THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 "'iSSi.fi'M vtT-«~. .._
 
 THE DAY WILL COME.
 
 iluj) Ai^ttl>i
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 3. md. 
 
 EY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "LADY AUDLEY'S SECEET," "VIXEN/ 
 "MOHAWKS," &c., &c., &a. 
 
 i»tcicoti)pctJ iitJlttOlT, 
 
 LONDON : 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., 
 
 LIMITED, 
 STATIONERS' HALL COURT. 
 
 1890. 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 LONDON' : 
 
 PRINTKD BY WILLIAiM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 bTA.MFOKD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
 
 PR 
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 CHAPTEIi I. 
 
 " Farewell, too — now at last— 
 i'"arcwell, fair lily." 
 
 The ]'o5'-bells clashed out upon the clear, bright air, stjirtUng the 
 rooks in the elm-trees that showed their leafy tops above the grey 
 gables of the old church. The bells broke out wth sudden jubila- 
 tion ; sudden, albeit the village had been on the alert for that very 
 Bound all the summer afternoon, uncertain as to when the signal for 
 that joy peal might be given. 
 
 The signal had come now, given by the telegraph wires to the 
 old postmistress, and sent on to the expectant ringers in the churcii 
 tower. The young couple had arrived at Wareham station, live 
 miles off; and four horses were bringing them to their honeymoon 
 home yonder amidst the old woods of Cheriton Chase. 
 
 Cheriton village had been on tiptoe witli expectance' ever since 
 lour o'clock, althoTigh common sense ought to have informed the 
 villagers that a bride and bridegroom who were to be married at 
 two o'clock in Westminster Abbey were not very likely to appear 
 at Cheriton early in the afternoon. But the vUlage having made 
 up its mind to a half-holiday was glad to begin early. A little knot 
 of gipsies from the last race-meeting in tlie neighbourhood had 
 improved the occasion and set up the friendly and familiar image of 
 Aunt Sally on the green in front of the Eagle Inn ; while a rival 
 estabhshment had started a pictorial shooting-gallery, with a rubi- 
 cund giant's face and wide-open mouth, grmning at the populace 
 across a barrel of Barcelona nuts. There are some peo])le who 
 might think Ciieriton village and Cheriton Chase too remote from 
 the busy world and its traffic to be subject to strong emotions of 
 any kind. Yet even in this region of Purbeck, cut oil" from the rest 
 of England by a winding river, and ostentatiously calling itself an 
 island, there were eager interests and warm feelings, and many a 
 link wth the great world of men and women on the other side of 
 the stream.
 
 2 The Day will come. 
 
 Cheriton Chase was one of the finest places in the cor.nty of 
 Dorset. It lay south of Wareham, between Corfe Castle and 
 Branksea Island, and in the midst of scenery which has a peculiar 
 charm of its own, a curious blending of level pasture and steep 
 hillside, barren heath and fertile water-meadow ; here a Dutch 
 landscape, grazing cattle, and winding stream ; there a suggestion 
 of some lonely Scottish deer- walk ; an endless variety of outhne ; 
 and yonder on the steep hilltop the grim stone walls and mouldering 
 bastions of Corfe Castle, standing dark and stern against the blue 
 fair-weather sky or boldly confronting tlie force of the tempest. 
 
 Cheriton House was almost as old as Corfe in the estimation of 
 some of the country people. Its history went back into the night 
 of ages. But while the Castle had suffered siege and battery by 
 Cromwell's ruthless cannon, and had been left to stand as that arch- 
 destroyer left it, until only the outer walls of the mighty fabric 
 remained, with a tower or two, and the mullions of one great 
 ■window standing up above the rest, the mere skeleton of the 
 gigantic pile, Cheriton House had been cared for and added to 
 century after century, so that it presented now a picturesque 
 blending of old and new, in wMch almost eveiy corridor and every 
 room was a surprise to the stranger. 
 
 Never had Cheriton been better cared for than by its present 
 owner, nor had Cheriton village owned a more beneficent lord of 
 the manor. And yet Lord Cheriton was an alien and a stranger to 
 the soil, and that kind of person whom rustics mostly are inclined 
 to look down upon — a self-made man. 
 
 The present master of Cheriton was a man who owed wealth and 
 distinction to his own talents. He had been raised to the peerage 
 about fifteen years before tiiis day of clashing joy-bells and village 
 rejoicings. He had been owner of the Cheriton estate for more 
 than twenty years, having bought the property on the death of the 
 last squire, and at a time of unusual depression. He was popidarly 
 supposed to have got the estate for an old song ; but the old song 
 meant something between seventy and eighty thousand pounds, and 
 represented the bidk of his ^^^fe's fortune. He had not been aft-aid 
 BO to swamp his wife's dowry, for he was at this time one of the 
 most popular silk gowns at the equity Bar. He was making four 
 or five thousand a year, and he was strong in the belief in his power 
 to rise higher. 
 
 The purchase, prompted by ambition, and a desire to take his 
 place among the landed gentry, had turned out a very lucky one 
 from a financial point of view, for a stone quarry that had been 
 unworked for more than a century was speedily developed by the 
 new owner of the soil, and became a source of income which 
 enabled him to improve mansion-house and farms without em- 
 barrassment. 
 
 Under Mr. Dalbrook's improving hand, the Cheriton estate, which
 
 The Day zvill come. 3 
 
 had been gradually sinking to decay in the occupation of an exhausted 
 race, became as perfect as human ingenuity, combined with judicious 
 outlay, can make any estate. The falcon eye of the master was on 
 all things. The famous advocate's only idea of a hoHday was to 
 work his hardest in the supervision of his Dorsetshire property. lie 
 thought of Cheriton many a time in the law courts, as Fox used to 
 think of St. Aime's and his turnips amidst the debauchery of a long 
 night's card-playing, or in the whirl of a stormy debate. Purbcck 
 might have been the motto and password of his life. He was born 
 at Dorcliester, the son of humble shopkeeping parents, and was 
 educated at the quaint old stone grammar school in that good old 
 town. All his happiest hours of boyhood had been spent in tlie 
 Isle of Purbcck. Those v/atery meadows and breezy commons and 
 break-neck hills had been his playground ; and when he went back 
 to them as a hard-headed, overworked man of the world, made 
 arrogant from the magnitude of a success which had never known 
 check or retrogression, the fountains of his heart were unlocked by 
 the very atmosphere of that fertile land where the salt breath of the 
 sea came tempered by the balmy perfume of the heather, the odour 
 of hedgerow flowers, rosemary, and thyme. 
 
 At Cheriton James Dalbrook imbent, forgot that he was a great 
 man, and remembered only that his lot was cast in a pleasant place, 
 and that he had the most lovable of wives and the loveliest of 
 daughters. 
 
 His daughter had been born at Cheriton, had known no other 
 country home, and had never considered the first-floor flat in 
 Victoria Street where: her father and mother spent the London 
 season, and where her father had his incd-d-terre all the year round, 
 in the light of a home. His daughter, Juanita, was the eldest of 
 three children born in the old manor house. The two younger, 
 both sons, died in infancy ; and it seemed to James Dalbrook that 
 there was a blight upon his ofl'spring, such a blight as that which 
 withered the male children of Henry of England and Catherine of 
 Arragon. INIuch had been given to him. He had been allowed to 
 make name and fortune, he whose sole heritage was a little crockery 
 shop in a second-rate street of Dorchester. He had cnjo3^ed the 
 lordship of broad acres, the honours and position of a rural squire ; 
 but he was not to be allowed that crowning glory for which strong 
 men yearn. He was not to bo the first of a long Hne of Barons 
 Cheriton of Cheriton. 
 
 After the giief and disappointment of those two deaths — first of 
 an infant of a few weeks old, and afterwards of a lovely child of two 
 years — James Dalbrook hardened his heart for a little while against 
 the fair young sister who survived them. She could not perpetuate 
 that barony which was the crown of his greatness ; or if by special 
 grace her father's title might bo in after-days bestowed upon tho 
 husband of her choice — wlaich in the event of her marrying judi-
 
 4 The Day will come. 
 
 ciously and marrying wealth, might not be impracticable — it would 
 be an alien to his race who would bear the title which he, James 
 Dalbrook, had created. He had so longed for a son, and behold 
 two had been given to him, and upon both the blight had fallen. 
 When people praised his daughter's childish loveliness he shook his 
 head despondent!}'', thinking that she too would be taken, like her 
 brothers, before ever the bud became a flower. 
 
 His heart sickened at thought of this contingency, and of his 
 heir-at-law in the event of his dying childless, a first cousin, clerk in 
 an auctioneer's office at Weymouth, a sandy-haired freckled youth, 
 without an aspirate, with a fixed idea that he was an authority 
 upon dress, style, and billiards, an insupportable young man under 
 any conditions, but hateful to murderousness as one's next heir. 
 To think of that freckled snob strutting about the estate in years to 
 come, blinking with his white eyelashes at those things which had 
 been so dear to the dead ! 
 
 His wife, to whom he owed the estate, had no relations nearer or 
 dearer to her than the freckled auctioneer was to her husband. 
 There remained for them both to work out their plans for the dis- 
 posal of that estate and fortune which was their own to deal with as 
 they pleased. Already James Dalbrook had dim notions of a 
 Dalbrook Scholarship Fund, in which future barristers should have 
 their long years of waiting upon fortime made easier "o them, and 
 for which they should bless the memory of the famous advocate. 
 
 Happily those brooding fears were not realized; this time the 
 bud was not blighted, the tlower carried no canker in its heart, but 
 opened its petals to the morning of life, a strong bright blossom, 
 revelling in sun and shower, wind and spray. Juanita grew from 
 babyhood to girlhood with hardly an illness, save the regulation 
 childish complaints, which touched her as hghtly as a butterfly's 
 wing touches the flowers. 
 
 Her mother was of Spanish extraction, the granddaughter of a 
 Cadiz merchant, who had failed in the wine trade and had left his 
 tions and daughters to carve their own way to fortune. Her father 
 had gone to San Francisco at the beginning of the gold fever, had 
 been one of the first to understand the safest way to take advantage 
 of the situation, and had started a wine-shop and hotel, out of which 
 lie made a splendid fortune within fifteen years. He acquired 
 wealth in good time to send his two daughters to Paris for their 
 education, and by the time they were grown up he was rich enough 
 to retire from business, and was able to dispose of his hotel and 
 wine-store for a sura which made a considerable addition to his 
 capital. He established himself in a brand-new first-floor in one of 
 the avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, a rich widower, more of an 
 American than a Spaniard after his long exile, and he launched his 
 two handsome daughters in Franco-American society. From Paris 
 they went to London, and were well received in that upper middle-^
 
 The Day will come. 5 
 
 class circle in wliich wealth can generally command a welcome, and 
 in which a famous barrister, like Mr. Dalbrook, ranks as a star of 
 the first magnitude. James Dalbrook was then at the apogee of his 
 Buccess, a large handsome man on the right side of his fortieth birth- 
 day. He was not by any means the kind of man who would seem 
 a Hkely suitor for a beautiful girl of three and twenty; but it 
 happened that his heavily handsome face and commanding manner, 
 his deep, strong voice and brilliant conversation possessed just the 
 charm that could subjugate Maria Morales' fancy. His conquest 
 came upon him as a bewildering surprise, and nothing could be 
 further from his thoughts than a mamage with the Spaniard's 
 daughter; and yet within six weeks of their first meeting at a 
 Royal Academy soirde in the shabby old rooms in Trafalgar Square, 
 Mr. Dalbrook and !Miss IMorales were engaged, with the full consent 
 of her father, who declared himself willing to give his daughter forty 
 thousand pounds, strictly settled upon herself, for her dowry, but 
 who readily doubled that sum when his future son-in-law revealed 
 his desire to become owner of Cheriton, and to found a family. For 
 Buch a laudable purpose Mr. ^loralcs was willing to make sacrifices ; 
 more especially as Maria's elder sister had offended him by marry- 
 ing without his consent, an offence which was only cancelled by 
 her untimely death soon after her marriage. 
 
 Juanita was only three years old when her father was raised to 
 the bench, and she was not more than six when he was ofiered a 
 peerage, which he accepted promptly, very glad to exchange the 
 name of Dalbrook — still extant over "the old shop-window in Dor- 
 chester, though the old shopkeepers were at rest in the cemetery 
 outside the town — for the title of Baron Cheriton. 
 
 As Lord Cheriton James Dalbrook linked himself indissolubly 
 with the lands which his wife's money had bought — money made in 
 a 'Frisco ■«nnc-shop for the most part. Happily, however, few of 
 Lord Cheriton's friends were aware of that fiict. Morales had traded 
 under an assumed name in the miners' city, and had only resumed 
 his patronymic on retiring from the bar and the wine-vaults. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that Juanita could not boast of aristo- 
 cratic lineage upon either side. Her beauty and grace, her lofty 
 carriage and high-l)red air, were spontaneous as the beauty of a wild 
 flower upon one of those furzy knolls over wliich her young feet had 
 bounded in many a girlish race with her dogs or her chosen com- 
 panion of the hour. She looked like the daughter of a duke, 
 although one of her grandfathers had sold pots and pans, and tlio 
 other had kept order, with a bowie-knife and a revolver in his belt, 
 over the humours of a 'Frisco tavern, in the days when the city was 
 Btill in its rough and tumble infancy, fierce as a bull-pup. Her 
 father, who, as the years went on, worshipped this only child of his, 
 never forgot that she lacked that one sovereign advantage of good 
 birth and highly placed kindred ; and thus it was that from her
 
 6 The Day will come. 
 
 childhood he had been on the watch for some alliance which should 
 give her these advantages. 
 
 The opportunity had soon offered itself. Among his Dorsetshu-e 
 neighbom-s one of the most distinguished was Sir Godfrey Carmichael, 
 a man of old family and good estate, highly cormected on the 
 maternal side, and well comiected all round, and married to tlie 
 daughter of an Irish peer. Sir Godfrey showed himself friendly 
 from the hour of Mr. Dalbrook's advent iu the neighbourhood. Ho 
 declared himself delighted to welcome new blood when it came in 
 the person of a man of talent and power. Lady Jane Carmichael 
 was equally pleased with James Dalbrook's gentle wife. The friend- 
 ship thus begun never knew any interruption till it ended suddenly 
 in a ploughed field between Wareham and Wim])oinne, where Sir 
 Godfrey's horse blundered at a fence, fell, and rolled over his rider, 
 ten years after Juanita's birth. 
 
 There were two daughters and a son, considerably their junior, 
 Avlio succeeded his father at the age of fifteen, and who had been 
 Juanita's playfellow ever since she could run alone. 
 
 The two fathers had talked together of the possibilities of the 
 future while their children were playing tennis on the lawn at 
 Cheriton, or gathering blackberries on the common. Sir Godfrey 
 was enough a man of the world to rejoice in the idea of kis son's 
 marriage ^\^tll the heiress of Cheriton, albeit he knew tliat the httle 
 dark-eyed girl, with the tall slim figure and graceful movements, liad 
 no place among the salt of the earth. His own estate was a poor 
 thing compared with Cheriton and the Cheriton stone-quarries ; and 
 he knew that Dalbrook's professional earnings had accumulated into 
 a very respectable fortune invested in stocks and shares of the 
 soundest quality. Altogether his son could hardly do better than 
 continue to attach himself to that dark-eyed child as he was attach- 
 ing himself now in his first year at Eton, riding his pony over to 
 Cheriton every non-hunting day, and ministering to her childish 
 caprices in all things. 
 
 The two mothers had talked of the future with more detail and 
 more assurance than the fathers, as men of the world, had ventm'ed 
 upon. Lady Cheriton was in love with her httle girl's boyish 
 admirer. His frank, handsome face, open-hearted manner, and 
 undeniable pluck realized her ideal of high-bred youth. His mother 
 was the daughter of an earl, his gi'andmother was the niece of a 
 duke. He had the right to call an existing duke his cousin. These 
 things counted for much in the mind of the storekeeper's daughter. 
 Her experience at a fashionable Parisian convent had taught her to 
 worship rank ; her experience of English middle-class society had 
 not eradicated that wealmess. And then she saw that this fine, 
 frank lad was devoted to her daughter with all a boy's ardent feeling 
 for his first sweetheart. 
 
 The years went on, and young Godfrey Carmichael and Juanita
 
 The Day zuill come. 7 
 
 Dalbrook were sweethearts still — sweetheartg always — sweethearts 
 when ho was at Eton, sweethearts when ho was at Oxford, sweet- 
 hearts in union, and sweethearts in absence, neither of them ever 
 imagining any other love ; and now, in the westering sunlight of 
 this July evening, the bells of Cheriton Church were ringing a joj'- 
 peal to celebrate their wedded loves, and the little street was 
 gay with floral archways and bright-coloured bunting, and mottoes 
 of welcome and gi-eeting, and Lady Chcriton's barouche was bring- 
 ing the bride and bridegroom to their first honeymoon dinner, as 
 fast as fom- horses could trot along the level road from quiet little 
 Wareham. 
 
 By a curious fancy Juanita had elected to spend her honeyrooon 
 in that one house of which she ought to have been most wearj', the 
 good old house in which she had been bom, and where all her days 
 of courtship, a ten years' courtship, had been spent. In vain had 
 the fairest scenes of Europe been suggested to her. She had 
 travelled enough to be indifferent to mountains and lakes, glaciers 
 and fjords. 
 
 "I have seen just enough to know that there is no place like 
 home," she said, with her pretty air of authority. " I won't have a 
 honeymoon at all if I can't have it at Cheriton. I want to feel what 
 it is like to have you all to mj'sclf in my own place, Godfrey, among 
 all the things I love. I shall feel like a queen with a slave ; I shall 
 feel like Delilah with Samson. When you are quite tired of Cheriton 
 — and subjection, you shall take me to the Priory; and once there 
 you shall be master and I will be slave." 
 
 " Sweet mastership, tyrannous slavcrj''," he answered, laughing. 
 " ]\Iy darling, Cheriton will suit me better than any other place in 
 the world for my honejinoon, for I shall be near my future electors, 
 and shall be able to study tlic pohtical situation in all its bearings 
 upon — the Isle of Purbeck." 
 
 Sir Godfrey was to stand for his division of the county in the 
 election that was looming in the distance of the late autumn. Ho 
 was very confident of success, as a young man might be who camo 
 of a time-honoured race, and knew himself popular in the district, 
 armed with all the newest ideas, too, full to the brim of the most 
 modern intelligence, a brilliant debater at Oxford, a favourite every- 
 where. Ilis marriage would increase his popularity and strengthen 
 his position, with the latent power of that larger wealth which must 
 needs be his in the future. 
 
 The sun was shining in golden glory upon grey stone roofs and 
 grey stone walls, clothed with rose and honeysuckle, clematis and 
 trumpet ash, — upon the village forge, where there had been no work 
 done since the morning, where the fire was out, and the men Avero 
 lounging at door and window in their Sunday clothes, — upon tho 
 three or four village shops, and tho two village inns, the humblo 
 little house of call opposite the forge, with its queer old sign, " Live
 
 8 The Day will come. 
 
 and Let Live," and the good old " George Hotel," with sprawling, 
 dilapidated stables and spacious yard, where the mail-coach used to 
 stop in the days that were gone. 
 
 There was a floral arch between the little tavern and the forge — 
 a floral display along the low rustic front of the butcher's shop — and 
 the cottage post-office was converted into a bower. There were 
 calico mottoes flapping across the road — " Welcome to the Bride 
 and Bridegroom," " God Bless Them Both," " Long Life and Ilapj)i- 
 ness," and other fond and hearty phrases of time-honoured familiarity. 
 But those clashing bells, with their sound of tumultuous gladness, a 
 joy that clamoured to the blue skies above and the woods below, and 
 out to the very sea yonder, in its loud exuberance, those and the 
 smiling faces of the villagers were the best of all welcomes. 
 
 There were gentlefolks among the crowd — a string of pony carts 
 and carriages drawn up on the long slip of waste grass beyond the 
 forge, just where the road turned off to Cheriton Chase ; and there 
 were two or three horsemen, one a young man upon a fine bay cob, 
 who had been walking his horse about restlessly for the last hour or 
 BO, sometimes riding half a mile towards the station in his impatience. 
 
 The carriage came towards the turning-point, tlie bride bowing 
 and smiling as she returned the greetings of gentle and simple. 
 Emotion had paled the delicate oHve of her complexion, but her 
 large dark eyes were bright with gladness. Her straw-coloured 
 tussore gown and leghorn hat were the perfection of simolicity, and 
 seemed to surround her with an atmosphere of coolness amidst the 
 dust and glare of the road. 
 
 At sight of the young man on the bay cob, she put her hand on 
 Sir Godfrey's arm and said something to him, on which he told the 
 coachman to stop. They had driven slowly through the village, and 
 the horses pulled up readily at the turn of the road. 
 
 " Only to think of your coming so far to greet us, Theodore ! " said 
 Juanita, leaning out of the carriage to shake hands with the owner 
 of the cob. 
 
 " I wanted to be among the first to welcome you, that was all," 
 he answered quiet]}^ " I had half a mind to ride to the station and 
 be ready to hand you into your carriage, but I thought Sir Godfrey 
 might think me a nuisance." 
 
 " No fear of tliat, my dear Dalbrook," said the bridegroom. " I 
 should have been very glad to see you. Did you ride all the way 
 from Dorchester ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I came over earlj'' in the morning, breakfasted with a 
 friend, rested the cob all day, and now he is ready to carry me home 
 again." 
 
 " What devotion 1 " said Juanita, laughingly, yet with a shade of 
 embarrassment. 
 
 "What good exercise for Peter, you mean. Keeps liim in con- 
 dition against the cubbing begins. God bless you, Juanita. I can't
 
 The Day will come. 9 
 
 flo better than echo the invocation above our heads, ' God bless the 
 bride and bridegi'oom.' " 
 
 lie shook hands with them botli for the second time. A faint 
 glow of crimson swept over his frank fair face as he clasped those 
 hands. His honest grey eyes looked at his cousin for a moment 
 with grave tenderness, in which there was the shadow of a life-long 
 regret. He had loved and wooed her, and resigned her to her more 
 favoured lover, and he was honest in his desire for her happiness. 
 His own gladness, his own life, seemed to him of small account when 
 weighed against her well-being. 
 
 " Yon must come and dine with us before we leave Cheriton, 
 Dalbrook," said Sir Godfrey. 
 
 " You are very good. I am off to Heidelberg for a holiday as 
 poon as I can wind up my office work. I will offer myself to you 
 later on, if I may, when you are settled at the Priory." 
 
 " Come when you like. Good-bye." 
 
 The carriage turned the corner. The crowd burst into a cheer : 
 one, two, three, and then another one : and then three more cheers 
 louder than the first three, and the horses were ou the verge of 
 bolting for the rest of the way to Cheriton. 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook rode slowly away from the village festivities, 
 rode away from the clang of the joy-bells, and the sound of rustic 
 triple bob majors. It would be night before he reached Dorchester ; 
 but there was a moon, and he loiew every yard of high road, every 
 grassy ride across the wide barren heath between Cheriton and the 
 old Roman city. He knew the road and he knew his horse, which 
 was as good of its kind as there was to be found in the county of 
 Dorset. He was not a rich man, and he had to work hard for his 
 living, but he was the son of a well-to-do father, and he never stinted 
 the price of the horse that carried him, and which was something 
 more to Theodore Dalbrook than most men's horses are to them. 
 It was his own familiar friend, companion, and solace. A man 
 might have understood as much only to see him lean over the cob's 
 neck, and pat him, as he did to-night, riding slowly up the hill that 
 leads from Cheriton to the wild ridge of heath above Branksea 
 Island. 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook, junior partner in the firm of Dalbrook & 
 Son, Cornhill, Dorchester, was a more distant relative of Juanita's 
 than the sandy first-cousin in the auctioneer's office whom Lord 
 Cheriton had once hated as the only alternative to a charitable 
 endowment. The sandy youth was the only son of Lord Cheriton'a 
 elder brother, long since dead. Theodore was the grandson of a 
 certain Matthew Dalbrook, a second cousin of Lord Clieriton's. and 
 once upon a time the wealthiest and most important member of the 
 Dalbrook family. The humble-minded couple in the crockery shop 
 had looked up to Matthew Dalbrook, solicitor, with a handsome old 
 house in Cornhill, a smart gig, a stud of three fine horses, and half
 
 lo The Day will come. 
 
 the county people for his clients. To the plain folks behind the 
 counter, who dined at one and supped on cold meat and pickles and 
 Dutch cheese at nine of the clock, Mr. Dalbrook, the lawyer, was a 
 great man. They were moved by his condescension when he dropped 
 in to the five-o'clock tea, and talked over old family reminiscences, 
 the farmhouse on the Weymouth Road, which was the cradle of 
 their race, and where they had all known good days while the old 
 people were alive, and while the homestead was a family rendezvous. 
 That he should deign to take tea and water-cresses in the little 
 parlour behind the shop, he who had a drawiBg-room almost as big 
 as a church, and a man-servant in plain clothes to wait upon him at 
 his six-o'clock dinner, was a touching act of humility in their eyes. 
 When their younger boy brought home prizes and certificates of all 
 kinds from the grammar school, it was from Matthew they sought 
 advice, modestly, and with the apprehension of being deemed over- 
 ambitious. 
 
 " I'm afraid he's too much of a scholar for the business," said the 
 mother, shyly, lookiBg fondly at her tall, overgrovvTi son, pallid with 
 rapid growth and ovennuch Greek and Latin. 
 
 " Of com'se he is ; that boy is too good to sell pots and pans. 
 You must send him to the University, Jim." 
 
 Jim, the father, looked despondently at James, the son. The 
 University meant something a^vful in the crockeiy merchant's mind : 
 a vast expenditure of money; dreadfiU hazards to rehgion and 
 morals; friendships with dukes and marquises, whose influence 
 would alienate the boy from his parents, and render him scornful 
 of the snug back-parlour, with his grandfather's portrait over the 
 mantel-piece, painted in oils by a gifted towTisman, who had once 
 had a picture very nearly hung in the Royal Academy. 
 
 " I couldn't afford to send him to college," he said. 
 
 " Oh, but you must afford it. I must help you, if you and Sarah 
 liaven't got enough in an old stocking anywhere — as I dare say you 
 liave. My boys are at the University, and they didn't do half as 
 well at the grammar school as your boy has done. He must go to 
 Cambridge, he must be entered at Trinity Hall, and if he works 
 hard and keeps steady he needn't cost you a fortune. You would 
 work, eh, James ? " 
 
 " Wouldn't I just, that's all," James replied with emphasis. 
 
 His heart had sickened at the prospect of the crockery business : 
 the consignments of pots and pans ; the returned empties, invoices, 
 quarterly accounts, matchings, rivetings, dust, straw, dirt, and degra- 
 dation. He could not see the nobility of labour in that dusty shop, 
 below the level of the pavement, amid ewers and basins, teacups 
 and beer jugs, sherries and ports. But to work in the University — 
 hard by tliat great college where Bacon had worked, and Newton, 
 and a host of the mighty dead, and where Whewell, a self-made 
 man, was still head — to work among the sons of gentlemen, and
 
 The Day will come. 1 1 
 
 with a view to the profession of a gentleman, — ilvat would be labour 
 for which to live ; fur which to die, if need be. 
 
 " If — if mother and me were to strain a p'int," mused the crockery 
 man, who was better able to aflbrd the University for his son than 
 many a i^cntlcman of Dorset whose boj^s had to be sent there, willy 
 nilly, " if mother and me that have worked so hard for our money 
 was willing to spend a goodish bit of it upon sending him to college, 
 what are we to do with him after we've made a fine gentleman of 
 him ? That's where it is, you see, Mat." 
 
 " You are not going to make a fine gentleman of him. God forbid. 
 If he does well at Cambridge, you can make a lawyer of him. Trinity 
 Hall is the nursery of lawyers. You can article him to me ; and look 
 you here, Jim, if I don't have to help yon pay for his education, I'll 
 give him his articles. There, now, what do you say to that? " 
 
 The oiler was pronounced a generous one, and worthy of a blood 
 relation ; but James Dalbrook never took advantage of his kinsman's 
 kindness. His University career was as successful as his progress 
 at the quaint stone grammar school, and his college friends, who 
 were neither dukes nor marquises, but fairly sensible yoimg men, all 
 advised liim to apply himself to the higher branch of the law. So 
 James Ualbrook, of Trinity Hall, ate his dinners at the Temple 
 during his last year of undergraduate life, came out seventh \vi-angler, 
 was called to the Bar, and in due course wore crimson, velvet, and 
 ermine, and became Lord Choriton, a man whose _gi-eatness in some- 
 wise overshadowed the small provincial dignity of the house of 
 Matthew Ualbrook, erstwhile head of the family. 
 
 The Dalbrooks, of Dorchester, had gone upon their way quietly, 
 thriving, respected, but iu no wise distinguished. Matthew, jimior, 
 bad succeeded his father, Matthew, senior, and the firm in Comliill 
 had been Dalbrook & Son for more than thirty years; and now 
 Theodore, the eldest of a family of five, was Son, and his grand- 
 father, the founder of the firm, was sleeping the sleep of the just in 
 the cemetery outside Dorcliester. 
 
 Lord Chcriton was too wise a man to forget old obligations or to 
 avoid his kindred. There was nothing to be ashamed of in his 
 connection with a thoroughly reputable firm like Dalbrook & Son. 
 They might be provincial, but their name was a sjmonym for honour 
 and honesty. They had taken as firm root in the land as the 
 county families whoso title-deeds and leases, wills and codicils they 
 kept. They were well-bred, well-educated, God-fearing people, 
 ■with no struggling ambitions, no morbid craving to get upon a 
 higher social level than the status to which their professional 
 
 f)Osition and their means entitled them. They rode and drove good 
 lorses, kept good servants, lived in a good house, visited among the 
 county people with moderation, but they made no pretensions to 
 being "smart." They oflered no sacrifices of fortune or self-respect 
 to the modern Moloch — Fashion.
 
 12 The Day will come. 
 
 There was a younger son called Harrington, destined for the 
 Church, and with advanced views upon church architecture and 
 music ; and there were two unmarried daughters, Janet and Sophia, 
 also wth advanced views upon the woman's rights question, and 
 with a sovereign contempt for the standard young lady. 
 
 Theodore's lines were marked out for him with inevitable pre- 
 cision. He had been taken into partnership the day he was out of 
 his articles, and at seven-and-twenty he was his father's right hand, 
 and represented all that Avas modern and popular in the firm. He 
 was steady as a rock, had an intellect of singular acuteness, a ready 
 wit, and very pleasing manners. He had, above all things, the in- 
 estimable gift of an equable and happy temper. He had been 
 everybody's favourite from the nursery upwards, popular at school, 
 popular at the University, popular in the local club, popular in the 
 hunting field ; and it was the prevailing opinion of Dorchester that 
 he ought to marry an heiress and make a great position for the 
 house of Dalbrook. Some people had gone so far as to say that he 
 ought to marry Lord Cheriton's daughter. 
 
 He had been made free of the great house at Cheriton from the 
 time he was old enough to visit anywhere. His family had been 
 bidden to all notable festivities ; had been duly called upon, at not 
 too long intervals, by Lady Cheriton. He had ridden by Juanita's 
 side in many a run Avith the South Dorset foxhounds, and had 
 waited about with her outside many a covert. They had pic-nicked 
 and made gipsy tea at Corfe Castle ; they had rambled in the woods 
 near Studland ; they had sailed to Branksea, and, further away, to 
 Lulworth Cove, and the romantic caves of Stare : but this had been 
 all in frank cousinly friendship. Theodore had seen only too soon 
 that there was no room for him in his kinswoman's heart. He 
 began by admiring her as the loveliest girl he had ever seen ; he 
 had ended by adoring her, and he adored her still — but with a loyal 
 regard which accepted her position as another man's wife ; and he 
 would have died sooner than dishonour her by one unholy thought. 
 
 It was nearly ten o'clock when he rode slowly along the avenue 
 that led into Dorchester. The moon was shining between the over- 
 arching boughs of the sycamores. The road with that high over- 
 arching roof had a solemn look in the moonlit stillness. The Roman 
 amphitheatre yonder, with its grassy banks rising tier above tier, 
 shone white in the moonbeams ; the old town seemed half asleep. 
 The house in Cornhill had a very Philistine look as compared with 
 that fine old mansion of Cheriton wliich was present in his mind in 
 very vivid colours to-night, those two wandering about the old 
 Itahan garden, hand-in-hand, wedded lovers, with the lamplit rooms 
 open to the soft summer night, and the long terrace and stone balus- 
 trade and moss-grown statues of nymph and goddess sQvered by the 
 moonbeams. The Cornhill house was a good old house notAvith- 
 standing, a panelled house of the Georgian era, with a wide entrance-
 
 The Day will come. 13 
 
 hall, and a well-staircase with carved oak balusters and a baluster 
 rail a foot broad. The furniture had been very little changed sinco 
 the daj's of Theodore's great-grandfather, for the late IMrs. Dalbrook 
 had cherished no yearnings for modern art in the furniture line. 
 Her gentle spirit had looked up to her husband as a leader of men, 
 and had reverenced chairs and tables, bureaus and wardrobes that 
 had belonged to his grandfather, as if they were made sacred hy 
 that association. And thus the good old house in the good old 
 town had a savour of bygone generations, an old family air which 
 the parvenu would buy for much gold if he could. True that the 
 dining-room chairs were over-ponderous, and the dining-room pic- 
 tures belonged to the obscure school of religious art in which you 
 can only catch your saint or your martyr at one particular angle ; 
 yet tlie chairs were of a fine antique form, and bore the crest of 
 the Dalbrooks on their shabby leather backs, and the pictures had 
 a respectable brownness which might mean Holbein or Rembrandt. 
 
 The drawing-room was large and bright, with four narrow, deeply 
 recessed windows commanding tlie broad street and the Antelope 
 Hotel over the way, and deep window seats crammed with flowei-s. 
 Here the oak panelling had been painted pale pink, and the 
 mouldings picked out in a deeper tint by successive generations of 
 Vandals, but the eftect was cheerful, and the pink walls made a 
 good background for the Chippendale secretaires and cabinets filled 
 with willow-pattem Worcester or Crown Derby. The window- 
 curtains were dark brown cloth, with a border of Berlin wool lilies 
 and roses, a border which would have set the teeth of an aesthete 
 on edge, but which blended with the general brightness of the room. 
 Old Mrs. Matthew Dalbrook, the gi'andmother, and her three spinster 
 daughters had toiled over these cross-stitch borders, and Theodore's 
 mother would have deemed it sacrilege to have put aside this labour 
 of a vanished life. 
 
 Han'ington Dalbrook and his two sisters were in the drawing- 
 room, each apparently absorbed in an instructive book, and yet all 
 tiiree had been talking for the gi-eater part of the evening. It was 
 a characteristic of their highly intellectual lives to nurse a volume 
 of Herbert Spencer or a treatise upon the deeper mysteries of 
 lUiddlia, while they discussed the conduct or morals of their neigh- 
 bours — or their gowns and bonnets. 
 
 " I thought you were never coming home, Theo," said Janet. 
 '' You don't mean to say you waited to see the bride and bride- 
 groom ? " 
 
 " That is exactly what I do mean to say. I had to get old 
 Sandown's lease executed, and when I had finished my business I 
 waited about to see them airive. Do you think you could get me 
 anything in the way of supper, Janie? " 
 
 " Father went to bed ever so long ago," replied Janet ; " it's 
 dreadfully late."
 
 14 The Day will come. 
 
 " But I don't suppose the cook has gone to bed, and perhaps she 
 would condescend to cut me a sandwich or two," answered Theodore, 
 ringing the bell. 
 
 His sisters were orderly young women, who objected to eating 
 and drinking out of regulation hours. Janet looked round the 
 room discontentedly, thinking that her brother would make crumbs. 
 Young men, she had observed, are almost miracle workers in the 
 way of crumbs. They can get more superfluous crumbs out of any 
 given piece of bread than the entire piece would appear to contain, 
 looked at by the casual eye. 
 
 " I have found a passage in Spencer which most fuUy bears out 
 my view, Theodore," said Sophia, severely, referring to an argument 
 she had had with her brother the day before yesterday. 
 
 "How did she look?" asked Janet, openly frivolous for the 
 nonce. 
 
 " Lovelier than I ever saw her look in her life," answered Theo- 
 dore. " At least I thought so." 
 
 He wondered, as he said those words, whether it had been his 
 own despair at the thought of having irrevocably lost her which 
 invested her famihar beauty with a new and mystic power. " Yes, 
 she looked exquisitely lovely, and completely happy — an ideal 
 bride." 
 
 " If her nose wore a thought longer her face would be almost 
 perfect," said Janet. " How was she dressed ? " 
 
 " I can no more tell you than I could say how many petals there 
 are in that Dijon rose yonder. She gave me an impression of cool 
 soft colour. I think there was yellow in her hat — pale yellow, like 
 a primrose." 
 
 " Men are such dolts about women's dress," retorted Janet, 
 impatiently ; " and yet they pretend to have taste and judgment, 
 and to criticize everything we wear." 
 
 " I think you may rely upon us for knowing what we doiCt hkc," 
 said Theodore. 
 
 He seated himself in his father's easy-chair, a roomy old chair 
 with projecting sides, that almost hid him from the other occupants 
 of the room. He was weary and sad, and their chatter ii-ritated his 
 overstrung nerves. He would have gone straight to his own room 
 on arri\ing, but that would have set them wondering, and he did 
 not want to be wondered about. He wanted to keep his secret, 
 or as much of it as he could. No doubt those three knew that he 
 had been fond of her, very fond ; that he would have sacrificed half 
 his lifetime to win her for the other half ; but they did not know 
 how fond. They did not know that he would fain have melted down 
 all the sands of time into one grain of gold — one golden day in which 
 to hold her to his heart and know she loved him
 
 The Day zuill come. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 "And warm and light I felt her clasping hand 
 When twined in mine ; she followed where I went." 
 
 TiiF.RE is a touch of childishness in all honeymoon couples, a 
 something which suggests tho Babes in the Wood, left to play 
 together by the Arch-Deceiver, Fate ; wandering hand in hand in 
 tho morning sunshine, gathering flowers, pleased with tho mossy 
 banks and leafy glades, like those children of the old familiar story, 
 before ever hunger or cold or fear came upon them, before tlio 
 shadow of night and death stole darkly on their path. Even 
 Godfrey Carmichael, a sensible, highly : educated young man, 
 whose pride it was to march in the van of progress and enlighten- 
 ment, even he had that touch of childishness which is adorable 
 in a lover, and which lasts, oh, so short a time; transient as tlie 
 bloom on the peach, the dowTi on the butterfly's wing, tho morning 
 dew on a rose. 
 
 He had loved her all his life, as it seemed to him. They had 
 been companions, friends, lovers, for longer than cither could 
 remember, so gradual had been tho growth of love. Yet the 
 privilege of belonging to each other was not tho less sweet because 
 of this old familiarity. 
 
 "Are we really married — really husband and wife — Godfrey?" 
 asked Juanita, nesthug to his side as they stood together in tho 
 wide verandah where they brcakf\xsted on these July mornings 
 among climbing roses and clematis. " Husband and wife — such 
 prosaic words. I heard you speak of mo to the Vicar yesterday as 
 ' my wife.' It gave me quite a shock." 
 
 " Were you sorry to think it was true ? " 
 
 "Sorry — no! But 'wife.' The word has such a matter-of-fact 
 soimd. It means a person who writes cheques for the house 
 accounts, revises tlie bill of fare, and takes all the blame when tho 
 Bervants do wrong." 
 
 " Shall I call you my idol, then, my goddess — the enchantress 
 whose magic wand wafts gladness and sunshine over my existence ? " 
 
 " No, call me wife. It is a good word, after all, Godfrey — a 
 good serviceable word, a word that will stand wear and tear. It 
 means for ever." 
 
 They breakfasted tcte-a-tete in tlieir bower of roses ; they wan- 
 dered about the Chase or sat in the garden all day long. They led 
 an idle desidtory life like little children, and wondered that evening 
 came so soon,' and stayed up late into the summer night, steeping 
 themselves in the starshine and silence which seemed new to tliem 
 in their mutual dehght.
 
 1 6 The Day wilt come. 
 
 There was a lovely view from that broad terrace, with its Italian 
 balustrade and statues, its triple flight of marble steps descending 
 to an Itahan garden, which had been laid out in the Augustan age 
 of Pope and Addison, when the distinctive feature of a great man's 
 garden was stateliness. Here was the lovers' favourite loitering 
 piace when the night grew late, Juanita looking like Juliet in her 
 loose white silk tea-gown, with its Venetian amplitude of sleeve 
 and its mediaeval gold embroidery. The fashionable dressmaker 
 who made that gown had known how to adapt her art to Miss 
 Dalbrook's beauty. The long straight folds accentuated every 
 line of the finely moulded figure, fuller than the average girlish 
 figure, suggestive of Juno rather than Psyche. She was two inches 
 taller than the average girl, and looked almost as tall as her lover as 
 she stood beside him in the moonlight, gazing dreamily at the landscape. 
 
 This hushed and solemn hour on the verge of midnight was their 
 favourite time. Then only were they really alone, secure in the 
 knowledge that all the household was sleeping, and that they had 
 their world verily to themselves, and might be as foolish as they 
 liked. Once, at sight of a shooting star, Juanita flung herself upon 
 her lover's breast and sobbed aloud. It was some minutes before 
 he could soothe her. 
 
 " My love, my love, what does it mean ? " he asked, perplexed by 
 her agitation. 
 
 " I saw the star, and I prayed that we might never be parted ; 
 and then it flashed upon me that we might, and I could not bear 
 the thought," she sobbed, clinging to him like afrightened child. 
 
 " My dear one, what should part us, except death ? " 
 
 "Ah, Godfrey, death is everywhere. How could a good God 
 make His creatures so fond of each other and yet part them so 
 cruelly as He does sometimes ? " 
 
 " Only to unite them again in another world, Nita. I feel as if 
 our two lives must go on in an endless chain, circling among those 
 stars yonder, which could not have been made to be for ever un- 
 peopled. There are happy lovers there at this instant, I am con- 
 vinced — lovers who have lived before us here, and have been 
 translated to a higher life yonder ; lovers who have felt the pangs 
 of parting, the ecstasy of reunion." 
 
 He glanced vaguely towards that starry heaven, while he fondly 
 smoothed the dark hair upon Juanita's brow. It was not easy to 
 win her back to cheerfulness. That vision of possible grief had too 
 completely possessed her. Godfrey was fain to be serious, finding 
 her spirits so shaken ; so they talked together gravely of that 
 unknown hereafter which philosophy or rehgion may map out with 
 mathematical distinctness, but which remains to the individual soul 
 for ever mysterious and awful. 
 
 Her husband found it wiser to talk of solemn things, finding her 
 eo sad, and she took comfort from that serious conversation.
 
 The Day will come. 17 
 
 " Let us lead good lives, clear, and hope for the best in other 
 worlds," ho said. " Tiiere is sound sense in the Baddiiist theory, 
 tliat we are the makers of our own spiritual destin}', and that a man 
 mav be in advance of his fellow men, even in getting to Heaven." 
 
 Those grave thoughts had little place in Juanita's mind next 
 day, wliich was the lirst day the lovers devoted to practical things. 
 They started directly after breakfast for a iUe-a-ltte drive to ]\Iilbrook 
 Priory, where certain alterations and improvements were contem- 
 plated in the rooms which were to be Juanita's. Godfrey's widowed 
 mother, Lady Jane Carmichacl, had transferred herself and her 
 belongings to a villa at Swanage, where she was devoting herself to 
 the creation of a garden, which was, on a small scale, to repeat the 
 beauties of her flat old-fashioned flower garden at the Priory. It 
 irked her somewhat to think liow long the hedges of yew and holly 
 would t;iko to grow ; but there was a certain pleasure in creation. 
 She was a mild, loving creature, with an aristocratic profile, silvery 
 grey hair, and a small fragile figure ; a woman who looked a 
 patrician to her finger tips, and whom everybody imposed upon. 
 Her blue blood had not endowed her with the power to rule. She 
 adored her son, was very fond of Juanita, and resigned her place in 
 her old home without a sigh. 
 
 "The Priory was a great deal too big for me," she told her 
 particular friends. "I used to feel very dreary there when Godfrey 
 was at Oxford, and afterwards, for of course he was often away. It 
 was onlj' in the shooting season that the house looked cheerful. 1 
 hope they will soon have a family, and then that will enliven the 
 place a little." 
 
 Milbrook Village and Milbrook Priory lay twelve miles nearer 
 Dorchester than Cheriton Chase. Juanita enjoyed the long drive 
 in tlie fresh morning air through a region of marsh and watorv 
 meadow, where the cattle gave charm and variety to a landscape 
 which would have been barren and monotonous without them, a 
 place of winding streams on which the summer sunlight was shining. 
 
 The Priory was by no means so fine a ])laco as Cheriton, but it 
 was old, and not without interest, and Lady Jane was justified in 
 the assertion that it was too large for her. It would be too small 
 perhaps for Sir Godfrey and his wife in the days to come, when in 
 the natural course of events James Dalbrook would be at rest alter 
 his life labour, and Cheriton would belong to Juanita. 
 
 " No doubt they will like Cheriton better than the Priory when 
 W6 are all dead and gone," said Lady Jane, with her plaintive air. 
 "I only hope they will have a family. Big houses are so dismal 
 without little people." 
 
 This idea of a family was almost a craze with Lady Jane Car- 
 michacl. She had idolized her only son, had been miserable at 
 every parting,^ and it had seemed a hard thing to her that there waa 
 not more of hira, as she had herself expressed it. 
 

 
 1 8 The Day will come. 
 
 " Godfrey has been the dearest boy. I only wish I had six of 
 him," she would say piteously ; and now her mind projected itself 
 into the future, and she pictured a bevy of grandchildren — numerous 
 as a covey of partridges in the upland fields of the home farm at 
 Cheriton — and fancied herself lavishing her hoarded treasures of 
 love upon them. She had grandchildren already, and to spare, the 
 oSspring of her two daughters, but these did not bear the honoured 
 name of Carmichael, and, though they were very dear to her 
 maternal heart, they were not what Godfrey's children would be to 
 her. 
 
 She would be gone, she told herself, before they would be old 
 enough to forsake her. She would be gone before those young 
 birds grew too strong upon the wing. A blessed spell of golden 
 years lay before her ; a nurserj', and then a schoolroom ; and then, 
 perhaps, before the last dim closing scene, a bridal, a granddaughter 
 clinging to her in the sweet sadness of leave-taking, a fair young 
 face crowned with orange flowers pressed against her own in the 
 bride's happy kiss — and then she would say Nunc dimittis, and feel 
 that her cup of gladness had been filled to the brim. 
 
 The lovers' talk was all of that shadowy future, as the pair of 
 greys bowled gaily along the level road. The horses were Godfrey's 
 favourite pair, and belonged to a team of chestnuts and greys which 
 had won him some distinction last season in Hyde Park, when the 
 coaches met at the corner by the Magazine, and when the handsome 
 Miss Dalbrook, Lord Cheriton's heness, was the cynosure of many 
 eyes. The thoughts of Sir Godfrey and his wife were far fi-om 
 Hyde Park and the Four-in-Hand Club tliis morning. Their minds 
 were filled with simple rural anticipations, and had almost a 
 patriarchal turn, as of an Arcadian pair whose wealth was all in 
 flocks and herds, and green pastures like these by which they were 
 driving. 
 
 The Priory stood on low ground between Wareham and Wim- 
 bourne, sheltered from the north by a bold ridge of heath, screened 
 on the east by a little wood of oaks and chestnuts, Spanish chest- 
 nuts, with graceful drooping branches, whose glossy leaves contrasted 
 with the closer foliage of the rugged old oaks. The house was 
 built of Purbeck stone, and its bluish grey was touched with shades 
 of gold and silvery gi-een where the lichens and ipaosses crept over 
 it, while one long southern wall was clothed with trumpet-ash and 
 magnolia, mjTtJe and rose, as with a closely interwoven curtain of 
 greenery, from which the small latticed windows flashed back the 
 sunshine. 
 
 Nothing at the Priory was so stately as its counterpart at Cheriton. 
 There were marble balustrades and rural gods there on the terrace ; 
 here there was only a broad gravel walk along the southern front, 
 with a little old shabby stone temple at each end. At Cheriton 
 three flights of marble steps led from the terrace to the Italian
 
 The Day will come. 19 
 
 garden, and tliCTi again tln-co more flights led to a garden on a 
 lower level, and so by studied gi-adations to the bottom of the slope 
 on ■which the mansion was built. Hero house and garden were on 
 the same level, and those gardens which Lady Jane had so cherished 
 were distinguished only by an elegant simplicitJ^ Between the 
 garden and a park of less than fifty acres there was only a sunk 
 fence, and the sole glory of that modest domain lay in a herd /> f 
 choice Channel Island cows, which had been Lady Jane's pride. 
 She had resigned them to Juanita without a sigh, although each 
 particular beast had been to her as a friend. 
 
 " My dear, what could I do wth cows in a villa ? " she said, when 
 Juanita suggested that she should at least keep her favourites. 
 Beauty, and Maydew, and Coquette. " Of course, as you say, I 
 could rent a couple of paddocks ; but I should not like to see the 
 lierd divided. Besides, you will want them all by-and-by, when 
 you have a family." 
 
 Nita stepped lightly across the threshold of her future home. 
 The old grey porch was embedded in roses and trailing passion- 
 flowers. Everything had a shabby, old-world look compared Avith 
 Cheriton. Here there had been no improvement for over a century ; 
 all things had been quiescent as in the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty. 
 
 " What a dear old house it is, Godfrey, and how everything in it 
 speaks to me of your ancestors — your own ancestors — not other 
 people's ! That makes all the difference. At Cheriton I feel always 
 as if I were sun-ounded by malevolent ghosts. I can't see them, 
 but I Ivnow they are there. Those poor Strangways, how they must 
 bate me." 
 
 " If there are any living Strangways knocking about the world 
 houseless, or at any rate landless, I don't suppose they feel over 
 kindly disposed to you," said Godfrey; "but the ghosts have done 
 wth human habitations. It can matter very little to them who 
 lives in the rooms where they were once happy or miserable, as the 
 case may be. Has your father ever heard anything of the old 
 family?" 
 
 " Never. He says there are no Strangways left on tliis hemisphere. 
 There may be a remnant of the race in Australia," he says, " for he 
 heard of a cousin of Reginald Strang\vay's who went out to Brisbane 
 years ago to work with a sheep farmer on the Darling Downs. 
 There is no one else of the old race and the old name that he can 
 tell me about. I take a morbid interest in the subject, you know. 
 If I were to meet a very evil-looking tramp in the woods and he 
 were to threaten me, I should suspect him of being a Strangway. 
 They all must hate us." 
 
 " With a very imreasonable hatred, then, Nita, for it was no fault 
 of your father's that the family went to the bad. I have heard my 
 father talk of the Strangways many a time over his wine. They 
 had been a reckless, improvident race for ever so many generations,
 
 20 The Day will come. 
 
 men who lived only for the pleasure of the hour, whose motto was 
 ' Carpe diem ' in the worst sense of the words. There was a 
 Strangway who was the fashion for a short time during the Eegency, 
 wore a hat of his own invention, and got himself entangled Avith a 
 popular actress, who sued him for breach of promise. He dipped 
 the property. There was a racing Strangway who kept a stable at 
 Newmarket and married — well — never mind how. He dipped the 
 property. There was Georgiana Strangway, an heiress and a 
 famous beauty, in the Sailor King's reign. Two of the Royal 
 Dukes wanted to marry her ; but she ran away with a bandmaster 
 in the Blues. She used to ride in Hyde Park at nine o'clock everf 
 morning in a gi-een cloth spencer trimmed with sable, at a time 
 when very few women rode in London. She saw the bandmaster, 
 fell over head and ears in love with him, and bolted. They were 
 married at Gretna. He spent as much of her fortune as he could 
 get at, and was reported to have thrashed her before they parted. 
 She set up a boarding-house at Ostend, gambled, di-ank cheap 
 brandj^, and died at tive-and-forty." 
 
 " What a di-eadful ghost she would be to meet," said Nita, mth 
 a shudder. 
 
 "From first to last they have been a bad lot," concluded Sir 
 Godfrey, "and the Isle of Purbeck was a prodigious gainer when 
 your father became master of Cheriton Chase and Baron Cheriton 
 of Cheriton." 
 
 " T/iat is what they must feel worst of all," said Nita, speaking of 
 the dead and the living as if they were one gi-oup of banished shades. 
 " It must be hard for them to think that a stranger takes his title 
 from the land that was once theirs, from the house in which they 
 were born. Poor ill-behaved things, I can't help being soiTy for 
 them." 
 
 " My fanciful Nita, they do not deserve your pity. They make 
 their own hves, love. They have only suffered the result of their 
 own Karma." 
 
 " I only hope they will be better off in their nest incarnations, 
 and that they won't get to that dreadful eighth world which leads 
 nowhere," said Juanita. 
 
 She made this light allusion to a creed which she and her lover 
 had discussed seriously many a time in their graver moods. They 
 had read ]\Ir. Sinnett's books together, and had given themselves up 
 in somewise to the fascinating theories of Esoteric Buddhism, and 
 had been impressed by the curious parallel between that semi- 
 fabulous Reformer of the East and the Teacher and Redeemer in 
 whom they both beheved. 
 
 They went about the house together, Nita admiring everything, 
 as if she were seeing those old rooms for the first time. The 
 alterations to be made were of the smallest. Nita would allow 
 scarcely any change.
 
 The Day will come. 21 
 
 " Wliatevcr was nice enough for Lady Jane must be good enough 
 for me," slio said, decisively, when Godfrey proposed improvements 
 which would have changed tlie character of his mother's morning 
 room, a conservatory, and a large bay window opposite the fire- 
 place, for instance. 
 
 " But it is such a shabby old hole, compared with your room at 
 Chcriton." 
 
 " It is a dear old hole, sir, and I won't have it altered in the 
 smallest detail. I adore those deepsct windows and wide window- 
 seats; and this apple-blossom chintz is simply delicious. Faded, 
 sir? What of that? One can't buy such patterns nowadays, for 
 love or money. And that old Chinese screen must have belonged 
 to a mandarin of the highest rank. ^ly only feeling will be that I 
 am a wretch in appropriating dear Lady Jane's surroundings. This 
 room fitted her like a glove." 
 
 " She is charmed to surrender it to you, love ; and your forbear- 
 ance in the matter of improvement wnU delight her." 
 
 " Your improvements would have been destruction. A con- 
 servatory opening out of that window would suggest a city man's 
 drawing-room at Tulse Hill. I have seen such in my childhood, 
 when mother used to visit odd people on the Surrey side of the 
 river." 
 
 " Loveliest insolence ! " 
 
 " Oh, I am obliged to cultivate insolence. It is a parvenue's only 
 defensive weapon. We new-made people always give ourselves 
 more airs than you who were born in the purple." 
 
 She roamed from room to room, expatiating upon everything 
 with a childlike pleasure, delighted at the idea of this her new 
 kingdom, over which she was to reign with undivided sovereignty. 
 Cheriton was ever so much grander ; but at Chcriton she had only 
 been the daughter of the house ; indulged in every fancy, yet in 
 somewise in a state of subjection. Here she was to be sole mistress, 
 with Godfrey for her obedient slave. 
 
 " And now show me your rooms, sir," she exclaimed, with 
 pretty authority. " I may wish to make some improvements tliere^ 
 
 "You shall work your will with them, dearest, as you have done 
 with their master." 
 
 lie led her to his study and general don, a fine old room looking 
 into the stable-yard, capacious, but gloomy. 
 
 "This is dreadful," she cried, "no view, and ever so far from 
 v\r! You must have the room next the morning-room, so that we 
 can run in to each other, and talk at any moment." 
 
 " That is one of the best bedrooms." 
 
 "What of that! We can do without superfluous bedrooms; but 
 I cannot do without you. This room of yours will make a visitor's 
 bedroom. If he or she doesn't like it, he or she can go away, and 
 leave ua to ourselves, which we shall like ever so much better,
 
 2 2 The Day will come. 
 
 shan't we ? " she asked, caressingly, as if life were going to he one 
 long honeymoon. 
 
 Of conrse he assented, kissed the red frank lips, and assured her 
 that for him bliss meant a perpetual tete-a-tete. Yes, his study 
 should be next her boudoir ; so that even in his busiest hours he 
 should be able to turn to her for gladness — refreshing himself with 
 her smiles after a troublesome interview with his bailiff — taking 
 counsel with her about every change in his stable, sharing her 
 interest in every new book. 
 
 " I will give orders about the change at once," he said, " so that 
 everything may be I'cady for us when you are tired of Cheriton." 
 
 They lunched gaily in the garden. Nita hated eating indoors 
 when the weather was good enough for an al fresco meal. They 
 lunched under a Spanish chestnut that made a tent of foliage on the 
 lawn in front of the house. They lingered over the meal, full of 
 talk, finding a new world of conversation suggested by their sur- 
 roundings ; and then the greys were brought round to the hall door, 
 and they started on the return journej'. 
 
 It began to rain before they reached Cheriton, and the afternoon 
 clouded over with a look of premature winter. No saunterings on 
 the terrace this evening; no midnight meanderings among the 
 cypresses and yews, the gleaming statues and dense green walls ; as 
 if they had been Eomeo and Juliet, wedded and happy, in the garden 
 at Verona. For the first time since the beginning of their honey- 
 moon they were obliged to staj^ indoors. 
 
 " It is positively chilly," exclaimed Juanita, as her maid carried 
 off her damp mantle. 
 
 " My dearest love, I'm afraid you've caught cold," said Godfrey, 
 with apprehension. 
 
 "Do I ever catch cold, Godfrey?" said cried, scornfully; and 
 indeed her splendid phj^sique seemed to negative the idea as she 
 stood before him, tall and buoyant, with the carnation of health 
 upon cheek and lips, her eyes sparkling, her head erect. 
 
 "Well, no, my Juno, I believe you are as free from all such weak- 
 ness as human nature can be ; but I shall order fires all the same, 
 and I implore you to put on a warm gown." 
 
 " I will," she answered, gaily. " You shall see me in my copper 
 plush." 
 
 " Thanks, love. That is a vision to live for." 
 
 " Shall we have tea in my dressing-room — or in yours ? " 
 
 " In mine. I think we have taken tea in almost every other 
 room in the house, as well as in every corner of the garden." 
 
 It had been one of her girhsh caprices to de^^se new places for 
 their afternoon tea. Whether it had been as keen a delight to the 
 footmen to carry Japanese tables and bamboo chairs from pillar to 
 post was open to question ; but Juanita loved to colonize, as she 
 called it.
 
 The Day will co7?ie, 23 
 
 " I feci that wlierever we establish our teapot wo invest the spot 
 witli the sanctity of home," she said. 
 
 Fires were ordered, and tea in Sir Godfrey's dressing-room. 
 
 It was Lord Dalbrook's dressing-room actually, and altogether a 
 sacred chamber. It had been one of the best bedrooms in the days 
 of the Strangways ; but his Lordship liked space, and had chosen 
 this room for his den — a fine old room, with lull length portraits of 
 the Sir Joshua period let into the panelling. The furniture was of 
 the plainest, and very different from the luxurious appointments 
 of the other rooms, for these very chairs and tables, and yonder 
 substantial mahogany desk, had done duty in James Dalbrook's 
 chambers in the Temple tlmiy years before. So had the heavy- 
 looking clock on the chimney-piece, surmounted by a bronze Saturn 
 leaning upon his scythe. So had the brass candlesticks, and the 
 ink-stained red morocco blotter on the desk. He had fallen asleep 
 in that capacious arm-chair many a time in the small hours, after 
 struggling with the intricacies of a railway bill or poring over a 
 volume of precedents. 
 
 Tlio thick Persian carpet, the velvet window-curtains, panelled 
 walls, and fine old fireplace gave a look of subdued splendour to the 
 room, in spite of the dark and heav-y furniture. There was a large 
 vase of roses on the desk, where Lord Cheriton never tolerated a 
 flower ; and there were more roses on the chimney-piece ; and 
 some smart bamboo chairs, many coloured, like Joseph's coat, had 
 been brought from Nita's morning room — and so, with logs blazing 
 on the floriated iron dogs, and a scarlet tea-table set out with blue 
 and gold china, and a Moorish copper kettle swinging over a lamp, 
 the room had as gay an aspect as any one could desire. 
 
 Juanita had made her toilet by the time the tea-table was read}*, 
 and came in from her room next door, a radiant figure in a gleaming 
 copper-coloured go^vn, flowing loose from throat to foot, and with no 
 adornment except a broad collar and cuffs of old Venice point. Her 
 brilliant complexion and southern eyes and ebon hair triumphed 
 over the vivid hue of the gown, and it was at her Sir Godfrey looked 
 as she came beaming towards him, and not at the dressmaker's 
 master-piece. 
 
 " How do you like it? " she asked, with childlike pleasure in her 
 fine raiment. " I ought to have kept it till October, but I couldn't 
 resist putting it on, just to sec what you think of it. I hope you 
 won't say it's gaudy." 
 
 " My dearest, you might be clad in a nisset cloud for anything I 
 should know to the contrary. A quarter of a century hence, when 
 you are beginning to fancy yourself 7?asse<;, we will talk about gowns. 
 It will be of some consequence then how you dress. It can be none 
 now." 
 
 "That is just a man's ignorance, Godfrey," she said, shaking her 
 finger at him, as she seated herself in one of the bamboo chairs, a
 
 24 The Day will come. 
 
 dazzling figure in llic light of the blazing logs, wLicIi danced about 
 lier eyes and bair and copper-coloured gown in a bewildering 
 manner. " You think me handsome, I suppose? " 
 " Eminently so. 
 
 " And you think I should be just as handsome if I dressed anyhow 
 — in a badly-fitting Tussore, for instance, made last year and cleaned 
 this year, and with a hat of my own trimming, eh, Godfrey ? " 
 " Every bit as handsome." 
 
 " That shows what an ignoramus a University education can 
 leave a man. My dearest boy, half my good looks depend upon my 
 dressmaker. Not for worlds would I have you see me a dowdy, if 
 inly for a quarter of an hour. The disillusion might last a lifetime. 
 1 dress to please you, remember, sir. It was of you I thought when 
 I W.1S choosing my trousseau. I want to be lovely in your ej'cs 
 alwav', always, always." 
 
 " You need make no effort to attain your w'ish. You have put 
 so strong a spell upon my eyes that with me at least you are inde- 
 pendent of the dressmaker's art." 
 
 " Again I say you don't know what you are talking about. But 
 frankly now, do you think this gown too gaudy ? " 
 
 " That coppery backgi'ound to my Murillo Madonna. No, love ; 
 the colour suits you to perfection." 
 
 She poured out the tea, and then sank back in her comfortable 
 chair, in a reverie, languid after her explorations at the Priory, full 
 of a dreamhke happiness as she basked in the glow of the lire, 
 welcome as a novel indulgence at this time of the year. 
 
 " There is nothing more delightful than a fire in July," she said. 
 Her eyes wandered about the room idly. 
 " Do you call them handsome? " she asked presently. 
 Godfrey looked puzzled. Was she still harping on the dress ques- 
 tion, or w^as she challenging his admiration for those glorious eyes 
 which he had been watching in their rovings for a lazy five minutes. 
 " I mean the Strang^vaj^s. That is their famous beaiity — the girl 
 in the scanty white satin petticoat, with the goat. Imagine any one 
 walking about a wood, with a goat, in white satin. What queer 
 ideas portrait painters must have had m those days. She is very 
 lovely though, isn't she ? " 
 
 " She is not my ideal. I don't admire that narrow Cupid's-bow 
 mouth, the lips pinched up as if they were pronouncing ' prunes and 
 ]insm.' The eyes are large and handsome, but too round ; the com- 
 plexion is wax-dollish. No, she is not my ideal." 
 
 " I should have been miserable if you had admired her." 
 " There is a face in the hall which I like ever so much better, 
 and yet I doubt if it is a good face." 
 " Which is that ? " 
 
 " The face of the girl in that group of John Strangway's three 
 children."
 
 The Day will come. 25 
 
 "Tlial gill with tlio towslcd linir and bright Uiic cyop. Ycp, she 
 must liavc been handsome — but she looks — I hope you won't be 
 t;hocked, but I really can't help saying it — that girl Jooks a devil." 
 
 '• roor soul ! Iler temper did not do much good for her. I 
 believe she came to a melancholy end." 
 
 " How was that ? " 
 
 " She eloped from a school in Switzerland with an officer in a line 
 regiment — a love match ; but she went wrong a few years afterwards, 
 left her husband, and died in poverty at Boulogne, I believe." 
 
 "Another ghost!" exclaimed Juanita, doleful])'. "Poor, lost 
 soul, she must walk. I can't help feeling sorry for her — married to 
 a man who was unkind to her, perhaps, and whom she discovered 
 unworthy of her love. And then years afterwards meeting some 
 one worthier and better, wdiom she loved passionately. That is 
 dreadful! Oh, Godfrey! if I had been mamed before I saw you 
 — and we had met — and you had cared for me — God knows what 
 kind of woman I should have been. Perhaps I should have been 
 one of those poor souls who have a liistory, the women mother and 
 her friends stare at and whisper about in the Park. Why are people 
 so keenly interested in them, I wonder? Why can't they leave 
 them alone ? " 
 
 " It would be charity to do so." 
 
 " No one is charitable — in London." 
 
 *' Do you think people are more indulgent in the country ? " 
 
 " I suppose not. I'm afraid English people keep all their charity 
 for the Continent. I shall never look at the girl in that group 
 without thinking of her sad story. She looks hardly fifteen in the 
 jiicture. Poor thing! She did not know what was coming." 
 
 They loitered over their tea-table, making the most of their 
 happiness. The sweetness of their dual life had not begun to i)all. 
 It was still new and wonderful to be together thus, unrcstrainccl by 
 any other presence. 
 
 h\ the midst of their gay talk Juanita's eyes Avandered to the 
 bronze Time upon the chimney-piece, and the familiar figure 
 suggested gloomy ideas. 
 
 '• Oh, Godfrey ! look at that gi'im old man with his scythe, mowing 
 down our happy moments so fast that Ave can hardly taste their 
 sweetness before they speed away. To think that our lives are 
 huriying past us like a rapid river, and that we shall be like him " 
 (pointing distastefully to the type of old age — the wrinkled brow 
 and flowing beard) " before we know that Ave have lived." 
 
 " It is a pity, SAA-eet, that life should be so short." 
 
 Her glance AA'andered to the dark oak panel above the clock, and 
 she started up from her Ioav chair Avith a f;iint scream, stood on tiptoe 
 before the fireplace, snatched half a dozen scraggj' peacock's feathers 
 from the panel, and tlircAV them at her husband's feet. 
 
 " Ijook at thosQ," she exclaimed, pointing to them as they lay there.
 
 26 The Day zvill come, 
 
 " Peacock's feathers ! What have they done that you should use 
 tliem so ? " 
 
 " Oh, Godfrey don't you know ? " she asked, earnestly. 
 
 " Don't I know what ? " 
 
 " That peacock'iL- feathers bring ill luck. " It is fatal to take them 
 into a house. Thej-' are an evil omen. And father will pick them 
 up when he is strolling about the lawn, and will bring them indoors ; 
 though I am always scolding him for his obstinate folly, and always 
 throwing the horrid things away." 
 
 " And this kind of thing has been going on for some years, I 
 suppose ? " asked Godfrey, smiling at her intensity. 
 
 " Ever since I can remember." 
 
 " And have the peacock's feathers brought j''Ou misfortune? " 
 
 She looked at him gravely for a few moments, and then burst into 
 a joyous laugh. 
 
 " No, no, no, no," she said, " Fate has been over kind to me. I 
 have never known sorrow. Fate has given me you. I am the 
 happiest woman in the world — for there can't be another you, and 
 you are mine. It is like owning the Kohinoor diamond ; one knows 
 that one stands alone. Still, all the same, peacock's feathers are 
 imlucky, and I will not suffer them in your room." 
 
 " She picked up the offending feathers, twisted them into a ball, 
 and flung them at the back of the deep old chimney, behind the 
 smouldering logs; and then she produced a chess board, and she 
 and Godfrey began a game with the board on their knees, and played 
 for an horn* by firelight. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " A deadlj' silence step by step increased, 
 Until it seemed a horrid presence there." 
 
 That idea of the Strangways had taken hold of the bride's fancy. 
 She went into the hall with Godfrey after dinner, and they looked 
 together at the family group. The picture was a bishop's half-length, 
 turned lengthwise, and the figures showed only the head and 
 shoulders. The girl stood between the two boys, her left arm round 
 her younger brother's neck. He was a lad of eleven or twelve, in 
 an Eton jacket and broad white collar. The other boy was older 
 than the girl, and was dressed in dark green corduroy. The heads 
 were masterly, but the picture was uninteresting. 
 
 " Did you ever see three faces with so little fascination among the 
 three? " asked Godfrey. " The boys look arrant cubs ; the girl has 
 the makings of a handsome w^oman, but the lines of her mouth and
 
 The Day will comz. 27 
 
 rliir, havo firmness enough for forty, and yet she could hardly have 
 been over fifteen when that picture was painted." 
 
 " She has a lovely throat and lovely shoulders." 
 
 " Yes, the painter has made the most of those." 
 
 " And she has fine eyes." 
 
 " Fine as to colour and shape, but as cold as a Toledo blade — and 
 as dangerous. I pity her husband." 
 
 " That must be a waste of pity. If he had been good to her she 
 woidd not have run away from him." 
 
 " I am not sure of that. A woman with that mouth and chin 
 would go her own gate if she trampled upon bleeding hearts. I 
 wonder your father keeps these shadows of a vanished race." 
 
 " lie would not part with them for worlds. They are like the 
 peacock's feathers that he nnll bring indoors. I sometimes think he 
 has a fancy for unlucky things. He says that as we have no 
 ancestors of our own — to speak of — I suppose wo must have ances- 
 tors, for everybody must have come down from Adam somehow " 
 
 " Naturally, or from Adam's ancestor, the common progenitor of 
 the Darwinian thesis." 
 
 "Don't be horrid. Father's idea is that as we have no ancestors 
 of our own, we may as well keep the StrangA^\ay portraits. The 
 faces are the history of the house, fother said, when mother wanted 
 those dismal old pictures taken down to make waj'^ for a collection 
 of modern art. So there they are, and I can't help thinking that 
 they overlooh us." 
 
 They were still standing before the trio of young faces contem- 
 platively. 
 
 " Are they all dead? " asked Juanita, after a pause. 
 
 " God knows. I believe it is a long time since any of them were 
 heard of. Jasper Blake talks to me about them sometimes. Ho 
 ^vas in service liere, you know, before he became my father's bailifi". 
 In fact, lie only left Cheriton after the old squire's death. Ho is 
 fond of talking of the forgotten race, and it is from him that most of 
 my information is derived. , He told me about that unlucky lad," — 
 pointing to the younger hoy. " Ho was in the navy, distinguished 
 himself out in China, and was on the high road to getting a ship 
 when he got broke for drunkenness — a Hagrant case, which all but 
 ended in a tremendous disaster and the burning of a man-of-war. 
 He went into the merchant service — did well for a year or two, and 
 then the old enemy took hold of him again, and he got broke there. 
 After that he dropped through — disappeared in the great dismal 
 swamp whore the men who fail in this world sink out of knowledge.'^' 
 
 '' And the elder boy ; what became of him ? " 
 
 " He was in the army — a tremendous swell, I believe, — married 
 Lord Dangerlield's youngest daughter, and cut a dash for two or* 
 three years, and then disappeared from society, and took his wife to 
 Corsica, on the gi-ound of delicate health. For anything I know to
 
 28 'The Dcty will come. 
 
 the contrary they may still be living in that riec-and-easy littio 
 island. He was fond of sport, and liked a rough life. I fancy that 
 Ajaccio would suit him better than Purbeck or Pall Mall." 
 
 " Poor things ; I wonder if they ever long for Cheriton ? " 
 
 " If old Jasper is to be believed, they were passionately fond of 
 the place, especially that girl. Jasper was groom in those days, and 
 he taught her to ride. She was a regular dare-devil, according to 
 his account, with a temper that no one had ever been able to control. 
 But she seems to have behaved pretty well to Jasper, and he was 
 attached to her. Her father couldn't manage her anyhow. They 
 were too much alike. He sent her to a school at Lausanne soon 
 after that picture wa? painted, and she never came back to Cheriton. 
 She ran away with an English officer who was hutne from India on 
 furlough, and was staying at Ouchy for his health. She represeoteu 
 herself as of full age, and contrived to get married at Geneva. The 
 squire refused ever to see her or her husband. She ran away from 
 the husband afterwards, as I told you. In fact, to quote Jasper, she 
 was an incorrigible bolter." 
 
 " Poor, poor thing. It is all too sad," sighed Juanita. " Let us 
 go into the library and forget them. There are no Strangways 
 there, tliank Heaven." 
 
 She put her arm through Godfrey's and led him off, unresisting. 
 He was in that stage of devotion in which he followed her like a dog. 
 
 The library was one of the best rooms in the house, but the least 
 interesting from an archaeologist's point of view. It had been built 
 early in the eighteenth century for a ballroom, a long narrow room, 
 with five tall windows, and it had been afterwards known as the 
 music-room ; but James Dalbrook had improved it out of its original 
 character by throwing out a large bay, with three windows opening 
 on to a semicircular terrace, with marble balustrade and steps leading 
 down to the prettiest portion of that Italian garden which was the 
 crowning glory of Cheriton Manor, and which it had been Lord 
 Cheriton's delight to improve. The spacious bay gave width and 
 dignity to the room, and it was in the space between the bay and 
 the fireplace that people naturally grouped themselves. It was too 
 large a room to be warmed by one fire of ordinary dimensions, but 
 the fireplace added by James Dalbrook was of abnormal width and 
 grandeur, while the chimney-piece was rich in coloured marbles and 
 massive sculpture. The room was lined with books from floor to 
 ceiling. Clusters of wax candles were burning on the mantel-piece, 
 and two large moderator lamps stood on a massive carved oak table 
 in the centre of the room — a table spacious enough to hold all the 
 magazines, reviews, and periodicals in three languages that were 
 worth reading — Quarterlies, Revue des Deux Moncles, Rundschau, 
 Figaro, World, Saturdaij, Truth, and the rest of them — as well as 
 guide-books, peerages, clei'gj' and army lists — which made a fonaid' 
 ^ble range in the middle.
 
 The Day will come. ic) 
 
 Godfrey flung himself into a long, low, arm-chair, and Juanita 
 perched herself lightly beside him on the cushioned arm, looking 
 down at him from that point ot vantage. Tiicro was a wood firo 
 lierc as well as in the hall ; hut the rain was over now, the evening 
 had grown warmer, and the French windows in the bay stood open 
 to tlio dull grey night. 
 
 " What are you reading now, Godfrey ? " asked Juanita, glancing 
 at the cosy double table in a corner by the chimney-piece, loaded 
 with books above and below. 
 
 " For duty reading Jones' book on ' Grattan and the Irish Parlia- 
 ment ; ' for old books ' Plato ; ' for new ' Wider Horizons.' " 
 
 He was an insatiable reader, and even in those long summer daj-s 
 of honeymoon bhss he had felt the need of books, which were a 
 habit of his life. 
 
 " Is ' Wider Horizons ' a good book ? " 
 
 " It is full ot imagination, and it rarries one away ; but one has 
 the same feeling as in ' Esoteric Buddiiism.' It is a very comforting 
 theorj'^, and it ought to be true ; but by what authority is this gospel 
 preached to us, and on what evidence are we to believe ? " 
 
 " ' Wider Horizons ' is about the life to come ? " 
 
 "Yes; it gives us a very vivid picture of our existence in other 
 planets. The author writes as if he had been there." 
 
 "And according to this theory you and I are to meet and be 
 happy again in some distant star ? " 
 
 "In many stars — climbing from star to star, and achieving a 
 higher spirituality, a finer essence, with every new existence, until 
 we attain the everlasting perfection." 
 
 " And we who are to die old and worn out here are to be young 
 and bright again there — in our next world? " 
 
 " Naturally." 
 
 " And then we shall grow old again — go through the same slow 
 decay — grey hairs, fading sight, duller hearing ? " 
 
 " Yes ; as we blossom so must wc f;ide. The witlicred husk of 
 the old life holds the seed from which the new flower must spring; 
 and with every incarnation the tlower is to gain in vigoui and 
 beauty, and the life period is to lengthen till it touches infinity." 
 
 " I must read the book, Godfrey. It may bo all a dream; but I 
 love even dreams that promise a future iu which you and I shall 
 always be together — as we are now, as we are now." 
 
 She repeated those last four words with infinite tenderness. The 
 beautiful head sank down to nestle upon his shoulder, and they were 
 silent for some minutes in a dreamy reverie, gazing into the fire, 
 where the logs had given out their last flame, and were slowly 
 fading from red to grey. 
 
 It was a quarter to eleven by the dial let into the marble of the 
 chimney-piece. The butler had brought a tray with wine and 
 water at ten o'clock, and had taken the final orders before retiring.
 
 2,0 The Day will come. 
 
 Juanita and her luisband were alone amid the stillness of the 
 sleeping household. The night was close and dull, not a leaf stirring, 
 and only a few dim stars in the heavy sky. 
 
 As the clock told the third quarter with a small silvery chime, as 
 if it were a town clock in fairyland, Juanita started suddenly from 
 her half-rechning position, and Hsteued intently, with her face 
 towards the open window. 
 
 " A footstep ! " she exclaimed. " I heard a footstep on the 
 terrace." 
 
 " My dearest, I know your hearing is quicker than mine ; but this 
 time it is your fancy that heard and not your ears. I heard nothing. 
 And who should be walking on the terrace at such an hour, do you 
 suppose ? " 
 
 "I don't suppose anything about it, but I know there was some 
 one. I heard the steps, Godfrey. I heard them as distinctly as I 
 heard you speak just now; light footsteps — slow, very slow, and 
 with that cautious, treacherous sound which Hght, slow footsteps 
 always have, if one hears them in the silence of night." 
 
 " You are very positive." 
 
 "I know it, I heard it ! " she cried, running to the window, and 
 out into the grey night. 
 
 She ran along the whole length of the terrace and back again, 
 her husband following her with slower steps, and they found no one, 
 heard nothing from one end to the other. 
 
 " You see, love, there was no one there," said Godfrej'. 
 
 "I see nothing of the kind — only that the some one who was 
 there has vanished very cleverly. An eavesdropper might hide 
 easily enough behind any one of those cypresses," she said, pointing 
 to the obehsk-shaped trees which showed black against the dim 
 gi-ey of the night. 
 
 " Why should there be any eavesdropper, love ? What secrets 
 have you and I that any prowler should care to watch or listen. 
 The only person of the prowling kind to be apprehended would be 
 a burglar ; and as Cheriton has been burglar-free all these years, I 
 see no reason for fear; so, unless your mysterious footfall belonged 
 to one of the servants or a servant's follower, which is highly 
 improbable on this side of the house, I take it that you must have 
 heard a ghost." 
 
 He had his arm around her, and was leading her out of the misty 
 night into the warm, bright room, and his voice had the hght sound 
 of laughter ; but at that word ghost she started and trembled, and 
 her voice was very serious as she answered — 
 
 " A ghost, yes ! It was just lilce the footfall of a ghost — so slow, 
 BO soft, so mysterious. I believe it was a ghost, Godfrey — a Strang- 
 way ghost. Some of them must revisit this house."
 
 The Day luill come. 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 "Who will dare 
 To pluck thee from me ? And of thine o^vn will, 
 Full well I feel that thou wouldst not leave me." 
 
 The sunshine of a summer morning, streaming in through mullioned 
 windows that looked due south, raised Juanita's spirits, and dispersed 
 her fears. It was impossible to feel depressed under such a sky. 
 She had been wakeful for a considerable part of the night, brooding 
 upon that ghostly footstep which had sent such a sudden chill to her 
 warm young heart, but that broad clear light of morning brought 
 common sense. 
 
 " I dare say it was only some lovesick housemaid, roaming about 
 after all tlie others had gone to bed, in order to have a quiet think 
 about her sweetheart, and what he said to her last Sunday as they 
 went home from church. I know how /used to walk about with no 
 company but my thoughts of you, Godfrey, and how sweet it used 
 to be to go over all your dearest words — over and over again, — and 
 no doubt tlie heart of a housemaid is worked by just the same 
 machinery that sets mine going — and her thoughts would follow the 
 same track." 
 
 *' That is what we are taught to believe, dearest, in this enlightened 
 age." 
 
 " Why should it be a ghost ? " pursued Juanita, leaning back in 
 Ler bamboo chair, and lazily enjoying the summer morning, some- 
 what languid after a sleepless night. 
 
 They were breakfasting at the western end of the terrace, with 
 an awning over their heads, and a couple of footmen travelling to 
 and from the house in attendance upon them, and keeping respect- 
 fully out of earshot between whiles. The table was heaped with 
 roses, and the waxen chalices of a great magnolia on the lower level 
 showed above the marble balustrade, and shed an almost over- 
 powering perfume on the warm air. 
 
 '" Why should a ghost come now ? " she asked, harping upon her 
 morbid fancies. " There has never been a hint of a ghost in all the 
 years that father and mother have lived here. W^hy should one 
 come now, unless " 
 
 " Unless what, love ? " 
 
 "Unless one of the Strangways died last night — at the very 
 moment when wo heard the footfall — died in some distant land, 
 perhaps, and with his last dying thought revisited the place of his 
 birth. One has heard of such things." 
 
 ''One has heard of a great many strange things. The human 
 imagination is very inventive."
 
 32 The Day will come. 
 
 " All, you are a sceptic, I know. I don't think I actually believe 
 in ghosts — but I am afraid of being forced to believe in them. Oh, 
 Godfrey, if it were meant for a warning," she cried, with sudden 
 terror in the large dark eyes. 
 
 " What kind of warning ? " 
 
 " A presage of misfortune — sickness — death. I have read so 
 many stories of such warnings." 
 
 " My dearest love, you have read too much rubbish in that line. 
 Your mind is full of morbid fancies. If the morning were not too 
 warm, I should say put on your habit and let us go for a long ride. 
 I am afraid this sauntering life of ours is too depressing for you." 
 
 " Depressing — to be with you all day ! Oh, Godfrey, you must 
 be tired of me if you can suggest such a thing." 
 
 " But, my Nita, when I see you giving yourself up to gloomy 
 speculations about ghosts and omens." 
 
 " Oh, that means nothing. When one has a very precious 
 treasure one must needs be full of fears. Look at misers; how 
 nervous they are about their hidden gold. And my treasure is 
 more to me than all the gold of Ophir — infinitely precious." 
 
 She sprang up from her low chair, and leaned over the back of 
 his to kiss the broad brow wdiich was lifted up to meet those 
 clinging lips. 
 
 "Oh, my love, my love, I never knew what fear meant till I knew 
 the fear of parting from you," she murmured. 
 
 " Put on your habit, Nita. We will go for a ride in spite of the 
 sun. Or what do you say to driving to Dorchester, and storming 
 your cousins for a lunch ? I want to talk to Mr. Dalbrook about 
 "Skinner's bill of dilapidations." 
 
 Her mood changed in an instant. 
 
 " That would be capital fun," she cried. " I wonder if it is a 
 breach of etiquette to lunch with one's cousins during one's honey- 
 moon ? " 
 
 " A fig for etiquette. Thomas," to an approaching footman, 
 " order the phaeton for half-past eleven." 
 
 " What a happy idea," said Juanita, "a long, long drive with you, 
 and then the fun of seeing how you get on with my strong-minded 
 cousins. The}' pretend to despise everything that other girls care 
 for, don't you know; and go in for literature, science, politics, every 
 thing intellectual, in short; and I have seen them sit and mu'se 
 Darwin or Buckle for a whole evening, while they ha^'e talked of 
 gowns and bonnets and other girls' flirtations." 
 
 " Then they are not such Roman maidens as they affect to be." 
 
 " Far from it. They will take the pattern of my frock with their 
 eyes before I have been in the room ten minutes. Just watch 
 them." 
 
 " I will ; if I can take my eyes off you." 
 
 Juanita ran away to change her white peignoir for a walking-
 
 The Day will come. 33 
 
 dress, and reappeared in half an hour radiant and ready for tlio 
 drive. 
 
 " How do you like my frock ? " she asked, posing herself in front 
 of her husband, and challenging admiration. 
 
 The frock was old gold Indian silk, soft and dull, made with an 
 exquisite simplicity of long flowing draperies, over a kilted petticoat 
 which just showed the neat little tan shoes, and a glimpse of tan 
 silk stocking. The bodice iitted the tall supple figure like a glove ; 
 the sleeves were loose and short, tied carelessly at the elbow with a 
 broad satin ribbon, and the long suede gloves matched the gown to 
 the nicest shade. Her hat was leghorn, broad enough to shade 
 her eyes from the sun, high enough to add to her importance, and 
 caught up on one side with a bunch of dull yellow barley and a few 
 cornflowers, whose vivid hue was repeated in a cluster of the same 
 flowers embroidered on one side of the bodice. Her large sunshade 
 was of the same silk as her gown, and that was also embroidered 
 with cornflowers, a stray blossom flung here and there with an 
 accidental air. 
 
 " My love, you look as if you had stepped out of a fashion book." 
 
 " I suppose I am too smart," said Juanita with an impatient sigh ; 
 " and yet my colouring is very subdued. There is only that touch 
 of blue in the cornflowers — just the one high light in the picture. 
 That is the only drawback to country life. Everj'thing really 
 pretty seems too smart for dusty roads and green lanes. One must 
 be content to grope one's obscure way in a tailor gown or a cotton 
 frock all the year round. Now this would be perfection for a 
 Wednesday in Hyde Park, wouldn't it ? " 
 
 "M3' darling, it is charming. Why should jj-ou not be prettily 
 dressed under this blue summer sky ? You can sport your tailor 
 go^vns in winter. You are not too smart for me, Nita. Yon are 
 only too lovely. Bring your dust cloak, and you may defy the perils 
 of the road." 
 
 Celestine, Lady Carmichael's Frendh-Swiss maid, was in atten- 
 dance with tlio dust cloak, an ample \vrap of creamy silk and lace, 
 cloudlike, indescribable. This muffled the pretty gown from top to 
 toe, and Nita took her seat in the phaeton, and prepared for a 
 lon.t^jr drive and a longer talk than they Jiad liad yesterday. 
 
 She was pleased at the idea of showing off her handsome young 
 husband and her new frock to those advanced young ladies, who 
 had affected a kind of superiority on the ground of what she called 
 " heavy reading," and what they called advanced views. Janet and 
 Sophia had accepted Lady CheritoTi's invitations with inward pro- 
 test, and in their apprehension of being patronized had been some- 
 what inclined to give themselves airs, taking pains to impress upon 
 their cousin that she was as empty-headed as she was beautiful, and 
 that they stood upon an intellectual plane for which she had no 
 Bcaling ladder. She had put up with such small snubbings in the 
 
 i>
 
 34 ^/^^ Day will come. 
 
 sweetest way, knowing all the time that as the Honourable Juanita 
 Dalbrook, of Cheriton Chase, and one of the debutantes whose 
 praises had been sung in all the society papers, she inhabited a 
 social plane as far beyond their reach as their intellectual plane 
 might be above hers. 
 
 " I don't suppose we shall see Theodore," said Juanita, as the 
 bays bowled merrily along the level road. 
 
 The gi'eys were getting a rest after yesterday's work, and these 
 were Lady Cheriton's famous barouche horses, to whom the 
 phaeton seemed a toy. 
 
 "He must have gone to Heidelberg before now," added Juanita. 
 
 " He must be fond of Heidelberg to be running off there when it 
 is so jolly at home." 
 
 " He was there for a year, you know, before he went to Cam- 
 bridge, and he is always going back there or to the Hartz for his 
 hoHdays. I sometimes tell him he is half a German." 
 
 She rather hoped that Theodore was in Germany by this time ; 
 and yet she had assured herself in her own mind that there could 
 be no pain to him in their meeting. She knew that he had loved 
 her — that in one rash hour, after a year's absence in America, when 
 he had not known, or had chosen to forget, the state of affairs be- 
 tween her and Godfrey, he had told her of his love, and had asked 
 her to give him hope. It was before her engagement ; but she was 
 not the less frank in confessing her attachment to Godfrey. " I can 
 never care for any one else," she said ; " I have loved him all my life." 
 
 All her life ! Yes, that was Theodore's irreparable loss. While 
 be, the working man, had been grinding out his daj^s in the tread- 
 mill round of a country soUcitor's office, the young patrician had 
 been as free as the butterflies in Juanita's rose garden ; free to woo 
 her all day long, free to share her most trifling pleasures and sym- 
 pathize with her lightest pains. What chance had the junior 
 partner in Dalbrook & Son against Sir Godfrey Carmichael of Mil- 
 brook Priory ? 
 
 Theodore had managed his life so well after that one bitter rebuff 
 that Juanita had a right to suppose that his wound had healed, and 
 that the pain of that hour had been forgotten. She was sincerely 
 attached to him, as a kinsman, and respected him more than any 
 other young man of her acquaintance. Had not Lord Cheriton, that 
 admirable judge of character, declared that Theodore was one of the 
 cleverest men he Ivuew, and regretted that he had not attached him- 
 self to the higher branch of the law, as the more likely in his case to 
 result in wealth and fame ? 
 
 The phaeton drove up to the old Hanoverian doorway as St, 
 Peter's clock chimed the quarter after one. The old man-servant 
 looked surprised at this brilliant vision of a beautiful girl, a fine pair 
 of horses, a smart groom, and Sir Godfrey Carmichael. The tout- 
 ensemble was almost bewildering even to a!"man accustomed to see
 
 The Day will come. 35 
 
 the various conveyances of neighbouring landowners at his master's 
 door. 
 
 " Yes, my lady, both the young ladies are at home," said Brown, 
 and led the way upstairs with unshaken dignity. 
 
 He had lived iii that house fivc-and-thirty years, beginning as 
 shoe-black and errand boy, and he was proud to hear his master tell 
 his friends how he had risen from the ranks. lie had indulged in 
 some mild pliilanderings with pretty parlour-maids in the days of 
 his youtli, but had never seriously entangled himself, and was a con- 
 firmed bachelor, and something of a misogynist. He was a pattern 
 of honesty and conscientiousness, having no wife and family to bo 
 maintained upon broken victuals and illuminated with filched candle- 
 ends or stolen oil. He had not a single interest outside his master's 
 house, hardly so much as a thought ; and the glory and honour of 
 "family" were his honour and glory. So, as ho ushered Lady 
 Carmichael and her husband to the drawing-room, he was meditating 
 upon what additions to the luncheon he could suggest to cook which 
 might render that meal worthy of such distinguished guests. 
 
 Sophia was seated by one of the windows, pauiting an orchid in a 
 tall Venetian vase. It was a weakness with these clever girls to 
 think they could do everything. They were not content with 
 Darwin and the new leaming, but they painted indifferently in oils 
 and in water colours, played on various instruments, sang in three 
 languages, and fancied themselves invincible at lawn tenuis. 
 
 The orchid was top-heavy, and had been tumbling out of the vase 
 every five minutes in a manner that that had been very tiying to the 
 artist's temper, and irritating to Janet, who was grappling with a 
 volume of .Tohann Miiller, in the original, and losing herself in a 
 labyrinth of words beginning witli vcr and ending with licit. 
 
 They both started up from occupations of which both were tired, 
 and welcomed their visitors with a show of genuine pleasure ; for 
 although tliey had been very determined in their resistance to any- 
 thing like patronage on Juanita's part when she was Miss Dalbrook, 
 they were glad that she should be prompt to recognize the claims of 
 kindred now that she was Lady Carmichael. 
 
 " How good of you to come \ " exclaimed Janet. " I didn't think 
 you would remember us, at such at time." 
 
 " Did you think I must forget old friends because I am happy? " 
 said Juanita. " But I mustn't take credit for other people's virtues. 
 It was Godfrey who proposed driving over to see you." 
 
 " I wanted to show you what a nice couple we make," said Sir 
 Godfrey, gaily, draunng his bride closer to him, as they stood side 
 by side, tall and straight, and glowing with youth and gladness, in 
 the middle of the grave old dra^\^ng-room. " You young ladies 
 were not so cousinly as your brother Theodore. You didn't drive 
 to Cheriton to welcome us home." 
 
 " If Theo had told us what he was sroinc: to do we should have
 
 36 The Day will come, 
 
 been very glad to be there too," replied Sophy, " but he rode oEf in 
 the morning without saying a word to anybody." 
 
 " He is in Germany by this time, I suppose ? " said Juanita. 
 
 " He is downstairs in the office. His portmanteau has been 
 packed for a week, I believe," explained Janet, "but there is 
 always some fresh business to prevent his starting. My father relies 
 upon him more every day." 
 
 "Dear, good Theodore, he is quite the cleverest man I know," 
 said Juanita, without the slightest idea of disparaging her husband, 
 whom she considex-ed perfection. " I think he must be very much 
 like what my father was at his age." 
 
 " People who are in a position to know tell us that he is exactly 
 what his oicn fother was at that age," said Janet, resenting this 
 attempt to trace her brother's gifts to a more distant source. " I 
 don't see why one need go further. My father would not have 
 been trusted as he has been for the last thirty years if he were a 
 simpleton ; and Galton observes " 
 
 The door opened at this moment, and Theodore came in. 
 
 He greeted his cousin and his cousin's husband with unaffected 
 friendliness. 
 
 "It it against my principles to take luncheon," he said, laughingly, 
 as he gave Juanita his hand, " but this is a red-letter day. My 
 father is waiting for us in the dining-room." 
 
 They all went down stairs together, Theodore leading the way with 
 his cousin, talking gaily as they went down the wide oak staircase, 
 between sober panelled walls of darkest brown. The front part of 
 the gi'ound floor was given np to offices, and the dining-room was 
 built out at the back, a large bright-looking room with a bay window, 
 opening on to a square town garden, a garden of about half an acre, 
 surrounded wth high walls, above which showed the treetops in 
 one of the leafy wan\;s that skirt the town. It was very different to 
 that Italian garden at Cheriton, where the peacocks strutted slowly 
 between long rows of cypresses, where the Italian statues showed 
 white in every angle of the dense green wall, and where the 
 fountain rose and fell with a silvery cadence in the still summer 
 atmosphere. Here there was only a square lawn, just big enougli 
 for a tennis court, and a broad border of hardy flowers, with one 
 especial portion at the end of the garden, where Sophia experi- 
 mented in cross fertilization after the manner of Darwin, seeming 
 for ever upon the threshold of valuable discoveries. 
 
 Mr. Dalbrook was a fine-looking man of some imascertained age 
 between fifty and sixty. He boasted that he was Lord Cheriton's 
 junior by a year or two, although they had both come to a time of 
 hfe when a year or two more or less could matter verj^ little. 
 
 He was very fond of Juanita, and he welcome her with especial 
 tenderness in her new character as a bride. He kissed her, and then 
 held her away from him for a minute, with a kindly scrutiny.
 
 The Day will come. 37 
 
 " Lady Godfrey surpasses Miss Dalbrook," he said, smiling at tlio 
 girl's radiant face. " I suppose now you are going to be the leading 
 ])ersonage in our part of the county. We quiet townspeople will 
 be continuall}' hearing of you, and there will not be a local paper 
 without a notice of your domgs. Anyhow, I am glad you don't 
 forget old friends." 
 
 lie placed her beside him at the large oval table, on which the 
 handsomest plate and the oldest china had been set forth with a 
 celerity which testified to Brown's devotion. Mr. Dalbrook was 
 one of those sensible people who never waste keep or wages upon 
 a bad horse or a bad servant, whereby his cook was one of the 
 best in Dorchester ; so the luncheon, albeit plain and unpretentious, 
 was a meal of which no man need feel ashamed. 
 
 Juanita was fond of her uncle, as she called this distant cousin 
 of hers, to distinguish him from the younger generation, and she 
 M-as pleased to be sitting by him, and hearing all the news of the 
 county towTi and the county people who were his clients, and in 
 many cases his friends. It may be that his cousinship with Lord 
 Cheriton had gone as far as his professional acumen to elevate hira 
 in the esteem of town and county, and that some people who 
 would hardly have invited the provincial solicitor for own sake, 
 sent their cards as a matter of course to the law lord's cousin. But 
 there were others who esteemed IMatthew Dalbrook for his own 
 sterling qualities, and who even liked him better than the somewhat 
 severe and self-assertive Lord Cheriton. 
 
 While Juanita talked confidentially to her kinsman, and while Sir 
 Godfrey discussed the latest theory about the sun, and the probable 
 endurance of our own little planet, with Janet and Sophia, Theodore 
 sat at the bottom of the table, silent and thoughtful, watching the 
 lovely animated face with its look of radiant happiness, and telling 
 liimself that the woman he loved was as far away from him sitting 
 there, within reach of his touch, within the sound of his lowest 
 wliisper, as if she had been in another world. Ho had borne 
 himself bravely on her wedding-day, and smiled back her happy 
 smile, and clasped her hand with a steady grip of friendship ; but 
 niter that ordeal there had been a sad relapse in his fortitude, and 
 he had thought of her ever since as a man thinks of that supremo 
 jiosscssion without which life is worthless — as the miser tliinks of 
 his stolen gold — or the ambitious man of his blighted name. 
 
 Yes, he had loved her with all the strengtii of his heart and 
 mind, and he knew that he could never again love with the same 
 full measure. He was too wise a man, and too cxi)erienced in 
 life, to tell himself that for him time could have no healing power 
 — that no other Avoman could ever be dear to him ; but he told 
 himself that another love like unto this was impossible, and that all 
 the future could bring hira would be some pale faint copy of this 
 radiant picture.
 
 ^S The Day will C07ne. 
 
 " I suppose it's only one man in fifty who marries his first love," 
 he thought ; and then he looked at Godfrey Carmichael and thought 
 that to him overmuch had been given. He was a fine young 
 fellow, clever, unassuming, with a frank good face ; a man who 
 was liked by men as well as by women ; but what had he done to 
 be worthy of such a wife as Juanita ? Theodore could only answer 
 the question in the words of Figaro, " He had taken the trouble to 
 be born." 
 
 That one thoughtful guest made no difference in the gaiety of 
 the luncheon table. Llatthew Dalbrook had plenty to say to his 
 beautiful cousin, and Juanita had all the experiences of the last 
 season to talk about, while once having started upon Sir William 
 Thomson and the ultimate exhaustion of the sun's heat, the sisters 
 were not likely to stop. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Poor little life that toddles half an hour, 
 Crowned with a flower or two, and there an end — " 
 
 Sir Gobfeey's device for diverting his wife's mind from the 
 morbid fancies of the previous night answered admirably. She 
 left Dorchester in high spirits, after having invited her cousins 
 to Cheriton for tennis and lunch on the fo]lo\ving day, and after 
 having bade an affectionate good-bye to Theodore, who was to 
 start on his holiday directly he could make an end of some im- 
 portant business now in hand. His father told him laughingly 
 that he might have gone a week earher had he really wanted to go. 
 
 " I believe there must be some attraction for you in Dorchester, 
 though I am not clever enough to find out what it is," said Mr. 
 Dalbrook, innocently, "for you have been talking about going away 
 for the last fortnight, and yet you don't go." 
 
 Lady Carmichael had lingered in the homely old house till after- 
 noon tea, had lingered over her tea, telling her cousins all they 
 wanted to know about smart society in London, that one central 
 spot of bright white light in the dull, grey mass of a busy, common- 
 place world, of which she knew so much, and of which they knew 
 so httle. Janet and Sophia professed to be above caring for these 
 things, except from a purely philosophical point of view, as they 
 cared for ants, bees, and wasps ; but they hstened eagerly all the 
 same, with occasional expressions of wonder that human beings 
 could be so trivial. 
 
 " Five hundred pounds spent in flowers at Lady Drumlock's ball ! " 
 cried Sophy, " and to think that in a few more million years the
 
 The Day will come. 39 
 
 sun may be as cold as the north pole, and what trace will there bo 
 then of all this butterlly world ? " 
 
 " Did the Mountains cut a tremendous dash this season ? " asked 
 Janet, frivolously curious about their immediate neighbours, county 
 people who went to London for the season. " Of course you know 
 she had thirty thousand pounds left her by an uncle quite lately. And 
 she is so utterly without brains that I dare say she will spend it all in 
 entertainments." 
 
 " Oh, they did entertain a good deal, and they did their best, 
 ])00r things, and people went to them," Juanita answered, with a 
 deprecating air ; " but still I should hardly lilce to say that they are 
 m society. In the first place, she has never succeeded in getting the 
 Prince at any ol her dances ; and in the next place, her parties have 
 a cloud of provincial dulness upon them, against which it is in vain 
 to struggle. He can never forget his constituents and his duty to 
 his borough, and that kind of thing does not answer if one wants 
 to give reallj' nice parties. I'm afraid her legacy won't do her much 
 good, poor soul, unless she gets some clever person to show her 
 how to spend it. There is a kind of society instinct, don't you 
 know, and she is without it. I believe the people who give good 
 parties are born, not made — like poets and orators." 
 
 Sir Godfrey looked down at her, smiling at her juvenile arrogance, 
 which, to his mind, was more bew^itcbing than another woman's 
 humility. 
 
 " We mean to show them the way next year, if wo take a house 
 in town," he said. 
 
 "But we are not going to liavc a bouse in town," answered 
 Juanita, quickly. " Why, Godfrey, you know I have done with all 
 that kind of frivolity. We can go to Victoria Street in May, and 
 stay with our people there long enough to see all the pictures and 
 bear some good music, and just rub shoulders with the friends wo 
 like at half a dozen parties, and then w^e will go back to our nest at 
 the Priory. Do you think that I am like Lady Mountain, and want 
 to waste my life upon the society struggle, when I have you ? " 
 
 It was after five o'clock when they left Dorchester. It was more 
 than half-past seven when they drew near Cheriton, and the sun 
 was setting behind the irregular lino of hills towards Studland. 
 They approached the Manor by one of the most picturesque lanes 
 in the district, a lane sunk between high banks, rugged and rocky, 
 and with here and there a massive tnmk of beech or oak jutting out 
 above the roadwaj', while the gnarled and twisted roots spread over 
 the rough, shelving ground, and seemed to hold up the meadow-land 
 upon the higher level : a dark, secret-looking lane it must have 
 seemed on a moonless night, sunk so deeply between those earth 
 walls, and overshadowed by those gigantic trunks and interlacing 
 branches ; but in this mellow evening light it was a place in which 
 to Imger. There was a right of way through Cheritou Chase, and
 
 40 TJie Day will come. 
 
 this sunk lane was the favourite approach. A broad carriage drive 
 crossed the Chase and park, skirted the great elm avenue that led 
 to the house, and swept round by a wide semi-circle to the great 
 iron gates which opened on the high-road from Wareham. 
 
 The steep gable ends of an old Enghsh cottage rose amidst the 
 trees, on the upper ground just outside the gate at the end of the 
 lane. It was a veritable old English cottage, and had been standing 
 at that corner of the park-like meadow for more than two hundred 
 years, and had known but little change during those two centuries. 
 It was a good deal larger than the generality of lodges, and it 
 differed from other lodges insomuch as it stood outside the gate 
 instead of inside, and on a higher level than the road ; but it was 
 a lodge all the same, and the duty of the person who .lived in it 
 was to open the gate of Cheriton Chase to all comers, provided 
 they came in such vehicles as were privileged to enjoy the right of 
 way. There was a line drawn somewhere ; perhaps at coal waggons 
 or tradesmen's carts ; but for the generality of vehicles the carriage 
 road across Cheriton Chase was free. 
 
 A rosy-faced girl of about fourteen came tripping down the stone 
 steps built into the bank as the carriage approached, and was 
 curtseying at the open gate in time for Sir Godfrey to drive through 
 without slackening the pace. He gave her a friendly nod as ho 
 passed. 
 
 "Docs Mrs. Porter never condescend to open the gate herself?" 
 he asked Juanita. 
 
 " Seldom for any one except my father. I think she makes a 
 point of doing it for him, though I believe he would much rather 
 she didn't. You mustn't sneer at her, Godfrey. She is a very un- 
 assuming person, and verj' grateful for her comfortable position here, 
 though she has known better days, poor soul." 
 
 " That is always such a vague expression. What were the better 
 days like ? " 
 
 " She is the widow of a captain — in the mercantile marine, I think 
 it is called — a man who was almost a gentleman. She was left 
 very poor, and my father, who knew her husband, gave her the lodge 
 to take care of, and a tiny pension — not so much as I spend upon 
 gloves and shoes, I'm afraid ; and she has lived here contentedly 
 and gratefully for the last ten years. It must be a sadly dull 
 life, for she is an intellectual woman, too refined to associate with 
 upper servants and village tradespeople ; so she has no one to talk 
 to — literally no one — except when the Vicar, or any of us call upon 
 her. But that is not the worst, poor thing," pursued Juanita, drop- 
 ping her voice to a subdued and sorrowful tone ; " she had a great 
 trouble some years ago. You remember, don't you, Godfrey ? " 
 
 " I blush to say that Mrs. Porter's trouble has escaped my 
 inemorj'." 
 
 " Oh, you have been so much away ; you woiild hardly hear any»
 
 The Day will come. 41 
 
 thing about it, perhaps. She had an only daughter — her only child 
 — a very handsome girl, whom she educated most carefully ; and 
 the girl went wrong, and disappeared. I never heard the circum- 
 stances. I was not supposea to know, but I know she vanished 
 suddenly, and that there was a good deal of fuss with mother, and 
 the servants, and the Vicar ; and Mrs. Porter's hair began to whiten 
 from that time, and people who had not cared much for her before 
 were so sorry that they grew quite fond of her." 
 
 "It is a common story enough," said Godfrey, "what could a 
 handsome girl do — except go wrong — in such a life as that. Did 
 she open the gate whUe she was here ? " 
 
 " Only for my father, I beheve. !RIrs. Porter has always contrived 
 to keep a girl in a pinafore, hke that girl you saw just now. All the 
 girls come from the same family, or have done for the last six or 
 seven years. As soon as the girl grows out of her pinafores she 
 goes otf to some better service, and a younger sister drops into her 
 place." 
 
 " And her pinafores, I suppose." 
 
 " Mrs. Porter's girls always do well. She has a reputation for 
 making a good servant out of the raw material." 
 
 " A clever woman, no doubt ; very clever, to have secured a lodgc- 
 kecper's berth -without being obliged to open the gate ; a woman 
 who knows how to take care of herself." 
 
 " You ought not to disparage her, Godfrej'. The poor thing has 
 known so much trouble — think of what it was to lose the daughter 
 she loved — and in such a way — worse than death." 
 
 "I don't know about that. Death means the end. A loving 
 mother might rather keep the sinner than lose the saint, and the 
 sinner may wash herself clean and become a saint — after the order 
 of Mary Magdalene. If this Mrs. Porter had been really devoted 
 to her daughter she would have followed her and brought her back 
 to the fold. She would not be here, loading a life of genteel idleness 
 in that picturesque old cottage while the lost sheep is still astray iu 
 the wilderness." 
 
 "You are very hard upon her, Godfrey." 
 
 " I ara hard upon all shams and pretences. I have not spoken to 
 Mrs. Porter above half a dozen times in my life — she never opens 
 the gate for me, you know — but I have a fixed impression that slio 
 is a hj^ocrite — a harmless hypocrite, perhaps — one of those women 
 whose chief object in hfe is to stand well with the Vicar of her 
 parish." 
 
 They were at the hall door by this time, and it was a quarter to 
 eight. 
 
 " Let us sit in the drawing-room this evening, Godfrey," said 
 Juanita, as she ran o(T to dress for dinner. "The library would 
 give me the horrors after last night." 
 
 " My capricious one. You will be tired of the drawing-rooin to-
 
 42 The Day will come. 
 
 morrow. I should not be surprised if you ordered me to sit on the 
 housetop. We might rig up a tent for afternoon tea between two 
 chimney stacks." 
 
 Juanita made a rapid toilet, and appeared in one of her graceful 
 cream-white tea-gowns, veiled in a cloud of softest lace, just as the 
 clocks were striking eight. She was all gaiety to-night, just as she 
 had been all morbid apprehension last night ; and when they went 
 to the drawing-room after dinner — together, for it was not to be sup- 
 posed that Sir Godfrey would linger over a solitary glass of claret — 
 she flew to the grand piano and began to play Tito Mattel's famous 
 waltz, which seemed the most consummate expression of joyousness 
 possible to her. The brilliant music filled the atmosphere with 
 gaiety, while the face of the player, turned to her husband as she 
 played, harmonized with the lighthearted melody. 
 
 The drawing-room was as frivolously pretty as the library was 
 soberly grand. It was Lady Cheriton's taste which had ruled here, 
 and the room was a kind of record of her ladyship's travels. She 
 had bought pretty things or curious things wherever they took her 
 fancy, and had brought them home to her Cheriton drawing-room. 
 Thus the walls were hung with Algerian embroideries on damask 
 or satin, and decorated with Ehodian pottery. The furniture was a 
 mixture of old French and old Itahan. The Dresden tea services and 
 ivory statuettes, and capo cli inonte vases, and Copenhagen figures, 
 had been picked up all over the Continent, without any regard to 
 their combined effect ; but there were so many things that the ulti- 
 mate result was delightful, the room being spacious enough to hold 
 everything without the shghtest appearance of over-crowding. 
 
 The piano stood in a central position, and was draped with a 
 Japanese robe of state — a mass of rainbow-hued embroidery on a 
 ground of violet satin almost covered with gold thread. It was the 
 most gorgeous fabric Godfrey Carmichael had ever seen, and it 
 made the piano a spot of vivid parti-coloured light, amidst the more 
 subdued colouring of the room — the silvery silken curtains, the 
 delicate Indian mushn draperies, and the didl tawny plush coverings 
 of sofas and chairs. 
 
 The room was lighted only by clusters of wax candles, and a 
 reading-lamp on a small table near one of the wmdows. It was a 
 rule that wherever Sir Godfrey spent his evening there must always 
 be a readmg-table and lamp ready for him. 
 
 He showed no eagerness for his books yet awhile, but seemed 
 completely happy lolling at full length on a sofa near the piano, 
 listening and watching as Juanita played. She played more of 
 Mattel's brilliant music — another waltz — an arrangement of Non e 
 ver — and then dashed into one of Chopin's wildest mazurkas, with 
 an audacious self-abandonment that was almost genius. 
 
 Godfrey listened rapturously, delighted with the music for its own 
 sake, but even more delighted for the gladness which it expressed.
 
 The Day will come. 43 
 
 Sho stopped at last, breathless, after Mendelssohn's Capriccio. 
 Godfrey had risen from the sofa and was standing by her side. 
 
 " I'm afraid I must have tired you to death," she said, " but I had 
 a strange sort of feeUng that I must go on playing. That music was 
 a safety-valve for my high spirits." 
 
 "My darling, I am so glad to see that you have done with 
 imaginary woes. We may have real troubles of some kind to face 
 by-and-by, perhaps, as we go down the hill, so it would be very 
 foohsh to abandon ourselves to fancied sorrows while we are on 
 the top." 
 
 " Real troubles — j'^cs — sickness, anxiety, the fear of parting," said 
 .Tuaiiita, in a troubled voice. "Oh, Godfrey, if we were to give 
 half our fortune to the poor — if wc were to make some great sacri- 
 licc — do you thinlc God would spare us such pangs as these — tlie 
 fear — the homble fear of being parted from cacli other? " 
 
 " My dearest, we cannot make a bargain with Providence. We 
 can only do our duty, and hope for the best." 
 
 " At any rate, let us be very — very good to the poor," urged 
 Juanita, with intense earnestness ; " let us have their prayers to 
 plead for us." 
 
 The night was warm and still, and the windows were all open to 
 the terrace. Godfrey and Juanita took their coffee in their favourite 
 corner by the magnolia tree, and sat there for a long time in the 
 soft light of the stars, talking the old sweet talk of then- future 
 life. 
 
 " We must drive to Swanage and see Lady Jane to-morrow," said 
 Juanita by-and-by. " Don't you think it was very wrong to go to 
 see my people — only cousins after all — before we went to your 
 mother?" 
 
 " She will come to us, dear, directly we give her permission. I 
 know she is dying to see you in your new character." 
 
 " How lovely she looked at the wedding, in her pale grey gown 
 and bonnet. I love her almost as well as I love my own dear, 
 good, indulgent mother, and I think she is the most perfect lady I 
 ever met." 
 
 " I don't think you'll find her ven,' much like the t}'pical mother- 
 in-law, at any rate," replied Godfrey, gaily. 
 
 Tiioy decided on driving to Swanage next morning. They 
 would go in the landau, and bring " the mother " back with them 
 for a day or two, if she could be persuaded to come. 
 
 Juanita stifled a yawn presently, and seemed somewhat languid 
 after her sleepless night and long day of talk and vivacity. 
 
 " I am getting very stupid company," she said. " I'll go to bed 
 early to-night, Godfrey, and leave you an hour's quiet with ' Wider 
 Horizons.' I know you are longing to go on ^\^th that book, but 
 your chatterbox wife won't let you." 
 
 Of course he protested that her society was worth more than all
 
 44 ^>^<? Day will come. 
 
 the books in the British Museum. He offered to take his book up 
 to her room and read her to sleep, if she hked ; but she would not 
 have it so. 
 
 " You shall have your own quiet corner and your books, just as if 
 you were still a bachelor," she said, caressingly, as she hung upon 
 his shoulder for a good-night kiss. " As for me, 1 am utterly tired 
 out. Janet and Sophy talked me to death ; and then there was 
 the long drive home. I shall be as fresh as ever to-morrow morn- 
 ing, and ready to be off to dear Lady Jane." 
 
 He went into the hall with her, and to the top of the stairs for 
 the privilege of carrying her candlestick, and he only left her at the 
 end of the corridor out of which her room opened. 
 
 She did not ring for her maid, preferring solitude to that young 
 person's attendance. She did not want to be worried with elaborate 
 hair-brushing or ceremonies of any kind. She was thoroughly ex- 
 hausted with the alternations of emotion of which her life had been 
 made up of late, and she fell asleep almost as soon as her head 
 touched her pillow. 
 
 The bedroom was over the drawing-room. Her last look from 
 the open casement had shown her the reflection of the lights below 
 on the terrace. She was near enough to have spoken out of the 
 window to her husband, had she been so minded. She could picture 
 him sitting at the table at the corner window, in his thoughtful 
 attitude, his head bent over his book, one knee drawn up nearly to 
 his chin, one arm hanging loosely across the arm of his low easj'- 
 chair. She had watched him thus many a time, completely absorbed 
 in his book. 
 
 She slept as tranquilly as an infant, and her dream-wanderings 
 were all in pleasant places — with him, always with him ; confused 
 after the manner of all dreams, but with no sign of trouble. 
 
 What was this dream about being with him at Woolwich where 
 they were firing a big gun ? A curious dream ! She had been 
 there once with her father to see a gun drawn — but she had never 
 seen one fired there, — and now in her dream she stood in a crowd 
 of strange faces, fronting the river, and there was a long grey iron- 
 clad on the water — a turret ship — and there came a flash, and then 
 a puff of white smoke, and the report of a gun, short and sharp, not 
 like the roar of a cannon by any means, and yet her dream showed 
 her the dark sullen gun on the grey deck, the biggest gun she had 
 ever seen. 
 
 She started up from her pillow, cold and trembling. That report 
 of the gun had seemed so real and so near, that it had awakened 
 her. She was wide awake now, and pushed back her loose hair 
 from her ej'es, and felt imder her pillow for her watch, and looked 
 at it in the dim light of the night-lamp on the table by her bed. 
 
 " A quarter to one." 
 
 She had left the drawing-room a few minutes after ten. It was
 
 The Day will come. 45 
 
 long for Godfrey to have sat reading alone; but be was insatiable 
 when he had a new book that interested liini. 
 
 She got up and put on her slippers and dressing-gown, prepared 
 to take him to task for his late hours. She was not alarmed by her 
 dream, but the sound of that sharp report was still in her ears as 
 slie lighted her candle and went down into the silent house. 
 
 She opened the drawing-room door, and looked across to the spot 
 ■where she expected to see her husband sitting. Ilis chair was 
 empty. The lamp was burning just as she had left it hours ago, 
 burning with a steady light under the green porcelain shade, but ho 
 was not there. 
 
 Puzzled, and with a touch of fear, she went slowly across the 
 room towards his chair. He had strayed out on to the terrace 
 perhaps — he had gone out for a linal smoke. Slie would steal after 
 him in her long wiiite gown, and frigiiten him if she could. 
 
 " He ought at least to take me for a ghost," she thought. 
 
 She stopped transfixed with a sudden horror. He was lying on 
 the carpet at her feet in a huddled heap, just as he had rolled out of 
 his chair. His head was bent forward between his shoulders, his 
 face was hidden. She tried to lift his head, hanging over him, 
 calling to hira in passionate entreaty ; and, behold, her hands and 
 arms were drowned in l)lood. His blood splashed her white peignoir. 
 It was all over her. She seemed to be steeped in it, as she sat on 
 the floor trying to get a look at his face — to see if his wound was 
 mortal. 
 
 For some moments she had no other thought than to sit there in 
 her horror, repeating liis name in every accent of terror and of love, 
 beseeching him to answer her. Then gradually came the conviction 
 of his unconsciousness, and of the need of help. He was badly 
 hurt — dangerously hurt — but it might not be mortal. Help must 
 be got. He must be cured somehow. She could not believe that 
 ho was to die. 
 
 She rushed to the bell and rang again, and again, and again, 
 liardly taking her finger from the little ivory knob, hstening as tiio 
 siirill electric peal vibrated through the silent house. It seemed an 
 age before there was any response, and then three servants came 
 hurrying in — the butler, and one of the footmen, and a scared 
 housemaid. They saw her standmg there, tall and white, dabbled 
 with blood. 
 
 " Some one has been trying to murder him," she cried. " Didn't 
 you hear a gun?" 
 
 No, no one had heard anything till they heard the bell. TI)e two 
 men lifted Sir Godfrey from the iloor to the sofa, and did all they 
 could do to staunch that deadly wound in his neck, from which llie 
 blood was still pouring — a bullet wound. Lambert, the butler, was 
 afraid that tiie bullet had pierced the jugular vein. 
 
 if there was life still, it was only ebbing life. Juanita flung her-
 
 46 The Day will come. 
 
 self on the gi'ound beside that prostrate form and kissed the un- 
 conscious Ups, and the cold brow, and those palHd cheeks ; kissed 
 and cried over him, and repeated again and again that the wound 
 was not mortal. 
 
 "Is any one going for the doctor? " she cried, frantically. ''Are 
 you all going to stand still and see him die ? " 
 
 Lambert assured her that Thomas was gone to the stable to wake 
 the men, and despatch a mounted messenger for Mr. Dolby, the 
 family doctor. 
 
 " He might have helped us more if he had run there himself," 
 cried Juanita. " There will be time lost in waking the men, and 
 saddling a horse. I could go there faster." 
 
 She looked at the door as if she had half resolved to rush off to 
 the village in her dressing-gown and slippers. And then she looked 
 again at that marble face, and again fell upon her knees by the sofa, 
 and laid her cheek against that bloodless cheek, and moaned and 
 cried over him ; while the butler went to get brandy, with but little 
 hope in his o\vn mind of any useful result. 
 
 " What an end to a honeymoon ! " he said to himself despondently. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "Is not short payne well borne that bringes long ease, 
 And laj'es the soule to sleepe in quiet grave '! 
 Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas. 
 Ease after warre, death after life . . . ," 
 
 The morning dawned upon a weeping household. There was 
 nothing to be done Avhen Mr. Dolby, the village surgeon, arrived at 
 Cheriton House. He could only examine the death-wound and 
 express his opinion as to its character. 
 
 " It was certainly not self-inflicted," he told the servants, as they 
 stood about him in a stony gi'oup. 
 
 " Self-inflicted, indeed ! " echoed Lambert, " I should think not. 
 If ever there was a young man who had cause to set store by his 
 life it was Sir Godfrey Carmichael. It's murder, Mr. Dolby, rank 
 murder." 
 
 "Yes, I'm afraid it's murder," said Dolby, with an air which 
 implied that suicide would have been a bagatelle in comparison. 
 
 " But who can have done it, and why ? " he asked after a pause. 
 
 The servants inclined to the opinion that it was the act of a 
 poacher. Lord Cheriton had always been what they called a mark 
 upon poachers. There was doubtless a vendetta to which the
 
 The Day will conic. 47 
 
 pheasant-snaring fraternity had pledged themselves, and Sir Godfrey- 
 was the victim ot that vendetta ; however strange it might appear 
 tliat hatred of LordCheriton should find its expression in the murder 
 of Lord Cheriton's son-in-law. 
 
 " We must wait for the inquest hcfore wo can know anything," 
 said Dolby, when he had done all that surgerj' could do for that 
 cold clay, which was to compose the lifeless form in its final rest in 
 a spare bedroom at the end of the corridor, remote from that bridal 
 chamber where Juanita was lying motionless in her dumb despair. 
 
 The local policeman was on the scene at seven o'clock, prowling 
 about the house with a countenance of solemn stolidity, and asking 
 questions which seemed to have very little direct bearing on the 
 case, and taking measurements between the spot where the murdered 
 man had been found, too plainly marked by the pool of blood W'hich 
 had soaked into tho velvet pile, and imaginary points upon the 
 terrace outside, with the doctor at his elbow to make suggestions, 
 and as far as in him lay behaving as a skilled London detective 
 might have behaved imder the same circumstances, which conduct 
 on his part did not prevent j\Ir. Dolby telegraphing to Scotland Yard 
 as soon as the wires w-erc at his disposal. 
 
 He was in tlie village post-office when the clock struck eight, and 
 the post-mistress, who had hung out a fiag and decorated her shop 
 front with garlands on the wedding day, was watching him with an 
 awe-stricken countenance as he wrote his telegi-ams. 
 
 The first was to Scotland Yard : — 
 
 " Sir Godfrey Carmichael murdered late last night. Send one of 
 your most trustworthy men to investigate." 
 
 The second was to Lord Cheriton, Grand Hotel, Param(i St. Malo, 
 France : — 
 
 " Sir Godfrey Carmichael was mm'dered last night, between twelve 
 and one o'clock. Murderer unknown. Death instantaneous. Pray 
 come immediately." 
 
 The third was to Matthew Dalbrook, more briefly announcing the 
 murder. 
 
 He was going to send a fourth message to Lady Jane Carmichael, 
 began to write her address, then thought better of it, and tore up 
 the form. 
 
 " I'll drive over and tell her," he said to himself. " Poor soul, it 
 will break her heart, let her learn it how she may. But it would be 
 cruel to telegraph, all tho same." 
 
 Every one at Cheriton knew that Lady Jane's affections were 
 centred upon her only son. She had daughters, and she was very 
 fond of them. They were both married, and had married well ; but 
 their homes lay far off", one in the Midlands, the other in tlie North 
 of England, and although in each case there was a nursery full of 
 grandchildren, neither the young married women nor the babies had 
 ever filled Lady Jane's heart as her son had filled it.
 
 48 The Day will come. 
 
 And now Mr. Dolby had taken upon himself to go and tell this 
 gentle widow that the light of her life was extinguished ; that the 
 eon she adored had been brutally and inexplicably murdered. It was 
 a hard thing for any man to do ; and Mr. Dolby was a warm-hearted 
 man, with home ties of his own. 
 
 Before Mr. Dolby's gig was halfway to Swanage, his telegram 
 had been delivered at Dorchester, and Matthew Dalbrook and his 
 son were starting for Cheriton with a pair of horses in the sohcitor's 
 neat T cart, which was usually driven with one. Theodore drove, 
 and father and son sat side by side in a dreary silence. 
 
 What could be said ? The telegi-am told so httle. They had 
 speculated and wondered about it in brief broken sentences as they 
 stood in the office fronting the sunny street, waiting for the carriage. 
 They had asked each other if this ghastly thing could be ; if it were 
 not some mad metamorphose of words, some blunder of a telegraph 
 clerk's, rather than a horrible reality. 
 
 Murdered — a man who had been sitting at their table, fuU of life 
 and spirits, in the glow of youth, and health, and happiness, less 
 than twenty-four hours ago ! Murdered — a man who had never 
 known what it was to have an enemy, who had been popular with 
 all classes ! Had been ! How awful to think of him as belonging 
 to the past, he who yesterday looked forward to so radiant a future ? 
 And Theodore Dalbrook had envied him, as even the most generous 
 of men must needs envy the winner in the race for love. 
 
 Could it be ? Or if it were really true, how could it be ? What 
 manner of murderer? What motive for the murder? Where 
 liad it happened? On the highway — in the woody labyrinths of 
 the Chase? And upon the mind of Theodore flashed the same 
 idea which had suggested itself to the servants. It might be the 
 work of a poacher whom Sir Godfrey had surprised during a late 
 ramble. Yet a poacher must be hard bested before he resorts 
 to murder, and Sir Godfrey — easy tempered and generous — was 
 hardly the kind of man to take upon himself the functions of a 
 gamekeeper, and give chase to any casual depredator. It was 
 useless to wonder or to argue while the facts of the case were all 
 unrevealed. It would be time to do that when they were at 
 Cheriton. So the father and son sat in a dismal silence, save that 
 now and again the elder man sighed, "Poor Juanita, my poor 
 Juanita ; and she was so happy yesterday." 
 
 Theodore winced at the words. Yes, she had been so happj', and 
 he had despaired because of her happiness. The cup of gladness 
 which had brimmed over for her had been to him a fountain of 
 bitterness. It seemed to him as if he had never realized how 
 fondly he loved her till he saw her by her husband's side, an 
 embodiment of hfe's sunshine, innocently revealing her fehcity in 
 every look and word. It was so long since he had ceased to hope. 
 He had even taught liimself to think he was resigned to his fate,
 
 The Day wih come. 49 
 
 that he could hvc his life without her. But that delusion ceased 
 yesterday, and he knew that she was dearer than she had ever been 
 to him now that she was irrevocably lost. It was human nature, 
 perhaps, to love her best when love was most hopeless. 
 
 They drove along the level road towards Cheriton, in the dewy 
 freshness of the summer morning, by meadow and copse, by heath 
 and cornfield, the skylarks carolling in the hot blue sky, the corn- 
 crake creaking inside the hedge, the chaflhich reiterating his 
 monotonous note, the jay screaming in the wood, all living creatures 
 revelling in the cloudless summer. It was hard, awful, unsupport- 
 able, that he who was with them yesterday, who had driven along 
 tliis road under the westering sun, was now cold clay, a subject for 
 the coroner, a something to be hidden away in the family vault, and 
 forgotten as soon as possible ; for what docs consolation mean except 
 persuasion to forget ? 
 
 Never had the way between Dorchester and Cheriton Chase 
 loukcd lovelier than in this morning atmosphere ; never had the 
 cattle grouped themselves into more delightful pictures amidst those 
 ehallow waters which reflected the sky ; never had the lights and 
 shadows been fairer upon those level meadows and yonder broken 
 liills. Theodore Dalbrook loved every bit of that familiar landscape ; 
 and even to-day, amidst the horror and wonder of his distracted 
 thoughts, he had a dim sense of siuTounding beauty, as of something 
 seen in a dream. He could have hardly told where he was, or what 
 the season was, or whether it was the morning or the evening light 
 that was gilding the fields yonder. 
 
 The lowered blinds at Cheriton told only too surely that the 
 ghastly announcement in the telegi'am was no clerical eiTor. The 
 face of the footman who opened the door was pale with distress. IIo 
 conducted Mr. Dalbrook and his son to the library, where the butler 
 appeared almost immediately to answer the elder man's eager 
 questions. 
 
 Not on the highway, not in the woods or the Park, but in the 
 drawing-room where the butler had seen him sitting in a low ann- 
 chair by the open window, in the tranquil summer night, absorbed 
 in his book. 
 
 " He was that wrapped up that I don't believe he knew I was in 
 the room, sir," said Lambert, "till I asked him if there was any- 
 thing further wanted for the night, and then he starts, looks up at 
 me with his pleasant smile, and answers in his quiet friendly way, 
 ' Nothing more, thank you, Lambert. Is it very late ? ' I told him 
 it was past eleven, and I asked if I should shut the drawing-room 
 shutters before I went to bed, but he says, ' No, I'll see to that — I 
 like the windows open,' and then he went on reading, and less tlian 
 two hours afterwards he was lying on the ground, in front of tho 
 window — dead." 
 
 "Have you any suspicion, Lambert, as to the murderer? " 
 
 E
 
 50 The Day will come. 
 
 " Well, no, sir ; not unless it was a poacher or an escaped lunatic. 
 
 " The lunatic seems rather the more probable conjecture," said 
 JIatthew Dalbrook. " The police are at work already, I hope." 
 
 "Well, sir, yes; our local police are doing all that lies in their 
 power, and I have done what I could to assist them. Mr. Dolby 
 wired to Scotland Yard at the same time as he wired to you." 
 
 " That was wisely done. Have there been no traces of the 
 murderer discovered? No indication of any kind ? " 
 
 " Nothing, sir ; but one of the under housemaids remembers to 
 have heard footsteps about on the terrace, after dark, on several 
 occasions within the last fortnight ; once while Sir Godfrey and our 
 young lady were at dinner, and two or three times at a later hour 
 when they were in the draAving-room or the hbrary." 
 
 " Did she see any one ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; she is rather a dull kind of girl, and never so much as 
 troubled to find out what the footsteps meant. Her bedroom is 
 one of the old attics on the south side of the house, and she was 
 sitting at work near her open window when she heard the footsteps 
 — going and coming — slow and stealthy-like — upon the terrace at 
 intervals. She is sure they were not her ladyship's nor Sir Godfrey's 
 steps on either occasion. She says she knows their walk, and she 
 would swear to these footsteps as altogether different. Slower, 
 more creeping-like, as she put it." 
 
 '' Has no one been seen lurking about after dark ? " 
 
 "No one, sir, as we have heard of; and the constable questioned 
 all the servants, pretty close, I can tell you. He hasn't left much 
 for the London detective to do." 
 
 Matthew Dalbrook hadbeenthe onlyquestioner in this inteiTOgatory. 
 Theodore had sunk into a chair on entering the room, and sat silent, 
 Avith a face of marble. He was thinking of the stricken girl whose 
 life had been desolated by this mysterious crime. His father had 
 not forgotten her ; but he had wanted, first of all, to learn all he 
 could about her husband's death. 
 
 " How does Lady Carmichael bear it ? " he asked presently. 
 
 " A^ery sadly, sir; very sadly. Mrs. Morley and Celestine are 
 both with her. Mr. Dolby ordered that she should be kept as quiet 
 as possible, not allowed to leave her room if they could help it, but 
 it has been very difficult to keep her quiet. Poor dear young lady ! 
 She wanted to go to him.'''' 
 
 "Poor girl! poor girl! So happy yesterday!" said Matthew 
 Dalbrook. 
 
 His son sat silent, as if be were made of stone. 
 
 Far, very far off, as it were at the end of a long dark vista, cut 
 sharply across an impenetrable wood of choking thorns and bhnding 
 briars, he saw Juanita again radiant, again happy, again loving and 
 beloved, and on the threshold of another life. The vision dazzled 
 him, almost to bHndness. But could it ever be ? Could that loving
 
 The Day zviil come. 51 
 
 licart ever forget tliis agony of to-daj' — ever beat again to a joyl'nl 
 measure ? He wrenched himself from tliat selfish reverie ; he felt 
 a wretch for having yielded nj) his imagination, even for a moment, 
 to that alluring vision. lie was here to mourn witli her, here to 
 pity her — to sympathize with this unspeakable grief. Murdered ! 
 Iler lover-husband shot to death by an unknown hand, her honey- 
 moon ended with one murderous flash — that honeymoon which had 
 seemed the prelude to a lifetime of love. 
 
 " I should like to see her," said Mr. Dalbrook. " I think it would 
 be a comfort to her to see me, however agitated she may be. Will 
 you take my name to the housekeeper, and ask her opinion ? " 
 
 Lambert looked doubtful as to the wisdom of the course, but was 
 ready to obey all the same. 
 
 " Mr. Dolby said she was to be kept very quiet, sir — that she 
 v.-asn't to see anybody." 
 
 " That would haixUy apply to her own people. I\lr. Dolby 
 telegraphed for me." 
 
 "Did he, sir? Then I conclude he would not object to her 
 ladyship seeing you. I'll send up your name. Perhaps, while the 
 message is being taken, you would like to have a look at the spot 
 where it happened? " 
 
 " Yes. 1 want to know all that can be kno\\ni." 
 Lambert had been so busy with the constable all the morning 
 that ho felt himself almost on a level with Scotland Yard talent, 
 and he took a morbid interest in that dark stain on the delicate 
 half tints of the velvet pile, and in such few details as he was able 
 to e.xpoimd. He despatched a footman upstairs, and he led the 
 Dalbrooks to the drawing-room, where he open the shutters of that 
 window through which the assassin must have aimed, and let a 
 jiood of sunshine into the darkened room. 
 
 The chair, the table, and lamp stood exactly as they had stood 
 last night. Lambert took credit to himself for not having allowed 
 tiiem to be moved by so much as an inch. 
 
 '* Any assistance in my power I shall be only too happy to give to 
 the London detective," he said. "Of coiu'se, coming on the scone 
 as a total stranger, he can't be expected to do much without help." 
 There was no need to point out that ghastly stain upon the 
 carpet. The shaft of noonday sunshine seemed to concentrate its 
 brightness on that grisly patch. Dark, dark, dark with the witness 
 of a cruel nun-dor — the nmrdor of a man who had never done an 
 unkindly act, or harboured an unworthy thought. 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook stood looking at that stain. It seemed to 
 bring the fatal reality nearer to him. He looked at the low cliair 
 with its covering of peacock plush, and its Tm'kish cmbroitlery 
 draped daintily across the broad back and capacious arms — a chair 
 to live in — a sybarite's estate, — and then at the satinwood book-table 
 tilled v.'ith such books aa the lounger loves — Southey's *' Doctor."
 
 52 The Day will come. 
 
 "Burton," "Table Talk," by Coleridge, Whateley, Rogers, "The 
 Sentimental Journey," " Rochefoucauld," " Caxtoniana," " Elia," 
 and thrown carelessly upon one of the shelves a handkerchief of 
 cobweb cambric, with a monogram that occupied a third of the fabric, 
 *' J.C." Her handkerchief, dropped there last night, as she arranged 
 the books for her husband's use — putting her own favourites in his 
 way. 
 
 Lambert took up a book and opened it with a dismal smile, 
 handing it to Mr. Dalbrook as he did so. 
 
 It was "Wider Horizons," the volume he had been reading when 
 the bullet struck him, and those open pages were spattered with his 
 blood. 
 
 " Put it away for God's sake, man," cried Dalbrook, horrified. 
 " Whatever you do, don't let Lady Carmichael see it.' 
 
 " No, sir, better not, perhaps, sir — but it's evidence, and it ought 
 to be produced at the inquest." 
 
 "Produce it if you like; but there is evidence enough to show 
 that he was murdered on this spot." 
 
 " As he sat reading, sir ; the book is a great point." 
 
 And then Lambert expounded the position of that lifeless form, 
 making much of every detail, as he had done to the constable. 
 
 While he was talking, the door was opened suddenly, and Juanita 
 rushed into the room. 
 
 " Lord have mercy on us, she mustn't see that," cried Lambert, 
 pointing to the carpet. 
 
 Matthew Dalbrook hurried forward to meet her, and caught her 
 in his arms before she could reach that fatal spot. He held her 
 there, looking at her with pitying eyes, while Theodore approached 
 slowly, silently, agonized by the sight of her agony. The change 
 from the joyous self-abandonment of yesterday to the rigid horror of 
 to-day was the most appalling transformation that he had ever looked 
 upon. Her face was of a livid pallor, her large dark eyes were dis- 
 tended and fixed, and all their brilliancy was quenched like a light 
 blown out. Her blanched lips trembled as she tried to speak, and it. 
 was after several futile efforts to express her meaning that she finally 
 succeeded in shaping a sentence distinctly. 
 
 " Have they found his murderer ? " 
 
 " Not yet, dearest. It is far too soon to hope for that. But it is 
 not for you to think about that, Juanita. All will be done — be sure 
 
 — rest secure in the devotion of those who love you ; and " 
 
 with a break in his voice, " who loved him." 
 
 She lifted her head quickly, with an angry light in the eyes which 
 had been so dull till that moment. 
 
 " Do you think I will leave that work to others ? " she said. " It 
 is my business. It is all that God has left me to do in this world. 
 It is my business to see that his murderer suffers, — not as IJsuffer — 
 that can never be, — but all that the law can do — the law which is so
 
 The Day zuill come. 53 
 
 merciful to murderers nowadaj-s. You don't think he can get oil' 
 lightly, do you, uncle? They will hang him, won't they? Hang 
 him — hang him — hang him," she repeated, in hoarso dull syllables. 
 '* A few moments' agony after a night of terror. So little — so little ! 
 And I have to live my desolate life. My punishment is for a 
 lifetime." 
 
 " My love, God will be good to you. He can lighten all burdens," 
 murmured Mr. Dalbrook, gently. 
 
 " Ho cannot lighten mine, not by the weight of a single hair. He 
 has stretched forth His hand against me in hatred and anger, perhaps 
 because I loved His creature better than I loved Him." 
 
 " ^ly dearest, this is madness " 
 
 " I did, I did," she reiterated. " I loved my husband better than 
 I loved my God. I would have worshipped Satan if I could have 
 saved him by Satan's help. I loved him with all my heart, and 
 mind, and strength, as we are taught to love God. There was not 
 room in my heart for any other religion. He was the beginning and 
 the end of my creed. And God saw my happy love and hated mo 
 for it. He is a jealous God, We arc taught tliat when we are little 
 children. He is a jealous God, and He put it into the head of some 
 distracted creature to come to that window and shoot my husband." 
 
 A violent lit of hysteria followed these wild words. Mattliew 
 Dalbrook felt that all attempts at consolation must needs be vain for 
 some time to come. Until this tempest of gi'ief was calmed nothing 
 could be done. 
 
 " She will have her mother here in a day or two," said Theodore. 
 '• That may bring some comfort." 
 
 Juanita heard him even in the midst of her hysterical sobbing. 
 Her hearing was abnormally keen. 
 
 " No one, no one can comfort me, unless they can give me back 
 my dead." 
 
 She started up suddenly from the sofa where Matthew had placed 
 her, and gi-asped his arm with convulsive force. 
 
 " Take me to him," she entreated, " take me to him, uncle. You 
 were always kind to me. They won't let mo go to him. It is 
 brutal, it is inflxmous of them. I have a right to be there." 
 
 " By-and-by, my dear girl, when you are calmer." ' 
 
 " I will be calm this instant if you will take me to him," she said, 
 commanding herself at once, with a tremendous effort, choking down 
 tiiose rising sobs, clasping her convulsed throat with constraining 
 hands, tightening her tremulous lips. 
 
 "See," she said, "I am quite calm now. I will not give wr»y 
 .igain. Take me to Iiim. Let me see him — that 1 may be sure my 
 happy life was not all a dream — a mad-woman's dream — as it seems 
 to have been now, when I cannot look upon his l;xcc." 
 
 Mr. Dalbrook looked at his son interrogatively. 
 
 " Let her see him," said Theodore, gently. '' We cannot lessen
 
 54 ^-^-^ Day will come. 
 
 her sorrow. It must have its way. Better perhaps that she should 
 see him, and accustom herself to her gi"ief; better for her brain, 
 however it may torture her heart." 
 
 He saw the risk of a further calamity in his cousin's state — tlie 
 fear that her mind would succumb under the burden of her sorrow. 
 It seemed to him that there was more danger in thwarting her 
 natural desire to look upon her beloved dead than in letting her 
 have her way. 
 
 The housekeeper had followed her young mistress to the drawing- 
 room door, and was waiting there. She shook her head, and mur- 
 mured something about Mr. Dolby's orders, but submitted to the 
 authority of a kinsman and family solicitor, as even superior to the 
 faculty. 
 
 She led the way silently to that upper chamber where the murdered 
 man was l}'ing. Matthew Dalbrook put his cousin's icy hand through 
 his arm and supported her steps as they slowly followed. Theodore 
 remained in the drawing-room, walking up and down, in deepest 
 thought, stopping now and then in his slow pacing to and fro to 
 contemplate that stain upon the velvet pile, and the empty chair 
 beside it. 
 
 In the room above Juanita knelt beside the bed where he who 
 kissed her last night on the threshold of her chamber lay in his last 
 slumber, a marble figure with calm dead face shrouded by the snowy 
 sheet, with flowers — white waxen exotics — scattered about the bed. 
 She lifted the sheet, and looked upon him, and kissed him with love's 
 last despairing kiss, and then she knelt beside the bed, with her face 
 bent in her clasped hands, calmer than she had been at any moment 
 since she found her murdered husband Ijdng at her feet. 
 
 "It's -svonderful," whispered the housekeeper to Mr. Dalbrook; 
 " it seems to have soothed her, poor dear, to see liim — and I was 
 afraid she would have broke down worse than ever." 
 
 "You must give way to her a little, Mrs. Morley. She has a 
 powerfid mind, and she must not be treated like a child. She will 
 live through her trouble, and rise superior to it, be sure of that ; 
 terrible as it is." 
 
 The door opened softly, and a woman came into the room, a 
 woman of about five-and-forty, of middle height, slim and delicately 
 made, with aquiline nose and fair complexion, and flaxen hair just 
 touched with grey. She was deadly pale, but her eyes were tear- 
 less, and she came quietly to the bed, and fell on her knees by 
 Juanita's side and liid her face as Juanita's was hidden, and the first 
 sound that came from her lips was a long low moan — a sound of 
 greater agony than Matthew Dalbrook had ever heard in his life 
 until that moment. 
 
 " Good God," he nmttered to himself, as he moved to a distant 
 window, " I had forgotten Lady Jane." 
 
 It was Lady Jane, the gentle soul who had loved that poor clay
 
 The Day will come. 55 
 
 with a love that had gi-own and strengthened with every year of his 
 life, with a love that had won liheral response from the recipient. 
 Tiicrc had never been a cloud between them, never one moment of 
 disagreement or doubt. Each had been secure in the certainty of 
 the other's affection. It had been a union such as is not often seen 
 between mother and son ; and it was ended — ended by the red hand 
 of murder. 
 
 JIatthew Dalbrook left the room in silence, beckoning to the 
 housekeeper to follow him. 
 
 "Leave them together," he said. "They will be more comfort 
 tn each other than any one else in the world can be to either of thcui. 
 Keep in the way — here, in the corridor, in case of anj'thing going 
 wrong — faintinsr, or hysterics, for instance, — but so long as they are 
 tolerably calm let them be together, and imdisturbcd." 
 
 He went back to his son, and they both left the house soon after- 
 wards and drove off to find the Coroner and to confer with him. 
 Later in the afternoon they saw the local policeman, whose discoveries, 
 though he evidently thought them important, Mr. Dalbrook con- 
 sidered nil. 
 
 He had found out that a certain village freebooter — ostensibly an 
 agi'icultural labourer, nocttu'nally a poacher — bore a gi'udge against 
 Lord Cheriton, and had sworn to be even with him sooner or later. 
 The constable opined that, being an ignorant man, this person might 
 Lave mistaken Lord Cheriton's son-in-law for Lord Cheriton himself. 
 
 He had discovered, in the second place, that two vans of gipsies 
 had encamped just outside the Chase on the night after the arrival 
 of the bridal pair. They were, in fact, the very gipsies who had 
 provided Aunt Sally and the French shooting-gallery for the amuse- 
 ment of the populace, and he opined that some of these gipsies were 
 '•in it." 
 
 Why they should be in it he did not take upon himself to explain, 
 but he declared that his experience of the tribe justified his suspicions. 
 He was also of opinion that the murderer had come with the intent 
 to plunder the drawing-room, which was, in his own expression, 
 " chock-full of valuables," and that, being disappointed, and further- 
 more detected, in that intent, he had tried to make all things safe by 
 a casual murder. 
 
 " But, man alive. Sir Godfrey was sitting in his arm-chair, absorbeil 
 in his book. There was nothing to prevent any intending burglar 
 sneaking away unseen. You must find some better scent than that 
 if you mean to track the murderer." 
 
 " I hope, sir, with my experience of the district, I shall have a 
 better chance of finding him than a stranger imported from the 
 !^^etropolis," said Constable Barber, severely. " I conclude there 
 will be a reward offered, Mr. Dalbrook ? " 
 
 " There will, and a large one. I must not take upon myself to 
 name the figure. Lord Cheriton will be here to-morrow or next
 
 56 The Day will come. 
 
 day, and he will, no doubt, take immediate steps. You may con- 
 sider yourself a very lucky man, Barber, if you can solve this 
 mystery." 
 
 Matthew Dalbrook turned from the eager face of the police-officer 
 with a short, angiy sigh. It was of the reward the man was think- 
 ing, no doubt — congratulating himself perhaps upon the good luck 
 which had thrown such a murder in his way. And presently the 
 man from Scotland Yard would be on the scene, keen and business- 
 like, yet full of a sportsman's ardour, intent on discovery, as on a 
 game in which the stakes were worth winning. Little cared either 
 of these for the one fan- life cut short, for the other young life 
 bli'i'hted. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " I saw a Fury whetting a death-dart." 
 
 LoKD CiiERiTON liked to take his summer holiday on a sunny sea- 
 shore where there were not many English visitors. Parame St. Malo 
 fulfilled both these conditions. It atforded him a vast expanse of 
 golden sands, tirm beneath his foot, steeped in sunshine for the most 
 part, on which to pace to and fro, lifting his eyes dreamily now and 
 then to the sea-girt city, with its stony rampart, and its quaint Louis 
 Quatorze mansions, facing the sea in the sober dignity of massive 
 stone facade and tall windows ; grey old houses, which seem too 
 good for the age in which they find themselves, solid enough to last 
 through long centuries, and to outlive all that j'et lingers of that 
 grandiose France in which they were built. Roof above roof rises the 
 Breton city, steep old streets leading up to Cathedral and Municipal 
 Palace, with the crocheted steeple for its pinnacle, shining with a 
 pale briUiance in the summer sunlight, verdureless, and with but little 
 colom- save the reflected glory of the skies, and the jasper green of 
 the sea in its ring of golden sand. 
 
 Lord Cheriton affected Param«? because, though it was within a 
 summer night's journey from his own Isle of Purbeck, it was 
 thoroughly out of the beaten track, and he was tolerably secure from 
 those hourly encounters wath his most particular friends, to which 
 lie must have submitted at Baden or Spa, at Trouville or Dieppe. 
 Parame was Parisian or nothing. The smart people all came from 
 Paris. English smartness had its centre at Dinard, and the English 
 who patronize Dinard will tell j'ou there is no other paradise on 
 earth, and that its winter cHmate is better than that of the Riviera, 
 if people would only have faith. So long as the Cheritons could 
 keep out of the way of exploring friends from Dinard, his Lordship
 
 The Day will come. 57 
 
 was exempt from the amusements which to some minds make hfe 
 intolerable. 
 
 Lady Chcriton was distinctly social in her instincts, and looked 
 Dinanl-wards sometimes from her lotus-land with a longing eye. 
 She would have liked to ask some nice people to luncheon ; and she 
 knew so many nice people at Dinard. She would have liked to 
 organize excursions to Mont St. Michel, or up the Ilance to Dinan. 
 She would have liked to plunge into all manner of innocent gaieties ; 
 but her husband stamped out these genial j'carnings. 
 
 "It seems such a pity not to have people over to dinner when 
 lliere are such nice operettas and vaudevilles every night at the 
 Casino," she sighed. 
 
 '' And if you had them over to dinner, how do j'on sujipose f hoy 
 would get back? " asked her husband, sternly. "Would you wish 
 to keep them all till next morning, and be bored with them at 
 breakfast?" 
 
 That intervening strip of sea, nan-ow as it was, afforded imspeak- 
 able comfort to Lord Cheriton. It was an excuse for refusing lo go 
 over and take afternoon tea with ])eoplo he was supposed to hold iu 
 liis heart of hearts in the way of friciidshiji. 
 
 "You can go, Maria, if you Hke," he told his wife; "but I am 
 not a good sailor, and I came here on purpose to be quiet." 
 
 This was his Lordship's answer to every hospitable suggestion. 
 lie had come to Parame for rest; and not for gadding about, or 
 entertaiments of any kind. 
 
 So the long summer days succeeded each other in a lazy mono- 
 tony, and whatever gaiety there might be in the gi'eat white hotel, 
 the English law-lord and his wife had no share in it. They occupied 
 a suite of light, airy rooms in the west pavilion, and were served 
 a])art from the vulgar herd, after the fashion which befitted a person 
 of Lord Cheriton's distinction. They had only their body servants, 
 man and maid, so they were waited upon by the servants of the 
 liotel, and they drove about the dusty, level roads between St. 
 Servans and Do! in a hired landau, driven by a Breton coachman. 
 Lady Cheriton was dull, but contented. She had always submitted 
 to her husband's y)leasure. He had been a very indulgent husband 
 ill essentials, and he had made her a peeress. Her married life had 
 been eminently satisfactory; and she could allbrd to endure one 
 summer month of monotony amidst pleasant surroundings. She 
 dropped in at the Casino every evening, while Lord Cheriton read 
 the papers in the seclusion of his salon — with the large French 
 window wide open to the blue sea, and the blue moonlight — hearing 
 tiie tramp of feet on the teiTacc, or the sea wall beyond, or now and 
 again strains of lively music from the theatre, where the little opera 
 company from Paris were singing Lecocq's joyous music. 
 
 People used to turn round to look at Lady Chcriton as she 
 walked gravely between the rows of seats to her place near the
 
 58 The Day will come. 
 
 orchestra, his Lordship's valet following with an extra shawl, an 
 opera-glass, and a footstool. He established her in her chair, and 
 then retired discreetly to the back of the theatre to await her 
 departure, and to escort her safely back to the hotel. He was a 
 large, serions-looking man, a French Swiss, who had lived ten years 
 in Italy, and over fifteen years in Lord Cheriton's service, and who 
 spoke French, Italian, German, and English indifferently. 
 
 Lady Cheriton was handsome still, with a grand Spanish beauty 
 which time had touched lightly. She was tall and dignified in 
 carriage, though a shade stouter than she could have wished, and 
 she dressed to perfection with sobriety of colouring and richness of 
 material. Her life had been full of pleasantness, her only sorrow 
 being the loss of her infant sons, which she had not taken to heart 
 BO deeply as the proud father who had pined for an heir to his 
 newly won honours. She had her daughter, her first-born, the 
 child for whom her heart had first throbbed with the strange new 
 love of maternity. She shed some natural tears for the boy-babies, 
 and then she let Juanita fill their place in her heart, and her life 
 again seemed complete in its sum of happiness. And now in this 
 sleepy summer holiday — cut off from most things that she cared for 
 — Juanita's letters had been her chief joy — those happy, innocent, 
 girlish letters, overflowing with fond, foohsh praise of the husband 
 she loved, letters made up of nothings — of what he had said to her, 
 and what she had said to him — and where they had taken afternoon 
 tea — and of their morning ride, or their evening walk, and of thoso 
 plans for the long future which they were always making, projecting 
 their thoughts into the time to come, and laying out those after 
 years as if they were a certainty. 
 
 There had been no fairer morning than that which followed the 
 night of the murder. Lord Cheriton was an early riser at all 
 seasons, most of all in the summer, when he was generally awake 
 from five o'clock, and had to beguile an hour or so with one of the 
 books on the table by his bed — a well-thumbed " Horace " or a 
 duodecimo " Don Quixote," in ten volumes, which went everywhere 
 with him. By seven o'clock he was dressed, and ready to begin the 
 day ; and between that hour and breakfast it was his habit to attend 
 to the correspondence Avhich had accumulated during the previous 
 day. This severe rule was suspended, however, at Parame, and he 
 gave himself up to restful vacuity, sti-olling up and down the sands, 
 or walking round the walls of St. ]\Ialo, or sauntering into the 
 cathedral in a casual way for an early mass, enjoying the atmo- 
 sphere of the place, with its old-world flavour. 
 
 On this particular morning he went no further than the sanda, 
 where he paced slowly to and fro in front of the long white terrace, 
 hotel, and casino, heedless alike of Parisian idlesse coquetting with 
 the crisp wavelets on the edge of the sea, and of the mounted officer 
 yonder drilling his men upon the sandy flat towards St. Malo. He
 
 TJic Day will cojue. 59 
 
 was in a mood for idleness, but witli Iiim, idleness was only a 
 synonym for deep thought. lie was meditating upon his only child's 
 future, and telling liimself that he had done well for her. 
 
 Sir Godfrey Carmichael would be made Baron Chcriton in tho 
 days to come, when he, tho first P)aron, should bo laid in the newly 
 built vault in the cemetery outside D(U'chestcr. lie was not going 
 to sever himself from his kindred in that last sleep, albeit they wero 
 common folk. He would lie under the Egyptian sarcopliagus whicli 
 he had set u]> in honour of his father, the crockery dealer, and his 
 mother, the busy, anxious house-wife. The sarcophagus was plain 
 and unpretentious, hardly too good for the shopkeeper ; yet with a 
 certain solid dignity which was not unbefitting the law-lord, almost 
 as massive as that mammoth cross wliich marks the resting-place of 
 Henry Brougham in tho fair southern land. Ho had chosen tho 
 monument with uttermost care, so that it might serve the double 
 purpose. Ho had looked at the broad blank panel many a time, 
 wondering how his own name would look upon it, and whether his 
 daughter would have a laurel wreath sculptured alcove it. It might 
 be that admiring friends would suggest his being laid in the Abbey, 
 hard by those shabby disused courts where ho had pleaded and sat 
 in judgment through so many laborious years ; and it might be that 
 the suggestion would be accepted by Dean and Chapter, and that 
 the panel on the Dorchester sarcophagus would remain blank. 
 James Dalbrook knew that he had deserved well of posterity, and, 
 above all, of the ruling powers. He had been staunch and un- 
 wavering in his adherence to his owTi party, and he knew that he had 
 a strong claim upon any Conservative Ministrj'. He had sounded 
 those in authority, and he had been assured that there would be 
 very little difllculty in getting Sir Godfrey Carmichael a peerage by- 
 and-by, wdien ho, Lord Cheriton, should be no more. Sir Godfrey's 
 family was one of the oldest in tho country, and ho had but to 
 deserve well of his party, when he had got his scat, to insure future 
 favours. As the owner of the Cheriton and Milbrook estates, ho 
 would be a wortliy candidate for one of those coronets which seem 
 to be dealt round so freely by expiring Ministries, as it were a dying 
 father dividing his treasures among his weeping children. So far as 
 any man can think with satisfaction of the days when he shall be no 
 more — and when this world will go on, badl\-, of course, but some- 
 how, Avithout him — Lord Chcriton thought of those far-otV years when 
 Godfrej' Carmichael should bo owner of Cheriton Chase. Tho 
 young man had shown such fine qualities of heart and mind, and, 
 above all, had given such unobtrusive evidence of liis afTection for 
 Juanita's father, that tho elder man must needs give measure for 
 measure ; therefore Godfrey had been to Lord Cheriton almost as a 
 son. The union of his humbly bom daughter with one of the oldest 
 families in the south of England gratified the pride of tho self-made 
 man. His own pedigree might be of the lowliest ; but his grandson
 
 6o The Day will come. 
 
 would be able to look back upon a long line of ancestors, glorified 
 by many a patrician alliance. Strong and stern as was the fabric of 
 James Dalbrook's mind, be was not superior to the Englishman's 
 foible, and he loved rank and ancient lineage. He was a Tory to 
 the core of his heart ; and it was the earnestness and thoroughness 
 of his convictions which had given him weight with his part3\ 
 Wherever he spoke or whatever he wrote — and he had written 
 much upon current politics in the Saturday Review, and the higher- 
 class monthlies — bore the stamp of a Cromwellian vigour and a 
 Cromwellian sincerity. 
 
 He had never felt more at ease than upon that balmy summer 
 morning, pacing those golden sands in quiet meditation — brooding 
 over Juanita's last letter received overnight — with its girlish raptures, 
 its girlish dreams ; picturing her in the near future as happy a 
 mother as she was a bride, with his grandson, the third Baron 
 Cheriton of the future, in her lap. He smiled at his own foolishness 
 in thinking of that first boy-baby by the title which was but one of 
 the possibilities of a foreshadowed sequence of events ; yet he found 
 himself repeating the words idly, to the rhythm of the wavelets that 
 curled and sparkled near his feet — third Baron Cheriton, Godfrey 
 Dalbrook Carmichael, third Baron Cheriton. 
 
 Tbe cathedral clock was striking nine as he went into the hotel. 
 The light breakftxst of coffee and rolls was laid on a small round 
 table near the window. Lady Cheriton was sitting in a recess 
 between the massive stone columns which supported the balcony 
 above, reading yesterday's Morning Post in her soft grey cashmere 
 peignoir, whose flowing lines gave dignity to her figure. Her dark 
 hair, as yet untouched by time, was arranged with an elegant sim- 
 plicity. The fine old lace about her throat harmonized admirably 
 with the pale olive of her complexion. She looked up at her hus- 
 band with her placid smile, and gave him her hand in affectionate 
 greeting. 
 
 " What a morning, James ! One feels it a privilege to hve. What 
 a superb day it would be for Mont St. Michel ! " 
 
 " A thirty-mile drive in the dust ! Do you really think that it is 
 the best use to which to put a summer day ? You may be sure 
 there will be plenty of worthy people of the same opinion, and 
 that the rock will swarm with cheap tourists, and pretty little 
 Madame Poulard will be put to the pin of her collar to feed them 
 all." 
 
 She had seated herself at the table by this time, and was pouring 
 out coffee with a leisurely air, smiling at her husband all the time, 
 thinking him the greatest and wisest of men, even when he restrained 
 her social instincts. She was never tired of looking at that massive 
 face, with its clearly defined features, sharply cut jaw, and largo 
 grey eyes — dark and deep as the eyes of the earnest thinker rather 
 than the shrewd observer. The strong projection of the lower brow
 
 The Day ivill come. 6r 
 
 indicatcfl keen perceptions, and the power of rapid judginoiit; but 
 above the perceptive organs the npper brow towered majestically, 
 giving the promise of a mind predominant in the regions of thonght 
 and imagination — snch a brow as we look upon with reverence in 
 the portraits of Walter Scott. 
 
 Intellectually the brow was equal to Scott's ; morally there was 
 something wanting. Neither benevolence nor veneration was on^ 
 par with the reasoning faculties. Tory principles with Lord Cheriton 
 wei'e not so much the result of an upward-looking nature as they 
 were with Scott. This, at least, is the opinion at which a iihrc- 
 nologist might have arrived after a careful contemplation of that 
 l)0werful brow. 
 
 Lord Cheriton sipped his coffee, and leaned back in his arm-chair, 
 with his face to the morning sea. lie sat in a lazy attitude, still 
 thoughtful, with those pleasant thoughts which are the repose of the 
 working man's brain. 
 
 The tide was going out ; the rocky islets stood high out of the 
 water ; the sands were widening, till it seemed almost as if the sea 
 were vanishing altogether from this beautiful bay. 
 
 " I suppose they will finish their honeymoon in a week or two, 
 and move on to the Priory," said Lord Cheriton, by-and-by, reveal- 
 ing tlie subject of his reverie. 
 
 '' Yes, Juanita says we may go home as early as the second week 
 in August if wc like. She is to bo at the Priory in time to settle 
 down before the shooting begins. They will have visitors in Sep- 
 tember — his sisters, don't you know — the Morningsides and the 
 Grenvilles, and children and nurses — a house full. Lady Jane 
 ought to be there to help her to entertain." 
 
 " I don't think Nita will want any help. She will be mistress of 
 the situation, depend upon it, and would bo if there were forty mar- 
 ried sisters with their husbands and belongings. She seemed to be 
 mistress of us all at Cheriton? " 
 
 " She is so clever," sighed the mother, remembering that Cheriton 
 House would no longer be under that girlish sovereignty. 
 
 The grave looking French-Swiss valet appeared with a telegram 
 on a salver. 
 
 " Who can have sent me a 'pet'd hlcuc ? " exclaimed Lord Cheriton. 
 who was accustomed to receive a good many of those little blue en- 
 velopes when he was in Paris, but expected no such communications 
 at St. Male. 
 
 Before leaving for his holiday he had impressed upon laiid steward 
 and house steward that he was not to be bothered about anything. 
 
 " If there is anything wanted you will communicate with Messrs. 
 Dalbrook," he said. "They have full powers." 
 
 And yet here was some worrying message — some question about 
 a lease or an agreement, or somebody's rick had been burnt, or 
 somebody's chimney had fallen through the roof. He opened tlie
 
 62 The Day will come. 
 
 little envelope witli a vexed air, resentful of an nnexpccted annoy- 
 ance. He read the message, and then sat blankly staring ; read 
 again, and rose from his seat suddenly with a cry of horror. 
 
 Never in his life had he experienced such a shock ; never had 
 those kon nerves, that heart, bmiied hard in the furnace of this 
 world's strife, been so tried. He stood aghast, and could only give 
 the little paper — with its type-printed syllables — to his scared wife, 
 while he stood gazmg at summer sky and summer sea in a blank 
 helplessness, reahzing dimly that something had happened which 
 must change the whole course of the future, and overthrow every 
 plan he had ever made. 
 
 " The third Baron Cheriton." Strange, Ivut in that awful moment 
 the words he had repeated idly on the sands half an hour ago echoed 
 again in his ear. 
 
 Alas, he felt as if that title for which he had toiled was already 
 extinct. He saw, as in a vision, the velvet cap and golden coronet 
 upon the coffin lid, as the first and last Lord Cheriton was carried to 
 his grave. That prophetic vision must needs be realized within a 
 few years. There would be no one to succeed him. 
 
 Murdered ! Why ? By whom ? What devil had been conjured 
 out of hell to cut short that honest, stainless life ? What had God- 
 frey Carmichael done that a murderer's hand should be raised 
 against him ? 
 
 Lady Cheriton's softer nature found relief in tears before the day 
 was done ; tears and agonized pacings up and down those rooms 
 where life had been so placid in the sunhght — agonized supplications 
 that God would take pity upon her widowed girl. 
 
 " So young, and so happy, and a widow — a widow before her 
 nineteenth birthday," wailed the mother. 
 
 Lord Cheriton's grief was of a sterner kind, and found no outlet 
 in words. He held a brief consultation with his valet, a soldierly 
 looking man, who had fought under Garibaldi in Burgundy, when 
 the guerilla captain made his brilliant endeavour to save sinking 
 France. They looked at time-tables and calculated hours. The 
 express to Paris would not arrive in time for the evening mail via 
 Calais and Dover. It was Saturday. The cargo boat would cross 
 to Southampton that niglit, and influence would obtain accommoda- 
 tion for his Lordship and party on board her. The valet took a fly 
 and drove off to the quay to find the South-Western superintendent, 
 and secure a private cabin for his master and mistress. They would 
 have the boat to themselves, and would be at Southampton at seven 
 o'clock next morning, and at Cheriton before noon, even if it were 
 necessary to engage a special engine to take them there. 
 
 Lord Cheriton telegraphed to his daughter. 
 
 "Your mother and I will be with you to-morrow morning. Be 
 brave for our sakes. Kemember that you are all we have to live for."
 
 The Day will come. 63 
 
 Another telegram to the house-steward ordered a close carriage 
 to be in attendance at Wareham Station at ten o'clock on Sunday 
 morning. 
 
 " How quietlj' j'ou bear it, James," his wife told Lord Chcriton, 
 wonderingly, when the mode of their return had been arranged, and 
 her maid was packing her trunks, with those soberly handsome gowns 
 which had been the wonder of many a butterfly Parisienne. 
 
 She called him by his Christian name now as in their earliest 
 years of wedded hfe. It was only on ceremonious occasions, and 
 when the eye of society was upon her, that she addressed him by 
 his title. 
 
 That stern quietude of his, the fine features set and rigid, 
 frightened her more than a loquacious grief would have done. And 
 yet she hardly knew whether he felt the calamity too much for 
 words ; or whether he did not feel it enough. 
 
 " Poor Godfrey," she sighed, " he was so good to me — all that a 
 son could have been — murdered ! My God ! my God ! how horrible. 
 If it had been any other kind of death one might bear it — and yet 
 that lie should die at all would be too dreadful. So j'oung, so 
 handsome — cut otf in the flower of his days ! And she loved him 
 so. She has loved him all her Hfe. What ^vill become of her 
 without him ? " 
 
 " What will become of her ? " that was the mother's moaning cry 
 all through that dreary day. 
 
 Lord Chcriton paced the sands as far as he conld go from that 
 giddy multitude in front of the soa wall — beyond the little rocky 
 ridge by the pleasant Hotel dcs Bains, where the young mothers, 
 and nurses, and children, and homel}', easj^-going visitors congre- 
 gate — away towards Cancale, whore all was loneliness. He walked 
 up and down, meditating upon his blighted hopes. He knew now 
 that he had loved this young man almost as well as he loved his 
 own daughter, and that his death had shattered as fair a fabric as 
 ever ambition built on the further side of the grave. 
 
 " She will go in mourning for him all the days of my life, 
 perhaps," he thought, " and then some day after I am in my grave 
 she Avill fall in love with an adventurer, and the estate I love and 
 the fortune I have saved will be squandered on the Tmf or thrown 
 awaj^ at Monte Carlo." 
 
 A grim smile curled his lip at a grim thought, as he paced that 
 lonely shore beyond the jutting cliff and the villa on the point. 
 
 "I am sorry I left the Bench when I did," bethought; ''it would 
 have been something to have put on the black cap and passed 
 sentence upon that poor lad's murderer." 
 
 Who was his min-derer, and what the motive of the crime ? 
 Those were questions which Lord Chcriton had been asking himself 
 with maddening iteration through that intolerable summer day. He 
 welcomed the fading sunlight of late afternoon. He could eat
 
 64 The Day will come. 
 
 nothing ; would not even sit down to make a pretence of dining ; 
 but waited chafing in the gi-eat stone hall of the liotcl for the 
 carriage that was to take him and his wife to the steamer. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " The stars move still, Time runs, the clock will strike." 
 
 Trains were favoiu'ahle, and there was no necessity for a special 
 engine to carry Lord Cheriton and his wife to the house of mourning. 
 It was not yet noon when the closed landau drove in at the chief 
 gate of the park, not that side gate in the deep, rocky lane, of 
 which Mrs. Porter was custodian. One of the gardeners lived at 
 the lodge, and it was he who opened the gate this Sunday morning. 
 Lord Cheriton stopped the carriage to question him. He had heard 
 a full account of the mm'der already from the station-master at 
 Wareham. 
 
 "Have they found the murderer?" he asked. 
 
 " No, my Lord ; I'm afraid they're not likely to — begging your 
 Lordship's pai'don for venturing an opinion." 
 
 The man was an old servant, and altogether a superior person. 
 
 " Were the gates locked at the usual time on Friday night? " 
 
 " Yes, my Lord — the gates were locked, but that wouldn't keep 
 out a foot-passenger. There's the turnstile in the lane." 
 
 " Of course. Yes, yes. A London detective has been at work, I 
 hear." 
 
 "Yes, my Lord; came yesterday before two o'clock, and has 
 been about with Barber ever since." 
 
 " And have they discovered nothing? " 
 
 " Nothing, my Lord — or if they have it has been kept dark." 
 
 Lord Cheriton asked no further questions. The man was right. 
 A detective from Scotland Yard was not Hkely to talk about any minor 
 discoveries that he might have made. Only the one grand dis- 
 covery of the guilty man would have been made known. 
 
 Five minutes later the carriage drew up in front of the hall door. 
 What a blank and melancholy look the fine old house had with all 
 the windows darkened. It did not look so dismal as a London 
 house with its level rows of windows and its flat facade would have 
 looked under similar conditions ; for here there was variety of 
 mullion and moulding, bay-windows and oriel, dormer and lattice, 
 and over all the growth of lovely creeping plants, starry clematis 
 and passion-flower, clustering Banksia roses and waxen magnolia, 
 an infinite beauty of form and colour. Yet the blind windows were
 
 The Day will come. 65 
 
 lucre, with their tUiU, dead look and chilling^ suggestion of dcatli. 
 Lady Cheriton looked at tlie house for a moment or so as she got 
 out of the carriage, and then burst into tears. It seemed to her as 
 if slie had scarcely realized the stern reality till that moment. 
 
 She went straight to her daughter's boudoir, a room with an 
 oriel window looking across the wide expanse of the park, where the 
 tnrf lay openest to the sunsiiine, and where the deer were wont to 
 congregate. The garden was at its narrowest point just below this 
 window, and consisted only of a broad gravel path, and a strip of 
 llowers at the toj) of a steep grass bank that sloped down to the ha- 
 lia which divided garden and park. The room was full of Juanita's 
 girlish treasures — evidencies of fancies that had passed like summer 
 clouds — accomplishments begun and abandoned — a zither in one 
 corner — a guitar and a mandolin against the wall — an easel in front 
 of one window — a gigantic rush work-basket lined with amber satin 
 and crammed with all manner of silks, wools, scraps, and unfinished 
 undertakings in another. The room remained just as she had left 
 it when she went to London at the begiiniing of ^May. She had not 
 occupied it during her honeymoon ; and perhajis that was the reason 
 she was here now in her desolation, sitting silent, statue-like, with 
 Lady Jane by her side, on a sofa opposite the oriel. She lifted her 
 c^'elids when her mother came into the room, and looked up at her 
 in speechless despair. She uttered no word of greeting, but sat 
 dmnbiy. Lady Cheriton went over to her, and knelt by her side, 
 and then, feebly, automatically, the widowed girl put her limp, cold 
 liandinto her mother's and hid her bloodless face upon her mother's 
 breast. 
 
 Lady Cheriton held her there with one hand while she stretched 
 out her other hand to Lady Jane. 
 
 •• Dear Lady Jane, how good of you to be with her — to comfort hor." 
 
 " Where else should I be? — I want to be near him ! " 
 
 The gentle blue eyes filled with tears, the gracious head tremliled 
 n little. Then came a long shivering sigh and silence. 
 
 Tiio mother knelt beside the sola with her child's head leaning 
 forward upon her matronly bosom. There may have been some 
 comfort perhaps in that contact, some recurrence of the thoughts 
 and (eclings of earlier years, when the mother could console every 
 grief and soothe every pain. No words camo to cither of those 
 mourners. What could be said in mitigation of a sorrow that 
 seemed to ofler no point of relief, no counter-balancing good. There 
 was nothing to be done but to sit still and suffer. 
 
 The silence lasted long, and then Juanita lifted her head sud- 
 denly from its heavy repose and looked fixedly in her mother's face. 
 
 •' My father has come back with you ? " sho asked. 
 
 "Yes, dearest. We did not lose an hour. Had there been any 
 quicker way of travelling we would have been here sooner." 
 
 " My father will be able to Una the murderer," said Juanita, 
 
 n
 
 66 The Day will come. 
 
 scarcely hearing her mother's words, intent upon her own thought. 
 " A great lawyer as he was ; a judge, too ; he must be able to trace 
 the murderer — to bring him to justice — to take a lil'e for a life. Oh, 
 God ! " with a shrill agonizing cry, " could a thousand lives give me 
 back one hour of that one life? Yet it will be something — some- 
 thing — to know that his murderer has been killed— killed shame- 
 fully, ui cold blood, in the broad light of day. Oh, God, thou 
 Avenger of wrong, make his last hours bitter to him, make his last 
 moments hopeless ; let him see the gates of hell opening before him 
 when he stands trembling with the rope round his neck." 
 
 There was an intensity of hatred in this vindictive appeal, which 
 thrilled the two listeners with an icy horror. It was like a blast 
 from a fi'ozen region blowing suddenly ui their faces, and the}' 
 shivered as they heard. Could it be the girl they knew, the loving, 
 lovable girl, w^ho, in those deep, harsh tones, called upon her God 
 lor vengeance and not for mercy ? 
 
 '• Oh, my love, my poor heart-broken love, pray to Him to have 
 ]jity upon us ; ask Him to teach us how to bow to the rod, how to 
 bear His chastisement. That is the lesson we have to learn," 
 pleaded Lady Jane, tearful and submissive, even in the depth of sorrow. 
 
 " Is it ? My lesson is to see justice done upon the wretch who 
 killed my husband — the malignant, the merciless devO. There was 
 not one of those slayers of women and children in the Indiaii 
 mutiny worse than the man who killed my love. What had he 
 done — he, the kindest and best — generous, frank, pitiful to all who 
 ever came in his way — what had he done to provoke any man's 
 enmity ? Oh, God, when I remember how good he was, and how 
 much brighter and better the world was for having him " 
 
 She began to pace the room, as she had paced it again and again 
 in her slow hours of agony, her hands clasped above her dishevelled 
 head, her gi-eat dark eyes — so dovehke in their hours of love and 
 happiness — burning with an angry light, lurid almost, in the excite- 
 ment of her fevered brain. There had been times when Lady Jane 
 had feared that reason must give way altogether amidst this wild 
 dehrium of grief. She had stayed to watch, and to console, for- 
 getting her own broken heart, putting aside aU considerations of her 
 own sorrow as something that might have its way afterwards, iu 
 order to comfort this passionate mourner. 
 
 Comfort, even from affection such as this, was unavailing. Now 
 and again the girl tm-ned her bunung eyes upon the mother's pale, 
 resigned face, and for a moment a thought of that chastened, gentle 
 grief softened her. 
 
 '' Dear, dear Lady Jane, God made you better than any otliev 
 woman on this earth, I believe," she cried amidst her anguish. 
 '• The saints and martyrs must have been like you, but I am not. I 
 am not made like that. I camul kiss the rod." 
 
 The meeting between Jiuu/.d and her father was more painful to
 
 The Day will come. 67 
 
 him than to lier. She hung upon iiis neck in teverish excitement, 
 ini])lonng him to avenge her liusband. 
 
 " You can do it," she urged ; " you who are so clever must know 
 how to bring the murderer's guilt home to him. You will find him, 
 will you not, fother '? He cannot have gone very far. He cannot 
 have got out of the countiy yet. TJiink, it was only Friday. I 
 was a happj'' woman upon Friday ; only think of that — happy — sit- 
 ting by Godfrey's side in the phaeton, driving through the sunset, 
 and tliinkiug how beautiful the world was and what a pri\-ilcge it 
 was to live. I had no more foreboding than the skylark had singing 
 above our heads. And in less than an hour after midnight my 
 darling was dead. Oh, God, how sudden ! I cannot even remem- 
 ber his last words. He kissed me as he left me at my bedroom 
 door— kissed me and said something. I cannot remember what it 
 was ; but I can hear the sound of his voice still — I shall hear it all 
 my life." 
 
 Lord Cheriton let her ramble on. He had, alas, so httle to say 
 to her, such sorry comfort to offer. Only words, mere words — 
 which must needs sound idle and hollow in the ear of grief, frame 
 his consolatory speeches with what eloquence he might. He could 
 do nothing for her, since he could not give her back her dead. This 
 wild cry Ibr.vengeance shocked him from those young lips ; yet it 
 was natural perhaps. He too would give much to see the assasshi 
 sutler ; he too felt that the dock and the gallows would be too trivial 
 a punishment for that accursed deed. 
 
 He had looked upon the marble face of him who was to have 
 been the second Baron Cheriton — looked upon it in its placid repose, 
 and had sworn wthin himself to do all that ingenuity could do to 
 avenge that cruel murder. 
 
 " He could not liave had an enemy," he told himself, "unless it 
 was some wretch who hated him for being happy and beloved." 
 
 He had a long talk with Mr. Luke Churton, the London detective, 
 who had exhausted all his means without arriWng at any satisfactory 
 result. 
 
 "I confess, my Lord, that I am altogether at a standstill," said 
 Mr. Churton, when he had related all that he had done since his 
 arrival on the scene early on Saturday afternoon. " The utmost 
 information I have been able to obtain leaves me without one 
 definite idea. There is no one in the neighbourhood open to sus- 
 picion, so far as I can make out ; for I am sure your Lordship will 
 agree with me that yom- butler's notion of a poacher resenting your 
 treatment by the murder of your son-in-law is much too thin. One 
 cannot accept such a notion as that for a moment," said Mr. Churton, 
 shaking his head. 
 
 " No, that is an untenable idea, no doubt." 
 
 ''The next suggestion is that some person was prowling about 
 with the intention of abstracting trinkets and other valuabfes fnn.i
 
 68 The Day zvill come. 
 
 the diawing-room — in an unguarded moment when the room might 
 happen to be empty — and I admit that the present fashion of cover- 
 ing drawing-room tables and cabinets with valuables of every 
 description is calculated to suggest plunder ; but that kind of thing 
 would be probable enough in London rather than in the country, 
 and nothing is more unlikely than that a prowler of that order would 
 resort to murder. Again, the manner in which the body Avas found, 
 with the open book lying close to the hand that had held it, goes 
 far to prove that Sir Godfrey was shot as he sat reading — and at a 
 time when a burglar could have no motive for shooting him." 
 
 " Do you think it was the act of a lunatic ? " 
 
 " NOj my Lord, for in that event the murderer Avould have been 
 heard of or found before now. The gardens, park, and chase have 
 been most thoroughly searched under my superintendence. It is 
 not possible for a lap-dog to be hidden anywhere within this 
 demesne. The neighbouring villages — solitary cottages — commons 
 and copses — have been also submitted to a searching investigation — 
 the police all over the country are on the alert. Of course the 
 crime is still of very recent date. Time to us seems longer than it 
 really is." 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt ! I can find no other hj-pothesis than that 
 the act was done by a madman — such a motiveless murder — a man 
 sitting by a window reading — shot by an imknown hand from a 
 garden terrace — remote from the outer worlds Were we in Ireland 
 the crime might seem commonplace enough. Sir Godfrey was a 
 landowner — and that alone is an otfence against the idle and the law- 
 less in that unhappy country, — but here, in the midst of an orderly, 
 God-fearing population " 
 
 " Had Sir Godfrey no enemy, do you think, my Lord .'' " asked 
 the detective, gravely. " The crime has the look of a vendetta." 
 
 " There never was a young man, OAvner of a considerable estate, 
 more universiilly beloved. His tenants adore him — for as a landlord 
 he has been exceptionally indulgent." 
 
 " He may have granted too much in some quarters, and too little 
 in others." 
 
 " No, no. He has been judicious in his liberahty, and he has a 
 capital bailiff, an old man who was a servant on this estate many 
 years ago." 
 
 " But there are other influences," said the detective, musingly. 
 " AVhenever I meet with a crime of this kind — motiveless apparently 
 — 1 remember the Eastern Prince — I think he was one of those long- 
 headed Orientals, wasn't he, my Lord, w'ho used to ask, ' Who is 
 she ? ' In a thoroughly dark case I always suspect a woman Ijehind 
 the curtain. Sir Godfrey had been independent of all control for a 
 good many years — and a yomig man of fortune, handsome, open- 
 hearted, with only a mother to look after him — well, my Lord, you 
 know the kind of thing that generally happens in such cases."
 
 The Day will come. 69 
 
 " You mean tliat my son-in-law may have been involved in some 
 disreputable intrigue ? " 
 
 " I don't say disreputable, my Lord ; but I venture to suggest 
 that there may have been some — ahem — some awkward entangle- 
 ment — with a married woman, for instance, — and the husband — or 
 another lover — may have belonged to tlic criminal classes. There 
 are men who think very little of murder when they fancj' themselves 
 ill-used by a woman. Half the midnight brawls, and nearly half the 
 murders, in the metropolis are caused by jealousy. I know what a 
 large factor that is in the sum-total of crime, and unless you are 
 sure there was no entanglement " 
 
 " I am as sure as I can be of anything outside my own existence. 
 I don't believe that Sir Godfrey ever cared for any woman in his life 
 except my daughter." 
 
 " He might not have cared, my Lord, but he might have been 
 drawn in," suggested Mr. Churton. " Young men are apt to bo 
 weak where women are concerned ; and women know that, un- 
 fortunately, and they don't scruple to use their power; not the best 
 of 'em even." 
 
 Y'oung men are apt to be weak. Yes, Lord Cheriton had seen 
 enough of the world to know that tliis was true. It was just pos- 
 sible that in that young life, which had seemed white as snow to the 
 eye of kindred and friends, tlicre had been one dark secret, one cor- 
 roding stain, temptation yielded to, promises given — never to be 
 fulfilled. Such things have been in many lives, in inost lives, per- 
 haps, could we know all. Lord Cheriton thought, as he sat silently 
 meditating upon the detective's suggestions. 
 
 Lady Jane might know something about her son's past, perhaps, 
 something that she might have kept locked in the beneficent 
 maternal heart. He determined to sound her delicately at the 
 earliest opportunity. 
 
 But on being sounded Lady Jane repudiated any such possil)ility. 
 No. again and again no. His youth had been spotless ; no hint of 
 an intrigue had ever reached her from any quarter. He had chosen 
 Iiis friends among the most honourable young men at the University 
 — his anmscments had been such as became a young Englishman of 
 exalted position — he had never stooped to low associations or even 
 doubtful company ; and from his boyhood upwards he had adored 
 Juanita. 
 
 "That love alone would have kept him right," s;ud Lady Jane; 
 " but I do not believe that it was in his nature to go wrong." 
 
 It would seem, therefore, that the detective's suspicion was gi'ound- 
 less. Jealousy could not have been the motive of the crime. 
 
 " If any of us could be sure that we know each other I ought to 
 accept Lady Jane's estimate of her son," thought Lord ( 'lieriton ; 
 " but there is always the possibility of au unrevealed nature — one 
 phase in a character that has escaped discovery. I am almost in-
 
 70 The Day ivill conic. 
 
 clined to tliiiik the detective may have hit upon the truth. Tliere 
 'imist have been a motive for this devilish act — unless it were done 
 by a maniac." 
 
 The latter supposition seemed hardly probable. Lunacy wander- 
 ing loose about the country Avould have betrayed itself before now. 
 
 It was past five upon that summer afternoon, and Lord Cheriton, 
 having seen his daughter and interviewed the detective, was saunter- 
 ing idly about the gardens in the blank hours before dinner. That 
 meal would be served as usual, no doubt, at eight o'clock, with all 
 due state and ceremony. The cook and her maids were busied 
 about its preparation even now in tliis tranquil hoiir when afternoon 
 melts into evening, sliding so softly from day to night that only 
 those evening hymns of the birds — and on Sundays those melan- 
 choly church bells thrilling across the woods — mark the transition. 
 They were scraping A'egetables and whipping eggs whUe the birds 
 were at vespers, and they were talking of the murder as they went 
 about their work. When would they ever cease to gloat with 
 glioulish gusto on that deadly theme, with endless iteration of "says 
 he " and " says she " ? 
 
 Lord Cheriton left the stately garden with its quadruple lines of 
 cypress and juniper, its marble balustrades, and clipped ycAV hedges 
 hve feet thick, its statues and alcoves. He passed through a little 
 gate, and across a classic single-arched bridge to the park, where he 
 sauntered slowly beneath his immemorial elms, in a strange dream- 
 like frame of mind, in which he allowed his senses to be beguiled by 
 the balmy afternoon atmosphere and the golden light, until the all- 
 pervading consciousness of a gi'eat giief, which had been with him 
 all day, slipped off him for the moment, leaving onlj' a feeling of 
 luxurious repose, rest after labour. 
 
 Cheriton Chase was exercising its wonted influence upon him. 
 He loved the place with that deep love which is often felt by the 
 hereditary owner, the man born on the soil, but perhaps still oftenor, 
 and to a greater degi-ee by him who has conquered and won the land 
 by his own hard labour of head or hand, bj^ that despicable personage, 
 the self-made man. In all his wanderings — those luxurious reposeful 
 joumeyings of the man who has conquered fortune — JamesDalbrook's 
 heart yearned towards these ancient avenues and yonder grey walls. 
 House and domain had all the charm of antiquity, and yet they were 
 in a measure his own creation. ]*]verywhere had his hand improved 
 and beautified ; and he might say with Augustus that where he' found 
 brick he would leave marble. The dense green walls — those open- 
 air courts and quadrangles — those obelisks of cjqjress and juniper 
 had been there in the dominion of the Strangways, ■nath here and 
 there a mouldering stone Syrinx or a moss-grown Pan ; but it was 
 he who brought choicest marbles from Rome and Florence to adorn 
 that stately pleasaunce ; it was he who erected yonder fountain, 
 whose waters made a monotonous music by day and night. The
 
 The Day tuill came. ^t 
 
 marble balustrades, tlie mosaic floors, the artistic enricbmcnt of 
 terrace and mansion bad been his work. If the farms were perfect 
 it was he wlio had made them so. If his tenants were contented it 
 was because he had shown liimself a model landlord — considerate 
 and liberal, but severely exacting, satsified with nothing less than 
 perfection. 
 
 Ilavmg thus in a manner created hi^ estate James Dalbrook loved 
 it, as a proud, self-contained man is apt to love the work of his own 
 hands, and now in lliis quiet Sunday afternoon the very atmosphere 
 of the place soothed him, as if by a spell. A kind of sensuous 
 contentment stole into his heart, with temporary forgctfulness of his 
 daughter's ruined life. But this did not last long. As he drew near 
 the drive by which strangers, were allowed to cross the park by 
 immemorial right, he remembered that he had questioned one of the 
 lodge-keepers, but not the other. He strui;k across an open glade 
 where only old hawthorn trees cast their rugged shadows on the 
 close-cropped turf, and made for the gate oi)ening into the lane. 
 
 ^Irs. Porter's cottage had its usual aspect, a cottage such as any 
 gentleman nr lady of refined taste might have been pleased to 
 inhabit, quaint, juediajval, with heavy timbers across rough cast 
 walls, deep-set casements, picturesque dormers, ami thatched roof, 
 witli gable ends which were a source of rapture to every artist who 
 visited Cheriton — a cottage embowered in loveliest creeping plants, 
 odorous of jasmine and woodbine, and set in a garden where the 
 standard roses and carnations were rumoured to excel those in her 
 ladyship's own particular i lower-garden. AVcll might a lady avIio 
 had known better days rejoice in such a haven ; more especially 
 when those better days appeared to have raised her no higher than 
 the status of a merchant-cajitain's wife. 
 
 Very lew people about Cheriton envied her la<lyship. It was 
 considered that, if not born in the purple, she had at least brought 
 her liusband a large ibrtune, and had a right to taste the sweets of 
 wealth. But there were manj' hard-driven wives and shabby 
 genteel spinsters who envied ]\Irs. Porter her sinecure at the gate 
 of Cheriton Park, and who looked grudgingly at the garden brim- 
 ming over with flowers and the lattices shining in the evening sun, 
 and through the opeii casements at prettily furnished rooms, rich in 
 books and photographs, and other trivial indications of a refined taste. 
 
 "It is well to be she," said the curate's wife, as she went home 
 from the village with two mutton chops in her little fancy basket, a 
 l>asket which suggested ferns, and in which she always carried a 
 trowel, to give the look of casual botany to her housewifely errands. 
 "I wonder whether Lord Cheriton allows her an income for doing 
 nothing, or is it only house, and coals, and candles that she gets? " 
 speculated the curate's wife, who lived in a 1u-and new villa on the 
 outskirts of Cheriton village — a villa that was shabby and dilapidated 
 after three years' occupation, through whose thin walls all the winds
 
 72 The Day will come. 
 
 of winter blew, and wliose slate roof made the upper floor like a 
 bakehouse under the summer sun. 
 
 Lord Cheriton, still sauntering in gloomy meditation, came to Ihe 
 cottage garden outside his gates, and found Mrs. Porter standing 
 among her roses, — a tall, black figiu-e, the very pink and pattern of 
 respectability, with her prayer-book in one hand and a gi-ey silk 
 sunshade in the other. She turned at the sound of those august 
 footsteps, and came to the little garden gate to greet her benefactor, 
 with a grave countenance, as befitted the circumstances. 
 
 " Good afternoon," he said briefly. " Have you just come from 
 church ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have been to the children's service." 
 
 "Not very interesting, I should imagine, for anybody past 
 childhood?" 
 
 " It is something to do on a Sunday afternoon, and I like to he 
 Mr. Kempster talk to the children." 
 
 "Do you? Well, there is no accounting for tastes. Can you 
 tell me anything about my son-in-law's murderer? Have you seen 
 any suspicious characters hanging about? Did you notice any one 
 going into the park on Friday night ? " 
 
 " No, I have not seen a mortal out of the common way. The 
 gate was locked at the usual hour. Of course the gate would make 
 no dift'erence — it would be easy for any one to get into the park." 
 
 " And no one was seen about? It is extraordinary. Have you 
 any idea, Mrs. Porter, any theory about this horrible calamity that 
 has come upon us? " 
 
 '• How should I have any theory? I am not skilled in finding 
 ciut such mysteries, like the man who came from London yesterday. 
 Has lie made no discoveries ? " 
 
 "Not one." 
 
 " Then you can't expect me to throw a light upon the subject." 
 
 " You have an advantage over the London detective. Yoti know 
 the neighbourhood — and you know what kind of man Sir Godfrey 
 was." 
 
 "Yes, I know that. How handsome he was, how frank and 
 pleasant looking, and how your daughter adored him. They were 
 a beautiful couple." 
 
 Her wan cheeks flushed, and her eyes kindled as she spoke, as if 
 with a genuine enthusiasm. 
 
 '• They were, and tliey adored each other. It will break my 
 dr.ughter's heart. You have known trouble — about a daughter. I 
 think you can xmderstand what I feel for my girl." 
 
 " I do — I do ! Yes, I knoAv wdiat you must feel — what she must 
 feel in her desolation, with all she valued gone from her for ever. 
 But she has not to drink the cup that my girl must drink. Lord 
 Cheriton. She has not fallen. She is not a thing for men to trample 
 under foot, and women to shrink away from."
 
 The Day will coine. 73 
 
 " Forgive mc," said Lord Clioriton, in a softened voice, " I ought 
 not to have spoken of — Mercy." 
 
 " You ought never to speak of her — to mo. I suppose you tlioiigiit 
 the wound was so old tliat it might bo touched with impunity, but 
 you were wrong. Tliat wound will never heal." 
 
 " I am sure you know that I have always been deeply sorry for 
 you — for that great affliction," said Lord Chcriton gentl}'. 
 
 " Sorry, yes, I suppose you were sorry. You would have bccTi 
 sorry if a footman had knocked down one of your Se^Tes vases and 
 smashed it. One is sorry for anything that can't be replaced." 
 
 " Tiiat is a harsh and unjust way of speaking, Mrs. Porter," said 
 Lord Cheriton, drawing himself up suddenly with an air of wounded 
 dignity. " You can tell me nothing about our trouble, I see ; and I 
 am not in the mood to talk of any older grief. Good night." 
 
 He lifted his hat with grave respect and walked back to the park 
 gate, vanishing slowly from those grey eyes which followed him in 
 eager watchfulness. 
 
 " Is he really sorry ?" she asked lierself. "Can such a man as 
 that be sorry for any one, even his own tiesh and blood? lie has 
 prospered; all things have gone well with him. Can he be sorry? 
 It is a check, perliaps; a check to his ambitious hopes. It baulks 
 him in liis longing to found a family. He looks pale and worn, as 
 if he had suffered : and at his age, after a prosperous life, it must be 
 hard to suffer." 
 
 So mused the woman who had seen better days — embittered 
 doubtless by her own decadence — embittered still more by her 
 daughter's fall. 
 
 It was nearly ten years since the daughter had eloi)ed with a 
 middle-aged Colonel in a cavalry regiment, a visitor at tlie Chase — 
 a man of fortune and high family, with about as diabolical a repu- 
 tation as a man could enjoy and yet hold Her Majesty's commission. 
 
 Mercy Porter's fiiU had been a surprise to eveiybody. She was a 
 girl of shy and reserved manners, graver and sadder than youtli 
 should be. She had been kept very close by her mother, allowed 
 to make no friendships among the girls in the village, to liavc no 
 companions of her own age. She had earlj^ shown a considcralilc 
 talent for music, and her piano had been Jicr chief pleasure and 
 occupation. Lady Cheriton had taken a good deal of notice of her 
 when she grew up, and she might have done well, the gossips saiil, 
 when they recalled the story of her disgrace; but she chose to fall 
 in love with a married man of infamous character, a notorious jiro- 
 tligate, and he had but to beckon with his linger for her to go oil 
 with liim. The circumstances of her going oif were discussed con- 
 fidentially at fenn'nine tea-drinkings, and it was wondered that Mrs. 
 Porter could hold her head so In'gli, and show herself at chTircli three 
 times on a Sunday, and entertain the curate and his wife to after- 
 noon tea, considering what had happened.
 
 74 ^"/^i- Day will come, 
 
 Tlic curate and his wife were new arrivals comparatively, and 
 only knew that dismal common story from hearsay. They were 
 both impressed by Mrs. Porter's regular attendance at the church 
 services, and by the excellence of that cup of tea with which she 
 was always ready to entertain them whenever they cared to drop in 
 at her cottage between four and five o'clock. 
 
 The inquest was opened early on the afternoon of ilonday at the 
 humble little inn near the forge, with its rustic sign, '• Live and let 
 live." Juanita gave her evidence with a stony calmness Avhich im- 
 pressed those who heard her more than the stormiest outburst of 
 grief would have done. ITcr mother and her husband's mother had 
 both implored her not to break down, to bear lierself heroically 
 through this terrible ordeal, and they were both in the room to 
 support her by their presence. Both were surprised at the firmness 
 of her manner, the clear tones of her voice as she made her state- 
 ment, telling how she had heard the shot in her dream, and how 
 she had gone down to the drawing-room to find Sir Godfrey lying 
 face downward on tlie carpet, in front of the chair where he had 
 been sitting, his hand still upon the open book, which had fallen as 
 he fell. 
 
 "Did you think of going outside to sec if anv one was lurking 
 about?" 
 
 "Xo, I thought of nothing but trying to save him. I did not 
 believe that he was dead." 
 
 There was a look of agony in her large wide open eyes as she 
 said this — -a piteous remembrance of the moment while she still 
 hoped — which thrilled the spectators. 
 
 " What course did you take ? " 
 
 "I rang for the servants. They came after a time that seemed 
 long — but I believe they came quickly." 
 
 " And after they had come ? " 
 
 " I remembered nothing more. They wanted me to believe that 
 he was dead — and I would not — I Sould not believe — and — I re- 
 member no more till next day." 
 
 " That -will do. Lady Carmichael. I will not trouble you further." 
 
 Lady Jane and Lady Cheriton Avanted to take her away after 
 this, but she insisted upon remaining. 
 
 " I Avish to hear every word," she said. 
 
 They submitted, and the three women, robed in densest black, 
 sat in a little gi'oup behind the Coroner till the end of that day's 
 inq!!iry. 
 
 No new facts were elicited from any of the witnesses, and nothmg 
 had resulted from the elaborate search made, not only throughout 
 Lord Cheriton's domain, but in the neighbourhood. No suspicious 
 prowlers had been heard of. The gipsies who had contributed to 
 the gaiety of the wedding day had been ascertained to have left the
 
 T^he Day will coiiu\ 75 
 
 Isle of Parbeck a fortnight before the murder, and to be dclightiiiii; 
 tlio larger world between Portsmouth and Ilavant. Is'otbing had 
 been discovered; no sale of revolver or gun to any questionable 
 purchaser at Dorchester; no indication, however slight, which might 
 put a keen-witted detective upon the trail. I\lr. Churton confessed 
 himself completely at fault. 
 
 The jury drove to Cheriton House to view the bodj', and the 
 inquest was adjourned for a fortnight, in the expectation that some 
 discovery might be made in the interim. The funeral would take 
 ])]ace at the usual time ; there was nothing now to hinder the victim 
 being laid in his last resting-place in the old Saxon c^uux'h at 
 MJlbrook. 
 
 Bills ofl'ering a reward of £500 for any information leading to the 
 discovery of the murderer were all over the village, and in every 
 village and town within a radius of forty miles. The stimulus of 
 cupidity was not wanting to sharpen the rural wit. Mr. Churton 
 shook his head despondently when he talked over the inquest with 
 Lord Cheriton later ui the day, and owned himself " out of it." 
 
 "I have been in many dark cases, my Lord," he said, "and 
 I've had many hard nuts to crack, but this beats 'em all. I can't 
 see my way to making anything of it ; and unless you can furm'sh 
 me with any particulars of the poor young gentleman's past life, of 
 an enlightening character, I don't see much hope of getting ahead." 
 
 "You slick to your idea of the murder being an act of revenge ? " 
 
 " What other reason could there be for such a murder ? " 
 
 That question seemed unanswerable, and Lord Cheriton let it 
 pass. Matthew Dalbrook and his elder son were to dine Avith him 
 that evening, in order to talk quietly and calmly over the terrible 
 event of last week, and the bearing which it must have upon his 
 daughter's future life. Lady Cheriton and Lady Jane Carmichael 
 had lived entirelj" on the upper floor, taking such poor ajiologies for 
 meals as they could be induced to take in her ladyshiji's morning- 
 room. That closed door at tlio eastern end of the corridor exercised 
 its solemn influence upon the whole house. Those mourning women 
 never went in or out without looking that way — and again and again 
 through the long still days they visited that chamber of death, 
 carrying fairest blooms of stephanotis or camellia, whitest rose-buds, 
 waxen lilies; kneeling in silent prayer beside that white bed. 
 
 During all those dismal days before the funeral Juanita lived 
 secluded in her own room, only leaving it to go to that silent room 
 where the white bed and the white flowers made an atmosphere 
 of cold pm-ity, which chilled her heart as if she too were dead. She 
 counted the hours which remained before even this melancholy link 
 between life and death would be broken, and when she must stretch 
 out her hands blindly to find one whom the earth would hide from 
 her for evermore. In the brief snatches of troubled sleep that had 
 visited her since Friday night she had awakened with her husband's
 
 ']() The Day will come. 
 
 name upon lier lips, with outstretched hands that yearned for the 
 touch of his, awakening slowly to consciousness of the horrible 
 reaHty. In every dream that she had dreamed he had been with 
 her, and in some of those dreams had appeared with a distinctness 
 wdiich involved the memory of her sorrow. Yes, she had thought 
 him dead — yes, she had seen him stretched bleeding at her feet ; 
 but that had been dream and delusion. Reality was here, here in 
 his strong voice, here in the warm grasp of his hand, here in the 
 lying vision that was kinder than truth. 
 
 Mr. Dalbrook and his son arrived at a quarter to eight, and were 
 received by Lord Cheriton in the library. The drawing-room was 
 now a locked chamber, and it would be long doubtless before any 
 one would have the courage to occupy that room. The Dalbi'ooks 
 were to stay at Cheriton till after the funeral. Matthew Dalbrook 
 had been Sir Godfrey's solicitor, and it would be his duty to read 
 the will. 
 
 He was also one of the trustees to Juanita's marriage settlement, 
 and the time had come — all too soon — when the terms of that 
 settlement would have to be discussed. 
 
 " How is mj^ cousin ? " asked Theodore, when he had shaken 
 hands with Lord Cheriton. 
 
 •' Have you seen her since — Friday ? " 
 
 " Yes, I saw her on Saturday morning. She was terribly 
 changed." 
 
 " A ghastly change, is it not? " said Lord Cheriton, with a sigh. 
 " I doubt if there is any improvement since then : but she behaved 
 splendidly at the inquest this afternoon. AVe were all prepared for 
 her breaking down. God knows whether she will ever get the better 
 of her gi'ief, or whether she will go down to the grave a liroken- 
 hearted woman. Oh ! INIatt," turning to his kinsman and con- 
 temporary, "such a trial as this teaches us how Providence can 
 laugh at our best laid plans. I thought I had made ray daughter's 
 happiness as secure as the foundations of this old house." 
 
 " You did your best, James. No man can do more." 
 
 Theodore was silent for the most part after his inquiry about his 
 cousin. He listened while the elder men talked, and gave his 
 opinion when it was asked for, and showed himself a clear-headed 
 man of business ; but his depression was not the less evident. 
 The thought of Juanita's grief — the contrast between her agony 
 now and her joyousness the day she was at Dorchester — was never 
 absent from his mind ; and the talk of the two elder men, the 
 discussion as to the extent of her possessions, her power to do this 
 and that, the house she was to live in, the establishment she was to 
 keep, jarred upon him horribly. 
 
 " By the conditions of the settlement, the Priory is to be hers for 
 her life, with everything it contains. By the conditions of Sir God- 
 frey's will, in the event of his leaving no issue, the Priory estate is to
 
 The Day will come. 77 
 
 go after his widow's defitli to Mrs. Grenville's eldest son, or failing; 
 a son in that direction, then to Mrs, Morningside's eldest son. 
 Should neither sister leave a son surviving at the time of Lady 
 Carmichacl's death the estate is to be sold, and the product divided 
 in equal portions among the surviving nieces ; l)ut at the ])resent 
 rate at which the two ladies are iilling their nurseries there is very 
 little doubt there will be a surviving son. Mrs. Grenville was Sir 
 (tudfrey's favourite, I know\ and I can understand his giving her boy 
 the estate, and thus founding a family, rather than dividing the 
 property between the issue of the two sisters." 
 
 "I do not think anybody can find fault with his will," said Lord 
 Cheriton. "Clod knows that when I saw him sign it in my room 
 in Victoria Street, an hour after his marriage, nothing was further 
 iVom my thoughts than the idea that the will would come into 
 force within the ne.xt iifty years. It seemed almost an idle pre- 
 caution for so young a man to be in such a hurry to set his house 
 in order." 
 
 " Do you think Juanita will decide to live at the Priory ? " asked 
 ]Mr. Dalbrook. 
 
 '' It would seem more nattn-al for her to live here with her mother 
 and me, but I fear that this house will seem for ever accursed to 
 her. She will rememlier that it was her own whim to spend her 
 honeymoon here. It will seem to her as if she had brought her 
 husband to his death. Oh, God, when I remember how her mother 
 and I suggested other places — how we talked to her of tlio Tyrol 
 and the Dolomites, of Hungary, Norway — and with what a kind of 
 childish infatuation she clung to her fancy for this house, it seems 
 as if a hideous fatality guided her to her doom. It is lier doom, 
 as well as liis. I do not believe she will pv(>r be a happy woman 
 again." 
 
 '' It may seem so now to us all, to herself most of all, poor girl," 
 answered ^latthcw Dalbrook. " But I never saw a sorrow yet that 
 Time could not heal, and the sorrow of a girl of nineteen leaves 
 such a margin for Time's healing powers. God grant that you and 
 I may both live to see her brigiit and happy again — with a second 
 husband. There is something prosaic, I feel, in the very sound; 
 but there may be some touch of romance even in a second love." 
 
 He did not see the painful change in his son's face while he was 
 talking : the sudden crimson whicii faded slowly to a ghastlvjjallor. 
 It had never occurred to IMatthew Dallirook that his son Theodon; 
 had felt anything more than a cousinly regard for Lord Cheritoii's 
 daughter. 
 
 The funeral took place on the following Wednesday— one of those 
 funerals about which people talk for a month, and in which grief is 
 almost lost sight of by the majority of the moiuners in a feverish 
 excitement. The procession of carriages, very few of them un
 
 78 The Day will come, 
 
 occupied, was nearly half a mile long — the little churchyard at 
 Milbrook could scarceh' contain the mourners. The sisters' husbands 
 were there, with hats hidden iu crape, and solemn countenances ; 
 honestly sorry for their brother-in-law's death, but not uninterested 
 in his will. All the district, within a radius of thirty miles, had 
 been on the alert to pay tliis last mark of respect to a young man 
 who had been universally liked, and whose melancholy fate had 
 moved ever\' heart. 
 
 The will was read in the library, and Juanita appeared for the 
 first time since her cousins had been at Cheriton. She came into 
 the room with her mother, and went to Matthew and his son quiet]}', 
 and gave a hand to each, and answered their grave inquiries about 
 her health without one tear or one faltering accent ; and then she 
 took her seat beside her father's chair, and waited for the reading 
 of the will. It seemed to her as if it contained her husband's last 
 words, addi'essed to her from his grave. He knew when he wrote 
 or dictated those words that she would not hear them in his lifetime. 
 The will left her a life-interest in everything, except twenty thousand 
 pounds in consols to Lady Jane, a few legacies to old servants and 
 local charities, and a few souvenirs to college friends. Sir Godfrey 
 had held the estate in fee simple, and could deal with it as he pleased. 
 He expressed a hope that if his wife survived him she should con- 
 tinue to live at the Priory, and that the household should remain, as 
 far as possible, xuachanged, that no old horse should ever be sold, and 
 no dogs disposed of in any way off the premises. This l-ast request 
 was to secure a continuance of old customs. His father had never 
 allowed a horse that he had kept over a twelvemonth to be sold ; 
 and had never parted with a dog. His own hand shot the horse 
 that was no longer fit for service ; his own hand poisoned the dog 
 whose hfe had ceased to be a blessing. 
 
 When the will was finished, and it was by no means a lengthy 
 document. Lady Jane kissed her daughter-in-law. 
 
 "You will do as he %vished, won't you, dearest?" she said, softly. 
 
 " Live at the Priory — }-es, Lady Jane, unless you will live there 
 instead. It would be more natural for you to be mistress there. 
 When — ^\\'hen — my darling made that will he must have thought 
 of me as an old woman, likely to sur^-ive him by a few years at 
 most, and it would seem natural to him for me to go on li^mlg iu 
 his house — to continue to live — those were his words, you know — 
 to continue to live in the home of my married life. But all is 
 different now, and it would be better for you to have the Priory. 
 It has been your home so long. It is full of associations and 
 interests for you. I can live anywhere — anywhere except in this 
 detested house." 
 
 She had spoken in a low voice all {he time, so low as to be quite 
 inaudible to her father and Matthew Dalbrook, who were talking 
 confidentially upon the other side of the wide oak table.
 
 The Day will come. 79 
 
 *' Jly iove, it is your house. It will be full of associations for ycju 
 too — tiic memories of his youth. It may comfort you by-aud-by 
 to live among the things he cared for. And I can be with you 
 there now and then. You will bear with a melancholy old woman 
 now and then," pleaded Lady Jane, willi tearful tenderness. 
 
 The only answer was a sob, and a clinging pressure of the hand ; 
 and then the three women quietly left the room. Their interest in 
 the business was over. Blinds had been drawn up and Venetian 
 shutters opened. There was a flood of sunshine on the staircase and 
 in the corridors as Juanita went back to her room. The perfume 
 of roses and the breath of summer came in at the open Avindows. 
 
 " Oh, God, how the sun shines ! " she cried, in a sudden agony of 
 remembrance. 
 
 Those odours from the garden, the lilue sky, summer greenery 
 and dazzling summer hght brought back the image of her vanisheil 
 happiness. Last week, less than a week ago, she had been one ol 
 the joyous creatures in that glad, gay world — -joyous as the thrusli 
 whose song was thrilling upon the soft sweet air. 
 
 Lady Jane's two sons-in-law had drawn near the oak table at 
 which the lawyer was seated with his pai)ers before him. 
 
 Jessica's husband, Mr. Grenville, was sporting. Ilis thouglits 
 were centred in his stable, where he found an all-sufficient occupation 
 for his intellectual powers in an endless buying, exchanging, selling, 
 summering and wintering his stud ; in the invention of improved 
 bits, and tlie development of new ideas in saddlery ; in the per- 
 formance of operations that belong rather to tlie professional 
 veterinary than to the gentleman at large, and in tlie conversation 
 of his stud groom. These resources tilled up all llio margin that 
 was left for a man who hunted four days a week in his own district, 
 and who often got a fifth and even a sixth day in other counties 
 accessible by rail. It may have been a natural result of Mr. Gren- 
 ville's devotion to the stable that Mis. Grenville was absorbed liv 
 her nurscrj' ; or it may have been a natural bent on the lady's pari. 
 However this might be, the lady and the gentleman followed 
 parallel lines, in which their interests never clashed. He talked 
 of hardly anything but his horses ; slie rarely mentioned any other 
 .subject than her children, or something bearing upon her children's 
 well-being. He believed his horses to be the best in the county ; 
 .she considered her babies unsurpassed in creation. Both in their 
 line were supremely happj-. 
 
 Mr. Morningside, married to Sir Godfrey's youngest sister, IJutli, 
 was distinctly Parliamentary; and had no sympathies in connnon 
 with sucli men as Hugo Grenville. To him horses were animals 
 with four legs who dragged burdens; \\\\o were expensive to keep, 
 and whose legs were liable to " till " or to develop superfluous bone 
 on the slightest provocation. His only idea of a saddle horse wa.s 
 a slow and stolid cob, for whose virtuous disposition and powerful
 
 8o TJie Day will come. 
 
 bone he had paid nearly three hundred pounda, and on which he 
 ])ounded round the park three or four times every morning during 
 the Parliamentary season, an exercise of which he was about as fond 
 as he was of Pullna water, but which had been recommended him 
 for the good of his Hver. 
 
 Mr. Morningside had a castle in the north, too near Newcastle to 
 be altogether beautiful, and he had a small suite upon a tifth floor 
 in Queen Anne's Mansion. He had taken this apartment as a 
 l)achelor "pied a terre for the Parliamentary season ; and lie had 
 laid considerable emphasis upon the landowner's necessity for 
 stern economy which had constrained him to take rooms so small 
 as to be altogether " impossible " for his wife. Mrs. Morningside 
 was, however, of a diflereut opinion. No place was impossible for 
 her which her dear Stuart deigned to occupy. She did not mind 
 small rooms, or a fifth story. Was there not a lift, and were there 
 not charming people living ever so much nearer the skies ? She 
 tUd not mind even what she gracefully described as "pigging it," 
 for her dear Stuart's sake. She was utterly unlike her elder sister, 
 and she had no compunction at placing over two hundi-ed miles 
 between her and her nursery. 
 
 " They'd vnve for me if anything went wrong," she said, '' and 
 the express would take me home in a few hours." 
 
 " That would depend upon what time you got the wire. The 
 express doesn't go every quarter of an hour like a Royal Blue," 
 replied Mr. Morningside, gloomily. 
 
 He was a dry-as-dust man ; one of those self-satisfied persons 
 who are never less alone than wlieii alone. He had mamed at 
 five and thirtj'', and the comfortable habits of a priggish bachelor 
 still clove to him after six years of married bliss. He was fond of 
 his wife in her place, and he thought her a very charming woman 
 at the head of his table, and receiving his guests at Morningside 
 Castle. But it was essential to his peace that he should have many 
 solitary hours in which to pore over Blue books and meditate upon 
 au intended speech. He fancied himself greatly as a speaker, and 
 he was one of those Parliamentaiy bores whose ornate periods are 
 made mincemeat of by the reporters. He looked to a day when he 
 would take his place with Burke and "Walpole, and other giants, 
 whose oratory had been received coldly in the dawn of their 
 senatorial career. He gave himself up to much study of politics 
 past and present, and was one of those well-informed bores wlio are 
 only useful as a store-house of hard facts for the use of livelier 
 speakers. When a man had to speak upon a subject of which he 
 knew nothing, he went to Mr. Morningside as to a Parliamentary 
 Encyclopaedia. 
 
 To sustain these stores of knowledge ilr. Morningside required 
 much leisure for what is called heavy reading ; and heavy reading 
 is not easy ia that genial family life which means incessant talk and
 
 The Day will come. Si 
 
 incessant interruption. Mr. Morninj^side would have preleirud, 
 tliercfore, to keep his den on the fifth floor to himself; but his 
 wife loved I;Oudun, and he could not refuse her the privilege of 
 occasionally sharing his nest on a level with the spires and towers 
 of the p-eat city. She made her presence agreeably felt by tables 
 covered with photograph easels, Vallauris vases, stray flowers in 
 specimen glasses, which were continually being knocked over, 
 Japanese screens, and every known variety of chair-back ; and 
 albeit he was an essentially dutiful husband, Mr. ^lorningside never 
 felt happier than when he had seen his Kuth comfortably seated in 
 the Bournemouth express on her way to the home of her forefathers 
 for one of those protracted visits that no one but a near relation 
 would venture to make. He left her cheerily on such occasions, 
 with a promise to run down to the Priory on Saturday evenings 
 whenever it was ])ossible to leave the helm. 
 
 Mr. I\Iorningsi(le had liked his brother-in-law as well as it was in 
 him to like any man, and had been horrified at that sudden in- 
 explicable doom ; but Sir Godfrey being snatched off this earth in 
 the flower of his age, Mr. Morningside thought it only natural that 
 the young ]\Iorniiigsides should derive some benefit, immediate or 
 contingent, from their uncle's estate. It was, therefore, with somo 
 disgust that he heard that clause in the will which gave Jessica's 
 sons the preference over all the sons of Ruth. True that, failing 
 any son of Jessica's, the estate was to lapse to the eldest surviving 
 son of Ruth ; but what earthly value was such a reversionary 
 interest as this in the case of a lady whoso nursery was like a 
 rabbit warren ? 
 
 " I congratulate you on your eldest boy's prospects, Grenville," 
 said j\Ir. IMorningside, sourly. " Your Tom," a boy whom ho 
 hated, " will come into a very fine thing one of these days." 
 
 " Humph," muttered Grenville, " Lady Carmichael's is a good life, 
 and I should be very sorry to see it shortened. Besides, who can 
 tell? Before this time next year there may be a nearer claimant." 
 
 "Lord have mercy ni)on us," exclaimed Morningside, "I never 
 thought of that contingency."
 
 82 The Day will come. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 *' I'oor girl ! put on th}' stifling widow's weed, 
 And 'scape at once from Hope's accursbd bauds ; 
 To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow, 
 And the next day will be a daj' of sorrow." 
 
 Life falls back into old grooves after calamities the most stupendous. 
 After fires — after plagues — after earthquakes — people breakfast and 
 dine, marry and are given in marriage. A few more graves testify 
 to the fever that has decimated a city ; a ruined village here and 
 there along the smiling southern shore, shells that were once houses, 
 churches beneath whose shivered domes no worshipper dare ever 
 kneel again, bear witness to the earthquake ; but the monotonous 
 common-place of life goes on all the same in city and village, on 
 hill and sea-shore. And so when Godfrey Carmichael was laid in 
 his grave, when the police had exhausted their ingenuity in the 
 vain endeavour to fathom the secret of his death — when the coroner 
 had adjourned and again adjourned his inquiry, and an open verdict 
 had been pronoimced, Ufe in Cheriton House resumed its old order, 
 and the room in which the bridegroom had lain murdered at the 
 feet of the bride was again thrown open to the sun and air, and to 
 the somid of voices, and to the going and coming of daily life. 
 
 Lady Cheriton would have had the room closed ; for a j^ear at 
 least, she pleaded ; but her husband told her that to make it a 
 sealed chamber now would be to throw it out of use for his lifetime, 
 
 "If we once let servants and people think and talk of it as a 
 haunted room nobody will ever like to occupy it again so long as 
 this house stands," he said. " Stories will be invented — those things 
 shape themselves unawares in the human mind — sounds will be 
 heard, and the whole house will become uninhabitable. We both 
 love our house, Maria. Our own hands have fashioned it after our 
 own hearts. It would be folly to put a brand upon it, and to say 
 henceforward it shall be accursed to us. God knows I am sorry for 
 Juanita's sorrow, sorry for my own loss; but I look to you to help me 
 in keeping our home bright and pleasant for our declining days." 
 
 It was the habit of her life to obey him and try to please him in 
 all tilings ; so she answered gently — 
 
 " Of course, dear James, it shall be as you wish. I feel sure you 
 are right. It would be wicked to shut up that lovely room " — with 
 a faint shudder ; " but I shall never go near the west window with- 
 out thinking of — our dear boy. And I'm afraid Juanita will never 
 be able to endure the room." 
 
 " Perhaps not. We can use the other rooms when she is here. 
 She has her own house now ; and I dare say it will be some time 
 before she will care to cross this thresliold. The house must seem
 
 TJie Day zuill come. 83 
 
 fatal to her. It was her own caprice that brought him hero. I'm 
 afraid that recollection will torture lier, poor child." 
 
 It was linally decided therefore that the drawing-room should bu 
 used nightly, as it had been in all the peaceful years that were gone. 
 Tiie lamps with their gay shades of rose or amber made spots of 
 c'oloured light amidst tables heaped with flowers. All the choicest 
 blooms that the hothouses or the gardens could produce were 
 brought as of old, like otlerings to a pagan shrine. The numberless 
 toys upon the tables were set out in the old orderly disorder — 
 porcelain and enamel bon-bon boxes on one table — antique watches 
 and gold and silver snuff-boxes on another — bronzes, intaglios, coins, 
 medals, filigi'ee scent bottles upon a third, and a background of 
 flowers everywhere. The piano was opened, and the candles 
 lighted ready for her ladyship, who sang Spanish ballads delight- 
 fully even yet, and who was in the habit of singing to her husband 
 of an evening whenever they were alone. 
 
 They Averc generally alone now, not being able to receive visitors 
 from the outside world at such a time. The vicar of the parish 
 dined at Chcriton now and then, and Matthew Dalbrook spent a 
 night there occasionally, and talked over business matter's, and the 
 future development of a tract of land at Swanage, which formed a 
 portion of the original Strangway estate. 
 
 The widow had taken possession of her new home, the home 
 which tlicy two were to have lived in for half a century of loving 
 union. They had joked about their golden wedding as they sat at 
 lunch on the lawn that day ; had laughed at the thought of how 
 they would look in white hair and wrinkles, and then had sighed at 
 the thought of how those they loved now would be gone before that 
 day came, and how the friends who gathered round them would be 
 new friends, the casual acquaintances of the passing years promoted 
 to friendship in the place ot those earlier, nearer, dearer friends 
 whom death had taken. 
 
 They had talked of their silver Avedding, which seemed a happier 
 idea ; tor dear Lady Jane and Juanita's mother and father might 
 all live to see that day. They would be old, of course, older by 
 five and twenty j'cars ; but not too old to be happy and beloved. 
 The young wife and husband pictured the lawn on which they were 
 sitting crowded witii friends and tenants and villagers and children ; 
 and planned the feasting and the sports, which were to have a touch 
 of originality, something out of the beaten track, which something 
 was not easy to devise. 
 
 And now she and Lady Jane were sitting in the same spot, in 
 the sultry August evening, two desolate women ; the tawny giant 
 at their feet, his dog, the mastiff Styx, looking up at them now and 
 then with great serious eyes, as if asking what had become of his 
 master. 
 
 Juunita was strangely altered since the days of her honeymoon.
 
 84 The Day will come. 
 
 Her cheeks had hollowed, and the large dark eyes looked larger, 
 and gave a haggard expression to the pallid face ; hut she was 
 hearing her sorrow hravely for Lady Jane's sake, as Lady Jane had 
 done for her sake, in the beginning of things. That gentle lady had 
 broken down after the funeral, and Juanita had been constrained to 
 forget her own agony for a brief space in trying to comfort the 
 bereaved mother; and so the two acted and re-acted upon each 
 other, and it was well for them to be together. 
 
 They had settled down in the old house before they had been 
 there a week. Lady Jane put off her return to Swanage indefinitely. 
 She could drive over now and then to supervise the gardening, and 
 she would stay at the Priory as long as Juanita wanted her. 
 
 "That -^ould be always," said Juanita. 
 
 " Ah, my love, what would not do. I don't forget all that has 
 been written about mothers-in-law. There must be some truth in 
 it." 
 
 " Oh, but you forget. That is when there is a son and husband 
 to quarrel about," said Juanita, with a sudden sob. " We have no 
 cause for jealousy. We have only our dead." 
 
 Lady Jane wanted to establish her daughter-in-law in that 
 cheerful sitting-room which had been her own, but here Juanita 
 opposed her. 
 
 " I am not going to have it — now," she said, resolutely. " It shall 
 be your room always. No one else shall use it. I am going to have 
 his room for my den." 
 
 " My dearest, it is the dullest room in the house." 
 
 " It was his room, and I like it better than any other in the 
 world." 
 
 She arranged all her own books and possessions in the large room 
 looking into the stable yard, which had been Sir Godfrey's study 
 from the time he went to Eton. She found all his Eton books on 
 a lower shelf of one of the book-cases, and she sat on tlie floor for 
 an hour dusting grammars and dictionary. First Greek Reader, Latin 
 Gradus, and all the rest of them. She found his college books, with 
 the college arras upon them, on another shelf. She would have 
 nothing disturbed or altered, and she was supremely indifferent to 
 the question of incongruity. Her own book-cases from Cheriton, 
 the dainty toy book-cases of inlaid satin wood, were squeezed into 
 the recesses on each side of the fireplace. Her photographs of 
 mother, father, friends, horses, and dogs, were arranged upon the 
 carved oak mantelpiece, above the quaint little cupboards with 
 carved doors, spoil of old Belgian churches, still full of choice cigars, 
 the young man's store. His spurs and hunting-crops, canes, and 
 boxing-gloves, decorated the panel between the two tall windows. 
 His despatch box still stood upon the hbrary table, and the dog Styx 
 pushed the door open whenever it was left ajar and strolled into the 
 room as by old established right
 
 The Day ivill come. 85 
 
 She felt herself nearer her dead husband here than anywhere 
 else ; nearer even than in the churchyard, where she and Lady 
 Jane went every aftoruoon witli fresh flowers for his grave. They 
 had not laid him in the f;\mily vault, but among tlie graves ot 
 gentle and simple, under the sunny turf. The marble was not yet 
 carven which was to mark out his grave amidst those humbler 
 resting-places. 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook had not seen his cousin since the day of the 
 funeral. His Either and his two sisters had called upon her at the 
 Priory, and had brought back an account of the quiet dignity with 
 which she bore herself in her melancholy position. 
 • " I did not think she had so much solid sense," said Janet ; and 
 then she and Sophia talked about the Priory as a dwelling-house, 
 ami of its inferiority to Cheriton, and speculated upon the amount of 
 their cousin's income. 
 
 " She has a splendid position. She will be a fine catch for some 
 one by-and-by," said Harrington. "I hope she won't go and throw 
 herself away upon an adventurer." 
 
 "I hope not," said his father, "but I suppose she will marry 
 again ? That seems inevitable." 
 
 "I don't see that it is inevitable," argued Theodore, almost 
 angrily, " She was devotedly attached to her husband. I suppose 
 there is now and then a woman wlio can remain faithful to a firat 
 love " 
 
 " When the first love is alive, and not always then," put in Sophia, 
 flippantly. "Of course she will marrj^ again. If she wanted to 
 remain single people would not let her, with her income." 
 
 Theodore got up and walked to the window. His sister's talk 
 often set his teeth on edge, but rarely so much as it did to-day. 
 
 "You talk of her as if she were the most shallow-brained of 
 women," he exclaimed, with his back to the family group, looking 
 out with gloomy eyes into the old-fashioned street, the narrow 
 circumscribed view which he had hated of late with a deadly hatred. 
 
 " I don't think she is very deep," answered Sophia. " She never 
 could appreciate Darwin. She told me once that she wondered 
 what I could find to interest me in earth-worms." 
 
 " A woman must, indeed, be shallow who feels no interest in that 
 thrilling subject," sneered Theodore. 
 
 " Upon my word, now," said his father, " Darwin's book interested 
 me, though I'm not a scientific man. And I never see a worm 
 ^\Tiggling otf the gardener's spade without feeling that I ought to 
 be gi-ateful to him as a factor in the landed interest. Periiaps," 
 continued Mr. Dalbrook, musingly, '' my own practice in the con- 
 veyancing line owes something of its substantial character to earth- 
 worms. If it were not for them there might be no land to convey." 
 
 The conversation drifted lightly away from Juanita and her
 
 86 The Day will come. 
 
 sorrow, but her image still filled Theodore's mind, and he left the 
 drawing-room and the frivolous talk and the chnking of teacups and 
 teaspoons, and went out in the declining light to walk in the avenue 
 of sycamores on the edge of the old city. 
 
 He had not called upon his cousin in her new home ; he shrank 
 from the very idea of meeting her while her sorrow was still new, 
 while her thoughts and feelings were concentrated upon that one 
 subject, while he could only be to her as a,n unwelcome intruder 
 from that outside world she loathed, as grief loathes all but its own 
 sad memories. 
 
 Had the calamity which had desolated her Ufe brought her any 
 nearer to him who had loved her so long and so unselfishly? Alas, 
 no ; he told himself that if she ever loved again, it would be to a 
 stranger that her reawakening heart would open rather than to the 
 rejected lover of the past, the man whom her memory would 
 couple with the husband she had lost, and whom she w^ould compare 
 disadvantageously with that chosen one. 
 
 No, he told himself, there was little more chance for him in the 
 futiu-e than there had been in the past. She |Hked him and trusted 
 him, with a sisterly affection which nothing short of a miracle could 
 warm into love. Passion does not grow out of such placid beginnings. 
 
 In her veiy da\\'n of girlhood she had been in love with Godfrey : 
 had blushed at his coming: had quarrelled with him, and wept 
 stormy tears : had suffered all those alternations of joy and grief, 
 pride and self-abasement, which accompany love in an impassioned 
 nature. Theodore remembered her treatment of the fifth-form 
 Etonian, of the undergraduate, remembered the passionate drama 
 perpetually being acted in those two young lives, a drama which he 
 had watched with aching heart ; and he felt that he could never bo 
 as that first lover had been. He was associated with the common- 
 place of her life. She had laughed often at his diy-as-dust talk 
 with her father — the dull discussions about leases and bills of 
 dilapidation. A solicitor living from year's end to year's end in a 
 country town — what a dreary person he must needs appear beside 
 the brilliant young Patrician, full of the gladness of the life that 
 knows neither labour nor care. He sickened at the thought of that 
 contrast. 
 
 He had served his father faithfully hitherto, and the bond 
 between father and son had been one of strong affection as well as 
 duty; but for the last year there had been growing upon him an 
 inexpressible weariness of the house in which he was bom, and the 
 city in which he had hved the chief part of his uneventful hfe. He 
 had struggled against the disgust of familiar things, telling himself 
 that it was an unworthy feeling, and that he would be a snob if he 
 indulged it. Yet the disgust grew into absolute loathing; the 
 monotonous days, the repetitive work, oppressed him life a night- 
 marc. Since Juanita's marriage the burden had become more and
 
 The Day will co7iie. 87 
 
 more intolerable. To be so near her, yet so far. To be letting life 
 creep away in dull drudgery which could never bring liim nearer 
 her Kocial level ; to feel that all his pursuits and associations were 
 beneath the woman he loved, and could never arouse the iaintest 
 interest in her mind. This was almost too bitter to be borne, and 
 he had for some time past been meditating some way of escape, 
 some manner of release from these old fetters into the wider arena of 
 the outer world. 
 
 Such escape was not easy. He had to think of his father, that 
 indulgent, large-minded father who had given his son a very 
 remunerative share in his practice at an age when most young men 
 are dependent fur every suit of clothes or five-pound note upon 
 parental bounty and parental caprice. He knew that his father 
 looked to him for an entire release from work before they were 
 many years older ; and that he would then find liimself sole master 
 of a business worth at least fifteen hundred a year. All this had 
 come to him and would come to him easily, as the reward of 
 conscientious and intelligent work. It was a prospect which few 
 young men would forego without considerable hesitation ; but Theo- 
 dore hardly thought of the substantial advantages which he was so 
 eager to sacrifice. His sole hesitation was on account of the disap- 
 pointment which the step he contemplated would inflict upon his father. 
 
 He was not without a foreshadowing of a plan by which that 
 disappointment might be in somewise lessened. He had kept an 
 eye upon his brother for some time past, and he had discovered that 
 the young man's fervour for the Anglican Church had begun to cool. 
 There were all the signs of wavering in that gifted youth. At ono 
 time he devoted all his study to the writings of Cardinal Newman, 
 Ilurrel Froude, and the Tractarian Party — he lived in the atmosphere 
 of Oxford in the forties ; he talked of Cardinal Manning as the head 
 and front of religious thought. He was on the verge of deciding 
 for the Old Faith. Then a sudden change came over the spirit of 
 his dream. He began to have doubts, not of the reformed faith, but 
 of every Western creed. 
 
 " Light comes from the East," he told his sisters with an oracular 
 air. "I doubt if there is any nearer resting-place for the sole of my 
 fdot than the Temple of Buddha. I find there the larger creed for 
 which my mind yearns — boundless vistas behind and before me. I 
 xbi'gin to entertain painful doubts of my fitness for the Anglican 
 Church. I might be a power, perhaps, but it would be outside those 
 narrow bounds — like Voyscy, or Stopford Brooke. The Church, 
 with its present limitations, would not hold me." 
 
 The sisters sympathized, argued, quoted Essays and Eevicws, and 
 talked of Darwin and Spencer, Huxley and Comto. Theodore 
 listened and said nothing. He saw which way the tide was turning, 
 and rejoiced in the change of the current. 
 
 And now this sultry August afternoon, pacing up and do\NTi the
 
 88 The Day zvill come. 
 
 gi-oen walk, he was expectant of an opportunity of discussing his 
 brother's future with that gentleman himself, as Harrington was in 
 the habit of taking his afternoon constitutional, book in hand, upon 
 this very path. 
 
 He appeared by-and-by, carrying an open volume of Max Miiller, 
 and looking at the nursemaids and perambulators. 
 
 " What, Theo, taking your meditative cigar ? You don't often 
 give yourself a holiday before dinner." 
 
 " No, but I wanted to talk to you alone, and I knew this was vour 
 beat." 
 
 " Nothing gone wrong, I hope.'' 
 
 " No ; it is your future I want to discuss, if you don't mind." 
 
 " My future is wrapped in a cloud of doubt," replied the young 
 man, dreamily. '' Were the Church differently constituted — were 
 the minds that rule in it of a larger cast, a wider grasp, a " 
 
 "Harrington, how would you like the law as a profession?" 
 Theodore asked abruptly, when the other began to hesitate. 
 
 " My dear fellow, it is all very well to ask me that question, when 
 you know there is no room for me in my father's office," retorted 
 Harrington, with a contemptuous wave of that long, lean white 
 hand, which always reminded him of St. Francis de Sales or Savo- 
 narola ; not that he had any positive knowledge of what those saintly 
 hands were like. 
 
 "Eoom might be made for you," said Theodore. 
 
 "I should not care to accept a subordinate position — Aut 
 Caesar " 
 
 " So far as the CiBsar-ship of a provincial solicitor's office can go 
 the whole empire may be yours by-and-by, if you like — provided 
 you put your shoulder to the wheel and pass your examinations." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you would throw up your position — 
 and an income which would allow of your marrying to-morrow, if 
 you chose — to make room for me? " 
 
 " If I can get my father's consent, yes, decidedly." 
 
 "And how do j'ou propose to exist without a profession?" 
 
 "I don't propose anything of the kind. I mean to go to the Bar ' 
 
 " Oh, I begin to understand. A solicitor's office is not good enough 
 for you ? " 
 
 " I don't say that ; but I have taken a disgust — an unreasonable 
 disgust, no doubt — to that branch of the law, and I am very sick of 
 Dorchester." 
 
 " So am I," retorted Harrington, gazing vaguely at a pretty nurse- 
 maid. " We are agreed there at any rate. And you want to follow 
 in Lord Cheriton's track, and make a great name? " 
 
 " It is onh'' one in a thousand who succeeds as James Dalbrook 
 has succeeded ; but if I go to the Bar you may be sure I shall do 
 my best to get on ; and I shall start witli a pretty good knowledge 
 of common law."
 
 The Day ivill conic. 89 
 
 "You want to be in London — you are pining for an aesthetic 
 centre," siglicd Harrington. 
 
 " I don't quite know what that is, but I should prefer London to 
 Dorchester." 
 
 " So should I — and you want mo to take your place at the mill ; 
 to gi"ind out my soul in the dull round that has sickened you." 
 
 '• The life has begun to pall upon me, but I think it ought to suit 
 you," answered Theodore, thoughtfully. " You are fonder of home 
 — and of the sisters — than I am. You get on better with them." 
 
 '' You have been rather grumpy lately, I admit," said Harrington. 
 
 " And you have let yourself cool upon your Divinity exam. You 
 evidently don't mean the Clim-ch? " 
 
 '• I have outgrown the Church. Y''ou can't put a quart of wine 
 into a pint bottle." 
 
 " And you must do something. I don't think you can do anything 
 60 good as to take my place, and become my father's right hand 
 until he chooses to retire, and leave you the practice. You will 
 have married by that time, perhaps, and will have sobered down 
 — intellectually. Morally you are one of the steadiest fellows I 
 know." 
 
 '' I suppose I ought to consiiler this what the house-agents call an 
 imusual opportunity ? " said Harruigton ; " but you must give me 
 time to think it over." 
 
 " Take time," answered Th(^odore, briefly. " I'll talk to my father 
 in the meanwhile." 
 
 ]\Ir. Dalbrook received his elder son's communication as if it had 
 been a blow from an enemy's hand. 
 
 " Do you suppose that ass Harrington can ever take your place ? "' 
 he exclaimed. Whereupon Theodore took pains to explain that his 
 brother was by no means an ass, and that he was only labouring 
 under that burden of small aifectations which weighs down a young 
 man who has been allowed to live too much in the society of young 
 women, sisters and sisters' friends, and to consider all his own 
 utterances oracular. 
 
 "He is not so fit for the Church as Brown is," said Theodore, 
 " and he will oidy addle his brauis if he reads any more theology. 
 He won't be content with Paley and Butler, and the good old books 
 which have been the turnpike road to ordination fur a century. He 
 is all for new ideas, and the new ideas are too big for him. But if 
 you will give him his articles, and teach him, as you taught me " 
 
 " I don't think I taught you nnich. You seemed to get at every- 
 thing by instinct." 
 
 " Ah, you taught me my profession without knowing it ; and yon 
 will teach Harrington with just as little trouble. He "will shake' olF 
 that husk of aftectation in your office — no solicitor can be atVectcd — 
 and he will come out a good lawyer ; while I am trying my luck in 
 Temple chambers, reading, and waiting for briefs. With your help.
 
 go The Day will come. 
 
 by-and-by, I am bound to do something. I shall get a case or two 
 upon this circuit, anyhow." 
 
 " I can't think what has put this folly in your head, Theo," said 
 his father, with a vexed air. 
 
 " It is not folly, father ; it is not a caprice," the young man 
 protested, with sudden earnestness. " For God's sake don't think 
 me ungrateful, or that I would willingly turn my back upon my 
 duty to you. Only — young people have troubles of their own, don't 
 you know ? — and of late I have not been altogether happy. I have 
 not prospered in my love-dream ; and so I have set up a new idol, ' 
 that idol so many men worship with more or less reward — Success. 
 I want to spread my wings, and see if they will carry me on a longer 
 flight than I have taken yet." 
 
 •'Well, it would be selfish of me to baulk you, even if your loss 
 were to cripple me altogether. And it won't do that. I am strong 
 enough to work on for a few years longer than I intended." 
 
 " Oh, my dear father, I hope it won't come to that. I hope my 
 change of plan won't shorten your years of leisure." 
 
 " I am afraid that's inevitable, Theo. I can't transfer a fine 
 practice to my sou till I've made him a good lawyer — and God 
 knows how long that will take in Harrington's case. Judging by 
 my present estimation of him, I should say half a century. But 
 don't be downliearted, Theo. You shall eat your dinners. You 
 shall qualify for the Woolsack. After all, I don't know how a life 
 of leisure might suit me. It would be a change from the known to 
 the unknown, almost as stupendous as the change from life to death." 
 
 Perhaps MattliCAV Dalbrook had fathomed that secret woe at 
 which Theodore had hinted darkly ; in any case he took his elder 
 son's defection more easily than might have been hoped, and bore 
 patiently with some preliminary fatuity from the yoimger son, who 
 accepted the gift of his articles, an allowance of two hundred pounds 
 l)er annum, and the promise of a junior partnership ia the near 
 future, with the languid politeness of one who felt that he was 
 renouncing a mitre. 
 
 Everything was settled off-hand, and Theodore was to go to 
 London at the end of September to select and furnish lus modest 
 chambers in one of those grave old courts of the Temple, and be 
 ready to begin his new life with the beginning of term. 
 
 He had not seen Juanita since the funeral, and she had been told 
 notliing of this sudden reconstruction of his life ; but he determined 
 to see her before he left Dorchester, and he considered that he had 
 a right, as her kinsman, to bid her good-bye. Perhaps in his heart- 
 weariness he was inclined to exaggerate the solemnity of that leave- 
 taking, somewhat as if he had been starting for Australia. 
 
 He drove over to the Pi'iory on a dull, grey afternoon, his last 
 day in Dorchester. His portmanteaus were packed, and all things 
 were read^ for an early departure next morning. Sorely as he ha(}
 
 The Day will come. ■ 91 
 
 sickened of the good old town which was his birth-place, he felt a 
 shade of melancholy at the idea of cuttincf himself adrift altogether 
 from that quiet haven ; and the love of those open stretches of 
 harrcn hcatli and those swampy meadows and grazing cattle on tJie 
 way to ]\Iilbrook, was engrained in him deeper than he knew. It 
 was a landscape which took a peculiar charm from the grey dimness 
 of an autumnal atmosphere, and it seemed to Theodore Dalbrook 
 that those level pastures and winding waters had never looked 
 fairer than they looked to-day. 
 
 He had written to his cousin a day before to tell her of his 
 intended visit. It was too solemn a matter in his own mind for him 
 to leave the finding her at home to chance. His groom took the 
 dog-cart round to the stables, while he was ushered at once to the 
 drawing-room where Lady Carmichael was sitting at her work-table 
 in the bow window, with Styx stretched on a lion-skin at her feet. 
 
 The silence of the house struck Theodore Dalbrook painfully as he 
 followed the footman across the hall and along a corridor which led 
 to the drawing-room — that death-like silence of a roomy old mansion 
 in which there are neither children nor guests, only one lonely 
 inhabitant waited upon by solemn-visagcd servants, drilled to a 
 ]ihenomenal quietness, and keeping all their good spirits for tlie 
 remoteness of the servants' hall, shut oif bj' double doors and long 
 passages. Saddened by that atmosplicre of gloom, he entered his 
 cousin's presence, and stood witii her small cold hand in his, looking 
 at the face which had changed so sorely from that vivid beauty 
 which had shone upon him in the low light of the sinking sun on 
 that summer evening not three months ago. 
 
 As he looked the memory of tlie bride's face came between him 
 and the face of the widow, and for a moment or two he stood 
 speechless. The clearly-cut features were pinched and sharpened, 
 wasted by long nights of weeping and long days of silent regret. 
 The dark eyes were circled by purple shadows, and the oval cheeks 
 were sunken and pallid. All the colour and richness of that southern 
 beauty had vanished, as if some withering blight had passed over 
 the face. 
 
 " It was very good of you to think of me before you left Dor- 
 chester," she said, gcntl}'. 
 
 She pushed forward a chair for her cousin, before she sat down ; 
 and Theodore seated himself opposite to her witii the wicker work- 
 table between them. He wondered a little to see that satin-lined 
 receptacle gorged with bright coloured silks, and pieces of untlnished 
 embroidery ; for it seemed to him that there was a touch of frivolity 
 in this light ornamental needle-work which hardly harmonized with 
 her grief-stricken countenance. 
 
 " You could not suppose that I should leave without seeing you," 
 he said ; " I should liave come here weeks ago, only " 
 
 " Only you wanted to give me time to grow calm, to teach mvself
 
 92 • The Day will come. 
 
 to look my trouble straight in the face," she said, interpreting his 
 thought. "That was very thoughtful of you. Well, the storm is 
 over now. I am quite calm, as you see. I dare say some people 
 think I am fjeitiwj over it. That is the usual phrase, is it not? 
 And so you are going to the Bar, Theodore. I am glad of that. 
 You are clever enough to make a name as my father did. It will 
 he slow work, I suppose ; but it ■will be a tield worthy of your 
 ambition, which a solicitor's office in a market-town never would be." 
 
 " I have felt the want of a wider field for a long time ; and I shall 
 feel more interest in a barrister's work. But I hope you don't think 
 1 am conceited enough to expect to get on as well as your father." 
 
 " I don't know about that. I think you must know you are a 
 clever man. I liave been wishing to see you for a long time, Theo- 
 dore, only I was like you — I wanted to give myself time to be calm. 
 I want to talk to you about — the murderer." 
 
 "Yes. Have you heard anything? Has there been any dis- 
 covery?" 
 
 " Nothing. The offer of a reward has resulted in nothing — not 
 one little scrap of information. The London detective gave up the 
 business and went back to town a week after the funeral, having 
 obtained only negative results. The police hereabouts are creatures 
 without an idea ; and so unless something is done, unless some 
 clever brain can solve the riddle, the wi-etch who killed my husband 
 may go down to the grave unpunished." 
 
 " It is hard that it should be so," said Theodore, quietly, " yet it 
 is an almost impossible case. There is not a single indication so 
 far to put one on the track — not one little clue." 
 
 " Not for these dull-brained, mechanical discoverers, perhaps ; but 
 for you or me, Theo, — for us who loved him there ought to be light. 
 Think, what a strange murder it was. Not for gain, remember. 
 Had it been the hand of a burglar that shot him, I could understand 
 the difficulty of tracing that particular criminal among all the criminal 
 classes. But tins murder, which seems utterly motiveless, must have 
 been prompted by some extraordinary motive. It was not the act 
 of a maniac ; a maniac must have left some trace of his presence in 
 the neighbourhood. A maniac could not have so completely eluded 
 the police on the alert to hunt him down. There must have been 
 some indication." 
 
 " Put madness out of the question, Juanita, what then? " 
 
 " Hatred, Theodore. That is the strongest passion in the human 
 mind — a savage hatred which could not be satisfied except with the 
 brightest life that it had the power to destroy — a relentless hatred 
 — not against him, not against my beloved. What had he done in 
 all his good life tliat any one upon this earth should hate lain? But 
 against us — against my father and mother and me — the usui-pers, 
 the owners of Cheriton jManor ; against us who have thrust ourselves 
 upon the soil which that wicked race held so long. Oh, Theodore,
 
 The Day will come. 
 
 I have thought and thought of tliis, till the conviction has grown 
 into my mind — till it has seemed like a revelation from God. It 
 was one of that wicked family who struck this blow." 
 
 "One of your predecessors — the Strangways? Is that what you 
 mean, NitaV" 
 
 "Yes, that is what I mean." 
 
 " My dear Juanita, it is too wild an idea. What, after your ftithcr 
 has owned the estate nearly a quarter of a century ? Why should 
 the enemy wait all those years — and choose such a time ? " 
 
 •'Because there never before was such an opportunity of striking 
 a blow that should bring ruin upon us. My father's hope of making 
 his son-in-law his successor in the peerage was known to a good 
 many people. It may easily have reached the ears of the Strang- 
 ways." 
 
 " My dear girl, the family has died off like rotten sheep. I doubt 
 if there are any survivors of the old race." 
 
 " Oh, but families are not obliterated so easily. There is always 
 some one left. There were two sons and a daughter of the old 
 squire's. Surely one of those must have left children." 
 
 " But, Juanita, to sujiposo that any man could hate the purchaser 
 of his squandered estate with a hatred malignant enough for murder 
 is to imagine humanity akin to devils." 
 
 " We are akin to devils," cried Juanita, excitedly. "I felt that I 
 could rejoice as the devils rejoice at human suffering if I could see 
 my husband's murdeicr tortured. Yes, if he were tied against a 
 tree, as Indian savages tie their sacrificial victims — tied against a 
 tree and killed by inches, with every variety of torture which 
 a hellish ingenuity can suggest, I would say my litany, like those 
 savages, my litany of triumph and content. Yes, Theodore, we 
 have more in common with the devils than you may think." 
 
 " I cannot see the possibility of murder, prompted by such an in- 
 adequate motive," said Theodore, slowly, remembering, as he spoke, 
 how Churton had suggested that the crime looked like a vendetta. 
 
 " Inadequate ! Ah, that depends, don't you see. Bemcmbcr, wo 
 have not to deal with good people. The Strangways were always 
 an evil race. Almost every tradition that remains about their lives 
 is a story of wrong-doing. And think how small a wound may bo 
 deadly when the blood has poison in it beforehand. And is it a 
 small thing to see strangers in a home that has been in one's family 
 for three centuries? Again, remember that although nothing throve 
 on the Cheriton Estate while the Strangways held it — or at any rate 
 not for the last hundred years of their holding — no sooner was my 
 lather in possession than the luck changed. Quarries were develojied ; 
 land that had been almost worthless became valuable for building. 
 Everything has prospered ^vith him. And tliiuk of them outside — 
 banished for ever, like Adam and Eve out of Paradise. Think uf 
 them with hate and envy gnawing their hearts."
 
 94 The Day will come. 
 
 "There would be time for them to get over that feeling in four 
 and twenty years. And when you talk about thcm^ I should like to 
 know exactly whom you mean. I assure you the general idea is 
 that they have all died oif. That is to say, all of the direct line." 
 
 " It is upon that very subject I want to talk to you, Theodore. 
 Would you like to do me a service, a very great service ? " 
 
 " Nothing would make me happier." 
 
 " Then will you try to find out all about the Straugways — if they 
 are really all gone, or if there are not some survivors, or a survivor, 
 of the last squire's family? If you can do that much it will be 
 something gained. We shall know better what to think. When I 
 heard that you Avere going to live in London, it flashed into my mind 
 that you woidd be just the right person to help me, and I knew how 
 good you had been to me always, and that you ivould help. London 
 is the place in which to make 3'our inquiries. I have heard my father 
 say that all broken lives — all doubtful characters —gravitate towards 
 London. It is the one place where people fancy they can hide." 
 
 " I will do everything in my power to realize your wish, Juanita. 
 I shall be a solitary man with a good deal of leisure, so I ought to 
 succeed, if success be possible." 
 
 They were silent for some few minutes, Juanita being exhausted 
 with the passionate vehemence of her speech. She took up a piece 
 of embroidery from the basket, and began, vdth slow, careful stitches, 
 upon the petal of a dog rose. 
 
 " I am glad to see you engaged upon that artistic embroidery," 
 said Theodore, presently, for the sake of saying something. 
 
 " That means perhaps that you wonder I can care for such 
 frivolous work as this," she said, interpreting his recent thought, 
 when his eyes first lighted on her satin-lined basket with its rain- 
 Ijow-hued silks. "It seems inconsistent, I dare say; but this work 
 has helped me to quiet my brain many a time when I have felt 
 myself on the brink of madness. These slow regular stitches, the 
 mechanical movement of my hand as the flowers grow gradnall}', 
 stitch by stitch, through the long melancholy day, have quieted my 
 nerves, I cannot read. Books give me no comfort, for my eyes 
 follow the page while my mind is brooding on my own troubles. It 
 is better to sit and think quietly, while I work. It is better to face 
 my sorrow." 
 
 " Have you been long alone? " 
 
 " No. It is only three weeks since Lady Jane went back to 
 Swanage; and she comes to see me two or three times a week. 
 My father and mother come as often. You must not think I am 
 deserted. Every one is very good to me." 
 
 " They have need to be." 
 
 Again there was a brief inte^'val of silence, and then Juanita 
 closed her basket, and lifted her earnest eyes to her cousin's face. 
 
 " You know all about the Straugways ? " she inquired.
 
 The Day zvill come. 95 
 
 " I have licanl a good deal about tlicm from one and anDther. 
 People who live in the country have long memories, and arc fond of 
 talking of the lords of the soil, even when the race has vanished 
 from "the land. I have heard elderl\' men tell their after-dinner 
 stories about the Strangways at ray father's table." 
 
 '' You know the family portraits at Cheriton? " 
 
 " The pictures in the hall ? Yes. I have wondered sometimes 
 that your father should have kept them there — effigies of an alien 
 race." 
 
 " I hate them," exclaimed Juanita, shuddering. " I always had an 
 uncomfortable feeling about them, a feeling of strange cold eyes 
 looking at us in secret enmity ; but now I abhor them. There is a 
 girl's face — a cruel face — that I used rather to admire when I was a 
 child, and sometimes dream about ; and on the last night but one — 
 of — my happy life — I looked at that picture with Godirey, and told 
 him my feeling about that face, and he told nio the pitiful stor}' of 
 the girl whose portrait we were looking at. The creature had a sad 
 life, and died in France, poor and broken-hearted. Two hours later 
 I heard a strange step upon the tenace — while Goilfrey and I wei;e 
 sitting in the library — a stealthy, creeping step, coming near one of 
 the open windows, and then creeping away again. When we looked 
 out there was no one to be seen." 
 
 " And this was the night before — Sir Godfrey's death ? " 
 
 "Yes. I told my father about it — after — after my trouble; and 
 when he questioned the gardeners he discovered that footprints had 
 been seen by one of them on the damp gravel the morning after I 
 heard that ghost-like step. They were strange footprints the man 
 was sure, or he would not have noticed them — the prints of a shoo 
 with a ilat heel — not of a large foot, — but they were not very distinct, 
 and he went over them with his roller, and rolled them out, and 
 tliought no more about the fact till my father questioned him. The 
 next day was dry and warm, as you know, and the gravel was hard 
 next night. There were no footprints seen — afterwards." 
 
 ''Did the gardener trace those marks beyond the terrace— to the 
 avenue, for instance ? " 
 
 '' Not he. All ho did was to roll them out \vith his iron-roller." 
 
 "They suggest one point — that the murderer may have been 
 lurking about on the night before the crime." 
 
 " I am sure of it. That footstep would not have frightened me if 
 there had been no meaning in it. I felt as a Scotchman does when 
 he has seen the shadow of the shroud round his friend's figure. It 
 is a point for you to remember, Theodore ; if you mean to help me." 
 
 "I do mean to help you." 
 
 " God bless you for that promise," she cried, giving him her hand, 
 " and if you want any further infomiation about the Strangways 
 there is some one here who may be useful. Godfrey's old bailitT, 
 Jasper Blake, lived over ten years at Cheriton. He only left there
 
 96 The Day will come. 
 
 when the Squire died, and he almost immediately entered the service 
 of Godfrey's fiither. If you can stay till the evening I will send for 
 him, and you can ask him as many questions as you like." 
 
 " I will stay. There is a moon rather late in the evening, and I 
 shall be able to get back any time before midnight. But, Juanita, 
 as an honest man, I am bound to tell you that I believe you aro 
 following an ignis fatuus — you are influenced by prejudices and 
 fancies, rather than by reason." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "The snow 
 Of her sweet coldness hath extinguished quite 
 The fire that but even now began to flame." 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook, a sensible, hard-headed man of business, was 
 like a puppet in his cousin's hands. She told him to toil for her, 
 and he deemed himself privileged to be allowed so to labour. She 
 put him upon that Avhich, according to his own conviction, was an 
 absolutely false track, and he was compelled to follow it. She bade 
 him think with her thoughts, and he bent his mind to hers. 
 
 Yes, she was right perhaps. It was a vendetta. Lord Cheriton 
 had lived all these years hemmed round with unseen, unsuspected 
 foes. They had not burned his ricks, or tried to burn his dweUing- 
 house ; they had not slandered him to the neighbourhood in anony- 
 mous letters; they had not poisoned his dogs or his pheasants. 
 Such petty malevolence had been too insignilicant for them. But 
 they had waited till his fortunes had reached their apogee, till his 
 only child had grown from bud to flower and he had wedded her to 
 an estimable young man of patrician lineage and irreproachable 
 character. And, just when fate was fairest the cowardly blow had 
 been struck — a blov/ that blighted one young life, and darkened 
 those tAvo other lives sloping towards the grave, the lives of father 
 and mother, rendered desolate because of their daughter's desolation. 
 
 Mastered by that will which was his law, the will of the woman 
 he loved, Theodore began to believe as she believed, or at least to 
 think it just possible that there might be amongst the remnant of the 
 Strangway race a man so lost and perverted, so soured by poverty, 
 so envenomed by disgraces and mortifications, eating slowly into the 
 angry heart, like rust into iron, that he had become at last the very 
 incarnation of malignity — hating tlie man who had prospered while 
 he had failed, hating the owner of his people's forfeited estate as if 
 that owner had robbed them of it — hating with so passionate a
 
 The Day will come. 97 
 
 malevolence that nothing less than murder could appease his wiath. 
 Yes, there mii,dit be such a man. In the history of mankind tiif^ro 
 liave been such crimes. They are not common in England, happily ; 
 but among the Celtic nations they are not uncommon. 
 
 " My lirst briet','' mused Theodore, with a grim smile, as he walked 
 up and down the drawing-room wdiilc his cousin was writing a 
 memorandum requesting the bailiff's presence. "It is more like a 
 case entrusted to a detective than sulmiitted to counseUs opinion ; 
 but it will serve to occupy my mind while I am eating my diimers. 
 ^[y poor Juanita ! Will her loss seem less, I wonder, when she has 
 discovered the hand that w-idowed her ? " 
 
 lie dined with his cousin at a small round tabic in the spacious 
 dining-room which had held so many cheerful gatherings in the ycai's 
 that were gone : the sisters and their husbands, and the sisters' 
 friends ; and (rodfrey's college friends; and those old friends of the 
 neighbourhood who seemed only a little less than kindred, by reason 
 of his having known them all his life. And now these two were 
 sitting here alone, and the corners of the room were full of shadows. 
 One large circular lamp suspended over the table was the only light, 
 the carving being done hi a serving-room adjoining. 
 
 Juanita was too hospitable to allow the meal to be silent or gloomy. 
 She put aside the burden of her grief and talked to her cousin of his 
 family and of his own prospects; and she seemed warmly interested 
 in his future success. It was but a sisterly^nterest, he knew, frankly 
 expressed as a sister's might have been ; yat it was sweet to him 
 nevertheless, and he tdked freely of his plans and hopes. 
 
 " I felt stilled in that old street," he told her. " A man nuist bo 
 very happy to endure life in a country town." 
 
 '' But you are not unhapp}-, Theodore? " she interrupted, wondci-- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Unhappy — no, that would l)e too much to say, perhaps. Vou 
 know how fond I am of my father. I was glad to work w^ith him, 
 and to feel that 1 was useful to him ; but that feeling was not enough 
 to reconcile me to the monotony of my days. A man who has home 
 ties — a wife and children — may be satistied in that narrow circle ; 
 but for a young man with his life before him it is no better than a 
 prison." 
 
 " I understand," said Juanita, eagerly. *' I can fully sympathize 
 with you. I am very glad you are ambitious, Theodore. A man is 
 worthless who is without ambition. And now tell me what you will 
 do when you go to London. How will you begin ? " 
 
 " I shall put up at the Inns of Court Hotel for a few days while f 
 look about for a suitable set of chambers, and Avhcn I have found 
 them and furnished them, and brought my books and belongings 
 from Dorchester, I shall sit down and read law. I can read while I 
 am qualifying for the Bar. I shall go on reading after I have quali- 
 tied. My life will be to sit in chambers and read law books until 
 
 H
 
 98 The Day zvill come. 
 
 Bomc one brings me business. It hardly sounds like a brilliant 
 cai-eer, does it?" 
 
 " All beginnings are bard," sbe answered, gently. " I suppose 
 my father went through just the same kind of drudgery when he 
 began?" 
 
 "Well, yes, he must have gone upon the same lines, I fancy. 
 There is no royal road." 
 
 " And while you are studying law and waiting for briefs, will you 
 have time to look after my interests ? " 
 
 " Yes, Juanita. Your interest shall be my first thought always. 
 If it can make you happier to discover your husband's murderer " 
 
 " Happier ! It is the only thing that can reconcile me to the 
 burden of living." 
 
 " If it is for your happiness, you need not fear that I shall ever 
 relax in my endeavours. I may fail, — indeed, I fear I must foil, — 
 but it shall not be for the lack of earnestness or perseverance." 
 
 " I knew that you would help me," she said, fervently, holding 
 out her hand to him across the table. 
 
 Diimer was over, and they were alone, with the grapes and 
 peaches of the Priory hothouses, which were not even second to 
 those of Cheriton, unlieeded upon the table before them. 
 
 " Blake is in the house by tliis time, I dare say," said Juanita 
 presently. " Would you like to see him here, and shall I stay, or 
 would you rather talk to liim alone ? " 
 
 " I had better take him in hand alone. It is always hard work 
 to get straight answers out of that sort of man, and any cross 
 current distracts him. His thoughts are always ready to go off at a 
 tangent." 
 
 " He knows all about the Squire's children. He can give you any 
 particulars you want about them." 
 
 The butler came iato the room five minutes afterwards with the 
 coffee, and announced the bailiff's arrival. 
 
 Juanita rose at once, and left her cousin to receive Jasper Blake 
 alone. 
 
 He came into the room with rather a sheepish air. He was about 
 sixty, young looking for his age, with a bald forehead, and stubbly 
 iron grey hair, and a little bit of whisker on each sunburnt cheek. 
 He had the horsey look still, though he had long ceased to have 
 anything to do with horses beyond buying and selhng cart-horses 
 for the home farm, and occasionallj'' exhibiting a prize animal in that 
 line. He was a useful servant, and a thoroughly honest man, of the 
 old-fashioned order. 
 
 " Mr. Blake, I want you to give me some infoimation about old 
 friends of yom-s. I have a little business in hand, which indirectly 
 concerns the Strangway family, and I Avant to be quite clear iti 
 my OAvn mind as to how many are left of them, and where they are 
 to be found."
 
 The Day will come. 99 
 
 TIic bailiff rubbed one of bis Ktuntcd -wbiskcrs meditatively, and 
 sliook his head. 
 
 " There was never many of 'em to leave, sir," he said, grumpily, 
 " and I don't believe there's any of 'cm left anywheres. There 
 pceras to have been a curse upon 'em, for the last hundred years. 
 Nothing ever throve with them. Look at what Cheriton is now, and 
 what it was in their time." 
 
 "I didn't know it in their time, Mr. Blake." 
 
 " Ah, you're not old enough ; but your father knew the place. 
 He cUd business for the old Squire — till things got too bad — mort- 
 gages, and accommodation bills, and overdrawn accounts at the 
 bank, and such like, and your father washed his hands of the busi- 
 ness — a long-headed gentleman, your father. He can tell you what 
 Cheriton was like in the Squire's time." 
 
 " Why do you suppose the Strangways are all dead and gone? " 
 
 " Well, sir, first and foremost it's fifteen years and more since 
 I've heard of any of 'em, and the last I heard was about as bad as 
 bad could be." 
 
 " What was that last report? " 
 
 "It was about jMastcr Reginald — that was the eldest son, him that 
 was colonel of a Lancer regiment, and married Lord Dangcrfield'.^! 
 youngest daughter. I remember the bonfires on the hills out by 
 Studlands just as if it happened yesterday, but it's more than forty 
 years ago, and I was a boy in the stables at fourteen shillings a 
 week." 
 
 " Reginald, the elder son, colonel of Lancers, married Lord 
 Dangerfield's daughter — about 1840," wrote Theodore in a pocket- 
 book Avhich he held ready for taking notes. 
 
 " What was it you heard about him ? " he asked. 
 
 " Well, sir, itwas i\[r. de Lacy's servant that told me. He'd been 
 somewhere in the south with his master where there was gambling 
 — a place where the folks make a regular trade of it. It's a 
 wonderful climate, says Mr. de Lacy's man, and the gentry go 
 there fur their health, and very often finish by shooting themselves, 
 and it seems Colonel Strangway was there. He'd come over from 
 Corsica, which it seems was in the neighbourhood — where he'd left 
 his poor wife all among brigands and savages — and he was at the 
 tables day and night, and he had a wonderful run of luck, so tliat 
 they called him the king of the place, and it was who but he? 
 Howsoever the tide turned suddcnlj', and he began losing, and ho 
 lost his last sixpence, in a manner of speaking regular cleaned out, 
 Mr. do Lacy's man said ; and by-and-by tliere comes another gentle- 
 man, a Jewish gentleman from Paris, rolling in money, and playing 
 for the sake of the science, and able to hold out where another man 
 must have given in ; and in a week or two lie was the king of the 
 place, and the Colonel was nowhere, just living on tick at the hotel, 
 and borrowing a fiver from Mr. dc Lacy or any other old acquaintance
 
 lOO The Day will come. 
 
 whenever he liad tlie chance, and making as much i)]ay as he conlil 
 with two or three cart wheels, where he used to play with hundred- 
 franc pieces. And so it went on, and he cut up uncommon rough 
 when anybody happened to offend him, and there was more than one 
 row at the hotel or in the gardens — they don't allow no rows in the 
 gambling rooms, — and just as the season was coming to an end the 
 Colonel went oft" one afternoon to catch the boat for Corsica. The 
 boat was to start after dark from Nice, and there was a lot of traffic 
 in the port, but not as much light as there ought to have been, and 
 the Colonel missed his footing in going from the quay to the boat, 
 and went to the bottom like a plummet. Some people thought he 
 made aw^iy with himself on purpose, and that the one sensible thing 
 he did was to make it look like accident, so as not to vitiate the 
 insurance on his life, which Lord Dangerfield had taken care of, and 
 had paid the premiums ever smce the Colonel began to go to the 
 bad. Anyhow, he never came up again alive out of that water. 
 His death was published in the papers : ' Accidentally drowned at 
 Nice.' I should never have knowm the rights or the wrongs of it if 
 Mr. de Lacy hadn't happened to be visiting here soon afterwards." 
 
 " Did Colonel Strangway leave no children ? " 
 
 " Neither chick nor child." 
 
 " Do you know if his widow is still living ? " 
 
 " No, sir. That is the last I ever heard of him or his." 
 
 " What about the younger brother ? " 
 
 " I believe he must be dead too, though I can't give you chapter 
 and verse. He never married, didn't Mr. Frederick — not to my 
 knowledge. He went on board a man-of-war before he was fifteen, 
 and at five and twenty he was a splendid officer and as fine a yomig 
 man as you need wisli to see ; but he was too fond of the bottle. 
 China was the rain of him, some folks said, and he got court- 
 marshalled out there, not long after they sacked that there Summer 
 Palace there was so much talk about ; and then he contrived to 
 pass into the mercantile marine, which was a come-down for a 
 Strangway, and for a few years he was one of their finest officers, a 
 regidar dare-devil ; could sail a ship faster and safer than any man in 
 the service ; used to race home with the spring pickings of tea, when 
 tea wasn't the cheap muck it is now, and when there weren't no 
 Suez Canal to spoil sport. But he took to his old games again, and 
 he got broke again, broke for drunkenness and insubordination ; and 
 then he went and loafed and drank in Jersey — where, it's my belief, 
 he died some years ago." 
 
 " You have no positive information about his death? " 
 
 " I can't say that I have." 
 
 " There was one daughter, I tliink ? " 
 
 " Yes, there was a daughter, Miss Eva. I taught her to ride. 
 There wasn't a finer horsewoman in Dorsetshire, but a devil of a 
 temper— the real Strangway temper. I wasn't surprised when I
 
 The Day will come. loi 
 
 licard slicM raariied badly; 1 wasn't siu'priscd when I heard she'd 
 run away from her husband." 
 
 '' Did she leave an}^ children ? " 
 
 " No, not by him." 
 
 " But afterwards — do you know if there were children ? " 
 
 "I can't say that I do. Sho was living in Boulogne when I last 
 heard of lier, and somebody told me afterwards that she died there." 
 
 "That's vague. She may bo living still." 
 • " I don't think that's likely. It's more than ten years — aj% it's 
 nearer fifteen — since I heard of lier death. She was not the kind 
 of woman to hide her light under a bushel for a quarter of a century. 
 If she were alive I feel sine we sliould have heard of her at Cheriton. 
 Lord ! how fond sho was of the place, and how proud she was of 
 her good looks and her old name, and how haughty and overbearing 
 she was with every other young woman that ever came in her way."' 
 
 " She must have been a remarkably disagreeable young person, I 
 take it." 
 
 '' Well, not altogether, sir. She had a taking way when she 
 wasn't in her tantrums, and she was very good to the poor people 
 about Ciieriton. Tlanj doated upon her. Siie never quarrelled witli 
 them. It was with her father she got on worst. Those two never 
 could hit it off. They were too much alike. And at last, when she 
 was close upon seventeen, and a regular clipper, things got so bad 
 tiiat the Squire packed off the governess at an iiour's warning. She 
 was too young and silly to manage such a pupil as Miss Strangway, 
 and it's my belief she sided with her in all her mischief, and madt' 
 things worse. He turned her out of doors neck and crop, and a 
 Aveek afterwards he took his daughter up to London and handed her 
 over to an English lady, who kept a finishing school somewhere 
 abroad, at a place called Losun." 
 
 "At Lausanne, I think." 
 
 " Yes, that was the name. She was to stay there for a year, and 
 tlien she was to have another year's schoohng in Paris to finish her ; 
 but she never got to Paris, didn't Miss Eva. She ran off from 
 Lausanne with a lieutenant in a marching regiment, and her fathoi- 
 never saw her fiice again. He had no money to give her if she Jiail 
 married ever so well, Init he took a pride in striking her name out 
 of liis will all the same." 
 
 " What was her husband's name ? " 
 
 "Darcy — Tom Uarcy. He was au Irishman, and I've heard he 
 treated her very badly." 
 
 '• Do you know how long it was after her marriage that she left 
 him ? " 
 
 " I only know when I heard they were parted, and tliat was six 
 or seven years after she ran away from Lausanne." 
 
 •' How long was that before the Squire's death and the sale of the 
 estate ? "
 
 I02 The Day zvill come. 
 
 " Nearly ten years, I should say." 
 
 " That makes it about thirty-four years ago ? " 
 
 "Yes, that's about it." 
 
 Theodore noted down the date in his book. He had heard all 
 these things before now — loosely, and in a disjointed fasliion — never 
 having'been keenly interested in the vicissitudes of the Strangways. 
 
 "Who was the man who took her away from her husband ? " 
 
 " God knows," said Jasper. " None of us at Cheriton ever heard. 
 We fancied he must have been a Frenchman, for she was heard of 
 afterwards — a good many years afterwards — at Boulogne. Our old 
 Vicar saw her there the year before he died — it must have been as 
 late as sixty-four or sixty-five, I fancy, — a •UTeck, he said. He 
 wouldn't have recognized her if she hadn't spoken to him, and she 
 had to tell him who she was. I heard him tell mj' old master all 
 about it, one summer afternoon at the Vicarage gate, when Sir 
 Godfrey had driven over to see him. Yes, it must have been as 
 late as sixty-five, I believe." 
 
 " Five years after Lord Cheriton bought the estate?" 
 
 " About that." 
 
 '"Do you remember the name of Miss Strangway's governess? 
 Of course, you do, though." 
 
 The bailiff' rubbed his iron-grey whisker with a puzzled air. 
 
 " My memory's got to be like a corn-sieve of late j^ears," he said, 
 "but I ought to remember her name. She was at Cheriton over 
 four years, and I only wish I had a guinea for every time I've sat 
 behind her and Miss Strangway in the pony chaise. She was a 
 light-hearted, good-tempered young woman, but she hadn't bone 
 enough for her work. She wasn't up to Miss Strangwaj^'s weight. 
 Let me see now — what was that young woman's name ? — she was a 
 good-looking girl, sandy, with a high colour and a freckled skin. I 
 ought to remember." 
 
 " Take a glass of claret, Mr. Blake, and take your time. The 
 name will come back to you. Have you ever heard of the lady 
 since she left Cheriton ? " 
 
 " Never — she wasn't likely to come back to this part of the world 
 after having been turned out neck and crop, as she was. What was 
 the name of the man who saw the apple fall ? — Newton — that was 
 it, Sarah Newton. Miss Strang^vay used to call her Sally. I re- 
 member that." 
 
 " Do you know where she came from, or what her people were ? "' 
 
 "She came from somewhere near London, and it's my opinion 
 her father kept a shop ; but she was very close about her home and 
 her relatives." 
 
 " And she was young, you say? " 
 
 " Much too young for the place. She couldn't have been five 
 and twenty when she left ; and a girl like Miss Strangway, a mother- 
 less girl, wauted some one older and -wiser to keep her in order."
 
 The Day will come. 103 
 
 " Had the Squire's wife been long dead at that time ? " 
 
 "She died before I went to service at Cheriton. ]Miss Eva 
 couldn't have been much above seven years old when she lost her 
 mother." 
 
 Theodore asked no more questions, not seeing his way to extract- 
 ing any furtlier information from the bailiff. He had been acquainted 
 with most of tliose fiicts before, or had heard them tallied about. 
 The handsome daughter who ran away from a foreign school with a 
 penniless subaltern — the Strangway temper, and the pitched battles 
 between the spendthril't father and the motherless unmanageable 
 girl — the life-long breach, and tlien a life of povertj^and an untimely 
 death in a strange city, only vaguely known, yet put forward as 
 a positive and established fact. He had heard all tiiis: but the 
 old servant's recollections helped him to talwlate his f icts — helped 
 him, too, with the name of the governess, wliicli might be of some 
 use in enabling him to trace the stor}^ of the last of tlic Strangways. 
 
 " If there is any ground for Juanita's theory, I think the man 
 most likely to have done the deed would be the Colonel of Lancers, 
 supposed to be drowned at Nice. If I were by any means to dis- 
 cover that the story of the drowming was a mistake, and that tlie 
 Colonel is in the land of the living, I should be iiirlined to adopt 
 Juanita's view of the murder." 
 
 lie encouraged the bailiff to take a second glass of claret, and 
 talked over local interests with him for ten minutes or so, while his 
 dog-cart was being brought round; and then, ^Ir. Blake having 
 witiidrawn, lie went to the drawing-room where Juanita was sitting 
 at work by a lainivlit table, and wished her good night. 
 
 " Did you find Jasper intelligent ? " she asked, eagerly. 
 
 " Very intelligent." 
 
 " And did you find out all you wanted from him ? " 
 
 "Not quite all. He told me very little that I did not know 
 before ; but there were one or two facts that may be useful. Good 
 night, Nita, good night, and good-bye." 
 
 ''Not for long," she answered. "You will spend Christmas at 
 home, of course." 
 
 " Yes, I shall go home for the Cln-istmas w^eek, I suppose." 
 
 " You will have something to tell mo by that time, perhaps. You 
 will be on the track." 
 
 " Don't be too .sanguine, Xita. I will do my uttermost." 
 
 "I am sure you will. Ah, you don't know how I trust you, how 
 I lean upon you. God bless you, Theodore. You are my strong 
 rock. I, who never had a brother, tiu'n to you as a sister 
 might. If vou can do this thing for me — if vou can avenge his cruel 
 death '" 
 
 "If — what then, Juanita?" he asked, paling suddenly, and his 
 eyes flaming. 
 
 " I shall honour — esteem you — as I have never done yet; and yoi^
 
 I04 The Day will come. 
 
 know I have always looked up to yon, Theodore. God bless and 
 prosper you. Good night." 
 
 Her speech, kind as it was, fell upon his enthusiasm like ice. He 
 was holding both her hands, almost crushing them unawares in his 
 vehemence. Then his grip loosened all at once, he bent his head, 
 gently kissed those slender hands, muttered a husky good night, and 
 imrried from the room. 
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 
 "The God of love — ah, benedicite! 
 How mighty and how great a Lord is he ! " 
 
 A WEKK later Theodore Dalbrook was established in chunibers on 
 the second floor of No. 2, Ferret Court, Temple. 
 
 Ferret Court is one of the few places in tlie Temple which have 
 not been improved and beautified out of knowledge within the last 
 thirty years. The architect and the sanitary engineer have passed 
 by on the other side, and have left Ferret Court to its original 
 tihabbiness. Its ceilings have not been elevated, or its windows 
 widened, nor has the Early-English stone front replaced the shabby 
 (lid brickwork. Its time has not come. The rooms are small and 
 low, the queer old closets where generations of lawj'ers have kept 
 their goods and chattels are dark and redolent of mice. The stair- 
 cases are rotten, the hea\'y old ballusters are black with age, and the 
 deep old window-seats are set in windows of the early Georgian era. 
 
 The chambers suited Theodore, first because they were cheap, and 
 next because the sitting-room, which was at the back, commanded 
 a good view of the river. The bedroom was a tolerable size, and 
 there was a dressing-room just big enough to hold bath and boots. 
 He furnished the rooms comfortably, with solid old-fashioned furni- 
 ture, partly consisting of surplus articles sent from the old liouse in 
 Dorchester, and partly of his own purchases in London. The rooms 
 were arranged with a sober taste which was by no means inartistic, and 
 there was just enough bright colouring in the Algerian portieres and 
 a few handsome pieces of Oriental crockery to relieve the dark tones 
 of old oak and Spanish mahogany. Altogether the chambers had 
 the established look of a nest which was meant to last tlirough wind 
 and weather, a shelter in which a man expected to spend a good 
 many years of his life. 
 
 He had another reason for choosing those old rooms in Ferret 
 Court in preference to chambers in any of those new and commo- 
 dious houses in the courts that had been rebuilt of late years. It 
 was in this house that James Dalbrook had begun hjs legal career j
 
 The Day will come. 105 
 
 it was here, on the ground floor, that the future Lord Chcritun had 
 waited for briefs nearly forty years ago ; and it was here that fame 
 and fortune had first visited liim, a sliining apparition, bringing 
 brightness into the shabby old rooms, irradiating the gloomy old 
 court with the glory of ti'iumphaut ambition, hopes suddenly 
 realized, the consciousness of victory. James Dalbrook had occu- 
 pied tliose dingy chambers fifteen years, and long after he became 
 a great man, and he had gone from them almost reluctantly to u 
 spacious first-lloor in King's Bench Walk. He had enjoyed the 
 reputation of a miser at that period of his life. He was never 
 known to give a dinner to a friend ; he lived in a close retirement 
 which his enemies stigmatized as a hole-and-corner life ; he was never 
 seen at places of amusement ; he never played cards, or bet U2)0n a 
 race. Socially he was unpopular. 
 
 Theodore had taken all the j)reliminary steps, and had arranged 
 to read with a well-known special pleader. He was thoroughly in 
 earnest in his determination to succeed in tliis new line. He wanted 
 to prove to his father that his abandonment of the Dorchester ofiice 
 was neither a caprice nor a folly. He was even more in earnest in 
 his desire to keep his promise to his cousin Juanita. 
 
 Almost his first act upon arriving in London had been to go to Scot- 
 land Yard in the hope of finding the detective who had been sent to 
 Cheriton, and his inquiries there were so far successful that he was able 
 to make an appointment with ^Ir. Churton for the next day but one. 
 
 He had talked with Chmton after the adjourned inquest, and had 
 heard all tliat the professional intellect had to offer in the way of 
 opinion at that time ; but he thought it worth his while to find out 
 if the detective's ideas had taken any new development upon subse- 
 quent reflection, and also to submit Juanita's theory to professional 
 consideration. He was not one of those amateurs who think that 
 they are cleverer at a trade than the man who has served a long 
 apprenticeship to it. 
 
 " Have you thought anything more about the Cheriton murder 
 since last July, Mr. Churton?" he asked; "or has your current 
 work been too engrossing to give you time for thought ? " 
 
 "No, sir. I've had plenty of other cases to think about, but I'm 
 not likel}' to forget such a case as that at Cheriton, a case in whicli 
 I was worsted more completely than I have been in anything for tlie 
 last ten vears. I've thought about it a good bit, I can assure vou, 
 .Mr. Dalbrook." 
 
 " And do you see any new liglit ? " 
 
 " No, sir. I stick pretty close to my original opinion. Sir 
 Godfrey Carmichael was murdered by somebody that bore a grudge 
 against him ; and there's a woman at the bottom of it." 
 
 " Why a woman ? Might not a man's hatred be deadly enough 
 to lead to murder?" 
 
 " Not unless he was egged on by a woman ; or had been jilted by
 
 io6 The Day will come. 
 
 a woman ; or was jealous of a woman ; or thought he had a woman's 
 wrongs to avenge." 
 
 " Is that what your experience teaches you, Mr. Churton ? " 
 " Yes, Mr. Dalbrook, that is what my experience teaches me." 
 " And you think it was an enemy of Sir Godfrey's who fired that 
 shot?" 
 " I do." 
 
 "Do j^ou think the enemy was a woman — the hand that pulled 
 the trigger a woman's hand? " 
 
 "No, I don't. A woman couldn't have been about the place 
 without being remarked — or got clear off, as a man might." 
 
 " There are the servants. Could the murderer be one of them ? " 
 " I do not think so, sir. I've taken stock of them all — stables — 
 lodges — ever}rwhere. I never met with such a superior set of 
 servants. The person at the west lodge is a lady bred and born, I 
 should say. She gave me a good deal of information about the 
 household. I consider her a remai-kably intelligent woman, and I 
 know she is of my opinion as to the motive of the murder." 
 
 " And yet if I tell you that Sir Godfrey had not an enemy in the 
 world ? " said Theodore, dwelling on the main point, and not par- 
 ticularly interested in what the highly-intelUgeut Mrs. Porter might 
 have said upon the subject. 
 
 " I should tell you, sir, that no man can answer for another man. 
 There is something in the lives of most of us that we would rather 
 keep dark." 
 
 " I don't believe there was any dark spot in Sir Godfrey's life. 
 But what if there were an enemy of Lord Cheriton's — a man who 
 has been a judge is in a fair way to have made enemies — a foe 
 vindictive enough to strike at him through his son-in-law. to smite 
 him by destroying his daughter's happiness ? She is his only child, 
 remember, and all his hopes and ambitions centre in her." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Dalbrook, if there was such a man he would be an 
 out-and-out blackguard." 
 
 " Yes, it would be a refinement of cruelty — a Satanic hate ; but 
 such a man might exist. Remember the murder of Lord Maj^o — 
 one of the wisest and most beloved of India's rulers. The wretch 
 who killed him had never seen his face till the day of the murder. 
 He thought himself unjustly condemned, and he killed the man who 
 represented the Power which condemned him. Might not some 
 wrong-headed Englishman have the same vindictive feehng against 
 an English judge ? " 
 
 " Yes, it is possible, no doubt." 
 " My cousin. Lady Carmichael, has another theory." 
 Theodore explained the positions of Lord Cheriton and the race 
 that preceded him as o'wners of the soil, and Juanita's suspicion of 
 some unknown member of the Strang way family ; but the detective 
 rejected this notion as unworthy of professional consideration.
 
 The Day zuill come. 107 
 
 "It is like a youug lady to get Ruch an idea into her head," he 
 Bai<l. " If the estate had changed hands yesterday — well, even then 
 I shouldn't suspect the former owners of wanting to murder the 
 purchaser's son-in-law; hut when you reflect that Lord Cheritou 
 has been in peaceful possession of the property for more than twenty 
 years the idea isn't worth a moment's thought. What put such a 
 fancy into the lady's head, do you think, Mr. Dal])rook? ' 
 
 "Grief! She has brooded upon her loss until her soitow has 
 taken strange shapes. She thinks that it is her duty to help in 
 bringing her husband's murderer to justice. She has racked her 
 brains to discover the motive of that cruel crime. She has conjured 
 up the image of incarnate hatred, and she calls that image by the 
 name of Strangway. I have pledged myself to act upon this idea 
 of hers as if it were inspiration, and the lirst part of my task will be 
 to find out any surviving member of Squire Strangway's family, 
 lie only left three children, so the task ought not to be impossible." 
 
 " You don't mean, sir, that you are going to act upon the young 
 lady's theory ? " 
 
 "I do mean it, !Mr. Churton, and I want you to help me; or at 
 any rate to give me a lesson. How am I to begin? " 
 
 He laid his fiicts before the detective, reading over the notes 
 which he had elaborated from Jasper Blake's reminiscences and 
 from his own recollection of various conversations in which the 
 Strangways had tigured. 
 
 Churton listened attentively, nodded, or shook his head occasion- 
 ally, and was master of every detail after that one hearing. 
 
 '' Jersey is not a large place. If 1 were following up this inquiry 
 I should go first for the son who is supposed to haA'^e died in 
 Jersey," he said, when he had heard all. "I should follow that line 
 as far as it goes, and then I should hunt up the particulars of the 
 Colonel's death, the gentleman who was drowned at Nice. If any 
 Strangway had a hand in the business, it must have been one of 
 those two, or the son of one of them. But I tell you plainly, Mr. 
 Dalbrook, that I don't put any faith in that poor lady's notion — 
 no, not that much," said the detective, snapping his fingers con- 
 temptuously. 
 
 " Yet it was you yourself who first mooted the idea of a vendetta." 
 
 " So it was ; but I didn't mean a vendetta on such grounds as 
 that. An estate changes hands, and — after twenty years and more 
 — the original holders try to mmder the son-in-law of the jiurcliascr ! 
 That won't hold water, sir. Tliere's not enough human passion in 
 it. I've had to study humanity, ls\r. iJallnook. It's been a jiart of 
 ray profession, and perhajis I've studied human nature closer than 
 many a philosopher who sits in his library and writes a book 
 about it. Now, there's no human nature in that notion of Lady 
 Carraichael's. A man may be very savage because his spendthrift 
 father has squandered his estate, and he may feel savage with the
 
 io8 The Day will come. 
 
 lucky man who bought and developed that estate, and may envy 
 him in his enjoyment of it — but he won't nurse his wrath for nearly 
 a quarter of a century, and then give expression to his feelings all 
 at once with a revolver. Tliat isn't human nature." 
 
 "How about the exception to every rule? Might not this be an 
 exceptional case ? " 
 
 " It might, of course. There's no timer saying than that fact is 
 stranger than fiction; but, for all that, this notion of Lady Car- 
 michael's is a young lady's notion, and it belongs to fiction and not 
 to fact. I wouldn't waste my time upon it, if I were you, ]\Ir. 
 Dalbrook." 
 
 " I must keep my promise, Mr. Churton. I am obhged to you 
 for your plain speaking, and I am inclined to agree with you ; but 
 I have made a promise, and I must keep it." 
 
 "Naturally, sir; and if in the course of your inquiries I can be of 
 any use to you, I shall be very glad to co-operate." 
 
 "I rely on your help. Eemember there is a handsome reward 
 to be earned by you if you can bring about the discovery of the 
 murderer. My part in the search will count for nothing." 
 
 " T imderstand, sir. That's a stimulus, no doubt ; but I hardly 
 wanted it. When a case baffles me as this case has done, I would 
 work day and night, and live on bread and water for a month, to 
 get at the rights of it. Good day. You've got my private address, 
 and you can wire me anywhen." 
 
 " You're a Sussex man, Mr. Churton, 1 fancy ? " 
 
 " Born in the village of Bramber." 
 
 Theodore left Waterloo the following evening, and landed at St. 
 Heliers on the following morning an hour or so before noon. He 
 landed on the island as an absolute stranger, and with the vag-nost 
 idea of the work that lay before him, but with the determination to 
 lose no time in beginning that work. He sent his valise to Brett's 
 Hotel, and he walked along the pier to the town, and inquired his 
 way to the Police Oflice. He was not going in quest of information 
 about a member of the crimmal classes ; but the man he was hunt- 
 ing had been a notorious drunkard, and it seemed to him that in a 
 small settlement like St. Heliers such a man would have been likely 
 to attract the attention of the poUce at some stage of his do^^^lward 
 career. 
 
 The first official whom Theodore interrogated had never heard ot 
 the name of Strangway in the island; but an elderly inspector 
 appearing presently upon the scene, and listening attentively to the 
 conversation, made a suggestion. 
 
 " You say the gentleman was fond of drink, sir, and in that case 
 he'd be likely to have his favourite public, where they'd know all 
 about him. Now, there are not so many taverns in St. Heliers 
 where a sea-captain, and a broken-down gentleman, would care to
 
 The Day zvill come. 109 
 
 enjoy himself, lie Avouldn't <^o to a low place, you kcc; and lin 
 wouldn't fancy a swell place. It woidd be some house betwixt and 
 between, where lieM be looked up to a bit— and it would be some- 
 thing of a seafaring jilace, you may be sure. There ain't so many 
 but what you could look hi at 'em all, and ask a few questions, and 
 get on the right track. I cau give you the names of two or lluco 
 of the likeliest."' 
 
 "I shall be much obliged," said Theodore. "I think it's a capital 
 idea." 
 
 The inspector wrote downi the names of three taverns, tore the 
 leaf out of his pocket-book, and handed it to ^Ir. Dalbrook. 
 
 " If you don't hear of him at one of those, I doubt if you'll hear of 
 him anywhere on the island," he said. '• Those houses arc all near 
 the pier and the quays. It won't take j'ou long to go from one to tiie 
 other. ' The Rose and Crown,' that's where the English pilots go ; 
 ' La Belle Alliance,' that's a French house with a tahle d'holc 
 They've got a very good name for their brandy, and it's a gi-eat 
 place for broken-dowii gentlemen. You can get a good dinner for 
 half-a-crown with v'm ordinaire included." 
 
 •' I'll try the ' Belle Alliance ' tirst," said Theodore. " It sounds 
 likely." 
 
 " Yes, I believe it's about the likeliest," replied the inspector. 
 
 The " Belle Alliance " fronted the quay, and stood at the corner 
 of a shabby old street. There was a church close by, and a dingv 
 old churchyard. Everything surrounding the "Belle Alliance" was 
 shabby and faded, and its outlook on the dirty quay and the tralh(j 
 of ugly waggons and uglier trucks, hogsheads and lumber of all 
 kinds, was depressing in the extreme. 
 
 But the tavern itself had an air of smartness which an English 
 tavern would hardly have had in the same circumstances. The 
 interior was gay with much looking-glass, and a good deal of tar- 
 nished gilding. There were artificial flowers in sham silver vases 
 on the tables, and there was a semi-circular counter at one end of 
 the restaurant, behind which a ])ondcrous divinitv, still youthfid. 
 but expansive, sat enthroned, her sleek, black Iiair elaborately 
 dressed, her forehead ornamented with accroche-coeurs, and a cross 
 of Jersey diamonds sparkling upon her swan-like throat, which was 
 revealed by one of those open collars which are dear to the lower 
 order of French women. There was a row of tables in front of the 
 windows which looked towards the quaj', and there Avas a long, 
 narrow table in the middle of the room, laid for the tahle dlwdi 
 dejeuner ; but as yet the room was einjity, save for one young man 
 and woman, of the tourist order, who were whispering and tittering 
 oyer a, cafe com jilet at one of the small tables furthest from the bufl'ct. 
 
 Theodore went straight to the front of the buffet, and saluted the 
 lady enthroned there. 
 
 " Madame speaks English, uo doubt 'r* "
 
 no The Day zvill come, 
 
 " Oil, yes, but a leetle. I am live long time in Jairsey, where is 
 more English as French peoples." 
 
 After this sample speech it seemed to him that he might get on 
 better with the lady in her native tongue, so he asked her for a cup 
 of coi^ee in her own language, and stood at the counter while he 
 drank it, and talked to her of indifferent matters, she nothing loth. 
 
 "You have lived a long time in Jersey," he said. " Does that 
 mean a long time in this house? " 
 
 " Except one year I have lived in this house all the time, nine 
 years. I was only nineteen when I undertook the position of clam.e 
 du comptoir. I could not have undertaken such a responsibility 
 with a stranger, but the proprietor is my uncle, and he knew hov/ 
 to be indulgent to my youth and inexperience." 
 
 " And then, a handsome face is always an attraction. You must 
 have brought him good fortune, madame." 
 
 '•He is kind enough to say so. He found it difficult to dispense 
 with my services while I was absent, though he had a person from 
 London who had been much admired at the Crystal Palace." 
 
 "And you, madame, — was it a feminine caprice, the desire for 
 change, which made you abandon your uncle during that time? " 
 
 " I left him when I married," replied the lady, wth a profound 
 sigh. " I returned to him a heart-broken widow." 
 
 " Pray forgive me for having recalled the memory of your grief. 
 I am a stranger in this place, and I am here on a somewhat delicate 
 mission. My first visit is to this house, because I Icnew I should 
 find intelligence and sjTnpathy here rather than among my own 
 countrymen. I am fortunate in meeting with a lady who has 
 occupied an important position at St. Heliers for so long a period. 
 I have strong reasons for wishing to discover the history of a 
 gentleman who came to the Island some years ago — I do not know 
 how many — after having been unfortunate in the world. He was a 
 naval man." 
 
 "My poor husband was a naval man," sighed the dame du 
 comptoir. 
 
 "A pilot, no doubt," thought Theodore. 
 
 Theodore's manner, which was even more flattering than his 
 words, had made a favourable impression, and the lady was dis- 
 posed to be confidential. She glanced at the clock, and was glad 
 to see that it was only twenty minutes past twelve. There was 
 time for a little further conversation with this handsome, well-bred 
 Enghshman, before the habitues of the " Belle Alliance " came 
 trooping in for tlie half-past twelve o'clock table d'hote. Already 
 the atmosphere was odorous with fried sole and ragout de mouton. 
 
 " The gentleman of whom I am in quest is reported to have died 
 on the Island," he continued ; " but this is very likely to have been 
 a false report, and it is quite possible that Captain Strangway may 
 still "
 
 The Day zuill co7nc. ill 
 
 •• Captain Straugway," echoed the woman, with an agitated air. 
 
 " Yes, I see you know all about him. You can liolp mc to find 
 him." 
 
 " Know him !" cried the woman. "I should think I did know 
 liim, to my bitter cost. Captain Strangway was mj' husband." 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " 
 
 " He was my husband. The people \v\\\ be here in a few minutes. 
 If monsieur will do me the honour to step into my sitting-room, wc 
 can talk without interruption." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " The comfort is, you shall be called to no :iioic payments, fear no more 
 tavern bills." 
 
 The dame du comptoir beckoned a waiter, and delegated some por- 
 tion of her supreme authority to him for the next quarter of an hour. 
 She constituted as it were a Regency, and gave her subordinate 
 command over her wine and liqueur bottles, her fine vluimpofiiie, 
 Bass and Guinness ; and then she ushered Theodore Dalbrook into 
 a very small sitting-room at the back of the coimter, so small indeed 
 that a large looking-glass, a porcelain stove, two arm-chairs, and 
 one little table left hardly standing room. 
 
 Theodore followed with a sense of bewilderment. He had told 
 himself that the Island of Jersey was a world so small that he could 
 not have much difliculty in tracmg any man who had lived and 
 died there within the last ten years ; but accident had been kinder 
 to him than he had hoped. 
 
 The lady seated herself in one of the ruby velvet arm-chairs, 
 and motioned him to the other. 
 
 " You have given me a shock, monsieur," she said. " My friends 
 in the island know that my nrarriage was unfortunate, and they 
 never mention my husband. He is forgotten as if he had never 
 been. I sometimes fancy that year of my life was only a troubled 
 dream. p]ven my name is unchanged. I was called Mdlle. Coralic 
 before I maiTied. I am called Madame Coralie now." 
 
 " I am sorry to have caused you painful emotion, madame, but 
 it is most important to me to trace the history of your husband's 
 later years, and I deem myself veiy fortunate in having found you." 
 
 " Is it about a property, a fortune left him, perhaps? " exclaimed 
 Coralie, with sudden animation, hor iine eyes lighting up witli hope. 
 
 " Alas, no. Fortime had nothing in reserve for your unlucky 
 husband."
 
 112 The Day will come. 
 
 " Uiiliick}^, indeed, but not so unlucky as I was in giving my 
 lieart to him. I knew that he was a drunkard. I knew that he had 
 been turned out of tlio navy, and out of the mercantile marine on 
 account of that dreadful vice, — but he — he was very fond of me, 
 poor fellow, and he swore that he would never touch a glass of 
 brandy again as long as he lived, if I would consent to marry him. 
 Tie did turn over a new leaf for a time, and kept himself sober and 
 steady, and would hang over that counter i^or a whole evening 
 talking to me, and take nothing but black coffee. I fhonght I could 
 reform him. I thought it would be a gi'and thing to reform a man 
 like that, a gentleman bred and born, a man whose father had been 
 a great landowner, and whose family name was one of the oldest in 
 England. He was a gentleman in all his ways. He never forgot 
 himself even when he had been drinking. He was a gentleman to 
 the last. Such a fine-looking man too. While he was courting me 
 and kept himself steady he got back his good looks. He looked ten 
 years younger, and I was very proud of him the day we were 
 married. He had taken a house for me, a nice little house on the 
 hill near the Jesuits' College, with a pretty little garden, and I had 
 furnished the house out of my savmgs. I had saved a goodish bit 
 since I came to Jersey, for my uncle is a generous man, and my 
 situation here is a good one. I had over two hundred pounds in 
 hand after I paid for the furniture — these chairs were in my drawing- 
 room, — and he hadn't much more than the clothes he stood upright 
 in, poor fellow. But I wouldn't have minded that if he had only 
 kept himself steady. I was prepared to work for him. I knew I 
 should have to keep him. He was too much of a gentleman to Ijc 
 able to work except in his profession, and that was gone from him 
 for ever ; so I knew it was incumbent on me to work for both, and 
 I thought that by letting our drawing-room floor in the season, and 
 by doing a httle millinery all the year round— I'm a, good milli- 
 ner, monsieur — I thought I could manage to keep a comfortable 
 liome. without touching my two hundred poimds in the Savings 
 Bank." 
 
 " You were a brave, unselfish girl to think so." 
 
 " Ah, sir, we are not selfish when we love. I was very fond of 
 him, poor fellow. I had begun with pitying him, and then he was 
 a thoroughbred gentleman — he was vielle roclie, monsieur, and I 
 have always admired the noblesse. I am no Republican, moi. And 
 lie had such winning ways wlien he was sober — and he was not 
 stupid as other men are when he was dnmk — only more brilliant — 
 Id tetemontee — helas, comme il petillaitcr esprit — but it was his brain 
 that he was burning — that was the fuel that made the light. But 
 how is it you interest yourself in him, monsieur? " she asked, sud- 
 denly, hxing him with Iier sharp black eyes. " You say it is not 
 about propei'ty. You must have a motive, all the same." 
 
 " I have a motive, but my interest is not personal. I am acting
 
 The Day will come, 1 1 3 
 
 for Romc one who now owns the Strangway estate, and who wishes 
 to know what has become of the old family." 
 
 " What can it matter to any one ? " asked Madame Coralie, sus- 
 piciously. " They had lost all their money — of the land that had 
 been theirs not an acre was left. What business is it of any one's 
 what became of them when they were driven from their birth-place. 
 Oh, how my poor Frederick hated the race that had possessed itself 
 of his estate ! There was nothing too bad for them. When he was 
 excited lie would rave about them awfully — a beggarly laAvj'cr, a 
 black-hearted scoundrel, that is what he would call Lord — Lord 
 Shemngton, when he had been drinking." 
 
 Theodore's brow gi-ew thoughtful. How strange this seemed, 
 almost like a confirmation of Juanita's superstitious horror of the 
 banished race. Perhaps it was not unnatural that an unlucky 
 spendthrift — mined, disgraced — should hate the favourite of fortune 
 who had ousted him ; but not with a hate capable of murder, murder 
 in cold blood, the murder of a man who had never injured him 
 even indirectly. 
 
 " Your husband has been dead some years, I conclude ?" lie said, 
 presently. 
 
 " Three years and a half on the tenth of last month." 
 
 " And you had a troul)lesome time with him, I fear ? " 
 
 " Troulile seems a light word for what I went through. It was 
 like living in hell — there is no other word — the hell which a mad- 
 man can make of all around him. For a few weeks wo went on 
 quietly — he seemed contented, and I was very happy, thinking I 
 had cured him. I watched him as a cat watches a mouse, for fear 
 he should go wrong again. He never went out without me ; and at 
 liome I did all that a woman can do to make much of the man she 
 loves, studying him in everything, surrounding him with every little 
 luxury I coidd aflbrd, cooking dainty little meals for him, petting 
 liim as if he had been an idolized child. He seemed grateful, for the 
 iirst few weeks, and almost happy. Then I saw he was beginning 
 to mope a little. He got low-spirited, and would sit over the fire 
 and brood — it was cutting ^larch weather — and would inunii over 
 his blighted life, and his own folly. ' If I had to begin over again,' 
 he would say, 'ah, it would be difl'erent, Cora, it would be all 
 diflerent.' " 
 
 " He was not unkind to you ? " 
 
 "No, he was never unkind, never. To the last, when he died 
 raving mad with delirium tremens, he was always kintl. It was 
 peeing his madness and his ruin that made my trouble. He was 
 violent sometimes, and threatened to kill me, but that was only 
 when he didn't know me. I watched him moping for a week or so, 
 and then one day, I was so unhappy at seeing him fret, that I 
 thought I would do anything to cheer him. I fancied he missed the 
 company in this house, and the cards and dominoes, and billiards — 
 
 \
 
 1 1 4 The Day will come. 
 
 for before we were married he used to dine at the tahle d''Mta two pr 
 three times a week, and used to be in the cafe or in the bilhard- 
 room every night." 
 
 " How did he manage to hve without a profession, and without 
 ostensible means V " 
 
 Madame shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "God knows. I think he used to write to his old friends — hif? 
 brother officers in the navy or the merchant service — and he got a 
 httle from one and a little from another. He would borrow of any 
 one. And there was a small legacy from his mother's sister which 
 fell in to him soon after he came to Jersey. That was all gone 
 before I married him. He hadn't a penny after he'd paid the mar- 
 riage fees. Well, monsieur, seeing him so down-hearted I proposed 
 that he should go down to the ' Belle Alliance ' and have a game at 
 billiards and see his old friends. ' You needn't take any money,' I 
 said, ' my uncle will treat you hospitably.' He seemed pleased at 
 the idea, and he promised to be home earlj'' ; but just as he was 
 leaving the house he turned back and said there was a little bill of 
 thirty shillings he owed to a bootmaker in the street round the 
 corner, and he didn't like to pass the man's shop without paying. 
 Would I let him have the money ? It was the first money he'd 
 asked me for since we were married, and I hachi't the heart to say 
 no, so I went to my Httle cash-box and took out three half sove- 
 reigns. I told him that the money meant a week's housekeepmg. 
 ' I give you nice little dinners, don't I, Fred ? ' I said, ' but you've 
 no idea how economical I am.' He lauglied and kissed me, and 
 said he hated economy, and wished he had a fortune for m.y sake, 
 and he went down the street whistling. Well, sir, perhaps you can 
 guess what happened. He came home at thi-ee o'clock next morn- 
 ing mad with drink, and then I knew he was not to be cured. I 
 went on trying all the same, though, till the last ; and I lived the life 
 of a soul in torment. I was fond of him to the last, and saw him 
 killing himself inch by inch, and saw him die a dreadful death, one 
 yopv and three days after our wedding day. He spent every penny 
 I haa ni the world, and my uncle helped us when that was gone, 
 and I came back to this house after his funeral a broken-hearted 
 woman. All my furniture which I'd worked for was sold to pay the 
 rent, and the doctors, and the undertaker. I just saved the furni- 
 ture in this room, and that is all that is left of four hundred and 
 seventy pounds and of my married life." 
 
 "You were indeed the victim of a generous and confiding heart." 
 
 " I was fond of him to the last, monsieur, and I forgave him all 
 my sufferings ; but let no woman ever marry a drunkard with the 
 hope of reforming him." 
 
 " Were you quite alone in your martyrdom ; had your husband 
 no relatives left to help him on his djdng bed ? " 
 
 " Not one. He told me he was the last of his race. He must
 
 The Day will conic. 1 1 
 
 have had distant relations, I Buppose ; but his elder brother was dead, 
 and his sister." 
 
 '• You arc sure his brother was dead ? " 
 
 " Yes ; lie fell into the water at Nice on a dark evening, when ho 
 was going on board the steamer for Corsica. I have got the paper 
 with the account of his death." 
 
 "Will you show me that paper, ami any other documents relating 
 to your husband's family ? I know I have no right to ask such a 
 favour; but all I can say is that I shall be very grateful if you will 
 so far oblige me." 
 
 The tahlc dlwtc was in full swing in the adjoining room, as testi- 
 fied by the clattering of plates and the jingle of knives and forks, 
 and a subdued murmur as of a good raanj' coufidential conversations 
 carried on simultaneously. 
 
 " You want to sec my poor Fred's private papers," said the widow, 
 meditatively. " That's a good deal to ask ; not that there are any 
 secrets in them that can hurt anybody above ground. The Colonel 
 is dead, and his sister. My husband was the last. But I can't 
 imdcrstand why anybody should want to pry into a dead man's 
 papers, unless there's property hanging to them." 
 
 She looked at Tlieodore suspiciously, as if she could not divest 
 lierself of the idea of a fortune having turned up someliow, unex- 
 l)ectcdly ; a fortune to which her dead husband was entitled. 
 
 " There is no property, I assure you. It is a question of senti- 
 ment, not of money." 
 
 " You're a lawyer, I suppose ? " said Coralie, still suspiciously. 
 
 She supposed that it was only lawj^ers who went about prying 
 into the alfairs of the dead. 
 
 " I am a lawyer ; but the business which brings me to Jersey is 
 not law business." 
 
 '• Well, I don't see how any harm can come to me through yoirr 
 seeing m}' husband's papers. There's not many to see — a few 
 letters from the Colonel, and two or three from a lawyer about the 
 legacj^ and a dozen or so from old friends, refusing or sending him 
 money. You've spoken kindly to me, and I've felt that you could 
 sympathize with me, though you're a stranger — so — well — you may 
 see his letters, thoTigh it hurts me to touch anything that belonged 
 to him, lepaiivre hoinmc." 
 
 She took a bunch of kej-s from her pocket, unlocked the little 
 secretaire, and from one of the drawers produced a bundle of old 
 letters and cuttings from newspapers, whicli siie handed to Theodore 
 Dalbrook, and then seated herself opposite to him, planted her 
 elbows on the table, and watched him while he read, keenly on the 
 alert for any revelation of his purpose which might escape him in 
 the course of his reading. She had not altogether relinquished that 
 idea of an inheritance, or legacy — property of some kind — involved 
 in this endeavour to trace a dead man's history. The explanation
 
 1 1 6 The Day will come. 
 
 which Theodore had given had not convinced her. He had con- 
 fessed himself a lawyer, and that was in itself enough to made her 
 doubt him. 
 
 The cuttings from old newspapers belonged to the days when 
 Frederick Strangway had commanded a war-ship, to the days when 
 he fought in the Chinese war. Some of them recorded the honour 
 he had won for himself at different stages of his career, and it was 
 only natural that these should have been carefully presented by him 
 in all his wanderings. But there were other cuttings — the report of 
 the court martial that broke him — the trial in which he stood accused 
 of having risked the loss of his ship with all hands aboard by his dis- 
 solute habits — a shameful and a painful story. This record of his folly 
 had been kept by that strange perversity of the human mind which 
 makes a man secrete and treasure documents which must wi'ing his 
 lieart and bow his head with shame every time he looks at them. 
 There were other extracts of a like shameful kind — reports of street 
 rows, two cases of drunken assault in San Francisco, one of a fight 
 in Sydney harbour. He had kept them all as if they had been words 
 of praise and honour. 
 
 The letters were most of them trivial — letters from brother 
 officers of the past — " very sorry to hear of your embarrassments," 
 '■regret inability to do more than the enclosed small cheque," "the 
 numerous claims upon my purse render it impossible for me to grant 
 the ban requested," the usual variations upon the old tune in which 
 a heavily-taxed jpa^er familias fences with the appeal of an unlucky 
 acquaintance. They were such letters as are left by the portmanteau- 
 lul among ^the effects of the man for whom the world has been too 
 hard. 
 
 Theodore put aside all this correspondence after a brief glance, 
 nnd there remained only four letters in the same strong, resolute 
 hand — the hand of Reginald Strangway. 
 
 The first in date was written on Army and Navy Club paper, and 
 was addressed to Captain Strangway, R.N., H.M.S. Coh-a, Hong 
 Kong. 
 
 " My dear Fked, 
 
 "I have been sorry to leave your letter so long un- 
 answered, but I am bothered about a great many things. My wife 
 has been out of health for nearly a year. The doctors fear her chest 
 is affected, and tell me I ought to get her away from England before 
 the winter. As things have been going very badly with me for a 
 long time I shall not be sorry to cut this beastly town, whore the 
 men who have made their money, God knows how, are now upon 
 the crest of the wave, and by their reckless expenditure have made 
 it impossible for a man of small means to live in London — if he 
 wants to live hke a gentleman. Everything is t^ace as dear as it 
 used to be when I was a subaltern. My wife and I are pigging in
 
 The Day will come. 1 1 7 
 
 two rooms on a second floor in Jermyn Street. I live at my club, 
 and she lives on her relatives, so that we don't often have to sit 
 down to a lodging-house dinner of burnt soles and greasy chops, 
 but the whole busuiess is wretched. She has to go to parties in a 
 fi)ur-\vhcc'l cab, and I can hardly afford the risk of a rubber. Sc 
 I sliall bo uncommonly glad to cut it all, and settle in some out-oi- 
 tho-way place where we can live cheap, and where the climate will 
 suit 'Millicont. 
 
 •• My tirst idea was Algiers, but things are still rather unsettlcii 
 there, as jou know. Lambton, of the Guards, has been shooting in 
 Corsica lately, and came home with a glowing account of the 
 climate and the cheapness of the inns, which are roughish, but clean 
 and fairly comfortable ; so I have determined on Corsica. We sliall 
 be within a day's sail of Nice, so not utterly out of reach of civiliza- 
 tion, and we can live there liow we like, without entertaining a 
 mortal, or having to buy new clothes. I^Iillicent, who is fond of 
 novelty, is in love with the notion, and Dangerlicld has behaved 
 very well to her, promising her an extra hundred a year if we will 
 live quietly and keep out of debt, which, considering he is as poor 
 as Job, is not so bad. As for my creditors, they are pretty quiet 
 since I got Aunt Belle's legacy, part of whicli I divided among 'em 
 as a sop to Cerberus. They'll have to be still quieter when I'm 
 settled in Corsica. 
 
 "Of course, you heard of that wretched woman's kicking over 
 the traces altogether at last. God knows what will become of her. 
 I believe she had been cariying on rather badly for some time 
 before Tom found out anything. You know what an ass he is. 
 However, he got hold of a letter one evening — met the postman at 
 the door and took her letters along with his own. and didn't like the 
 look of one and opened it; and then there was an infernal row, and 
 she just put on lier bonnet and shawl, walked out of the house and 
 called a eab and drove olF. lie followed in another cab, but it was 
 a foggy night, and he lost her before she'd gone tar. Tiiey were in 
 lodgings in Kssex Street, and it isn't easy for one cab to chaso 
 another on a foggy evening. She never went back to him, and he 
 went all over London denouncing her. naming lirst one man and 
 tlien another, but without any deliMJtc idea as to who the real man 
 was. The letter was oidy a couple of sentences in Italian, which 
 Tom oidy know by sight — but he could sec it was an appointment 
 at a theatre, for the theatre and hour were named. She snatched 
 the letter out of his hand while they were quarrelling, he told me, and 
 chucked it into the lire, so he hasn't even the man's handwriting as 
 evidence against him. It was a hand he had never seen before, he 
 says. However, if lie wants to find her no doubt he can do so, if ho 
 takes the trouble. I am sorry she should disgi'ace her family, and 
 of course my wife feels the scandal uncommonly hard iipon her. I 
 can't say that I feel any pity lor Tom Darcy. She had led a
 
 1 1 8 The Day zuill come. 
 
 wretched life with him ever since he sold out, and I don't much 
 wonder at her being deuced glad to leave him. As it's Tom's 
 business to shoot her lover, and not mine, I shan't mix myself up in 
 the aflair — and as for her, well, she has made her bed ! " 
 
 There was more in the letter, but the rest was of no interest t« 
 Theodore. 
 
 The letter was dated January 3rd, 1851. 
 
 Three of the remaining letters Avere from Corsica, and contained 
 nothing of any significance. A fourth was written at Monte Carlo, 
 in answer to an apjjeal for money, and the date was twelve years 
 later than the first. It was a gloomy letter, the letter of a ruined 
 man, who had di'unk the cup of disappointment to the dregs. 
 
 " To ask me for help seems like a ghastly joke on your part. 
 Whatever your troubles may be, I fancy my lookout is darker than 
 yours. My wife and I have vegetated on that accursed island for 
 just a dozen years — it seems like a lifetime to look back upon. We 
 just had enough to live upon while my father was alive, for, bad as 
 things were at Cheriton, he contrived to send me something. Now 
 that he is gone, and the estate has been sold by the mortgagees, 
 there is nothing left for me — and we have been living for the last two 
 years upon the pittance my poor Milly gets from her father. What- 
 ever your cares may be, you don't know what it is to have a sick 
 wife whose condition requires every luxury and indulgence, and to 
 have barely enough for bread and cheese. If you were to see the 
 house we live in — the tiled floors and the dilapidated furniture — and 
 the windows that won't shut — and the shutters that won't keep to, 
 and our two Corsican servants who look like a brace of savages, 
 though they are good creatures in the main— you would be the last 
 man to howl about your own troubles to me. 
 
 "I have been here a month, and with my usual diabolical luck. 
 I am going home to-morrow — though perhaps I should be wiser if 
 I went up into the hills behind Monaco and put a bullet through my 
 brains. Millicent would be no worse off, God help her ; for she is 
 entirely dependent on her father, and I am only an incubus, — but 
 she might think herself worse off, poor soul, so I suppose I had 
 better go home. 
 
 '' What am I thinking about ? I can't aftbrd to take refuge in 
 the suicide's haven. My life is insured in the Imperial for £3,000, 
 and poor old Dangerfield has been paying the premium ever since 
 I began to go to the bad financially. It would be too hard upon 
 him if I shot myself." 
 
 This was the last letter, and it was endorsed by the brother's hand. 
 
 "Reginald's last letter. I read in the Times newspaper of his 
 being drowned at Nice ten days afterwards." 
 
 Theodore made a note of the dates of these letters, and the name
 
 The Day will come. 1 1 9 
 
 of the insurance ofllce. Provided with these data it wonkl be easy 
 for him to verify the fact of Colonel Strani^way's death, and tlnis 
 bring the history of the two sons of old Scjuire Strangway to its 
 dismal close in dust and darkness. 
 
 And thus -would be answered Juanita's strange suspicion of the 
 house of Strangway, answered with an unanswerable answer. Who 
 can argue with Death? Is not that at least the end of all things — 
 the road that leads no whither? 
 
 There remained for hiiu only the task of tracing the erring 
 daughter to her last resting-place. This would doubtless be moio 
 difficult, as a runaway wife living under a false name, and in all 
 probability going from ]<lace to place, was likely to have left but 
 faint and uncertain indications of her existence. But the first 
 part of his task had been almost too easy. He felt that he could 
 take no credit for what he had done, could expect no gratitude from 
 Juanita. 
 
 He thanked Mrs. Strangway — alias Madame Coralie — for her 
 politeness, and asked to be allowed to oft'er her a ten-pound note as 
 a trilling acknowledgment of the favour she had done him. She 
 promptly accepted this oil'oring, and was only the more convinced 
 that there was " property " involved in the lawyer's researches. 
 
 " If there is anything to come to me from any of his relations, I 
 hope nobody will try to keep me out of it," she said. " I hope his 
 friends will remember that I gave him my last shilling, and nursed 
 him when there wasn't manv would have staved in the room with 
 him ? " 
 
 Theodt)re reiterated his assurance that no question of monej' or 
 inheritance was involved in his mission to the Island, and then bade 
 the Captain's widov/ a respectful adieu, and threaded his way through 
 the avenue of tables to the door, and out of the garlic-charged 
 atmosphere into the fresh autumnal air. 
 
 lie stayed one night in Jersey, and left at eleven o'clock the 
 next mornini^ on board the Fanny, and slept in his chambers in 
 Ferret Court, after having written a long letter to Juanita with a 
 full account of all that he iiad learnt from the hps of the v/idow. and 
 from the letters of the dead. 
 
 " I do not surrender my hope of finding the murderer," he wrote 
 finally, "but you must now agree with me that I must look else- 
 whore than among the remnants of the Strangway race. They can 
 prove an unanswerable alibi — the grave." 
 
 lie went to the oflice of the Imperial next morning, saw the 
 secretary, and ascertained that the amount of the policy upon 
 Colonel Strangway's life had been paiil to Lady ]Millicent Strang- 
 way, his widow, in April, 18G3, after the directors had received 
 indisputable evidence of his death. 
 
 " I remember the case perfectly," said the secretary. "The 
 circumstances were peculiar, and there was a suspicion of suicide,
 
 1 20 The Day will come. 
 
 us the man had just left Monte Carlo, and was known to have lost 
 his last napoleon, after a most extraordinary run of luck. There 
 was some idea of disputing the claim ; but if he did make away 
 with himself he had contrived to do it so cleverly that it would have 
 been uncommonly difficult to prove that his death was not an 
 accident — more particularly as Lord Dangerfield brought an action 
 against the steamboat company for wilful negligence in regard to 
 their gangway and deficient lighting. The poUcy was an old one, 
 too, and so it was decided not to litigate." 
 
 " There could bo no doubt as to the identity of the man who was 
 drowned at Nice, I conclude ? " 
 
 " No, the question of identity was carefully gone into. Lord 
 Dangerfield happened to be wintering at Cannes that year, and he 
 heard of his son-in-laAv's death in time to go over and identify the 
 body before it was coffined. You know how quickly burial follows 
 death in that part of the world, and there would have been no 
 ]iossibility of the widow getting over from Ajaccio before the fimeral. 
 We had Lord Dangerfield's declaration that the body he saw at Nice 
 was the body of Colonel Strangway, and we paid the £3,000 on that 
 evidence. We have never had any reason to suspect error or foul 
 play." 
 
 CnAPTER xin. 
 
 " I'hou takest not away, Death ? 
 Tbou strikest — absence perishetb, 
 Indifference is no more ; 
 The future brightens on our sight : 
 For on the past hath fallen a light 
 That tempts us to adore." 
 
 While Juanita clung with feverish intensity to the hoi)e of dis- 
 covering her husband's murderer Lord Cheriton seemed to be 
 gradually resigning himself to the idea that the crime would go to 
 swell the long list of undiscovered murders which he could recall 
 within his own experience of life — crimes which had kept society 
 expectant and on the alert for a month, and which had stimulated 
 the police to unwonted exertions, finally to fade into olilivion, or to 
 be occasionally cited as an example of the mysteriousness of human 
 history. 
 
 He had offered a large reward, he had brought all his own trained 
 intelligence to bear upon the subject; he had thought and 
 brooded upon it by day and by night; and the result had been 
 nil. A hand had been stretched out of the darkness to slay an
 
 The Day luill come. 121 
 
 unoffending young man, in whose life liis (l.aughter\s happiness had 
 licen bound up. That was the whole history of the murder. A 
 shot heard la the night, a bullet fired out of the darkness with fatal 
 iiim. 
 
 Not one indication, not one suggestive fact had been discovered 
 since the night of the murder. 
 
 " It is hopeless," said Lord Cheritou, talking over the calamity 
 with ^Ir. Scarsdale, the Vicar of Cheriton and Testwick, adjoining 
 1 larishes ; " the crime and the motive of the crime are alike inscrutable. 
 If one could imagine a reason for the act it might be easier to get 
 Hjiun the track of the murderer; but there is no reason that I can 
 conceive for such a deed. It has been suggested to me that Sir 
 (iodfrey might have had a secret enemy — that his life might not 
 have been as spotless as we think " 
 
 " I will answer for it that he was never guilty of a dishonourable 
 action, that he provoked no man's hatred by any imworthy act," 
 iiiti'rrupted the Vicar warmly. 
 
 He had been curate at Milbrooklicfore he got the Cheriton liWug, 
 and had lived for two years at the Priory while he prepared Godfrey 
 ("armichael for Eton, so he claimed the right to vouch for the honour 
 of the dead. 
 
 " There never was a whiter soid in mortal clay," said the Vicar. 
 
 " I am inclined to estimate his character almost as highly as you," 
 replied Lord Cheriton, deliberately, " yet the straiglitest walker 
 may make one false step — and tlicre may have been some unfortunate 
 entanglement at the University or in London " 
 
 " I will never believe it. lie may have been tempted — he may 
 Ii;i\e yielded to temptation, — but if he erred, be sure he atoned for 
 his error to the uttermost of his power." 
 
 " There are errors — seeming light to the steps that stumble — 
 which cannot be atoned for." 
 
 "There was no such error in his youth. I looked in his face on 
 his wedtling day, Lord Cheriton, and it was the face of a man of 
 imblcmished life — a man Avho need fear no ghost out of the dead 
 past." 
 
 " Well, you are right, I believe, — and in that case the murder is 
 motiveless — tlie murder of a madman — a madman so profomnlly 
 artful in his lunacy as to escape every eye. By heaven, I wish wc 
 had the old way of hunting such a quarry — and that a leash of 
 bloodhouiuls could have beeii set loose upon his track within an 
 hour of the murder. Thoj would have hunted him down — ihnr 
 instinct would have found \m\\ skulking and shivering in his lair; 
 and we should have needed no astute detective primed with all the 
 traditions of Scotland Yard. It would have been swift, sudden 
 justice — blood for blood." 
 
 His dark grey eyes shone with an angi-y light as he walked up 
 and down the spacious floor of the hbrary, while the Vicar stood in
 
 122 The Day zvill come. 
 
 front of the fire, looking gravely into his clerical hat, and without 
 
 any suggestion to offer. 
 
 " I hope Lady Carmichael is recovering her spirits," he said feehly, 
 after a pause. 
 
 " She is not any happier than she was when her loss was a week 
 old; but she keeps up in a wonderful way. I believe she is 
 sustained by some wild notion that the murderer will be found — 
 that she will live to see her husband's death avenged. I doubt if 
 at present she has any other interest in life." 
 
 " But let us hope she will be cheered by the society of her 
 husband's people. I hear that the Morningsides and the Grenvilles 
 are to be at the Priory in November." 
 
 " Indeed ! I have heard nothing about it." 
 
 " I was at Swanage yesterday afternoon, and took tea with Lady 
 Jane. She was full of praises of Lady Carmichael's goodness, and 
 her desire that all things at the Priory might be just as they had 
 been in Sir Godfrey's lifetime. His brothers-in-law used to be 
 invited for the shooting in November, and they were to be invited 
 this year, on condition that Lady Jane would help to entertain 
 them, and Lady Jane has consented gladly. So thei-e will be a 
 large family party at the Priory on this side of Christmas," concluded 
 the Vicar. 
 
 "I am glad to hear it," said Lord Cheriton. "Anything is 
 better for her than solitude ; any occupation, if it be only revising a 
 bill of fare, or listening to feminine twaddle, is better for her tlian 
 idleness." 
 
 " Yes, there will be a houseful," pursued the Vicar; " Mrs. Grea- 
 ville takes her nursery Avith her wherever she goes." 
 
 " And Mrs. Morningside is delighted to leave hers behind her." 
 
 " Yes, she is one of those mothers who are always telling people 
 what paragons of nurses Providence has provided for their darlings, 
 or how admirably their children are being brought up by a model 
 governess," said the Vicar, who was severe iipon other people's 
 neglect of duty. "By-the-by, talking of mothers, I beheve I saw 
 Mrs. Porter's daughter the other day Avliile I was in town." 
 
 " You helip.ve you saw her? " 
 
 " Yes, I am not certain. A face flashed past me in the street 
 one night, and when the face was gone it came upon me that it 
 was Mercy Porter's eyes that looked at me for an instant in the 
 gaslight. I was in a busy thoroughfare on the Surrey side of 
 Westminster Bridge. I had been to hear Vansittart preach a 
 mission sermon at a church near Walworth, and I was walking 
 back to the West End. It was late on a Saturday night, and the 
 road was full of costerraongers' barrows, and the pavement was 
 crowded with working people doing their marketing. I ti-ied to 
 overtake the girl whose face had startled me, but it was no use. 
 She had melted into the crowd. I went back the whole length of
 
 The Day zvill conic. 123 
 
 tlio street, Imping I might find hor iu front of one of the costers' 
 stalls ; but sho must have turned into one of the numerous sido 
 streets, and it was hopeless to hunt for her there. Yet I should 
 have been very glad to get hold of her." 
 
 " Is she much changed ? " 
 
 'Chanfjed! Yes. It was only the ghost of Mercy Porter that 
 I saw. I should not have known her but for her eyes. She had 
 fine eyes, do you remember, and with a great deal of expression 
 in them. I think I should be safe in swearing to Mercy Porter's 
 eyes." 
 
 " Did she look poor or ill ? " 
 
 " She looked both' — but the illness might be only hunger. She 
 had that wan pinched look one sees in the faces of the London 
 poor, especially in the women's faces." 
 
 " Have you told her mother ? " 
 
 " No, I came to the conclusion that it would be givuig the poor 
 soul useless pain to tell her anything, having so little to tell. Sho 
 knew years ago that Colonel Tremaine had deserted his victim, and 
 tliat the girl had dropped through. God knows where : into the 
 abyss that swallows up handsome young women who I>egin tlieir 
 career in West End lodgings and a hired brougham. If the motlicr 
 were to go in quest of her, and bring her home here, it might be 
 only to bring shame and misery upon her declining j^ears. The 
 creature may have fallen too low for the possibility of reformation, 
 and the mother's last hours might be darkened by her sin. I would 
 do much to rescue her — but I would rather try to save her through 
 a stranger's help than by the mother's intervention." 
 
 Lord Cheriton continued his pacing to and fro, and did not appear 
 particularly interested in the case of Mercy Porter. He had been 
 much troubled by her flight from Cheriton. for the seducer was his 
 own familiar friend, and he had felt himself in somewise to blamo 
 for having lirought such a man to Cheriton. Ho told himself that 
 ho would not have had Tremaine inside his house had his own 
 daughter been out of the schoolroom ; and yet he had allowed the 
 man to cross the path of the widow's only child, and to bring deso- 
 lation and soiTow upon the woman whose life he had in somewise 
 taken under his ])rotection. 
 
 " There are people wliose mission it is to hunt out that kind of 
 misery," he said, after an interval of silence. " I hope one of those 
 good women will rescue IMcrcy Porter. I think you have been 
 wise in saying nothing to the mother. She has got over hor 
 trouble, and anything she might hear about the girl would only be 
 a reopening of old wounds." 
 
 "She is a wonderful woman," replied the vicar; "I never saw 
 such grief as hers when the girl ran away ; and yet within a few 
 months she had calmed down into the placid personage sho has 
 been ever since. Sho is a woman of very powerful mind. I
 
 124 '^^^^ ^^y "^^^^ come. 
 
 sometimes wonder that even at her age she can content herself 
 with the monotonous life she leads in that cottage." 
 
 "Oh, she likes the place, I believe, and the life suits her," said 
 Lord Cheriton, carelessl}'. " She had seen a good deal of trouble 
 before she came here, and this was a quiet haven for her after the 
 storms of life. I am very sorry the daughter went wrong," he added, 
 with a sudden cloud upon liis face. " Tluit was a bitter blow ; and 
 I shall never forgive myself for having brought that scoundrel 
 Tremaiue here." 
 
 " lie is dead, is he not ? " 
 
 " Yes, be was killed in Afghanistan six years ago. He was a 
 good soldier though he was a bad man. I dare say he made his 
 being ordered off to India an excuse for leaving Mercy — left her 
 with a trifle of money perhaps, and a promise of further remittances, 
 and then let her drift. I told my lawyer to keep his eye upon her, 
 if possible, and to establish her in some respectable calling if ever 
 he saw the chance of doing so ; but she eluded him somehow, as 
 you know." 
 
 '' Yes, j'ou told me what you had done. It was like you to think 
 even of so remote a claim upon your generosity." 
 
 " Oh, she belonged to Cheriton. I have cultivated the patriarchal 
 feeling as much as I can. All who live upon my land are under my 
 protection." 
 
 " Lady Cheriton has been a good friend to jMrs. Porter too." 
 
 " My wife is always kind." 
 
 Juanita accepted her cousin's account of what he had heard and 
 read at St. Ileliers, as the closing of his researches in the history 
 of the Strangways. The sister's death in a shabby exile remained 
 to be traced ; but there was no light to be expected there ; and 
 Juanita felt tliat she must now submit to surrender her superstition 
 about that evil race. It was not from them the blow had come. 
 The miu-derer had to be hunted for in a wider range, and the quest 
 would be more difficult than she had thought. She was not the less 
 intent upon discovery because of this difficulty. 
 
 " I have all my life before me," she told herself, " and I have 
 nothing to live for but to see his murderer punished."' 
 
 It had been Juanita's especial, desire that the Morningsides and 
 the Grenvilles should be invited to the Priory just as they had been 
 in Sir Godfrey's lifetime — that all the habits of the household should 
 be as he had willed them when his bodily presence was there among 
 them, as he was now in the spirit, to Juanita's imagination. She 
 thought of him every hour of the day, and in all things deferred to 
 his opinions and ideas, shaping the whole course of her life to please 
 him who was lying in that dark resting-place where there is neither 
 pain nor pleasure. 
 
 When November came, however, and with it the group of 
 Grenvilles, nurses and nursery governess, and the Morningsides
 
 The Day will come. 125 
 
 with valet and maid, it seemed to Juaiiita as if the wild conipanioni; 
 of Comus or a contingent from I'odlam had invaded the sober old 
 I'riory. Those loud voices in the hall, that perpetual running up and 
 down and talking and laughing upon the staircase ; the everlasting 
 opening and shutting of doors ; the roll of carriage-wheels driving 
 up to the door a dozen times in a day; the bustle and fuss and 
 commotion which two cheerful families in rude health can contrive 
 to make in a house where they feel themselves perfectly at home — 
 all these things were agonizing to the mourner who had lived in 
 silence and shadow from the hour of her loss until now. IIapj)ily, 
 however, Lady Jane was there to take all tlie burden off those 
 weary shoulders; and Lady Jane in the character of a grandmother 
 was in her very fittest sphere. Between her ladyship and the 
 housekeeper all arrangements were made, and every detail was 
 attended to without inflicting the slightest trouble upon Juanita. 
 
 " You shall sec just as little of them all as you like, dear," said 
 Lady Jane. " You can breakfast and lunch in your morm'ng-rooin. 
 and just come down to dinner when you feel equal to being with us, 
 and then you will see the darlings at dessert. I know tlicy will 
 cheer you, with their pretty little ways. Such loving pets as they are 
 too, and so full of intelligence. Did I tell you what Johnnie said 
 yesterday, at lunch ? " 
 
 "Yes, dear Lady Jane, you did tell me. It was very funny," 
 replied Juanita, with a faint smile. 
 
 She could not tell that adoring grandmother that the children 
 ■were a burden to her, and that those intelligent speeches and deliglit- 
 fid mispronunciations of polysyllabic words which convulsed part'uts 
 and grandparent seemed to add perceptibly to her own gloom. 
 She pretended to be interested in Tom's letter from Eton with a 
 modest request for a large hanii)er, and she made a martyr of her- 
 self by showing Susie picture-books, and explaining the pictures, or 
 by telling Lucy her favourite Hans Andersen story, which never 
 
 palled upon that young listener. 
 «' Don*t 
 
 you think you would like a new one ? " Juanita would 
 ask. 
 
 " No, no, not a new one — the same, please. I want ' The Proud 
 Darning Needle.' " 
 
 So the adventures of "The Proud Darning Needle" had to be 
 read or related as the case might be. 
 
 Juanita took Lady Jane's advice and spent the greater jiart of every 
 day in her morning-room, that room which had been Godfrey's den. 
 It was further from the staircase than any other sitting-room, and 
 the clatter and the shrill voices were somewhat modified by distance. 
 The house-party amused themselves after their hearts' desire, and 
 worked the horses with the true metropolitan feeling that a horse is 
 au animal designed for locomotion, and that he can't have too much 
 of it. Lady Jane was the most indulgent of deputy hostesses, and
 
 126 The Day zvill come. 
 
 spent all breakfixst time in cutting sandwiches of a particularly 
 dainty kind for her sons-in-law, so that they might be sustained 
 between the luxurious home breakfast at nine, and the copious 
 luncheon with which the cart met the shooters by appointment at 
 half-past one. When the shooters had started there were the httle 
 Grenvilles to slave for ; and Lady Jane spent another half-hour in 
 seeing them oft" upon their morning constitutional, Lucy on her 
 Shetland, and Johnnie, Susie, and Godolphin on their short little 
 legs, with groom and nurses in attendance. There were so many 
 wraps to be adjusted, so many injunctions to be given to nurses and 
 groom, so many little pockets to be filled with gingerbreads and 
 queen-cakes, while Mrs. Grenville looked on, and protested against 
 gi'andmamma's infraction of hj^gienic rules. Dr. Dobson Drooce had 
 said they must never eat between meals. 
 
 Juanita rarely appeared before afternoon tea, when she was 
 generally installed in her own particular easy-chair by the fire, 
 fenced round by a seven-leaved Indian screen, which was big 
 enough to include a couple of small tables and a creepie stool, 
 before the sisters-in-law came in from their afternoon di'ive, or the 
 shooters dropped in after their day in the woods. There were no 
 other guests than the sisters and their husbands ; and it was an 
 rmderstood thing that no one else should be asked, unless it were 
 Lord and Lady Cheriton, the Dalbrooks from Dorchester, or Mr. 
 Scarsdale. 
 
 No one could have been sweeter than the young widow was to 
 her visitors during the hours she spent with them, listening with 
 inexhaustible patience to Jessica Grenville's gi'aphic account of the 
 measles as lately "taken" by her whole brood, with all the after 
 consequences of the malady, and the amount of cod-liver oil and 
 quinine consumed by each patient ; pretending to be interested \\\ 
 Ituth Morningside's perpetual disquisitions upon smart people and 
 smart people's frocks ; and in every way performing her duty as a 
 hostess. 
 
 And yet George Grenville was not altogether satisfied. 
 
 " I'll tell you what it is, Jess," he said to his wife one night, in 
 the luxurious privacy of the good old-fashioned bedroom, seated on 
 tiie capacious sofa in front of the monumental four-poster, witii 
 elaborately-turned columns, richly-moulded cornice, and heavy 
 damask curtains ; the kind of bedstead for which our ancestors 
 gave iifty guineas, and for which no modern auctioneer can obtain a 
 bid of fifty shillings ; " I'll tell you what it is, Jess," repeated Mr. 
 Grenville, frowning at the fire, " either your brother's widow gives 
 herself confounded airs, or there is something in the wind." 
 
 "I'm afraid so, George," replied his wife, meekly. 
 
 " You're afraid of what ? Why the deuce can't you be coherent ? 
 Afraid of her airs " 
 
 " I'm afraid there is — something in the wind," faltered the sub-
 
 The Day will conic. 127 
 
 missive lady. '• I suppose it's tlio best thing that could happen to 
 lier, poor girl, for a nursery will be an occupation for lier mind, and 
 prevent her brooding on her loss ; but this place would have been 
 very nice for Tom all the same." 
 
 ''I should think it would indeed, and ho ought not to be swindled 
 out of it," saiil ^Ir. Grenville, with a disgusted air. " I — I am sur- 
 prised at your sister-in-law ! I have always considered that there is 
 a kind of indelicacy in a ])Osthumous child. It may be a prejudice 
 on my part, but I have always felt a sort of revulsion when I have 
 heard of such creatures," and j\Ir. Grenville curled his lordly aquiline 
 nose, and made a wry face at the jovial tire, l)lazing hospitably, 
 heaped high with coals and wood, and roaring up towards the frosty 
 sky. 
 
 CIIAPTER XIV. 
 
 "Then tbroii:;li my brain the tliouf^ht did ptisi', 
 Kven as a flash of lipfhtninj:; tliero, 
 That there was soinethint; in her air, 
 Wliich would not doom me to despair ; 
 And on the tliought my words broke forth." 
 
 IT Af?nrs'0T0X Dat^brook was as keenly imprcsRcd with a sense of 
 stupendous self-sacrilice in giving up his prospects in the Church as 
 if the Primacy had only been a question of time ; yet as his Divinity 
 examination had twice ended in disappointment and a shamefaced 
 return to the paternal roof-tree, it might be thought that, in his 
 friend Sir Henry Baldwin's j)hraseology, ho was very well out of it. 
 Sir Henry was the average young man of the epoch, shai-p, shallow, 
 and with a strong belief in his own superiority to the human race in 
 general, and naturally to a friend whose father plodded over leases 
 and agreements in an old-fashioned office in a country town ; but 
 the two young men happened to have been thrown together at 
 O.xford. where Sir Henry was at Christ Church while Harrington 
 Dalbrook was at New ; and as Sir Henry's ancestral home was 
 within six miles of Dorchester, the friendship begun at the University 
 was continued in the county town. 
 
 Sir Henry lived at a good old Georgian house called the [Mount, 
 between Dorchester and Weymouth. It was a red brick house, 
 with a centre and two wings, a Corinthian portico of Portland stone, 
 and a wide level lawn in front of the portico, that was brilliant with 
 scarlet geraniums all the summer. There were no novelties in the 
 way of gardening at the [Mount, and there were never likely to be 
 any new departures while Lady Baldwin held the reins of power.
 
 128 The Day will come. 
 
 She was known in the locaUty as a lady of remarkable " closeness," 
 a lady who pared do'wn every department of expenditure to the 
 very bone. The gardens and shrubberies were always in perfect 
 order, neat, trim, weedless ; but everything was reduced to the 
 minimum of outlay ; there were no new plants or shrubs, no 
 specimen trees, no innovations or improvements ; there was very 
 little " glass," and there were only two gardeners to do the work in 
 grounds for which most people would have kept four or five. 
 
 The dowager was never ashamed to allude to the smallness of 
 her jointure or to bemoan her son's college debts. She had two 
 daughters, the younger pale, sickly, and insignificant ; the elder tall 
 and large, with a beauty of the showy and highly-coloured order, 
 brown eyes, a complexion of milk and roses, freely sprinkled with 
 freckles, and light wavy hair, which in a young woman of meaner 
 station might have been called red. 
 
 The neighbourhood was of opinion that it was time for the elder 
 Miss Baldwin to marry, and that she ought to marry well ; but that 
 important factor in marriage, the bridegroom, was not forthcoming. 
 It was a ground of complaint against Sir Henry that he never 
 brought any eligible young men to the Mount. 
 
 " My mother's housekeeping would frighten them away if I did," 
 answered Henry, when hard driven upon this point. " The young 
 men of the present day like a good dinner. There isn't a tliird-rate 
 club in London where the half-crown house dinner isn't better than 
 the food we have here — better cooked and more plentiful." 
 
 " Perhaps, if you helped mother a little things would be more 
 comfortable than they are," remonstrated Laura, the younger sister, 
 who generally took upon herself the part of Mentor. " You must 
 know that her income isn't enough to keep up this place as it ought 
 to be kept." 
 
 " I don't know anything of the kind. I believe she is hoarding 
 and scraping for you two girls ; but she'll find by-and-by that she 
 has been penny wise and pound foolish, for nobody worth having 
 vdll ever propose to Juhet in such a dismal hole as this," continued 
 the baronet, scornfully surveying the old-fashioned furniture, which 
 had never been vivified by modem frivohties, or made more luxurious 
 by modern inventions. 
 
 " " Juliet is not the beginning and end of our lives," replied Laura, 
 soin-ly. " She has plenty of opportunities, if she were only capable 
 of using them. I know her visiting costs a small fortune." 
 
 " A very small one," said Juhet; " I have fewer gowns than any 
 girl I meet, and have to give smaller tips when I am leaving. The 
 servants are hardly civil to me when I go back to a house." 
 
 " I dare say not," retorted Laura, " considering that you expect 
 other people's maids to do more for you than your own maid would 
 do, if you had one." 
 
 Juliet sighed, and shrugged her graceful shoulders*
 
 The Day icill come. 129 
 
 " It is all vci'y liunid and very sordid," she said, " and I wish I 
 uiTO dead." 
 
 '■ 1 don't go so far as that," replied Lam-a, "but I wish with all 
 my heart you were married, and that naother and I could live in 
 l.c-acc." 
 
 AH this meant that the handsome IMiss Baldwin was seven and 
 twenty, and that although she had drunk the cup of praise from 
 men and women, not one clipbli! man with place and fortune to 
 ofl'er luid oiVerod himself. Kligible men had admired and had 
 praised and had ilattered, and had ridden away, like the kni;:;ht of 
 old, and had married some other girl ; a girl with money generally, 
 an American girl sometimes. Juliet Baldwin hated the very name 
 of Cohmibus. 
 
 For want of some one better to flirt with, Juliet had flirted with 
 Harrington Dalbrook. lie was her junior by two years, and on his 
 lirst visit to the Mount had succumbed to her beauty, and to the 
 cliarm of manners which somewhat exaggerated the progressive 
 spirit of the smart world. Miss Baldwin was amused by her con- 
 quest, though slie had no idea of allowing her acquaintance with her 
 brother's friend to travel beyond the strictest limits of that st;ite of 
 things which our neighbours call " llirtage." But " flirtage " nowa- 
 days is somewhat comprcliensive; and with Juliet it went so far as 
 to allow her admirer to gratify her with offerings of gloves and 
 flowers for her ball-dresses, when she was staying with friends in 
 Bclgravia, and the young man was taking a holiday in London. 
 
 It may be that the fascinations of this young lady had something 
 to do with Harrington's faihire to pass his Divinity examination, 
 juid with his subsequent renunciation of the Church of l^igland for 
 the wider faith of the naturalist and tlie metaphysician. lie told 
 liis family tiiat he had got beyond Christianity as it was midorstood 
 by Ciiurchmen, and set forth in the Tiiirty-nine Articles, lie hail 
 gone from the river to tlie sea, as he explained it, from the narrow 
 banket 1-in river of orthodoxy to the wide ocean of the new faith — 
 faith in humanity — faith in a universal brotherhood — faith in one's 
 self as superior to anything else in tho universe, past or present. 
 In this enlightened attitude he had grasped at Theodore's ofler, — all 
 the more eagerly, perhaps, because he had lately heard Juliet 
 Baldwin's emphatic declaration apropos to nothing particular — that 
 she would never marry a parson, and that the existence of a parson's 
 wife in town or country seomed to her of all lives the most odious. 
 
 Would she take more kindly to a lawyer, he asked himself with 
 a siidcing heart. Would a country practice, life in an old-fashioned 
 liousc in an old-fashioned market-town, satisfy her ambition ? Ho 
 fejired not. If he wanted that radiant creature for his wife, he must 
 exchange country for town, Dorchester fu" Lincoln's Inn Fields, and 
 a house in Ciiester Street, or at least Gloucester Place. She had 
 been used to Bclgravia ; but she might perhaps tolerate the neigh- 
 
 K
 
 130 The Day zuill conic. 
 
 liomliood of Portraan Square, the unaristocratic sound of Baker 
 Street, the convenience of Atlas omnibuses, until he should be able 
 to start his brougham. 
 
 Led on by this guiding star he told himself that what he had to 
 do was to become learned in the law, particularly in the science,'art, 
 and mystery of conveyancing, which branch of a familj^ practice he 
 believed to be at once dignified and lucrative. He had to make 
 liimself master of his profession, to make his experiments upon the 
 inferior clay of Dorsetshire — upon farmers and small gentry, — and 
 then to persuade his father to buy him a London practice, au 
 aristocratic London practice, such as should not call a blush to the 
 cheek of a fashionable wife. He had met solicitors' wives who gave 
 themselves all the airs of great ladies, and who talked as if the 
 Bench and the Bar were set in motion and kept going bj- their hus- 
 bands. Such a wife would Juliet be could he be so blessed as to 
 win her. 
 
 The mild "flirtage," involving much tribute from the glover and 
 the florist, the bookseller and the photographer, had been going on 
 lor nearly three j-ears, and Harrington was tremendously in earnest. 
 His sisters had encouraged him in his infatuation, thinking that it 
 would be rather a nice thing to have a baronet as a family connec- 
 tion, and with a sneaking admiration for Sir Henry Baldwin's club- 
 house manners, and slangy vocabular}^, which had to be translated 
 to them in the first instance by Harrington. They liked to be 
 intimate with Miss Baldwin of the ]Mount, liked to see her smart 
 little pony-cart waiting for an hour in front of the door in Cornhill, 
 while the young lady prattled about her conquests, her frocks, and 
 her parties, over the afternoon tea-table. True that she never talked 
 about anybody but herself, except when she depreciated a rival 
 belle ; but the background of her talk was the smart world, and 
 that was a world of which Janet and her sister loved to hear, albeit 
 " plain-living and high-thinking " was their motto. 
 
 Sir Hcniy had a small hunting stud, and somewhat ungraciously 
 allowed his elder sister an occasional mount, although, as he took 
 care to impress upon her, ho hated hunting women. For the 
 pleasure of being in the young lady's society Harrington, who had 
 no passion for horsemanship, became all of a sudden an ai'dent 
 sportsman, borrowed his brother's cob, Peter, and was ultimately 
 cajoled into the puix-hase of an elderly hunter, which was not quite 
 quick enough for his friend Sir Henry. 
 
 " You don't mean hunting in the shires, so pace is not of so 
 much consequence to you as it is to uie," said the baronet. " Mah- 
 niud will carry you beautifully in our comitry, and he's as quiet as 
 a sheep." 
 
 It is possible that this qualification of sheepishness was Mahmud's 
 chief merit in Harrington's estimation. He was a black horse, and 
 looked a good deal for the money. Sir Henry asked a hundred
 
 The Day luill conic. 131 
 
 giiiiioas fur him, and finally took his frieiurs acceptance for eighty, 
 and this transaction was the tirst burden of debt which Harrington 
 Dalbrook laid upon his shoulders after leaving the University. There 
 liad been college debts, and he had considerably exceeded a very 
 liberal allowance, but his father had paid those debts to the last 
 shilling; and one grave and stern remonstrance, with a few fatherly 
 words of advice for the future, had been all that Harrington had been 
 called upon to endure. But he did not forget that his father had 
 warned him against the consequences of any future folly. 
 
 He felt rather imcoinfortable when the black horse was brought 
 to the door one hunting morning, and when his father happened to 
 be in the front office, whence he could see the unknown animal. 
 
 " Where did you get that black horse, Harrington V Is it a liii-e ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " No. The fact is I've bought him." 
 
 "Have you really? You must bo richer than I gave you crctht 
 fur being if you can afford to buy yourself a hunter. He looks a 
 well-bred one, but shows work. I hope you didn't give much for him." 
 
 " No ; I got him on easy terms." 
 
 '■ Not on credit, I hope." 
 
 " No ; of course not. Sir Henry Baldwin sold him to me. I had 
 saved a little out of my allowance, don't you know? " 
 
 " I'm very glad to hear it. And now bo off and get a good day's 
 sport, if you can. I shall want you to stick to your desk to-morrow." 
 
 Harrington took up his cro]) and hurried out, with a heart as 
 heavy as lead. Never until to-day had he told his father a deliberate 
 falsehood ; but Matthew Dalbrcjok's searching look had frightened 
 him out of his veracity. Only six months ago he had solemnly 
 ]»ledged himself to avoid debt, and he had broken his pronn'sc 
 already, and owed eighty guineas for a lieast which he could hardly 
 hope to ride to hounds half a dozen times that season. He had 
 involved himself for the beast's maintenance also, for his father's 
 stables were full, and he had been obliged to put this new animal 
 out at livery. He began to feel now that he had made a fool of 
 himself; that he had been talked into buying a horse f(jr which ho 
 had very little use. 
 
 He was jogging along in a low-spirited way when Sir Henry and 
 his sister came up behind him at a sharj) trot, whereat ^lahmud 
 gave a buck-jump that almost unseateil him. 
 
 "The black looks a tritle fresh tliis morning," said Sir Heniy. 
 "You'll take it out of him presently. Ho suits you capitally, 
 and he's well up to your weight. I was a little bit too heavy for 
 him. You'll find him go like old boots." 
 
 Miss I'aldwin, fluslied with fresh air and exercise, looked more 
 than usually brilliant. She was particularly amiable too; and when 
 Han'ington complained that he might not be able to give Mahmud 
 enough work she offered to meet the difficulty.
 
 132 The Day will come. 
 
 " Send him over to me whenever you don't want Lini," she said, 
 chceril3^ " I'll make him handy for you. " 
 
 The black gave another buck -jump, and Harrington felt inclined 
 to lay him at her feet there and then. It was only the remembrance 
 of that horrid slip of stamped paper, which had doubtless already 
 been turned into cash by Sir Henry, which restrained him. He 
 made up his mind to send IMahmud to TattersaU's at the end of 
 the hunting season, to be sold mthout reserve. Juliet was riding 
 a thorough-bred of which she was particularly fond, and was in 
 very high spirits during the earlier part of the day; and in her 
 lively society Harrington forgot the stamped paper, and gradually 
 got on good terms with his horse. IMahmud had, indeed, no fault 
 but age. He knew a great deal better how to keep near the hounds 
 than his new master, and promised to be a valuable acquisition. , 
 
 Harrington felt that he was distinguishing himself. 
 
 " The black suits you down to the ground," shouted Sir Henry, 
 in the middle of a run, as he bucketed past his friend upon a pulling 
 chestnut that had no respect for anybody, but clove his way through 
 the ruck of riders like a battering-ram. 
 
 Sir Henry boasted ot this animal that he never kicked a hound. 
 
 " Small thanks to him," said the Master, " for he kicks everything 
 else. Hounds are not good enough for him. He nearly smashed 
 my leg last Monday." 
 
 Harrington and Juliet did a good deal of quiet flirtation while the 
 hounds were drawing a spinney rather late in the day, after a very 
 good run and a kill. He told her all about the change in his position, 
 and that he was to be his father's partner after a very short ap- 
 prenticeship to the law. 
 
 " And you will live in Dorchester all your life," said Juliet, with 
 an involuntary disgust. 
 
 " Not if I can help it. I don't mean to vegetate in a dead-alive 
 provincial town. My father has a London connection already, and 
 all his business wants is a little new blood. I hope to start chambers 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields before I am many years older. And if I 
 should marry," he continued, faltering a little, " I could afford to 
 have a house in the West End — May Fair or Belgi'avia, for instance." 
 
 " Let it be Maj' Fair, I beg — for j'our wife's sake, whoever she 
 maj' be," exclaimed Juliet lightly. "A small house in Belgravia is 
 an abomination. There is an atmosphere of invincible dreariness 
 throughout that district which can only be redeemed bj' wealth and 
 splendour. Perhaps it is because the place is on a level with Mill- 
 bank. There is a flavour of the prison in the very air. Now, in 
 Curzon or Hertford Street one breathes the air of the Park and 
 Piccadilly, and one could exist in a bandbox. But really now, 
 Harrington, joking apart, is it not rather wild in a young man like 
 you — not out of paternal leading-strings — to talk about marriage 
 and housekeeping ? "
 
 The Day will come. 
 
 " One can't help thinkin,'^ of tlic future. Besides, I am not so 
 vorv young. I am four and twenty." 
 
 .Juliet lau;;liecl a short cynical lau,iL,'h, which ended in a sigh. She 
 wondered whether he knew that she was three years older. Brothers 
 are such traitors. 
 
 " I am four and twentj', and I feel that it is in me to succeed," 
 concluded Harrington, with a comfortable vanity which he mistook 
 for the self-confidence of genius. 
 
 The hounds drew blank, and the riders jogged homewards pre- 
 sently, by lane and common, Sir Henry keeping in front with one 
 of his particular friends, and talking horse-flesh all the way, while 
 Juliet and Harrington followed slowly side by side in earnest 
 conversation. 
 
 He told her the history of his doubts, about which she did not 
 care twojicnce — his " phases of faith and feeling," as he expressed it 
 alliteratively. All she wanted to know was about his prospects — 
 whether his father \vas as well off as ho was said to be — she had 
 heard people talk of him as a very ricli man — those officious people 
 who are always calculating other people's incomes, and descanting 
 upon the little their neiglibours spend, and the much that they 
 must contrive to save. Juliet had heard a good deal of this kind of 
 talk about Matthew Ualbrook, whose unpretentious and somewhat 
 old-fashioned style of living gave an impression of reserved force — 
 wealth invested and accumulating for a smarter generation. After 
 all, perhaps, this young man, whose adoration was obvious, might 
 not be a despicable ^;art«. He might be pretty well oft' by-and-by, 
 with a fourth, or better than a fourth, share of JIatthew Dalbrook's 
 scrapings, — and lie was Lord Chcriton's cousin, and therefore could 
 hardly be called a nobody. 
 
 Moved by these considerations, gravely weighed in the grave and 
 grey November dusk, as they rode slowly between tall hedges, leafy 
 still, but sear and red with the frost, Juliet felt inclined to let herself 
 be engaged to her legal lover. She had been engaged to several 
 people since she danced at her first ball. The bond did not count 
 for verv much in her mind. One could always slip out of that kind of 
 thing, ]f it became inconvenient — one could manage with such tact 
 that the man himself cried oft", if one were afraid of being denounced 
 as a jilt. Jidiet and her lovers had always parted friends ; and she 
 wore more than one half-hoop of sapphires or of brilliants which 
 had once played a solemn part as her engagement ring, but which 
 had lapsed into a souvenir of friendship. 
 
 She was not so foolish as to hasten matters. She wanted to see 
 her way before her ; and she opposed Harrington's youthful ardour 
 with the calm savoirfaire of seven and twenty. She called him a 
 foolish boy, and declared that they must cease to bo friends if he 
 insisted upon talking nonsense. She would liave to accept a very 
 urgent invitation to Lady Balgowny Brigg's Castle in Scotland,
 
 134 ^^^'^ /?^j' will come. 
 
 which she had been fencing; with for years, if lie made it (iiificiilt'for 
 them to meet. She threw him into a state of abject alarm by tliis 
 stupendous threat. 
 
 "I won't say a word you can take objection to," he protested, 
 "though I can't think why you should object." 
 
 "You forget that I liave to stud}' other people's ideas as well as 
 Tiiy own," she answered gently. "I hope you won't be offended if 
 I tell you that my mother would never speak to me again if I were 
 engaged to you." 
 
 " No doubt Lady Baldwin has higher views," the yomig man said 
 meekly. 
 
 " Much higher views. My poor mother belongs to the old school. 
 She cannot forget that her grandfather was a marquis. It is foohsh, 
 but I suppose it is human nature. Don't let us talk any more about 
 this nonsense. I like you very much as my brother's friend, and I 
 shall go on hking you if you don't make me unhappy by talking 
 nonsense." 
 
 Harrington took comfort from that one word " tudlapp3^" It 
 implied depths of feeling beneath that fashionable manner which 
 held him at arm's length. 
 
 His spirits were somewhat dashed presently when Miss Baldwin 
 looked with friendly contemptuousness at his neat heather-mixture 
 coat and mud-stained white cords, and said carelessly, — 
 
 " It's a pity you don't belong to the Hunt. I fancy you would 
 look rather nice in pink ! " 
 
 " I — I — have so lately given up the idea of the Church," he 
 faltered. 
 
 " Yes, biit now you have given it up, you ouglit to be a member 
 of the Hunt. Let my brother put you up at the next meeting. 
 You are pretty sure of being elected, and then you can order 
 your pink swallow-tail coat in time for the Hunt Ball in 
 December." 
 
 Harrington shivered. That would mean two red coats — a hunting 
 coat and a dancing coat. But this idea of twenty pounds laid out 
 upon coats was not the worst. Twenty years ago, when he had 
 ridden as hard and kept as good horses as any member of the Hunt, 
 Matthew Dalbrook had resolutely declined the honour of member- 
 ship. He had considered that a provincial solicitor had other work 
 than to ride to hounds t\vice or three times a week. He might 
 allow himself that pleasure now and again as an occasional relax- 
 ation in a hard-working professional hfe ; but it was not for him to 
 spend long days tearing about the country with the men of whose 
 lands and interests he was in some wise custodian. 
 
 Theodore, who was at heart much more of a sportsman than his 
 younger brother, had respected his father's old-fashioned prejuchces, 
 whatever line thej' took, and he had never allowed his name to be 
 put up for the Hunt. He had subscribed liberally to the fund for
 
 The Day luill come. 135 
 
 rontinc;cnt expciiKCs, as his father and grantlfivtlier had done heforo 
 ]iim ; but lie liad been content to forego the glory of a scarlet coat, 
 and the privilege of the Hunt buttons. 
 
 Harrington was not strong in that cln"ef virtue of man, moral 
 courage — the modern and loftier equivalent for that brute-courage 
 which was the Roman's only idea of virtue. Ho felt that to ac- 
 knowledge himself afraid to put up for election into the sacred circle 
 of the Hunt lest he should ollend his lather, was to own by implica- 
 tion that a solicitor was not quite upon the social level of landed 
 gentry and retired militarj'' men, the colonels and majors who form 
 the chief ornament of the average Hunt club. 
 
 ■ He miu'murcd something to the cflect that his father was not 
 sporting, and wouldn't like him to waste too much time riding to 
 liounds. 
 
 " What does that matter ? " exclaimed Juliet. " You needn't go 
 out any oftcner because j'ou arc a member of the Hunt. There ai-(> 
 men who appear scarcely half a dozen times in a season — men Avho 
 have left the neighbourhood, and only come down for a run now and 
 then for old sake's sake." 
 
 " I'll think it over," faltered Hamngton. " Don't say anything to 
 Sir Henry about it just yet." 
 
 " As you please ; but I shan't dance with you at the ball if you 
 wear a black coat," said Juliet, giving her bridle a sharp little shake 
 and trotting forward to join her brother. 
 
 Mahmud, discomposed by that sudden start, gave a shambling 
 elderly shy; Harrington pulled him up into a walk, and rode sulkily 
 on, and allowed tlie other three riders to melt from him in the shades 
 of evening. 
 
 Yes, she was beautiful exceedingly, and it would be promotion for 
 a country solicitor to be engaged to a girl of such high standing ; but 
 ho felt that his relations with her were hedged round with difliculty. 
 She was expensive herself, and a cause of expense in others. She 
 had spent the brightest years of her girlhood in visiting in country 
 houses, where everything was on a grander scale than at the Mount. 
 She had escaped from the barrenness of home to the mansions of 
 noblemen and millionaires. She had strained all her energies 
 towards one aim — to be popular, and to be asked to good houses. 
 She had run the gauntlet of most of the best smoke-rooms in the 
 three kingdoms, and had been talked about everywhere as the hand- 
 some Miss Baldwin. Yet her twenty-seventh liirthday had sounded, 
 find she was Miss Baldwin still. Half a dozen times she had Amcied 
 herself upon the eve of a great success — such a marriage as woidd 
 at once exalt her to the pinnacle of social distinction — and at tlio 
 last moment, as it seemed, the man had changed his mind. Some 
 malicious mother of ugly daughters, or disappointed spinster, had 
 told the eligible suitor "things" about Miss Baldwin — harmless 
 little deviations from the rigid lines of maidenly etiquette, and the
 
 J 
 
 6 The Day zvill come. 
 
 suitor had cried off, fearing in his own succinct speecli that lie was 
 going to be " had." 
 
 At seven and twenty, damaged by the reputation of faihu'e— 
 spoken of by the initiated as "tliat handsome girl Maltravers so 
 nearly married, dou't you know? " — Miss Baldwin felt that all hope 
 of a great match was over. The funeral bell of ambition had tolled. 
 She began to grow reckless ; eat her dinner and took her dry 
 champagne with a masculine gusto ; smoked as many cigarettes as a 
 secretary of legation ; read all the new French novels, and talked 
 about them unreservedly with her partners ; was keen upon racing, 
 and loved euchre and nap. She had half made up her mind to throw 
 herself away upon the first wealthy cotton-spinner she might meet 
 up in the North when she allowed herself to be touched by Harring- 
 ton Dalbrook's somewhat boyish devotion, and began to wonder 
 whether it might not be well for her to end her chequered career by 
 a love match. 
 
 He was good-looking, much better educated than her brother and 
 her brother's set, and he adored her. But, on the other hand, he was 
 utterly without any claims to be considered " smart," and marriage 
 with him would mean at best bread and cheese — or would at least 
 mean nothing better than bread and cheese until they should both 
 be middle-aged, and she should have lost all semblance of a waist. 
 She had met solicitors' wives in society who wore diamonds, and 
 who hurried away from evening parties because they were afraid of 
 their horses catching cold— a carefulness which to her mind implied 
 that horses were a novelty. She had even heard of solicitors making 
 big fortunes ; but she concluded that those were exceptional men, 
 and she did not see in Harrington's character the potentiality of 
 wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. 
 
 Moved by these mixed feelings she allowed her lover to dangle in 
 a state of uncertainty, and to spend all his spare cash upon those 
 airy nothings which a young lady of ]\Iiss Baldwin's easy temper 
 will accept from even a casual admirer. He knew the glover whose 
 gloves she approved, and she occasionally told him the colour of a 
 gown in advance, so that he might give her a suitable fan ; and she 
 iiad, furthermore, an oft-hand way of mentioning any songs or new 
 French novels she fancied. 
 
 " How very sweet of you," she would say, when the songs or the 
 books appeared, " but it is really too bad — I must never mention 
 anything I want in your hearing." 
 
 In spite of which wise remark the volatile damsel went on 
 mentioning things, and being surprised when her wishes were 
 gratified. 
 
 Miss Baldwin had met Lady Cheriton and her daughter both in 
 town and country, and she and her people had been invited to 
 garden parties at"^ Cheriton Chase, but there had been no intimacy
 
 The Day ivill come. T37 
 
 lietwcen tlie f;iniilit's. Lady Cheriton sliraiik witli an inwanl turior 
 from a young lady of such advanced oi)iiiious as tliosft wliicli dropju'd 
 like pearls and diamonds — or like toads and adders — according 
 to the idea of her hearers — from ]\Iiss Baldwin's lips. Rumours of 
 the j-oung man's infatuation had been conveyed to the Priory by 
 Lady Jane, and Harrington having gone to a family dinner at 
 Milbrook was severely interrogated by his cousin. 
 
 "I liope there is no truth in what I have heard about j'on, Harry," 
 she said contidcntiall}', when he was sitting by her in her favourite 
 corner w'ithin the shadow of the tall screen. 
 
 " I cannot answer tliat question until you tell mc what you have 
 heard," he replied with ofiended dignity. 
 
 " Something that would make me very unhappy if it were true. 
 I was told you were getting entangled with tliat JMiss Baldwin." 
 
 " I don't know why you should lay such an olVensive emphasis 
 upon the demonstrative pronoun. j\liss Baldwin is beautiful and 
 accomplished — and — I am very proud of being attached to her." 
 
 " Has it gone so far as that, Harry ? Are vou actuall}' engaged 
 to her?" 
 
 " I am not actually engaged — slie has a right to look a good deal 
 liighor — but I hope to make her my wife as soon as I am in a 
 ]i()sition to marrj'. She has given me so nmch encouragement that 
 i don't think she will refuse me when the right time comes." 
 
 " But, my dear boy, she is always giving encouragement," 
 exclaimed Jnanita, anxiously. 
 
 Dear httle Lucy Grenvillo was at the piano at the other end of 
 the room jilaying an infantile arrangement of '• Batti, batti," with 
 liiigcrs of iron, while mother and gi-an»bnother iiung over her en- 
 raptured, and while the rest of the family party talkcjd their loudest, 
 so the cousins in the nook by the fire were not afraid of being over- 
 hoard. " She is the most encouraging young lady I ever heard of. 
 She lias jilted and been jilted a dozen times, I believe " 
 
 "You /WiVre," echoed Harrington, with intense indignation; "I 
 wonder that a girl of your good sense — in most things — can give 
 heed to such idle gossip." 
 
 " Uo you mean to say that she has not been jilted? " 
 
 " Certainly not. I admit that her name has been associated with 
 the names of men in society. Silly people who write for the papers 
 liave given out things about her. She was to marry Lord Welbeck, 
 Sir Humphrey Ramlom — Heaven knows whom. A girl can't stay 
 at big houses, and bo admired as she has been, without all manner 
 of reports getting about. But she is heartily sick of that kind of 
 life, an endless web of unmeaning gaieties — that is what she herself 
 called it. She will be very glad to settle down to a refined, quiet 
 life — say, at the West End of London, with a victoria and brougham, 
 anil a small house, prettily furnished. One can fm-nish so prettily 
 and so cheaply nowadays," concluded Harrington, with his miiid'a
 
 138 TJie Day zvill come. 
 
 ej'e upon certain illnstratcd advertisements he had seen of late — 
 Jacobean dining-rooms — Slieraton drawing-rooms — for a mere song. 
 
 ' ' I have heard people say that a reformed rake makes a good 
 luisband," said Juanita gravely, "but I have never heard that a 
 reformed flirt makes a good wife." 
 
 " It is a shame to talk like that, Juanita. Every handsome girl 
 is more or less a flirt. She can't help flirting. Men insist upon 
 flirting with her." 
 
 " Does your ftither know you mean to marry Miss Bald^vin ? " 
 
 " No, I have never mentioned marriage to him. That will come 
 in good time." 
 
 " And do you think ho will approve ? " 
 
 " I don't know. He is full of old-fashioned prejudices ; but I 
 don't see how he can object to my marrying into one of the county 
 fomilies." 
 
 " Don't you thinlc it will be more like Miss Baldwin marrying out 
 of one of the county families ? I'm afraid from what I know of her 
 brother and of old Lady Baldwin they would both want her to marry 
 money." 
 
 " I suppose they have wanted that for the last four or five years," 
 answered Han-ington ; " but it has not come off, and they must be 
 satisfied if she chooses to marry for love." 
 
 " Well, I mustn't plague you any more, HaiTy. I see your heart 
 is too deeply involved. I hope ]\Iiss Baldwin is a nicer girl than I 
 have ever thought her. Girls are sometimes prejuchced against 
 ach other." 
 
 " Occasionall}'," said HaiTingi;ton, with satirical emphasis. 
 
 Lucy finished " Batti, batti," with a final chord in the bass and a 
 final twirl in the treble, and was pronounced by her grandmother to 
 have achieved wonders. 
 
 " Her time is a httle uncertain," her mother remarked modestly; 
 "but she has a magnificent ear. You should see her run to the 
 window when there is an organ in the street." 
 
 " Yes, mother," cried Johnny, " but she never stays to listen unless 
 there is a monkey on the top." 
 
 December came, and tlie Hunt Ball, at which more than one of 
 Miss Baldwin's discarded or discarding admirers were present. The 
 young lady looked very handsome in white satin and gauze, without 
 a vestige of colour about her costume, and with her bodice cut with 
 an audacity which is the peculiar privilege of dressmakers who live 
 eouth of Oxford Street. The white gown set off Miss Baldwin's 
 brilliant coloiu-ing, and looked well against the pink coats of her 
 partners. 
 
 Harrington's dress suit had been a thing of beauty and a joy to 
 him when it came home from his London tailor's, folded as no human 
 hands could ever fold it again, enshrined in layers of tissue paper.
 
 The Day linll come. 1 39 
 
 Ills sisters had Iidiu'd to unpack thu tailor's parcel, and had ex- 
 t'laimed at the extravagance of the corded-silk lapels and the satin 
 pleeve-lining, and ho had himself deemed that the archetypal coat 
 could scarcely be more beautiful. Yet in this lurid ball-room ho 
 felt ashamed of his modest black twilled kersimere, and the insig- 
 niticance of his white tie. The fox-hunters seemed to him to have 
 it all their own way. 
 
 Miss Baldwin, however, was not unkind. She danced with him 
 oftener than with any one else, especially after supper, when she 
 became unconscientious and forgetful as to her engagements, and 
 when her card was found to hold twice as many names as there were 
 dances, together with a pencil sketch of a lobster waltzing with a 
 champagne bottle, supplied by an unkno\vn hand. 
 
 It was a cold, clear night, and j'outh and imprudence were going 
 in couples to the garden behind the ball-room for coolness between 
 the dances, and to look at the frosty stars, which in the enthusiasm 
 of girlhood were accepted as a novelty. Harrington and Juliet were 
 among those who ventured into the garden, the lady ^vrapped in a 
 great white fur cloak, which made her look like a haystack in a 
 snow-piece. 
 
 "Poor Doriscourt brought me this polar bear-skin.*' she said. 
 " He shot the bear himself, at the risk of his life. I had asked him 
 to bring me a skin when he came home." 
 
 "You asked him to give you something for which he must risk 
 his life, and yet you make a gi-eat fuss at accepting Daudet's last 
 novel from me," said Harrington, with tender reproachfulness. 
 
 " Ah, but you and Doriscourt are so difTerent," exclaimed Juliet, 
 rather contemptuously. " He was a great dare-devil, who would 
 have come down hand-over-hand on a rope from the moon if there 
 had been any way of getting up there." 
 
 " What has become of him ? " 
 
 " Dead ! He died a year ago — of drink, I'm afraid — ^lung-com- 
 plaint complicated with del. trem. Poor fellow ! " 
 
 She breathed a deep sigh, with that little pensive air which in a 
 young lady of experience is as much as to say, " He was the oidy 
 man I ever loved," and then she turned the conversation and talked 
 of the supper and the champagne, which she sweepingly condemned. 
 
 Harrington hated that talk about the supper. He would have 
 preferred taking of the stars like a schoolgirl,- or Claude Melnotte, 
 *' wondering what star should be our iiomc when love becomes im- 
 mortal." To be told that the wine Avhich now glowed in his veins 
 and intensitied his passion was not worth three-and-sixponce a bottle 
 jarred upon his finer feelings. "You arc such a cynic." he said. 
 " I think I shall never get any nearer to your real self — for I know 
 there is a heart under that mocking vein." 
 
 And then ho repeated his simple story of a humble, devoted love 
 — humble because the woman he loved was the loveliest among all
 
 140 The Day will come. 
 
 womankind, and because she occupied a higher plane than that on 
 which his youth had been spent. 
 
 " But you have taught nae what ambition means," he said. 
 " Only promise to be my wife and you shall see that I am in earnest 
 — that it is in me to succeed." 
 
 She had long been wavering — touched by his truthfulness, his 
 boyish devotion — very weary of life at the Mount, where the 
 mother scolded and the sister sneered, where the underfed and 
 underpaid servants were frankly disobliging, where her brother 
 rarely saw his womankind except at meals, which periods of family , 
 life he enlivened by a good deal of strong language, gi'umbling at 
 the cookery, and at the deterioration of landed property in general, 
 and his own in particular. The rest of his home-life he spent in the 
 billiard-room or the stables, since he found the society of the saddle- 
 room more congenial than the dreariness of the drawing-room, 
 where his mother and sisters were not always on speaking terms. 
 
 From such a house as the Mount — goodly and fair to look upon 
 without as many other whited sepulchres — any escape would be 
 welcome. Juliet felt that she was a great deal too good for a young 
 man of uncertain prospects and humdrum surroundings ; but he was 
 very much in love, and he was good-looking, and in her own par- 
 ticular phraseology she was beginning to be rather weak about him. 
 She was so weak that she let him hold her unresisting hand as they 
 stood side by side in the garden, and devour it with kisses. 
 
 "You certainly ought to do well in the world," she said, sweetly ; 
 " for you are the most persistent person I ever knew." 
 
 He looked round, saw that they were alone in the garden, and 
 clasped her in his arms, polar bear and all, and kissed tie unresist- 
 ing lips, as he had kissed the unresisting hand. 
 
 "]NIy dearest," he exclaimed, " that means for Hfe, does it not ? " 
 
 " You are taking everything for granted," she said ; " but I suppose 
 it must be so. Only remember I don't want our engagement talked 
 about till you are in a more assured position. My mother would 
 make home a hell upon earth, if she knew." 
 
 " I will do nothing rash, nothing that you do not approve," replied 
 Harrington, considerabty relieved by this injunction ; for although it 
 was not INIatthew Dalbrook's habit to make a pandemonium of the 
 family circle, Harrington feared that he would strongly disapprove 
 of such an alliance as that which his younger son had chosen for 
 himself. He welcomed the idea of delay, hoping to be more firmly 
 seated at the office desk before he must needs make the uapleasing 
 avowal. " When my father finds I am valuable to him he will be 
 more inclined to indulgence," he thought.
 
 The Day will come. 141 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 •* For men h.ivc marble, women waxen minds, 
 And therefore are thej' formed as marble will ; 
 'Ihe weak oppress'd, the impression of change kinds, 
 Is formed in them by force, by fraud, or skill ; 
 Tlien call them not the authors of their ill." 
 
 Inclination would liavo taken Theodore Dalbrook to Dorsctsliire 
 before tlie C'liristiiias liolidays pave him an excuse for going lionie; 
 but lie wrestled with that haunting desire to revisit the Priory, and 
 to be again tele-d-tiic with his cousin in the dimly lighted room 
 where she had talked to him of her own sorrows and of liis ambitions. 
 'J'he memory of that last evening was the most vivid element in his 
 life. It stood out like a spot o£ light against the dull grej' of 
 monotonous days, and the burden of dry-as-dust reading. Put he 
 had told her that he should not see her imtil Christmas time, and 
 he was not weak enongii to indulge that insane longing for the 
 society of a woman whose heart was in the grave of her husband. 
 
 November and the greater part of December stretched before him 
 like a long dark road which had to be trodden somehow before lie 
 came to the inn at which there would be light and comfort, cheerful 
 voices, and friendly greetings. He set his face resolutely towards 
 that dark prospect, and tramped along, doing the work he had to do, 
 living the life of a hermit in those chambers in Ferret Court, which 
 bad already taken the stamp of his own character, and looked as if 
 he had lived in them for years. 
 
 He had no need to sit alone at night with his books and his lamp, 
 for there were plenty of houses in which he would have been 
 welcome. His name was a passport in legal circles. Old friends of 
 James Dalbrook's were ready to welcome his kinsman to their tables, 
 c;iger to be of service to him. He had liis college friends, too, in 
 tiie great city, and need not have gone companionless. Put he was 
 not in the mood for society of any kind, old or young, except the 
 society of Plackstone, Coke, and Justinian, and divers other sages 
 who out of the dim i)ast shed their light upon tlie legal wilderness of 
 tlie present. He sat by his fire and read law, and laid down hi.s 
 book only to smoke his meditative ])ipe ami indulge in foolisii 
 waking dreams about that grave old house in Dorsetshire and the 
 young widow who lived there. 
 
 He had followed two of those three children of tlie old Squire, two 
 out of the three faces in the picture in the hall at Cliorituii, to the 
 end of their story. No man could discover any postscript to that 
 etory, which in each case was closed by a gi-ave. 
 
 There remained only one last unfinished record — the history of
 
 142 TJic Day ivill come. 
 
 tlie runaway wile, the end whereof was opeu to doubt. That un- 
 lucky lady's fate had been accepted upon hearsay. It had been 
 isaid that she had died at Boulogne, withui a year or so after the Vicar 
 met her there. 
 
 Upon his return from Jersey, Theodore wrote to his father's oldest 
 and most experienced clerk, begging him to hunt up the evidence 
 of Mrs. Darcy's death, so far as it was obtainable at Cheritou or in 
 the neighbourhood. 
 
 The clerk repHed as follows, after an interval of ten days : — 
 
 " Deab Sir, 
 
 " I have been twice to Cheriton, and have made inquiries, 
 cautiously as you wished, with respect to the report of Mrs. 
 Darcy's death, some fifteen years ago, and saw Mr. Dolby, the 
 doctor, and Gaster at the general shop, who, as you are no doubt 
 aware, is a gentleman who busies himself a good deal about other 
 people's afiairs, and sets himself up for being an authority upon 
 most things. 
 
 " Mr. Dolby I found very vague in his ideas. He remembered the 
 late Vicar telling him about having met Mrs. Darcy in the market- 
 place at Boulogne, and being shocked at the change in her. He 
 told Mr. Dolby that he did not think she was long for this world ; 
 but it was some time after when Dolby heard some one — he could 
 not remember who it was — assert that Mrs. Darcy was dead. 
 
 " Gaster had much more to say upon the subject. He pretends 
 to he interested in all reminiscences of the Strangways, and boasts 
 of having served Cheriton House for nearly forty years. He re- 
 members Evelyn Strangway when she was a little girl, handsome 
 and high-spirited. He remembered the report of her death at 
 Boulogne getting about the village, and he remembered mentioning 
 the fact to LordCheriton at the time. There was an election going 
 on just then, and his lordship had looked in to consult him, Joseph 
 Gaster, about certain business details : and his lordship seemed 
 shocked to hear of the poor lady's death. ' I suppose that is the 
 end of the family, my Lord ? ' Gaster said, and his lordship replied, 
 ' Yes, that is the end of the Strangways.' 
 
 "Gaster believes that he must have read of the death in the 
 newspapers ; perhaps copied from the Times into a local paper ; at 
 any rate, the fact had implanted itself in his mind, and it had never 
 occurred to him to doubt it. 
 
 " I asked him if he knew what had become of the lady's husband, 
 but here his mind is a blank. He had heard that the man was a 
 scamp, and that Avas all he knew about him. 
 
 " Since making these inquiries I have spent a long evening at the 
 Literary Institute, where, as you know, there is a set of the T/wes-, in 
 volumes, extending over a period of forty years. I have looked through 
 the deaths for three years, taking the year in which Gaster thinks he
 
 The Day will come. 143 
 
 heard of Mrs. Darcy's death, as the middle year out of throe, hut 
 \s'ithout result. It is, of course, uulikely that the deatli ^vould bo 
 advertised if the poor lady died friendless and in poverty in a foreign 
 town ; but I thought it luy duty to make this investigation. 
 " Awaiting your further commands, &c., &e." 
 
 There was nothing conclusive in this ; and Theodore felt tiiat the 
 history of IMrs. Darcy's later years remained to bo unravelled. It 
 was not to be supposed that the runaway wife, who, if she were yet 
 living must be an elderly woman, could have had act or [jart in the 
 murder of Sir Godircj' Carmichael ; but it was not tlie less a part of 
 his task to trace her story to its iinal chapter. Then only could ho 
 convince Juanita of tho wikhiess of that idea which connected the 
 catastrophe of the 29th of July with the exiled Straugways. When 
 he could say to her, " You see that long before that fatal night tho 
 Squire's three children had vanished from this earth," she would be 
 constrained to confess that the solution of tho mystery was not to 
 be sought here. 
 
 He went over to Boulogne, saw the English chaplain, and several 
 of the hotel-keepers. Ho explored the cemeterj-, and examined tho 
 record of the dead. Pie visited the police, and he made Inends with 
 the elderly editor of an old-established newspaper ; but from all his 
 questioning of various people the result was ])lank. Nobody remem- 
 bered a ;Mi-s. Darcy, an Englishwoman of distinguished appearance 
 but fallen fortunes, a woman long past youth and yet not old. If 
 she had lived for any time in Boulogne she had left no trace of her 
 existence ; if ishe had died and been bmied there she had left no 
 record among the graves. 
 
 Boulogne could tell him nothing. lie came back to the gi-eat 
 wilderness of London, the rallying point for all wanderers. It was 
 there perhaps that the end of Evelyn Strangway was to be sought. 
 
 He had, as it seemed to him, only one clue, the name of her 
 governess. The governess was only seven or eight years older than 
 the pupil, and she might have survived licr i)upil, and might have 
 been in communication with her till the end. Jasper Blake had 
 told him that there was a strong attachment between Sarah Newton 
 and tlie wayward girl she taught. 
 
 To hunt for a governess among the thousands of portionless 
 gentlewomen who try to live by teaching might seem more hoi)elcKS 
 than tho proverbial search for the lost needle, but Theodore did not 
 despair. If Miss Newton liad remamed a spinster and had con- 
 tinued to exercise her vocation as a teacher she might be traced 
 through one of those .agencies wliich transact business between 
 governess and employer ; but, on the other hand, if, as was more 
 likely, slio had long ago abandoned the jjrofcssion of teacher, and 
 had made some obscure marriage, she would have sunk into the 
 vast ocean of middle-class life, in whose depths it would be almost
 
 144 ^-^^^ D'-'^y "^^'^^^ come. 
 
 impossible to discover her. The first thiii,^^ to be done was to make 
 a visitation of the agencies, and this task Theodore began two days 
 after his return from Boulogne. 
 
 lie had methodized his life by this time, devoting a certain 
 portion of his days to his cousin's interests, but in no wise neglecting 
 the work he had to do for his own advancement. He had known 
 too many instances of men who had made reading law an excuse for 
 an idle and desultory life, and he was resolved that his own course 
 should be steady and persistent even to doggedness. He had been 
 told that success at the Bar was nowadays almost unattainable ; 
 that the men of the day who had conquered fame and were making 
 great fortunes, were in a manner miraculous men, and that it was 
 futile for any young man to hope to follow in their steps. The road 
 tkey had trodden was barred against the new comer. Theodore 
 listened to these pessimists, yet was not discouraged. He had told 
 himself that he would emerge someliow from the obscurity of a 
 country solicitor's practice — would bring himself in some wise 
 nearer the social level of the woman he loved, so that if in the davs 
 to come one gleam of hope should ever shine upon that love he 
 might be able to say to her, " My place in life is the place yoiu- 
 father held when he offered himself to your mother ; my determina- 
 tion to conquer fortune is not less than his." 
 
 He seldom passed the dingy door of the gi'ound-floor chambers — 
 on which the several names of three briefless ones were painted in 
 dirty letters that had once been white — u-ithout thinking of his 
 fortunate kinsman, without wondermg what his life had been like in 
 those darksome rooms, and in what shape fortune had first appeared 
 to him. He had not married until he was forty. Long and lonely 
 years had gone before that golden sumraertide of his fife, when a 
 young and lovely woman had given him happiness and fortune. 
 How had he lived in those lonely years ? Tradition accused him of 
 miserly habits, of shabby raiment, of patient grinding and scraping 
 to accumulate wealth. Theodore knew that if he liad hoarded his 
 earnings it had been for a worthy end. He had set himself to win 
 a place among the lords of the soil. The land he loved had been to 
 him as a mistress, and for that he had been content to live poorly 
 and spend his nights in toO. For such miserliness Theodore had 
 nothing but admiration ; for he had seen how liberally the man who 
 had scraped and hoarded was able to administer a large income — 
 how generous as a master, friend, and patron the sometime miser 
 had shown himself. 
 
 He spent more than a week in visiting the numerous agencies 
 which are employed by the great governess-class, and the result of 
 that painstaking exploration was not altogether barren. He suc- 
 ceeded in finchng an elderly personage at the head of an old- 
 established Agency, who kept her book with praiseworthy regularity, 
 and who remembered Sarah Newton. She had had no less than
 
 The Day will come. 145 
 
 four Miss Nowtons on her re,c?ister at didcrent times, but there was 
 oul}' one Sarah Newton among tlicm, and for this lady she had 
 obtained a situation in the Lalcc Country so lately as July 20, 187;^ 
 — that is to say, about eleven years before the j^eriod of Theodoie's 
 investigation. 
 
 On that date Miss Newton had entered the family of a Mr. Craven 
 — the vicar of a small parish l)etween Ambleside and Bowncss. She 
 was living in that fomily four years afterwards, when Miss Palmer, 
 the Principal in the Agency, last heard of her. 
 
 " And in all probability she is living there still," said Miss Palmer. 
 " At her time of life people are not fond of change. I remember 
 her when she was a young woman, full of energy, and very impatient 
 of control. I used to see her much oftener then. She seldom kept 
 a situation over a twelvemonth." 
 
 " Except at Cheriton Chase. She was more than a year in that 
 situation, I think." 
 
 " Cheriton Chase ! I don't remember the name. Some one else 
 may have got her the situation. How long ago was she there, do 
 you sujtpose ? " asked Miss Palmer, turning over one of her neat 
 basil-bound registers. 
 
 " It was in the year '47 she left Cheriton." 
 
 " Ah, then, it was not we who got her the situation. ViS first 
 entry about her is on the 11th December, '48. Siie paid her 
 entrance fee of one guinea on that date. It is higher than that of 
 inferior agencies ; but we take real trouble for our clients, and wo 
 make it our business to be safe upon the jxjint of chau.vcter. We 
 arc as careful about the families into which we send governesses as 
 about the governesses we introduce into families." 
 
 The next day was Sunday, and Theodore employed that day of 
 rest in travelling by a very slow train to Bowness ; where he arrived 
 at five o'clock in tlie evening, to find mountain and lake hidden in 
 densest grey, and an innkeeper who seemed neither to desire nor 
 deserve visitors. Happily the traveller was of the age at Avhich 
 dinner is not a vital question, and he was hardly aware of the 
 toughness of the steak, or the inferior quality of the codfish set 
 before him in the desolate coiVee-room. He had a diamond Virgil 
 in his pocket, and he sat by the fire reading the sixth book by the 
 paradin lamp till ten o'clock, and then went contentedly to a bed- 
 room which suggested ghosts, or at least n.ightmare. 
 
 No deadly visions troubled him, however, for the slow train had 
 brought about a condition of abject weariness which resulted in 
 dreamless slumber. The sun shone into his bleak bed-chamber 
 when he awoke next morning, and the lake stretched beneatii his 
 windows, silver-shining, melting dimly into the grey of the opposite 
 shore. The mountains were sulking still, and only showed their 
 rugged crests above dark rolling clouds ; but the scene was an 
 
 I.
 
 146 The Day will come. 
 
 improvement upon the avenue of chimney-pots and distant glimpse 
 of a murky Thames as seen from Ferret Court. 
 
 His landlord greeted him in a more cheerful spirit upon Monday 
 morning than he had evinced on Sunday evening when his after- 
 dinner lethargy was rudely disturbed by a guest whose business- 
 like air and small Gladstone bag did not promise much profit ; a 
 visitor who would want a dinner off the joint, most likely, and a 
 half-crown breakfast ; a visitor whose libations would be limited to 
 bitter beer and an occasional whisky and soda. Such a guest in a 
 house that was beginnmg to hibernate was a burden rather than a 
 boon. 
 
 This morning, however, the landlord was reconciled to his 
 solitary customer, having told his wife that after all, " little fish are 
 sweet," and he went blithely to order the dog-cart — his own cart 
 and own man — ostler in the season, coachman or anything you 
 please out of the season — to drive Mr. Dalbrook to Kettisford 
 Vicarage, a nine-mile journey. 
 
 It was a pretty, out-of-the-way nook — half hidden in a cleft of 
 the hills — at which Theodore arrived a few minutes after noon ; a 
 little, old-fashioned, world-forgotten village, and a sprawling old 
 greystone house, covered with Virginia creeper, passion-flower, and 
 the feathery leafage of the trumpet ash ; a long, low" house, with 
 heavily thatched roof, projecting over its Tipper casements ; a sleepy- 
 looking old house in a still sleepier garden, so remote and so sheltered 
 that winter had forgotten to come there ; and the great yellow 
 roses were still blooming on the w^all, fattened by the misty 
 atmosphere of the adjacent lake, glorified by the untainted air. 
 November was half over, yet here the only signs of autumn were 
 the grey sky, and the crimson of the Virginia creeper. 
 
 The Vicar of Kettisford was one of those privileged persons who 
 can speak with their enemies at the gate, assured of being backed 
 up in their speech by a family contingent. The Vicarage seemed 
 overflowing with young life, from the very threshold of the hall, 
 where cricket-bats, a tricycle, a row of well-used tennis rackets, a 
 stupendous array of hats, overcoats, and comforters, testified to that 
 quiverful so esteemed in the patriarchal age. 
 
 A conscientious performer was pounding at the " Harmonious 
 Blacksmith " upon a wiry piano near at hand, having left the door 
 wide open, with the indecent disregard of other people peculiar to 
 juvenile performers upon all kinds of instruments. From the other 
 side of the hall came the twanging of an equally wiry guitar, upon 
 which girlish fingers began, and for ever recommenced a Spanish 
 melody, which the performer was striving to attain by that agonizing 
 process known among young ladies as " picking up " an air. Mark, 
 gentle reader, what the learned and reverend Haweis has to say upon 
 this art of playing by ear ! 
 
 From a remoter room came young voices and yoimg laughter;
 
 The Day will come, 147 
 
 and amiflst all those sounds it was havdly surprising tliat Mr. 
 Dalbrook had to ring three times, and to wait in Iront uf the open 
 hall door for at least ten minutes, before an elderly housemaid 
 responded to his summons and ushered him into the Vicar's stud}', 
 the one room in the Vicarage which was ever fit to receive a 
 visitor. 
 
 The Vicar was reading a newspaper in front of a comfortable 
 fire. He was an elderly man, of genial and even jovial aspect, and 
 he received Mr. Dalbrook's apologetic account of himself and his 
 business with perfect good humour. 
 
 " You want to see Miss Newton, my dear sir. I am sony to tell 
 you she left us nearly two years ago — heartily sorry, for Sarah 
 Newton is a very worthy woman, and a jewel of price in a mother- 
 less fomily like mine," said the Vicar. " I regret that yon should 
 have come such a long way to find her when, had you written to 
 me, I could have told you where to look for her in London." 
 
 "Yes, it was a mistake to come so far without making preliminary 
 inquiries — only, as she had not applied to her usual agent for a new 
 situation, I concluded that she was still imder your roof." 
 
 " She has not gone into a new situation, Mr. Dalbrook. She was 
 too much valued in this house to wish to chaiigc to another employ- 
 ment, although she might have lived more luxuriously and done 
 less work elsewhere. tShe was a mother to my girls — ay, and to 
 my boys as well — while she was with us ; and she only left us when 
 she made up her mind to live an independent life." 
 
 " She has left oil' teaching, then, I conclude ? " 
 
 "Yes. She had a little bit of money left her by a bachelor 
 uncle, safely invested in railway stock, and yielding about two 
 hundred a year. This, with her o^vn savings, made her an in- 
 dependent woman, and she made up her mind to realize her own 
 ideal of a useful life — an ideal which had been developing in her 
 mind for a good many years — a life which was to be serviceable to 
 others, and yet pleasant to herself" 
 
 " Do you mean tliat she joined some sisterhood? " 
 
 " No, no, !Mr. Dall)rook ; Sarah Newton is much too fond of h(>r 
 own way, much too independent and fiery a spirit, to place lun'solf 
 in a position where other people would think for her, and where 
 she would be obliged to obey. She told me her plan of life very 
 frankly. ' I have about two hundred and sixty pounds a year,' sho 
 said; ' I can live comfortably upon half that money, if I live after a 
 plan of my own; and I can do a great deal of good with the other 
 lialf if I do it in my own way. I am elderly and plain. If I were 
 to live amongst small gentilities I should be a nobody, and in all 
 probability I should bo considered a bore. I shall take a lodging in 
 a poor neighbourhood, furnish my rooms with the utmost comfort, 
 treat myself to a good piano, and collect my little library book by 
 book from the second-hand booksellers. I shall spend half my days
 
 148 The Day will come. 
 
 in going quietly about among the poor young women of the district 
 — I ought to know what girls are after nearly fort}'- years' teaching 
 and managing the species— and I shall spend half my income in 
 doing as much good to them as I can, in my o^^^l unorthodox way.' 
 I knew the good that brave little soul had done in this parish, in 
 her quiet, unpretentious fashion, and I felt no doubt she would carry 
 out her plan." 
 
 " HaA'e you seen her since she left you ? " 
 
 " Yes, I went to see her last June when I had a fortnight's 
 hohday in London. I found her in a shabby old house in Lambeth, 
 not very far from St. Thomas's Hospital ; but dingy as the house 
 looked outside, our good Sally's apartments were the picture of 
 comfort. I found her as happy as a bird. Her plan of life had 
 answered her highest expectations. ' My friends are legion,' she 
 said, ' but I haven't a single gentility among them.' Sally is a 
 desperate Radical, you must know." 
 
 " Will you give me her address, that I maj' \\Tite and ask her 
 permission to call upon her ? " 
 
 " You shall have the address, but I doubt if she will feel disposed 
 to receive you. She will count you among the gentilities." 
 
 " I must try my chance at any rate. I want her to throw some 
 light upon the history of one of her earliest pupils. Did you ever 
 hear her talk of Cheriton Chase and the Strangway family ? " 
 
 " My dear sir, I have heard her talk of any number of places, and 
 any number of people. I used to tell her she must be a female 
 Methuselah to have passed through so many experiences. She was 
 very fond of telling stories of the families in which she had lived, 
 but though I used to listen I remember very little about them. My 
 girls would remember better, I have no doubt. They can give you 
 chapter and verse, I dare say; so the best thing you can do is to eat 
 your luncheon with us, and then you can ask them as many questions 
 as you like." 
 
 Theodore accepted the offer with gratitude, and ten minutfs 
 afterwards followed the Vicar into the dining-room, where three tall, 
 good-looking girls and two straggling youths were assembled, and 
 where a foiuih girl and another boy dropped in after the rest were 
 seated. The board was spread with a plenteous but homely meal. 
 A large dish of L'ish stew smoked at one end of the table, and the 
 remains of yesterday's roast ribs of beef appeared at the other. 
 
 The girls were evidently accustomed to droppers in, and received 
 Theodore with perfect equanimity. 
 
 Alicia, the eldest, carved the beef with a commanding wrist, and 
 the third daughter, Laura, administered to his appetite \vith pickled 
 walnuts and mashed potatoes. The girls were all keenly interested 
 directly he spoke of IMiss Newton. They pronounced her a dear 
 old thing, not a bit like a governess. 
 
 " We all loved her," said Alicia : " and we are not the easiest
 
 The Day zinll come. 149 
 
 pirls to get on with, I can assure you. We have liad two poor 
 things since Sally deserted us, and we have driven them both away. 
 And now we are enjoying an interregnum, and we hope the dear 
 lather will make it a long one." 
 
 " Did you ever hear your governess talk of the Strangways, Miss 
 Craven ? " 
 
 " What, Evel}!! Strangway, of Cheriton Chase ? I should think 
 we did, indeed," cried Laura. " She had a good many prosy stories 
 — chestnuts, we used to call them — but the Cheriton Chase stories 
 were tlie most cliostnutty. It was her first situation, and she was 
 never tired of talking about it." 
 
 "Do you know if she kept up her acquaintance with Miss Strang- 
 way in after life ? " asked Theodore. 
 
 " I think not ; at any rate, she never talked about that. She 
 knew something about the poor girl's later hfe — something very bad, 
 I think — for she would never tell us. She used to sigh and look 
 very unhaj)py if the subject was touched upon ; and she used to 
 warn us against runaway matches. As if any of us would be likely 
 to run away from this dear old father?" protested Laura, leaning 
 over the table to pat the Vicar's coat-sleeve. " Why, he would let 
 us marry chimney-sweeps rather than see us unhappy." 
 
 There was a good deal more talk about Sarah Newton, her virtues 
 and her little peculiarities, but nothing bearing upon Theodore's 
 business, so he only stayed till luncheon was finished, and then 
 wished the amiable Vicar and his fiimily a friendly good-bye, oifering 
 to be of use to them in London at any time they might want some 
 small business transacted there, and begging the Vicar to look hini 
 up at his chambers when he took his next holiday. 
 
 " You may rely upon it I shall take you at your word," said the 
 
 f arson cheeril}'. "You've no idea what a gay old dog I am when 
 am in town — the theatre every night, and a little bit of supper 
 afterwards. I generally take one of my lads with me, though, to 
 keep me out of mischief. Good-bye, and mind you don't fall in love 
 with Sally Newton. She's old and ugly, but she's one of the most 
 fascinating women I know." 
 
 Theodore drove ofi' in the dog-cart with all the Vicarage family 
 at the gate waving their hands to him, as if lie had been an old 
 friend, and with four Vicarage dogs barking at him. 
 
 He went back to London tliat night, and wrote to Miss Newton, 
 asking leave to call upon her upon a matter relating to one of her 
 old pupils on the following day. He should take silence to mean 
 consent, and would be with her at four in the afternoon, if he did 
 not receive a telegram to forbid him. 
 
 He worked in his chambers all the morning, and at a little after 
 three set out to walk to Lambeth. The address wa.s 51, Wedge- 
 wood Street, near the Lambeth Road. It was not a long walk, and 
 it was not a pleasant one, for a seasonable fog was gathering when
 
 150 The Day will come. 
 
 Theodore left the Temple, and it thickened as ho crossed West- 
 minster Bridge, wliere the newly-h'ghted lamps made faint yellow 
 patches in the dense brown atmosphere. Under these conditions 
 it took him some time to find Wedgewood Street, and that particular 
 house which had the honour of sheltering Sarah Newton. 
 
 It was a very shabby old street. The shops were of the meanest 
 order, and the houses which were not shops looked as if they were 
 mostly let off to the struggling class of lodgers ; but it was a street 
 that had evidently seen better days, for the houses were large and 
 substantially built, and the doorways had once been handsome and 
 architectural — houses which had been the homes of prosperous 
 citizens when Lambeth was out of town, and when the perfume of 
 bean blossom and new-mown hay found its way into Wedgewood 
 Street. 
 
 The gTound-floor of Number 51 was occupied by a shoemaker, a 
 shoemaker who had turned his parlour into a sliop, who made to 
 measure, but was not above executing repairs neatly. The front 
 door being open, Theodore walked straight upstairs to the first-floor 
 landing, where there was a neat little Doulton ware oil-lamp burning 
 on a carved oak bracket, and where he saw Miss Newton's name 
 painted in bold black letters upon a terra-cotta coloured door. The 
 stairs were cleaner than they generally' are in such a house, and the 
 landing was spotless. 
 
 lie rang a bell, and the door was promptly opened by a lady, 
 whom he took to be Miss Ncvvton. She was rather below middle 
 height, strongly built, but of a neat, compact figure. She was 
 decidedly plain, and her iron grey hair was coarse and wiry ; but 
 she had large bright eyes which beamed wntli good nature and 
 intelligence. Her black stuff gown and narrow linen collar, the 
 knot of scarlet ribbon at her throat, and the linen cuffs turned back 
 over perfectly-fitting sleeves, were all the pink of neatness, and 
 suited her as no other kiud of dress would have done. The trim 
 li,gin-e,the bright eyes, and the small white hands made a favourable 
 impression upon Theodore, in spite of the lady's homeliness of 
 feature and complexion. 
 
 "Walk in, Mr. Dalbrook," she said cheerily. "Pray come and 
 sit by the fire ; you must be chilled to the bone after coming through 
 that horrid fog. Ah, how I hate fog! It is the scourge of the 
 London poor, and it sometimes kills even the rich. And now wc 
 are only at the beginning of the evil, and there is the long winter 
 before us." 
 
 " Yes, it is very bad, no doubt; but you do not look as if the fog 
 coulA do you much harm, Miss Newton." 
 
 " No, it won't hurt me. I'm a hardy old plant, and I contrive to 
 make mj'self comfortal)le at all seasons." 
 
 "You do, indeed," he answered, glancing round the room, ''I 
 had no idea "
 
 The Day will come. 151 
 
 " That anybody could bo so comfortable in Lambeth," she said, 
 interpreting his thoughts. "No, people think thoy must pay for 
 what they call ' a good situation.' Poor pinclicd widows and shabby 
 spinsters sjiend more than half their income on rent and taxes, and 
 starve on the other half, in order to live in a genteel locality — some 
 dingy little street in Pimlico perhaps, or a stucco terrace in Kensing- 
 ton. Here am I with two fine large rooms in a forgotten old street, 
 which was built before the age of shoddy. I live among poor people, 
 and am not obliged to sacrifice a sixpence for the sake of appearances. 
 I buy everything in the cheapest market, and my neighbours look 
 up to me, instead of looking down upon mc, as they might if I lived 
 among gentilities. You will say, perhaps, that I live in the midst 
 of dirt and squalor. If I do I take care that none of it ever comes 
 near me, and I do all that one woman's voice and one woman's pen 
 can do to lessen the evils that I see about me." 
 
 "It would be a good thing for poor neighbourhoods if tliere were 
 many ladies of your mind. Miss Newton," said Theodore, basking in 
 the glow of the fire, and looking lazily round the room, with its two 
 well-filled bookcases, occupying the recesses on each side of the 
 fireplace, its brackets and shelves, and hanging pockets, its large 
 old-fashioned sotix, and substantial claw-footed table, its wicker 
 chairs, cusliioncd with bright colour — its lamps and candlesticks on 
 shelf and bracket, ready to the hand when extra light should be 
 wanted, its contrivances and handinesses of all kinds, which denoted 
 the womanly inventiveness of the tenant. 
 
 " Well, I believe it would. If only a small percentage of the 
 lonely spinsters of England would make their abode among the poor, 
 things would have to be mended somehow. There could not bo 
 such crying evils as there are if there wore more eyes to see them, 
 and more voices to protest against tliem. You like this old room of 
 mine, I see, Mr. Dalbrook," added Sarah Newton, following his eyes 
 as they siu'veyed the dark red wall against which the brackets and 
 shelves, and books and^photographs, and bits of old china stood out 
 in bright relief. 
 
 " I am full of admiration and surprise ! " 
 
 " It is all my own work. I had lived in other people's houses so 
 long that I was charmed to have a home of my own, even in 
 Lambeth. I was determined to spend very little money, and yet to 
 make myself comfortable ; so I just squatted in the next room for 
 the first three months, with only a bedstead, a table, and a chair or 
 two, while I prowled all over London to find the exact furniture I 
 w\intcd. There's not an article in the room that did not take mo 
 weeks to find and to buy, and there's not an article that wasn't a 
 tremendous bargain. But what an egotistical old prattler I nm ! 
 Women who live much alone get to be dreadful prosers. I won't 
 say another word about myself — at any i-ate, not till after I've made 
 you a cup of tea after your cold walk."
 
 152 The Day will come. 
 
 She had seen the mud upon his boots, and guessed that he had 
 walked from the Temple. 
 
 " Pray do not take any trouble " 
 
 "Nonsense ; it is never trouble to a woman to make tea. I give 
 a tea-party twice a week. I hope you like tea? " 
 
 "I adore it. But pray go on with your account of how you 
 settled down here. I am warmly interested." 
 
 " That's very good of you — but there's not much to tell about 
 myself," said Miss Newton, producing some pretty old china out of 
 an antique cupboard with glass doors, and setting out a little brass 
 tea-tray while she talked. 
 
 There was a small copper kettle singing on the old-fashioned hob, 
 and there was a covered dish of toast in the capacious fender. Miss 
 Newton's dinners were ever of the slightest, but she was a sybarite 
 as to her tea and toast. No cheap and powdery mixture ; no " inferior 
 Dosset" for her. She made her brew with a dainty precision which 
 Theodore admired, while she went on talking. 
 
 "Do you like the colour of the walls? Yes, I painted them. 
 And you like that paper on the ceiling ? I papered it. I am rather 
 a dab at carpentering, too, and I put up all those shelves and 
 brackets, and I covered the chairs, and stained the boards round 
 that old Turkey carpet ; and then, after a day's hard work, it was 
 very pleasant to go and stroll about among the bookshops of an 
 evening and pick up a volume here and there till I got all my old 
 friends about me. 1 felt like Elia ; only I had no Bridget to share 
 my pleasure." 
 
 She seated herself opposite to him with a wicker table in front of 
 her, and began to pour out the tea. He wondered to find himself 
 as much at home with her as if he had known her all his life. 
 
 "It is very good of you to receive me so cordially," he said, 
 presently. " I feel that I come to you as an unauthorized intruder." 
 
 " Can you guess Avhy I was willing to receive you? " she asked, 
 looking at him intently and with a sudden gl•avil5^ " Can you guess 
 why I didn't telegraph to forbid your coming? " 
 
 " Indeed, no, except because you are naturally kind." 
 
 " My kindness had nothing to do with it. I was willing to see 
 you because of your name. It is a very familiar name to me — 
 Dalbrook, the name of the man who bought the house in which she 
 was born. Poor soul, how she must have hated him, in her desolate 
 after years. How she must have hated the race that ousted her 
 fiom the home she loved." 
 
 •' You are talking of Evelj-n Strangway ? " 
 
 " Yes, she was my first pupil, and I was very fond of her— all the 
 fonder of her, perhaps, because she was wayward and difficult to 
 manage : and because I was much too young and inexperienced to 
 exercise any autliority over her." 
 
 " It is of her I want to talk to you, if you will allow me."
 
 The Day will come. 153 
 
 " Cortainly. I like talking of those old days Avhen I was a jjirl. 
 I don't suppose I was particularly happy at Chcritoii Chase ; but I 
 was youns, and we most of us hui:; the delusion that we were happy 
 in our youth. Poor Evel_\Ti — so often in disgrace — so often unhappy, 
 from the very dawni of girlhood ! What reason can you have for 
 being curious about her? " 
 
 " I have a very strong reason, though I cannot explain it yet awhile. 
 I have set myself to discover the history of that banished race." 
 
 " After the angel with the flaming sword stood at the gate — that 
 is to say, after ]\Ir. Dalbrook bought the i)roperty. By-the-by, what 
 are you to Lord Chcriton ? Ilis son perliaps ? " 
 
 " No, I am only a distant cousin." 
 
 " Is it on his account j'ou are making these inquiries ? " 
 
 " He is not even aware that I am making them." 
 
 " Indeed ; and pray how did you find me out ? ^ly tea-parties are 
 not recorded in the Society papers ; I have never figured among 
 ' Celebrities at Home.' " 
 
 " I took some pains to find you," said Theodore, and then he told 
 her of his visits to the agencies, and his journey to the Vicarage in 
 Lakeland. 
 
 "You liave taken infinite trouble, and for a small result. I can 
 give vou verv little information about Evelyn Strangway — afterwards 
 Mrs.'Darcy." 
 
 " Did you lose sight of her after you left Cheriton ? " 
 
 " Yes, for a long time. It was j'ears before we met again ; but 
 she wrote to me several times from Lausanne, during the first year 
 of her banishment ; doleful letters, complaining bitterly of her father's 
 cruelty in keeping her awa}' from her beloved Cheriton, the horses 
 and dogs, the life she loved. School she detested. She was clever, 
 l)Ut she had no taste for intellectual pursuits. She soon wearied of 
 the lake and the mountains, and the humdrum society of a small 
 town. She wrote of herself as a galley-slave. Then came a sudden 
 cliange, and she began to write about him. You don't know the 
 way a girl writes about Mm ; the first him she has ever thought 
 worthy to bo written about. Her tone was liglit enough at the 
 beginning. She had met a young Irishman at a httle evening partj', 
 and they had laughed together at Lausanne society. He was an 
 officer, on furlough, full of wit and fun. I need not go into details. 
 I saw her danger, and warned her; I reminded her that her father 
 woul<l never allow her to many a subaltern in a marching regiment, 
 and tliat such a marriage would mean starvation. Her fjither could 
 give her nothing; it was incumbent on her to marry well, and with 
 her attractions she had only to wait for a good oOer. It would 
 inevitably come in due time." 
 
 " She was liandsomo, I suppose ? I know her face in the picture 
 at Cheriton. My cousin bought all tlio old portraits." 
 
 " She was much handsomer than the picture. That was painted
 
 154 2^^^ Z?(Ty will come. 
 
 wlien she was only fifteen, but at seventeen liev beauty had de- 
 veloped, and she was one of the most brilliant blondes I ever saw. 
 Well, I suppose you know how useless my advice was. She ran 
 away with her Irish admirer, and I heard no more of her for nearly 
 four years, when I met her one afternoon in the Strand, and she 
 took me home to her lodging in Cecil Street, and gave me some 
 tea. It was in October, and I sta3'ed with her till dark, and then 
 she insisted on seeing me off in the omnibus to Haverstock Hill, 
 where I was then living in an artist's family. The lodgings were 
 shabby, and she was shabbily dressed. She was as handsome as 
 ever, but she looked worried and unhappy. Her husband had sold 
 out of the army, and had a position as secretary to a West End club. 
 " She told me that they would have been pretty well off but for 
 his extravagance. He was getting four hundred a year, and they 
 had no children. She complained that it was her fate to be allied 
 with spendthrifts. Her father had squandered his fortune ; and her 
 husband's improvident habits kept her in continual debt and diffi- 
 culty. It gi'ieved me to see the shabbiness of her surroundings — 
 the squalid lodging-house parlour, without so much as a bunch of 
 flowers or a stand of books to show that it was in the occupation of 
 a lady. There was a cigarbox on the mantelpiece, and there was 
 a heap of newspapers on the sofa, and a pair of shabby slippers 
 inside the fender. It was a room to make one shudder. I asked 
 her if she was reconciled to her father, and she said no ; she had 
 heard nothing of him since her marriage. I felt very unhappy about 
 her after we parted at Hungerford Market. I saw her standing on 
 the pavement as the omnibus drove away, a tall, slim figure, dis- 
 tinguished-looking in spite of her shabby mantle and rusty black 
 silk gown. I had promised to go and see her again, though I was 
 very seldom at liberty at that time, and I went to Cecil Street two 
 or three times in the course of the ■winter, but she was always out, 
 and there was something in the tone of her letters that made me 
 think she did not wish to see me again, though I believe she was 
 fond of me always, poor soul. I saw nothing more of her, and 
 heard nothing until nearly foiu' years afterwards, when I was spend- 
 ing an afternoon at Richmond with my pupils — two girls of fourteen 
 and sixteen — and I came face to face with her in front of Thomson's 
 Seat. She was wth a tall, handsome man, whom at first I took to 
 be her husband : but there was something in the manner of both of 
 them that impressed me uncomfortably, and I began to fear that 
 this was not her husband. She looked much brighter than when I 
 saw her in Cecil Street, and she was better dressed — very plainly, 
 but in excellent taste. She took me aside a little way while her 
 companion stood and talked to the two girls. She put her arm 
 through mine in her old caressing way, and then she said, abruptly, 
 ' I almost wonder that you Avill speak to me. I thought you would 
 cut me dead.' I looked puzzled, no doubt; so she said, 'Perhaps
 
 The Day will come. 155 
 
 you don't know Avhat a lost creature I am. Perhaps you liavo not 
 hoard.' I told her I had heard nothing about her since we parted 
 at Hungerford Market, and then she gave a deep sigh, and said, 
 * Well, I am not going to deceive you. That,' with a jerk of her 
 head towards the man who was standing with his back to us, ' is not 
 my husband, but he and I are bound together for the rest of our 
 lives, and wo are perfectly happy together. Society would scorn us 
 and trample upon us no doubt if we gavo it a chance ; but we don't. 
 We live out of the world, and we live for one another. Now, aren't 
 you shocked with^me ? Don't you W'ant to run away ? ' she asked, 
 with a little laugh, which sounded as if she was very nearly crying. 
 I told her that I was very sorry for her. I could say no more than 
 that. ' You would be sorrier still if you could ])icture to yourself 
 the miserable life I led before I left my husband,' she said. 'I bore 
 it for five years, years that seemed an eternity. lie cared for me 
 no more than for the flower-girls in the street. He left me to pine 
 in my dingy lodging, left me to be dunned and woiried all 
 day long, left me out-at-elbows, ashamed of my own shabbiness, 
 while ho amused himself at his club ; and then he considered 
 himself cruelly used when he found out there was another man 
 in the world who thought me worth caring for, and when I told 
 him I loved that man with all my heart. !My lea\'ing him was 
 the impulse of a moment. The moment came when his brutaUty 
 turned tiie scale, and I ran out of the house in my despair, and 
 jumped into the first cab I could hail, and drove away to liim^ 
 pointing to the man in the distance, strolling beside my two gawky 
 girls, ' and to happiness. I am a wicked wretch, no doubt, to bo 
 happy under such circumstances, but I am, or. at any rate, as happy 
 as anybody can hope to be in this world. There is always a thorn 
 among the flowers,' she sighed, as if the thorn was a big one, I 
 thought. ' I suppose I shall never see you again,' she said. ' When 
 we say good-bye presently, it will be farewell for ever.' I told her 
 tliat was not inevitable. I was my own mistress, free to choose my 
 friends. I told her that if ever she had need of a friend I would 
 go to her. I felt that I was in some wise answerable for the bad 
 turn her life had taken, for had I been a more judicious counsellor, 
 I might have guided her better, might have prevented her coming 
 into collision with her fiither. I asked her for her address, but she 
 told me she had promised to tell nobody where she lived. ' We are 
 living out of the world,' she said, ' we have no visitors, no friends or 
 acquaintance.' She clasped my hands, kissed me, and hurried away 
 to rejoin the man whose name I never learned. lie lifted his hat 
 to mo and the girls, and they walked away together towards the 
 Star and Garter, leaving us standing by Thomson's Seat, staring idly 
 at the landscape in the summer sunlight. I felt dazed as I stood 
 there, looking down into that lovely valley. It had been a terrible 
 shock to me to meet her again under such circumstances."
 
 156 The Day zvill come. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " Be useful where thou livest, that they may 
 Both want and wish th}' pleasing presence still, 
 
 All worldly joj's go less 
 
 To the one joy of doing kindnesses," 
 
 " What impression did the man make upon you in that brief meet- 
 ing? " asked Tiieodore. " Did he strike you as a rouef " 
 
 " No, that was the odd part of the business. He had the steady, 
 respectable air of a bread-winner, a professional, or perhaps a com- 
 mercial man. I could not tell which. There was nothing flashy or 
 dissipated in his appearance. He looked me steadily in the face 
 when he bowed to me at parting, and he had a frank, straightforward 
 expression, and a grave decision of manner that was not ■without 
 dignity. He was soberly dressed in a style that attracted no atten- 
 tion. I had no doubt that he was a gentleman." 
 
 " He was handsome, you say ? " 
 
 " Yes, he was decidedly handsome — but I can remember only the 
 general character of liis face, not features or details, for I saw him 
 only twice in my life." 
 
 '• Ah, you saw him again ? " 
 
 '* Once again — some years later, after her death." 
 
 "She is dead, then?" cried Theodore; "that is the fact I am 
 most anxious to learn from a rehable source of information. There 
 was a rumour of her death years ago, but no one could give me any 
 evidence of the fact. I went to Boulogne last week to try and trace 
 her to her last resting-place ; but I could discover neither tomb- 
 stone nor record of any kind." 
 
 " And yet it was at Boulogne she died. I will tell you all I know 
 about her, if you like. It doesn't amount to much." 
 
 " Praj", tell me everything you can. I am deeply grateful to you 
 for having treated me with so much frankness." 
 
 "It was on her account I received you. lam glad to talk to any 
 one who is interested in her pitiful fate. There were so few to care 
 for her. I think there is no lot more sad than that of a broken- 
 down gentleman's daughter, born to an inheritance she is never to 
 enjo)', brought up to think of herself as a personage, with a right 
 to the world's respect, and finding herself friendless and penniless in 
 the bloom of her womanhood, exposed to the world's contumely." 
 
 Theodore's face flushed a little at this mention of his interest in 
 the unhappy lady, for he could but feel that the interest was of a 
 sinister kind ; but he held his peace, and Miss Newton went on wth 
 her story. 
 
 " It was ever so many years after that meeting in Fiichmoud Park
 
 The Day will come. 157 
 
 • — I lliink it must have been nearly ten years — when I ran against 
 tliat very man upon a windy March day in Folkestone. 1 hati 
 thought mnch and often of my poor girl in all those years, wonder- 
 ing how the world had used her, and whether the lover whom slie 
 trusted so implicitly had been true to her. I shuddered at the 
 thought of what her fate might have been if he were false. I had 
 never heard a word about lior in all that time. I had seen no report 
 of a Divorce suit in the papers. I knew absolutely nothing of her 
 history from the hour 1 parted with her by Thomson's Seat till 
 1 ran against that man in Folkestone. I am rather shy about 
 speaking to strangers in a general way ; but I was so anxious to 
 know her fate that I stopped this man, whose very name was un- 
 known to me, and asked him to tell me about my poor friend. He 
 looked bewildered, as well he might, at being pounced upon in that 
 manner. I explained that I was Evelyn Strangway's old governess, 
 and that I was uneasy at having lost sight of her for so many years, 
 and was very anxious to see her again. He looked troubled at my 
 question, and he answered me gi'avely — ' I am sorry to say you will 
 never do that. Your friend is dead.' I asked when she died, and 
 where? He told me within the last month, and at Boulogne. I 
 asked if he was with her at the last, and he said no ; and then he 
 lifted his hat and muttered something about having very little time 
 to get to the station. He was going to London b}^ the next train, it 
 seemed, and he was evidently anxious to shake me oil; but I was 
 determined ho should answer at least one more (piestion. ' Was 
 her husband with her when she died ? ' I asked. His face darkened 
 at the question, wliich I suppose was a foolish one. ' Do you think 
 it likely? ' he said, trying to move ])ast me ; but I had laid my hand 
 upon his sleeve in my eagerness. ' I'raj tell me that her end was not 
 nnhappj' — and that she was penitent for her sins.' He looked very 
 angry at this. ' If I stand here talking to you another minute I 
 shall lose my train, madam,' he said, ' and I have important business 
 in London this afternoon.' A fly came strolling by at this moment. 
 He hailed it and jumped in, and he drove oif into what Thomas 
 Carlylo would call the Immensities. I never saw him again ; I 
 never knew his name, or calling, or place of abode, or anything 
 about liim. I can no more localize him than I can Goethe's 
 IMephistopheles. God knows how he treated my poor girl — whether 
 he was kind or cruel ; whether he was failhfid to a dishonourable tie, 
 or whether he held it as lightly as such lies have been held by the 
 majority of men from Abraham downwards." 
 
 The little woman's face flushed and her eyes filled as she gave 
 vent to her feelings. 
 
 " And this is all you know of Evelyn Strangway ? " said Theodore, 
 when she had linished. 
 
 "This is all I know of her. And now teU me why you are so 
 anxious to learn her history — you who can never have seen her face,
 
 158 The Day ivill come. 
 
 except in the picture at Cheriton. I dressed her for that picture and 
 sat by while it was painted." 
 
 " I will tell you the motive of my curiosity," answered Theodore. 
 " You have treated me so frankly that I feel I must not withhold 
 my confidence from j^ou. I know that I can rely upon your discre- 
 tion." 
 
 " I can talk, as you have just heard," said Miss Newton ; " but I 
 can be silent as the grave, when I like." 
 
 " You must have read something about the murder at Cheriton- 
 last July." 
 
 " I read a great deal about it. I took a morbid interest in the 
 case, knowing the house so well in every cranny and comer. I 
 could picture the scene as vividly as if I had seen the murdered 
 man lying there. A most inexplicalile murder, apparently motive- 
 less." 
 
 "Apparently motiveless. That fact has so preyed upon the 
 widow's mind that she has imagined a motive. She has a strange 
 fancy that one of the Strangways must have been the author of the 
 crime. She has brooded over their images till her whole mind has 
 become possessed with the idea of one of that banished race, 
 garnering his wrath for long years, until at last the hour came for 
 a bloody revenge, and then striking a death-blow out of the dark- 
 striking his fatal blow and vanishing from the sight of men, as if a 
 phantom arm had been stretched out of the night to deal that blow. 
 She has asked me to help her in discovering the murderer, and I 
 am pledged to do my utmost towards that end. I am the more 
 anxious to do so as 1 tremble for the consequences if she should be 
 allowed to brood long upon this morbid fancy about the Strangways. 
 I think, however, that with your help I have now laid that ghost. 
 I have traced the two brothers to their graves ; and I suppose we 
 may accept the statement of the man you met at Folkestone as 
 sufficient evidence of Mrs. Darcy's death ; especially as it seems to 
 fit in with the account of the then Vicar of Cheriton, who met 
 her in Boulogne in the summer of '64 looking very ill and much 
 aged." 
 
 " It was in the spring of '65 I met that man at Folkestone. I 
 could find the exact date in my diary if you wished to be very 
 precise about it, for it is one of my old-maidish ways to be very 
 regular in keeping m}' diary. Poor Evelyn ! To think that any one 
 should be mad enough to suspect her of being capable of murder — or 
 Fred or Reginald. They had the Strangway temper, all three of 
 them ; and a fiery temper it was when it was roused, a temper that 
 led to family quarrels and all sorts of unhappiness ; but murder is a 
 different kind of thing." 
 
 " That is the question," said Theodore, gi-avely. " Is there such 
 a wide gulf between the temper that makes family quaixels, sets 
 father against son, and brother against brother, and the temper that
 
 The Day will come. 159 
 
 pulls a trigger or uses a bowie-knife ? I thought they wore one and 
 the same thing in actual quality, and that the result was dependent 
 upon circumstances." 
 
 " Oh, don't talk like that, please. Murder is something exceptional 
 —a hideous solecisni in nature — and in this case why murder? 
 What had Sir Godfrey Carmichael done that any member of the 
 Strangway family should want to kill him ? " 
 
 "I tell you that the idea is a wild one, the morbid growth of my 
 cousin's sorrow." 
 
 " Of course it is. I am very sorry for her, poor soul. I don't 
 suppose any woman could suffer more than she must have suffered. 
 It is a dreadful story. And she was very fond of her husband, I 
 dare say." 
 
 " She adored him. They had been lovers almost from her child- 
 hood. There never were a more devoted bride and bridegroom. 
 Their honeymoon was not even beginning to wane. They were 
 still lovers, still in a state of sweet surprise at finding themselves 
 husband and wife. Poor girl, I saw her the day before the murder, 
 a brilliant creature, the very spirit of joy. I saw her the morning 
 after, a spectre, with awful eyes and marble face — more dreadful 
 to look ui)on than her murdered husband." 
 
 " It is all too sad," sighed Miss Newton. " I begin to think that 
 Cheriton is a fatal house, and that no one can be happy there. 
 However, you can tell this poor lady that the Strangways are ex- 
 onerated from any part in her misery." 
 
 " I shall write to iier to-night to that effect. And now, Miss New- 
 ton, let me thank you once more for your friendly frankness, and 
 wish you good night." 
 
 " Don't be in such a hurry, Mr. Dalbrook. I like your face, and 
 I should like to see you again some day, if you can find time to 
 waste an hour upon an old maid in such a God-forsaken place as 
 Wedgcwood Street." 
 
 "I shall think an hour so spent most delightfully employed," 
 answered Theodore, who was quite subjugated by the charm of this 
 little person and her surroundings. 
 
 He did not remember having ever sat in a room ho liked better 
 than this first-floor front in Wedgewood Street, with its tcrra-cotta 
 walls, prettily-boimd books, curious oddments of old china, and 
 comfortable curtains of creamy workhouse-sheeting, with a bold 
 vermilion border worked by Sarah Newton's indefatigable fingers. 
 
 " I should very much like to hear all about your life in tliis — 
 strange neighbourhood," he said. 
 
 " There is not much to tell. When my little fortune— left by my 
 uncle, the diysalter — fell in to mc I was a lonely old woman, without 
 one surviving relative for whom I cared twopence. I was pretty 
 tired of teaching French and German — God knows how manj' hun- 
 dred times I must have gone through Ollendorff in both l.inguages —
 
 i6o The Day will come. 
 
 and I've done him a good many times in Italian, lyxr dessus le marche. 
 Perhaps I might have held on for a year or two longer, as I was 
 very fond of those nice girls and boys at Kettisford Vicarage, if it 
 hadn't been for Ollendorlf. He decided me. Leila, the j'oungest 
 girl, had only just begun that accursed book. She was blundering 
 over ' the baker's golden candlestick ' the very morning I got the 
 lawj'er's letter to tell me of my uncle's death, and the will, and the 
 legacy. I snatched the book out of her hand, and shut it with a 
 bang. 'Ain't I to do any more Ollendorlf, Sally?' she asked. 
 ' You may do as much as you like, my love,' I said, ' but you'll do 
 no more with me. I'm a millionaire, or at least 1 feel as rich and 
 independent as if I were a Rothschild.' Well, I lay awake all that 
 night making plans for my life, and trying to think out how I could 
 get the most comfort out of my little fortune, enjoy my declining 
 years, have everything I wanted, and yet be of some use to my 
 fellow-creatures ; and the end of it was that I made up my mind to 
 take a roomy lodging in a poor neighbourhood, where I should not 
 be tempted to spend a penny upon appearances, furnish it after my 
 own heart, and make myself liappy in just my own way, without 
 caring a straw what anybody thought about me. I knew that I was 
 plain as well as elderly, that I could never be admired, or cut a 
 figm-e in the genteel world, so I determmed to renounce the gen- 
 tilities altogether and to be looked up to in a little world of my 
 own." 
 
 " And you have found your plan answer " 
 
 "It has answered beyond my hopes. Ever since I was thirty 
 years of age and had finished with all young ideas and day-dreams, 
 I had one particular ideal of earthly bliss, and that was the position 
 of a countr\' squire's wife — an energetic, active, well-meaning woman, 
 the central figure in a rural village, having her model cottages and 
 her allotment gardens, her infirmary, her mission-house — the good 
 genius of her little community, a queen in miniature, and without 
 political entanglements, or menace of foreign war. Now it could 
 never be my lot to reign on a landed estate, to build cottages, or cut 
 up fertile meadows for cottagers' gardens ; but I thought by taking 
 up my abode in a poor neighbourhood, and visiting in a friendly, 
 familiar way — no tracts or preachings — among the most respectable 
 of the inhabitants, and slowly feeling my way among the difficult 
 subjects, I might gradually acquire an influence just as strong as that 
 of the Lady Bountiful in a country parish, and might come to be as 
 useful in my small way as the squire's wife with her larger means. 
 And I have done it," added IMiss Newton, triumphantly. " There 
 are rooms in this street and in other streets that are to me my model 
 cottages. There are overworked, underfed women who look up to 
 me as their Providence. There are children who come and hang to 
 my skirts as I pass along the streets. There are great hulking men 
 who ask my advice and get me to AVTite their letters for them.
 
 The Day will come. i6i 
 
 What coiilJ a squire's \viro have more lliaii that? And yet I 
 luive only a Imudrcd and lifty ixjunds a year to spend upou my 
 peoi)le." 
 
 '' You give tliem sometliing more than money. You give them 
 sympathy — tlie magnetism of your strong and generous nature." 
 
 " Ah, there is something in tliat. Magnetism is a good word. 
 Tliere must be some reason Avhy people attach themselves so ar- 
 dently to Mr. Gladstone, don't you know, — some charm in him that 
 holds them almost in spite of themselves, and makes them think as 
 he thinks, and veer as he veers. Yes, they swing round ^^^th him 
 like the boats going round with the tide, and they can't help it any 
 more than the boats can. And I think, to compare small things 
 with great, tiicre must be some touchof that magnetic power in nte," 
 cunchi<led Miss Newton. 
 
 "I am sure of it," said Theodore, "and I am sure, too, that you 
 must be like a spot of light in this dark little world of yours." 
 
 " I live among my friends. That is the point," explained Miss 
 Newton. " I don't come from Belgravia, or from a fashionable 
 terrace in Kensington, and tell them they ought to keep their 
 wretched rooms cleaner, and open their windows and put flower-pots 
 on their window-sills. I live here, and they can come and see how 
 I keep 7???/ rooms, and judge for themselves. Their landlord is my 
 landlord ; and a nice life I lead him about water, and whitewash, and 
 drains. He is thoroughly afraid of me, I am happy to say, and 
 generally bolts round a corner when he sees me in the street; but 
 I am too quick for his over-fed legs. I tackle him about all his 
 shortcomings, and he finds it easier to spend a few pounds upon his 
 property now and then than to have me upon his heels at every 
 turn ; so now Crook's tenements have quite a reputation in Lambeth. 
 If you were to see the old dragon you would v^^onder at my pluck 
 in attacking him. I can assure you." 
 
 *' Your wiiole life is wonderful- to me, iSIiss Newton ; and I only 
 wish there were hundreds of women in this big city living just as 
 you live. Tell me, please, what kind of people your neighbours 
 are." 
 
 " Oh, there arc people of all kinds, some of course who are quite 
 impracticable, for whom I can du notliing ; but there are many 
 more who are glad of my friendshi]), and who receive mo with open 
 arms. The single women and widows are my chief friends, and 
 some of those I know as well as if we had been brought up and 
 educated upon tiie same social level. They are workwomen of all 
 kinds, tailoresses, shirt-makers, girls who work for military outfitters, 
 extra hands for Court dressmakers, shop-girls at the humbler class 
 of shops, shoe-binders, artificial-Hower-makers. I wonder whether 
 you would like to see some of them." 
 
 M
 
 1 62 The Day luill come. 
 
 "I .should like it very much indeed." 
 
 " Then perhaps you will come to one of my tea-parties. I give 
 two tea-parties a week all through the winter, to just as many of my 
 women friends as this room will hold. It holds about twenty very 
 comfortably, so I make twenty-five the outside limit. We rather 
 enjoy a little bit of a crush — and I give my invitations so that they 
 all have such pleasure as I can give them, fairly, turn and turn 
 about. AVe do not begin our evening too early, for the working 
 hours are precious to my poor things. We take tea at eight o'clock, 
 and we seldom separate before half-past eleven — just as if we were 
 at a theatre. We have a httle music, a Httle reading and recitation, 
 and sometimes a round game at cards. When we are in a wild 
 humour we play dumb-crambo, or even puss-in-the-corner ; and we 
 have alwaj^s a great deal of talk. We sit round this fireplace in a 
 double semi-circle, the younger ones sitting on the rug in front of us 
 elders, and we talk, and talk, and talk — about ourselves mostly, and 
 you can't think what good it does us. Surely God gave man speech 
 as the universal safety-valve. It lets off half our troubles, and half 
 our sense of the world's injustice." 
 
 "Please let me come to your very nest partj'," said Theodore, 
 smiling at the little woman's ardour. 
 
 " That will be to-morrow evening," replied Miss Newton. " I 
 shall have to make an excuse for your appearance, as we very 
 seldom invite a man. You will have to read or recite something, 
 as a reason for your being asked, don't you know." 
 
 " I will not recoil even from that test. I have distinguished 
 myself occasionally at a Penny Eeading. Am I to be tragic — or 
 comic? " 
 
 " Be both if you can. We like to laugh ; but we revel in some- 
 thing that makes us ciy desperately. If you could give us something 
 creepy into the bargain, freeze our blood with a ghost or two, it 
 woidd be all the more enjoyable." 
 
 " I will satiate you with my talents ; I shall feel like Pentheus when 
 he intruded upon his mother and her crew, and shall be humbly 
 gi-ateful for not being torn to pieces. I dare say I shall be torn to 
 pieces mora%, in the way of criticism. Good night, and a thousand 
 thanks." 
 
 " Wait," said Miss Newton. " I'm afraid it is much foggier than 
 when you came. I have smelt the fog coming on while we have 
 been talking. Wouldn't you like a cab?" 
 
 " I should very much, 'but I doubt if I shall succeed in finding 
 one." 
 
 " You wouldn't, but I dare say I can get you one," replied Miss 
 Newton, decisively. 
 
 She had an unobtrusive little chatelaine at her side, and from 
 the bunch of implements, scissors, penknife, thimble, she selected a
 
 The Day will come. i6 
 
 small whistle. Tliuu she liulled Inu-k uiic ol' the eivaiii-whiu; cur- 
 tains, opened the window, and whistled loud and shrill into the fot,'. 
 Two minutes afterwards there came a small treble voice out of the 
 darkness. 
 
 "What is it, Miss Newton?" 
 
 "Who's that?" 
 
 '' Tonnny I^Ieadows." 
 
 "All ri^ht. Tommy. Do j'on think j'ou could find a liansoui 
 without pettint; j-ourself run over ? " 
 
 " llather ! Do you v/ant it briiiged to your door, uiiss? " 
 
 " If you please. Tommy." 
 
 " I'm oft"," cried the shrill voice, and in less than ten minutes a 
 two-whccler rattled along the street, and drew up sharply at 
 Tommy's treble command, with Tommy himself seated inside, 
 enjoying the drive and the uncertainty of the driver. 
 
 His spirits were still further exalted by the gift of sixpence from 
 Theodore as he stepped into the cab, to be taken back to the 
 Temple at a foot ])ace. 
 
 Even that sitling-room of his, which he had taken pains to make 
 comfortable and home-like, had a gloomy look after that bright 
 room in Lambeth, with its terra-cotta walls and cream-coloured 
 curtains, its gail^'-bouud books and vivid Vallauris vases perched in 
 eveiy available corner. He was more interested in that quaint 
 interior, and in the woman who had created it, than he had been in 
 any one except that one woman who tilled the chief i>lace in all his 
 thoughts. The Vicar of Kettisford had not over-estimated Sarah 
 Newton's power of fascination. 
 
 lie was in Wedgewood Street at a few minutes before eight on 
 the following evening. The sky above Lambeth was no longer 
 obscured; there were wintry stars shining over that forest of 
 chimney pots and everlasting monotony of slated roofs ; and even 
 Lambeth looked livc;!}^ with its (posters' barrows and bustle of even- 
 tide marketing. Theodore found the door open, as it had been 
 j'estcrday, and he found an extra lamp upon the first floor landing, 
 and the door of Miss Newton's room ajar, while from within came 
 the sound of many voices, moderated to a subdued tone, but still 
 lively. 
 
 Ills modest knock was answered by Miss Newton herself, who 
 was standing close to the door, readj' to greet every fresh arrival. 
 
 "How do yon do? We are nearly all here," she said, cheeril}'. 
 
 " I hope yon have not just been dining, for with us tea means a 
 hearty meal, and if you can't cat anything we shall feel as if you 
 were Banquo's ghost. How do yon do, Mrs. Kirby?" to another 
 arrival. " Baby better, I hope ? Yes, that's right. IIow arc; you, 
 (Jlara? and you. Hose? You've had that wretched tooth out — I 
 can see it in your face. Such a relief, isn't it? So glad to see you,
 
 164 The Day ivill come. 
 
 Susan Dale, and you, jMaria, and you, Jenny. Why, we are all here, 
 I do believe." 
 
 " Yes, Miss Newton," said a bright-looking girl by the fireplace, 
 who had been making toast indefatigably for twenty minutes, and 
 whose complexion had suffered accordingl3\ " There are two and 
 twenty of us, four and twenty, counting the gentleman and you. I 
 think that's as many as you expected." 
 
 " Yes, everybody's here. So we may as well begin tea." 
 
 In most such assemblies, where the intention was to benefit a 
 humble class of guests, the proceedings would have begun with a 
 hymn; but at Miss Newton's parties there were neither hymns 
 nor prayers — and yet Miss Newton loved her hymn-book, and 
 delighted in the pathos and the sweetness of the music with which 
 tliose familiar words are interwoven ; nor would she yield to any- 
 body in her belief in the efficacy of prayer ; but she had made up 
 her mind from the beginning that her tea-parties were to be pure 
 and simple recreation, and that any good which should come out of 
 them was to come incidentally. The women and girls wlio came at 
 her bidding were to feel they came to be entertained, came as 
 her guests, just as, had they been duchesses, they might have gone 
 to visit other duchesses in Park Lane or Carlton Gardens. They 
 were not asked in order that they should be taught, or preached 
 to, or wheedled into the praying of prayers or the singing of 
 hymns. They went as equals to visit a friend who relished their 
 society. 
 
 And did not everybody relish the tea ! which might be described 
 as a Yorkshire tea of a humble order; not the Yorkshire tea which 
 may mean mayonnaise and perigord pie, chicken and champagne — 
 but tea as understood in the Potteries of Hull, or the humbler alleys 
 and streets of Leeds or Bradford. Three moderate-sized tables had 
 been put together to make one capacious board, spread with snowy 
 damask, upon which appeared two large plum loaves, two tall 
 towers of bread and butter, a glass bowl of marmalade, a bowl of 
 jam, two dishes of thinly-sliced German sausage set off with sprigs 
 of parsley — German sausage bought at the most respectable ham and 
 beef shop in the Borough, and as trustworthy as German sausage 
 can be ; and for crowning glory of the feast a plentiful supply of 
 shrimps, freshly boiled, savouring of the unseen sea. The liot 
 buttered toast was frizzling on a brass footman in front of the fire, 
 ready to be handed round piping hot, as required. There were two 
 tea-trays, one at each end of the table, and there were t'.vo bright 
 copperkettles, which had never been defiled by the smoke of the 
 fire, filled with admirable tea. 
 
 Miss Newton took her place at the head of the table, with Theo- 
 dore on her right hand, and a pale and fragile looking young woman 
 on her left. These two assisted the hostess in the administration
 
 The Day zuill come. 165 
 
 of" the tea-fray, handirif; cups and saucers, sugar-basin and crcam- 
 
 ■rt 1 
 
 Other. 
 
 Having gone there prepared to bo interested, Tlicndoro soon 
 began to interest himself in tliis young woman, whom IMiss Newton 
 addressed as ^larian. Slic was by no means beautiful now, l)ut 
 Theodore fancied tliat she had once been very handsome, and lio 
 occu]iicd In'msclf in reconstructing the beauty of the past from the 
 wreck of the present. 
 
 Tlie lines of the face were classic in their regularity, but the 
 hollow cheeks and pallid complexion told of care and toil, and the 
 foce was aged untimely by a hard and joyless life. The eyes were 
 darkest grey, largo and pathetic-looking, the eyes of a woman who 
 liad suffered much and thought much. The beaut}' of those eyes 
 gave a mournful charm to the ]iale pinched face, and the light 
 auburn hair was still luxm-iant. Theodore noted the delicate hands 
 and taper fingers, which dilfercd cm-iously from the other hands 
 which were busy around the hospitable board. 
 
 He could see that this young woman was a favourite with Sarah 
 Newton, and he told himself that she was of a race apart from the 
 rest ; but he was agreeably surprised in finding that, except for the 
 jirevailiiig Cockney accent, and a few slight lapses in gi-ammar and 
 proinmciation. Miss Newton's guests were quite as refined as those 
 ladies of Dorchester with whom it had been his privilege to asso- 
 ciate ; indeed, ho was not sure that he did not prefer the Cockney 
 twang and the faulty grammar to the socond-hand smartness and 
 slang of the young ladies whose "Awfully jolly," "Ain't it," and 
 "Don't you know," had so often irritated his ear on tennis lawn or 
 at afternoon tea. Here at least there was the unstudied speech of 
 j)eople who knew not the caprices of fashion or the latest catcli word 
 that had descended from Belgravia to Brompton, and from Bromp- 
 ton to the provinces. 
 
 There was a great deal of talk, as ]\Iiss Newton had told him there 
 would be ; and as she encouraged all her guests to talk about them- 
 selves, he gathered a good deal of interesting information about the 
 state of the diilerent trades and the ways and manners of various 
 employers, most of whom seemed to be of a despotic and grasping 
 temper. The widows talked of their children's ailments or their 
 progress at the Board School ; the girls talked a little, and witii all 
 modesty, of their sweethearts. Sarah Newton was interested in 
 every detail of those humble lives, and seemed to remember every 
 fact bearing upon the joys or the sorrows of her guests. It was 
 a wonder to Theodore, to see how the care-worn faces lighted wy 
 round the cheerful table in the lamp-light. Yes, it was surely a good 
 thing to live among these daughters of toil, and to lighten their 
 biu'dens by this quick sympathy, this cheerful hospitality. Vast
 
 1 66 The Day zvill conic. 
 
 Pleasure Halls and People's Palaces may do ranch for the million ; but 
 here was one little spinster with her small income making an atmo- 
 sphere of friendliness and comfort for the few, and able to get a great 
 deal nearer to them than Philanthropy on a gigantic scale can ever 
 get to the many. 
 
 Theodore noticed that while most other tongues babbled freely, 
 the girl called Marian sat silent, after her task of distributing the tea 
 was over, with hands folded in her lap, listening to the voices round 
 her, and with a soft slow smile lighting her face now and then. In 
 repose her countenance was deeply sad, and he found himself specu- 
 lating upon the history that had left those melancholy lines upon 
 a face that was still young. 
 
 " I am much interested in j'our next neighbour," he said to ]Miss 
 Newton, presently, while Marian was helping another girl to clear 
 the table. " I feel sure there must be something very sad in her 
 experience of life, and that she has sunk from a higher level." 
 
 " So do I," answered Miss Newton, " but I know very little more 
 about her than you do, except that she is a most exquisite worker 
 with those taper fingers of hers, and that she has Avorked for the 
 same baby-linen house for the last three years, and has lived in 
 the same second-floor back in Hercules' Buildings. I think she is as 
 fond of me as she can be, yet she has never told me where she was 
 born, or who her people were, or what her life has been like. Once 
 she went so far as to tell me that it had been a very commonplace 
 life, and that her troubles had been in nowise extraordinary — except 
 the fact of her having had a very severe attack of typhus fever, which 
 left her a wreck. Once, from some chance allusion, I learnt that it 
 was in Italy she caught the fever, and that it was badly treated by 
 a foreign doctor ; but that one fact is all she ever let slip in her 
 talk, so carefully does she avoid every mention of the past. I need 
 hardly tell you that I have never questioned her. I have reason to 
 know that her life for the last three years has been spotless — an 
 industrious, temperate. Christian life — and that she is charitable and 
 kind to those who are poorer than herself. That is quite enough 
 for me, and I have encouraged her to make a friend of me in every 
 way in my power." 
 
 " She is happy in having found such a friend, an invaluable 
 friend to a woman who has sunk from happier surroundings." 
 
 "Yes, I think I have been a comfort to her. She comes to me 
 for books, and we meet nearly every day at the Free Library, and 
 compare notes about our reading. My only regret is that I cannot 
 induce her to take enough air and exercise. She spends all the 
 time that she can spare from her needlework in reading. But I 
 take her for a walk now and then, and I think she enjoys that. A 
 penn'orth of the tramcar carries us to Battersea Park, and we can 
 stroll about amongst grass and trees, and in sight of the river. She
 
 The Day zoill come. 167 
 
 is better olVthan most of the girls in the way of getting a little rest 
 .iftcr toil, for that fine, delicate needlework of hers pays iietter 
 than tho common run of work, and kIio is the quickest worker I 
 know." 
 
 The tables were cleared by this time, and space had been made 
 for that hali-circle round the fire of wliicii ]\Iiss Newton had spoken 
 on tho previous night. Tho younger girls brought hassocks and 
 cushions, and seated themselves in tho front rank, while their 
 ciders sat in the outer row of chairs. 
 
 Theodore was now called upon to contribute his share to tho 
 entertainment, and thereupon took a book from his ])ocket. 
 
 " You told me you and your friends were fond of creepy stories, 
 Miss Newton," he said. " Is that really so ? " 
 
 " Really and truly." 
 
 " And you are none of _vou afflicted with weak nerves — you are not 
 afraid of being made uncomfortablel)y the memorj'of a ghastlystory ? " 
 
 "No. I think that with most of us the cares of life are too real 
 and too absorliing to leave any room in our minds for imaginary 
 horrors. Isn't it so, now, friends? " 
 
 '• Lor, yes, Miss Newton," answered one of the girls briskly : " we're 
 all of us too busy to worry about ghosts ; but I love a ghost tale for 
 all that." 
 
 A chonis of voices echoed this assertion. 
 
 " Then, ladies, I shall have the honour of reading tho * Haunters 
 and the Haunted,' by Bulwer Lytton." 
 
 The very title of the story thrilled them, and tho whole party, 
 just now so noisy with eager talk and frequent laughter, sat breath- 
 less, looking at the reader with awe-stricken eyes as that wonderful 
 story slowly unwound itself. 
 
 Theodore read well, in that subdued and semi-dramatic st5'lo 
 which is best adapted to chamber-reading. He felt what he read, 
 and the horror of the imaginary scene was vividly before his eyes as 
 he got deeper into the story. 
 
 The reading lasted nearly two hours, but it was not one moment 
 too long for Theodore's audience, and there was a sigh of regret 
 when the last words of the story had been spoken. 
 
 " Well," exclaimed one young lady, '• I do call that a first-class 
 tale, don't you, Miss Newton V "' 
 
 " You may go a long way without getting such a ghost talc as 
 that," said another; "and don't the gentleman read beautifully, 
 and don't he make one feel as if it was all going on in this very 
 room? And the dog too ! There, I never see such a thing! A 
 poor dog to drop down dead, like that." 
 
 "I did hope that there dog would come to life again at the end," 
 said one damsel. 
 
 By way of diversion after the story. Miss Newton opened her piano,
 
 1 68 The Day will come. 
 
 beckoned three of the girls over to her, and jilayed the s^^mphony 
 of " Blow, Gentle Gales," which old-fashioned glee the three girls 
 sang with taste and discretion, the bass part being altered to suit a 
 female voice. Then came some songs, all of Avhich I\Iiss Newton 
 accompanied ; and then- at her request Theodore read again, this 
 time selecting Holmes' " Wonderful One-Iiorse Shay," which caused 
 much laughter ; after which, the little clock on the chimney-piece 
 having struck eleven, he wished his hostess good night, selected his 
 coat and hat from among the heap of jackets and hats on a table on 
 the landing, and Avent downstairs. 
 
 He was still in Wedgewood Street when he heard light footsteps 
 coming quickly behind him. It seemed to him that they were try- 
 ing to overtake him, so he turned and met the owner of the feet. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir ; forgive me for followuag you," said a 
 very gentle voice, which he recognized as belonging to the girl called 
 Marian — " I wanted so much to speak to you — alone." 
 
 " And I am glad of the opportunity of speaking to you," he 
 answered. ' ' I felt particularly interested in you this evening — there 
 are some faces, you know, which interest us in spite of ourselves 
 almost, and I felt that I should like to know more of you." 
 
 This was so gi-avely said that there was no possibility of an 
 offensive construction being given to the words. 
 
 " You are very good, sir. It was your name that struck me." 
 she answered, falteringly ; " it is a Dorsetshire name, I think." 
 
 " Yes, it is a Dorsetshire name, and I am a Dorchester man." 
 
 " Dorchester," she repeated slowly. " I wonder whether you 
 know a place called Cheriton ? " 
 
 " I know it very well indeed. A kinsman of mine lives there. 
 Lord Cheriton is my cousin." 
 
 "I thought as much, directly I heard your name. You must 
 know all about that dreadful murder, then — last summer ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know about as much of it as any one knows, and that is 
 very little." 
 
 "They have not found the murderer?" she asked, with a faint 
 shudder. 
 
 " No, nor are they ever likely to find him, I believe. But tell me 
 why you are interested in Cheriton. Do j^ou come from that part 
 of the country V " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Were you born in Cheriton village ? " 
 
 " I was brought up not far from there," she answered, hesitatinglv. 
 
 He remembered what Miss Newton had told him of her own 
 forbearance in asking questions, and he pursued the inquiry no further. 
 
 " May I see you as far as your lodgings ? " he said, kindly. " It 
 Avill be very little out of my way." 
 
 ''NO; thank you, Mr. Dalbrook. lam too much accustomed to
 
 The Day ivill come. 169 
 
 poinf; about alone ever to want any escort. Good ni.^lit, and thank 
 you for liaving answered my questions." 
 
 Iler manner showed a (hsinclination to jirolonp; tlio interview, and 
 she walked away with hurried atcps which carried her swiftly into 
 the darkness. 
 
 " Poor lone!}' soul ! " he said to himself. " Now, whose lost sheej) 
 is she, I wonder? She is certainly of a rank above a cottager's 
 dauj!;hter, an<l with those hands of hers it is clear she has never 
 been in domestic service. Not far from Cheriton ! What may 
 that mean ? Not far is a vague description of locality. I must ask 
 Lady Chcritou about her the next time I am at the Chase." 
 
 CHAPTER XVIT. 
 
 " A minil not to be changed by pl.ace or time." 
 
 CiiuiSTMAS at Dorchester was not a period of festivity to which 
 Theodore Dalbrook had hitherto looked forward with ardent ex- 
 ]iectations, but in this jjarticular Decemlter he found himself longing 
 for that holiday season even as a sclioolboy might long for release 
 from I^atin Crammar and suet pudding, and for the plenteous fare 
 and idle days of home. He longed for the grave old town with its 
 lioman relics and leatless avenues; longed for it, alas! not so much 
 because his father, brother, and sisters dwelt there, as because it 
 was within a possible drive of j\Iilbrook Priory, and once being at 
 Horchester he ha<l a fair excuse for going to sec his cousin. Many 
 and many a time in his chambers at the Temple he had felt the 
 f'ever-iit so strongly upon him that he was tempted to put on his 
 hat, rush out of tliose C|uiet courts and stony <[uadrangles to the 
 bustle of tlie Embankment, spring into the iirst hansom that came 
 within liail, and so to AVaterloo, and liy any train that would carry 
 him to Wareham Station, and thence to the Priory, only to look 
 upon Juanita's face for a little while, only to hold her hand in his, 
 once at greeting and once at parting, and then back into the night 
 and the loneliness of liis life, and law books and precedents, and 
 Justinian and Chitty, and all that is commonplace and dry-as-dust 
 in man's existence. 
 
 He had refrained from such foolishness, and now Christmas was 
 at hand, liis sisters were making the house odious with holly and 
 laurel, the old cook was chopping suet for the traditional pudding
 
 1 70 The Day luill come. 
 
 wliich he had loathed foi" the last ten years, and he had a fair 
 excuse for driving along the frosty roads to visit his widowed 
 cousin. He had a pressing invitation from Lord Cheriton to spend 
 two or three days of his holiday time at the Chase, an invitation 
 which ho had promptly accepted ; but his first visit was to Lady 
 Carmichael. 
 
 He found the house in all things unlike what it had been when 
 last he saw it. The dear Grenvilles had been persuaded to spend 
 their Christmas in Dorsetshire, and the Priory was full of children's 
 voices, and the traces of children's occupation. Theodore had 
 known Jessica Grenville before her marriage, yet it was not the less 
 a shock to find himself confronted by a portly matron and a brood 
 of children in tliat room where he had seen Juanita's sad face bent 
 over her embroidery. There was no trace of Juanita in the spacious 
 drawing-room to-day, and the fact of her absence almost unhinged 
 him, and put him at a disadvantage in his conversation with ]\lrs. 
 Grenville, who received him v/ith gracious loquacity, and insisted 
 upon his giving an immediate opinion upon the different degi-ees of 
 family likeness to be seen in her fom' children there present. 
 
 " These two are decided Carmichaels," she said, putting forward 
 a rather flabby boy and a pudding-faced girl, " and the other two 
 are thorough Grenvilles," indicating the latter and younger pair, 
 who were seated on the floor building a Tower of Babel with a lately 
 received present of bricks, and carrying out the idea by their own 
 confusion of tongues. 
 
 Theodore felt glad he was not a Grenville if that was the tjqDC. 
 lie murmured some vague civility about the children, while he 
 shook' hands with Lady Jane, who had come forward shyly to wel- 
 come him, almost obliterated by her more loquacious daughter. 
 
 "Don't you think Johnnie the very image of his poor dear 
 uncle? " asked Mrs. Grenville urgently, a question which always 
 agonized Lady Jane, who could not see the faintest likeness 
 between her snub-nosed and bilious-looking grandchild and her 
 handsome son. 
 
 Theodore was too nervous to be conscious of his own untruth- 
 fulness in replying in the affirmative. He was anxious to have 
 done with the children, and to hear about his cousin. 
 
 " I hope Juanita is not ill? " he said. 
 
 "Oh, no, she is pretty well," replied Lady Jane, " but we keep 
 her as quiet as we can, and of course the children are rather trying 
 for her " 
 
 " Nobodj"- can say that they are noisy children," interjected the 
 happy mother. 
 
 " So she seldom leaves her own rooms till the evening," continued 
 Lady Jane. " You would like to see her at once, I dare say, Mr. 
 Dalbrook ? And I know she will be pleased to see you."
 
 The Day luill come. 171 
 
 Slio rang, ami told the footman to in(iiiirc if Lady Carmichacl 
 was ready to see Mr. Dalln'ook, and Tlieodorc had to occupy the 
 interval until the footman's return with polite attentions to the four 
 children. He asked Lucy whence slio had obtained those delight- 
 ful bricks, thcreliy eliciting the information that the bricks were not 
 Lucy's, but (irodolphin's, only ho " let her ])lay with them," as he 
 observed magnanimously. He was gratified with tlie further in- 
 formation that the tower now in process (jf elevation was n(jt a 
 church, but the Tower of Babel ; and he was then treated to the 
 history of that remarkable building as related in Holy Writ. 
 
 " Yoii didn't know that, did you ? " remarked Godolphin, boast- 
 fully, when he had finished his narration in a harsh bawl, being one 
 of those coarse brats whom their parents boast of as after the 
 pattern of the inlant Hercules. 
 
 The footman returned before Godolphin had wrung a confession 
 of ignorance from the nervous visitor, and Theodore darted up to 
 follow him out of the room. 
 
 He found Juanita reclining on a low couch near the fire in a 
 diml3--lighted room, that room which he remembered having entered 
 only once before, on the occasion of an afternoon party at the 
 Priory, when Sir Godfrey had taken him to his den to show him a 
 newly acquired folio copy of Thomson's '' Seasons," with the fomous 
 liartolozzi mezzotints. It was a good old room, especially at this 
 wintry season, when tlio dulness of the outlook was of little con- 
 scfpicncc. The firelight gleamed cheerily on the rich bindings of 
 the ])ooks, and on the dark w^ooilwork, and fondly touched Juanita's 
 reclining figure and the rich folds of her dark plush tea-gown. 
 
 '• How good of you to come to see me so soon, Theodore ! " she 
 said, giving him her hand. " I know you only came to Dorchester 
 yesterday. Tlic girls were here the day before, and told me the\' 
 exi^ectcd you." 
 
 " You did not think I should be in the county very long without 
 finding my way here, did you, Juanita ? " 
 
 "Well, no, periia[)s not. I know what a true friend you arc. 
 And now tell me, have you made any further discoveries ? " 
 
 " One more discovery, Juanita, as I told you briefly in my last 
 letter. I have traced the Squire's daughter to the sad close of a 
 most unhappy life — and so ends the Strangway fiimily as you know 
 of their existence — that is to say, those three Strangways who had 
 some right to feel themselves aggrieved by the loss of the land upon 
 whicli they were ])orn." 
 
 " Tell mo all you heard from Miss Newton. Your letter was 
 brief and vague, but as I knew I was to sec you at Cliristmas I 
 waited for fuller details. Tell me everything, Theodore." 
 
 He obeyed iier, and related tlie ])ittcr, connuonplace story of 
 livelyn Strangway's life, as told him by her old governess. There
 
 172 The Day ivill come. 
 
 were no clemonts of romance in the story. It was as common as 
 the Divorce Court or the daily papers. 
 
 " Poor crcatm-e ! Well, there ends my theory, at least about 
 her," said Juanita, gloomily. " Her brothers were dead, and she was 
 dead, long before that fatal night. Did they bequeath their vengeance 
 to any one else, I wonder ? Who else is there in this world who had 
 reason to hate my father or me ? And I know that no creature upon 
 this earth could have cause to hate my husband." 
 
 " In your father's calling there is always a possibility of a deadly 
 hate, inexplicable, unknown to the subject. Eemember the fate of 
 Lord Mayo. A judge who holds the keys of life and death must 
 make many enemies." 
 
 " Yes," she sighed, " there is that to be thought of. Oh, my 
 dearest and best, why did yon ever link your life with that of a 
 Judge's daughter? I feel as if I had hn-ed him to his doom. I 
 might have foreseen the danger. I ought never to have married. 
 What right had I? Some discharged felon lay in wait for him — 
 some relentless, Godless, hopeless wretch — whom my father had 
 condemned to long imprisonment — whose angry heart my father 
 had scorched with his scathing speech. I have read some of his 
 summings up, and they have seemed cruel, cruel, cruel — so cold, so 
 deliberate, so like a god making light of the sins of men. Some 
 wretch, coming maddened out of his silent cell, and seeing my 
 husband — that white, pure life, that brave, strong youth — pros- 
 perous, honoured, happy — seeing what a good man's life can be — 
 lay in wait like a tiger, to destroy that happy life. If it was not 
 one of the Strangways who killed him, it must have been such a 
 man." 
 
 Her eyes shone, and her cheeks flushed with a feverish red. 
 Theodore took her hand, held it in both his own, and bent to kiss 
 the cold fingers — not with a lover's ardour, fondly as he loved; but 
 with a calm and l)rotherly atfection which soothed her agitated 
 heart. Her loved her well enough to be able to subjugate himself 
 for her sake. 
 
 '' My dear Juanita, if you would only withdraw your thoughts 
 from this ghastly subject ! I will not ask you to forget. That may 
 be impossible. I entreat you only to be patient, to leave the 
 chastisement of crime to Providence, .which works in the dark, 
 works silently, inevitably, to the end for which we can only grope in 
 a lame and helpless fashion. Be sure the murderer will stand 
 revealed sooner or later. That cruel murder will not be his last 
 crime, and in his next act of violence he may be less fortunate in 
 escaping every human eye. Or if that act is to be the one solitary 
 crime of his life something will happen to betray him — some over- 
 sight of his own, or some irrepressible movement of a guilty con- 
 science will give his life to the net, as a bird flies into a trap. I
 
 The Day zuill come. 1 73 
 
 beseech you, dear, let your thouj;Iit.s dwell upon less painful subjects 
 — lor your own sake — for the sake " 
 
 He faltered, and loft his sentence unfinished, and Juanita knew 
 that his sisters had told him son1('thinJ,^ She knew that the one 
 hope of her blighted life, hope which she liad hardly recognized as 
 iiope yet awhile, was known to him. 
 
 " I can never cease to think of that night, or to pray that God 
 will avenge that crime," she said, iirmly. " You think that is an 
 unchristian jiraycr perhaps, hut what does the Scripture say? 
 • Whoso shedileth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' 
 Christ came to confirm that righteous law. Oh ! it is well to be a 
 humanitarian — to sign petitions against capital punishment, — but let 
 your nearest and dearest be murdered, and you will be (piick to recog- 
 nize the justice of that old inexorable law — a life for a life. That 
 is what / want, Theodore — the life of the man who killeil my 
 husband." 
 
 " If I can help to bring about that end, Juanita, believe me that I 
 will not shrink from the task ; but at ])resent I must own that I am 
 oil' the track, and see no likelihood of succeeding where a trained 
 detective has failed. Could I but find a shred of evidence to put me 
 on the trail, I would pursue that clue to the bitter end ; but so far 
 all is dark." 
 
 '• Yes, all is dark ! " she answered, dejectedly ; and then, after a 
 pause, she said, " You are going to stay at Cheriton, I hear ? " 
 
 "I am to spend three days there at the turn of the year, just 
 before I go back to London. I have chambers in Ferret-court, over 
 the rooms in which your father spent the golden years of his youth, 
 the years that made him a gi'eat man. It will be very interesting to 
 me to hear him talk over those years, if I can beguile him into 
 talking of himself, a subject which he so seldom dwells u])on." 
 
 •• Ask him if he ever made a bitter enemy. Ask him for his 
 experience as a .ludge at Assizes — find out, if yon can, whether he 
 ever provoked the hatred of a bad vindictive man." 
 
 '• I will question your t;\ther, Juanita." 
 
 " Do ! He will not let me talk to him about the one subject that 
 o?cui>ies my minil. lie always stops me on the threshold of any 
 iiuiuiries. He might surely help me to find the murderer, with his 
 highly trained intellect, with his experience of the darkest siile of 
 human nature. But he will not help me. He would talk more 
 freely to you, no doubt." 
 
 '•I will sound him," answered Theodore, and then lie tried to 
 beguile her into talking of other things — her home, her suiToundings. 
 
 •• It must be a comfort to you to have Lady Jane." 
 
 " A comfort ! She is all that I have of happiness — all that reminds 
 me of Godfrey. My mother and father are very dear to int.' — I hope 
 you believe that, Theodore? — but our lives are parted now. My
 
 174 ^-^^ Day will come. 
 
 uiotlier is wrapped \\\) in her husband. Neitiier of tliem can 
 synipathize with me as hk mother can. Their loss is not tlie same 
 as ours. We two are one in our grief." 
 
 " And she is a. bnfler between you and the outer world, I see. She 
 bears the burdens that would weigh you down. Those children, for 
 instance — no doubt they are charming, as children go ; but I fancy 
 they would worry 3rou if you had too much of them." 
 
 " They would kill me," said Juanita, smiling at him for tlic first 
 time in their interview. "I am not very fond of children. It sounds 
 unwomanly to say so, but I often find myself wishing they could be 
 born gi-own up. Fortunately, Lady Jane adores them. And I am 
 glad to have the Grenvilles at Christmas time. I want all things to 
 be as they would have been were my dearest here. I lie here and 
 look round this room, which Avas his, and think and think, and think 
 of him till I almost fancy he is here. Idle fancy ! Mocking dream ! 
 Oh! if you knew how often I dream that he is living still, and that 
 I am still his happy wife. I dream that he has been dead — or at 
 least that Ave have all believed that he was dead — but that it was a 
 mistake. He is alive ; our oaati for long years to come. The wild 
 rapture of that dream wakes me, and I know that I am alone. God 
 keep you, Theodore, from such a loss as mine ! " 
 
 ''I must gain something before I can lose it," he answered, 
 with a shade of bitterness. "I see myself, as the years go on, 
 liardeniug into a lonely old bachelor, outliving the capacity for 
 human afl'ection." 
 
 " That is nonsense-talk. You think so just now, perhaps. There 
 is no one be3'ond your own family you care for, and j'on fancy yoni'- 
 self shut out from the romance of life — but your day will come, very 
 suddenly, perhaps. You will see some one Avhom you can care for. 
 Love will enter your life unawares, and will fill your lieart and mind, 
 and the amliitiou that absorbs you noAV will seem a small thing." 
 
 "Never, Juanita. I don't mean to plague you with any trouble 
 of mine. You have given me your friendship, and I hope to be 
 worthy of it ; but praj' do not talk to me of the chances of the 
 future. My future is bounded by the hope of getting on at the Bar. 
 If I fail in that I fail in everything." 
 
 " You Avill not fail. There is no reason you should not prosper in 
 your profession as mj^ father prospered. I often think that you are 
 like him — more like him than you ai'e like your own father." 
 
 Their talk touched on various subjects after this — on the great 
 events of the world, the events that make historj" — on books and 
 theatres, and then upon Sarah Newton, whose plan of life interested 
 Juanita. 
 
 He told her of the girl called Marian, and her inquiries about 
 Clieriton. 
 
 " i wonder if you ever knew her among your villagers," ho said.
 
 The Day will come. 175 
 
 '• 1 sliould rmicli like to know who she is. She interests me inoie 
 than I can sav. Tliere is a rellncinent in her manners and ajipear- 
 anco that convinces me slie must have belonj^cil to superior [leople. 
 She was never born in a labom-er's cottage, or amidst a small shop- 
 keeper's shabbj^ suiTOundings. She was never taught at a National 
 School, or broken into domestic service." 
 
 " And she was once very handsome, you say ? " 
 
 " Yes, she must have been beautiful, before illness and trouble sot 
 their marks upon her face. She is only a wreck now, but there is 
 beauty in the WTeck." 
 
 " IIow old do you suppose her to be ? " 
 
 " Eight or nine and twenty. It is dillicult to guess a woman's 
 age within two or three years, and this woman's face is evidently 
 aged by trouble ; but I don't think she can be thirty." 
 
 " There is only one person I can think of who would in any 
 manner answer your description," said Juanita, thoughtfully. 
 
 '•Who is that?" 
 
 '' Mercy Porter. You must have heard about Mercy Porter, the 
 daughter of the woman at the West Lodge." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I remember. She ran away with a middle-aged man 
 — an army man — one of your father's visitors." 
 
 " I was a child at the time, and of course I lieard very little about 
 it. I only knew that Mercy Porter who used to come to tea with 
 mother, and who played the piano better than my governess, 
 suddenly vanished out of our lives, and that I never saw her again. 
 My mother was quite fond of her, and I remember hearing of her 
 beauty, though I was too young myself to know what beauty meant. 
 I could not thiidc any one pretty who wore such plain frocks, and 
 sucli stout useful boots as ^lercy wore. Her mother certainly did 
 nothing to set olT her good looks, or to instil vanity. Years after, 
 my mother told me how the girl disappeared one summer evening, 
 and how Mrs. Porter came distracted to the house, and saw my 
 father, and stormed and raved at him in her agony, saying it was /n'.s- 
 friend who had blighted her daughter's youth — //?'« work that she 
 had gone to her ruin. He was very jiatient and forbearing with her, 
 my mother said, for he pitied her despair, and lie felt that he was 
 in some wise to blame for having brought such an nnjirinciplcd man 
 as Colonel Tremaine to Cheriton, a man who had carried ruin into 
 many homes. Mercy had been seen to leave Wareham Station with 
 him by the night mail. He had a yacht at Weymouth, She wrote 
 to her mother from London a fortnight afterwards, and ^Irs. Porter 
 brought the letter to my mother and father one morning, as they 
 sat at breakfast. It was a heartbroken letter — the letter of a poor 
 foolish girl who flings away her good name and her hope of Heaven, 
 with lier eyes open, and knows the cost of her sacritico, and yet 
 can't help making it. I was engaged to Godfrey when 1 first heard
 
 1 76 The Day zvill come. 
 
 IMercy's story, and I felt so sorry for her, so sorry, in the midst of 
 my happy love. What had I done to deserve happiness more than 
 she, that life should be so bright for me and so dark for her. I did 
 not know that my day of agony was to come." 
 
 " Did you ever hear how Colonel Tremaine treated her? " 
 
 " No ; I believe my father wrote him a very severe letter, and 
 called upon him to repair the -UTong he had done ; but I don't think 
 he even took so much trouble as co answer that letter. His regi- 
 ment was ordered off" to India two or three years afterwards, and he 
 was killed in AfiJ,hanistan about six years ago." 
 
 " And has nothing been heard of Mercy since her flight ? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " I wonder her motlier has sat at home quietly all these years 
 instead of making strenuous efforts to find her lost lamb," said 
 Theodore. 
 
 "Ah, that is almost exactly what Godfrey said of her. He 
 seemed to think her heartless for taking things so quietly. She is a 
 curious woman — self-contained, and silent. I sometimes fancy she 
 was more angry than grieved at Mercy's fate. Mother says she 
 turns to ice at the slightest mention of the girl's name. Don't you 
 think love would show itself differently ? " 
 
 "One can never be sure about other people's sentiments. Love 
 has many languages." 
 
 Their talk drifted to more commonplace subjects. And then 
 Theodore rose to take leave. 
 
 " You must dine at the Priory before j'our holiday is over, Theo," 
 said his cousin, as they shook hands. " Let me see — to-morrow 
 will be Christmas Day — will you come the day after, and bring the 
 sisters ? It is too long a drive for a winter night, so you musL stay ; 
 there is plenty of room." 
 
 " Are you sure we shall not bore you ? " 
 
 " I am sure you will cheer me. My sister-in-law is very good — 
 but Lady Jane is the only person in this house of whom I do not get 
 desperately tired, including myself," she added, with a sigh. " Please 
 say you will come, and I will order your rooms." 
 
 " We will come then. Good night, Juanita." 
 
 The shadows were falling as he drove away, after refusing tea in 
 the drawing-room and a further acquaintance with the wonderful 
 children. 
 
 He looked forward to that evening at the Priory with an eager 
 expectancy that he knew to be supreme foolishness, and when the 
 evening came, it brought some measure of disappointment with it. 
 Juanita was not so well as she had been upon Christmas Eve. She 
 was not able to dine downstairs, and the family dinner, at which the 
 Etonian Tom, Johnnie, and Lucy were allowed to take their places 
 in virtue of Christmas time, was a dull business for Theodore. His
 
 The Day li'ill conic. 177 
 
 only pleasure was in tlio fact that ho sat on Lady Jane's right hand, 
 aiui was able to talk with her of Juanita. Even that pleasure was 
 nlloycd with keenest pain ; for Lady Jane's talk was of that dead 
 love which cast its shadow over Juanita's youth, or of that dim and 
 dawnin.!:;^ hope which might brighten tlie coming days — and neitlicr 
 ill the love of the past nor in the love of the future had Theodore 
 any part. Juanita was on her sofa by the drawing-room fire when 
 he and Mr. Greuville left the dining-room, after a single glass of 
 claret, and a brief review of the political situation. Theodore's 
 sisters were established on each side of her. There was no chanco 
 for him while they were absorl)ing her attention, and he retired dis- 
 consolately to the group in the middle of the room, where ]\Irs. 
 (irenville and Lady Jane were seated on a capacious ottoman with 
 the children about them. 
 
 Johnnie and Lucy, who had over-eaten themselves, were disposed 
 to be (juict, the little girl leaning her fiiir curls and fat shining cheek 
 against her grandmotlier's shoulder with an air that looked touchinj^, 
 but which really indicated repletion ; Johnnie sprawling on the 
 carpet at his mother's feet, and wishing he had not eaten that mince- 
 jiie, telling himself that, on the whole, he hated mince-pie, and 
 envying his brother Tom, who had stolen oil" to the saddle-room to 
 talk to the grooms. Godolphin and Mabel having dined early, were 
 full of exuberance, waiting to be "jumped," which entertainment 
 Theodore had to provide without inlermission for nearly half an 
 hour, upheaving first one and then another towards the ceiling, first 
 a rosy bundle in ruby velvet, and tlien a rosy bundle in white 
 muslin, laugliing, screaming, enraptured, to be caught in his arms, 
 and set carefully on the ground, there to await the next turn. 
 Theodore slaved at this recreation until his arms ached, casting a 
 furtive glance every now and then at the corner by the fireplace 
 where his sisters were treating Juanita to the result of their latest 
 heavy reading. 
 
 At last, to his delight, Lucy recovered from her comatose condition, 
 and began to thirst for amusement. 
 
 " Let's have magic music," she said ; " we can all play at that, 
 Granny and all. You know you love magic music, (Jranny. Who'll 
 ]ilay the i»iano ? Not mother, she plays so badly," added tho 
 darling, with childlike candour. 
 
 '' Sophy shall play for you," cried TheoJoro ; " she's a capital 
 hand at it." 
 
 He went over to his sister. 
 
 '• Go and play for the children. Sophy," ho said. " I've been 
 doing my duty. Go and do yours." 
 
 Sophy looked agonized, but complied; and he slipped into her 
 vacant seat. 
 
 lie sat by his cousin's side for nearly an hour, while the children, 
 
 N 
 If
 
 I yS The Day will conic. 
 
 mother, and graiulmother played their nursery game to tlie sound 
 of dance-music, now low, now loud, neatly executed by Sophy's 
 accurate fingers. Their talk was of indillerent subjects, and the lion's 
 share of the conversation was enjoyed by Janet ; but to Theodore 
 it was bliss to be there, by his cousin's side, ^^^thin sound of her 
 low melodious voice, within touch of lier tapering hand. Just to 
 sit there, and watch her face, and drink in the tones of her voice, 
 was enough. He asked no more from Fate, yet awhile. 
 
 He had a long talk with her in her own room next morning, 
 before he went back to Dorchester, and the talk was of that old 
 subject which absorbed her thoughts. 
 
 " Be sure you find out all you can from my father," she said at 
 parting. 
 
 Life at Cheriton Chase bore no impress of the tragedy tliat had 
 blighted Juauita's honeymoon. There were no festivities this 
 winter ; there was no large house-party. There had been a few 
 quiet elderly or middle-aged visitors during the shooting season, and 
 there had been some slaughter of those pheasants which were wont 
 to sit, ponderous and sleepy as barn-door fowls, upon the five-ban-ed 
 gates, and post-and-rail fences of the Chase. But even those sober 
 guests — old friends of husband and wife — had all departed, and the 
 house was empty of strangers when Theodore arrived there, in time 
 for dinner on New Year's Eve. Notliing could have suited him 
 better than this. He Avanted to be tete-a-tete with Lord Cheriton ; 
 to glean all in the way of counsel or reminiscence that might fall 
 from those wise lips. 
 
 " K there is a man living who can teach me how to get on in my 
 profession it is James Dalbrook," he said to himself, thinking of his 
 cousin by that name which he had so often heard his father use 
 when talking of old days. 
 
 Lady Cheriton gi-eeted him affectionately, made him sit by her in 
 the library, where a richly embroidered Japanese screen made a 
 cosy corner by the fireplace, during the twenty minutes before 
 dinner. She was a handsome woman stiU, wnth that grand-looking 
 Spanish beauty which does not fade with youth, and she was 
 dressed to perfection in lustreless black silk, reHeved by the glitter 
 of jet here and there, and by the soft white crape kerchief, worn a 
 la Marie-Antoinette. There was not one thread of grey in the rich 
 black hail', piled in massive plaits upon the prettily shaped head. 
 Theodore contemplated her with an almost worshipping admiration. 
 It was Juanita's face he saw in those classic lines. 
 
 " I want to have a good talk with you, Theo," she said ; '•' there 
 is no one else to whom I can talk so freely now my poor Godfrey is 
 gone. We sit here of an evening, now, you see. The drawing- 
 room is only used when there are people in the house, and even
 
 The Day zviil conic. 1 79 
 
 than I feci miserable there. I cannot cjct his ima£,'e out of mj' mind. 
 Chcriton insists that the room shall bo used, that it shall not bo 
 made a haunted room — and no doubt it is best so, — but oue cannot 
 forget such a traijcdy as that." 
 
 " I ho]ie Juanita will forget some day." 
 
 "Ah, that is what I try to hope. She is so young, at the very 
 beginning of life, and it does seem hard that all those hopes for 
 which other women live should be over aud done with for her. I 
 wish I could believe in the power of Time to cure her. I wish 
 I could believe that she will be able to lovo somebody else as 
 she loved Godfrej'. If she does, I dare say it will be some new 
 person who has had nothing to do with her past life. I had been 
 in and out of lovo before I met James Dalbrook, but the sight of him 
 seemed like the beginning of a new life. I felt as if it had been pre- 
 ordained that I was to love him, and only him — that nothing else 
 had been real. Yes, Theodore," — with a sigh, — " you may depend, 
 if ever she should caro for anybody, it will be a now person." 
 
 '' Very lucky for the new person, and rather hard upon any one 
 who Jiappens to have loved her all his life." 
 
 " Is there any one — like that? " 
 
 " I think you know there is. Lady Chcriton." 
 
 •' Yes, yes, my dear boy, I know," she answered kindly, laying 
 lier soft hand upon his. " I won't pretend not to know. I wish, 
 with all my heart, you could make her care for you, Theodore, a 
 year or two hence. Y'ou would be a good and true husband to her, 
 a kind father to Godfrey's child — that fatherless child. Oh, Theo- 
 dore, is it not sad to think of the child who vnW never — not for onc 
 bricf hour — feel tlie toucli of a father's hand, or know the blessing 
 of a father's love ? Such a dead blank where there should be Avarmtli 
 and life and joy ! Wc must wait, Tlico. Who can dispose of the 
 future? I shall bo a happy woman if ever you can tell me you 
 have won the reward of a life's devotion." 
 
 "God bless you for your goodness to me," he faltered, kissing the 
 soft white hand, so like in form and outline to Juanita's hand, only 
 l)lumper and more matroulj'. 
 
 They dined snugly, a cosy trio, in a small room hung with genuine 
 old Cordovan leather, and adorned with Moorish crockery, a room 
 which was called her Ladyshii)'s parlour, and which had been ono 
 of Lord Chcriton's birthday gifts to his wife, fiu-nisliod and decorated 
 during her absence at a German spa. When Lady Chcriton left tiiem, 
 the two men turned their chairs towards the lire, lighted their cigare, 
 and settled themselves for an evening's talk. 
 
 The gi'eat lawyer was in one of his pleasantcst moods. lie gave 
 Theodore the benefit of his experience as a stulV-gown, and did all 
 that the advice of a wise senior can do towards puttiu^j a tyro on 
 the right track.
 
 I So The Day will come. 
 
 " You will have to bide your time," he said in conclusion ; " it is a 
 tedious busineys. You must just sit in your chambers and read till 
 your chance comes. Always be there, that's the grand point. Don't 
 be out when Fortune knocks at your door. She will come in a very 
 insignificant shape on her earlier visits — with a shabby little two- 
 guinea brief in her hand; but don't you let that shabby little brief 
 be carried to somebody else just because you arc out of the way. 
 I suppose you are really fond of the law." 
 
 "Yes, 1 am very fond of my profession. It is meat and drink to 
 me." 
 
 "Then you will get on. Any man of moderate abilities is bound 
 to succeed in any profession which he loves with a heart-whole love ; 
 and your abilities are much better than moderate." 
 
 There was a little pause in the talk while Lord Cheriton threw on 
 a fresh log and lighted a second cigar. 
 
 "I have been meditating a good deal upon Sir. Godfrey's murder," 
 said Theodore, " and I am perplexed by the utter darkness which 
 surrounds the murderer and his motive. No doubt you have some 
 theory upon the subject." 
 
 " No, I have no theory. There is really nothing upon which to 
 build a theory. Churton, the detective, talked about a vendetta — 
 suggested poacher, tenant, tramp, gipsy, any member of the 
 dangerous classes who might happen to consider himself aggiieved 
 by poor Godfre}^ He even went so flvr as to make a very un- 
 pleasant suggestion, and urged that there might be a woman at the 
 bottom of the business, speculated upon some youthful intrigue of 
 Godfrey's. Now, from all I know of that young man, I believe his 
 life had been blameless. He was the soul of honour. He avouIJ 
 never have dealt cruelly with any woman." 
 
 " And you. Lord Cheriton," said Theodore, hardly following tho 
 latter part of his cousin's speech in his self-absorption. 
 
 His kinsman started and looked at him indignantly. 
 
 "And you — in your eajiacity of judge, for instance — have you 
 never made a deadly foe ? " 
 
 " Well, I suppose the men and women I have sentenced have 
 hardly loved me ; but I doubt if the worst of them ever had any 
 strong personal feeling about me. They have taken me as a part of 
 the machinery of the law — of no more account than the iron door 
 of a cell or a beam of the scaffold." 
 
 " Yet there have been instances of active malignity — the assas- 
 sination of Lord Mayo, for instance." 
 
 " Oh, the assassin in that case was an Indian, and a maniac. We 
 live in a different latitude. Besides, it is rather too far-fetched an 
 idea to suppose that a man would shoot my son-in-law in order to 
 avenge himself upon me." 
 
 "The shot may have been fired under a misapprehension. The
 
 The Day will come. i8i 
 
 f^^nxc seated reading in the lamplight may have been mistaken for 
 you." 
 
 " The assassin must have been uncommonly short-sighted to 
 make sucli a mistake. I won't say such a thing would be impossible, 
 ibr experience has taught me that tliorc is nothing in this life too 
 strange to be true ; but it is too unlikely a notion to dwell upon. 
 Indeed, I think, Theodore, we must disnn'ss this painful business 
 from our minds. If tlie mystery is ever to be cleared up, it will bo 
 by a fluke ; but even that seems to me a very remote contingenc}'. 
 Have you not observed that if a murderer is not caught within three 
 months of his crime he is hardly ever caught at all ? I might almost 
 say if he is not caught within one month. Once let the scent cool 
 and the chances are a hundred to one in his favour." 
 
 " Yet Juanita has set her heart ujion seeing her husband avenged." 
 
 " Ah, that is where her Spanish blood shows itself. An English- 
 woman, pure and simple, would tliiidi only of her sorrow. INIy poor 
 girl hungers for revenge. Providence may favour her, perhaps, but 
 1 doubt it. The best thing that can happen to her will be to forget 
 her first husband, fine young fellow as he was, and choose a second. 
 It is horrible to think that the rest of her life is to be a blank. With 
 licr beaut}' and position she may look high. I am obliged to be 
 ambitious for my daughter, you see, Theodore, since Heaven has not 
 spared me a so;i." 
 
 Theodore saw only too plamly that, whatever favour his hopes 
 might have from soft-hearted Lady Cheriton, his own kinsman, 
 James Dalbrook, would be against him. This mattered very litth; 
 to him at present, in the face of the lady's indifference. One gleam 
 of hope from Juanita herself would have seemed more to him than 
 all the favour of parents or kindred. It was her hand that held his 
 late : it was she alone who could make his life blessed. 
 
 New Year's Day was fine but frosty, a sharp, clear day on which 
 r'heriton Park looked loveliest, the trees made foiry-liko by tho 
 light rime, the long stretches of turf touched with a silvery white- 
 ness, the distant copses and boundary of pine-trees half hidden in a 
 pale grey mist. 
 
 Theodore walked across the park with Lady Cheriton to the 
 eleven o'clock service in the church at the end of Cheriton village. 
 It was nearly a mile from the great house to the fine old fifteenth- 
 century church, but Lady Cheriton always walked to church in 
 decent weather, albeit her servants were conveyed there luxuriously 
 in a capacious omnibus specially retained for their use. On the 
 way along the silent avenue Theodore told her of his meeting with 
 Miss Newton's 2jro<('(7Je, and of Juanita 's idea that the woman called 
 Marian might be no other than Mercy Porter. 
 
 ■' I certainly remember no other case of a girl about here leaving 
 her home under disgraceful circumstances — that is to say, any girl
 
 1 82 The Day will covie. 
 
 of refinement and education," said Lady Clieriton. " Tliere have 
 been cases among the villagers, no doubt ; but if tliis girl of yours 
 is really a superior person, and really conies from Cheriton, J think 
 Juanita is right, and that you must have stumbled upon Mercy Porter. 
 Her mothor ought to be told about it, without delay." 
 
 "Will you tell her, or will you put me in the way of doing 
 so?" 
 
 " Would you like to see Mrs. Porter? " 
 
 " Yes. i feel interested in her, chiefly because she may be 
 Marian's mother. I shall have to go to work very carefully, so as 
 not to cause her too keen a disappointment in the event of Juanita's 
 guess being wrong." 
 
 " I do not know that you will find her very soft-hearted where 
 her daughter is concerned," replied Lady Cheriton, thoughtfully. 
 " I sometimes fear that she has hardened herself against that rm- 
 happy girl. The troubles of her own early life may have hardened 
 her, perhaps. It is not easy to bear a long series of troubles with 
 patience and gentleness." 
 
 " Do you know much of her history ? " 
 
 " Only that she lost her husband when she was still a young 
 woman, and that she was left to face the Avorld permiless "wdth her 
 young daughter. If my husband had not happened to hear of her 
 circumstances, Heaven knows what Avould have become of her. He 
 had been intimate with her husband when he was a young man in 
 London, and it seemed to him a duty to do what he could for her ; 
 go he pensioned oft" an old gardener who used to live in that pretty 
 cottage, and he had the cottage thoroughly renovated for Mrs. 
 Porter. She had a little furniture of a rather superior kind ware- 
 housed in London, and with this she was able to make a snug and 
 pretty home for herself, as you will see, if you call upon her after 
 the service. You are sure to see her at church." 
 
 '' Was she very fond of her little girl in those days ? " 
 
 " I hardly know. People have different ways of showing affec- 
 tion. She was very strict with poor Mercy. She educated lier at 
 home, and never allowed her to associate ■u'ith any of the village 
 children. She kept the child entirely under her own wing, so that 
 the poor little thing had actually no companion but her mother, a 
 middle-aged woman, saddened by trouble. I felt very sorry for the 
 child, and I used to have her up at the house for an afternoon now 
 and then, just to introduce some variety into her life. When she 
 grew up into a beautiful young woman, her mother seemed to dis- 
 hke these visits, and stipulated that Mercj^ should only come to see 
 me when there were no visitors in the house. She did not want 
 her head turned by any of those foolish compliments which frivolous 
 people are so fond of paying to a girl of that age, never thinking 
 of the mischief they may do. I told her that I thought she was
 
 The Day will conic. 183 
 
 over-care fill, and tliat as ^Icrcy must discover that she was liand- 
 some suoner or later, it was just as well she should gain some 
 pxperienco of life at once. ITer instinctive self-respect would teach 
 jier how to take care of herself ; and if she could be safe anywhere, 
 she would be safe with me. Mrs. Porter is a rather obstinate 
 ])nrson, and she took her o\vn way. She kept Mercy as close as 
 if she jiad been an Oriental slave ; and yet, somehow, Colonel 
 Tremaine contrived to make love to her, and tempted her away 
 from her lionie. Perhaps, if that home had been a little less dismal, 
 the girl might not have been so easily tempted." 
 
 They had left the park by this time and were nearing the church. 
 A scanty congregation came slowly in after Lady Cheriton and her 
 companion had taken their seats in the chancel pew. Tlie con- 
 gregation was chielly feminine. ]Middle-agcd women in evcry-day 
 bonnets and fur-trimmed cloaks, with their shoulders up to their 
 ears. Ciirls in felt hats and smart, tight-fitting jiickets. A few 
 pious villagers of advanced years, spectacled, feeble, with WTinkled 
 fares half hidden under poke bonnets : two representative old men 
 with long white liair and quavering voices, whose shrill treble was 
 distinguishable above the rustic choir. 
 
 Amidst this sparse congregation Theodore had no difficult}' in 
 discovering ^Frs. Porter. 
 
 She sat in one of the front benches on the left side of the aisle, 
 which side was reserved for the tradespeople and humbler inhabi- 
 tants of Cheriton ; while the benches en the right were occupied 
 by the county people, and some small fry who ranked with those 
 elect of the earth — with them, but not of them — a retired banker 
 and his wife, the village doctor, the A'illagc lawyer, and two or three 
 female annuitants of good family. 
 
 A noticeable woman, this I\Irs. Porter, anywhere. She was tall 
 and thin, straight as a dart, with strongly marked features and white 
 hair. Her complexion was pale and sallow, the kiml of skin which 
 is generally described as sickly. If she had ever been handsome, all 
 traces of that former beauty liad disappeared. It was a hard face, 
 without womanly charm, yet with an unmistakable air of refine- 
 ment. She Avorc her neat little black straw bonnet and black cloth 
 mantle like a lady, and she walked like a lady, as Theodore saw 
 ])resently, wdien that portion of the little band of worshippers wliich 
 did not remain for the celebration dribbled slowh' out of church. 
 
 lie left Lady Cheriton kneeling in her pew, and followed Mi's. 
 Porter out of the porch and along the village street, and thence 
 into that rustic lane which led to the West Lodge. He had spoken 
 to her only once in his life, on a summer morning, wlion lie had 
 happened to find her standing at her garden gate, and when it had 
 been impossible for her to avoid him. He knew that slie must 
 have seen him going in and out of the park gates often enough for
 
 184 The Day zvill come. 
 
 his appearance to be familiar to her, so he had no scruple in intro- 
 ducing himself. 
 
 " Good morning, Mrs. Porter," he said, overtaking her in the 
 deeply sunk lane, between those rocky banks where hart's-tongnie 
 and polypodium grew so luxuriantly in summer, and where even in this 
 wintry season the lichens and mosses spread their rich colouring 
 over grey stone and brown earth, and above which the snow-laden 
 boughs showed white against the blue brightness of the sky. 
 
 She turned and bowed stiffl\\ 
 
 " Good morning, sir." 
 
 " You haven't forgotten me, I hope. I am Theodore Dalbrook, 
 of Dorchester. I think you must have seen me pass your window 
 too often to forget me easily ? " 
 
 "I am not much given to watching the people who pass in and 
 out, sir. When his Lordship gave me the cottage, he was good 
 enough to allow me a servant to open the park gate, as he knew 
 that I was not strong enough to bear exposure to all kinds of 
 weather. I am free to live my own life therefore, without thinking 
 of his Lordship's visitors." 
 
 " I am sorry to intrude myself upon your notice, i\Irs. Porter, but 
 I want to speak to you upon a very delicate subject, and I must 
 ask your forgiveness in advance if I should touch upon an old 
 wound." 
 
 She looked at him curiously, shrinkingly even, with a latent anger 
 in her pale eyes, ej^es that had been lovely once, perhaps, but which 
 time or tears had faded to a glassy dulness. 
 
 " I have no desire to discuss old wounds with any one," she said 
 coldly. " My troubles at least are my own." 
 
 " Not altogether your o^\Tl, Mrs. Porter. The sorrow of which 
 I am thinking involves another life — the life of one wdio has been 
 dear to you." 
 
 " I have nothing to do with any other life." 
 
 " Not even with the life of your only child ? " 
 
 ' Not even with the life of my only child," she answered dog- 
 gedly. " She left me of her own accord, and I have done with her 
 for ever. I stand utterly alone in this world — utterly alone," she 
 repeated. 
 
 " And if I tell you that I think and believe I have found your 
 daughter in London — very poor — working for her living, very sad 
 and lonely, her beauty f;idcd, her life jojdess — would you not wish 
 to know more — would not your heart yearn towards her ? " 
 
 " No ! I tell you I have done with her. She has passed out of 
 my life. I stand alone." 
 
 There was a tone of finality in these words wdiich left no room 
 for argument. 
 
 Theodore lifted his hat, and walked on.
 
 The Day it.' HI come. i8. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 "0 povcreiifn power of love ! O grief! balm ! 
 All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm, 
 And shadowy, through the mist of passed years." 
 
 TlAniMNGTOX Dalp.rook, liaviiig in a manner given hostages to 
 Fuitiiiie, entered upon liis new career witli a strengtli of i)ur[)Ose 
 anil a resolute industry wliicli took liis fatlier by surprise. 
 
 "Upon my wunl, IlaiTy, I did not think tliere was so much grit 
 in yon," said Mr. Dalbrouk. " I thougiit you and your sisters were 
 too much stuffed w'ith modem culture to be capable of old-fashioned 
 work." 
 
 •' I hope, mj' dear father, you don't think education and intellect 
 out of place in a lawj-er? " 
 
 •' Far from it. We have had too many examples to the contrary, 
 from 15acon to Brougham, from Hale to Cockburn ; but I was afraid 
 (if the dilettante spirit, the talk about books which you had oidy 
 half read, the smattering of subjects that need the work of a life- 
 time to be ]no])erly imderstood. I was afraid of our modern electro- 
 plate culture — the process which throws a brilliant film of education 
 over a foundation of ignorance. However, you have surprised me, 
 Ilany. I own that I was disappointed by your want of jturpose at 
 llie University ; but I begin to resjject you now I fmd you attack 
 your work in the right spirit." 
 
 " I want to get on," answered Harrington, gravely, hanging hi3 
 liead a little in shame at his own reticence. 
 
 From so good a father he felt it was a kind of dishonour to 
 keep a secret ; but Juliet Baldwin had insisted upon secrecy, and 
 the name of every fiancee in the early stages of an engagement is 
 She-who-must-be-obeyed. 
 
 Harrington said not a word, therefore, as to that mighty prime- 
 mover wln'ch was urging him to dogged jierseverance in a ])rofessioii 
 for which he had as yet no real inclination. He put aside Darwin 
 and Spencer, Max Miiller and Seeley, Scho])enhauer and Hartmauji, 
 all those true or false lights which he had followed through the 
 mazes of free thought; and he set himself to master the stern 
 actualities of the law. Ho had not done well at the University ; 
 not because he was wantinc; in brains, but because he was wanting
 
 1 86 The Day will come. 
 
 ill cuucentratiou and doggedness. The prime-mover being supplied, 
 and of a prodigious power, Hamngton brought liis intellectual forces 
 to bear upon a given point, and made a rapid advance in legal know- 
 ledge and acumen. The old cook-housekeeper complained of the 
 coals and candles which " Master Harry " consumed during his after- 
 midnight studies, and wondered that the household were not all 
 burnt in their beds by reason of the young gentleman dropping olT 
 to sleep over Coke upon Littleton. The sisters complained that 
 they had i»ow practically no brother, since Harrington, who had a 
 pretty tenor voice, and had hitherto been a star at afternoon teas 
 and evening parties, refused to go anywhere, except to those few 
 houses — county — where Miss Bald'wan might be met. 
 
 Scarcely had the New Year begim when Miss Baldwin went off 
 upon a visit to one of the largest houses in Wiltshire, and one of 
 the smartest, a house under the dominion of a childless ^\^dow, 
 gifted with a large income and a sympathetic temperament, a lady 
 who allowed her life to be influenced and directed by a family 
 of nephews and nieces, and whose house was declared by the 
 advanced section of society to be " quite the most perfect house to 
 stay in, don't you knoAV." 
 
 Miss Baldwin did not leave the neighbourhood of Dorchester and 
 her lover without protestations of regi-et. The thing was a bore, a 
 sacrifice on her part, but it must be done. She had promised dear 
 old Lady Burdenshaw ages ago, and to Lady Burdenshaw's she 
 must go. 
 
 " You needn't worry about it," she said, with her off-hand air, 
 lolling on the billiard-room settee in the grey Avinter afternoon, on 
 the second Sunday of the year ; " if you are at all keen Tipon being 
 at Medlow Court while I am there, I'll make dear old Lady 
 Burdenshaw send you an invitation." 
 
 " You are very good," replied Harrington, " and I should like 
 staying in the same house %vith you ; but I couldn't think of visiting 
 a lady I don't know, or of cadging for an invitation." 
 
 Sir Henry had asked liis friend to luncheon, and now, after a 
 somewhat Spartan meal of roast mutton and rice pudding, the lovers 
 were alone in the billiard-room. Sir Henry having crept off to the 
 stables. The table was kept rigorously covered on Sundays, in 
 deference to the Dowager's Sabbatarian leanings ; and there was 
 nothing for her son to do in the billiard-room, except to walk list- 
 lessly up and down and stare at some very dingy examples of the 
 early Italian school, or to take the cues out of the rack one by one 
 to see which of them wanted topping. 
 
 "Oh, but you needn't mind. You would be capital friends with 
 Lady B. We all call her Lady B., because a three-syllable name is 
 too much for anybody's patience. I tell her she ought to drop a 
 syllable. Lady Ijur'sliaw would do just as well. I suppose, though,
 
 The Day zvill come. 1S7 
 
 if I were to got ;ui invitation you could hardly be spared from — tiiu 
 shop," concluded Juliet, with a laugh. 
 
 " Hardly. I have to stick very close to — the shop," replied Har- 
 rington, blushing a little at the word. " liemember what I am 
 working for — a family practice in London and a house that you 
 need not be ashamed to inhabit. To me that means as much 
 as the red ribbon of the Bath means to' a soldier or sailor. My 
 ambition goes no further, unless it were to a seat in Parliament 
 later on." 
 
 " You are a good earnest soul. Yes, of course, you must go into 
 Parliament. In spite of all the riff-ralf that has got into the House 
 of late years, boys, Home Kulers, city-men, there is a faint flavour 
 of distinction in the letters j\[.P. after a man's name. It helps him 
 just a little in society to be able to talk about 'my constituents,' and 
 to contemplate European politics from the standpoint of the town 
 that has elected him. Yes, you must be in the House, by-and-b}-, 
 Ilany." 
 
 " You told me you were tired of countrj'- house visiting," said 
 Han-ington, who for the first time since his iaetrothal felt somewhat 
 inclined to quarrel with liis divinitj'. 
 
 '' So I am, heartily sick of it ; and I shall rejoice when I have a 
 siuig little nest of my own in Clarges or Hertford Street. But you 
 must admit that ^ledlow Court is better than this house. Behold 
 our average Sunday ! Boast mutton — rice pudding — and invincible 
 (hihicss ; all the servants except an luidcr-footman gone to afternoon 
 church, and no possibility of a cup of tea till nearly six o'clock. A 
 cold diinier at eight, and family prayers at ten." 
 
 " What kind of a Sunday do you have at Mcdlow ? " 
 
 ^^ II ifen a 2WW' ioiiH les fjoiits. Medlow is liberty hall. If we 
 were even to take it into our heads to have family prayers Lady 
 Burdenshaw Avould send for her chaplain — pluck him out of the 
 bosom of his family — and order him to read them. She doesn't 
 like cards on a Sunday, because of the servants ; but after the clock 
 has struck eleven we may do what we please — play poker, nap, 
 euchre, baccarat, till daj-light, if we are in the humour. The billiard 
 and smoke rooms, and the ball-room are at one end of the house, 
 ever so tar from the servants' (piarters. We can have as much fun 
 as \VQ like while those rustic souls are snoring." 
 
 Harrington sighed ever so faintly. This picture of a fashionable 
 interior was perfectly innocent, and his betrothcd's way f)f looking 
 at things meant nothing worse than girlish exuberance, fnie animal 
 spirits: but the sans gene oi ^ledlow Court was hardly the kind of 
 training he would have chosen for his future wife. And then he 
 looked at the handsome profile, the piled-uji mass of ruddy-brown 
 hair on the top of the haughtily poised head, the perfectly fitting 
 tailor gown, with its aristocratic simplicity, costing so much more
 
 iS3 The Day will covie. 
 
 tlian plebeian silks and satins ; and he told himself that he was 
 privileged in having won such exalted beauty to ally itself with his 
 humble fortunes, Such a girl would shine as a duchess; and if 
 marriageable dukes had eyes to see with, and judgment to guide 
 their choice, that lovely auburn head would ere now have been 
 crowned with a tiara of family diamonds instead of waiting for the 
 poor sprigs of orange blossom which alone may adorn the brow of 
 the solicitor's bride. 
 
 " Shall we go for a stroll in the grounds?" asked Juliet, with a 
 restless air and an impatient shiver. " Perhaps it will be warmer 
 out of doors than it is here. AVe keep such miserable fires in this 
 house. I believe the grates were chosen with a view to burning 
 the minimum of coal." 
 
 " I shall be delighted." 
 
 Laura was absent on a visit to Yorkshire cousins, strong-minded 
 like herself, and with no pretensions to fashion. Lady Baldwin had 
 retired for her afternoon siesta. On Sundays she always read her- 
 self to sleep wth Taylor or South ; on week-days she nodded over 
 the morning paper. She had gone to the morning-room with the 
 idea that Henry would take his friend to the stables, and that Juliet 
 would require no looking after. It had never entered into her 
 ladyship's head that her liandsome daughter would look so low as 
 the son of her solicitor. Juliet was therefore free to do what she 
 pleased with her afternoon, and her pleasure was to walk in the 
 chilly shrubberies, and the bare grey park, sparsely timbered, and 
 with about as little forestal beauty as a gentleman's park can possess. 
 
 She put on an old seal-skin jacket and a toque to match, which 
 she kept in the room where her brother kept his overcoats, and 
 Avhich smelt of tobacco, after the manner of everything that came 
 within Sir Henry's influence. And then she led the waj^ to a half- 
 glass door, which opened on a grass-plot at the side of the house, 
 and she and her lover went out. 
 
 "You can smoke if you like," she said. "You know I don't 
 mind. I'll have a cigarette with you in the shrubbery." 
 
 " Dearest Juliet, I can't tell you how glad I should be if j'ou 
 would smoke — less," he said nervously, blushing at his own earnest- 
 ness. 
 
 " You think I smoke too many cigarettes — that they are really 
 bad for me? " she asked carelessly. 
 
 "It isn't that. I wasn't thinking about their effect on your 
 health ; but — I know you will call it old-fashioned nonsense — I can't 
 bear to see the Avoman who is to be my wife with a cigarette 
 between her lips." 
 
 " And when I am your wife, I suppose you will cut me off from 
 tobacco altogether." 
 
 " I should never be a domestic tyrant, Juliet ; but it would wound
 
 The Day will come. 189 
 
 mc to see nij' wife sinokc, just as nuicli as it wouiuls mc now wlien 
 1 SCO you smoke half a dozen cigarettes in succession." 
 
 "What a Pliilistino you are, Harry! Well, you shall not 1)0 
 tortured. I'll case oil' the smoking if I can — but a whitV or twn of 
 an Egyptian soothes me when my nerves arc ovorstraincil. You 
 are as bad as my mother, wlio thinks cigarette smoking one stage 
 on the road to perdition, and rather an advanced stage, too. You 
 are very easily shocke<l. Harry, if an innocent little cigarette can 
 shock you. I wonder if you arc really fond of me, now the novelty 
 of our engagement has worn olV? " 
 
 " I am fonder of you every day I live." 
 
 " Enthusiastic boy ! If tliat is true, you may be able to stand a 
 worse shocker than my poor little cigarette." 
 
 Harrington turned pale, but he took the hand which she held 
 out to him, and grasped it firmly. What was she going to tell 
 him V 
 
 "Harry, I want to make a financial statement. I want you to 
 help me, if vou can. 1 am up to my eyes in debt." 
 
 " In debt'? " 
 
 "Yes. It sounds bad, don't it? Debt and tobacco should be 
 exclusively masculine vices. I owe money all round — not large sums 
 — but the sum-total is large. I have had to hold my own in smart 
 houses upon an allowance which some women would spend with 
 their shoemaker. My mother gives me a hundred and twenty-fivo 
 ])ounds a year for everything, tips, travelling c.x])enses, clothes, 
 music — and I am not going to say anything unkind about her on 
 that score, for I don't see how she could give me more. Iler own 
 jiieans come toi omething under eighteen hundred a year, and she 
 has this place to keep up. Henry takes all the rents, ami often 
 keeps her waiting for her income, which is a first charge upon the 
 estate. If it were not for your father, who looks after lier interests 
 as sharply as he can, she might fare much worse. Henry brings as 
 many men as he likes here, and contributes notlting to the house- 
 keeping." 
 
 " And you owe money to milliners and people? " said Harrington, 
 dee])ly distressed by his sweetheart's humiliation, which he felt 
 more keenly than the lady herself. 
 
 Juliet had lived among girls who talked freely of their debts and 
 diflicultios, of sops to Cerberus, and gcr.ting round an unwilling 
 dressmaker. Harrington's lines had been eet among old-fashioned 
 countrified peojile, to whom debt — and especially feminine indebted- 
 ness — meant disgrace. He had come back from the I'niversity 
 feeling like a murderer, because he had exceeded his allowance. 
 
 " ^Milliners, dressmakers, shoemakers, hatters — and ever so many 
 more. 1 am afraid I have been rather reckless — only — I thought " 
 
 "1 thought I should make a great match," she would have said,
 
 I go The Day will come. 
 
 had she followed her idea to its close, but she checked herself 
 abruptly, and cut ofl' a sprig of yew with a swing of the stick she 
 carried. 
 
 " If I can help you in any way " began Harrington. 
 
 " My dear boy, there is onlj'' one way in which you can help me. 
 Lend me any money you can spare, say fifty pounds, and I will give 
 it you back by instalments of ten or fifteen pounds a quarter. It 
 would be mockery for me to pretend I could pay you in a lump 
 sum, now I have told you the extent of my income." 
 
 Harrington's worldly wealth at that moment was something 
 imder fifty pounds. His father had given him a cheque for fifty on 
 Christmas Eve, and he had no right to expect anything more till 
 Lady Day; while he had to think of the black horse who was 
 steadily eating his head off at livery, and for whom nothing had 
 been paid as yet. 
 
 He could not find it in his heart to tell his affianced that he was, 
 comparatively speaking, a pauper. He knew that his father had 
 the reputation of wealth, a man always ready to invest in any odd 
 parcel of land that was in the market, and who was known to 
 possess a good many small holdings and houses in his native town 
 and its neighbourhood. Could he tell her that her future husband 
 was still in leading-strings, and that the run of his teeth and fifty 
 pounds a quarter were all he could count upon till he was out of his 
 articles ? No ; he would rather perish than reveal these despicable 
 facts ; so, although he had only forty-three pounds odd in his little 
 cash-box, he told her that he would let her have fifty pounds in a 
 daj'' or two. 
 
 "If you could manage to bring it me to-morrow I should be very 
 glad," said Juliet, who, once having broken the ice, talked about 
 the loan with easy frankness. " I must have a new frock for the 
 ball at IMedlow. They are to have a ball on the first of February, the 
 ball of the year. There will be no end of smart people. I want 
 to send Estelle Dawson thirty-five or forty pounds, about half the 
 amount of her last bill. It's a paltry business altogether. I knoAv 
 girls who owe their dressmakers hundreds where I owe tens. Let 
 me have the cash to-morrow if you can, there's a dear. Miss 
 Dawson is sm-e to be full of work for the country at this season, and 
 she won't make my frock unless I give her a week's notice." 
 
 "Of course, dear, yes, you shall have the money," Harrington 
 answered nervously; "but your white gown at our ball looked 
 lovely. Why shouldn't you wear that at Medlow? " 
 
 " My white gown would be better described as black," letorted 
 the young lady with marked acidity. " If I didn't hate the 
 Dorchester people like poison I wouldn't have insulted them by 
 wearing such a rag. I would no more appear in it at Medlow than 
 I would cut my throat."
 
 TJic Day zuill come. 191 
 
 Language so strong as this forbade argument. Harrington con- 
 cluded that there was a mystery in these things outside tli(>, limits of 
 masculine understanding. To liis cyo the wJiitc satin and tulle his 
 betrothed had worn had seemed ianltless ; but it may be that the 
 glamour of first love acts like limelight upon a soiled white garment : 
 and no doubt Miss Baldwin's gown had seen service. 
 
 Ho walked back to the house with her, and left her at the door 
 just as it was growhig dusk, and the servants were coming home 
 from clnu'ch. He left her with a fictitious appearance of cheerful- 
 ness, promising to go to tea on the following afternoon. 
 
 He was glad of the six-mile walk to Dorchester, as it gave him 
 solitude for deliberation. At home the keen eyes of his sisters 
 would be upon him, and he would be pestered by inquiries as to 
 what there had been for lunch and what Miss Baldwin wore ; while 
 the still more penetrating gaze of his father would be quick to 
 perceive anything amiss. 
 
 '•Oh, Juliet, if you knew how hard you are making our engage- 
 ment to me ! " he ejaculated mentally, as he walked, with the 
 unconscious hurry of an agitated mind, along the frost- boimd 
 road. 
 
 There had been a hard frost since Christmas, and hunting had 
 been out of the question, whereby the existence of Mahmud, and 
 the bill at the livery stable seemed so much the heavier a 
 burden. 
 
 Somehow or other he must get the difference between forty-three 
 pounds and fifty, only seven pounds, a paltry sura, no doubt; but it 
 would hardly do for him to leave himself penniless until Lady Day. 
 He might be called on at any moment for small sums. Short of 
 shamming illness and stopping in l)ed till the end of the quarter, he 
 could not ])ossibly escape the daily calls which every young man 
 has upon his purse. He told himself, therefore, that ho must con- 
 trive to borrow fifteen or twenty pounds. But of whom ? That 
 was the question. 
 
 His first thought was naturally of his brother — but in the next 
 moment he remembered how Theodore in his financial arrangements 
 with his father had insisted upon cutting himself down to the very 
 lowest possible allowance. 
 
 '' You will ]iay all my fees, Dad, and give me enough money to 
 furnish my chambers decently, with the help of the things I am to 
 have out of this house, and you will allow me so much," he said, 
 naming a very modest sum, "for maintenance till I begin to get 
 briefs. I want to feel the spur of poverty. I want to work for my 
 bread. Of course I know 1 have a court of appeal here if my cx- 
 chfti-juer should run dry." 
 
 Remembering this, Harrington felt that he could not, at the very 
 beginning of things, pester his brother for a loan. The same
 
 192 The Day zvill come. 
 
 court of appeal, the father's well-filled purse, was open to him ; but 
 lie had no excuse to ofler, no reason to give, for exceeding his 
 allowance. 
 
 He might sell Mahmiid, if there were not two obstacles to that 
 transaction. The first that nobody in the neighbourhood wanted to 
 buy him, the second that he was not yet paid for, except by that 
 bill which rose like a pale blue spectre before the young man's eyes 
 as he was dropping off to sleep of a night, and sometimes spoiled 
 his rest. He would have to sell INIahmud in order not to dishonour 
 that bill ; and if the horse should fetch considerably less than the 
 price given for him, as all equine experience led his owner to fear, 
 whence was to come the difference ? That was the problem which 
 would have to be solved somehow before the tenth of March. He 
 would have to send the beast to Tattersall's most likely, the com- 
 mon experience of the hunting field having taught him that nol)ody 
 ever sells a horse among his own circle. He saw himself realizing 
 something under fifty ponnds as the price of the black, and having 
 to bridge over the distance betAveen that amount and eighty as 
 best he might. But March was not to-morrow, and he had first of 
 all to provide for to-morrow ; a mere trifle, but it would have to be 
 liorrowed, and the sensation of borrowing was new to Matthew 
 Dalbrook's son. He had frittered away his ready money at the 
 University, and he had got into debt ; but ho had never borrowed 
 money of Jew or Gentile. And now the time had come when he 
 must borrow of whomsoever he could. 
 
 He took tea with his sisters in the good, homely, old-fashioned 
 drawing-room, which was at its best in winter; the four tall, 
 narrow windows closely curtained, a roaring fire in the wide iron 
 grate, and a modern Japanese tea-table wheeled in front of it. 
 Five o'clock tea was of a more substantial order on Sundays than 
 on week-days, on account of the nine o'clock supper which took 
 the place of the seven o'clock dinner, and accommodated those 
 who cared to attend evening church. Lady Baldwin's Spartan 
 luncheon had not indisposed her guest for cake and muffins, and 
 basking in the glow of the fire Harrington forgot his troubles, 
 enjoyed his tea, and maintained a very fair appearance of cheerful- 
 ness while his sisters questioned and his father put in an occasional 
 word. 
 
 " I'm afraid you are getting rather too friendly at the Mount," 
 said ]\Iatthew Dalbrook. " I don't like Sir Henry Baldwin, and I 
 don't think he's an advantageous friend for you." 
 
 "Oh, but we're old chums," said Harrington, blushing a little; 
 " we were at Oxford together, you know." 
 
 " I'm afraid we both know it, Harr}', and to our cost," replied his 
 father. 'VYou might have succeeded in your divinity exam, if it 
 hadn't been for this line gentleman friend of yours."
 
 The Day will come, 193 
 
 " I'm not sorrv I i'aileil, fatlicr. The law suits mc ever so much 
 Letter than the Churcli." 
 
 '' So long as you stick to that opinion I'm satisfied. Only don't 
 go to the Moimt too often, and don't let the handsome Miss Bald- 
 win make a fool of you." 
 
 If it had not been for the coloured shades over the lamps, which 
 were so artistic as to he useless for seeing purposes, Harrington 
 might have been seen to turn pale. 
 
 ■' No fear of that," Sophia exclaimed contemptuously. " Juliet 
 Baldwin is not likely to give a provincial solicitor any encourage- 
 ment. She's a girl who expects to marry for position, and though 
 she is just a shade passee, she may make a good match even yet. 
 She comes here because she likes us ; but she's a thorough woman 
 tif the ■world, and vou needn't be afraid of her running alter 
 Harry." 
 
 Harrington grew as red as a pconj^ with suppressed indignation. 
 
 " Perhaps as tlie Baldwins are my friends you might be able to 
 get on without talking any more about them," he said, scowling at 
 his elder sister. " I've told you what we had for lunch, and how 
 many servants were iu the room, and what kind of gown Juliet — 
 ]\Iiss Baldwin — was wearing. Don't you think we've had enough 
 of them for to-night ? " 
 
 " Quite enough, Harry, quite enough," said the father. " By-the 
 by, did you read the Times leader on Gladstone's last manifesto ? 
 And where are the Field and the Observer? Bring me over a 
 lamp tliat I can see by, Soj)hy, my dear. Those crimson lamp- 
 shades of yours suggest one of Orchardson's pictures, but they don't 
 help mo to read my paper." 
 
 '• They're the beastliest things I ever saw," said Ilamngton, 
 vindictively. 
 
 " I'm sorry yon don't like them," said Janet. " It was Juliet 
 r.aldwin who persuaded us to buy them. She had seen some at 
 ]\[odlow Court, and she raved about them." 
 
 Harrington went out of the room witiiout anotlicr word. How 
 odious his sisters had become of late ; yet while he was at Oxford 
 they had regarded him as an oracle, and he had found even sisterly 
 appreciation pleasant. 
 
 It was some time since he had attended evening service, but on 
 this particular evening he went alone, not troubling to invite his 
 sisters, who were subject to an intermittent form of neuralgia which 
 often prevented their going to church in the evening. To-night ho 
 avoided St. Peter's, in which his father had scats, and went to the 
 more remote church of Fordington, where lie had a pew all to 
 himself on this frosty winter night, except for one well-bcliaved 
 worshipper in the person of his father's old and confidential clerk, 
 James Hay field, a constant church-goer, who was punctual at every 
 

 
 194 T^^^ ^<^y "^^^^^ come. 
 
 evening service, whatever the weather. Harrington had expected 
 to see him there. 
 
 Hayfield sat modestly aloof at the further end of the pew, but 
 when the sen'ice was over the young man took some pains to follow 
 close upon the heels of the grey-haired clerk, with shoulders bent 
 by long years of desk-work, and respectable dark-blue Chesterfield 
 overcoat with velvet collar. 
 
 "How do you do, Hayfield? Isn't this rather a sharp night for 
 you to venture out in?" said Harrington, as they left the church 
 porch. 
 
 "I'm a toughish customer, I thank you, Mr. Harrington. It 
 would take severer weather than this to keep me away from the 
 evening service. I'm very fond of the evening service. A fine 
 sermon, sir, a fine, awakening sermon." 
 
 "Magnificent, capital," exclaimed Harrington, who hadn't heard 
 two consecutive sentences, and whose mind had been engaged upon 
 arithmetical problems of the most unpleasant kind. " It is imcom- 
 monly cold though," he added, shivering. " I'll walk round your 
 way. It will be a little longer for me." 
 
 " You're very good, Mr. Hanington, very good indeed," said the 
 old clerk, e\adently touched by this unusual condescension. Never 
 till to-night had his master's son oflered to walk home from church 
 with liim. 
 
 The old man's gi'atitude was more than Harrington could stand. 
 He could not take credit for kindly condescension, when he knew 
 himself intent upon his own selfish ends. 
 
 " I'm afraid I'm not altogether disinterested in seeking your com- 
 pany to-night, Hayfield," he blurted out. " The fact is, I want to 
 ask a favour of you." 
 
 "You may take it as granted, Mr. Ilarrin.gton," answered 
 the clerk, cheerilj^, "provided the gi-anting of it lies within my 
 power." 
 
 " Oh, it's not a tremendous affair — in point of fact, it's only a 
 small money matter. I'm exceeding my allowance a httle this 
 quarter, but I intend to pull up next quarter ; and it will be a gi'eat 
 convenience to me in the meantime if you'll lend me ten or fifteen 
 pounds." 
 
 It was out at last. He had no idea until he uttered the words 
 how mean a creature the utterance of them would make him seem 
 to himseU". There are people who go through life borrowing, and 
 who do it with the easiest grace, seeming to confer rather than to 
 ask a favour. But perhaps even with these gifted ones the first 
 plunge was painful. 
 
 " Fifteen or twenty, if you like, sir," replied Hayfield. " I've got 
 a few pounds in an old stocking, and any little sum like that is freely 
 at your service. I know yom- father's son won't break his word or
 
 The Day luill come. 195 
 
 forget that an old servant's savings arc liis onlylmlwark against age 
 and decay." 
 
 " Jly dear Hayfield, of course I sliall repay you next quarter, 
 without fail." 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Harrington, I feel sure you will. And if at 
 the same time I may venture a word, as an old man to a young one, 
 in all friendliness and respect, I would ask you to beware of horses. 
 I heard some one let drop the other evening in the billiard-room at 
 the 'Antelope,' where I occasionally play a fifty, I heard it said, 
 promiscuously, that Sir Henry Baldwin is a better hand at selling a 
 horse than j'ou are at buying one." 
 
 "That's bosh, Hayfield, and people in a God-forsaken town like 
 Dorchester will always talk bosh — especially in a public billiard- 
 room. The horse is a good horse, and I shall come home upon him 
 when I send him up to Tattcrsall's after the hunting." 
 
 " I only hope he won't come home upon you, sir. You'd bettor 
 not put a high reserve upon him if you don't want to see him again. 
 I used to be considered a pretty good judge of a horse in my time. 
 I never was an equestrian, but one sees more of a horse from tho 
 pavement than when one is on his back." 
 
 HaiTington felt that he must bear with this twaddle for the sake 
 of the twenty ])ounds which would enable him to lend Juliet a round 
 fifty, and would thereby enable Juliet to go to Medlow Court and 
 flirt with unknown men, and forget him upon whom her impe- 
 cuniosity was inflicting such humiliation. After all, love is only 
 another name for suffering. 
 
 ^Ir. Hayfield lived in West- Walk terrace, where he had a neat 
 first floor in a stucco villa, semi-detached, and built at a period 
 when villas strove to be architectural without attaining beauty. 
 The first floor consisted of a front sitting-room, looking out upon 
 the alley of sycamores and the gi'ccn beyond, and a back bedroom, 
 looking over gardens and houses, towards the church-tower in the 
 heart of the town. 
 
 Provided with a latch-key. Mr. Hayfield admitted his master's 
 son to the inner mysteries of the villa, where a lady with a very 
 reedy voice was singing " Far away," in the front j)arlour, while a 
 family conversation which almost drowned her melody was going on 
 in tho back parlour. Mr. Hayfield's bedroom candlestick and 
 matches were ready for him on a Swiss bracket near his door, and 
 his lamp was ready on a table in his sitting-room, where every object 
 was disposed with a studied precision wliich marked at once tho 
 confirmed bachelor and the model lodger. " The Pilgrim's Progress," 
 " The Christian Year," " Whitaker's Almanack," and " UncloTom's 
 Cabin," were placed with mathematical rcgtilarity upon the walnut 
 loo table, surrounding a centrepiece of wax flowers in an alabaster 
 vase under a glass shade. A smaller table of the nature described
 
 196 The Day zaill come. 
 
 as Pembroke was placed nearer the fire, and on this appeared Mr. 
 Hayfield's supper-tray, set forth with a plate of cold roast beef, a 
 glass saucer of Oriental pickle, cheese, and accompaniments, flanked 
 by an Imperial pint of Guinness'. A small fire burned brightly in 
 the grate, whose dimensions had been reduced by a careful adjust- 
 ment of fire-bricks. 
 
 " Sit down, my dear Mr. Harrington, you'll find that chair very 
 comfortable. I'll go and get you the money. IMy casli-box is in 
 the next room. Can I tempt you to join me in a plate of cold ribs ? 
 There's plenty more where that came iVom. ]\Irs. Potter has a fine 
 wing rib every Sunday, from year's end to year's end. I generally 
 take my dinner with her and her family, but I sup alone. A little 
 society goes a long way with a man of my age. I like my Lloyd 
 and my News of the World after supper." 
 
 He went into his bedroom, which was approached by folding doors, 
 and came back again in two minutes with a couple of crisp notes, 
 the savings of half a year, savings which meant a good deal of self- 
 denial in a man who, in his own words, wished to live like a gentle- 
 man. The old clerk prided himself upon his good broadclotli, clean 
 linen, and respectable lodgings ; and it was felt in the town that so 
 respectable a servant enhanced even the respectability of Dalbrook 
 and Son. 
 
 Harrington took the bank-notes with many thanks, and insisted 
 upon writing a note of hand — albeit the old clerk reminded him that 
 Sunday was a dies non — at the desk where Hayfield wrote In's letters 
 and did any copying work he cared to do after office hours. He 
 stayed while the old man ate his temperate meal, but would not be 
 persuaded to share it. Indeed, his lips felt hot and dry, and it 
 seemed to him as if he should never want to eat again ; but he 
 gladly accepted a tumbler of the refreshing Guinness' upon the 
 repeated assurance that there was plenty more where that came 
 from. 
 
 There was a rapid thaw on the following morning, so Harrington 
 rode the black over to the Mount in the twilight after office hours, 
 a liberty which that high-bred animal resented by taking fright at 
 every doubtful object in the long leafless avenue beyond the lioman 
 Amphitheatre. 
 
 Trifles which would have been light as air to him, jogging home- 
 ward in company after a long day's hunting, assumed awful and 
 ghostly aspects under the combined influences of solitude and want 
 of work. The twilight ride to the Mount was in fact a series of 
 hairbreadth escapes, and it would have needed a stronger stimulant 
 than the Dowager's wishy-washy tea to restore Mr. Dalbrook's 
 ]ihysical balance, if his mental balance had not been so thoroughly 
 unhinged as to make him half unconscious of physical discomfort,
 
 TJic Day li'ill come. 197 
 
 "You lofik awfully seedy," said Juliet, as she poured out tea from 
 a pot tliat liad been standiiii; nearly half an hour. 
 
 The Dowager had retired to her own den, where she occupied a 
 pi'cat portion of her life in writing prosy lettere to her relatives and 
 connections of all degrees ; hut as she never sent them anything 
 else, this was her only way of maintaining the glow of family feeling. 
 
 "The black nearly ])ulled my lingers oil"," replied Harrington. 
 " I never knew him so fresh." 
 
 " You should have taken it out of him on the downs," answered 
 Juliet, rather contemptuously. " The grass is all right after the 
 thaw. Have you brought me what you so kindly ]iromised? " 
 
 He took a sealed envelope out of his breast-pocket and handed it 
 to her. 
 
 "Is this the fifty? How quite too good of you ! " she cried, 
 pocketing it liastily. '' You don't know wdiat a difficulty you 
 liave got me out of; but V\\\ afraid I may have inconvenienced 
 you." 
 
 Tills was evidently an after-thought. 
 
 " ' Being your slave, what should I do but tend upon the hours 
 and times of yuur desire V" quoted Harrington, with a sentimental 
 air. 
 
 " How sweet ! " exclaimed Juliet, really touched by his aflection ; 
 yet she would rather he had told her that fifty pounds was a sum of 
 no consequence, and that so small a loan involved no inconvenience 
 for liim. 
 
 " I'm afraid his father can hardly be as rich as people tliink," she 
 said to herself, while Harrington relaxed his strained muscles before 
 the fire. 
 
 " How I wish you were not going to jMedlow ! " he said presently. 
 
 " So do I ; but I can't possibly get out of it, and then it's a blessed 
 escape to get away from here." 
 
 "Do you really dislike your home?" asked her lover, wondering 
 at this hitherto unknown characteristic in a young woman. 
 
 " I loathe it, and so does my sister, though she pretends to he 
 domestic and religious and all that kind of thing. Lady Baldwin is 
 an impossible person, and our housekeei)ing would disgrace the 
 Union. If I had not had tlie enlrie of plenty of good houses, and 
 been in request, I should have been found hanging in one of the 
 attics years ago." 
 
 This candour gave Harrington an uncomfortably chilly feeling, as 
 if a damp cold wind had blown over him, and then he told himself 
 that it would be his privilege to initiate this dear girl in the tranquil 
 delights of a happy home, which, while modest in its pretcnsion.s, 
 should yet be smart enough to satisfy her superior tastes and aspi- 
 rations. 
 
 " When do you go? " he asked, preparing to take leave.
 
 19S The Day will come. 
 
 " To-morrow. Your kindness has made everything easy to 
 me." 
 
 " Come back as soon as you can, love ; " and then there was some 
 hngering foolishness permissible between engaged lovers, and the 
 beantiful Miss Baldwin's head reposed for two or three minutes upon 
 the articled clerk's shoulder, while he looked into her eyes and told 
 her that they were stars to light him on to fame and fortune. 
 
 " I hope they'll show you a short cut," she said. 
 _ He left her cheered by the thought that she was very fond of 
 him ; and so she was, but he was not the first, second, third, or 
 fourth young man of whom she had been fond, nor was it a new 
 thing to her to be told that her eyes were guiding stars. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 "All tlie creatures 
 Made for Heaven's honours, have their ends, and good ones, 
 All but the cozening crocodiles, false women." 
 
 Februaky had begun, the frost and snow had disappeared. There 
 were soft breathings of spring in the breezes that blew over the 
 broad gi'assy downs beyond the Roman encampment, and the 
 sportsmen of the neighbourhood were rejoicing in open weather and 
 lengthening daylight ; but Juliet Baldwin was still at Medlow Court, . 
 and the heart of Han-ington Dalbrook was heavy as he set out in 
 the pleasant morning for some distant meet ; and it was heavier as 
 he rode home in the evening, after a day's sport which had shown 
 him only too distinctly that the black horse was not so young as he 
 had been. He hugged himself with the delusion that those indica- 
 tions of advancing years which were but too obvious towards the 
 close of a trying day across a heavy country, would vanish after a 
 week's rest, and that the horse would show no signs of staleness at 
 Tattersall's, Avhere he must inevitably be sold before the end of the 
 month, his owner seeing no other way of meeting the bill that had 
 been given in exchange for a beast whose name should have been, 
 not Mahmud, but White Elephant. 
 
 Harrington's sole motive for buying a hunter — or, rather, his sole 
 excuse for being trapped into the purchase — was the expectation of 
 being able to ride to hounds in Miss Baldwin's company. She had
 
 The Day zuill come. 199 
 
 said to liim '' Yon ouglit to hunt," and he had straightway liuiited, 
 just as, if she liad told hiru to balloon, he would have ballooned. 
 And now Juliet Baldwin was following the hounds in another county 
 while ho was in Dorsetshire plodding along dreary roads to inac- 
 cessible meets at places which would seem to have been chosen with 
 a special study of everybody's inconvenience. The whole business 
 was fraught with bitterness. lie had never loved hunting for its 
 own sake — had never possessed the single-mindedness of the genuine 
 sportsman, who cares not for weather or country, or companionship, 
 or hunger or thirst, so long as there is a fox at the beginning of the 
 day and blood at the end. 
 
 Juliet was out with the hounds three daj's a week. She wrote 
 rapturous accounts of forty minutes here, and an hour there ; and 
 every run which she described was apparently the quickest thing 
 that had ever been known in that country. She let her lover know 
 enpaasant that she had been greatly admired, and that her horse- 
 manship had been tidked about. Ilcr letters were very affectionate, 
 but they testified also to a self-love that amounted to adoration. 
 Her frocks, her horses — pro-\nded, as the young ravens are fed, by a 
 kindly Providence in the shape of casual acquaintance — her breaks 
 at billiards, her waltzing, were all dilated upon with a charming 
 frankness. 
 
 " It seems rather foolish to -wi-ite all this egotistical twaddle," sho 
 apologized, "but you complain if I send [you a short letter, and 
 there is literally nothing to tell here — at least nothing about any 
 one you know, or that would have the faintest interest for you — 
 so I am obliged to scribble about my frocks and my little social 
 triumphs." 
 
 This was kindly meant, no doid)t, but it stung him to be reminded 
 that his friends were not her friends, that Belgravia is not further 
 from Islington than her people were from his people. 
 
 In one of her letters she WTote casually : — 
 
 " Why don't you put Mahmud into a horse-box and come over 
 for a day with these hounds. It would bo capital fun. There is a 
 dear little nistic inn where you and your horse can put up — and 
 Lady B. woidd ask you to diiuier as a matter of course. I dare say 
 your highly respectable hair will stand on end at some of our ways 
 — but that won't matter. I am sure you would enjoy an evening or 
 two at ^ledlow. Think about it, like a dear boy." 
 
 Harrington did think about it — indeed, from the first reading of 
 his lady-love's tmceremonious invitation he thought of nothing else. 
 After much puzzling over time-tables, he found that trains — those 
 particular trains which condescend, with an asterisk, to carry horees 
 — could be matched so as to convey the black horse to the immediate 
 vicinity of Medlow Court in something under a day, and tins being 
 so, he telegraphed his intention of putting up at the "Medlow Arms"
 
 200 The Day will come. 
 
 on the following night, taking pains to add " Shall arrive at five 
 p.m.," so as to secure the promised invitation to dinner. lie had 
 been so chary of spending money since his loan to Juliet that he 
 had still a few pomids in hand, enough as he thought to pay travel- 
 ling expenses and hotel bills. His heart Avas almost light as he 
 packed his hunting-gear and dress suit, albeit March 10 was written 
 in fiery characters across a spectral bill which haunted him wher- 
 ever he went. 
 
 It was still early in February, he told himself. Some stroke of 
 luck might happen to him. Some rich young fool at Medlow Court 
 might take a fancy to Mahmud and want to buy him. He had 
 heard of men who wanted to buy horses, although it had been his 
 fate to meet only the men who were eager to sell. 
 
 After no less than three changes of trains he arrived at the 
 Toppleton Road Station — for Medlow and Toppleton — about half- 
 ])ast four, weary, but full of hope. He was to see her again — after 
 three Aveeks' severance. He was going at her own express desire. 
 It was her tact and cleverness that had made the visit easy for him. 
 Had he not Lady Burdenshaw's invitation in his pocket, in a fine 
 open-hearted hand, sprawling over three sides of large note- 
 paper : — 
 
 " Dear Mr. Dalrrook, 
 
 " I hear you are coming over for a day or two with our 
 hounds, and I hope you will contrive to dine with us every evening 
 while you are in the neighbourhood. Your father and Sir Phillimore 
 were old friends. Dinner at eight. 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " Sarah Burdenshaw." 
 
 Sir Phillimore had been in the family vault nearly fifteen years. 
 The malicious averred that he had sought that dismal shelter as a 
 refuge and a relief from the life which Lady Burdenshaw imposed 
 upon him — open house, big shoots, hunting breakfasts, fancy balls, 
 and private theatricals in the country; and in London perpetual 
 parties or perpetual gadding about. 
 
 Sir Phillimore's grandflither had come up from Aberdeen, a raw 
 boj' without a penny, and had found out something about the manu- 
 facture of iron which had eventually made him a millionaire. Sir 
 Phillimore's fortune had reconciled the beautiful Sally Tempest to a 
 marriage with a man who was her senior bv a quarter of a century, 
 and the only license she had allowed herself had been her indulgence 
 in boundless extravagance, and a laxity of manner which had some- 
 what shocked society in the sober fifties and sixties, though it left 
 her moral character unimpeached. 
 
 In the eighties nobody wondered or exclaimed at Lady Burden-
 
 The Day luill come, io\ 
 
 sliaw'fi froedoni of speech and manner, or at the manners she en- 
 couraged in her j:;:nests. In the eighties Sarah Burdenshaw was 
 generally described as "good fun." 
 
 IIarrin,2;ton found the dear httle rustic inn very picturesque ex- 
 ternally, but small and stully within, and the bedroom into which 
 he was ushered was chioily occupied by a largo old-fashioned, fuur- 
 post bedstead, with chintz hangings that smelt of mildewed lavender 
 — indeed, the pervading odour of the "Medlow Arms" was mildew. 
 He dressed as well as he could nndor considerable disadvantages ; 
 and a rumbling old landau, which had the local odour, conveyed 
 him to ^bMllow Court much quicker than he could have supposed 
 possible froin his casual survey of the horse. It was ten minutes to 
 eight when he entered Lady Burdenshaw's drawing-room. 
 
 It was a very large room, prettily furnished in a careless style, as 
 if by a jierson whose heart was not set upon furniture. There were 
 ]ilenty of low luxiu'ious chairs, covered with a rather gaudy chintz, 
 and bcfrilled with lace and raushn, and there were flowers in abun- 
 dance ; but of lunnan life the room was empty. 
 
 Harrington hardly knew whether he was relieved or discomposed 
 at thiding himself alone. He had leisure in which to pace the room 
 two or tliree times, to arrange his tie and inspect his dress suit before 
 one of the long glasses, and then to feel oiVended at Juliet's cold- 
 ness. She knew that he was to be there. She might surely have 
 contrived to be in the drawing-room ten minutes before the dinner 
 hour. 
 
 Haifa dozen people straggled in, a not too tidy-looking matron in 
 ruby velvet, a sliari)-fcatured girl in black lace, and some men who 
 l(jokcd sporting or military. One of these talked to him. 
 
 " I think you must be Mr. Dalbrook," he said, after they had dis- 
 cussed the weathrr and the state of the roads. 
 
 *' You are ipiitu right — but how did you guess ? " 
 
 " Miss Baldwin told me you were coming, and I dou't think there's 
 any one else expected to-night. Uo you know your hostess ? " 
 
 '• I am waiting for that privilege." 
 
 " Ah ! that explains your punctuality. Nobody is ever punctual 
 at ^ledlow. Eight o'clock means half-past, and sometimes a quarter 
 to nine. Lady Burdenshaw has reached her sixtieth year without 
 having arrived at a comprehension of the nature of time, as an 
 inelastic thing which will not stretch to suit feminine convenience. 
 Slie still believes in the elasticitj' of an hour, and rushes ofl' to bcr 
 room to dress when she ought to be sitting down to dinner. Her 
 girl friends follow her example, and seldom leave the billiard-room 
 or the tea-rooni till dear Lady B. leads the way." 
 
 A whole bevy of ladies entered the room rather noisily at this 
 moment, and among them appeared Juliet, magnificent in a red 
 gown, which set olV the milky whiteness of her shoulders.
 
 202 The Day will come. 
 
 " Eatber a <Iaring combination with red hair," remarked the 
 yonng lady in black, who was sitting on a narrow caiiscuse with a 
 large man, whose wliite moi;staclie and padded chest suggested a 
 cavalry regiment. 
 
 " You may call the lady a harmony in red," said the gentleman. 
 
 Harrington scowled upon these prattlers, and then crossed the 
 room to greet his love. Yes, it was a daring combination, the 
 scarlet gown with the ruddy tints in her auburn hair ; but the 
 audacity was justified by success. She looked a magnificent creature, 
 dazzling as Vashti in her Eastern splendour, invincible as Delilah. 
 Who could resist her ? 
 
 She gave her hand to Harrington, and seemed pleased to see 
 him, but in the next moment he saw her looking beyond him 
 towards the end of the room. He turned, involuntarily following 
 the direction of her eyes, and saw the man who had talked to him, 
 and who was now evidently watching them. He was a middle-aged 
 man, handsome, tall, and upstanding, and with an air which Har- 
 rington considered decidedly patrician. 
 
 " Who is that man by the piano? " he asked. 
 
 " Major Swanwick, Lord Beaulieu's younger brother." 
 
 " Ah, I thought he was a swell," said Harrington, innocently. 
 "He was very civil to me just now. You might have been in the 
 drawing-room a little earlier, Juliet. You must have known that I 
 was longing to see you." 
 
 " My dear boy, we were playing skittle-pool till five minutes to 
 eight. I had no idea you were in the house. Ah, here comes 
 Lady B." 
 
 A fat, fair, flaxen-haired lady in a sky-blue tea-gown embroidered 
 with silver palm- leaves came rolling into the room, murmuring 
 apologies for having kept people waiting for their dinner. 
 
 " I know you must all be delightfully ravenous," she said ; " and 
 that's ever so much better than feeling that dinner has come too 
 soon after lunch." 
 
 Juliet introduced her friend, who was most graciously received. 
 
 " How is your father?" asked Lady Burdenshaw. "It is ages 
 since I saw him — more than tvv'cnty years, I believe. Sir Phillimore 
 bought some land in your county, and Mr. Dalbrook acted for him 
 in the matter, and he still receives the rents. And so you are going 
 out with the hounds to-morrow ? They meet quite near — not more 
 than seven or eight miles from your inn. Jidiet will shov/ you the 
 way across country. She's always in the first flight ; but if you want 
 to know her particular talent, you should see her play pool, I can 
 assure you she makes all the men sit up." 
 
 Harrington scarcely followed the lady's meaning. There was no 
 time for explanations, as the butler, who had been waiting for her 
 Ladyship's appearance, now announced dinner, and Harrington had
 
 The Day ivill come. 203 
 
 the bliss of going to the dining-room with Juliet Baldwin on his 
 iirm. lie felt as if he Avoro in the ^loslem's cnchaiitod fields as ho 
 sat by her side at the brilliant table, with its almost overpowering 
 perfume of liot-house ilowers, wliich were grouped in gi'cat masses 
 of bloom among the old silver and the many-coloured Venetian 
 glass. Yes, it was a Mohammedan paradise, and this was the houri, 
 this lovely creature with the milky shoulders rising out of soft folds 
 of scarlet crape. 
 
 " How long are you going to sta}- hero, Juliet? " he asked, as the 
 houri unfolded her napkin. 
 
 She gave a little laugh before she answered the question. 
 
 "Compare this room and table with our dining-room at the 
 Mount — you can compare the dinner witli my mother's dinners 
 after you have eaten it — and ask yourself if any reasonable 
 creature would be in a hurry to leave this Canaan for that 
 wilderness. I'm afraid I shall stop as long as ever dear old Lady 
 r>. asks me ; and slie is always pressing me to extend my 
 visit." 
 
 '• I don't think dinner can be much of attraction in your mind, 
 Juliet," said Harrington. 
 
 " Of course not — girls don't care what they eat," replied Juliet, 
 sipping her clear soup, and most fuiiy appreciating the flavour. 
 " But there are so many advantages at Medlow. There is the 
 liuuting, for instance, which is mucli better than any I can get at 
 liome, where I have ])ositively no horse that I can call my own. 
 Here I can always rely upon a good mount." 
 
 " Has Lady Burdenshaw a large stable ? " 
 
 "Oh, she keeps a good many horses; but most of hers are only 
 fit for leather. There are men who come here with strings of 
 hunters, and have always a young one that they like me to handle 
 fur them." 
 
 '•Juliet, you will get your neck broken," cried Harrington, pale 
 with horror, and staring vacantly at the fish that was being ollered 
 to him. 
 
 "There is no fear of fliat while I ride young horses, (he danger 
 is an old one. My father tauglit me to ride, and as he was one 
 of the best cross-country riders in Dorset I am not likely to make a 
 mistake. You had better try that sole Nonnande ; it is one of the 
 Medlow specialities." 
 
 "Juliet, I hate the idea of your staying in this house — or in any 
 buuse where there is a crowd of fast men. I hate tlie idea of 
 your riding men's horses — of your being under an obligation to a 
 stranger " 
 
 " Don't I tell you that the obligation is all the Dllicr way. A 
 young hunter is a more saleable article when lie has carried a lady. 
 ' Will suit a bold horsewoman in a stilV country.' That sort of thing
 
 204 TJic Day will come. 
 
 is worth a great deal in a catalogue, and the men whose liorses I 
 ride are not strangers." 
 
 " At the most they are casual acquaintances." 
 ' " Call them that if you like. Why should not one profit by one's 
 acquaintances ? " 
 
 " There is one of your benefactors looking at you at this moment, 
 and looking as if he objected to my talking to you." 
 
 " How dare you talk about my benefactors ? Do you suppose 
 I had you invited to Medlow in order that you might insult me ? " 
 
 This httle dialogue was conducted in subdued tones, but Avith a 
 good deal of acrimony upon either side. Harrington was bursting 
 with jealousy. 
 
 The house, the m.en, the very atmosphere awakened distrust. 
 He detested those men for their square shoulders and soldierly 
 bearing, for the suggestion of cavalry or household brigade which 
 seemed to him to pervade the masculine portion of the assembly. 
 He had always hated military men. Their chief mission in life 
 seemed to be to make civilians look insignificant. 
 
 Miss Baldwin ate the next entree in stony silence, and it was not 
 till he had abjectly apologized for his offensive speech that her lover 
 was again taken into favour. She relented at last, however, and 
 favoured him with a good deal of information about the house party 
 which made such a brilliant show at Lady Burdenshaw's luxurious 
 board. 
 
 The men were for the most part militarj^ — the greater number 
 bachelors, or at any rate unencumbered with wives. Two had been 
 divorced, one was a widower, another was sejiarated in the friend- 
 liest way from a wife who found she could live in better style 
 unfettered by matrimonial supervision. 
 
 Major Swanwick was one of the two who had profited by Sir 
 James Hannen's jurisdiction. 
 
 " His wife was Lady Flora Thurles, one of the Tantallans. All 
 the Tantallan girls went wrong, don't you know. It was in the 
 blood." 
 
 " You and he seem to be great friends," said Harrington, still 
 suspicious. 
 
 " Oh, we have met very often ; he is quite an old chum of mine. 
 He is a good old thing." 
 
 Seeing that the good old thing looked as if he were well under 
 forty, Harrington was not altogether reassured, even by this com- 
 fortable tone. He watched his betrothed and the Major all through 
 the long evening in the billiard-room, where j)Ool was again the 
 chief amusement of a very noisy party, of which Juliet and Major 
 Swanwick seemed to him the ringleaders and master-spirits. It 
 was with difficulty that he, the affianced, got speech with his 
 betrothed.
 
 The Day will come. 205 
 
 Tlicrc were just a few minutes, wliilc tlie old family tankards 
 were boini^ canieil round with nndled claret and other cunnini^ 
 drinks, in which Juliet vouchsafed to give her attention to her lover, 
 lie having in a manner cornered her into a draped recess at the end 
 of the room, where he held her prisoner while he bade her good 
 night. 
 
 " I shall sec yon at the meet to-mon-ow," he said. 
 
 " I won't promise to be at the meet, but I shall find you and the 
 hounds in plenty of time. I Imow every inch of this country." 
 
 " Whose horse are you going to ride to-morrow ? " 
 
 "A fine upstanding chestnut; I'm sure you'll admire him?" 
 
 " Yes, yes, but whose ? " 
 
 "Whose?" echoed Juliet, as if she scarcely understood the 
 word. "Oh," — with a sudden Hash of intelligence, — "you mean 
 wiiose property is ho ? As if that mattered ! lie belongs to Major 
 Swanwick." 
 
 " tJood night ! " said Harrington ; and he went off to take leave of 
 Lady Burdenshaw. who was sitting in the capacious ingle nook, 
 with a circle of men about her telling her anecdotes in Parisian 
 rrench, and from whom every now and then there burst jjcals of 
 jovial laughter. 
 
 " At my age one understands everything, and one may hear 
 everything," said her Lady.ship. 
 
 Harrington went back to the " Medlow Arms " more dejircssed 
 than ho had felt during any period of his courtshii). Instinct had 
 warned him of the dangers that nmst lurk in such a house as Medlow 
 Court for such a girl as Juliet Baldwin ; ])ut neither insthict nor 
 imagination had prepared him for the horrible reality. To see the 
 woman who was to be his wife smoking cigarettes, ])laying shilling 
 pool, and bandying doubtful jokes with men who had obvit)usly the 
 very poorest opinion of tlie opposite sex. was an agony which lio 
 l»ad never thought to sutler; and for the iirst time since his engage- 
 ment he asked himself whether it would not have been better to 
 have trusted his future happiness to the most insipid and colourless 
 of tlie girls with whom he played tennis than to this magniticent 
 .specimen of emanciiiated smartness. Thi; image of Juliet s]iraw]ing 
 over the billiard-talilc, with her eyes on fire and her shoulders half 
 out of her gown as slie took a (iiilicult " life," pursued liim like a 
 bacchanalian nightmare all througli his troubled snatches of sleep. 
 The stony straw mattrass and lumpy feather bed would not iiavo 
 been conducive to slumber under the happiest circumstances, but 
 for a mind disturbed by care they were a bed of torture. He rose 
 at seven, unrefreshed, heavj'-hearted, detesting chanticleer, cloudy 
 skies, and all the olil-fashioned fuss about a liunting morning, and 
 wishing himself in his comfortable room in the good old house in 
 Coruhill, where he had ample space and all things needful to a
 
 2o6 The Day will come. 
 
 luxurious toilet. Ho got himself dressed somehow. He was in 
 the saddle at nine o'clock, after a breakfast for which he had no 
 ajipetite. 
 
 It was a long, dreary ride to the little roadside inn at which the 
 hounds met, and Harrington being particularly punctual, had to jog 
 along companionless till the last mile, when Major Swanwick and 
 another man from IMedlow overtook him and regaled him with their 
 talk for the rest of the way. 
 
 " I think I know that black horse," said the Major, who looked 
 provokingly well in his red coat, chimney pot, and cream-coloured 
 tops, thereby making Harrington ashamed of his neat dark grey 
 coat, Bedford cords, and bowler hat. " Wasn't he in Baldwin's stud 
 nine years ago? " 
 
 " I bought him of Sir Henry Baldwin." 
 
 " Thought so. Good hand at selling a horse, Bald^\^n ! However, 
 I suppose there's some work in the black horse yet." 
 
 " I hope so, for I mean to hunt him to the end of the season," 
 answered Harrington, ignoring that awful necessity of selling before 
 the end of the month. 
 
 Hope glowed faintly in his breast as he saw the Major's keen eye 
 going over his mount, as if studying the condition of every limb and 
 ever}'' muscle. 
 
 " Wears well," he said, after this deliberate survej', " but I'm 
 afraid you'll find him like the wonderful one-horse shay. He'll go 
 to pieces all at once. Did Baldwin tell you his age ? " 
 
 " He said something about rising eight — but I didn't inquire very 
 particularl}-, as I know the horse is a good one." 
 
 " And it was a good one of Baldwin to talk about rising eight. 
 He would have been within the mark if he had said rising eighteen. 
 I've bought a horse of Sir Henry myself, and," — after a brief pause 
 — " I've sold him one." 
 
 " And I dare say that made you even," said Harrington, with 
 acidity. He would have liked to call the Major out for his insolence, 
 and almost regretted that he was a Briton, and not a Frenchman 
 and a professed duellist. 
 
 "Faith, I don't think he had altogether the best of me — for when 
 he rode that hunter of mine he was like the little old woman in the 
 nursery rhyme, of whom it was said that she should have music 
 wherever she went. He had music, and to spare." 
 
 And so with jovial laughter they rode up to the open space in 
 front of the " Red Cow," where the hounds were .grouped about a 
 duck-pond, while the master chatted with his friends. 
 
 It was an hour later before Juliet appeared, cropping up suddenly 
 on a windy common, with three other girls and two men, whUe the 
 hounds were drawing the furze. 
 
 " You see I could make a pretty good guess where to find you,"
 
 The Day ivill couic. 207 
 
 she said to Ilavrington. '' IIow well tlio black looks! You have 
 been savii)!^ Iiiin up, I suppose?" 
 
 " No, I've hunted as often as I could. I had no othet distraction 
 durincj your absence." 
 
 " How sweet of you to say that — with all the gaieties of Dorches- 
 ter to allure you ! Hark ! they've found, and we shall be oif in a 
 minute. Yes, there he goes ! " — pointing with her whip to the spot 
 where the fox had fiasjicd across the sliort level sward, vanishing 
 next moment in the withered heather. " Now you'll sec what this 
 horse can do, and you can tell me what you think of him when wo 
 meet at dinner." 
 
 There was the usual minute or so of flutter and expectation, and 
 then the business-like calm — an almost awful calm — every man 
 KCttling down to his work, intent upon himself, steering carefully for 
 a good place. 
 
 Harrington was a nervous rider, and if fortune helped him to 
 get a good place ho rarely kept it. To-day he was more than 
 usually nervous, fancying that Juliet's eye was upon him, which 
 it wasn't, and, indeed, could not have been, unless it had been situ- 
 ated in the back of her head, since she was already ever so far in 
 front. 
 
 In time, however, he, too, contrived to settle do^\Tl, and the black 
 horse took the business into his own hands, and kejtt his rider fairly 
 close to the hounds. For the first twenty miiuites there was a good 
 deal of jumping, but of a mildisli order, and Harrington ielt that lio 
 was distinguisiu'ng himself, hiasrauch as he was able to stick to his 
 horse, though not always to his saddle. 
 
 They lost their first fox, after a very fair run, and they waited 
 about for nearly two hours before they started a second, which they 
 did eventually in a scrubby copse on the skirts of a great stretch of 
 ploughed land 
 
 The plough took a great deal out of IMahmud, and after the 
 plough came a series of small fields, with some stiflisli fences, which 
 liad to be taken by any man who wanted to keep with the hounds. 
 Here Juliet was in her glory, for the chestnut on which she was 
 mounted was a fine fencer, and she knew how to handle him, or, 
 perhaps it may be said, how to let him alone. 
 
 JMahmud had been almost as fine a fencer as the fiery j'oung 
 chestnut, and he was a horse of a great heart, always ready to 
 attempt more than he could do. The livery stable ])oople had told 
 Harrington that if his legs were only as good as his lieart he woidd 
 bo one of the best hunters in the county. And now, with some 
 quavering of spirit on his own part, Harrington trusted that 
 heart would stand instead of logs, and get him and the black 
 over the fences somehow. Just at this crucial point in the run, 
 Juliet was in front of him, and Major Swanwick was pressing
 
 2o8 The Day will conic. 
 
 him behind. He was near the hoimds, and altogether in a place 
 of honour, could he but keep it, and to keep it he felt was worth a 
 struggle. 
 
 He got over or through the first fence somehow ; not gloriouslj', 
 but without too nTuch loss of time ; and galloped gaily towards the 
 second, which looked a stitt'ur and more com])licated affair. Juliet's 
 horse went over like a bird, and Juliet sat him like a butterfly, no 
 more discomposed by the shock than if she had been some winged 
 insect that had lighted on his haunches. Mahmud followed close, 
 excited by the horse in front of him, and rose to his work gallantly ; 
 but this time it was timber and not quick-set that had to be cleared, 
 and that stiff rail was just too much for the old hunter's legs. He 
 blundered, hit himself with the sharp edge of the rail, and fell 
 heavily forward, sending his rider flying into the next field, and 
 sinking in a struggling mass into the ditch. Major Swanwick dis- 
 mounted in an instant, scrambled over the hedge, and ran to help 
 Harrington up. 
 
 "Are you hurt?" 
 
 " Not much," answered the fallen man, staggering to his feet, 
 hatless, and with a dazed look. " I'm afraid my horse is done for, 
 though, poor old chap." 
 
 In that moment his only thought was of the beast he had been fond 
 of, which had been to him as a friend, albeit often an unmanageable 
 one. He had no thought just then of the money value of that 
 doubled-up mass Ijdng in the ditch. 
 
 Mahmud had finished his course. His foreaiTQ was broken, and 
 the most merciful thing was to make a swift end of him with a 
 bullet from a gun which one of the whips fetched from the nearest 
 formhouse. His owner stood by him and waited for the end, while 
 Juliet and the rest of the hunt galloped away out of sight. AVhen 
 the shot had been fired the black horse w\as left to be carted oft" to 
 the kennels, and Harrington turned to walk slowly and sorrowfully 
 to the farmhouse, where he was promised a trap to convey him to 
 the " Medlow Arms." 
 
 Then and then only did he discover that he had dislocated his 
 shoulder, and was suffering acute agony, and then and tlien onty 
 did he remember the acceptance which he had given for the black 
 horse. 
 
 Wliere now were the fifty pounds which he had reckoned upon 
 getting for the animal at Tattersall's, trusting to Providence, or old 
 Haj'field, to make up the balance of thirty. He saw himself noAV 
 with that horrible acceptance falling due and no assets. 
 
 He got back to the rustic inn, with great suffering, and laid him- 
 self down upon the stony-hearted four-poster instead of dressing to 
 go and dine at Medlow. The village surgeon came and attended to 
 liis shoulder, a painful business, though not unskilfully done ; and
 
 TJie Day will come. 209 
 
 tlicn lie was tuld he imist keep liinisolf as quiet as possible for a few 
 days, and must not think of travelling till the inflatuniation \vas 
 reduced. It was his ri,L,dit shoulder on which he had fallen, and ho 
 was utterly helpless. Tiie handy young man of the " Medlow Arms " 
 had to valet liim and assist him to eat the tough mutton chop 
 ■which was served to him in lieu of all tlie delicacieL; of Medlow 
 Court. 
 
 A messenger came from that hospitable mansion at ten o'clock 
 with a little note from Juliet. 
 
 '• Why did you not turn up at dinner-time ? Major Swanwick said 
 you were all right. I waited till I saw you get up, safe and sound. 
 So sorry for poor old i\h\hmud. Come to breakfast to-morrow and 
 tell us all about it. A^'e killed in a quarter of an hour. — Yours, 
 Juliet." 
 
 Harrington sent his best regards to ]\liss Baldwin and his apolo- 
 gies to I.ady Burdenshaw, and begged to i:iform them that he had 
 dislocated his shoulder, and was unable to write. 
 
 He had a miscral)le night — sleepless and in pain — haunted by 
 the ghost of ]\Iahmud, whose miseraljle end alliicted him sorely, and 
 troubled by the peqilexities of his iinancial position. Should he tell 
 his father the wliole truth? Alas, it seemed only yesterday that he 
 had told his father the whole truth about his college debts; and 
 though truthfulness is a great virtue, a second burst of candour 
 coming on the heels of the first might be too much for I\Ir. Dalbrook's 
 jjatience. 
 
 Should he borrow the money from Juanita? No, too humiliating. 
 He had always felt a restraining pride in all his inlercourse with his 
 p-and relations at Chcriton Chase. They were of his own blood ; 
 but tliey were above him in social status, and he was sensitively 
 alive to the dilVcrence in j)ositii)n. 
 
 Could he apply to his brother? Again the answer was in the 
 negative. He doubted whether Tlieodore possessed eighty guineas 
 in the world. 
 
 And so he went on revolving the same considerations through 
 his fevered brain all through the long winter night. There were 
 moments of exasperation and semi-delirium, when he thought lie 
 would go over to ^ledlow Court as soon as he was able to move, 
 and appeal to the beneficence of Lady Burdenshaw for the temporary 
 accommodation of a cheque for eighty guineas. 
 
 And thus the night wore on till the morning sounds of the inn 
 brought the sense of stern reality across his feverish dreams ; and 
 then, amidst the crowing of cocks, and the bumping of i)ails, and 
 tramping of horses in the stable yard, he contrived to fall asleep, 
 after having failed in that endeavour all through the quiet of the 
 night. 
 
 It was about half-past eleven, and the handy-man had helped him 
 
 1'
 
 210 The Day will come. 
 
 to make a decent toilet and to establish himself upon a sofa that 
 was a little harder than the bed, when a pony-carriage drove up to 
 the door, and the chamber-maid came in with an awe-stricken face 
 to announce Lady Burdenshaw and another lady, and would he 
 please to see them, as they wanted to come upstairs. 
 
 The room was tidy, and he was dressed as well as a helpless man 
 could be, so he said yes, they might come up, which was almost un- 
 necessary, as they were already on the stairs, and were in the room 
 a minute afterwards. 
 
 Juliet expressed herself deeply concerned at her lover's mis- 
 fortune, though she did not attempt to conceal from him that she 
 considered his riding in fault. Lady Burdenshaw was more sympa- 
 thetic, and was horrified at the discomfort of his surroimdings. 
 
 "You cannot possibly endure that cruel-looking sofa till your 
 shoulder is well," she said, " and such a small room, too, poor fellow ; 
 and a horrid low ceiling ; and the house smells damp. I wonder if 
 we could venture to move him to the Court, Ju ? " 
 
 Ju was of opinion that such a proceeding would be to the last 
 degree dangerous. 
 
 " The only chance for his shoulder is to keep quiet," she said. 
 
 Unfortunately, the surgeon had said the same thing, and there 
 could be no doubt about it. 
 
 " Perhaps you could send him a sofa ? " suggested Juliet. 
 
 " Of course I could ; and I can send him soups and jellies and 
 things — but that isn't like having him at INIedlow, where he could 
 have a large airy room, and where you and I could take it in turns 
 to amuse him." 
 
 "Dear Lady Burdenshaw^, you are too good to an almost 
 stranger," murmured Harrington, moved to the verge of tears by 
 her geniality. 
 
 " Stranger ! fiddlesticks. Don't I know your cousin, Lord Cheri- 
 ton ; and has not your fiither done business for me ? Besides, I like 
 young men, when they're modest and pleasant, as you are. Indeed 
 I sometimes like them when they're impertinent. I like young faces 
 and young voices about me. I like to be amused, and to see people 
 happy. I can't endure the idea of your lying for ever so many days 
 and nights in this dog-kennel, when you came to Medlow to enjoy 
 yourself." 
 
 " It mustn't be many days and nights. I must get home some- 
 how by the end of the week, if I post all the \va3\" 
 
 " Oh, you needn't post. When you are able to be moved, my 
 carriage shall take you to the station ; and I'll get the railroad 
 people to take an invalid carriage through to Dorchester for 
 you." 
 
 "Indeed, you must not be impatient, ITarry," said Juliet. "I 
 shall come to sec you every day, except on the hunting days,
 
 The Day zuill come. 2 1 1 
 
 and oven tlien I can walk over in the evening, if Lady B. will let 
 me." 
 
 " Of course I shall let you. All my sympathies are with lovers, 
 and when you are married I shall give ^h: Dalbrook as much of 
 my business as I possibly can venture to take away from those dear 
 old fossils at Salisbury, who have been the family lawyers for the 
 best part of a century."' 
 
 Juliet had confided her enga,c;cmcnt to Lady B. at the hej^inning 
 of her visit, and she and Ijady 15. had talked over the yonn,:^ man's 
 chances of doing well in the world, and the wisdom or the foolish- 
 ness of such an alliance. Lady 1). had seen a good deal of smart 
 young men and women, and she had discovered that the smart 
 young men were very keen in the furtherance of their own interests, 
 and that the smart young women liad considerable difliculty in get- 
 ting themselves permanent!}'' established in the smart world by 
 smart marriages. Some were beautiful, and many were admired; 
 but they had to wait for eligible suitors, and one false step in the 
 early stages of their career would sometimes blight their chances of 
 success. Juliet had taken many false steps, and had got herself a 
 good deal talked about, and Lady I5urdenshaw felt that her chance 
 of making an advantageous match had been lessening year by year 
 until it had come to be almost nil. 
 
 " If this young fellow is sensible and good-looking, and has a little 
 money, I really think, Ju, you ought to marry him," concluded 
 Lady B., talking the matter over "with her protegee before she had 
 seen Harrington. 
 
 She fancied that Juliet had cooled somewhat in her feelings 
 towards her youthful lover within the last week or ten days. It 
 might be. Lady B. thought, that she began to jicrceive that he was 
 too young, that the difierence in their ages, which was not much, 
 and the ditference in their worldly experience, which was enormous, 
 unfitted them to be happy together. 
 
 " No doubt the young man is n pis oller,^'' reflected Lady Burden- 
 shaw, after Harrington's appearance at jMedlow, "but ho is a very 
 good-looking fellow, and by no means bad — as a ^«s oiler. Of 
 course, he is too j'oung for Juliet, and much too fresh and innocent 
 to miderstand her; but if he knew more he wouldn't be so eager to 
 marry her — so she ought to be satisfied." 
 
 Lady P>urdenshaw sent a delightful sofli, and a lot of books, 
 flowers, pillows, foot-rests, and other luxuries in one of her own 
 waggons, within an hour of her return to Medlow, and Harrington's 
 comfort was considerably increased by her kindness. Still the 
 thought of that A\Tetchcd acceptance was like a tliorn in every 
 cushion, a scorpion under every [lillow, a wasp in every llower. Nor 
 was he altogether at ease about Juliet. He thought that he had
 
 212 TJie Day will come. 
 
 detected a constraint in her manner, a shiftiness in her eyes. It 
 had wounded him that she had so promptly opposed his being con- 
 veyed to Medlow. It might be that she was influenced only by con- 
 cern for his safety; yet it would have been natural for his betrothed 
 to wish to have him under the same roof with her, where she might 
 tend and comfort him in his helplessness. Pain and anguish were 
 wringing his brow, and she who should have been his ministering 
 angel was content to limit her ministrations to half an hour of some- 
 what disjointed conversation, and to the polite attention of bringing 
 him the morning papers, when everybody at Medlow had looked at 
 them. 
 
 Lady Burdenshaw had very kindly taken upon herself to write to 
 Matthew Dalbrook, explaining his son's prolonged absence, and 
 making light of his accident as a matter only involving a few days' 
 rest. 
 
 The few days had gone on till the fourth day after his fall, and 
 in spite of all that Lady Burdenshaw had done to ameliorate his cap- 
 tivity the hours of the day and the night seemed to grow longer and 
 longer, till he began to think of Silvio Pellico and the Man in the 
 Iron Mask. Juliet's visits were very short, and she was obviously 
 absent-minded and bored even during that scanty half-hour which 
 she gave to her betrothed. 
 
 "I'm afraid you are hke Colonel Enderby's wife," he said, "and 
 that the sight of sickness or suffering is more than you can bear." 
 
 " Who was Colonel Enderby's wife ? " 
 
 " Don't you know ? She is the heroine of a very clever novel — an 
 original, strange, and, I fear, not unnatiu-al character." 
 
 " Don't remember her," answered Juliet, carelessly. " I don't 
 read many Enghsh novels. They are too slow for me." 
 
 On the hunting day he missed even that brief ^asit, and was 
 expectant of her coming all the evening, as she had promised to 
 make up for the day's absence. But the night was wet, and she 
 told him next day that she did not like to take out Lady Burden- 
 shaw's horse and man in such weather. 
 
 •' The stable people would have resented it, and I am obliged to 
 stand well with the stable," she said. 
 
 He thought she had a troubled look that day. It seemed to him 
 that it cost her an effort to keep her attention upon any subject, 
 and she lapsed into silence every now and then, looking dreamily 
 out of the window to the thatched roofs and ploughed lields in the 
 distance. 
 
 " I'm afraid you have something on j^our mind," he said. 
 
 " What nonsense ! What put such an idea into your liead ? " 
 
 " You are so thoughtful, and so much more silent than usual." 
 
 " There is so little to talk about in a sick room. If I were to tell 
 you about our doings at Medlow I should only bore you."
 
 The Day will come. 213 
 
 " Not at all. I should 1)0 very pleased to hear how you amuso 
 yourself. Is IMajor Swainvick still there ? " 
 
 "Yes; he is still there." 
 
 He saw that her cheeks crimsoned as she answered his qnes- 
 lion, and he wondered whether she really had any penchant for 
 the !Major, or whether she suspected his jealous apprehensions 
 upon that subject. She got up to go before he could question her 
 further. 
 
 "I shall be late for luncheon," she said, "and Lady B. hates any 
 • fus to be absent! " 
 
 " I thought there was no such thing as punctuality at Medlow." 
 
 " Oh, we are pretty punctual at luncheon. It's the hungry hour, 
 and we are all ravenous. Good-bye." 
 
 " Au revoir. You will come to-morrow, love ; and come earlier, 
 I hope." 
 
 " Pas possible. I shall be out with the hounds." 
 
 " Another blank day for nic. But don't disappoint me in the 
 evening, whatever the weather may be." 
 
 She was gone, leaving him doubtful of her fidelity, though far 
 from suspecting the extent of her flilschood. 
 
 He endured the long, dull day as best he might, and iniiirovcd 
 his mind by skimming all tiic books which Lady Bunlonsliaw had 
 sent him, which were really the cream of IMudie's last su]iply — 
 travels, memoirs, gossip, magazines — books chosen with a view to 
 the masculine mind, which was supposed to be indillerent to fiction. 
 ]']vening came at last. Ilis lamp was lighted, his tire swept and 
 garnisJK'd. Tiio hunting party would bo jogging homeward in the 
 wintry darkness, he thought. There were three hours to wait 
 before half-past nine, which was the earliest time at which he could 
 expect his beloved. 
 
 It was a little after the half-hour, when his heart began to beat 
 faster at the sound of carriage wheels. This time she was not 
 going to disappoint him. lie listened for her step upon the stair — 
 the tirm, quick tread he knew so well ; but it was another step 
 which he heard, a slower and heavier tread, with much rustling of 
 silken draperies. It must be Lady Burdenshaw come to chaperon her. 
 
 It was Lady Burdenshaw, but alone. She came in and drew 
 near his sofa with a serious countenance. 
 
 " Great God ! " ho cried, starting up from his reclining position ; 
 "is anything the matter? An accident in the hunting iield ! Is 
 she hurt?" 
 
 " No, my poor fellow. SJie's not hurt. It would take a groat 
 deal to hurt her. She's too hard. But she has done her best to 
 hurt you." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " She has gone olY with that audacious scamp."
 
 214 ^-^^ ^^y ^^'^^ come. 
 
 "Major Swainvick?" 
 
 " Yes. Did you suspect an3'thing ? " 
 
 " I thought there was an understanding between them." 
 
 " They went off together early this morning ; walked five miles 
 to the station, leaving their luggage to be looked after by the Major's 
 servant, who had received his instructions and who got everything 
 packed and off by the one o'clock train for London. I got this 
 telegram late in the afternoon from Salisbury." 
 
 She handed him a telegram, which he read slowly, word by word, 
 and then he slowly folded it and restored it to his visitor, in heart- 
 stricken silence. 
 
 The telegram was in these words : — 
 
 " To Lady Burdenshaw, IMedlow Court, — 
 
 " Major Swanwick and I were married at two o'clock, before 
 the Eegistrar. We start for Monte Carlo to-night. Please break it 
 to Harrington, and forgive me for going away without telUng you. 
 We thouglat it better to avoid fuss. 
 
 "Yours lovingly, 
 
 "JUUET SwAN'mCK." 
 
 " God help this infatuated girl," said Lady Burdenshaw. " She 
 has married a scoundrel Avho is up to his eyebrows in debt. He 
 behaved brutally to his first wife, and he is not very likely to treat 
 this one any better. I'm very sorry I ever had them in my house 
 together. He was an old flame, and he had lost her more than one 
 good match by his equivocal attentions. As for you, my dear young 
 fellow, I congratulate you upon a very luckj'^ escape." 
 
 Harrington put his hand before his eyes to hide the tears of 
 mortification and wounded love. Yet, even while the sense of 
 disappointment was keenest, he had a feeling that Lady Burdenshaw 
 was right, and that he had escaped a lifelong martyrdom. How 
 could he, with liis limited means, have ever satisfied a woman who 
 lived only for pleasure and excitement, dress and dissipation ? Juliet 
 had been very frank with him dining their brief courtship, and he 
 had seen enough of her character to know that this splendid creature 
 was not of the stuff that makes a good wife for a professional man 
 with his struggles all before him. He was sorry, he was angiy, he 
 was wounded to the quick ; but in the midst of it all he felt that 
 there was a burden lifted off his mind and off his life — that he could 
 breathe more freelj', that he was no longer overweighted in the 
 race. 
 
 Lady Burdenshaw stopped vrith him for an hour, and told him a 
 good many small facts to his charmer's discredit, although he begged 
 her more than once to desist. It was her only idea of comforting 
 him, and it may be that her efforts were not misdirected.
 
 The Day ivill come. 215 
 
 Tic was .surinLsod on the following aftenionn by a visit from his 
 father, who was not satisfied with Lady Burdcnshaw's report of his 
 condition. Touched by this evidence of paternal aflcction, the young 
 man took heart of gi-ace and made a fidl confession — first of his 
 engagement, and next of his pecuniary obligations — the acceptance 
 BO soon to fall due, the twenty pounds borrowed from Ilayfield. 
 
 " I can pay that very easily out of my allowance," he said ; " I 
 only tell you about it to show what a mean hound I was becoming," 
 
 " You were very hard driven, my poor boy. You had been 
 unlucky enougli to fall in love with an unprincipled woman. You 
 may thank Providence for having escaped a life of misery. Such an 
 alliance as that would have wrecked your future. I would rather 
 you man-ied a housemaid with a good character than such a woman 
 as Juliet Baldwin. However, there are plenty of nice girls in your 
 own sphere, thank God, and plenty of pretty girls with unblemished 
 character and antecedents." 
 
 Harrington went back to Dorchester with his father next da)', and 
 the acceptance was promptly honoured when it was presented at 
 tlio house in Cornhill. 
 
 Sir Henry had discounted it at the local bank almost immediately 
 after it passed into his possession, and the bank had regarded the 
 document as good value for tlieir money, ^Matthew Dalbrook being 
 very unlikely to allow his son's signature to bo dishonoured.
 
 2i6 The Day will come. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 " All the spring-time of his lore 
 Is already gone and past." 
 
 Theodore went Lack to wintry London before the year was a week/ 
 old. He settled himself by liis lonely fireside, in the silence of his 
 old-fashioned rooms. All he had of the beauty of this world was a 
 glimpse of the river athwart tlie heavy grey mists of a London 
 morning, or the lamps on the Embankment shining like a string of 
 jewels in the evening dusk. There were days of sullen, hopeless fog, 
 when even these things were hidden from him, and when it was hard 
 work to keep that stealthy, penetrating greyness and damp cold out 
 of his rooms. 
 
 He had brought a fox-terrier from Dorchester on his retin-n from 
 his holiday, an old fovourite that had seen the best days of her youth, 
 and was better able to put up with a sedentary life, varied only by 
 an occasional run, than a younger animal would have been. This 
 faithful friend, an animated little beast even at this mature stage of 
 her existence, lightened the burden of his loneliness, were it only by 
 leaping on to his knees twenty times in five minutes, and only 
 desisting therefrom upon most serious remonstrance. It was pleasant 
 to him to have something that loved him, even this irrepressible 
 IMiss Nipper, with her sidelong grin of afiectionate greeting, and her 
 unconquerable suspicion of rats behind the wainscot. He felt less 
 like Dr. Faustus on that famous Easter morning, when the emptiness 
 of life and learning came home to the lonely student with such 
 desolating intensity, when even a devil was welcome who could offer 
 escape from that dull burden of existence. 
 
 He had come back from his brief holiday dejected and disheartened. 
 It seemed to him that she who was his lode-star was more remote 
 from him than she had ever been — more and more remote — vanish- 
 ing into a distant world wliere it was vain for him to follow. He had 
 failed in the task that she had imposed upon him. He was no nearer 
 the sohition of that dark mystery which troubled her life than he 
 had been when he first promised to help her. How poor and im- 
 potent a creature he must appear in her eyes. His only discoveries 
 had been negative. All that his keen, trained intellect, sharpened 
 by seven years of legal experience, liad been able to do was to prove 
 the unsoundness of her own theory. lie had started no theory upon
 
 TIic Day will come. 2 i 7 
 
 his jiart. No flasli of ponins had illumined the obscurity wliieli 
 burroundod Godfrey Cannichacrs death. 
 
 He went on with his plodding' wmk, resolutely bent upon doin;; 
 tlio utmost that patient labour can do to insure success. Even if it 
 were all vain and futile — that hojie of winning favour in her eyes — 
 the mere possibility of standing better with her, of showing her that 
 he was of the stulV which goes to the making of distinguished men — 
 even this was worth working for. 
 
 " She may liave great offers by-and-by," lie told himself, recalling 
 what Lord Chcriton liad said about his daughter's chances. " With 
 her beauty and her expectations, to say nothing of her present 
 means, she is sure of distinguished admirers; but at the worst she 
 cannot look down upon a man who is on the road to success in her 
 father's profession." 
 
 This ever-present consideration, joined to his love of his calling, 
 sweetened all that was dry and dull in the initial stages of a ])arrister's 
 career. While other men of his age were spending their evenings 
 at the Gaiety Theatre, seeing the same l)urles(pio and laughing at 
 the same jokes night after niglit, as ap])etito grew with what it fed 
 on, Tiieodore was content to sit in chambers and road law. It was 
 not that he was wanting in appreciation of the drama. There was 
 no man in London better able to enjoy the dignity of Hamlet at the 
 Lyceum, or the rollicking fun of the Gaiety Bluelioard. He was 
 no pedantic piece of cla}-, proud of the dulness that calls itself 
 virtue. He was only an earnest worker, bent upon a given result, 
 and aide to put aside every hindrance upon the road that he was 
 travelling. 
 
 '• They that run in a race nm all, but one obtaineth the prize," he 
 said to himself, recalling a sentence in an epistle tliat he had learned 
 years ago at his mother's knee, words that always brought back tiio 
 cold brightness of early spring, and a jieriod of extra church services, 
 long sermons in the lamp-lit church, and the voices of strange 
 preachers, a time of daflbdils and fish dinners, and much talk of 
 High and Low (Jhurch. He had never faltered in his religions con- 
 victions; yet in the days of his youth that Lenten season in a 
 country town, th.at recurrent sound of church bells in the chilly 
 March twilight, had weighed heavy upon his sotd. 
 
 Almost the only recreation which he allowed himself in this winter 
 season was an occasional attemlaiice at ^liss Newton's tea-parties. 
 He had secured acceptance for himself at these entertainmcMts on 
 the strength of his reading, and he was now established as a 
 Sliakespearian reader; IMiss Newton having taken it into her head 
 that Shakespeare is of all great poets the easiest imdcrstood by tiie 
 people, and having ordered him to read Shakespeare until she sliould 
 tell him to desist. 
 
 " I know what they like and what they dislike," she said. " They'll
 
 2i8 The Day ivill come. 
 
 not conceal their feelings from me when wc talk you over after 
 you've gone. As soon as ever I find them getting tired I'll let you 
 know." 
 
 He began with Macbeth, a story which caught them at the very 
 first page. The witches took their breath away ; and when he came 
 to the murder scene they were all sitting round him with their hair 
 seemingly on end. He closed his first reading with that awful 
 knocking at the gate ; that one supreme stage effect Avhich has never 
 yet been paralleled by mortal dramatist. There were some of the 
 girls who tumbled off their chairs and grovelled on the floor in their 
 excitement. There were others who wanted to know the fate of 
 IMacbeth and his wife on the instant. 
 
 ''I do hope they were both hung, like the Mannings," said a meek 
 widow. 
 
 " Oh, but lie wasn't so much to blame, Mrs. Kirby. That wicked 
 woman drove him to it." 
 
 " So did Mrs. Manning," argued a Bormondsey lady, " but they 
 hung Manning all the same when they caught him. I was a child 
 when it happened, but I remember hearing about them. He was 
 took in Jersey, and she wore a black satin gownd." 
 
 "Oh, don't talk about your Mannings, Mrs. Hodge," cried one of 
 the girls, indignantly. " They were low, vulgar people. These were 
 a King and Queen in a palace. It's all different. It lifts one up out 
 of one's own life only to hear about them. You may read about 
 murders in the newspapers till your eyes begin to swim, but you 
 won't feel like tliat. I don't know when I've felt so sorry for any- 
 body as I feel for King Macbeth." 
 
 Marian sat silent, and refrained from all part in the chorus of 
 criticism, but she moved to the piano presently and began to play a 
 Scotch air — a grand old march — slow, solemn music that was almost 
 too much for the nerves of the more excitable among Miss Newton's 
 ]iarty. She glided from one melody to another, and she played those 
 wild Scottish airs with such thrilling power that they seemed to 
 sustain and intensify the uncanny effect of the tragic reading. 
 
 Theodore went over to the piano and stood beside her as she 
 played. 
 
 " I knew you were a musician," he said, " though I never heard 
 you touch the keys till to-night." 
 
 " How did you know ? " 
 
 "My cousin Juanita told mc. She remembered your playing in 
 her mother's room when she was a child." 
 
 The woman called Marian lifted her eyes to him with a look of 
 patient reproach, as if she said, " You are cruel to hit any one so 
 helpless as I am," and then, playing all the time, she answered 
 Coldl3% — 
 
 "I do not know what you are talking about."
 
 The Day zi'ill come. 219 
 
 " Don't you ! Oh, but indeed I tliink you do, <and I should be very 
 glad to be of use to you if you would let mc, for the sake of those 
 old daj'S. I don't think it is possible I can be mistaken, though 
 you may have your own reason for refusing to conlide in me." 
 
 He was certain now in his own mind that this was Mercy Porter 
 and no other. That fine touch upon the ])iaiio implied sustained 
 and careful cultivation. She did not play like a girl who had learnt 
 music as an afterthought. 
 
 He left the house when she did, and walked part of the way to 
 Hercules Buildings with her, but did not offer to go out of his way 
 to see her home, being very sure she would refuse. 
 
 " I wish you would trust me," he said gentlj-, as they walked side 
 by side, Avithout looking at each other. " Believe me that every one 
 at Cheriton is sorry for you. If you were to go back to the neigh- 
 bourhood you would have everybody's sympathy. There would be 
 no one to cast a stone." 
 
 "I am very sorry I ever mentioned Cheriton to you, !Mr. Dal- 
 brook," she said impatiently. " It was a foolish impulse that made 
 mo talk. You insist u])on making guesses. You try to force a 
 confession from me. It is hardly generous." 
 
 " My interest in you must be my excuse." 
 
 '' You can do mo no good by that kind of interest. I shall never 
 see Dorsetshire again — so what can it matter who I Avas when I 
 lived in that part of the world. There are hundreds of women in 
 London as lonely as I am — hundreds — perhaps thousands — who 
 have broken every link \di\\ their past. !RIy life suits mo well 
 enough, and I am contented. I shall never try to change it." 
 
 " That is a pity. You arc young enough to make a good wife to 
 an honest man, to help in creating a happy home." 
 
 "Am I? I feel a century old; and I have done with everv 
 thought of love or marriage. "When I woke to conscioiisness after 
 that dreadful fever, awoke from darkness and oblivion like that of 
 the gi-ave, I entered upon a new life. I came out of that sickness 
 like one who had passed through hell. Passion and hope, and youth 
 and good looks, had been burnt out of me in a tiery furnace. It was 
 a wonder to m\-sclf that my body was alive, it was no wonder to 
 me that my heart was dead. From that time I have lived very 
 much as I am living now — after a brief time of struggle and starva- 
 tion — and the life suits me fairly well. I shall never seek to better it." 
 
 "That is hard, ^larian." ' 
 
 He called her by her Christian name, frankly, in almost paternal 
 friendliness, not knowing any other name by which to call her. 
 
 lie was with Miss Newton earlier than usual on the occasion of 
 her next tea-drinking, so early as to be before anybody else, and ho 
 talked to his hostess about Marian — ]\Iarian Gray, Miss Newton 
 called her, — confiding to her his conviction that this young woman
 
 2 20 The Day zuill conic. 
 
 was no other tlian Mrs. Porter's missing dangliter. lie told her of 
 his interview with Mrs. Porter, and of the mother's angry repudiation 
 of her child. 
 
 " I can but think that her hardness was assumed," he said, " and 
 that the ice would melt at a touch if the mother and daughter could 
 be brought together. I should like to try the experiment." 
 
 " It is hardly wise to try experiments with hiiman hearts," said 
 Miss Newton. " Marian is contented and at peace, if not happy. 
 To force her back upon a mother who might be hard and bitter to 
 her — do you think that would be true kindness? " 
 
 '' What if the mother's heart has been yearning for her lost lamb 
 in all these years, and by bringing her back I might make two lives 
 happy? " 
 
 " Let the mother come to the child. Let her who has something 
 to forgive be the one to make the advance. It is so hard for the 
 sinner to go back. She must be helped back. If the mother were 
 a woman with a motherly heart, she would have been searching for 
 her lost child in all those years, instead of wrapping herself up in her 
 sorrow at home." 
 
 " I own I have thought that." 
 
 " Of course you have. You can't think otherwise as a sensible 
 man. I have no patience with such a mother. As for jNIarian, I 
 think she may get on very well as she is. I am fond of her, and I 
 believe she is fond of me. She earns from twelve to fourteen 
 shillings a week. She pays five shilhngs for her room, and she lives 
 upon eightpence a day. I needn't tell \o\\ that the teapot is her 
 2nece de resistance. Her most substantial meal on some days con- 
 sists of a couple of scones from the Scotch baker's, or a penny loaf 
 and a hard-boiled egg ; but when I go to see her she gives me an 
 admirable cup of tea, and positively delicious bread and butter. Her 
 room is the very pink and pattern of neatness. All the instincts of 
 a lady show themselves in that poor Httle two-pair back. She has 
 curtained the iron bedstead and the window with white dimitj^, 
 which is always clean and fresh, for she washes and irons it with her 
 own hands. She generally contrives to have a bunch of flowers 
 upon her work-table, and, hard as she works, her room is always free 
 from litter. She has about half a dozen books of her own upon the 
 mantelshelf, her Bible, Miltoa, Shakespeare, Charles Lamb's Essays, 
 Goldsmith's Poems, and the ' Idyls of the King ' — well-worn 
 volumes, which have been her companions for years. She borrows 
 other books from the Free Library, and her mind is always being 
 cultivated. I really believe she is happy. She is one of those rare 
 individuals who can aiTord to live alone. Do not disturb her lightly." 
 
 '• You are right perhaps. The mother struck me as by no means 
 a pleasant character, always supposing that Mrs. Porter is her 
 mother, of which I myself have very little doubt,"
 
 The Day will come. 221 
 
 Tlicodore mado no furtlicr cfibrt to bring mother and danf,ditcr 
 togt'tlier, but he met Marian from lime to time at Miss Newton's 
 tea-parties, and acquaintance rijiened into friendship. Ilcr reline- 
 ment and her musical talent sustained his interest in her. lie 
 tallied to her of books sometimes when they happened to be sitting 
 side by side at the tea-table, and he was suiprised at the extent cf 
 her reading. She confessed, when he questioned her, that she was 
 in the habit of stealing two or three hours from the night for her 
 books. 
 
 "I find that I can do with a few hours' sleep," she said, "if I lio 
 down happy in my mind after being absorbed in a delightful book. 
 ]\Iy books are my life. They give me the whole universe for my 
 world, though I have to live in one room, and to follow a very 
 monotonous calling." 
 
 Ue admired the rcluiement of that purely intellectual nature, 
 but he admired still more that admirable tact which regulated her 
 intercourse with Miss Newton's homelier friends. Never by word 
 or tone or half-involuntary glance did ^larian lietray any conscious- 
 ness of superiority to the uncultivated herd. iShe shared their 
 interests, she sympathized with their vexations, she neither smiled 
 nor shuddered at Cockney twang or missing aspirate. 
 
 Winter brightened into spring, with all its varieties of good and 
 evil ; east winds rushing round street-corners, and cutting into the 
 pedestrian like a knife ; west %vinds enfolding him like a balmy 
 caress, and bringing the perfume of violets, the vivid yellow of 
 daifodils into the wilderness of brick and stone ; rainy days, grey, 
 monotonous, dismal, hanging on the soul like a curtain of gloom 
 and hopelessness. These made up the sura of Theodore's outer 
 life. "Witliin he had his books, his ambition, and his faithful love. 
 He told himself that it w^^s a hopeless love; but tliero are many 
 things which a man tells himself, and tries to believe, and yet 
 does not believe. The very human longing for blessedness is too 
 strong for human wisdom. Where there is love, there is always 
 ho])e. 
 
 He had grown accustomed to his life in chambers; and albeit 
 he was much attached to his father, and was amiably tolerant of his 
 brother and sisters, he could but feel that this solitary existence 
 better suited his temper than residence in a family circle. At 
 Dorchester it had been very difllcult for him to be alone. Out of 
 business hours his sisters considered that tliey had a claim upon 
 him, a right to waste his life in the most trivial amusements and 
 engagements. If he withdrew himself from their society, and that 
 of their numerous dearest friends, they accused him of gruinpiness, 
 and thought themselves ill-treated. He had chafed against the 
 waste of life, the utter futility of those engagements which prevented 
 his keeping level with the intellectual growth of the age. He ftlt
 
 22 2 The Day will come. 
 
 tliat his youth was shpping from under him, leaving him stationary, 
 when every pulse of Ms being beat impatiently for progress. And 
 now it was pleasant to him to be his owm master, free to make the 
 best possible use of his days. He found a few friends in London 
 whose society suited him, and only a few. Among these the man 
 of whom he saw most Avas Cuthbert Eamsay, a young Scotchman, 
 who had been his chief companion at Cambridge, who had studied 
 medicine for three years in Leipsic and Paris with Ludwig and 
 Pasteur, and who was now at St. Thomas's. Tlie two young men 
 ran up against each other in that main artery of London life, the 
 Strand, in the January twilight, and renewed the friendly intimacy 
 of that bygone time when Ramsay had been at Trinity and Dalbrook 
 at Trinity Hall. They dined together at a restaurant on the evening 
 of that first meeting, and after dinner Theodore took his friend to 
 his chambers, where the two sat late into the night talking over 
 college reminiscences of hall and river. 
 
 Cuthbert Ramsay had been one of the most remarkable under- 
 graduates of those days, notable alike for mental and physical gifts 
 Avhicli lifted him out of the ruck. He was six feet two — with the 
 form of an athlete and as handsome a face as was ever seen within 
 the gates of Trinity, — and these advantages of person, wliich would 
 have been noteworthy in any man, were the more remarkable in 
 him, because of his utter indifference to them, or, perhaps, it may 
 be said, complete unconsciousness of them. He knew that he was 
 a big man, because his tailor told him as much ; but he had never 
 taken into consideration the question as to whether he was or was 
 not a handsome man ; indeed, except when he had his hair cut, an 
 operation which he always submitted to unwillingly and of dire 
 necessity, it is doubtful if he ever looked into a glass long enough to 
 know what manner of man he was — certainly not at his morning 
 toilet, when he moved restlessly about the room, hairbiiishes in hand, 
 belabouring his handsome head, and exercising his extraordmary 
 memory by the repetition of some scientific formula acquired during 
 the previous night's reading. 
 
 His own estimate of his appearance was comprised in the idea 
 that he was " very Scotch." That milky Avhiteness of complexion, 
 touched with just enough ruddy colour to give life to the face, those 
 brilliant blue eyes, the straight nose, clear-cut nostrils, firm lips and 
 firmer chin, the high broad brow, and crisp auburn hair, constituted 
 to his mind nothing more than his brevet of nationality. 
 
 "No one would ever take me for anything but a Scotchman," he 
 woiild say lightly, if any acquaintance ventured to hint at his good 
 looks. " There's no mistake about me. Albion is written on my 
 brow." 
 
 Prom his childhood upwards he had cared only for large things — • 
 intent upon investigation and discovery from the time he could
 
 The Day luill come. 223 
 
 crawl — asking the most searcliing questions of mother and of nurse 
 — prying into those abstract mysteries Avhicli perplex philosophers 
 before he could speak plain. The thirst for knowledge had grown 
 with his gi-owth and strengtliened with his strength. His hardy 
 boyhood had been spent for the most part in the windy streets of 
 Aberdeen, marching with swinging stride along that granito pave- 
 ment, his shabby red gown flapping in the north-easter; fixring any- 
 liow, as indilVerent to what he ate as he was to what he wore ; ahead 
 of his fellows in all things intellectual, and abreast with tlie best 
 athletes of his year in the sports they valued, — a king among men; 
 and of such a happy disposition that nothing in life came amiss to 
 him, and what would have been hardship to another seemed sport 
 to him. 
 
 Some one, a wealthy member of his extensive family, found out 
 that this Cuthbert was no common youth, and lliat Avith a little 
 encouragement he might do honour to the clan. This distant kins- 
 man, one of the heads of the great house of Kamsay, sent him to 
 Cambridge, where he entered as a scholar of his college, and at the 
 end of a year gained a University scholarship, which made him 
 independent. This hardy youth from the city of Bon Accord was 
 able to live upon so little — could not for the life of him have been 
 extravagant, having none of that mollcsse, or soft self-indulgence, 
 which is at the root of most men's squanderings. Ho was nine and 
 twenty years of age, and he had never worn a gardenia, and had 
 only had one suit of dress clothes since he grew to man's estate. 
 Needless to say that albeit he went out verj' seldom that suit was 
 now somewhat shabby ; but Cuthbert's superb appearance neutralized 
 the shabbiness, and he looked the finest man in any assembly. His 
 parents were in their graves before ho left the University. He had 
 no ties. He was free as Adam would have been if Eve had never 
 been created. There was no one near or dear to him to feel proud 
 of his honours, though his name was high in the list of Wranglers, 
 and he had taken a first-class in science. And now, after that 
 interval of serious scientific work in Leipsic and Paris, he was 
 plodding at St. Thomas's with a view to a London degree, and thus 
 the two hard-working young men — very intimate in the old days 
 when Cuthbert's rooms in the liishojt's Hostel were conveniently 
 adjacent to Theodore's gTonnd floor in Trinity Hall — were thrown 
 together again upon their life-journey, and were honestly glad to 
 renew the old friendship. 
 
 Ramsay was delighted with his friend's chambers. 
 
 " I was afraid there was nothing so good as this left in the Temple," 
 ho said, rapturously contemplating the blackened old wainscot, and 
 the low ceiling with il.s heavy cross-beam. " I thought smartness 
 and brand-new stone had superseded all that was historical and 
 interesting within the precincts of the Lamb. But these rooms of
 
 2 24 The Day will come. 
 
 yours have the true sraaclc. AViiy, I really believe now, Dalbrook, 
 you must have rats behind that wainscot? " 
 
 " Perhaps I had, till ]\Iiss Nipper came to keep me company," 
 answered Theodore, patting the terrier, whose neat little head and 
 intelligent ears were lifted at the sound of her name. 
 
 "And Nipper has made them emigrate to the next house, no 
 doubt ? " 
 
 " I'm glad you like my rooms, Cuthliert." 
 
 " Like them ! I envy you the ownership more than I can say. 
 If anything can make me sorry that I am not a lawyer it would be 
 the fact that I can't live in the Temple. We doctors have no dis- 
 tinctive abode, nothing associated with the past." 
 
 " Perhaps that is because medicine is essentially a progi'essive 
 . science." 
 
 I " Is it ? Sometimes I begin to doubt if it has made anj' progress 
 I since Galen — or Albertus Magnus. I will admit that there was 
 \ progress of some kind up to Jds time." 
 
 " This house has an interest for me that it would have for no one 
 else," said Theodore, presently, while his friend filled his briar-wood. 
 " My kinsman. Lord Cheriton, occupied the rooms underneath these 
 for about a dozen years ; and it is a fancy of mine to keep his image 
 before me as I sit here alone with my books. It reminds me of 
 what a man can do in the profession which so many of my friends 
 declare to be hopeless." 
 
 " No one knows anything about it, Theodore. If you Avent into 
 statistics you would find that the chances of success in the learned 
 professions are pretty nearly equal. So many men will get on, and 
 so many will fail, at every trade, in every calling. The faculty of 
 success lies in the man himself. I always thought you were the 
 kind of man to do well in whatever line you hit upon. A calm, 
 clear brain and a resolute will are the first factors in the sum of life. 
 And so Lord Cheriton lived in this house, did he ? I have heard 
 people talk of him as a very distinguished man, as well as a very 
 lucky one. By-the-by, it was in his house that strange murder 
 occurred last year." 
 
 " Yes, it was in his house, and it was his daughter's husband who 
 was murdered." 
 
 "Tell me the story, Theodore," said Ramsay, leaning back his 
 handsome head, and half closing his eyes, with the air of a man wlio 
 liked hearing about murders. '• I read the account in the papers at 
 the time, but I've very nearlj'' forgotten all about it." 
 
 Theodore comjilied, and gave his friend the history of the case, 
 and the failure of every attempt to find the murderer. 
 
 •' And there has been nothing discovered since last summer?" 
 
 "Notliing!" 
 
 " That is rather hard upon Lord Cl'.eriton — bearing in mind your
 
 The Day zuill come. 225 
 
 detective's siij;;c;cstioii of a vendetta. Tlic vendetta would not be 
 likely to close with the death of Sir (Todfrcy Cfirniicliael. Hatred 
 would demand further victims — Lord Chcritoa himself perhaps — or 
 this lovely younj^ widow, — hut there could hardly he such a vindic- 
 tive feeling without a stronc; cause. Enmity so deadly must have 
 had a beginnini; in a profomid sense of wronj?." 
 
 '' I have studied the case from that point of view, but can discover 
 no cause for such malijjnity. I have almost given up all hope of 
 unravelling the mystery." 
 
 " And your kinsman is to live under the sword of Damocles for 
 the rest of his life ? Ui>on my soul I pity him. I can imagine 
 nothing in Ireland worse than the murder of Sir Godfrey Carmichael 
 — a man seated peacefully in his own drawing-room ; and a high- 
 principled, amiahie young man, you tell me, who never was known 
 to wrong his fellow-man." 
 
 Theodore Dall)rook did not spend his Easter holidays in Dorset- 
 shire. He had hoard from his sisters that Juanita was staying at 
 Swanage with Lady Jane Carmichael. He was unwilling to intrude 
 upon her there, and he had nothing to communicate upon the sub- 
 ject which was at present his only claim upon her interest. Under 
 these circumstances he was easily persuaded to spend his vacation 
 in a ten days' trip to Holland with Cuthbert Rarafiay, who was 
 keenly interested in the result of some experiments wliich had 
 lately been made at Leyden ; and thus it happened that Theodore 
 let some time go by without seeing any member of his family except 
 his father, who came to London occasionally upon business, and 
 whom his son was delighted to entertain and make much of in his 
 chambers or at his club, the serviceable Constitutional. 
 
 Towards the end of April he read an announcement in the papers 
 which had touched him almost to tears. 
 
 " On the 23rd inst., at Mill)rook Priory, the widow of Sir Godfrey 
 Carmichael, of a j)osthumous son." 
 
 He was thankful for her sake that this new interest had been 
 given to her days — that a new and fair horizon was open to her in 
 this j'oung life, with all its possibilities of love and gladness. It 
 might be that the coming of this child would change the current of 
 her thoughts, that the stern desire for retribution would grow less 
 keen, that the agonizing sense of loss would be softened almost to 
 forgetfulncss. He remembered those lovely lines of the poet 
 philosopher's — 
 
 "A child, more than all other pifts, 
 Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts." 
 
 This child came, he hoped, freighted with healing and comfort,
 
 2 26 The Day ivill come. 
 
 came like the glad spring-time itself, like Adonis or Persephone, 
 \vith liis arms full of flowers. 
 
 He wrote to his cousin, in tenderest congratulation, a letter 
 breathing a generous affection, without one selfish thought lurking 
 between the lines. 
 
 Her answer came after nearly a month's delay, bnt, although 
 tardy, it was most delightful to him. Juanita asked him to be 
 godfather to her boy; and he could easily imagine that this was 
 the highest honom- she could offer him. 
 
 " In London half the young men I used to meet took a pride in 
 avowing their unbelief," she wrote, " but I know that you are not 
 ashamed to acknowledge your faith in Christ and His Church. I 
 shall feel secure that what you promise for my child will be ful- 
 filled, so far as it is in your power to bring about its fulfilment. I 
 know that if you stand beside the font and take those vows in His 
 name you will not remember that ceremony as an empty form, a 
 mere concession to usage and respectability. Those promises wll 
 appeal to you for my fatherless cliild in the days to come. They 
 will make you his friend and protector." 
 
 He accepted the trust with greater gladness than he had felt 
 about anj^hing that had happened to him for a long time ; and on 
 a balmy morning in the last week of May he fovmd himself standing 
 by the font of the old Saxon chiu-ch at Milbrook where he had 
 heard the solemn words of the Burial Service read above Sir 
 Godfrey Carmichael's coffin less than a year before. He took upon 
 himself the custody of the infant's conscience in all good faith, and 
 he felt that this trust which his cousin had given to him made a 
 new link between them. 
 
 The Grenvilles had come dowii from town to be present at the 
 ceremony, though neither husband nor wife was officially concerned 
 in it. Mrs. Grenville had seized the opportunity to bring Johnnie 
 and Godolphin to Dorsetshire for change of air. She had an idea 
 that the Purbeck air had a particularly revivifying effect upon them 
 — like imto no other air. 
 
 " I suppose that is because it is vsxy native air," she explained. 
 
 Mr. Grenville submitted to his nephew's existence as a mysterious 
 dispensation of Providence, which it became him to endure with 
 gentleman-like fortitude, but he did not cease to regard a post- 
 humous infant as a solecism in nature and society. 
 
 " Yom- sister-in-law actually seems pleased with her baby," he 
 told his wife, gi'umblingly, as he put on a frock coat in honour 
 of the approaching ceremony; ''but it appears to me that a 
 woman of I'efined feeling would be impi'essed with a sense of 
 incongruity — of indelicacy even — in the idea of a child born such 
 ages after the father's death — a sort of no-man's-baby. And upon 
 my word it is uncommonly hard upon Thomas. With such a family
 
 The Day zuill come. 227 
 
 as ours — five and the possibilities of tlic future — it would havt.; been 
 a grand thin;^ to have one well provided for. As things stand now 
 they must all be paupers." 
 
 Lord Cheriton was Theodore's fellow-sponsor, and Lady Jane 
 was godmother, an office which filled the dear soul with rajiturc. 
 She held her grandchild throughout the service, except when she 
 delivered him gingerly to the priest, who, at one stage of the ceremony, 
 carried the new-made Christian halfway up the aisle, and, as it 
 were, tlaunted him in the face of the scanty congi'Cgation. 
 
 Juanita stood like a statue while these rites were being celebrated, 
 and in her i)ale set fivce there was none of the tender interest which 
 a mother might be expected to show upon such an occasion. There 
 was a deep pathos in that marble face and those black garments in 
 an hoiu- which has generally something of a festal aspect. Strangers 
 thought her cold, a proud, hard young woman, thinking more of her 
 own importance, perhaps, than of her baby ; yet could they have 
 read beneath the surfaci; they would have pitied the girl-widow in 
 her desolation on this day which should have been blessed to her. 
 She could but think of him who was not there ; of the father who 
 had been fated never to look upon his son's face ; of the son who 
 was to grow from infancy to manhood without the knowledge of a 
 father's love. 
 
 Theodore watched that jtale and lovely face, full of sympathy, 
 but not without wonder. How would tliis new tie atVcct her? 
 Would it soften all thatwas hard and vindictive in her mind — would 
 it be strong enough to bring about resignation to the will of Heaven 
 — a patient waiting upon Providence, nistead of that feverish eager- 
 ness to exact a life for a life ? 
 
 They two were alone together for only a few minutes after 
 luncheon, strolling along the broad gravel walk in front of the 
 dining-room windows, in the afternoon sunshine, while Lord 
 Cheriton and Mr. Grenvillo lingered over cofice and cigars, and 
 Lady Jane and her daughter made a domestic group with children 
 and nurses under a gigantic Japanese umbrella. Short as that 
 tLtc-a-lHc was it convinced Theodore that the child had not brought 
 oblivion of the father's fate. 
 
 "You have heard nothing more — made no new discovery, I 
 suppose? " Juanita said, ncrvouslj*. 
 
 "Nothing. Indeed, Juanita, I fear I have no talent as tin 
 amateur di;tectivo. I am not likely to succeed where Mr. Churton 
 failed. It was easy enough for me to complete the record of tiio 
 Strangways — to set your suspicions at rest with regard to Ihem. 
 That was plain sailing. But it seems to mo I shall never go any 
 further." 
 
 '' I'm afraid you will not," she said, wearily ; "and yet I had such
 
 2 28 The Day zinll come. 
 
 hope in your cleverness — your determination to help me. As a 
 lawyer you would know how to set about it. The London defective 
 has many cases — his mind travels from one to another. He has 
 no leisui'e to think deeply aliout anything — but you who have 
 had so much leisure of late — you would, I know, be glad to help 
 me." 
 
 " Glad ! Good God, Juanita, you must know that I would 
 cut off my hand to give you ease or comfort — respite even from 
 a passing trouble. And if you are really set upon this thing — if 
 your peace is really dependent upon the discovery of your husband's 
 murderer " 
 
 " It is, it is, Theodore. I cannot know rest or comfort while his 
 death remains unpimished. I cannot lie down in peace at night 
 while I know that the wretch who killed him is walking about, 
 rejoicing in his wickedness, glad to have destroyed that blameless 
 life, laughing at our feeble love which can let our dead go 
 unavenged." 
 
 " If cudgelling these poor brains of mine could bring me anj^ 
 nearer to the truth, Juanita," Theodore said, with a troubled sigh, 
 " I should have helped you better ; but so far I can see no ray 
 of light in the thick darkness. I do not think any efforts of ours 
 will solve the myster3\ Only some accident, some inconceivable 
 imprudence on the part of the murderer can put us on his 
 track." 
 
 And then he thought with horror of Eamsay's idea that a hatred 
 so malignant as that which had killed Godfrey Carmichael might 
 reveal itself in some new crime. He thought of the young mother 
 bending over her infant's cradle in some unguarded room — calm 
 in the fancied safety of her English home. He thought of her 
 wandering alone in park or wood, while that rabid hatred lurked 
 in the shadow, waiting and watching for the moment of attack. 
 The horror of the idea chilled him to the heart, but he was careful 
 not to hint at that horror to Juanita. He seized the first opportunity 
 of being alone with Lady Jane, and imparted his fears, founded 
 upon that suggestion of Cuthliert Ramsay's to her. The kind 
 creature was quick to take alarm, and promised to see that .Juanita 
 was guarded at all hours by all precautions that could be taken 
 without alarming her. 
 
 " She is surrounded with old and faithful servants," said Lady 
 Jane ; " a hint to them will put them on their guai'd ; but if you 
 thought it wiser I would take her away from this place — take her 
 away from England, if necessary. It is horrible to think of living 
 at the mercy of an imknown foe." 
 
 '• My friend's notion may be groundless. The crime of last year 
 may have been an isolated act — the inspiration of madness. In our 
 eflbrts to account for the unaccountable we may invent theories
 
 The Day will come. 229 
 
 which torture us, and whicli may j'ot have no ground in fact. Only 
 it is as well to think of possibilities, however hideous," 
 
 Ue spent one night at the Priory, and before departure next 
 morning presented his offering of a fine George the Second mug to 
 his godson, Godfrey James Dalbrook — who in his present stage of 
 existence seemed to his godfiather a scarcely distinguishable morsel 
 of humanity smutlicred in oviraiuch cambric and Valenciennes. 
 
 " I'm afraiil if I were to meet my godson in the arms of a strange 
 nurse I shouM not know him," he said, deprccatingly, after he had 
 kissed the rosebud mouth, " but, please God, the time will come 
 when he and I will lie firm friends. As soon as he is old enough to 
 decline inensa I shall feel that we can converse upon a common 
 footing, and when he goes to Eton I shall renew my youth every 
 time I run down to waste an hour in tlie jilaying fields watching him 
 at cricket, or to drive him to the ' Wliite Hart.' " 
 
 Although he put on an air of cheerfulness in his leave-taking, ho 
 left the Priory with a sense of deepest anxiety; and it was almost 
 a relief to hiua when he received a letter from Lady Jane a week 
 afterwards. 
 
 '• I could not get over the uneasy feeling which your suggestion 
 awakened." she wrote, "so I am going to carry oft" mother and child 
 to Switzerland the day after to-morrow. Interlakeii and Grindel- 
 wald arc delightful at this season. AVc shall return to Dorsetshiro 
 as soon as the tourists begin to invade our retreat, and I trust in 
 God that some discovery may be made in the meantime, so that all 
 our minds may be more at ease."
 
 230 Xhe Day zaill come. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 " Tallin liath taught me thus to ruminate, 
 That time will come and take my love away. 
 This thought is as a death, which cannot choose 
 Eut weep to have that which it fears to lose." 
 
 That ghastly idea mooted by Cuthbert Ramsay — the idea of an 
 unsatisfied hatred still hovering like a bird of prey over the heads of 
 Juanita and her child, ready to make its deadly swoop in the hour 
 that should see her most helpless and unprotected — gave a new 
 impetus to Theodore's mind, and he applied himself again to the 
 apparently hopeless endeavour to find the motive of the murder 
 and the person of the murderer. 
 
 As an initial step he invited Mr. Churton to dine with him at his 
 chambers, entertained that gentleman with a well-chosen little 
 dinner sent in from a famous tavern m the Strand, and a bottle of 
 unexceptionable port after dinner ; and by this innocent means got 
 the detective into an expansive frame of mind, and induced him to 
 discuss the Cheriton murder in all its bearings. 
 
 The result of the long evening's talk differed in hardly any point 
 from the opinion which Mr. Churton had formulated at Cheriton. 
 The motive of the murder must be looked for in some past ^\^•ong, 
 or fancied wrong, inflicted upon the murderer. And again Mr. 
 Churton returned to his point that there was a woman at the bottom 
 of it. 
 
 "Do you mean that a woman fired the shot? " 
 
 " Decidedly not. I mean that a woman was the motive power. 
 Women are not given to avenging their wrongs with their own 
 hands. They will instigate the men who love them to desperate 
 crimes — unconsciously perhaps — for they are the first to howl when 
 the crime has been committed, and the lover's neck is in danger. 
 But jealousy is the most powerful factor of all, and I take it jealousy 
 was at the bottom of the Cheriton crime. I take it that some 
 intrigue of Sir Godfrey's youth was at the root of the matter." 
 
 " Strange as you may consider such a belief, Mr. Churton, I am 
 inclined to think that Sir Godfrey's youth ^vas innocent of intrigues 
 — that he never loved any woman exceiit my cousin, whom he 
 adored from the time he was eighteen, when she was a lovely child
 
 The Day will come. 231 
 
 of eleven. It was a very romantic attachment, and the kiiul of 
 attacliment which keeps a man clear of low associations." 
 
 " You and Lord Clieriton tell rao the same story, sir," said the 
 detective, with a touch of impatience ; '' but if this immaculato 
 young man never injiu'cd anybody, how do you account for that 
 bullet?" 
 
 " It is imaccountable, except upon a far-fetched hypothesis." 
 
 " What may that be ? " 
 
 "That the act of vengeance — though striking Godfrey Car- 
 michael — was aimed at Lord Cheriton ; that the blow was meant to 
 ruin his daughter's life, and by ricochet strike him to the heart. I 
 think we have spoken of this possibility before to-night." 
 
 After that evening with Churton, Theodore made up his mind 
 that there was no assistance to be looked for from this quarter. 
 The detective had exhausted his means of investigation, and had 
 nothing further to suggest. lie was too practical a man to waste 
 lime or thought upon speculative theories. Theodore saw, there- 
 fore, that if he were to pursue the subject further he must think 
 and work for himself. 
 
 After considering the question from every possible point of view, 
 he became the more established in the idea that Godfrey Carmichael 
 had been the scapegoat of another man's sin, the vicarious victim 
 whose death was to strike at a guilty life. Of his youth it was easy 
 to know all that there was to be known. He had lived in the sight 
 of his fellow-men, a young man of too much social importance to bo 
 able to hide any youthful indiscretions or wrong-doing. But what 
 of that other and so much longer life? What of the early struggles 
 of the self-made man ? What of the history of James Dalbrook in 
 those long years of bachelor life in London, when he was slowly 
 working his way to the front ? IMight not there have been some 
 hidden sin in that life, some sin dark enough to awaken a sleepless 
 vengeance, a malignity which slioidd descend upon him in the day 
 of peace and prosperity like a thunderbolt from a clear and quiet 
 sky? 
 
 A man who mames at forty years of ago has generally some 
 kind of history before his marriage; and it was in that history 
 Theodore told himself he must look for the secret of Godfrey 
 Carmichacl's death. He was loyal to his kinsman and his friend; 
 he was inspired by no prurient curiosity, no envious inclination to 
 belittle the great man; ho was prompted solely by his desire to 
 imearth the hidden foe, and to provide for the safety of Juanita's 
 future life. 
 
 Meditating upon his past intercourse with Lord Cheriton, and 
 upon every iamiliar conversation which be was able to recall, he 
 was surprised to find how very little his kinsman liad ever related 
 of his London life, before the time wlien he took silk and married a
 
 232 The Day luill come. 
 
 rich wife. His allusions to that earlier period had been of the 
 briefest. He had shown none of that egotistical pleasure which 
 most successful men feel in talking of their struggles, and the rosy 
 dawn of fame, those first triumphs, small perhaps in themselves, 
 but the after-taste of which is sweeter in the mouth than the larger 
 victories of the flood-tide. He had never talked of any aftairs of 
 the heart, any of those hghter flirtations and unfinished romances 
 which elderly men love to recall. His history, so far as it could be 
 judged by his conversation, had been a blank. 
 
 Either the man must have been a legal machine, a passionless 
 piece of human clay, caring for nothing but professional achieve- 
 ment, in those eighteen years of manhood between his call to the 
 Bar and his marriage, or he had lived a life which he could not 
 altbrd to talk about. He was either of a duller clay than his feUow- 
 raen, or he had a hidden history. 
 
 Now, as it was hardly possible that James Dalbrook, judged from 
 either a psychological or a physiological standpoint, could have 
 been dull and cold, and plodding, and passionless, at any period 
 of his career, there remained the inference that he had a secret 
 history. 
 
 Living under the very roof that had sheltered his coTisin in the 
 greater part of his professional career, Theodore Dalbrook arrived 
 at this conclusion. 
 
 What Icind of a life had he lived, that young barrister, briefless 
 and friendless at the outset, whose name was eventually to become 
 a power, a weight bringing down the judicial scale on the side of 
 victory, just as Archer's riding was supposed to secure the winning 
 of a race. How had he lived in those early years, when the fight 
 was all before him ? What friends had he made for himself, 
 and what enemies? What love, or what hate, had agitated his 
 existence ? 
 
 The investigator could only approach the question in the most 
 commonplace manner. It was nearly a quarter of a century 
 since James Dalbrook had been a tenant of that gi"Ound-floor 
 set, above which Theodore was pacing up and down in the summer 
 dusk. He had to find some one who remembered him at that 
 time. 
 
 It would not be his present laundress, a buxom matron of about 
 five and thirty, who had never been known to any present inhabit- 
 ant of Ferret Court without the encumbrance of a baby in arms, 
 or a baby at the breast. As fast as one baby was disposed of, there 
 was another coming forward to take its place. She always brought 
 her baby with her, and left it about in obscure corners, like an 
 umbrella. It was always of the order of infant designated good ; 
 that is to say, it was not a squalling baby. There were some of 
 Mrs. Armstrong's chents who suspected her of keeping it in a semi-
 
 The Day zvill come. 233 
 
 narcotized comlition in the interests of lior jtrofossion ; but when 
 tin's practice was liintcd at tlie matron referred to the necessities of 
 tcetiiing, and lioped she did not require to be reminded of her duty 
 as a mother. 
 
 Tin's good person bronglit in tlie lighted lamp wiiile Theodore 
 was pacing up and down the narrow limits of his sitting-room. She 
 l)laced the lamp on the table, looked inquiringly at her employer, 
 and then retired, only to return with the tea-tray, which she 
 ai'rangcd lingeringly. She was a talkative person, with an active 
 intellect, and it irked her to leave the room without any scrap of 
 convcrsiition, were it only an inquiry about the postman, or a casual 
 remark ujton the weather. 
 
 Nothing being forthcoming from Mr. Dalbrook, slic withdrew to 
 the door, but jjausod upon the thresjiold and dropped a curtsey. 
 
 " I'm afraid we're going to have a storm to-night, sir," she 
 said. 
 
 The fear was a thing of the moment, inspired by her desire to 
 talk. 
 
 '' Do you tiiink so. Sirs. Armstrong? " 
 
 "I do, indeed, sir. It coukhrt be that 'cavy if there wasn't 
 thunder in the air." 
 
 '' Pcrliaps not," replied Theodore, indifferently. " Ah ! by the 
 way, how long have yon looked after tliese chambers? " 
 
 '• From tin-ee Mears before I was married, sir." 
 
 "Is that long?" 
 
 ** Lor', j-es, sir; I should think it was! Wliy, my Joseph was 
 thirteen on his last birthday ! " 
 
 " Let me see ; that would mean about seventeen years, wouldn't 
 it ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 •'And I suppose you knew nothing about the chambers before 
 that time." 
 
 " I won't say that, sir. I've known them more or less ever since 
 I could run alone. Mother looked after them liefore mo. It was 
 only when the rheumatics took sucli firm hold of her" — this was 
 3aid as if Theodore were tiioroughly posteil in the case — " that 
 TMother gave uj). She liad done for tiie gentlemen in this house for 
 over twenty years; though when she married father she never 
 tliought to liavo to do such work as this, ho being a master car- 
 penter and cal)inet-maker with a nice business — and she'd been 
 brought up dilleront, and had more education than any of us ever 
 had." 
 
 " Then your mother must have known tin's house when Mr. 
 I)all>rook had the ground iloor— the Mr. Dalbrook who is now 
 Lord Cheriton," said Theodore, cutting short this biographical 
 piatter,
 
 234 ^-^^^ ^^y ^^'^^ come. 
 
 " I should tliiiik she did, sir. Many's the time I've heard her talk 
 of him. He was just like you, sir, in his ways, as far as I can gather 
 — very quiet and very studious. She waited upon him for nearly 
 twelve years, so she ought to be a judge of his character." 
 
 " I should like to have a chat with your mother some of these 
 days, Mrs. Armstrong." 
 
 "Would you, sir? I'm sure she'd be delighted. She loves 
 talking over old times. She's none of your Radicals, that are all for 
 changing things, like my husband. She looks up to her superiors, 
 and she feels quite proud of having done for Lord Cheriton when he 
 was just like any other young gentleman in Ferret Court. Any 
 time you'd like to step round to our place, sir, mother would be 
 happy to see you. She'd be glad to wait upon you, but she's 
 crippled with the rheumatics, and it's as much as she can do to get 
 upstairs of a night and downstairs of a morning." 
 
 "I'll call npon her to-morrow afternoon, if that will be con- 
 venient." 
 
 "No fear of that, sir. Shall I look roimd at four o'clock and 
 show you where she lives, sir? It's not above five minutes' 
 walk." 
 
 " If you please. I shall be very much obliged." 
 
 Gadbolt's Lane was one of the obscm-est alleys between the 
 Temple and St. Bride's Church, but it was as well known in the 
 locality as if it had been Eegent Street. Thither Mrs. Armstrong 
 conducted her employer on a sultry Jime afternoon, and admitted 
 him with her own private key into one of the narrowest houses he 
 had ever seen — a house of three stories, with one window in each 
 story, and. with a tiny street door squeezed in between the parlour 
 window and the next house — a house which, if it had stood alone, 
 would have been a tower. Upon the nan'ow street door appeared 
 a wide brass plate inscribed with the name of " J. W. Armstrong, 
 plumber," and in the parlour window Avcre exhibited various 
 indications of the plumbing trade. On a smaller brass plate just 
 below the knocker appeared the modest legend, " Miss Mobley, 
 ladies' own materials made up." 
 
 The little parlour behind the plumber's emblems was very close 
 and stuffy upon this midsummer afternoon, for Mrs. Dugget's com- 
 plaint necessitated a fire in season and out of season ; but it was 
 also spotlessly clean, and preparations had evidently been made for 
 an afternoon tea of an especially delicate character. There was a 
 rack of such thin, dry toast as Mrs. Armstrong's employer affected, 
 and there was a choice pat of Aylesbury butter, set forth upon the 
 whitest of table-cloths, and flanked by a glass jar of jam, the glass 
 receptacle being of that ornate character which dazzles the pur- 
 chaser into comparative indifierence as to the quality of the jam ;
 
 The Day loill come. 235 
 
 jnst as admiriiip; man, caught by outward beauty, is apt to kIiuL his 
 eyes to the lack of more lasting charms iu the way of temper and 
 character. 
 
 *' Mother thought perhaps you'd honour her by taking a cup of tea 
 this warm afternoon, sir," said Mrs. Armstrong, when Theodore had 
 seated himself opposite the invalid, "and then you can have your 
 little talk over old times while I look after Armstrong's sni>per. 
 He'll eat any bit I choose to give him for his dinner, and there's 
 days ho don't get no dinner at all, but he always looks for some- 
 thing tasty for supper, don't he, mother ? " 
 
 Mrs. Duggct acknowledged this trait in her son-in-law's character, 
 and Theodore having graciously accepted her liospitality, ]\Irs. 
 Armstrong poured out the tea, and waited upon the distinguished 
 guest, ami, having done this, withdrew to her domestic duties. 
 She was visible in front of the window five minutes afterwards, 
 setting out Avith a basket over her arm, e^adently in quest of the 
 "something tasty " that was needful to her husband's well-being. 
 
 "Your daughter tells me that you remember my cousin, Lord 
 Cheriton, Avhen he was Mr. Dalbrook," said Tlieodore, when he and 
 the old woman were alone together, except for the presence of a 
 very (;imiliar black cat, which pushed its chilly nose into Theodore's 
 hand, and rubbed its sleek fur against Theodore's legs, with an air 
 of slavish adulation. 
 
 " It isn't everybody that Tom takes to," said Mrs. Dugget, 
 touched by her favourite's conduct. " He's a rare judge of charac- 
 ter, is Tom. I've had him from a kitten, and his mother before 
 him. Yes, sir, I ought to remember his lordship, seeing that I 
 waited upon bini for over eleven years; and a quiet gentleman he 
 was to attend upon, giving next to no trouble, and never using bad 
 language, or coming home the worse for drink, as I've known a 
 gentleman behave in that very set." 
 
 " Did he live in his chambers all that time? " 
 
 "Well, sir, nominally he did, but actually ho didn't. He had 
 lu's bedroom and his bath-room, just as you have ; and the rooms 
 was furnished pretty comfortable, and everything about them was 
 very neat, for he was uncommoidy particular, was Mr. Dalbrook ; 
 and he was always there of a day, and all day long, except when 
 he was at the law courts, for there never was a more persevering 
 gentleman. But after the first three years I can't say that he lived 
 in Ferret Coiu-t. He came there by nine or ten o'clock every 
 morning; and sometimes he stayed till ten o'clock at night, and 
 sometimes he loft as early as live in the afternoon ; l)ut he didn't 
 live there no more after the third year, when he was licgiiming to 
 get on a bit. There was his rooms, and there was nothing altered, 
 except that he took away his dressing-case and a good many of his 
 clothes ; but there was everythirg left that he wanted for his toilet,
 
 236 The Day ivill come. 
 
 and all in apple-pie order for him to fall back upon his old ways at 
 any time. Only, as I said before, he didn't live there no longer ; 
 and instead of having his dinner in his own room at seven o'clock, 
 he never took anything more than a biscuit and a glass of sherry, 
 or a brandy and soda." 
 
 " Did this change in his habits come about suddenly? " 
 
 "Yes, sir, it did; without an hour's warning. I comes to his 
 rooms one morning and finds that his bed hasn't been slept in, and 
 I finds a little bit of a pencil note from him to say that he would be 
 stopping out of town for a few days. He was away over a fortnight, 
 and from that time to the end of my service in Ferret Court, ho 
 never spent another night there." 
 
 " Ho had taken lodgings out of town, I conclude ? I suppose you 
 knew his other address? " 
 
 " No, sir, he never told me where his home was, for of course he 
 must have had a home somewhere. No man would be a waif and 
 stray for all those years^above all, such a steadj'-going gentleman 
 as Mr. Dalbrook. I've heard other gentlemen accuse him of being 
 a hermit. ' One never sees you nowhere,' they saj's. ' You're as 
 steady as Old Time,' they says. And so he was ; but he was very 
 secret with his steadiness." 
 
 " Had you any idea where that second home of his was — in what 
 part of the suburbs ? It could not have been very far from London, 
 since you say he came to his chambers before ten o'clock every 
 morning." 
 
 " It was oftener nine than ten, sir," said Mrs. Dugget. 
 
 She paused a little before replying to his question, watching him 
 with a sly smile as he caressed the obtrusive cat. She had her 
 own notions as to the motive of his curiosity. He had expecta- 
 tions from Lord Cheriton, perhaps, and he wanted to discover if 
 there were anything in the background of his kinsman's history 
 which was likely to interfere with the fruition of his mercenary 
 hopes. 
 
 " It was a good many years after Mr. Dalbrook left off sleeping at 
 his chambers that I made a sort of discovery," she said ; " and I 
 knew my place too well to take any advantage of that discovery. 
 But still I had my suspicions, and I believe they were not far off the 
 truth." 
 
 " What was the nature of your discovery ? " 
 
 " Oh, well, you see, sir, it wasn't much to talk about, only it set 
 me thinking. It was two or three years before Mr. Dalbrook left 
 Ferret Court and went to that first floor set in King's Bench Walk, 
 but he was beginning to be a great man, and he had more work than 
 he could do, slave as hard as he might ; and he did slave, I can tell 
 you, sir. His rooms in Ferret Court were very shabby — they hadn't 
 had a bit of paint or a pail of whitewash for I don't know how long;
 
 The Day zuill come. i'\^'] 
 
 60, just before the Lonp: Vacation, lie says to me, ' I'm goin;; to got 
 these rooms done up, Mrs. Dnggct, Avliilo I'm out of town. I've 
 pot a estimate from a pai-ty in llolljorn, and he's to ])aint tlie 
 wainscot and clear coal the ceiling, and do the whole thing for 
 nine pounds seven and eightpence, in a workmanlike manner. You'll 
 please to clean nj) after him, and do away with all tlie waste paper 
 and rubbish, and get everything tidy before November." 
 
 Rlrs. Dugget ])ausod, and refreshed herself with half a cup of tea, 
 and ajiologizcd for the obtnisiveness of the cat. 
 
 " I hope you don't object to cats, sir." 
 
 Theodore smiled, reflecting that any man who objected to cats 
 would have fled from that stuffy parlonr before now. 
 
 " No, 1 am rather fond of them, as an inferior order of dog. Well, 
 now, as to this discovery of yours, Mrs. Dugget? " 
 
 " I'm coming to it as fast as I can, sir. You must know that 
 there was a lot of waste paper in one of the closets beside the 
 fireplace, and you are aware how roomy those closets in Ferret 
 Court are. I never held with burning waste paper, iirst because 
 it's dangerous w^ith regard to fire, and next because they'll give you 
 three shillings a sack for it at some of the paper mills ; so I had 
 alway emptied the waste-paper baskets into this closet, which was 
 made no other use of, and the bottom of the closet was chock-full 
 of old letters, envelopes, pamphlets, and such like. So I took my 
 sack, and I sat down on the floor and tilled it. Now, as I was 
 putting in the papers by handfuls— taking my time over it, for the 
 painters wasn't coming till the following ^londay, and all my gen- 
 tlemen was away on their holidays — I was struck by seeing such a 
 number of envelopes addressed to the same name — 
 
 ' J. Danvers, Esq., 
 
 ' ]\Iyrtle Cottage, 
 
 ' Cambcrwell Grove.' 
 
 How did Mr. Dalhrook come to have all those envelopes belonging 
 to Mr. Danvers? There must have been letters inside the enveloi)Cs, 
 and what business had he with Mr. Danvers's letters?" 
 
 " They may have been letters bearing upon some case on which 
 he was engaged," said Theodore. 
 
 " So they might, sir; but woidd he have the letters?" asked tlio 
 laimdress shrewdly. " Wouldn't that lie the solicitor's business? " 
 
 " You are right, Mrs. Dugget. I sec you have profited by your 
 experience in the Temple." 
 
 *■ I had the curiosity to look at the post-marks on tliose envelopes, 
 sir. There was over a hundred of 'em, I should think, some wliole. 
 and some torn across, and the post-marks told me that thi-y sjiread 
 over years. They most of 'em looked like tradesmen's envelopes,
 
 238 The Day will come. 
 
 and the Camberwell post-mark was ou a good many of 'em. That 
 closet hadn't been cleared out for eight or nine years, to my know- 
 ledge, and those envelopes went back for the best part of that time, 
 and the longer I looked at them the more I wondered who Mr. 
 Danvers was." 
 
 " And did you come to any conclusion at last ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, I had my own idea about it, but it isn't my place to 
 say what that idea was." 
 
 " Come, come, Mrs. Dugget, you have no employer now, and you 
 are beholden to no one. You are a free agent, and have a perfect 
 right to give expression to your opinion." 
 
 " If I thought it would go no further, sir." 
 
 " It shall go no further." 
 
 " Very well then, sir, to be candid, I thought that James Dal- 
 brook and J. Danvers, Esq., were the same person, and that Mr. 
 Dalbrook had been living in Camberwell Grove under an assumed 
 name." 
 
 " Would not that seem a very curious thing for a professional man 
 in Mr. Dalbrook's position to do? " inquired Theodore, gravely. 
 
 " It might seem curious to you, sir, but I've seen a good deal of 
 professional gentlemen in my time, and it didn't strike me as very 
 uncommon. Gentlemen have their own reasons for what they do, 
 and the more particular they are from a professional point of view 
 the more convenient they may find it to make a little alteration in 
 their names now and again." 
 
 Mrs. Dugget looked at him with a significant shrewdness, which 
 gave her the air of a female Mephistopheles, a creature deeply versed 
 in all things e\al. 
 
 " Did your curiosity prompt you to try and verify your suspicions ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 The old woman looked at him searchingly before she answered, 
 as if trying to discover what value there might be for him in any 
 information she had it in her power to give or to withhold. So far 
 she had been carried along by her inherent love of gossip, stimulated 
 by the wish to stand well with her daughter's employer, and perhaps 
 with a view to such small amenities as a poimd of tea or a bottle 
 of whisky. But at this point something in Theodore's earnest 
 manner suggested to her that her knowledge of his kinsman's life 
 might have a marketable value, and she therefore became newl}' 
 reticent. 
 
 " It doesn't become me to talk about a gentleman like Mr. Dal- 
 brook, your namesake and blood relation, too, sir," she said, folding 
 her rheumatic hands meekly. " I'm afraid I've made too free with 
 my tongue already." 
 
 Tlx^ndore did not answer her immediately. He took a letter-case 
 from hiii breast-pocket, and slowly and deliberately extracted two
 
 The Day will come. 239 
 
 crisp bauk-notoR from one of the divisions. Those he opened and 
 spread calmly and carefully on the table, smoothing out tlieir crisp 
 freshness, which crackled under his hand. 
 
 There is something very pleasant in the aspect of a new bank- 
 note ; money created expressly, as it were, for the first owner ; 
 virgin wealth, pure and uncontamiiiatcd by the dealings of the 
 multitude. These were only five-pound notes, it is true, tiie lowest 
 in the scale of English paper-money — in the eye of a millionairo 
 infinitesimal as the gi'ains of sand on the sea-shore — yet to Mrs. 
 Dugget those two notes lying on the table in front of her suggested 
 vast wealth. It is doubtful if she had ever seen two notes together 
 in the whole of her previous experience. Her largest payment was 
 a quarter's rent, her largest receipt had been a quarter's wages. 
 She had managed to save a little money in the coiu'se of her 
 laborious days, but her savings had been accumulated in sovereigns 
 and half-sovereigns, which liad been promptly transferred to tho 
 savings bank. Bank-notes to her mind were the symbols of surplus 
 wealtli. 
 
 " Now, I am not going to beat about the bush, Mrs. Dugget," 
 said Theodore, with a matter-of-ftict air. " I have a great respect 
 for my kinsman, Lord Cheriton, who has been a kind friend to me. 
 You may be assured, therefore, that if I am curious about his past 
 life, I mean him no harm. I have reasons of my own, which it is 
 not convenient forme to explain, for wanting to know all about his 
 early struggles, his friends, and his enemies. I feel perfectly sure 
 that you followed up your discovery of those envelopes — that you 
 took the trouble to find I\Iyrtle Cottage, and to ascertain tho kind 
 of people who lived tlicre." Her face told him that he was right. 
 " If you choose to be frank with me, and tell me all you can, those 
 two five-pound notes are very much at your service. If you prefer 
 to hold your tongue, I can only wish you good afternoon, and try to 
 make my discoveries unaided, which will not be very easy after a 
 lapse of over twenty years." 
 
 " I tlon't want to keep any useful information from you, sir, 
 provided you'll promise not to let anything I may tell you get to 
 Lady Clieriton's ears. I shouldn't like to make uuhappiness between 
 man and wife." 
 
 " I promise that Lady Cheriton shall not be made unliappy by 
 any indiscretion of mine." 
 
 " That's all I care about, sir," said ]\Irs. Dugget, piously, with her 
 keen old eye upon tho notes, "and being sure of that, I don't mind 
 owning that I did take the trouble to follow up the address upon 
 the envelope. Now, when a gentleman like Mr. Dalbrook — a gen- 
 tleman as always pays his way regular, and stands high in liis 
 profession — when such a gentleman as that changes his name, you 
 may be sure there's a lady in the case. If you tiike up a paper,
 
 240 The Day will come. 
 
 Bir, and happen to glance at a divorce case, promiscuous, as I do 
 sometimes when my son-in-law leaves his Tdegrai^h or his Echo 
 lying about — you'll find that the gentleman who runs away with 
 the lady always changes his name first thing — whether he and the 
 lady go to an hotel, or takes lodgings, or go on the Continent — he 
 always takes another name. I don't thmk the change does him 
 much good, for wherever he goes people seem to know all about 
 him, and come out with their knowledge in court directly it's 
 wanted — but it seems as if he must always act so, and act so he 
 does." 
 
 Theodore submitted to this disquisition in silence, but he touched 
 the notes lightly with his fingers and made them crackle," by way of 
 stimulus to Mrs. Dugget's intellect. 
 
 " I felt sure if Mr. Dalbrook had been living at Myrtle Cottage 
 imder the name of Danvers there was a lady mixed up in it, and, 
 being in the Long Vacation, when I knew he generally went abroad, 
 I thought I would try and satisfy myself about him. I thought I 
 should feel more comfortable in waiting upon him when I knew the 
 worst. And then Camberwell Grove was such a little way off. It 
 would be just a nice outing for me of a summer evening ; so what 
 did I do one lovely warm aftei'noon but take my tea a little earlier 
 than usual, and trot off to the corner of Lancaster Place, where I 
 wait for a Waterloo 'bus coming sauntering along the Strand as if 
 time was made for slaves, and there was no such things as loop-lines 
 or trains to be caught. I hadn't no train to catch, so I didn't mind 
 the saimtering and the dawdling and the taking up and setting 
 down. I had all the summer evening before me when I got out at 
 the Green and made my way to the Grove. It's a beautiful 
 romantic place, Camberwell Grove, sir. I don't know whether you 
 know it, but if you do I'm sure you'll own that there ain't a prettier 
 neighbourhood near London. Twenty years ago they used still to 
 show you the garden where George Barnwell murdered his uncle, 
 but I'^dare say that's been done away with by now. It took me a 
 good time to find Myrtle Cottage, for it was one of the smallest 
 houses in the Grove, and it stood back in a pretty little garden, and 
 there was nothing on the gate to tell if it was Myrtle or otherwise. 
 But I did find it at last, thanks to a young housemaid who was standing 
 at the gate, talking to a grocer's lad. The grocer's lad made olf 
 when he saw me, and for the first few minutes the girl was inclined 
 to be disagreeable ; but she came roimd very quickly, and I dare say 
 Bhe was glad to have some one to talk to on that sohtary summer 
 evening. 'Cook's out for her holiday,' she says, ' and I can't stop in 
 the house alone.' And then we got talking, and after we'd talked 
 a bit standing at the gate, she asked me into the garden, where 
 there was a long narrow grass plot, screened ofi" from the high road 
 by two horse-chestnut trees and some laburnums, and there was
 
 The Day luill conic. 241 
 
 Bomc garden cluiirs and a tabic on tlio grass, and tlic young woman 
 asked mc to sit down. Slic'd got her work-basket out tliore, and 
 she'd been making lierself an apron. ' I can't bear the house of a 
 summer evening,' she says, 'it gives me tlie horrors.' Well, W(! 
 talked of her master and mistress, as was natural. She'd lived with 
 them over a twelvemonth, and it was a pretty good place, but very 
 dull, and the missus had a temi)er, and was dreadfully particular, 
 and expected things as nice as if she had ten servants instead of two, 
 and was vcr}"^ mean into the bargain, and seemed afraid of spending 
 money. ' I shouldn't be so particular, if I was her,' the girl said, 
 and then she told me that she knew things wasn't all right, though 
 Ihcy seemed a very respectable couple, and the lady went to church 
 regularly." 
 
 "What made her suspect that things were wrong?" asked 
 Theodore, ^Irs. Dugget having paused at this point of her narrative. 
 
 " Oh, sir, servants always know ! They can't live six months in a 
 house without finding out how the land lies. They've got so little 
 to think of, you sec, except their masters and mistresses. You can't 
 wonder if they're always on the watch and the listen, meaning no 
 harm, poor things. If you was shut up in a stuffy little kitchen ail 
 (lay, never seeing no one but the lads from the tradespeople for two 
 or three minutes at a time, you'd watch and you'd listen. It's 
 human nature. People don't like reading servants, and they don't 
 like gadding servants; so they nnist put up with servants that think 
 a good deal of what's going on round them. The housemaid told 
 me she was sure from the solitary way Mr. and Mrs. Danvers lived 
 that there was a screw loose somewhere. ' No one never comes 
 near them,' she said, ' and she never goes nowhere exce])t for a 
 walk with him. No visitors, no friends. 1 can't think how she 
 bears her life. She hasn't a party- gown, even. If anybody asked 
 her to a party she couldn't go. When he took her abroad last 
 month she was all in a fluster and excitement, just like a child, or 
 like a prisoner that's going to be let out of prison. She shook 
 hands with cook and me when she said good-bye, and that isn't like 
 her. " I feel so happy, Jane," she says, " I don't know what I'm 
 doing." No more I think she did. She looked quite wild with 
 pleasure, and quite young too in her new bonnet, although in a 
 general way she looks older than him.' And then the girl told \i\(\ 
 liow fond she was of him, although she showed lier temper now and 
 then, even to him. Not often, the girl said, and any quarrel with 
 him threw her into a dreadful way afterwards, and she would lie 
 awake and sob all night long. The girl had heard her, for it was a 
 trumpery little house, though it was pretty to look at, and the walls 
 were very thin. I could see with my own eyes that it wasn't much 
 of a house, a sort of dressed-up cottage, smothered with creepers up 
 to the roof. It looked pretty and countrified after the Temple, and 
 
 K
 
 242 The Day zvill come. 
 
 I could understand that Mr. Dalbrook liked living in sucli a lovely 
 place as Camberwell Grove." 
 
 " Did you find out what the lady was like ? " asked Theodore. 
 
 " You may lie sure I tried to do that, sir. How could I help 
 being interested in a lady that had such an influence over one of my 
 gentlemen ? The girl told me that Mrs. Danvers was one of the 
 ' has beens.' She had been handsome, perhaps, once upon a time ; 
 and she might have had a fine figure once upon a time ; but she 
 had neither face nor figure now. She was pale and careworn, and 
 she was very thin. She didn't do anything to set herself off either, 
 like other ladies of five and thirty. She wore the same merino gown 
 month after month, and she had only one silk gown in her wardrobe. 
 She was always neat and nice, like a lady ; but she didn't seem to 
 care much how she looked. She told the girl once that she and ]\lr. 
 Danvers would be better ofiE" by and by, and then all things would be 
 different with them. ' I am only waiting for those happier days,' 
 she says ; but the girl fancied she would be an old woman before 
 those days came." 
 
 " Were there any children? " 
 
 " I could not find out for certain. The girl fancied from chance 
 words she had overheard that there had been a baby, but that it had 
 been sent away, and that this was a grievance between them, and 
 came up when they quarrelled, Avhich was not often, as I said before. 
 Altogether I left Camberwell Grove feeling very sorry for the lady 
 who was called Mrs. Danvers, and I thought it was a great pity if Mr. 
 Dalbrook wanted to make a home for himself he couldn't have man- 
 aged it better. I made great friends with Jane, the housemaid, before 
 I left that garden, and I asked her when she had an evening out to 
 come and take a cup of tea with me ; and if she could get leave to 
 go to the theatre, my youngest son, who was living at home then, 
 could take her, along with my daughter, who was then unmarried 
 and in service in New Bridge Street. The young Vi'oman came 
 once, about Christmas time, and she told me things were just the 
 same as they had been at Myrtle Cottage. She talked very freely 
 about Mr. and Mrs. Danvers over her tea, but she had no idea that 
 he was beknown to me, or that he was a barrister with chambers 
 in the Temple. She thought he was something in the City. I 
 asked her if it was Mr. Danvers who was mean and kept his lady 
 short of money; but she thought not. She thought it was Mrs. 
 Danvers that had a kind of mania for saving, for she was quite put 
 out if Mr. Danvers brought her home a present that cost a few 
 pounds. It seemed as if they were saving up for some purpose — 
 for they used to talk to each other of the money he was putting by, 
 and it was plain they were looking forward to a better house and a 
 happier kind of life. Jane thought that either she had a husband 
 hidden away somewhere — in a lunatic asylum, perhaps — or he had 
 another wife."
 
 The Day luill come. 243 
 
 Mrs. Diijrgot stopped to rcpliMiisli the thrifty little fire witli a. very 
 pinall scooptul of coals, during wliicli operation the sleek black cat 
 leaped upon her back and balanced himself upon her shoulders 
 while she bent over the grate. 
 
 " Well, sir, that was Jane's first and last visit. She got married 
 all of a sudilen l)eforc Lady-day, and she; went to live in the country, 
 where her husband was postman in her native village, and I never 
 see no more of her. I went to Camberwell Grove again in the 
 Long Vacation, when I knew Mr. Dalbrook was away, but I found 
 only an old woman in the house as caretaker, stone deaf, and dis- 
 agreeable into tlie bargain. Mr. Dalbrook moved into King's Bench 
 Walk the following j'ear, and less than six months after that I saw 
 his marriage in the papers ; and his clerk told me he had married 
 a very rich young lady, and was going to buy an estate in the 
 country. I went to have another look at the cottage soon after 
 31 r. Dalbrook's marriage, and I found the garden-gate locked, 
 and a board up to say that the house w^as to be let unfurnished ; 
 and that, sir, is all I could ever find out about the lady called Mrs. 
 Danvers." 
 
 " And this history of the liome in Camberwell Grove is all you 
 ever knew about Mr. James Dalbrook's life outside the chambers in 
 Ferret Court." 
 
 " Yes, sir, that is all 1 ever heard, promiscuously or other- 
 wise." 
 
 " Well, JMrs. Dugget, you have been frank with me, and you have 
 earned my little jM-esent," said Theodore, handing her the two 
 notes, which her old iingers touched tremulously in a rapture that 
 was too much for words. It was with an effort that she faltered out 
 lier thanks for Iiis generosity, which, she protested, she had never 
 "looked for." 
 
 Theodore walked back towards the Temple deep in thought ; 
 indeed so troubled and perplexed were his thoughts that upon 
 approaching Ferret Court ho stopped short, and instead of going 
 straight to his chambers, turned aside and went to the Gardens, 
 where lie walked up and down the same gi'avel path for an hour, 
 pondering upon that jiicture of the hidden home in Camberwell 
 Grove, conjured u]) before him by the loquacious laundress. Yes, 
 he could imagine that obscm'c existence almost as if he had seen it 
 with his bodily eyes. He could fancy the solitary home where 
 never kinsman or familiar friend crossed the threshold; a home 
 destitute of all home ties and homely associations ; a home never 
 smiled upon by the parson of the i)arish ; cut off from all local 
 interests, identified with nothing, a mystery among the common- 
 place dwellings around and about it ; a subject for furtive observation 
 from the neighbours. He could fancy those two lonely lives preying 
 upon each other, too closely united for peaceful union ; the woman
 
 244 '^^^^ D'-'^y "^'-'^'^^ come. 
 
 too utterly dependent upon the man ; she feeling lier dependence a 
 degradation; he feeling her helplessness a burden. He could [jicturo 
 them, loving each other, perhaps, passionately, jealously to the last, 
 and yet weary of each other, worn out and weighed down by tlie 
 narrowness of a life walled off from the rest of the world and all its 
 changeful interests and widening sympathies. And then he saw 
 the picture in still darker colours, as it might have been ere that 
 unknown figure faded from the canvas. He thought of the ambitious, 
 successful barrister, heart-sick at the fetters which he had fastened 
 upon his life, tired of his faded mistress, seeing all gates open to him 
 were he but free to pass them ; still living apart from the world, at 
 a time of life when all the social instincts are at their highest 
 development, when a man loves the society of his fellow-men, the 
 friction of crowds, the sound of his own voice, and every social 
 tribute that the world can offer to Ins talents and his success. He 
 saw his"kinsman galled by the chain which love and honour had hung 
 about him, loathing his bondage, longing for liberty — saw bini witli 
 the possiljility of a brilliant marriage suddenly offering itself to him, 
 a lovely girl ready to throw herself into his arms, a fortune at his 
 feet, and the keen ambition of a self-made man goading him like a 
 spur. How did it end? Did death set him free — death, the 
 loosener of all bonds ? Or did his mistress sacrifice herself and her 
 broken heart to his welfare, and of her own accord release him ? 
 There are women capable of such sacrifices. It would seem that his 
 disentanglement, however it came about, had been perfect of its 
 kind ; for no rumour of a youthful intrigue, no scandal about a cast- 
 off mistress had ever clouded the married life of James Dalbrook, 
 Even in Cheriton village, where the very smallest nucleus in the waj' 
 of fact was apt to swell into a gigantic scandal, even at Clieritoii 
 nobody had ever hinted at indiscretions in the earlier years of the 
 local magnate. 
 
 And then Theodore Dalbrook asked himself the essential ques- 
 tion : AVhat bearing, if any, had this episode of his kinsman's life 
 upon the murder of Juanita's husband ? What dark and vengeful 
 figure lurked in the background of that common story of dishonom-- 
 able love? An outraged husband, a brother, a father? That 
 obscure life apart from friends and acquaintances would show that 
 some gi-eat wrong had been done, some sacred tie had been broken. 
 Only a sinful union so hides its furtive happiness — only a deep sense 
 of degradation will reconcile a woman to banishment from the 
 society of her own sex. 
 
 Whether that forsaken mistress were dead or living there might 
 lurk in her sad history the elements of tragedy, the motive for a 
 ghastly revenge ; and on this account the story possessed a grim 
 fascination for Theodore Dalbrook. He lay awake the greater "part 
 of the night thinking in a fitful way of that ilHcit menage in the
 
 The Day ivill conic. :i45 
 
 unfashionable suburb — the suburb whose very existence is unknown 
 to society. He fell asleep long after the sini was up, only to dream 
 ("onfuseilly of a strange woman who was now James Dalbrook's 
 lawful wife — and now his victim — and w-hose face had vague 
 resemblances to other faces, and who was and was not half a dozen 
 other wojnen in succession. 
 
 He walked to Camberwell on the following afternoon, surprised 
 at the strange world through which he passed on his way there, the 
 teeming, busy, noisy world — the world which makes such a hard 
 fight for life. The Grove itself, after that bustling, seething road, 
 seemed a place in which nightingales might have warbled, and 
 laughing girls hidden from their lovers in the summer dusk. The 
 very atmosjiherc of decay from a better state was soothing. There 
 were trees still, and gardens, and here and there pretty, old-fashioned 
 houses ; and in a long narrow garden between two larger houses he 
 f< lund Myrtle Cottage. There was a board up, and the neglected gar- 
 den indicated that the cottage had been a long time without a tenant. 
 
 There was a policeman's wife living in it, witli a colony of small 
 children, in the cotton-pinafore stage of existence, and with noses 
 dc]iendent upon maternal supervision, so much so that scarcely 
 had the matron attended to one small snub than her attention 
 was called off to another, which gave a distracted air to all her 
 conversation. 
 
 Slie took jNIr. Dalbrook over the house, and expatiated upon the 
 damp walls, and the utter incompetence of the cistern and pipes to 
 meet the exigencies of a family, which was the more to be regretted 
 on the ground that the landlord declined to do anything in tlie way 
 of repairs, as he intended to pull the house down in a few years 
 with a view to making better use of the ground. 
 
 "And indeed that's about all it's fit for," said the policeman's 
 wife. " It ain't fit for anybody to live in." 
 
 The rooms had even a more desolate look than rooms in em]ity 
 houses usually have, in consequence of this long neglect. The 
 cottage had been empty for two years and a half, long enough for 
 the damp to make hideous blotches upon all the walls, and trace 
 discoloured maps of imaginary continents upon all the ceilings; long 
 enough for the si)idcrs to weave their webs in all the corners, for 
 rust to eat deei) into the iron grates, and for dust and dirt to obscure 
 every wiiidow. 
 
 Theodore stood in the room which had once been a drawing-room, 
 and which boasted of a wide French window looking out upon a 
 lawn, with a large weeping-ash directly in front of the window, and 
 much too near for airiness or health, a melancholy-looking tree in 
 which Theodore thought ^Irs. Danvers might have found a symbol 
 of her own life, as she stood at the window and looked at those dull 
 drooping branches against a background of ivy-covered wall.
 
 246 The Day wih come. 
 
 CHA.PTER XXII. 
 
 " And if we do but watch the hour, 
 There never j'et was human power 
 
 Which could evade, if unforgivcn, 
 The patient search and vigil long 
 Of him who treasures up a wrong." 
 
 Theodore made a tour of the little garden in the summer sundown. 
 It was very small, but its age gave it a superiority over most 
 suburban gardens. There were trees, and hardy ])erennials that 
 had been gi'owing year after year, blooming and fading, with very 
 little care on the part of successive tenants. The chief charm of 
 the garden to some people might liave been its seclusion. There 
 was no possibility of being " overlooked " in this naxTow pleasaunce, 
 and overlooking is the curse of the average garden attached to the 
 average villa. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, taking their ease, or working in 
 their garden in the cool of the evening, are uncomfortably conscious 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Smith eyeing them from the drawing-room windows 
 of next door. 
 
 Here tlie high wall on one side, and the tall liorse-chestnuts on 
 the other, made a perfect solitude ; but seclusion on a very small 
 scale is apt to merge into dulness, and it must be owned that the 
 garden of Myrtle Cottage at sundown was about as melancholy a 
 place as the mind of man could imagine. Theodore, contemplating 
 it from the standpoint of Mrs. Danvers' history, her friendlessness, 
 her sense of degradation, wondered that she could liave endured 
 that dismal atmosphere for a single summer. And she had lived 
 there for many years; lived there till weariness must have become 
 loathing. 
 
 " God help her, poor soul ! " he said to himself. " How she must 
 have abhorred that weeping ash! liow it must have tortured her 
 to see the leaves go and come again year after year, and to know 
 that neither spring nor autumn would better her fate ! " 
 
 He took do\vn the address of the agent who had the letting of the 
 house, and left witli tlie intention of seeing him that evening if 
 possible. The landlord was a personage resembling the ]\Iikado, or 
 the Grand Llama, and was not supiposed to be accessible tu 
 the human vision, certainly not in relation to his liouse property. 
 The policeman's wife averred that '• him and the De Crespignys 
 owned iialf Camberwell."
 
 The Day luill come. 247 
 
 The asent was representLMl to live over his office, which was in 
 no less iamoiis a locality than Camberwcll Green, and was likely, 
 therefore, to oblige Mr. Dalbrook by seeini; him upon a business 
 matter after business hours. Tt was not nuich past seven when 
 Theodore entered the oflicc, where ho found the a,<:;ont extending 
 his business hours so far as to be still seated at his desk, deep in the 
 revision of a catalo,i;:ue. He Avas a very <j;enial agent, and he put 
 aside the cataloirne immediately, asked Theodore to be seated, and 
 wheeled round his office chair to talk to him. 
 
 "Myrtle Cottage. Yes, a charming little box, convenient and 
 compact, a bijou residence for a bachelor with a small establish- 
 ment. Such a nice garden, too, retired and rustic. If you were 
 thinking of taking the propert}^ on a repairing lease, the rent would 
 be very moderate, really a wonderfully advantageous occasion for 
 any one wanting a pretty secluded place." 
 
 " To tell you the truth, Mr. Adkins, I am not thinking of taking 
 that house or any house. I have come to ask you a few questions 
 about a former tenant, and I shall take it as a favour if you will be 
 so good as to answer them." 
 
 The agent looked disappointed, but he put his [)en behind his ear, 
 crossed his legs, and prepared himself for conversation. 
 
 *' Do you mean a recent tenant? " he asked. 
 
 " No ; the gentleman I am interested in left Myrtle Cottage 
 twenty years ago — nearer five and twenty years, perhaps. His 
 name was Danvers." 
 
 The agent gave a suppressed whistle, and looked at his inter- 
 locutor with increasing interest. 
 
 "Oh, you wanted to know something about Mr. Danvers. Was 
 he an acquaintance of yours ? " 
 
 " He was." 
 
 " Humph ! He is more than old enough to be your father. He 
 might almost be your grandfather. Do you know him intimately?" 
 
 " As intimately as a man of my ago can know a man of his age." 
 
 " And position," added the agent, looking at his visitor shrewdlj*. 
 
 Theodore returned the look. 
 
 " I don't quite follow your meaning," he said. 
 
 " Come, now, sir, if you know anything at all about the gentle- 
 man in question you must know that his name is not Danvers, and 
 never was Danvers ; that he took Myrtle Cottage under an assumed 
 name, and lived there for nearly ten years under that assumed 
 name; that he never let any of his friends or acquaintances cross 
 his threshold ; and that he thought he had hoodwinked me, me a 
 man of the world, moving about in the world, among other men of 
 the world. Why, sir, ^Ir. Danvers had not jiaid me three half-years' 
 rent in notes or gold, as he always paid, and in this office here — 
 before I had found out that he was the rising Itarrister, Mr. Dalbrook
 
 248 The Day ivill come. 
 
 — and before I had guessed the reason of his hole-and-corner style 
 of life." 
 
 " What became of the lady who was called Mrs. Danvers? " 
 
 " And who in all probability was Mrs. Danvers," said Mr. Adkins. 
 " I have reason to believe that was her name. What became 
 of her ? God knows. A servant came to me one August morn- 
 ing with the keys and a half-year's rent — the tenant had given 
 notice to surrender at the Michaelmas quarter, that being the 
 quarter at which he entered upon possession. Mr. and Mrs, 
 Danvers had gone abroad — to Belgium, the woman thought ; and as 
 it was their present intention to live abroad, their fui'niture had all 
 been removed to the Pantechnicon upon the previous day, and the 
 house was empty, and at my disposal." 
 
 " Did you hear nothing more of them after that? " 
 
 " I heard of him, sir, as all the world heard of him — heard of his 
 marriage -with a wealthy young Spanish lady, heard of his elevation 
 to the peerage, — but of I\Irs. Danvers I never heard a syllable. I 
 take it she was pensioned off, and that she lived — and may have 
 flied — on the Continent. Why, there are a lot of sleepy old Flemish 
 to^vns — I'm a bit of a traveller in my quiet way — which seem to 
 have been created for that purpose ! " 
 
 " Is that all you can tell me about your tenants, Mr. Adkins ? I 
 am not prompted by idle curiosity in my inquiries. I have a very 
 strong motive " 
 
 "Don't trouble yourself to explain, sir. I know nothing about 
 ]\Ir. and Mrs. Danvers which I have any desire to hold back — or 
 which I am under any obligation to keep back. My business 
 relations with the gentleman never went beyond letting him Myrtle 
 Cottage, which I let to him Avithout a reference, on the strength of 
 a twelvemonth's rent in advance, and a deuce of a hurry he was in 
 to get into the place. As for Mrs. Danvers, you may be surprised 
 to hear that I never saw her face. I'm not a prying person, and, as 
 the rent was never overdue, I had no occasion to call at the house. 
 But I did see some one who had a strong bearing upon the lady's 
 life, and a very troublesome customer that person was." 
 
 " Who was he ? " 
 
 " No less an individual than her husband. A man dashed into 
 this office one winter afternoon, a little after dusk, and asked me if 
 I had let a house to a person called Danvers? I could see that he 
 had been drinking, and that he was in a state of strong excitement ; 
 so I answered him shortly enough, and I kept him well between 
 myself and the door, so as to be able to pitch him out if he got 
 troublesome. He told me that he'd just come from MjTtle Cottage, 
 that he had been refused admittance there, although the woman 
 who lived there was his wife. He wanted to know if the house had 
 been taken by her, or by the scoundrel who passed himself off as
 
 The Day luill come. 249 
 
 her liusliaiid ? If it had heeu taken in her name it was his liouse. 
 and he woiikl very soon let theni know that lie had the right to be 
 there. I told him that I knew nothing ahout him or his rights; 
 that my client's tenant was Mr. Danvers, and that there the husiness 
 ended. He was very violent upon this, abused the tenant, talked 
 about his own wrongs and his wife's desertion of him, asked me if I 
 knew that this man who called himself Danvers was an impostor, 
 who had taken the house in a false name, and who was really a 
 beggarly barrister called Dalbrook ; and then fnim blasphemy and 
 threatening he fell to crying, and sat in my oHice shivering and 
 whimpering like a half-demented creature, till I took compassion 
 upon him so far as to give him a glass of brandy, and send myofiice 
 lad out with him to put him into a cab." 
 
 " l)id he tell you his name or profession ?" 
 
 " No, he was unconuuonly close about himself. T asked him if the 
 lady's name was really Danvers, and if he was ^Ir. Danvers ; but 
 he only .stared at me in a vacant way with his dnuiken eyes. It 
 was hopeless trying to get a straight answer from him about any- 
 thing. Heaven knows how he got home that night, for he wouldn't 
 It'll the ofliee boy his address, and only told the cabman to drive to 
 llolborn. 'I'll pull him up when I get there,' he said, lie may 
 have been driven about half the night, for all I can tell." 
 
 " Was that all you ever saw or heard of him ? " 
 
 " All I ever saw, but not all I ever heard. Servants and neigh- 
 bours will talk, you see, sir, and I happened to be told of three or 
 four occasions — at considerable intervals — at which my gentleman 
 made unpleasantness at Myrtle Cottage. lie would go there wild 
 with drink — I believe he never went when he was sober — and would 
 kick up a row. If he wanted to get his wife away from the life she 
 w;;s leading he would have gone to work in a dill'crcnt manner ; but 
 it's my opinion he wanted nothing of the kind. lie was savage and 
 vindictive in his cups, and he wanteil to frighten her and to ainioy 
 the man who had tempted her away from him. But he was a ])Oor 
 creature, and after blustering and threatening he would allow himself 
 to be thrust out of doors like a stray cnr." 
 
 '•What kind of a man did he look? A broken-duwn gentle- 
 man .-' 
 
 '"Yes, I should say he had been a gentleman once, l.'ut be had 
 come down a longish way. He had come down as low as drink 
 and dissipation can bring a man. Altogether I should consider him 
 a dangerous customer." 
 
 " A man capable of violence — of crime even ? " 
 
 '' Perhaps ! A man wIiq wouldn't have stopped at crime if he 
 hadn't been a white-livered hound. I tell you, sir, the fellow was 
 afraid of Mr. Dalbrook, althougii ^Ir. Dalbrook ought to have been 
 afraid of him. He was a craven to the core of his heart."
 
 250 The Day will come. 
 
 " What age did you give him ? " 
 
 " At the time he came to me I should put him down at about 
 aix and thirty." 
 
 " And that is how many years ago ? " 
 
 " Say four and twenty — I can't be certain to a year or so. It 
 wasn't a business transaction, and I haven't any record of the fact." 
 
 " AVas he a powerful-looking man ? " 
 
 " He was the remains of a powerful man : he must have been a 
 fine man when he was ten years younger — a handsome man, too 
 • — one of those fair-complexioned, blue-eyed, aquihne-nosed men 
 who set off good clothes — the kind of man to do justice to a rig out 
 from a fashionable tailor. He was a wreck when I saw him, but he 
 was the ^\Teck of a handsome man." 
 
 " And you take it that he was particularly vindictive ? " 
 
 " He was as vindictive as a cur can be." 
 
 " And was his anger strongest against the lady, do you suppose, 
 or against the gentleman ? " 
 
 " Decidedly against the gentleman. He was full of envy and 
 hatred and all uncharitableness towards Mr. Dalbrook. He attected 
 to think contemptuously of his talents and to belittle him in every 
 way, while he was bursting with envy at his gro\ving sucfcess. He 
 was jealous and angry as a husband, no doubt ; but he was still more 
 jealous and still angi'ier as a disappointed man against a successful 
 man. He was as venomous as conscious failure can be. And now, sir, 
 that I have spoken so freely about this little domestic drama, which 
 was all past and done with twenty years ago, and in which I only felt 
 interested as a man of the world, now may I ask your name, and 
 how you come to be so keenly interested in so remote an event? " 
 
 "My name is Dalbrook," replied Theodore, taking out his card 
 and lying it upon the agent's desk. 
 
 " You don't mean to say so ! A relation of Lord Cheriton's ? " 
 
 "His cousin, a distant cousin, but warmly attached to him and 
 — his. The motive of my inquiry need be no secret. A dastardly 
 murder Avas committed last summer in Lord Cheriton's house " 
 
 " Yes, I remember the circumstances." 
 
 " A seemingly motiveless murder ; unless it was the act of some 
 secret foe — foe either of the man who was killed — or of his wife's 
 father, Lord Cheriton, I have reason to know that the young man 
 who was killed had never made an enemy. His life was short and 
 blameless. Now, a malignant cur, such as the man you describe — 
 a man possessed by the devil of drink — would be just the kind of 
 creature to assail the strong man through his defenceless daughter. 
 To murder her husband was to break her heart, and to crusli her 
 father's hopes. This man may have discovered long beforehand 
 how ray cousin had built upon that marriage — how devoted he was 
 to his daughter, and how ambitious for her. Upon my soul, I believe
 
 The Day luill come. 251 
 
 that you have given lue the clue. If we are to look Jur a LHiid 
 unreasoning hatred — mah'gnity strong enough and irrational enough 
 to strike the innocent in order to get at the guilty — I do not think 
 we can look for it in a more likely person than in the husband of 
 Mrs. Danvers." 
 
 "Perhaps not," said j\Ir. Adkins, keenly interested, j'ot dubious. 
 " But, gi-antcd that lie is the man, how are you to find liim ? It 
 is about four and twenty years since he stood where you are stand- 
 ing now, and I have never set eyes on him from that day to this — 
 close upon a quarter of a century, I can't tell you his calling, or 
 his kindred, the place where he lived, or even the name he bore, 
 with any certainty. Danvers may have been only an assumed 
 name — or it may have been his name. There's no knowing — or 
 rather there's only one person likely to be able to help you in the 
 matter, and that is Lord Cheriton." 
 
 " It would be diflicult to question him upon such a subject." 
 
 " Of course it would ; ami I don't sujipose that even lie has taken 
 the trouble to keep himself posted in the movements of that verj' 
 ugly customer. Having shunted the lady he wouldn't be hkely to 
 concern himself about the gentleman." 
 
 " A quarter of a century," said Theodore, too thoughtful to give a 
 direct answer. "Yes, it must be very difficult to trace any man 
 after such an interval ; but if that man went to Cheriton Chase ho 
 must have left some kind of trail behind him, and it will go hard 
 with me if I don't get upon that trail. I thank you, Mr. Adkins, 
 for the most valuable information I have obtained yet, and if any 
 good comes of it you shall know. Good night." 
 
 "Good night, sir. I shall be very glad to aid in the cause of 
 justice. Yes, I remember the Cheriton Chase murder, and I should 
 like to see the mystery cleared up."
 
 252 The Day will come. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " Upon a tono, 
 A touch of hers, his blood woul4 ebb aud flow, 
 And his cheek change tempestuously . . . 
 But she in these fond feelings had no share ; 
 Her sighs were not for him ; to her he was 
 Even as a brother — but no more." 
 
 Afper that conversation with the house-agent, tlie idea tliat he liad 
 found the due to the Cheriton Chase mystery took root in Theodore 
 Dalbrook's mind. Taking as his starting-point the notion of a 
 deadly hatred wreaking itself in an indirect revenge, there seemed 
 no more likely figure for the rule of avenger than that of the 
 wronged and deserted husband. The one startling improbability 
 in this view of the case was the long interval between the liusband's 
 appearance at Myrtle Cottage and the date of the murder; but even 
 tliis difficulty Theodore was able to account for upon the hypothesis 
 of a gradual pei"version, a descent from vice to crime, as the man's 
 nature hardened under the corrupting influence of a profligate 
 life, while the old festering sore grew into a mahguant canker, under 
 the lash of misery. He had seen in that great seething cauldron of 
 London life men whose countenances bore the stamp of a degrada- 
 tion so profound that the most ferocious ciime might seem the 
 normal outcome of their perverted natures. He could imagine how 
 the broken-down gentleman, steeped in drink, and embittered by 
 the idea of wrongs which had been the natural consequence of his 
 own misconduct, had sunk step by step upon the ladder of vice, till 
 he had arrived at that lowest deep where the dreams of men are 
 stained with blood and darkened by the shadow of the hangman. 
 He could imagine such a man brooding over his wrongs for long 
 years, nursing his jealous wrath as the one toucli of manliness that 
 survived in him — until some newspaper description of the Dalbrook 
 and Carmichael wedding reminded him of the bitter contrast 
 lietween his own lot and that of his rival, and, lashed into sudden 
 fury, lie set out upon his murderous errand, hardly caring whom he 
 murdered so long as he could hurt the man lie hated. 
 
 The very fact that Mrs. Danvers' husband had been described as 
 a craven, made the idea of his guilt more likely. Only a coward 
 would have chosen such a revenge ; only a coward could have 
 stretched out his hand from the darkness to kill a man who had
 
 The Day will come. 25, 
 
 never injured liiin. Tho crime was tho crime of a coward or a 
 iiiadinaii ; and this man, brutalized by drink, may have been buth 
 madman and coward. 
 
 Here at least was a man closely associated with James Dalbrook's 
 life, and having good cause to hate him. In tho darkness surround- 
 ing the murder of Godfrey Carmichael this was the first Hash of 
 light. 
 
 And having arrived at this point Tlieodoro Ralbrook saw himself 
 face to face with a new and seemingly insurmountable difliculty. To 
 follow this clue to the end, to bring the crime home to the husband 
 of Lord Chfriton's cast-off mistress, was to expose the history of the 
 great man's earlier years to the world at large, to ofter up a reputa- 
 tion which had hitherto been stainless as a rich and savorny repast 
 to that carrion brood — consisting of almost everybody — which loves 
 to feast upon garbage. IIow the evening newspapers would revel 
 in the details of such a story — what denunciations — what gloating 
 over the weakness of a strong man's life ! IIow the contents bills 
 would bristle with appetizing headings, how the shrill-voiced news- 
 boys would yell their startling particulars, their latest developments 
 of the Cheriton Ciiase Scandal ! 
 
 This must all inevitably follow upon the discovery of the niTU'- 
 dcrer, if the murderer Avcre indeed the injured husband. There 
 could be no possible escape from that glare of publicity, that swell- 
 ing symphony of slander. From the moment the law laid its hand 
 upon the criminal the case would pass beyond individual control, 
 and individual interests and reputations would become as nought. 
 Justice would have to do its work, and in the iloing of it must needs 
 atl'ord the usual fine opjiortunity to the newspapers. Thcodoro 
 thought with horror of such humiliation coming n])on Lord Clioriton, 
 and through him upon Juanita, who loved her fatlier with a 
 reverential aflection, and who was intensely proud of his character 
 and position. lie thought of gentle Lady Cheriton, who adored her 
 husband, and who doubtless would be made miserable by the 
 knowledge that his first love had been given to another woman, 
 whom he had loved well enough to sacrifice honour for the sake 
 of that illicit love. What agony to that single-minded, trusting 
 creature to find that dark spot upon her Inisband's jiast, and to 
 know tiiat the daughter's happiness had been blighted because of 
 the father's sin ! 
 
 With these considerations in his mind it seemed to Theodore 
 that it would be better to halt on the very threshold of discovery ; 
 and yet there was the appalling thought of further possibilities in 
 the way of crime — of a madman's revenge carried a stage further, a 
 madman's pistol aimed at the defenceless mother or the unconscious 
 child. What was he to do? Was there no alternative between 
 inaction and such action as must speedily set in motion the
 
 254 ^'^f? Day zuill come. 
 
 machinery of tlie law, and thus dei)rive him of all free will in the 
 future conduct of the case ? 
 
 Yes, there was an alternative course. If ho were once assured of 
 the identity of the assassin, it might be in his power to lay hands 
 upon him, and to j^lace him under such circumstances of control in 
 the future as would insure Juanita's safety, and render any further 
 crime impossible. If the man were mad, as Theodore thought more 
 than likely, he might be quietly got into an asylum. If he were 
 still master of his actions he might be got abroad, to the remotest 
 colony in the Antipodes. The knowledge of his crime would be a 
 hold over him, a lever which would remove him to the uttermost 
 ends of the earth, if need were. This would be an illegal com- 
 promise, no doubt — unjustifiable in the eye of the law, — but if it 
 insured Juanita's safety, and saved her father's character, the 
 compromise was worth making. It Avas, indeed, the only way by 
 which her security and her lather's good name could be provided 
 for. 
 
 To arrive at this result he had to find the man who appeared in 
 i\Ir. Adkins's ofliice al)out four and twenty years ago, and of whose 
 subsequent existence he, Theodore, had no knowledge. 
 
 " I must begin at the other end," he told himself. " If that man 
 was the murderer, he must have been seen in the neighbourhood. 
 It is not possible that he could have come to the place, and watched 
 for his opportunity, and got clear oif after the deed was done 
 without being seen by human eyes." 
 
 xVnd yet there remained the fact that the local policeman and a 
 London detective had both failed in obtaining the faintest trace of 
 a suspicious-looking stranger, or indeed of any stranger, male or 
 female, who had been observed in the neighbourhood of Cheriton 
 before or after the murder ; there remained the fact that a large 
 reward had been offered without resulting in one scrap of informa- 
 tion bearing upon the subject. How could he hope, in the face of 
 these facts, to trace the movements of a man whose personal 
 appearance was unknown to him, and who had come and gone like 
 a shadow ? 
 
 " I can but try, and I can but fail," he told himself. " Knowing 
 wliat I know now, I cannot remain inactive." 
 
 It may be that lie had caught something of the fiery eagerness 
 Avhich consumed Juanita, that in his ardent desire to be worthy of 
 her regard, to waste his life in her service, he had become, as it 
 were, inoculated with the spirit of his mistress, and hoped as she 
 hoped, and thought as she thought. 
 
 With the beginning of the Long Vacation he went to Dorches- 
 ter, but this time not alone. He took his friend Cuthbert Ramsay 
 with him, as a visitor to the grave old house, in the grave old 
 town.
 
 The Day will come. 255 
 
 His sisters oftou niailc a complaint apiinst liiin that lio laivcr 
 introduced any of liis college friends to tliem — that wliereas tlie 
 sisters of other University men were rich in the acquaintance ot 
 Charlies and Algernons, and Freds and Toms, who were produceable 
 at tennis parties and available for picnics at the shortest notice, 
 they were restricted to the youths of Dorchester and a horizon 
 hounded by the country houses of the immediate neighbourhood. 
 Kemembering these reproaches, and seeing that his friend Ramsay 
 was obviously pining for rest and country air, Theodore suggested 
 that he should occujiy the bachelor's room in Cornhill as long as ho 
 could venture to stop away from hospitals and lectures and scientific 
 investigations. 
 
 " You want a long fallow, Cuthbert," he said, "and you couldn't 
 have a better lotus island than Dorchester. There's not an excite- 
 ment or a feverish sensation to be had within twenty miles, and 
 then I really want to make you known to my cousin. Lord Cheriton. 
 lie is a very clever man — an all-round man — and he would be 
 interested in you and all that you are doing." 
 
 "i shall bo proud of knowing him. And then there is your 
 cousin, Lady Carmichael. I am deeply interested in her, without 
 having ever seen her ftice, and when I do see her " 
 
 *' Yuu will say slie is one of the loveliest women you ever saw 
 in your life, Cuthbert. I have no doubt of that. You will see her 
 beauty under a cloud, for she is not one of those women who iiegin 
 to get over the loss of a husband as soon as their crape gets rusty ; 
 but her beauty is all the more touching on accoimt of the grief 
 that separates her from all other women — even from her ])ast 
 self. I sometimes look at her and wonder if this sad and silent 
 woman can be the Jnanita I once knew ; the light-hearted, spon- 
 taneous girl, a buoyant creature, all impulse and caprice, fancy and 
 imagination." 
 
 " You may be sure that I shall admire her, and you may be 
 sure I shall not forget that there is some one whose admiration 
 has a deeper root than the lust of the eye and the fancy of the 
 moment." 
 
 Theodore would not affect to misunderstand him. It was not 
 possible that he could have talked of his cousin in the freedom of 
 friendship without having revealed his secret to his friend. 
 
 "My dear fellow," he said with a sigh, "mine is a hopeless case. 
 You will know that it is so when you see Juanita and me together. 
 Her mother said to me on the first day of this year, ' If ever she 
 comes to care for anybody it will be some new person ; ' and I have 
 not the least doubt that her mother was right. Iler tirst love wa.s 
 her playfellow, the companion of her girlhood. A woman cannot 
 have two such loves. Her second attachment, if she ever make 
 one. will be of a totally different character."
 
 256 The Day zvill conic. 
 
 "Who knows, Theodore? A woman's heart is to Lo mcasurcJ 
 by no callipers that I know of; it is suhject to no scientitic test ; wc 
 eannot say it shall give this or that result. It may remain cold as 
 marble to a man through years of faithful devotion, and then, in an 
 instant, the marble may change to a volcano, and liidden fires may 
 leap out of that seeming coldness. ' Nil desperandum ' should be 
 the motto of all inventors — and of all lovers." 
 
 Dorchester, and es{)ecially the old house in Cornhill, received j\Ir. 
 Ramsay with open arms. Harrington Avas in the dejected state of a 
 young man who has been rudely awakened from youth's sweetest 
 delusion. Fooled and forsaken b}' Juliet Baldwin, he had told him- 
 self that all women are liars, and was doiqg all in his power to 
 establish his reputation as a woman-hater. In this temper of mind 
 he was not averse from his o-mi sex, and he welcomed his brother's 
 iriend Avith unaffected cordiality, and was evidently cheered liy the 
 new life which Ramsay's vivacity brought into the quiet atmosphere 
 of home. 
 
 The sisters were delighted to do honour to a scientific man, and 
 were surprised, on attacking ^Ir. Ramsay at dinner with the ease 
 and aplomb of confreres in modern science, to discover one of two 
 things — either that he knew nothing, or that they knew ver\- little. 
 They were at iirst inclined to the former opinion, but it gradually 
 dawned upon them that their own much-valued learning was of a 
 very elementary character, and that their facts were for the most 
 part wrong. Chastened by this discovery, they allowed the con- 
 versation to drift into lighter channels, and never again tackled i\Ir. 
 Ramsay either upon the Ijroad and open subject of evolution, or the 
 burning question of the cholera bacillus. They were even content 
 to leave him to the enjoj^ment of his own views upon spontaneous 
 generation and the movement of glaciers, instead of setting him 
 rigbt upon both subjects, as they had intended in the beginning ot 
 their acquaintance. 
 
 " He is remarkably bandsome, but horribly dogmatic," So))hia 
 told her brother, '' and I'm afi-aid he belongs to the showy, shallow 
 school which has arisen since the death of Darwin. He would 
 hardly have dared to talk as he did at dinner during Darwin's 
 lifetime." 
 
 " Perhaps not, if Darwin had been omnipresent." 
 
 " Oh, there is a restraining influence in the very existence of 
 such a man. He is a perpetual court of appeal against arrogant 
 smatterers." 
 
 " I don't think you can call a man who took a first class in science 
 a smatterer, Sophy. However, I'm sorry you don't like my friend." 
 
 " I like him well enough, but I am not imposed upon by his 
 dogmatism." 
 
 The two young men drove to Milbrook Priory on the following
 
 77?^ Day will come. 257 
 
 day, Tlieodoro feeling painfully eager to discover what change the 
 last few months had made in Juanita. She had been in Switzer- 
 land, with Lady Jane and the baby, living first at Grindelwald, and 
 later in one of those little villages on the shores of the lake of the 
 forest cantons, which combine the picturesque and the dull in a 
 remarkable dc.gi'ee — a mere cluster of chalets and cottages at the 
 foot of the Rigi, facing the monotonous beauty of the lake, and the 
 calm grandeur of snow-capped mountains, which shut in tliat tran- 
 quil comer of the earth and shut out all the busy world beyond it. 
 Nowhere else had Juanita felt that deep sense of seclusion, that 
 feeling of being remote from the din and press of life. 
 
 And now she was again at the Priory. She had settled down 
 there in her new position, as widow and mother, a woman for whom 
 all life's passionate story was over, who must live henceforward for 
 tliat new hfe gro\ving day by day towards that distant age of passion 
 and of sorrow through which slae had passed suddenly and briefly, 
 crowding into a montli the emotions of a lifetime. There are 
 women who have lived to celebrate their golden wedding who in 
 fifty years of wedlock have not felt half her sum of love, and who 
 in losing the companion of half a century have not felt half her 
 pimi of grief. It is the capacity for loving and suffering which 
 difl'ers in diSerent people, and, weighed against that. Time comits 
 but little. 
 
 She received her cousin with all her old friendliness. She was a 
 little more cheerful than when last they met, and he saw that the 
 new interest of her life had done good. Lady Jane was at Swanage, 
 and Juanita was alone at the Priory, though not without the 
 expectation of company a little later in the year, as the sisters and 
 their husbands were to be with her before the first of October, so 
 that the expense of pheasant-breeding might not bo altogether 
 wasted. 
 
 " You must be here as much as you can in October, Theodore," 
 she said, " and help me to endure Mr. Grenville and Mr. Morning- 
 side. One talks nothing but sport, and the other insists upon 
 teaching me the science of pohtics." 
 
 She received Cuthbert liamsay with a serious sweetness which 
 charmed him. Yes, she was verily beautiful among women, excep- 
 tionally beautiful. Those southern eyes shone star-like in the 
 settled pallor other face, and her whole countenance was etlierealized 
 by thought and grief It touched the stranger to see how she 
 straggled to put away the memory of her son'ow and to receive him 
 with all due hospitalitj^ — how she restrained herself as she showed 
 him the things that had been a part of her dead husband's existence, 
 and told him the story of the old house which had sheltered so 
 many generations of Carmichaels. 
 
 Lady Cheriton had been lunching at the Priory, where she came 
 
 s
 
 258 The Day zuill come. 
 
 at least twice a week to watch her grandson's development in all 
 those graces of mind and person which marked his superiority to the 
 average baby. She came all. the oftener because of the difficulty in 
 getting Juanita to Cheriton. 
 
 " My poor child wiU hardly ever visit us," she told Theodore, as 
 they sauntered on the lawn while Juanita was showing Mr. Eamsay 
 the pictures in the dining-room, " She has an uism-mountable 
 horror of the house she was once so fond of; and I can't wonder at 
 it, and I can't be angry with her. I have seen how painfully her 
 old home affects her, so I don't worry her to come to us often. I 
 make a point of getting her there once in a way in the hope of over- 
 coming her horror of the place as time goes by ; and I have even 
 gone out of my way to make changes in the furniture and decoi'a- 
 tions, so that the rooms should not look exactly the same as they 
 looked in her fatal honeymoon ; but I can see m her face that every 
 corner of the house is haunted for her. Once when she had been 
 calm and cheerful with me for a whole afternoon, walking about the 
 garden and going from room to room, she flung herself into my 
 arms suddenly, sobbing passionately. ' We were so happy, mother,' 
 Bhe said, ' so happy in this fatal house ! ' We must bear with her, 
 poor girl. God has given her a dark lot." 
 
 Theodore had seen an anxious, questioning look in Juanita's eyes 
 from the beginning of his visit, and he took the first opportunity of 
 being alone with her, while Lady Cheriton entertained Mr. Eamsay 
 with an exposition of the merits of her grandson, who was calmly 
 slumbering in a hammock on the lawn, unconscious of her praises, 
 and half smothered in embroidered coverlets. 
 
 " Have you found out anything? " she asked, eagerly, as soon as 
 they were out of ear-shot. 
 
 " Yes, I believe I have really come upon a clue, and that I may 
 ultimately discover the murderer; but I can give you no details as 
 yet — the whole thing is too vague." 
 
 " How clever of you to succeed where the police have utterly 
 failed ! Oh, Theodore, you cannot imagiae how I shall value you — 
 how deeply grateful " 
 
 " Stop, Juanita, for Heaven's sake don't praise me. I may be 
 chasing a Will-o'-the-Wisp. I don't suppose that any experienced 
 detective would take up such a clue as I am going to follow — only 
 you have set me to do this thing, and it has become the business of 
 my life to obey you." 
 
 " You are all that is good. Pray tell me everything you have 
 discovered — however vague your ideas may be." 
 
 " No, Juanita, I can tell you nothing yet. You must trust me, 
 dear. I am at best only on the threshold of a discovery. It may 
 be long before I advance another step. Be content to know that 1 
 am not idle."
 
 The Day will come. 259 
 
 She gave an impatient sigli. 
 
 '* It is so hard to be kept in the dark," she said. " I dream night 
 after night tliat I myself am on tlic track of liis murdcicr — some- 
 times that I meet him face to face — oh, the Iiidcons pallid face — the 
 face of a man who has boon hanged and brouglit to life again. It is 
 always the same kind of face — the same dull livid hue — though it 
 differs as to features, though the man is never the same. You can- 
 not imagine the agony of those dreams, Theodore. Lay that ghost 
 for me, if you can. ]\Iake my life peaceful, though it can never be 
 happy." 
 
 "Never is a long word, Nita. As the years go by, your child's 
 love will give life a new colour." 
 
 " Yes, he is very dear. He has crept into my heart, little nest- 
 ling unconscious thing — knowing nothing of my love or my sorrow, 
 and yet seeming to comfort me. I sometimes think my darling's 
 spirit looks out of those clear eyes. They seem so full of thought — 
 of thought far beyond human wisdom." 
 
 Theodore could sec that the work of healing was being done, 
 Blowly but surely. The gracious influence of a new love was being 
 exercised, and the frozen heart was reviving to life and warmth 
 under the soft touch of those baby fingers. Ho saw his cousin 
 smile with something of the old brightness as she stood by while 
 Cuthbert Kamsay dandled the little lord of Carmichael Priory in his 
 gi'cat strong arms, smiling down at the tiny pink faco pecpmg out of 
 a cloud of lace and muslin. 
 
 " Any one can see that Mr. Eamsay is fond of children," said 
 Lady Cheriton, approvingly, as if a liking for infants just short-coated 
 were the noblest virtue of manhood. 
 
 " Oh, I am fond enough of the little beggars," answered Cuthbeit, 
 lightly. " All the gutter brats about St. Thomas's know me, and 
 hang on to my coat-tails as I go b}\ I like to look at a child's face 
 — those old shrewd London faces especially — and speculate upon the 
 life that lies before those younglings, the things those eyes are to 
 see, tlie words those lips are to speak. Life is such a tremendous 
 mystery, don't you know — one can never bo tired of wondoring 
 about it. lUit this fellow is going to be very happy, and a great 
 man in the land. He is going to belong to the new order, the order 
 of rich who go through life shoulder to shoulder with the poor ; tlio 
 redrcssers of wrongs, the adjusters of social levels." 
 
 " I hope you are n'ot a Socialist, Mr. Kamsay ? " said Lady 
 Cheriton, with an alarmed air. 
 
 " Not much ; but I acknowledge that there are points where my 
 ideas touch the boundary line of Socialism. I don't want impossi- 
 bilities. I have no dream of a day when there shall be no moro 
 millionaires, no great patrons of art or great em]iloy<>rs of labour, 
 but only a dead level of small means and shabby dwellings, and
 
 26o The Day will come. 
 
 sordid colonrlesi? lives. No, there must be butterflies as well as 
 ants — if it were only that the ants may have something pretty to 
 look at. What I should like to see is a stronger bond of friendship 
 and sympathy between the two classes — a real knowledge and 
 imderstanding of each other between rich and poor, and the 
 twin demons Patronage and Sycophancy exorcised for ever and 
 ever." 
 
 The tea-tables were brought out upon the lawn by this time ; Sir 
 Godfrey Carmichael was carried off by his nurse ; and the two 
 young men sat down with Lady Cheriton and her daughter under 
 the tree beneath which Juanita and her husband had sat on that 
 one blissful day which they had spent together at the Priory as man 
 and wife. They seemed a very cheery and pleasant quartette as 
 they sat in the sultry afternoon atmosphere, with the level lawn and 
 flower-beds stretching before them, and the wide belt of old timber 
 shutting out all the world beyond. Cuthbert Eamsay was the chief 
 talker, full of animal spirits, launching the wildest paradoxes, the 
 most unorthodox opinions. The very sound of his strong full voice, 
 the very ring of his buoyant laugh, were enough to banish gloomy 
 thoughts and sad memories. 
 
 Lady Cheriton was delighted with this new acquaintance; first, 
 because ho was dexterous in handling a baby ; next on the score of 
 general merits. She was not a deeply read person, but she had a 
 profound respect for culture in other people ; and she had an idea 
 that a scientific man was a creature apart, belonging to a loftier 
 world than that which she and her intellectual equals inhabited. 
 Theodore had told her of his friend's claims to distinction, his hard 
 work in several cities, and seeing this earnest worker boyish and 
 light-hearted, interested in the most frivolous subjects, she was lost 
 in wonder at his condescension. 
 
 She begged him to go to Cheriton with Theodore at the earliest 
 opportunity — an invitation which he accepted gladly. 
 
 " I have long wished to know Lord Cheriton," he said. 
 
 The two young men left soon after tea. Cuthbert's high spirits 
 deserted him at the Priory gates, and both men were thoughtful 
 during the homeward drive. 
 
 "Well, Cuthbert, what do you think of my cousin, now that 
 you have seen her ? " Theodore asked, when he had driven the 
 first mile. 
 
 " I can only agi'ee with you, my dear fellow. She is a very 
 lovely woman. I think there could hardly be two opinions upon 
 that point." 
 
 " And do you think — as I do — that it is hopeless for any man to 
 spend his life in worshipping her ? Do you think her heart is buried 
 with her dead husband ? " 
 
 " Only as Proserpine was buried with Pluto. It is not in human
 
 The Day will come. 261 
 
 iiaturo for so young a woman to wear her weeds for a lifetime. The 
 hour of revival must come sooner or later. She has too bright and 
 quick an intellect to submit to tlie monotony of an inconsolable 
 sorrow. Her energy expends itself now in the desire to avenge her 
 husband's death. Failing in tliat, her restless spirit will seek some 
 new outlet. She is beginning to be interested in her child. ^ As 
 tliat interest grows with the child's growth, her horizon will widen. 
 And then, and then, when she has discovered that life can still be 
 beautiful, her heart will become accessible to a new love. The cure 
 and the change, the awakening from death to life, may be slower 
 than it is in most such cases, because this woman is the essence of 
 sincerity, and all her feelings lie deep. But the awakening will 
 come — yoTi may be sure of that. Wait for it, Theodore ; possess 
 your soul in patience." 
 
 " You can allbrd to be philosophical," said the other, with a sigh. 
 " You are not in love ! " 
 
 " True, my friend. No doubt that makes a difference." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 "And one, an English home — gray twilight poured 
 On dcwj' pastures, dewy trees, 
 Softer than sleep — all things in order stored, 
 A haunt of ancient Peace." 
 
 TuEODOKE and his friend betook themselves to Cheriton Chase on 
 the following Friday, for that kind of visit which north country 
 people describe as " a week end." They carried their portmanteaux 
 in that jiortion of the dog-cart which is more legitimately occupied 
 by a leash of spaniels or Irisli setters, and they arrived in the 
 golden light of the afternoon, just when that sunk lane approaching 
 tlio west gate was looking its loveliest. Ilart's-tongue and rocky 
 boulder, the great brown tnmks of the oaks and tlie polypodiuni 
 growng amidst their cloven branches were all touched with sun- 
 gleams, while evening shadows lay soft and cool ujion the tall 
 flowering grasses in the meadows on either side of the deep gully. 
 
 " That is Mrs. Porter's cottage," said Theodore, indicating the 
 gatekeeper's house wth a tiu-n of his whip towards the end of 
 the lane where the clustered chimneys showed through a gap in 
 the trees. 
 
 Ramsay had been introduced to Miss Newton, and had constituted
 
 262 The Day will come. 
 
 himself honorary surgeon and medical adviser to that lady and all 
 her humble friends. He had been invited to the tea-parties in 
 Wedgewood Street, and had interested himself in the young woman 
 called Marian, and in her probable identity with the lodge-keeper's 
 missing daughter, for which reason he had a keen desire to make 
 the lodge-keeper's acquaintance. 
 
 " From your account of the lady she miTst be a piece of human 
 adamaat," he said. " I like to tackle that kind of individual. I've 
 met a few of them, and I'm happy to say that if I haven't been 
 able to melt them I've generally succeeded in making them smart. 
 I should enjoy exhibiting my moral aquafortis in the case of this 
 lady. I shall get you to accompany me in a morning call upon her 
 while we are at Cheriton." 
 
 " My dear Cuthbert, I would sooner call, uninvited and without 
 credentials, upon the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don't forget how 
 she froze me when I tried to be friendly with her last New Year's 
 Day. She was more biting than the north-east wind that was 
 curdling the ponds in the Park." 
 
 " A fig for her bitingncss. Do you suppose I mind ? If you 
 won't take me to her, I shall go by myself. A character of that kind 
 has an irresistible fascmation for me. I would go a hundred miles 
 any day to see a bitter, bad woman." 
 
 "She is bitter enough, but she may not be bad. She may be 
 only a creature who mistakes fanaticism for religion, who has so 
 misread her Bible that she thinks it her bounden duty to shut her 
 heart against a beloved chUd rather than to forgive a sinner. I 
 believe she is to be pitied rather than blamed, odious as she may 
 seem." 
 
 " Very likely. A hard heart, or an obstinate temper, is a disease 
 like other diseases. One ought to be sorry for the sufferer. But 
 this woman has a strong character, anyhow, for good or evil, and I 
 delight in studjdng character. The average man and woman is so 
 colourless that there is infinite relief in the study of any tempera- 
 ment which touches the extreme. Thinlc how delightful it would 
 be to meet such a man as lago or Othello — picture to yourself the 
 pleasure of watching the gradual unfolding of such a mind as 
 lachirao's, and consider how keen would be one's interest in getting 
 to the bottom of a woman like that poisoning stepmother of Imogen's 
 whose name Shakespeare does not take the trouble to record. So 
 this is the lodge — charming Early English cottage — real rustic 
 English, not Bedford Parkish — half-timbered, thatched gables, 
 dormers like eyes under bushy eyebrows, walls four feet thick, 
 lattices two hundred years old. It might be the very cottage in 
 which Grandmamma Wolf waited for the dear, plump little girl, 
 with chubby cheeks shimng like the butter in her basket, and vdth 
 lips as sweet as her honey. Poor little gul ! "
 
 The Day zuilL come. 263 
 
 Tlie servant-maid ran down the steps to open the gate, and as 
 the wheels stopped an upper casement swung suddenly open, and a 
 woman's face appeared in the golden light — h pale, wan face, whoso 
 most noticeable expression was a look of infinite weariness — 
 
 " Anajmic," said Cuthbert, as they drove in at the gate. " De- 
 cidedly anajmic. I should suspect that woman " 
 
 "Of what?" 
 
 "Of being a vegetarian," answered Cutlibert, gravely. " But I'll 
 call to-moiTow, and find out all about her." 
 
 Lord Cheriton received his kinsman's friend with marked cor- 
 diality, and seemed to enjoy his freshness and spontaneity. They 
 talked of Cambridge — the Cambridge of forty years ago and the 
 Cambridge of to-day, — and they talked of the continental schools of 
 medicine, a subject in which the lawyer was warmly interested. 
 There were no other visitors expected before September, when 
 three old friends of Lord Cheriton's were to shoot the partridges. 
 In October there was to be a large party for the ]iheasant shooting, 
 which was the chief glory of Cheriton Chase. There had been no 
 shooters at tlie Chase last year, and Lord Cheriton felt liimself so 
 much the more constrained to hospitality. 
 
 " You fellows must come in October, when we have our big 
 shoot," he said ; but Cuthbert Eamsay told him that he must be at 
 work again in London before the end of September. 
 
 Cuthbert was much impressed by the muster of Cheriton Chase, 
 and the grave and quiet dignity with which he wore success that 
 might have maile a weaker man arrogant and self-assertive. It 
 would seem as if scarcely anything were wanting to that prosperous 
 career. Yet Cuthbert saw that liis host was not free from a cloud 
 of care. It was natural, perhaps, that he should feel the tragedy 
 of his son-in-laws death as a lasting trouble, not to be shuQlcd 
 off and forgotten when the conventional period of mourning Avas 
 past. 
 
 Theodore had some private talk with his cousin on the first 
 evening of his visit, walking up and down the terrace, while 
 Cuthbert was looking at the books in the library, under Lady 
 Cheriton's guidance. He had it fully in his muid that the time 
 must come \A\ii\\ he would be obliged to take Lord Cheriton into 
 his confidence, but he felt that time was still far ofi". Whenever the 
 revelation came it must needs be infinitely painful to both, and 
 deeply humiliating to the man whose hidden sin liad brouglit 
 desolation upon his innocent daughter, and untimely death upon 
 the man whose fate had been linked with hers. It was for liis dis- 
 honour, for the ■wrongs inflicted by him, that those two had made 
 expiation. 
 
 No, the time to be outspoken — the time to say in the words of tlio 
 prophet, '* Thou art the man," had not yet come. When it should
 
 264 The Day will come. 
 
 come he would be prepared to act resolutely and fearlessly ; but in 
 the mean time he must needs go on working in the dark. 
 
 He remembered his last conversation with Lord Cheriton on that 
 subject — remembered how Cheriton had said that he beheved 
 Godfrey Carmichael incapable of a dishonourable action — incapable 
 of having behaved cruelly to any woman. Had he who pronounced 
 that judgment been guilty of dishonour — had he been cruel to the 
 woman who sacrificed herself for him ? There are so many degrees 
 in such wrong-doing ! There is the sin of impulse : there is the 
 deliberate betrayal, the coldly planned iniquity, the sin of the 
 practised seducer who has reduced seduction to a science, and who 
 has no more heart or conscience than a machine. There is the sin 
 of the generous man, who finds his feet caught in the web of cir- 
 cumstance, who begins, innocently enough, by pitying a neglected 
 wife, and ends by betraying the neglectful husband. Theodore gave 
 his kinsman credit for belonging to the category of generous sinners. 
 Indeed, the fact that he had lived aloof from the world for many 
 years, sharmg the isolation of the woman who loved him, was in 
 itself evidence that he had not acted as a villain ; yet it was possible 
 that when the final hour came, the hour for breaking those illicit 
 oonds, the rupture may have been in somewise cruel; and the 
 remembrance of that cruelty might be a burden upon the sinner's 
 conscience at this day. Such partings can never be without cruelty. 
 The fact that one sinner is to marry and begin a new life, while the 
 other sinner is to finish her days in a dishonoured widowhood, is in 
 itself a cruelty. She may submit, as to a fate which she foresaw 
 dimly, even in the hour of her fall — but she would be more than 
 human if she did not think herself hardly used by the man who 
 forsakes her. Nothing he can do to secure her worldly comfort or 
 to screen her from the world's disdain will take the sting out of that 
 parting. The one fact remains that her day is done. He has 
 ceased to care for her, and he has begim to care for another. 
 
 " Nothing has occurred since I was here to throw any new light 
 upon the murder, I suppose ? " Theodore said quietly, as they 
 smoked their cigars, walking slowly up and down in the siunmer 
 night. 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " Did her ladyship tell you that I have met a girl in Loudon, 
 whom I believe to be no other than Mercy Porter? " 
 
 " Yes, she told me something about that fancy of yours, for I take 
 it to be nothing more than a fancy. The world is too "wide for you 
 and Mercy Porter to meet so easily. What was your ground for 
 identifying her with the lodge-keeper's girl t " 
 
 " The lodge-keeper's girl ! " There was something needlessly 
 contemptuous in the phrase, it seemed to Theodore : a studied 
 disdain.
 
 The Day will come. 265 
 
 " It was she herself who suggested the idea, by her inquiries 
 about Cherlton. She confessed to having come from tliis part of 
 the world, and she has an air of refinement which shows that slie 
 does not belong to the peasant class. She is a very good pianiste — 
 plays with remarkable taste and feeUug ; and Lady Cheriton tells 
 rae that Mercy had a talent for music. I have no doubt in my own 
 mind that this young woman is Mercy Porter, and I think her 
 mother ought to go to London and see her, even if she should not 
 think fit to bring her back to the home she left." 
 
 " j\Irs. Porter is a woman of peculiar temper. The girl may be 
 happier away from her." 
 
 " Yes, that is vciy likely — but the mother ought to forgive her. 
 The penitent sinner, whose life for the last few years has been 
 blameless, ought to feel that she is pardoned and at peace with her 
 mother. I tried to approach the subject, but Mrs. Porter repelled 
 me with an almost vindictive air; and I do not think it would be 
 any good for me to plead for my poor friend again. If you or 
 Lady Cheriton would talk to her " 
 
 '■'l will got my wife to manage her. It is a matter in which a 
 woman would have more iuiluence than you or I. In the mean 
 time, if there is anything I can do to make Mercy Porter's life 
 easier, I shall be very glad to do it, for her father's sake." 
 
 "You are very good; but she is not in want, and she seems 
 content with her lot." 
 
 " What is she doing for a living ? " 
 
 "Her employment is fine needlework. She lives in one small 
 back room in Lambeth, and has only one friend in the world, and 
 that friend happens to be a lady who once lived in this house." 
 
 " A lady who lived in this house ! " exclaimed Lord Cheriton. 
 "Wlio, in Heaven's name, do you mean?" 
 
 "Miss Newton, who was governess to Miss Strangway nearly 
 forty years ago." 
 
 " What brought I\Iiss Newtou and you together ? " 
 
 '* That is rather a long story. I took some trouble to find the 
 lady in order to settle one question which had disturbed my cousin 
 Juanita since her husband's death." 
 
 "What question?" 
 
 " She was haunted by an idea that Sir Godfrey's murderer was 
 one of the Strangways, and his murder an act of vengeance by 
 some member of that banished race. It was in order to set this 
 question at rest for ever that I took some trouble to hunt out tho 
 history of Squire Strangway's two sons and only daughter. I traced 
 tliem all three to their graves, and have been able to convince 
 Juanita that they and their troubles were at rest long before the 
 time of her husband's murder." 
 
 " What could have put such a notion into her head ? "
 
 266 The Day will come. 
 
 "Oh, it came naturally enough. It was only a development of 
 Churton's idea of a vendetta." 
 
 " She was always full of fancies. Yes, I remember she used to 
 say the lioupe was haunted by the ghosts of the Strangways. I 
 really think she had a dim idea that I had injured that spendthrift 
 race in buying the estate which they had wasted. And so to satisfy 
 Juanita you took the trouble to ferret out Miss Newton ? Upon my 
 word, Theodore, your conduct is more Quixotic than I could have 
 believed of any young man in the nineteenth century. And pray 
 by what means did you discover the ci-devant governess ? " 
 
 Theodore told the story of his visit to the scholastic agencies, his 
 journey to Westmorland, and his friendly reception by Miss Newton 
 in her Lambeth lodgings. 
 
 " She was much attached to Miss Strangway, who was her first 
 charge, and near enough to her own age to be more of a companion 
 than a pupil," he said, " and she spoke of her melancholy fate with 
 gi'eat tenderness." 
 
 " It was a melancholy fate, was it? I know she made a runaway- 
 marriage ; but in what way was her fate sadder than the common 
 destiny of a spendthrift's daughter — a girl who has been reared in 
 extravagance and self-indulgence, and who finds herself face to face 
 with penury in the bloom of her womanhood ? " 
 
 "That in itself would be sad, but Miss Strangway's destiny was 
 sadder than that — commonplace enough, no doubt — only the old 
 story of an unhappy marriage and a runaway wife." 
 
 He could not help looldng at Lord Cheriton at this point, thinking 
 how this common story of an unfaithful wife must needs remind liis 
 kinsman of that other story of another ^vife which had influenced 
 his early manliood. He must surely have a sensitive shrinking from 
 the discussion of any similar story. 
 
 " She ran away from her husband ! Yes, I remember having 
 heard as much. What did Miss Newton know about her — beyond 
 that one fact?" 
 
 " Very little — only that she died at Boidogne nearly twenty 
 years ago. This fact Miss Newton heard from the Hps of the man 
 for whom Mrs. Darcy left her husband. I had been at Boulogne a 
 week or so before I saw Miss Newton, and I had hunted there for 
 any record of Mrs. Darcy's death, without result. But this is not 
 very strange, as it is quite likely that she lived at Boulogne under 
 an assumed name, and was buried in that name, and so lies there, 
 in a foreign land, dissevered for ever from any association with her 
 name and kindred." 
 
 " There are not many of her kindred left, I take it," said Lord 
 Cheriton. " There seems to have been a blight upon that race for 
 the last half-century. But, now, tell me about some one in whom 
 I am more interested — the girl you believe to be Mercy Porter. I
 
 The Day will come. 267 
 
 shoulcl be very glad to make licr life liappior, and so I told iicr 
 ladyship. You, Theodore, might bo the intcrmcdiar}'. I would 
 .allow her a hundred a year, which would enable her to live in some 
 pretty country place — in Devonshire or Cornwall, for instance, in 
 some quiet sea-coast village where no one would know anything 
 about her or her story." 
 
 " A lumcked a year ! My dear Cheriton, that is a most generous 
 ofTer." 
 
 " No, no, there is no question of generosity. Her father was my 
 friend, and I was under some obligation to him. And then the giil 
 was my wife's protegee ; and, finally, I can very well afford it. I am 
 almost a childless man, Theodore. My grandson will be rich enough 
 when I am gone, rich enough to be sure of a ])eerage, I hope, so 
 that there may be a Baron Cheriton when I am in the dust." 
 
 "You are ver^"- good. I believe this girl has a great deal of pride 
 — the pride of a woman who has drunk the cup of shame, and she 
 may set herself against being your pensioner; but if the matter can 
 he arranged as you wish she may yet see happier days. I think 
 the first thing to be done is to reconcile mother and daughter. Mrs. 
 Porter ought to go up to London " 
 
 ''To see Miss Newton's _^;ro<<?/76'e? On no account. I tell you 
 Mi"s. Porter is a woman of strange temper — God knows how bitterly 
 she might upbraid her daughter. And if the girl is proud, as you say 
 she is, the mother's reproaches would goad her to refuse any help 
 from me or my wife. No, Theodore, the longer we keep mother 
 and daughter apart, the better for Mercy's chances of happiness." 
 
 " But if this young woman should refuse to confess her identity 
 with Mercy Porter it will be impossible to benefit her." 
 
 " That difficulty may bo easily overcome. You can take my wife 
 to see her.' She was always fond of my wife." 
 
 " And you will leave the mother out of the question. That seems 
 rather hard upon her," 
 
 " I tell you, Theodore, it is better to leave the mother out of tlie 
 question. She never acted a mother's part to Mercy — there was 
 never any real motherly love — at least that was Lady Cheriton's 
 opinion of the woman, and she had ample opportunity for judging, 
 wliich, of course, I had not. If you want to help the daughter, keep 
 the mother aloof from her," 
 
 " I dare say you are right, and I shall of course obey you implicitly," 
 said Theodore, inwardly reluctant, 
 
 lie had an e.xalted idea of maternal love, its obligations and 
 privileges, and it seemed to him a hard thing to come between a 
 penitent daughter and a mother whoso heart ought to be full of jiity 
 and pardon. Yet he remembered his brief interview with ^Irs. 
 Porter, and he could but own to himself that this might be au 
 exceptional case.
 
 268 The Day will come. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 " And from that time to this I am alone, 
 And I shall be alone until I die." 
 
 Theodore and his friend strolled across the Park on Satm-day after- 
 noon in the direction of the west gate, Cuthbert Ramsay intent upon 
 carrying out his intention of introducing himself to Mrs. Porter, 
 and Theodore submitting meekly to be led as it were into the lion's 
 den. 
 
 " You have no idea what hard stuff this woman is made of," he 
 said ; and then he told Ramsay what Lord Cheriton had said to him 
 about Mrs. Porter on the previous evening, and how the daughter's 
 life was to be made happy, if possible, without reference to the 
 mother. 
 
 " The harder she is the more I am interested in making her 
 acquaintance," replied Cuthbert. " I don't care a jot about common- 
 place women, were they as lovely as Aphrodite. I go to see this 
 soured widow as eagerly as Romeo scaled Juliet's balcony. Did his 
 lordship ever tell you what it was that soured the creature, by the 
 way ? That kind of hardness is generally in somewise the result of 
 circumstance, even where there is the adamantine quality in the 
 original character." 
 
 "I never heard any details about the lady's past life; only that 
 her husband was in the merchant navy, upon the India and China 
 line — that he died suddenly and left her penniless — that she was a 
 lady by birth and education, and had married somewhat beneath 
 her. I have often wondered how my cousin, as a barrister, came 
 to be intimate with a captain in the merchant service." 
 
 They were at the gates of the Park by this time, and close to the 
 rustic steps which led up to Mrs. Porter's garden. It was one of 
 those tropical days which often occur towards the end of August, 
 and the clusters of cactus dahlias in the old-fashioned border, and 
 the tall hollyhocks in the backgi-ound, made patches of dazzling colour 
 in the bright white light, against which the cool grays of the stone 
 cottage offered repose to the eye. One side of the cottage was 
 starred with passion-flowers, and on the other the great waxen 
 chahces of the magnolia showed creamy white against the scarlet 
 of the trumpet ash. It was the season at which Mrs. Porter's
 
 The Day will come. 269 
 
 Iiormitac:c pnt on its s-iyest aspect, tlio crowning feast of bloom and 
 colour before the chillinp; breath of autumn brought rusty reds and 
 pallid grays into the picture. 
 
 The two young men lieard voices as they approached the steps, 
 and on looking upward, Theodore saw the curate and his wife 
 standing on the little grass-plot with Mrs. Porter. There could 
 hardly be a better opportunity for approaching her, as she was 
 caught in the act of receiving visitors, and could not deny herself. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Kempstcr were young people, and of that social 
 temperament which will make friends under the hardest conditions. 
 Mr. Kempstcr belonged to the advanced Anglican school, and 
 ministered the oflices of the Church as it were with his life in his 
 liand, always prepared for tlie moment when he should come into 
 collision with his Bishop upon some question of posture or vest- 
 ments. He had introduced startling innovations into the village 
 church, and hoped to be able to paraphrase the boast of Augustus, 
 and to say that ho found Cheriton I'^vangelical and left it Ritualistic. 
 Needless to say, that while he gratified one half of his congregation 
 he ofiended the other half, and that old-fiishioned parishioners 
 complained bitterly of his "gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old 
 wardi'obe or the llamen's vestry." Mrs. Kempstcr had work enough 
 to do in smoothing down the roughened furs of these antediluvians, 
 which smoothing process she eftected chiefly by a rigorous system 
 of polite afternoon calls, in which no inhabitant of the parish was 
 forgotten, and an occasional small expenditure in the shape of after- 
 noon tea and halfpenny buns toasted and buttered by her own fair 
 hands. She was a bright, good-tempered little woman, whom her 
 husband generally spoke of as a " body." 
 
 The Kempsters had just accepted Mrs. Porter's invitation to tea, 
 and were making an admiring inspection of her garden before going 
 into the cottage. 
 
 " I don't believe any one in Cheriton parish has such roses as 
 you, Mrs. Porter," said the curate's wife, gazing admiringly at the 
 standard Gloire de Dijon, which had grown into gigantic dimensions 
 in the middle of the grass-plot. "I never saw such a tree; but 
 then, you see, you give your mind to your garden as none of us 
 can." 
 
 " I have very little else to think about, certainly," said Mrs. 
 Porter. 
 
 " Except Algernon's sermons. I know you appreciate them," 
 cried Mrs. Kempstcr, in her chirruping little voice. " Algernon 
 says no one listens as attentively as you do. ' She quite carries me 
 away sometimes with that rapt look of hers,' he said the otlier day. 
 I am half inclined to feel jealous of you, Mrs, Porter. Oh, here is 
 Mr. Dallirook. IIow d'ye do, INIr. Dalbrook ? " 
 
 iMrs. Kempstcr shook hands with Theodore before he could
 
 270 The Day will come. 
 
 approach Mrs. Porter, but having got past this vivacious lady, he 
 introduced Cuthbert Ramsay to the mistress of the house. 
 
 " My friend is a stranger in the neighbourhood, Mrs. Porter," he 
 said, " and he was so struck by the beauty of your cottage yesterday, 
 that he set his heart upon being introduced to you, and I was really 
 obliged to bring him." 
 
 "My cottage is not generally considered a show place, Mr. 
 Dalbrook," she answered coldly, turning her dull gray eyes full 
 upon Theodore with a look which made him uncomfortable, " but I 
 shall be verj'' happy to show it to your friend — and his lordship's 
 friend, I conclude." 
 
 " I don't know if I dare claim that distinction, Mrs. Porter," 
 answered Cuthbert, in his cheerful resonant voice. " This is my 
 first visit to the Chase ; and if Lord Cheriton has received me witii 
 open arms it is only because I am his kinsman's friend." 
 
 Theodore introduced the stranger to the Kempsters, who welcomed 
 him eagerly, as one who came fraught with the interests and excite- 
 ments of the outer world. 
 
 " May I ask if our man has got in for Southwark ? " demanded 
 Mr. Kempster. "His lordship would be sure to get a telegi-am 
 after the polling." 
 
 " I blush to say that I forgot all about the election, and didn't 
 ask after the telegram," replied Cuthbert. " When you say ' our 
 man,' you mean " 
 
 " The Conservative candidate. I conclude you belong to us." 
 
 " Again I blush to say I don't belong to you the least httle bit. 
 I am an advanced Liberal." 
 
 Mr. Kempster sighed, with a sigh that was almost a groan. 
 
 " A destroyer and disestablisher of everything that has made the 
 glory of England since the days of the Heptarchy," he said, 
 plaintively. 
 
 " Well, yes, there have been a good many false gods toppled 
 over, and a good many groves of Baal cut down, since the Saxon 
 Kings ruled over the Seven Kingdoms. You don't want Baal and 
 the rest of them stuck up again, do you, Mr. Kempster ? " 
 
 " Mr. Eamsay, there are times and seasons when I would to God 
 I could wake up in the morning and find myself a subject of King 
 Egbert. Yes, when I see the rising tide of anarchy — the advancing 
 legions of imbehef — the Upas Tree of sensual science," said Kemp- 
 ster, slipping airily from metaphor to metaphor, " I would gladly lay 
 hold upon all that was most rigid and uncompromising among the 
 bulwarks of the past. I woTild belong to the Church of Wolsey and 
 A'Becket. I would lie prostrate before the altar at which St. 
 Augustine was celebrant. I would grovel at the feet of Dunstan." 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Kempster, we can't go back. That's the plague of it, 
 for romantic minds like yours. I am afraid we have done with the
 
 The Day zvill come. 271 
 
 f)ioturesqne in religion and in cvovytlung else. We are chiklrcn of 
 iglit — ofllie tierce wliite light of Kcieiice and common sense. Wo 
 may regi-et tlie scenic darkness of medipcvalism, but we cannot go 
 back to it. The clouds of ignorance and superstition have rolled 
 away, and we stand out in the open, in the searching light of truth. 
 We know what we are, and whom wo serve." 
 
 At Mrs. Porter's invitation they all followed her into the cottage 
 parlour, where the tea-tabk; stood ready, and much more elegantly 
 appointed than that modest board which the curate's wife was wont 
 to spread for her friends. Here there appeared both old china and 
 old silver, and the tea which Mrs. Porter's slender white hands 
 dispensed was of as delicate an aroma as that choice Indian pekoo 
 which Theodore occasionally enjoyed in Lady Cheriton's boudoir. 
 
 Mrs. Porter placed herself with her back to the window, but 
 Cuthbert's keen eyes were able to note every change in her 
 countenance as she listened to the conversation going on round her, 
 or on rare occasions took part in it. He observed that she was 
 curiously silent, and he was of opinion that Theodore's presence was 
 in some manner painful to her. She addressed him now and then, 
 but with an eflbrt which was evident to those studious eyes of 
 Cuthbcrt Ramsay's, though it might escape any less keen observer. 
 
 The conversation was of politics and of the outer world for the 
 first ten minutes, and was obviously uninteresting to Mrs. Kempster, 
 who fidgeted with her teaspoon, made several attempts to speak, 
 and had to wait her opportunity, but finally succeeded in engaging 
 Theodore's attention. 
 
 " Have you seen Lady Carmichael lately, Mr. Dalbrook ? " she 
 inquired. 
 
 " I saw her three days ago." 
 
 " And how did you find her ? In better spirits I hope ? She 
 hardly ever comes to Clicriton now, and her old friends know very 
 little about her. I am told she has a honor of the place, though she 
 was once so fond of it. Poor thing, it is only natural ! You found 
 an improvment in her, I hope? " 
 
 " Yes, I saw at least the beginning of improvement," answered 
 Theodore. " Her child give a new interest to her life." 
 
 " What a blessing that is ! And by-and-by she will meet some 
 one else who will interest her even more than her baby, and she 
 will marry again. She is too young to go on grieving for ever. 
 Don't you think so, Mrs. Porter ? " 
 
 "Yes, I KUi)jioso she will forget sooner or later. Most women 
 have a faculty lor forgetting." 
 
 "Most women, but not all women," said Cuthbcrt, with his 
 earnest air, which made the commonest words mean more from hini 
 than from other men. "I do not think you would be the liiud of 
 womau to forget very quickly, Mrs. Porter."
 
 272 The Day will cojue. 
 
 She was in no hurry to notice this remark, but went on pouring 
 out tea quietly for a minute or two before she rephed. 
 
 " There is not much room in my life for forge tfulness," she said, 
 after that protracted pause. " So without being in any way an 
 exceptional person, I may lay claim to a good memory." 
 
 " She remembers her daughter, and yet memory does not soften 
 her heart," thought Theodore. *' With her, memory means im- 
 placability." 
 
 He looked round the room, in the flickering light of the sunshine 
 that crept in between the bars of the Venetian shutters. He had not 
 expected ever to be sitting at his ease in Mrs. Porter's parlour after 
 that unpromising conversation upon the first day of tlie year. He 
 looked round the room, thoughtfully contemplative of every detail 
 in its arrangement which served to tell him what manner of woman 
 Mrs. Porter was. He was not a close student of character like 
 Kamsay ; he had made for himself no scientific code of liuman 
 expression in eye and lip and head and hand ; but it seemed to him 
 always that the room in which a man or a woman lived gave a useful 
 indication of that man's or that woman's mental qualities. 
 
 This room testified that its mistress was a lady. The furniture 
 was heterogeneous — shabby for the most part, from an upholsterer's 
 point of view, old-fashioned without being antique ; but there was 
 nevertheless a cachet upon every object which told that it had been 
 chosen by a person of taste, from the tall Chippendale bureau which 
 filled one corner of the room, to the solid carved oak table which 
 held the tea-tray. The ornaments w^ere few, but they were old 
 china, and china of some mark from the collector's point of view ; the 
 draperies were of Madras muslin, spotless, and fresh as a spring 
 morning. Theodore noticed, however, that there were no flowers 
 in the vases, and none of those scattered trifles which usually mark 
 the presence of refined womanhood. The room would have had a 
 bare and chilly aspect, lacking these things, if it had not been for a 
 few pictures, and for the bookshelves, which were filled with hand- 
 somely bound books. 
 
 " You have a nice library, Mrs. Porter," he said, somewhat 
 aimlessly, as he took a cup of tea from her hands. " I suppose you 
 are a gi'eat reader? " 
 
 "Yes, I read a great deal. I have my books and my garden. 
 Those make up my sum of fife." 
 
 " May I look at your books? " 
 
 " If you like," she answered coldly. 
 
 He went about the small, low room — so low, with its heavily- 
 timbered ceihng, that Cuthbert Kamsay's head almost touched the 
 crossbeams — and surveyed the collections of books in their difi'erent 
 blocks. Whoever had so arranged them had exercised both taste 
 and dexterity. Everything in the room fitted like a Chinese puzzle,
 
 The Day will come. 273 
 
 and eveiything seemed to have been adapted to those few pieces 
 of old fiiniiture — tlie wahmt-wood bureau, the oak table, and 
 tlie old Italian chairs. The books were theological or metaj^hysi- 
 cal for the most part, but among them ho found Carlyle's " Sartor 
 Kesartus," "Rust and Present," and "French llcvolution;" Bul- 
 wer's mystical stories, and a few books upon magic, ancient and 
 modern. 
 
 " I see you have a fancy for tlie black art, Vlx?.. Porter," he said 
 lightly. " One would hardly expect to find such books as these iu 
 the Isle of Purbeck." 
 
 " I like to know what men and women have built their hopes 
 upon in the ages that are gone," she answered. " Those dreams 
 may seem foolishness to us now, but they were very real to tho 
 dreamers, and there were some who dreamed on till the final slumber 
 — tho one dreamless sleep." 
 
 This was the longest speech she had made since the young men 
 entered her garden, and both were stmck by this sudden gleam of 
 animation. Even the large grej' eyes brightened for a few moments, 
 but only to fade again to that same dull, unflinching gaze which 
 made them more difficult to meet than any other eyes Theodore 
 Dalbrook had ever looked upon. That unflinching stare froze his 
 blood ; he felt a restraint and an embarrassment which no other 
 woman had ever caused him. 
 
 It was diflerent \A\h Cuthbert Ramsay. He was as much at his 
 ease in Mrs. Porter's parlour as if he had known that lady all her 
 life. He looked at her books without asking permission. He moved 
 about with a wonderful airiness of movement which never brought 
 him into anybody's way. He fascinated Mrs. Kempster, and sub- 
 jugated her husband, and impressed everybody by that strong 
 individuality which raises some men a head and shoulders above 
 the common herd. It would have been the same had there been a 
 hundred people in the room instead of five. 
 
 Mrs. Porter relapsed into silence, and the conversation was 
 carried on chiefly by Cuthbert Ramsay and the Curate, until IMrs. 
 Kempster declared that she must be going, lest the children should 
 be unhappy at her absence from their evening meal. 
 
 " I make a point of seeing them at their tea," she said ; " and 
 then they say their prayers to me before nurse puts th(?m to bed — so 
 prettily, and Laura sings a hymn with such a sweet little voice. I 
 am sure she will be musical by-aiid-by, if it is only by ihc way she 
 Btands beside the piano and listens while I sing. And such an car 
 as that child has, as fine as a bird's ! You must come and hcay her 
 sing ' Abide with me,' some day, Mrs. Porter, when you drop in to 
 take a cup of tea." 
 
 ^Irs. Porter murmured something to the effect that she would bo 
 pleased to enjoy that privilege. 
 
 T
 
 2 74 The Day will come. 
 
 " Ah, but you nevei" come to tea witli me, tlioiic;h I am always 
 asking you. I'm afraid you are not very fond of children." 
 
 "I am not used to them, and I don't think that children like 
 people Avho are out of the habit of associating with them," answered 
 ]\Irs. Porter deliberately. " I never Imow what to say to a child. 
 My life has been, too gi'avc and too solitary for me to be fit company 
 for children," 
 
 The Curate and his wife took lea\ c and went briskly down the 
 steps to the lane, and Theodore made a little movement towards 
 departure, but Cuthbert Eamsay lingered, as if he were really loth 
 to go. 
 
 " I am absolutely in love with your cottage, Mrs. Porter," he 
 said ; " it is an ideal abode, and I can fancy a lady of your studious 
 habits being perfectly happy in this tranquil spot." 
 
 " The life suits me well enough," she answered icily, " perhaps 
 better than any other." 
 
 " You have a piano yonder, I see," he said, glancing through the 
 half-open door to an inner room with a latticed window, beyond 
 which a sunlit garden on a bit of shelving gi'ound sloped upwards 
 to the edge of the low hill-side, the garden vanishing into an upland 
 meadow, where cows were seen gi-azing against the evening light. 
 This second sitting-room was more humbly furnished than the 
 parlour in which they had been taking tea, and its chief feature was 
 a cottage piano, which stood diagonally between the lattice and the 
 omall fireplace. 
 
 "You too are musical, I conclude," pursued Cuthbert, "like h'ttle 
 Miss Kempster." 
 
 "I am very fond of music." 
 
 " Might we be favoured by hearing you play something?" 
 
 " I never play before people. I played tolerably once, perhaps — 
 at least my master was good enough to say so. But 1 play now 
 only snatches of music, by fits and starts, as the humour seizes me." 
 
 She seated herself by the casement with a resigned air, as much 
 as to say, "Are these yormg men never going? " Her long, thin 
 fingers busied themselves in plucking the faded leaves from the 
 pelargoniums which made a bank of colour on the broad window 
 ledge. 
 
 "You were at home at the time of the murder, I suppose, Mrs. 
 Porter ? " said Cuthbert, after a pause, during which he had occupied 
 himself in looking at the water-colour sketches on the walls, 
 insignificant enough, but good of their kind, and arguing a cultivated 
 taste in the person who collected them, 
 
 " I am never away from home." 
 
 "And you heard and saw nothing out of the common course 
 — you have no suspicion of any one ? " 
 
 " Do you suppose if I had it would not have been made known
 
 The Day will come. 275 
 
 to the police immediately after tlio murder? Do you tliiiik I .should 
 hoard and treasure up a buspicion, or a scrap of circumstantial 
 e\'idenco till you came to ask me for it ? " she said, with suppressed 
 irritation. 
 
 " Pray forgive me. I had no idea of offending you by ray 
 question. It is natural that any one coming to Cheriton Chaso 
 for the first time should feel a morbid interest in that mysterious 
 murder." 
 
 " If you had heard it talked about as much as I have you would 
 be as weary of the subject as I am," said Mrs. Porter, rather more 
 courteously. "I have discussed it with the local police and the 
 London police, with his Lordship, with the doctor, with Mr. 
 Dalbrook s father, with Lady Carmichael, with Lady Jane Car- 
 michael, these having all a right to question me — and with a good 
 many other people in the neighbourhood who had no right to ques- 
 tion me. I answer you as I answered them. No, I saw nothing, 
 I heard nothing on that fatal night — nor in the week l»efore that 
 fatal night, nor at any period of Lady Carmichael's honeymoon. 
 Whoever the murderer was he did not come in a carriage and sum- 
 mon my servant to unlock the gate for him. The footpath through 
 the Park is open all night. There was nothing to binder a stranger 
 coming in and going out — and the chances wore a thousand to one, 
 I fixncy, against his being observed — once clear of the house. That 
 is all i know about it." 
 
 " And as an old resident upon the property you have no know- 
 ledge of any one who had a grudge against Lord Cheriton or his 
 daughter — such a feehng as might prompt the murder of the lady's 
 husband as a mode of retaliation upon the lady or her fother?" 
 
 " I know no such person, and I have never considered the crime 
 from such a point of view. It is too far-fetched a notion." 
 
 " Perhaps. Yet where a crime is apparently motiveless the main- 
 spring must be looked for below the surface. Only a far-fetched 
 theory can serve in such a case." 
 
 "Shall I tell you what I think about the murder, ]\Ir. Eamsay?" 
 asked I\Irs. Porter, looking up at him suddenlj-, and fixing him with 
 those steady grey eyes. 
 
 " Pray do." 
 
 "I think that no one upon God's earth will ever know who fired 
 that shot. Only at the Day of Judgment will the murderer stand 
 revealed, and then the secret of the crime and the motive will stand 
 forth written in fire upon the scroll that records men's wrongs and 
 sorrows and sins. You and I, and all of us, may read the story 
 there, perhaps, in that day when we shall sttind as shadows before 
 the great white throne." 
 
 " I believe you are right, Mrs. Porter." answered Cuthbert, quietly, 
 holding out his hand to take leave. " A secret that has bceu kept
 
 276 The Day will come. 
 
 for more than a year is likely to be kept till we are all in our graves. 
 The mm-dcrcr himself will be the one to tell it, perhaps. There 
 are men who are proud of a bloody revenge, as if it were a noble 
 deed. Good day to you, Mrs. Porter, and many thanks for your 
 friendly reception." 
 
 He held the thin, cold hand in his own as he said this, looking 
 earnestly at the imperturbable face, and then he and Theodore left 
 the cottage. 
 
 "Well, Cuthbert, what do you thmk of that woman?" asked 
 Theodore, after they had passed through the gate, and into the 
 quiet of the long glade where the fallow deer were browsing in the 
 fading day. 
 
 "I think a good deal about her, but I haven't thought out my 
 opinion yet. Has she ever been off her head ? " 
 
 " Not to my knowledge. She has lived in that house for tweitty 
 years. I never heard that there was anything wrong with her 
 mentally." 
 
 " I beheve there is something, or has been something very wrong. 
 There is madness in that women's eye. It may be the indication 
 of past trouble, or it may be a warning of an approaching dis- 
 turbance. She is a woman who has suffered intensely, and who 
 has acquu-ed an abnormal power of self-restramt. I should like to 
 know her history." 
 
 " My God, Cuthbert," cried Theodore, grasping him by the arm, 
 and coming suddenly to a standstill, "do you knoAV what your 
 words suggest — to what j^our conclusion points? The murder of 
 my cousin's husband was an act of vengeance, or of lunacy. We 
 have made up our minds about that, have we not ? The detective, 
 Juanita, you and I, everybody'. We are looking for some ^vl■etch 
 capable of a blindly malignant revenge, or for homicidal madness, 
 with its unreasoning thirst for blood ; and here, here at these gates 
 is a woman whom you suspect of madness, a woman who could 
 have had access to the gardens at any hour, who knew the habits 
 and hours of the servants, who would know how to elude observa- 
 tion." 
 
 " My dear fellow, you are going a gi'eat deal too for. Who said 
 I suspected that luihappy woman of homicidal madness? The 
 brain disease I suspect in Mrs. Porter is melancholia, the result of 
 long years of self-restraint and solitude, the not unfreiiueut con- 
 sequence of continuous brooding upon a secret grief."
 
 The Day zuill come. 2'j'j 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 " Jfy eyes are dim with childish tears, 
 Jly heart is idly stirred, 
 For the same sound is in my ears 
 Which in those days I heard." 
 
 That suggestion of Cutlibort Ramsay's of latent madness in the 
 lodge-keeper came upon Theodore like a flash of lurid light, and 
 gave a new colour to all his thoughts. It was in vain that his 
 friend reminded him of the wide distinction between the fury of the 
 homicidal lunatic and the settled melancholy of a mind warped by 
 misfortune. After that conversation in the Park he was haunted by 
 Mrs. Porter's image, and he found his mind distracted between two 
 0])posite ideas; one pointing to the man who had claimed Mrs. 
 Danvers as his wife, the deserted and betrayed liusband of James 
 Dalbrook's mistress; the other dwelling upon the image of this 
 woman living at his kinsman's gate, with an existence which was 
 unsatisfactorily explained by the scanty facts which he had been 
 able to gather about her former history. 
 
 lie recalled her conduct about her daughter, her cold and almost 
 vindictive rejection of the penitent smner; her stern resolve to 
 stand alone in the world. 
 
 Was that madness, or the consciousness of guilt, or what ? It 
 was conduct too unnatural to be accounted for easily, consider it 
 how he might. He had heard often enough of fathers refusing to be 
 reconciled with erring or disobedient children. The flinty hard- 
 ness of the father's heart has become proverbial. But an unfor- 
 giving motlier seems an anomaly in nature. 
 
 He determined upon confiding Ramsay's opinion and his own 
 doubts to Lord Cheriton witliout delay. 
 
 Whatever abnormal circumstances there had been in Mrs. Porter's 
 history, her benefactor was likely to be acquainted with them ; and 
 if those circumstances had aftected her intellect it was vital that lie 
 should be made aware of the fact before evil of any kind could 
 arise. 
 
 He contrived an after-dinner stroll upon the terrace with his kins- 
 man as upon the previous evening, and entered upon the subject 
 without loss of time. 
 
 " Ramsay and I took our afternoon-tea with Mrs, Porter," he said.
 
 278 The Day zvill come. 
 
 "Indeed! How did that come about? She is not a sociable 
 person in a general way, or accessible to strangers." 
 
 " It was to gTatify a fancy of Ramsay's that I went there. He 
 admired her cottage and was interested in her history, and took it 
 into his head that she was a woman of exceptional character." 
 
 " Ho was not far wrong there, I believe. Mrs. Porter is a very 
 hard mit to crack. I have never been able to fathom her." 
 
 " And yet with yom- knowledge of her previous history you must 
 have the safest clue to her character." 
 
 "I don't know about that. There is nothing exceptional in her 
 history — and there is much that is exceptional in her character, as 
 your friend says. Pray what was the result of his observation of 
 the lady in the leisure of afternoon tea-drinking? " 
 
 " He believed that he saw the traces of madness in her counte- 
 nance and manner; madness either past, present, or impending. 
 He could not decide which." 
 
 There was not light enough upon the terrace to show Theodore 
 any change in his cousin's countenance, but the movement of Lord 
 Cheriton's hand as he took the cigar from his mouth, and the sudden 
 slackening of his pace were sufBcient indications of troubled thought. 
 It could hardly be pleasant for him to hear so melancholy a sugges- 
 tion about the pensioner whom he had established in comfort at his 
 gate, intending that she should enjoy his bounty for all the days of 
 her life. 
 
 " Upon what does your friend base this fantastical notion ? " he 
 asked angi-ily. 
 
 " Upon physiological and psj^chological evidence. You can ques- 
 tion him, if you like. It appears to me that you ought to know tlie 
 truth." 
 
 " I have no objection to hear anything he may have to say, but 
 it is very unlikely I shall be influenced by him. These young men, 
 who are by way of being savants, are full of crochets and theories. 
 They look at every one as Darwin looked at a Virginia creeper or a 
 cowslip, with a preconceived notion that they must find dut some- 
 thing about him. I believe Mrs. Porter, with her calm, impassible 
 nature, is much better able to reckon up your friend Ramsay than 
 he is able to come to a correct opinion about her." 
 
 "I should like you to discuss the question with him, at any 
 rate," said Theodore. " The horror of last year's calamity is a 
 reason you should have nobody about the estate whom you cannot 
 trust." 
 
 " Wliat do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean that while you have madness at your gate you may 
 have murder in your house." 
 
 " Theodore ! You cannot be so cruel as to associate that un- 
 happy woman with Godfrey Carraichael's death ? "
 
 The Day will come. 279 
 
 "God knowfs! Tliat murder lias to bo accounted for someliow. 
 Can you, as Juanita's father, know rest or peace tDl it has been 
 accounted for? I could not, in your place." 
 
 " I hope you do not think it necessary to teach me my duty to 
 my dauglitcr," said Lord Cheriton coldly ; and Theodore felt that 
 lio had said too much. 
 
 Ills cousin addressed him upon some indiflcrent subject a minute 
 or so afterwards, when he had lighted a fresh cigar, and his manner 
 resumed its usual friendliness. There was no further mention of 
 Mrs. Porter that night, but on Sunday Lord Cheriton walked homo 
 from church with Cuthbcrt Kamsay, and questioned him as to his 
 imjjressions about the lodge-keeper. 
 
 " Theodore has exaggerated the significance of my remark," 
 explained Cuthbert. " I take it Mrs. Porter's case is one of slight 
 aberration brought on by much brooding upon troubles, real or 
 imaginary. If my power to diagnose is worth anything, her mind 
 has lost its balance, her thoughts have lost their adjusting power. 
 She is like a piece of mechanism that has got out of S(]uare, and will 
 only work one way. You may hardly consider that tin's amomits to 
 madness, and I may have done wrong in speaking of it : only were 
 Mrs. Porter concerned in my existence, I should feel it incumbent 
 on me to watch her; and I recommend you to have her watched, so 
 far as it can be done without alarming or annoying her." 
 
 " I will do what I can. I will get another opinion from a man of 
 long experience in mental cases. I have an old friend in the medical 
 profession, a specialist, who has made mental disease the studv 
 of his life. He will give me any advice I want." 
 
 " You cannot do better than get his opinion of Mrs. Porter, if you 
 are interested in her welfiu'e." 
 
 " I am interested in all who are dependent upon me, and in her 
 especially, on account of old associations." 
 
 Lady Carmichael drove over to Clieriton after luncheon, upon 
 one of those Sunday visits which she paid from time to time in 
 deference to her father, albeit she coukl never approach tlio hoTise 
 without pain. She came in the useful familj"- landau, whicli had 
 carried the Misses Carmichael to tennis parties, dinners, and dances, 
 before they married, and which now conveyed the nurse and baby 
 Du their visits to Cheriton. She camo for what Lady Clieriton 
 called a long afternoon, and she was received in the lil^rary, which 
 was now tlie most used room in tlie house. No one cared to occupy 
 tliat fatal drawing-room ; and altliough it was always accessible, and 
 there was a feint of daily occupation, its cold elegance was for tho 
 most part untenanted. 
 
 " And over all tiiere hung a cloud of fear." 
 
 To-day, for tlie first time, Theodore discovered numerous alter-
 
 2 So The Day will come. 
 
 ations in the arrangement of pictures and furniture in the hall. He 
 had promised Cuthbert to show him the portraits of the Strangways, 
 and most particularly that picture of the Squire's three children, 
 painted nearly forty years before ; but he found that this picture, 
 among others, had been removed, and that a fine Ehodian plate 
 occupied its place on the dark oak panelling. 
 
 He noticed the fact to his cousin. 
 
 " I am sorry to miss the family group," he said. " It was a really 
 interesting picture." 
 
 "Interesting to you perhaps, who knew the history of the race," 
 answered Lord Cheriton, "but very uninteresting to a stranger. 
 I think I've made an improvement over there. That plate is a 
 splendid bit of colour, and liglits up a dark corner. But that was 
 not my motive. I wanted to make such trifling alterations as would 
 change the aspect of the hall for Juanita, without any ostensible refur- 
 nishing. I have done the same thing in the library. The changes 
 there are slight, but the room is not as it was when she and her 
 husband occupied it." 
 
 " I should like to show Kamsay the Strangway portraits, if they 
 are get-at-able." 
 
 " They are not just at present. The canvases were rotting, and 
 I have sent them to London to be lined. You can show them to 
 your friend by-and-by, when I get them back." 
 
 Mr. Ramsajr's thoughts seemed a long way from the Strangway 
 portraits this afternoon, although he had expressed a curiosity as to 
 the lineaments of that luckless race. He was out in the garden — in 
 Lady Cheriton's rose garden — with Juanita and her son, and was 
 giving further proofs of liis adaptability to infantile society. The 
 grandmother was of the party, looking on with profound admiration 
 at that phase of awakening intellect which is described as " taking 
 notice." It was held now as an established fact that the infant 
 Godfrey James Dalbrook took notice, and that his notice dwelt with 
 especial favour upon Cuthbert Ramsay. 
 
 " I think it must be because you are so tall and big," said Juanita 
 lightly. " He feels your power, and he wants to conciliate you." 
 
 " Artful little beggar ! No, that is much too low a view. There 
 is a magnetic affinity between us — love at first sight. When babies 
 do take a fancy they are thoroughly in earnest about it. Loafing 
 about in the New Cut sometimes, studying human nature from the 
 Saturday night point of view, I have had a poor woman's baby take 
 a fancy to me — a poor little elfin creature, a year old perhaps, and 
 not half so big as this bloated aristocrat, a sour-smelling baby which 
 would give you mat au cccur, Lady Carmichael ; and the wretched 
 little waif would hook on to my elephantine finger and cleave to me 
 as if I were its mother. Oh, how sorry I have felt for such a baby — 
 with the pure starry eyes of infancy shining in the flabby withered
 
 The Day zoill come, 281 
 
 face that has grown old for want of cold water and fresh air ! For 
 Buch infancy and for stray do?;3 I have suncrcd acutest agonies of 
 pit}' — and yet I have done nothing — only pitied and passed on. That 
 is the worst of us. We can all pity, but we don't act upon the 
 divine impulse. You may be sure the Levite felt very sorry for 
 tlie wounded traveller, though he did not see his way to helping 
 him." 
 
 This was one of Cuthbert's tirades, w'hich he was wont to indulge 
 in when he found himself in congenial society; and Juanita's society 
 was particularly congenial to him. He felt as if no other woman 
 had ever symjjathized with him or Tinderstood him — and he gave 
 her credit for doing botli. Never had he felt so happy in the society 
 of an^- woman, as he felt in this sunlit garden to-day, among tiie 
 roses which were just now blooming in a riotous luxuriance, the 
 branching heads of standards top-heavy with great balls of blossom, 
 swaying gently in the summer wind. 
 
 lie had expected to see her a gloomy creature, self-conscious in 
 her giief— but the child's httle fingers had loosened her heart- 
 strings. If she was not gay, she was at least able to endure gaiety 
 in others. She listened to the j'oung man's rhapsodies and para- 
 doxes with a gentle smile ; she admired her mother's roses. She 
 cast no shadow upon the quiet happiness of the summer afternoon, 
 that tranquil contentedness which belongs to the loveliness of Nature, 
 and which makes a blessed pause in the story of human passion and 
 human discontent. It was one of those summer afternoons which 
 make one say to oneself, " Could life 1)e always thus what a blessed 
 thing it were to live !" and then the sound of evening bells breaks 
 the spell, and the shadows creep across the woods, and it is dinner 
 time, and all that halcyon peace is over. 
 
 How lovely she looked in her simply-made black gown, with its 
 closely-fitting bodice and straight tlowing skirt, of that thick lustre- 
 less silk which falls in such statuesque folds ! The plain little white 
 crape cap seemed in perfect harmony witli that raven hair and pure 
 white forehead. She was unlike any other woman Cuthbert Ramsay 
 had ever known. There was not one touch of society slang, nor of the 
 society manner of looking at life. She had passed through the fiery 
 ordeal of two London seasons unscorched in the furnace. Love had 
 been the purifying influence. She had never lived upon the excite- 
 ment of every-day pleasures and volatile loves, the intermittent 
 fever of flirtations and engagements that are on and oiT half a dozen 
 times in a season. The influence that guided all her thoughts and 
 all her actions had been one steadfast and single-minded love. She 
 had cared for no praises but from her lover's lips ; she had dressed 
 and danced, and played and sung, for none other than he. And 
 now in her devotion to lier child there was the same concentration 
 and simpUcity. She did not know that she was looking her love-
 
 282 The Day will come. 
 
 liest in that severe black gown and white cap ; she did not know 
 that Cnthbert Eamsay admired her far too mucli for his peace. She 
 only felt that ho was very sincere in his devotion to the baby, and 
 that he was a clever young man whose society suggested new ideas, 
 and made her for the moment forgetful of her grief. 
 
 It was evening before she left Cheriton. She had stayed later 
 than usual, and the shadows were creeping over the park as she 
 walked to the west gate with Theodore and his friend, the carriage 
 following slowly with nurse and baby ensconced among light lieecy 
 wraps, lest vesper breezes should visit that human blossom too 
 roughly. Theodore had proposed the walk across the park, and 
 Juanita had assented immediately. 
 
 " I am always glad of a walk," she said. " I have so few excuses 
 for a ramble nowadays. I have to stay at home to take care of 
 baby." 
 
 " Do you doubt the capabilities of that highly-experienced nurse ? " 
 asked Eamsay laughmgly. 
 
 " I doubt every one but myself, and I sometimes doubt even my 
 own discretion where my precious one is concerned." 
 
 " You will have more reason to doiibt by-and-by when your 
 precious one is old enough to be spoilt," said Theodore. " He has 
 begun to take notice, and before very long he will notice that he is 
 monarch of all he surveys, and that everybody about him is more 
 or less his slave. He will live in that atmosphere till you send hina 
 to Eton, and then he will find himself suddenly confronted with the 
 hard, cruel world of strictly Republican boyhood, which will jostle 
 and hustle him with ruthless equahty." 
 
 Lady Cheriton had business in London early in the following 
 week. She was going to London to see her dentist, and her dress- 
 maker, the latter being one of the arbiters of fashion who never go 
 out of their way to wait upon their clients, but who do the rather 
 exact reverence and attention from those clients. Slie had shopping 
 to do at the West-end of London, that shopping which is so delight- 
 ful to a lady who spends two-thirds of the year in the country. 
 Above all, she had things to get at the " Stores," an institution 
 which was dear to Lady Cheriton's heart, in spite of all her husband's 
 lectures upon political economy and the necessity of sustaining 
 private enterprise and the shopkeeping interest. 
 
 Hearing of these engagements, and that Lady Cheriton intended 
 to spend two nights in Victoria Street, Theodore suggested that he 
 should be allowed to accompany her ladyship to London and to 
 arrange a meeting between her and tlie young woman who called 
 herself Marian Gray. 
 
 " If you really wish to help her," he concluded. 
 
 " I do really "".vish it," answered Lord Cheriton earnestly, " and
 
 The Day will come. 283 
 
 the Kooner the matter is put in hand the better pleased I shall be. 
 Shall my wife call on tliis person?" 
 
 "She is very proud and very reserved. It mi.sjht be bettor to 
 bring about a meeting which would appear accidental. Marian 
 goes for a walk with Miss Newton once or twice a week. I could 
 arrange with her good fi'iend that they should be walking in a par- 
 ticular place — Battersea Park, for instance — at a certain hour, and 
 Lady Cheritou could drive that way with me, and we could meet 
 them. It would be the easiest way of arriving at the truth as to 
 Marian Gray's identity with Mercy Porter." 
 
 " Very good. You might suggest that to my wife." 
 
 Lady Cheriton, who was the soul of good-nature, fell in at once 
 with Theodore's idea. 
 
 " I would do anything in my power to help that poor girl," she 
 said ; " for I think her sadly to be pitied. Her girlhood was so dull 
 and joyless — such a ceaseless round of lessons and practice, without 
 any of those pleasures to which most school-girls look forward. 
 Ilcr mother seemed to take a ])ride in keeping the girl apart from 
 every one, in dressing her plainly, and in making her whole life as 
 dreary as she could. I hardly wonder that the poor, hopeless 
 creature suiTcndered to the first tempter — a man whose manner to 
 women had always been called irresistible, even by women of the 
 Avorld, and a man who would not shrink from any amount of false- 
 hood in pui'suing his wicked aim. And now she is pajing forfeit 
 for her sin with a lonely life of toil in a London garret. Poor 
 Mercy ! She was so pretty and so refined — a lady in all her 
 instincts." 
 
 Cuthbert Ramsay left on Monday, promising to return at the end 
 of the week ; and Theodore went up to town with Lady Cheriton 
 on the following Wednesday. He went straight from the terminus 
 to Wedgewood Street, where he saw ]\Iiss NeAvton, told her of 
 Lord Cheriton 's benevolent intentions to IMarian, alias Mercj', and 
 arranged the walk in Battersea Park for the following afternoon. 
 Miss Newton and her protegee were to bo walking upon the path- 
 way 1)esidc the river at half-past three o'clock, when Lady Cheriton 
 would drive that way. 
 
 Miss Newton had no difficulty in carrying out her part of the 
 little plot. Marian was always ready to put aside her work for the 
 pleasure of an afternoon with that one friend to whom her heart 
 was ever open. She met Miss Newton at the starting-place of the 
 tram-car, and they rode through the dusty crowded higliways to the 
 People's Park, where the flower-beds were gaudy with the rank 
 luxuriance that is the beginning of the end of summer's good things, 
 and where the geraniimi leaves were riddled by voracious slugs. 
 There was a dustiness and worn-out air upon all the foliage and all 
 the flowers, despite the coolness that came from the swiftly-Hownng
 
 284 The Day will come. 
 
 river — an air of fading and decay which pervades even the outer- 
 most regions of London when the season is over and the world of 
 fashion lias fled — ^the air of a theatre when the play is done and the 
 lights are extinguished. 
 
 Sarah Newton and her young friend walked slowly along the 
 gravel pathway, looking dreamily at the bright river, with its gay 
 movement of passing boats and flowing waters. The elder of the 
 two friends, who was wont to be full of cheery talk of newspapers 
 and books, the history of the present, and the history of the past, 
 was to-day unusually gi-ave and silent. 
 
 "I'm afraid j^ou are not well, dear Miss Newton," said Marian, 
 looking at her anxiously. 
 
 " Oh, yes, my dear, I am well enough. You know I am made of 
 cast-iron, and except for the toothache, or a cold m my head, I 
 hardly know what illness means. I am only a little thoughtful." 
 
 They walked a few paces in silence, and then Miss Newton stopped 
 suddenly to admire an approaching carriage. " What a stylish Vic- 
 toria ! Why, I declare there is Mr. Dalbrook, with a lady ! " 
 
 The carriage drew up as she spoke, and Theodore alighted. 
 Marian had reddened a little at the mention of his name, but the 
 flush upon her cheek deepened to crimson when she saw the lady in 
 the carriage, and as the lady got out and came towards her the 
 crimson faded to a deadly white. 
 
 " Mercy, child, I am glad with all my heart to find you," said Lady 
 Cheriton, holding out both her hands. 
 
 She was determined that there should be no doubt in the young 
 girl's mind as to her friendship and indulgence — that there should 
 be nothing in the mode of her approach, in the tone of her voice, or 
 the expression of her countenance that could bruise that broken 
 reed. Love and pity looked out of those lovely southern eyes, which 
 even in mature age retained much of their youthful beauty. 
 
 Mercy Porter went towards her, trembling, and with eyes brim- 
 ming with tears. The calm, self-restrained nature had melted all at 
 once at those gentle words in the familiar voice which had given her 
 words of kindness and of praise in her desolate childhood. The 
 transformation filled Theodore with wonder. 
 
 " Dear Lady Cheriton, I thought you would long ago have forgotten 
 the wi'etched girl to whom you were once so kind," she faltered. 
 
 "No, Mercj', I have never forgotten you. I have always been 
 sorry — deeply sorry for you. And when Mr. Dalbrook told me 
 about having met a person who interested him — a person asso- 
 ciated with Cheriton — I knew that person must be you. My dear 
 girl, I thank God that we have found you. My cousin will call 
 upon you to-morrow and tails; to you about yoiu* future — and of our 
 plans for making your life happier than it is." 
 
 " There is no need," said Mercy, quickh'. " I get on very well as
 
 The Day zvill come. 285 
 
 I am. My life is quite good enough for me. I hope fur nothing 
 better, wish for nothing better." 
 
 '' Nonsense, Mercy. His Lordship and I are your friends, and we 
 mean to help you." 
 
 " I will accept help from no one. Lady Cheriton. I made up my 
 mind about that long ago. I can earn my own living very well 
 now. If ever my fingers or my eyes fail me — I can go to the work- 
 house. I am deeply thankful for your pity — but I ask for no more, 
 I will accept no more." 
 
 " \Vc will see about that, Mercy," said Lady Cheriton, with her 
 gentle smile, quite unable to estimate the mental force in opposition 
 to her. 
 
 She could understand a certain resistance, the pride of a sensitive 
 nature painfully conscious of disgrace, unable to forget the ])ast. 
 She was ))repared for a certain amount of difficulty in reconciling 
 this proud nature to the acceptance of benefits ; but she never for 
 one moment contemplated an implacable resistance. 
 
 '' Let me see your friend, Mercy," she said, " the lady who has 
 been kind to you." 
 
 " Kind is a poor word. She has been my angel of deliverance. 
 She has saved me from the great dismal swamp of self-abasement 
 and despair." 
 
 Miss Newton had walked briskly ahead \vith Theodore, so as to 
 leave Lady Cheriton and Mercy together, Mercy ran after her 
 friend, and brought her back a little way, as Lady Cheriton advanced 
 to meet her. 
 
 "Miss Newton, my one true and good friend in all this great 
 world of London, and the only friend of my miserable childhood, 
 Lady Cheriton," said IMercy, looking from one to the other with 
 that intent look of thoughtful minds that work in nan-ow grooves. 
 
 " I thank you for being good to one in whose fate I am warmly 
 interested, Miss Newton," said Lady Cheriton. " You have done 
 the work of the good Samaritan, and at least one wounded heart 
 blesses you." 
 
 They walked on a little way together, and Lady Cheriton spoke 
 of the old house and the old family, the vanished race with which 
 Sarali Newton had been associated in her girlhood. 
 
 '' They arc all dead, I understand? " she said, in conclusion. 
 
 " Yes, there is none left of the old famih'. They are not a for- 
 tunate race, and I fear there are few who regi'ct them ; but I cannot 
 help feeling sorry that they are all gone. They have passed away 
 like a dream when one awakens." 
 
 Lady Cheriton lingered on the river-side pathway for nearly half- 
 an-hour, talking to IMercy and j\Iiss Newton. Theodore left them 
 together, after having obtained I\Iercy's permission to call at her 
 lodgings on the following afternoon.
 
 2^6 The Day will come. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 '■ I saw her too. 
 
 Yes, but you must not love her. 
 
 I will not, as you do ; to worship her, 
 As she is heavenly and a blessed goddess ; 
 I love her as a woman." 
 
 A DKCEXT-LOOKixG woiiian opened the door of the house in Ilcrcnlcs 
 Buildings, and ushered Mr. Dalbrook up two flights of stairs to the 
 small back-room in which Mercy Porter had lived her lonely life 
 from year's end to year's end. The tasteful arrangement of that 
 humble chamber struck Theodore at the first glance. He had seen 
 such rooms at Cambridge, where an undergraduate of small means 
 had striven to work wonders with a few shabby old sticks that had 
 done duty for half-a-dozen other undergraduates, and which had 
 been but of poorest quality when they issued, new and sticky with 
 cheap varnish, from the emporium of a local upholsterer. 
 
 Mercy was very pale, and although she received her visitor with 
 outward calmness, he could see that she had not yet recovered from 
 yesterday's agitation. 
 
 " What induced you to take so much trouble to betray me, Mr. 
 Dalbrook ? " she asked. 
 
 " Betray is a very hard word, ]\Iiss Porter." 
 
 "You don't suppose that I believed yesterday's meeting was 
 accidental? You took the trouble to bring Lady Cheriton across 
 my path in order to satisfy your curiosity about my identity. Was 
 that generous ? " 
 
 "God knows that it was meant in your best interests. I knew 
 that Lady Cheriton was your true and loyal friend — that she had 
 more of the mother's instinct than your real mother, and that no 
 pain could possibly come to you from any meeting with her. And 
 then I had a very serious reason for bringing you together. It was 
 absolutely necessary for me to make sure of your identity." 
 
 " Why necessary ? What can it matter to you who I am ? " 
 
 " Everything. I am the bearer of a very generous offer from 
 Lord Cheriton — and it was essential that I should make that offer 
 to the right person." 
 
 Mercy's face miderwent a startling change at the sound of Lord 
 Cheriton's name. She had been standing by the window in a 
 listless attitude, just where she had risen to receive her visitor.
 
 The Day will come. 287 
 
 She drew hcrriult' suddenly to Iior fullest height, and lookeil ut him 
 with ihished ehecks and ki^dli^,^' eyes. 
 
 "I will accept no generosity from Lord Cheriton," she said. "I 
 want nothing from him except to be let alone. I want nothing 
 from Lady Cheriton except her sympathy, and I would rather have 
 even that at a distance. You have done the greatest harm you 
 could do mo in bringing me face to face with my old life." 
 
 " Believe me I had but one feeling, anxiety for your happiness." 
 
 "What is my happiness to you?" she retorted, almost liercely. 
 " You are playing at philanthropy. You can do mo no good — you 
 may do me much evil. You see me contented with my life — 
 accustomed to its hardships — happy in the possession of one true 
 friend. Why come to me with oflicious offers of favours which I 
 have never sought? " 
 
 " You are ungenerous, and unjust. From the first hour of our 
 acquaintance I sav/ that you were of a different clay to that of tlio 
 women among wliom I found you — diO'erent by education, Listinct, 
 associations, family history. How could I help being interested in 
 one who stood thus apart? How could I help wanting to know 
 more of so exceptional a life ? " 
 
 " Yes, you were interested, as you might have been in any other 
 WTeck — in any derelict vessel stranded on a lonely shore, battered, 
 broken, empty, rudderless, picturesque in ruin. It was a morbid 
 interest, an interest in human misery." 
 
 He stated his commission plainly and briefly. lie told her that 
 it was Lord Cheriton 's earnest wish to provide for her future life — • 
 that he was ready, and even anxious, to settle a sum of money 
 which would ensure her a comfortable income for the rest of her 
 days. He urged upon her the consideration of the new happiness, 
 and larger opportunities of helping others, which this competence 
 would afford her ; but she cut him short with an impatient move- 
 ment of her head. 
 
 "Upon what gi'ound does he base his generous offer?" she 
 asked coldly. 
 
 " Upon the ground of his interest in your mother and yourself 
 — an interest which it is only natural for him to feel in one who 
 was brought u]) on his estate, and whose father was his friend. It 
 may be also tliat he feels himself in some wis© to blame for tho 
 great son-ow of your life." 
 
 " Tell him that I appreciate his noble contempt for money, his 
 readiness to shed the sunshine of his prosperity upon so remote an 
 outcast as myself; but tell him also that I would rather starve to 
 death, slowly in tliis room, than I would accept tho price of a loaf 
 of bread from his hands. Do not hesit<\to to tell him this, in tho 
 plainest form of speech. It is only right that he should know tho 
 exact measure of my feelings towards him "
 
 288 The Day will come. 
 
 After this Theodore could only bow to her decision and leave 
 her. 
 
 " Lord Cheriton is my cousin, and a man whom I have every 
 reason to regard with affection and respect," he began. 
 
 She interrupted him sharply. 
 
 " He has never denied the cousinship, never treated you as the 
 dirt under his feet — never looked down upon you from the altitude of 
 his grandeur, with insufferable patronage " 
 
 " Never. He has been most unaffectedly my friend, ever since 
 I can remember." 
 
 " Then you are right to think well of him — but you must let me 
 have my opinion in peace, even although you are of his blood and I 
 
 am nothing to him. Good-bye. Forgive me if I liave been 
 
 ungracious and ungrateful. I have no doubt you meant well by 
 me — only I would so much rather be let alone. It did me no good 
 to see Lady Cheriton yesterday. My heart was tortured by the 
 memories her face recalled." 
 
 She gave him her hand, the thin white hand, with taper fingers 
 worn by constant work. It was a very pretty hand, and it lay in 
 his strong grasp to-day for the first time, so reserved had been her 
 former gi-eetings and farewells. He looked at the delicate hand for 
 a moment or two before he let it go, and from the hand upwards to 
 the fair, finely-cut face, and the large, dark gi-ey ej^es. That look oi 
 his startled her, the hollow cheeks flushed, and the eyelids fell 
 beneath his steady gaze. 
 
 " Good-bye, Mercy," he said, gently, " let me call you Mercj'-, for 
 the sake of the Imk between us — the link of common recollections, 
 and the sad secrets of the past." 
 
 " Call me what you like. It is not very probable we shall meet 
 often." 
 
 "You are very stubborn, cruel to yourself, and more cruel to 
 those who want to help you. Good-bye." 
 
 " Good-bye," she echoed, almost in a whisper. 
 
 He went out into the shabby street haunted by those sad uplifted 
 eyes, and the hollow cheeks faintly flushed with delicate bloom. 
 How lovely she must have been in her da^vning womanhood, and 
 how closely she must have kept at home in the cottage by the west 
 gate, seeing that he who had been so frequent a guest at Cheriton 
 had never once met her there ! 
 
 He was not satisfied to submit to this total failure of his mission 
 without one further eftbrt. He went from Hercules Buildings to 
 Wedgewood Street, and saw his admirable Sarah Newton, into 
 whose attentive ear he poured the story of Mercy's obstinacJ^ 
 
 " She is a strange girl — a girl who could live in closest friendship 
 with me all this time, and never tell me the secret of her past life," 
 said Miss Newton thoughtfully. " Why she should be so perverse
 
 The Day will come. 289 
 
 in her refusal of Lord Cheriton's oli'cr I can't imagine — but you 
 luay depend she has a reason." 
 
 Theodore escorted Lady Cheriton back to Dorsetshire by the 
 afternoon train, but they i)arted company at Wareham Station, he 
 going on to Dorchester, Avhere his sisters received him ■n'ith some 
 wonderment at his restlessness. 
 
 " It is rather a farce for you and Mr. Ramsay to make engage- 
 ments whidi you never intend to keep," said Sophia peevishly ; 
 and it was thereupon expounded to him that he and his friend had 
 pledged themselves to be present at a certain tenuis party upon the 
 previous afternoon. 
 
 " I'm very sorry we both forgot all about it," he apologized, " but 
 I don't suppose we were missed." 
 
 '' I don't suppose you would have been," answered his sister 
 sulkih', " if there had been half a dozen decent young men at the 
 party ; but as Harrington preferred the office to our society or our 
 friends, and as there were only three curates and one banker's 
 clerk at Mrs. ITazledcan's, you and Mr. Eamsay would at least have 
 been someth'wcfr 
 
 " It is hardly worth any man's while to endure an afternoon's 
 boredom — to fetch and cany teacups in a sweltering sun, and play 
 tennis upon an unlcvel la^vn, if he is only to coimt for something, 
 a mere make-weight." 
 
 " Oh, you young men give yoiu'selves such abominable airs now- 
 adays," retorted Sophy, with a manner which implied that tlie 
 young men of former generations had been modesty incarnate. 
 "As for your friend, he has made a mere convenience of this 
 house." 
 
 "As how, Sophy?" 
 
 " I don't think the fact requires ex])lanation. First he goes to 
 the Priory, and then to Clieriton, and then he is off to London, and 
 then he is to be back on Saturday in order to lunch at the Priory on 
 Sunday. If that is not making an hotel of your father's house I 
 don't know what is." 
 
 " Perliaps I have been too unceremonious, forgetting that I no 
 longer live here, that it behoves me now. perhaps, to act in all things 
 as a visitor. It was I who made the engagements, Sophy. Yuu 
 must not be angry with Pamsay." 
 
 _" I am not angry. It cannot matter to me how Mr. Ramsay treats 
 this house. No doubt he thinks himself a great deal too clever for 
 our society, althougli we arc not quite so feather-headed as most 
 girls. He finds metal more attractive at the Priory." 
 
 '' What do you mean, Sojihy ? " 
 
 " That he is over head and eai-s in love with Juanita. It does not 
 need a very penetrating person to discover that." 
 
 u
 
 290 The Day will come. 
 
 " What nonsense ! Why, he has not seen her above three times." 
 " Quite enough for a young man of his vehement character." 
 " What can have put such an idea into your head ? " 
 " His way of talking about her — the expression of his face when 
 he pronounces her name — the questions he asked me about her, 
 showing the keenest interest in even the silhest details. What kind 
 of a girl was she before she married, and how long had she known 
 Sir Godfrey before they were engaged, and had their love been a 
 grand passion full of romance and poetry, or only a humdnim kind 
 of affection encouraged by their mutual relations ? Idiotic questions 
 of that kind could only be asked by a man who was in love. And 
 then how eagerly he snapped at your suggestion that he should go 
 with you to the Priory next Sunday." 
 
 " It may be as you think," Theodore answered gi-avely. " I know 
 his fervid temperament about most things ; but I did not think he 
 was the kind of man to fall in love — upon such very slight pro- 
 vocation." 
 
 "She may have given more encouragement than you suppose," 
 said Sophy. " He is the kind of man that a frivolous, half-educated 
 girl would think attractive. ^S/^e would never find out the want of 
 depth under that arrogant, self-assured manner. However, she lias 
 asked Janet and me for next Sunday, and I shall soon see how the 
 land lies. You were always unobservant." 
 
 Theodore did not try to \'indicate his character as an observer, 
 albeit he knew no look or tone of his cousin's was likety to escape 
 him ; that even sharp-eyed malevolence could never watch her more 
 closely than love would watch out of his eyes. 
 
 Yes ; it was not unlikeh^ that Cuthbert admired her too much for 
 his own peace. He recalled words which had passed imnoticed 
 when they were together. Poor Cuthbert ! He felt he had done 
 wrong in exjiosing his friend to such an ordeal. Who could know 
 her and not love her ?
 
 The Day will come. 291 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 " For life must life, and blood must blood repay." 
 
 CuTHBERT Ramsay arrivcrl at Dorchester on Saturday just in time 
 to dross for dinner, and he contrived to make liimself soap^rceal)]e to 
 all the family in the coin-so of that friendly meal, tliat Janet and 
 Sophia fort^ave him for his hase desertion, and Harriiitcton forgave 
 him for being a great deal cleverer and happier than himself. lie 
 was in veiy high spirits — had been working hard in London — 
 attending lectures — witnessing operations — and looking after thoso 
 gratis patients in the slums wlio were his chief delight. 
 
 " I love to find ont what life means below the surface," he said, 
 " One only gets at realities when one comes face to face with the 
 struggle for existence. The children — the poor pinched atomies 
 whom one looks at with a shudder, remembering that tliey are the 
 men and women of the future ! Tliat is tlie terrible point — to 
 think that in those little half-starved faces one sees the men who 
 are to meet in Trafalgar Square and uimiake our smooth, easy 
 world — to think that in those wizened moisels of humanity we have 
 all the elements of discord and destruction in the days to come. 
 Thai is the appalling thought." 
 
 " It is a thought that should teach us oin* duty to them," said Janet. 
 
 " What do you take that duty to be ? " 
 
 " To educate them ! " 
 
 " Educate— -yes — educate them in the ways of health and cleanli- 
 ness — after we have fed them. That I take to be our primary duty 
 to the children as much as to the lower animals. You know the 
 old adage. Miss Dalbrook, mens snna in corpore sano. Did you ever 
 hear of a sound and healthy mind in an unsound scrofulous body? So 
 long as we leave the little children to semi-starvation, we are sacri- 
 ficing to the Demon Scrofula, which is to our enlightened age what 
 the Demon Leprosy was to those darker ages whose ignorance wo 
 prate about." 
 
 "I am not in favour of pauperizing the working classes," said 
 Harrington. 
 
 " That idea of pauperism is a bugbear and a stumbling-block in 
 the path of benevolence. Do you pauperize an agricultural labourer
 
 292 The Day will come. 
 
 ■whose utmost wages are fifteen shillings a week if you provide his 
 children with two good meals of fresh meat in the seven days, and 
 so grow better bone and sinew than can be produced upon bread 
 and dripping, or bread and treacle ? Do you pauperize a man by 
 giving him a free supply of pure water, and larger, airier rooms than 
 his scanty wages will buy for him ? To subsidize is not to pauperize, 
 Mr. Dalbrook; and if England is to hold together upon the old lines 
 during the coming centuries, the well-to-do will have to help the 
 poor upon a stronger and wider basis than that on which they have 
 helped them in the past, and a good deal of the spare cash that is 
 now being spent on fine clothes and dinner-parties will have to be 
 spent upon feeding and housing the million." 
 
 The two young men drove over to Milbrook early on Sunday 
 morning, in order to attend morning service at the picturesque old 
 church. ]\Iatthew Dalbrook and his daughters were to join them at 
 the Priory in time for luncheon, which was to be a regular family 
 party. 
 
 Cuthbert was silent for the greater part of the drive, and Theo- 
 dore was thoughtfully observant of him. Yes, there might be 
 something in Sophy's idea. More than once during that long drive 
 the young man's face brightened with a sudden smile, a smile of 
 ineffable happiness, as of a dreaming lover who sees the gates of his 
 earthly paradise opening, sees his mistress coming to meet him on 
 the threshold. Theodore's heart sank at the thought that Sophia 
 had hit upon the truth. Anyway there was hopelessness in the 
 idea. If it were to be Theodore's blessed fate to see the one love 
 of his life victorious, soon or late, after long patience and devoted 
 sacrifice, Cuthbert must taste the bitterness of having loved in vain. 
 But he would hardly be worthy of pity, perhaps, seeing tliat he had 
 known from the first how the land lay, seeing that honour forbade 
 his falling in love with Juanita. 
 
 But will honour make a man blind to beauty, deaf to the music 
 of a voice, irapennous to the subtle charms of all that is purest, 
 best, and loveliest in womanhood ? Theodore began to think that 
 he had done wrong in bringuig his friend within the influence of 
 irresistible charms. 
 
 " I was a fool to think that he could help himself; I was a worse 
 fool to suppose that she wiU ever care for me — the humdrum cousin 
 whom she has known all her life — the countrj^ solicitor whose image 
 she has always associated with leases and bills of dilapidation — o. 
 little more than a bailifl", and a little less than a gentleman." 
 
 Tliey consigned the dog-cart to the village ostler, who was ex- 
 piatmg the jovial self-indulgence of Saturday night in the penitential 
 drowsiness of Sunday morning, and they were in their places in the 
 grey old church when Lady Carmichael came to the chancel pew. 
 Theodore's watchful eyes followed her from her entrance in a halo
 
 The Day will co7nc. 293 
 
 of sunshine, which was suddenly obscured as the curtain di'opped 
 behind her, to the moment wlien she bowed her head in prayer. 
 He saw her face brighten as she passed the pew where lie and his 
 friend were sitting, and he told himself that it was Cuthbcrt's 
 presence which conjiu-cd up that happier light in her soft, dark eyes. 
 On the walk from the church to the Priory it was with Cuthbcrt she 
 talked — Cuthbcrt the irrepressible, who had so much to say that he 
 must needs lind listeners. It was Cuthbcrt who sat next her at 
 luncheon, and who engrossed her attention throughout the meal. 
 It was Cuthbcrt who went through the hot-houses, fern-houses, and 
 greenhouses with her after luncheon, and gave her practical lessons 
 in botany and entomology as they went along, and who promised 
 her some Austrian frogs. The day was one long triumph for Cuth- 
 bcrt Ramsay, and he gave himself up to the intoxication of the hour 
 as a drunkard surrenders to strong drink, unconditionally, without 
 thought of the morrow. 
 
 "What do you think of your friend's infatuation nowf'' asked 
 Janet, with her most biting accent, as she and Theodore followed in 
 the horticultural procession, she carefully picking up lier gown at 
 every one of those treacherous puddles which are to be found in the 
 best-regulated hot-houses. "Plave you any doubt in your mind 
 now?" 
 
 " No. I have no doubt." 
 
 The carriages were at the door half an hour afterwards, and all 
 through the homeward drive Cuthbert was silent as the grave. 
 Only as they came into Dorchester did he find speech to say, — 
 
 " I shall have to go back to town early to-morrow morning, 
 Theodore ! " 
 
 " So soon. What an unquiet spirit you are ! You'll come back 
 to us next Friday or Saturday, I hope." 
 
 " J. don't know. I'll try ; but I'm rather afraid I can't." 
 
 Theodore did not press the point, and his friend kept his word, 
 and left by the first train on Monday morning, after liaving been 
 intolerably stupid on Sunday evening, according to the sisters, who 
 were disposed to think themselves especially ill-used by Mr. Ramsay's 
 obvious infatuation for Lady Carmichacl. 
 
 "I was beginning to respect Juanita for her conduct in the 
 difficult position of a young widow," said Sophia ; " but I begin to 
 fear that she is no better than the rest of them, and that her leaving 
 oft' crape upon her last gowns is a sign that she means to marry 
 again before the second year of her widowhood is over." 
 
 Lady Cheriton's roses were in danger from a failure of the water 
 in that old-fashioned well which had hitherto supplied tiie flower- 
 gardens. There had been an unusually long spell of dry weather 
 since the beginning of July, and the gardeners were in despair.
 
 294 '^^^^ ^'^y "^^^^ come. 
 
 "When Theodore went over to the Chase with his portmanteau, in 
 accordance with an engagement made the previous week, he found 
 that Lord Cheriton had that morning given an order for the sinking 
 of the old well from twenty to thirty feet deeper. 
 
 " There is plenty of water, my lord," said the head gardener, " if 
 we only go deep enough for it." 
 
 " Very well, Mackenzie, go as deep as you like, so long as you 
 don't go below the water-bearing strata. You had better put on 
 plenty of hands. Her ladyship is uneasy about her roses, seeing 
 how you have been stinting them lately." 
 
 " It has been hard work, my lord, to do our duty by the roses, 
 and keep the la^\^ls in decent order. The ground would be as hard 
 as iron if we didn't use a good deal of water for the grass." 
 
 " Get to work, Mackenzie, and don't waste time in talking 
 about it. Drive over to Gadby's, and tell him to send some good 
 men." 
 
 This conversation took place upon the terrace directly after 
 Theodore's arrival ; and when the gardener had gone off to the 
 stables to get the dog-cart-of-all-work. Lord Cheriton and his cousin 
 walked in the direction of the well. 
 
 The well was in one of the kitchen-gardens, quite the oldest bit 
 of garden ground at Cheriton, a square garden of about two acres, 
 shut in with high crumbling old red-biick walls, upon which grew 
 blue gages and William pears, egg-plums and apricots, attaining 
 more or less to perfection as the aspect favoured them. It was a 
 pleasant garden to dream in upon a summer afternoon, for there was 
 an air of superabundant growth that was almost tropical in the 
 century-old espaliers, albeit they had long ceased to produce 
 meritorious fruit, and in the sprawling leaves and yellow blossoms 
 of the vegetable marrows which seemed to be grown for no purpose 
 except to produce champion gourds or pumpkins, to be ultimately 
 hung up as ornaments in the gardener's cottage, or to rot in a 
 corner of the greenhouse. There is always one old greenhouse in 
 such a garden given over to preserving spiders and accumulating 
 rubbish. 
 
 In the middle of a vegetable marrow warren stood the weU — a 
 well of eight feet in diameter, surrounded by a low brick wall, of 
 that same bright red brick which crumbled behind the blue gages 
 and the egg-plums, and which the birds pecked and perforated, for 
 very wantonness. It was a well of the old pattern, with a ponderous 
 wooden roher, and an iron spindle, which had wound up water from 
 those same cool depths for over a hmrdred years. It had run dry 
 often, m the time of the Strangways, that good old well ; but no 
 Strangway had ever thought of improving anything upon the estate ; 
 BO in seasons of drought the flowers had drooped and the turf had 
 withered imheeded by the proprietorial eye.
 
 The Day will come. 295 
 
 Mr. Ga(ll)j''s mon appeared after their dinner, and got seriously 
 to work by about throo o'clock, at which hour Theodore and Lady 
 Cheriton were strolling in the rose garden, while the master of the 
 house sat in the library reading. Theodore had observed a marked 
 change in his cousin since his last visit to the Chase. There was a 
 worried look in Lord Cheriton's face which had not been there even 
 after the shock of the murder, a look of nervous apprehension which 
 showed itself from time to time in a countenance wdiere firmness of 
 character and an absolute fearlessness had been hitherto the 
 strongest characteristics. 
 
 He had not yet told his lordship the result of his interview with 
 ]\Icrcy Porter. lie had waited till an opportunity for quiet, con- 
 iiilential talk should come about naturallj', and that opportunity now 
 occurred. Lady Cheriton left him after half an hour's review of the 
 roses, and he went through the open window into the library where 
 Lord Cheriton sat in his large arm-chair at his own particular table, 
 reading the political summing-up in the last Quarterly. 
 
 " Shall I be disturbing j'ou if I sit liere V " asked Theodore, taking 
 a volume from the table where the newest books were always to be 
 found. 
 
 *' On the contrary, I shall bo very glad of a little conversation. 
 I have been struggUng through an analysis of last session, wliich is 
 all weariness and vexation of ^m•\\.. The session was dull, the 
 commentary is duller. I am anxious to know how you got on with 
 Mrs. Porter's daughter." 
 
 " Very badly, I regret to say, from our point of view. She rejects 
 your generous offer. Slio prefers her present hard life, Avith its 
 independence. She will accept no obligation from any one." 
 
 "Humph! She must be a curious young woman," said Lord 
 Cheriton, with a vexed air. " I should have liked very much to 
 have made her life bright and easy, if she would have let me — for 
 her father's sake. On what ground did she refuse my offer? " 
 
 " On the gi'ound of preferring to work for her living, and to live a 
 hard life. She has taken that upon herself, I believe, as an expia- 
 tion for her past errors, although she did not say that in so many 
 words. She is wonderfidly firm. I never saw such a resolute 
 temper in so young — and so gentle-mannered — a woman." 
 
 "You tried to overcome her objections, you represented to her 
 how easy and ]>leasant her life might be in some picturesque village 
 — among the hills and lakes, or by the sea — and how she might Hve 
 among people who would know nothing of her past historj', who 
 would grow to be fond of her for her own sake ? " 
 
 '• I m-ged all this upon her. I am as anxious as you are that she 
 sliould leave that dreary attic — that monotonous labour — but nothing 
 I could say was of the least use. She was resolute — she would 
 accept nothing from you."
 
 296 The Day will come. 
 
 " From me — ah, that is it ! " cried Lord Cheriton, suddenly. 
 " Had the offer come from any one else she might have been less 
 stubborn. But from me she will take nothing — aot a loaf of bread 
 if she were starving. That is the explanation of her hardness — it 
 is to me she is adamant. Tell me the truth, Theodore. Don't 
 spare my feelings. This girl hates me, I suppose ! " 
 
 " I fear she has a deeply-rooted prejudice against you. She may 
 — most unjustly — blame you for her misery, because Colonel 
 Tremayne was j^our friend." 
 
 " Yes, that is her feeling, no doubt ; it is on that account she 
 hates me. Perhaps she is justified in her anger. I ought to have 
 shot that scoundrel. Had we both lived fifty years sooner I suppose 
 I should have shot him." 
 
 " I don't think you could have been called upon to do that even 
 by the old code of honour. Mercy was not allied to you " 
 
 " No ; but she dwelt at my gates. She was under my protection 
 — she had no other man living to defend her. I ought to have 
 punished her seducer — it was incumbent on me to do it. Because 
 there was no one else," he added slowly, after a long pause. 
 
 " It may be on that account she rejects your generous offer. I 
 cannot pretend to interpret her feelings ; but there was certainly 
 some strong personal prejudice on her part. She was deeply 
 moved. Slie burst into a passion of sobs. ' Not from him,' she 
 cried, ' I will accept nothing from him. Of all the men upon this 
 earth he shall be the last to help me ! ' " 
 
 Lord Cheriton flung the Quarterly from him with a passionate 
 gesture, as he started to his feet and began to walk up and down 
 the long clear space m front of the windows. 
 
 " Theodore," he said suddenly, "you have not yet come face to 
 face with all the problems of life. Perhaps you have not yet found 
 out how hard it is to help people. I would have given much to be 
 able to help that girl — to assure her an easy and reputable existence 
 — the refinements of life amidst pleasant surroundings. What 
 would it matter to me whether I allowed her one hundred or two 
 hundred a year? All I desire is that her life should be happy. 
 And of deliberate malice — of sheer perversity' — she rejects my help, 
 she dooms herself to the seamstress' slavery, and to a garret in 
 Lambeth. My God, to think that with all the will and all tlie 
 power to help her, I cannot come between her and that sordid 
 misery. It is hard, Tlieodore, it is very hard upon a man like me. 
 There is nothing I hold of this world's goods that I have not worked 
 for honestly ; and when I want to do good for others with wliat I 
 have won, I am barred by their folly. It is enough to make me 
 mad." 
 
 Never before had Theodore seen this self-abandonment in his 
 stately cousin, the man who bore in every tone and every gesture
 
 The Day will come. 297 
 
 tho impress of his acknowledged ascendency over liis fellow-men. 
 To sec such a man as this so completely unhinged by a woman's 
 perversity was a new thing to Theodore Dalbrouk; and his heart 
 went out to his kinsman as it had never done before. 
 
 " My dear Chcriton, you have done all that was in your power to 
 do for that mistaken young woman," he said, holding out his hand, 
 which the elder man grasped warmly. '' Whatever wrong you may 
 have unwittingly brought about by the presence of a i)lackguard 
 under your roof, you have done your best to atone for that wrong. 
 The most sensitive, the most punctilious of men coidd do no more." 
 
 " I thank you, Theodore, for your sympathy. Yes, I have done 
 my best for her — you will bear witness to that." 
 
 " A father could scarcely do more for an erring daughter. I only 
 wish her mother felt half as kindly towards her as you, upon whom 
 her claim is so slight." 
 
 " No, no ; it is a substantial claim. She is fatherless, and her 
 mother is dependent upon me. I stand, as it were, in loco iKirentis. 
 Well, we will say no more about her ; she must go her own 
 way. Only, if ever you find an opportunity of helping her — for 
 me, vou will do me a gi'cat favom* by taking prompt advantage 
 of it." 
 
 "I shall gladly do so. I am interested in her for her own sake, 
 as well as for yours." 
 
 " You are a good fellow, Theodore, and I know you wish us 
 well. I Avill go a step further than that and say I know that I can 
 trust you." 
 
 This was said with an earnestness which impressed Theodore. 
 It seemed to him almost as if his kinsman foresaw that inevitable 
 hour in which there must bo perfect unreserve between them — in 
 which the younger man would have to say to his senior and 
 superior in rank, '' I know the secret of your earlier years. I know 
 the dark clouil that has overshadowed your life." 
 
 They talked for a little while of indifferent subjects, and then Lord 
 Cheriton proposed a stroll in the direction of the well. 
 
 " I should like to see whether those fellows have begim work," he 
 said. 
 
 The old garden looked its sleepiest in the westering sunlight, but 
 there was business going on there nevertheless, and a great heap of 
 damp clay had been Hung out by the side of the low brick parapet. 
 Two men were at work below, and there were two men above, 
 while a fifth, a foreman and leading light, looked on and gave 
 directions. 
 
 " Glad to see you've tackled the job. Carter," said Lord Cheriton. 
 
 "Yes, my lord, we've got on to it pretty well. Could I liavo a 
 word with your lordship? " 
 
 "Certainly, as many words as you like. How mysterious you
 
 298 The Day tvill come. 
 
 look, Carter! There is notliing in your communication that Mr. 
 Dalbrook is not to hear, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No, my lord, Mr. Dall^rook don't matter ; but I thought you 
 wouldn't care for everybody to know, lest it should get round to her 
 ladyship, and give her a scare." 
 
 " What are you driving at, Carter, with your ladyships and your 
 scares ? Have you seen a ghost at the bottom of the well ? " 
 
 " No, my lord, but the men found this in the surfoco clay, 
 and I thought it might have some bearing upon — last year — the 
 murder." 
 
 He dropped out his words hesitatingly, as if he hardly dared 
 approach that ghastly theme, and then took something out of his 
 jacket pocket, and handed it to Lord Cheriton. 
 
 It was a Colt's revolver, by no means of the newest make, rusted 
 by lying long under water. The foreman had amused his leisure 
 since the discovery in trying to rub off the rust with a large cotton 
 handkerchief, assisted bj^ his corduroy coat-sleeve, and had suc- 
 ceeded in polishing a small silver plate upon the butt of the pistol so 
 as to make the initials " T. D." engraved upon it easily decipher- 
 able. 
 
 There was not much in the discovery perhaps ; but by the ghastly 
 change in Lord Cheriton's face Theodore saw that to him at least it 
 appeared of fatal significance. His hand shook as it held the pistol, 
 his eyes had a look of absolute horror as they scrutinized it ; and 
 notliing could be more obvious than the effort with which he con- 
 trolled his agitation, and looked from the builder's foreman to 
 Theodore with an assumption of tranquillity. 
 
 " It may mean much, or nothing. Carter," he said, putting the 
 pistol in his coat pocket. " It was quite right of you to bring the 
 matter before me." 
 
 " I thought the initials on the pistol might lead to something being 
 found out, my lord," said the foreman. " I don't think there can be 
 much doubt the murderer chucked it in there." 
 
 "Don't you? I have gone into the subject of circumstantial 
 evidence a little deeper than you have, Carter; it was my trade, 
 don't you know, just as laying bricks was yours, and I can tell you 
 that the odds are ten to one against this pistol having belonged to 
 the murderer. Do you think it likely that the man who shot Sir 
 Godfrey Carmichael would have gone out of his way to throw his 
 pistol down that particular well ? " 
 
 " I don't know about that, my lord ; it would have been a safe 
 hiding-place, if the water hadn't given out — and it would be in his 
 way if he were making for the West Gate. He could hardly have 
 taken a shorter cut than across this garden." 
 
 "Perhaps not — if both the garden doors were open that 
 nidit,"
 
 The Day zvill come. 299 
 
 •' I don't tliink anybody ever saw them filint, my lord, night or 
 day," answered Carter, with respectful persistency. 
 
 Theodore knew by the very look of the clumsy wooden doors, 
 pushed back against the old wall, with rusty hinges, and with tho 
 tendrils of vine or plum tree gi'owing over their edges, that the 
 man was right. The path across this garden and tho next garden 
 led in a direct line to the West Lodge, and it was this way by which 
 tlie servants went on most of their errands to the village. 
 
 The one idea suggested by the choice of that hiding-place was 
 that the person who threw away that pistol was familiar with tho 
 premises. The well was about thirty feet away from the path, 
 and screened by the old espaliers. There was a gap in the 
 espaliers where an ancient and cankered apple tree had been t;iken 
 out, aiid it was by this opening that the gardeners generally went to 
 draw water. They had trodden a hard foot-track in their going and 
 coming. 
 
 It was always possible that a stranger exploring the grounds 
 furtively and in haste might have been sharp enough to hit upon 
 the well as a safe and handy hiding-place. It would, of course, 
 have been vital to the murderer to get rid of his weapon as soon as 
 possible after the deed was done, lest he should be taken red-handed 
 and with that piece of evidence upon him. 
 
 Theodore saw in that pistol with the initials " T. D.," confirmatory 
 evidence against the husband of Mrs. Danvers, the one person in 
 the world who had ground for an undying hatred of Lord Cheriton 
 and his race. He made no remark upon the discovery of the 
 weapon, fearing to say too much ; and he waited quietly to see how 
 his kinsman would act in the matter. That ghastly change in Lord 
 Cheriton's countenance as he examined the pistol, suggested that 
 he had come to the same conclusion as Theodore. Kemorse and 
 horror could hardly have been more plainly expressed by tlie human 
 countenance ; and what remorse could be more terrible than that 
 of the man who saw tlie sin of his youth visited upon his innocent 
 daughter? 
 
 "Shall you take any steps with reference to this discovery?" 
 asked Theodore, when they had gone half-way back to the house in 
 absolute silence. 
 
 " What steps can I take, do you think ? Send for another London 
 detective — or for the same man again — and give him this pistol? 
 To what end ? lie would be no nearer finding the murderer because 
 of the finding of the pistol." 
 
 " The initials might lead to identification." 
 
 " Did you never hear of such a tiling as a second-hand pistol ? 
 And do you think an assassin would make use of a pistol with his 
 own initials upon it to commit murder ? I do not." 
 
 " Not the professional assassin. But wc are all agreed that this
 
 300 The Day will come. 
 
 murder was an act of vengeance — for some reason at present un- 
 known — and tlio semi-lunatic who would commit murder for such a 
 motive would not be likely to do his work very neatly. His brain 
 would be fevered by passion or alcohol, in all probability, and he 
 would go to work blindly." 
 
 "That is no more than a theory, and my experience has shown 
 me that such theories are generally falsified by fact. The murder 
 was so far neatly done that the murderer got clear off, in spite of a 
 most rigorous search. I doubt if the pistol, with initials which may 
 belong to anybody in the world, will lielp us to track him after 
 more than a year." 
 
 " Then you mean to do nothing in the matter ? " 
 
 " I think not. I cannot see my way to doing anything at present ; 
 but if you like to take the pistol to Scotland Yard and see what 
 impression it makes upon the experts there " 
 
 " I should much like to do so. I cannot ignore the fact that so 
 long as Sir Godfrey's murderer remains undiscovered, tliere is a 
 possibility of peril for you and for Juanita, and for Juanita's child. 
 Who can tell whether that deadly hatred is appeased — whether the 
 man who killed yom- daughter's husband is not on the watch to kill 
 you or your daughter — when he sees his opportunity ? " 
 
 " As for myself, I must take my chance. I would to God that 
 the ball had struck me instead of my son-in-law. It would have 
 been better — a Hghter chastisement. I have lived my life. I have 
 done all I ever hoped to do in this world. A few years, more or 
 less, could matter very little to me. "And yet, life is sweet, Theodore, 
 life is sweet ! However heavily we are handicapped, we most of us 
 would choose to finish our race." 
 
 There was infinite melancholy in his tone, the melanchol}' of a 
 man who sees the shadows of a great despair darkening round him, 
 the melancholy of a man who gives up the contest of life, and feels 
 that he is beaten. 
 
 "Do not say anything to my wife about this business," he said ; 
 " let her be happy as long as she can. She has not forgotten last 
 summer, but she is beginning to be something like what she was 
 before that blow fell upon us. The advent of Juanita's baby has 
 woi'ked wonders. There is something to look forward to in that 
 child's existence. Life is no longer a cul-de-sac." 
 
 " There is one thing to be done," said Theodore, after an interval 
 of silence. " The bullet was kept, of course." 
 
 "Yes, it is in the possession of the pohce, I believe." 
 
 "Would it not be well to ascertain if it fits the pistol you have 
 in your pocket ? " 
 
 " Yes. I wiU go to the station to-morrow and look into that." 
 
 There was no more said about the pistol that evening. Tlieodore 
 felt that it would be cruelty to dwell upon the subject, seeing that
 
 The Day will ctmie. 301 
 
 his kinsman hail boon deeply alTocted by the dLscovcry, and ihat he 
 was oppressed by a gloom which he strove in vain to shake otV. 
 
 It was evident to Theodore that those initials on the pistol had a 
 terrible meaning for Lord Cheriton, that he recognized in those 
 initials the evidence of an injured husband's vengeance, a hatred 
 which had been undiminished by the lapse of years. 
 
 He told himself that the tardiness of that revenge might ho 
 accounted for by various contingencies, any one of which would 
 lessen the improbability of that long interval between the wrong 
 done and the retribution exacted. It might be that the murderer 
 had been an exile in a distant world. It might be that he had been 
 a criminal fretting himself against the bars of a felon's prison, 
 nursing his anger in the dull, dead days of penal servitude. Such 
 things have been. 
 
 It was clear to Theodore Dalbrook that in those initials upon the 
 Colt's revolver lay the clue to the murderer, and that Lord Cheriton 
 shrank with horror from the revelation which those two letters 
 might bring about. Yet, whatever e\'il might come upon the 
 master of Cheriton out of the secret past, it was vital that the 
 murderer should be found, lest his second crime should be more 
 hideous than his first; and Theodore was resolved that he would 
 spare no eflbrt in the endeavour to find him, living or dead, 
 
 " Cod grant that I may lind a grave rather than the living man," 
 he thought, " for Chcriton's sake. God grant that he may be spared 
 the humiliation of having his story told to all the world." 
 
 He went into Cheriton village early upon the following afternoon, 
 and dro])ped in upon the doctor, an old inhabitant, whose fatlicrand 
 gi-andfatlier before him had prescribed for all the parish, rich and 
 poor. ]\Ir. Dolby, ^Jrt?' excellence, Dr. Dolby, was a bachelor, a snare, 
 sharp-visagcd man of about forty, social and expansive, a Keen 
 sportsman, and a good billiard player, a man whose lines had been 
 set in pleasant places, fur he had inherited a roomy old cottage, 
 with capacious stabling, and twenty acres of the fattest meadow- 
 land in Cheriton parish, and he led exactly that kind of life which 
 his soul loved. It would have been no gain to such a man to have 
 changed places with Baron Rothschild or Lord Salisbury. Ho 
 would have been in all that constitutes liuman happiness a loser by 
 such an exchange. So cheery a person was naturally popular in a 
 nari'ow world like Cheriton, and Mr. Dolby was a general favourite, 
 a favom-ite in polite society, and in the billiard-room at the Ciicriton 
 Arms, which, in default of a club, served as the afternoon and 
 evening rendezvous for lawyer, doctor, and the tenant-fiirmcrs of a 
 gentlemanly class — the smock-frock farmers and tradespeople liaving 
 their own particular meeting place at the Old House at Home, a 
 public-hbuse at the other end of tiie village. Theodore had knoNNH 
 Mr. Dolliy from his childhood, and the medical adviser of Cheritou
 
 302 The Day luill come. 
 
 was an occasional dropper-in at the luncheon table in Cornhill, when 
 business transactions with his tailor or his banker took him to the 
 county town. There was nothing unusual, therefore, in Theodore's 
 afternoon call at Dovecotes, a somewhat picturesque name which 
 had been given to the doctor's domicile by his predecessor, who 
 had devoted his later years to an ardent cultivation of Barbs and 
 Jacobins and other aristocratic birds, and who had covered a 
 quarter of an acre of garden gi'ound with pigeon-houses of various 
 construction. 
 
 Theodore found Mr. Dolby smoking his afternoon pipe in the 
 seclusion of his surgery. He had made a long morning round, had 
 driven something between twenty and thirty miles, and considered 
 himself entitled to what he called his otium cum whisky and water, 
 which refreshment stood on a small table at his elbow while he 
 lolled in his capacious easy chair. 
 
 He welcomed his visitor with effusion, and insisted on calling for 
 another syphon, and haAdng another little table arranged at the 
 elbow of the other easy chair. 
 
 "Make yourself comfortable, old chap, and let us have a 
 jaw," he said. "I haven't seen you for ages. Are you at the 
 Chase?" 
 
 They talked of the usual village topics, glanced at the great world 
 of politics, speculated npon the prospects of the shooting season, and 
 then Theodore approached the real business of his visit. 
 
 " There is a fellow I am interested in from a business point of 
 view," he began, " who has been hanging about this place, off and 
 on, for the last five and twenty years, I believe, though I have 
 never happened to meet him. He is a drinking man, and altogether 
 a bad lot ; but it is my business to hunt him down." 
 
 " On account of some property, I suppose ? " 
 
 '• Yes, on account of some property. Now, I know what an 
 observer you are, Dolby, and what a wonderful memory you 
 have " 
 
 "I haven't wasted it up in London," interjected Dolby. "A 
 week in Oxford Street and the Strand would take ten years off my 
 memory. It's pretty clear at present, thank God. WeU, now, 
 what about this fellow, what kind of a fellow is he — a gentleman or 
 a cad?" 
 
 " He was once a gentleman, but he may have tumbled pretty low 
 by this time. He was gomg down hill at a good pace five and 
 twenty years ago." 
 
 "Egad, then he must be at the bottom of the hill, I take it. 
 What is he like — fat or lean, dark or fair, short or tall? " 
 
 " A tall man, fair complexion, a man who has once been handsome, 
 a showy-looking man," answered Theodore, quoting the house- 
 agent.
 
 The Day luill come. 303 
 
 " That will do. Yes, just such a man as that was at the Arms 
 one night — six — eight — upon my word I believo it must have been 
 ten years ago. A man who put on a good deal of side, tliough his 
 clothes were no end seedy — ragged edges to his trousers, don't you 
 know — and though his hand shook like an aspen leaf. I played a 
 fifty game with him, and I should say, tliougli I beat him easy, that 
 he had once been a fine player. Ho was in wi'ctched form, poor 
 creature, but " 
 
 " Ten years ago, do you really think it was as long ago you saw 
 him ? " 
 
 " I know it was. It would be in seventy-four, that was the year 
 Potter was returned for Screwraouth. I remember wo were all 
 talking of the election the night that fellow was there. Yes, I 
 remember him perfectly ; a tall, fair man, a wreck, but with tho 
 traces of former good looks. I fancy he must have been a soldier. 
 He sle[)t at the Arms that night, and I met him rather early next 
 morning, before nine o'clock, coming away from the Chase — met 
 liim within ten yards of the West Lodge." 
 
 " Did ho talk about Lord Chcriton?'" 
 
 "A good deal — talked rather wild, too — and would have black- 
 guarded your cousin if we hadn't shut him up pretty sharply. He 
 pretended to have been intimate with Jiim before he made his way 
 at the Bar, and he talked in the venomous way a man who has been 
 a failure very often does talk about a man who has been a success. 
 It's only human nature, I suppose. There's a spice of venom ia 
 human nature." 
 
 " Have you never seen this man at Cheritou since that occasion 
 — never within the last ten years ? " 
 
 "Never, and I should be inclined, looking at the gentleman from 
 a ])rofessional pohit of view, to believe that he must have been 
 under the turf for a considerable portion of that period. I don't 
 think there could have been three years' life in the man I played 
 billiards with that evening. Hard lines for him, poor beggar, if 
 tliero was property coming to him. He looked as if he wanted it 
 bad enough." 
 
 " What had he been doing at the Chase, do you suppose ? " 
 
 " I haven't the least idea. I was driving in my cart when I 
 passed him. I looked back and watchorl liim for two or three 
 minutes. Ho was walking very slowly, and with a langin'd air, like 
 a man who was not used to walking. Ten years — no, Tliondore — 
 I don't think it's possible such a shaky subject as that could have 
 lasted ten years. One certainly does see very miserable creatures 
 crawling on for years after they have been ticketed for tiio under- 
 taker — but this man — no — I don't think he could hdld out long 
 after that October morning. I fancy he was booked for a quick 
 passage."
 
 304 The Day will come. 
 
 " He may have pulled himself together, and turned over a new 
 leaf." 
 
 " Too old, and too far gone for that." 
 
 " Or what if he had done something bad and got himself shut up 
 for a few years ? " 
 
 "Penal servitude do you mean? Well, that might do some- 
 thing ! It's a very severe regimen for the habitual drunkard — 
 and it means kill or cure. In this case I should say decidedly 
 kill." 
 
 " But it might cure." 
 
 "I should think the chances of cure were as two in two hundred. 
 I won't say it would be impossible, not having examined the patient 
 — but so far as observation can teach a man anything, observation 
 taught me that the case was hopeless." 
 
 " And yet it is my belief that this man was at Cheriton some time 
 last year. You know everybody, and talk to everybody, my dear 
 Dolb}'. I wish you'd find out for me whether I am right? " 
 
 " I'll do my best," answered Mr. Dolby cheerfully, " If the man 
 has been seen by anybody in the village I ought to be able to hear 
 about him. Everybody was tremendously on the look-out last 
 year, after the murder, and no stranger could have escaped 
 observation." 
 
 " Perhaps not — but before the murder " 
 
 " Anybody who had been seen shortly before the murder would 
 have been remembered and talked about. You can have no idea of 
 the intense excitement that event caused among us. We seemed 
 to talk of nothing else, and to think of nothing else for months." 
 
 " And you suppose that if the man I want had been about — for a 
 few hours only, just long enough to come and go aAvay again on 
 that fatal night, he would have been remembered ? " 
 
 " I am sure of it. He would have inevitably been taken for the 
 murderer. Remember, we were all on the alert, ready to fix upon 
 the first suspicious-looking person our memory could suggest to us." 
 
 " Do you think Johnson would remember the man ? " 
 
 Johnson was the proprietor of the Cheriton Arms. 
 
 " ]My dear fellow, did you ever find Johnson's memory available 
 about any transaction six months old ? Johnson's memory is 
 steeped in beer, buried in flesh. Johnson is a perambulating barrel 
 of forgetfulness— a circumambulatory hogshead of stupidity. Ask 
 Johnson to tell you the Christian name of his grandmother, and I 
 would venture a new hat he would be maable to answer you. There 
 is nothing to be got out of mine host of the Cheriton Arms. Be 
 sure of that." 
 
 " I'm afraid you are right," said Theodore. 
 
 He felt as if he had come to a point at which there was no 
 thoroughfare. There was the pistol, with the initials '' T. D.," and
 
 The Day will come. 305 
 
 he had made up liis mind that the man for whom tliosc initials liad 
 been engi'aved was the man who f^ave his uanio as Danvers when ho 
 called upon the liousc-agent, the man whose wife had been known 
 for j'ears as Mrs. Danvers. He had made up his mind that this man 
 and no other had murdered (Jodfrcy Carmichael — that many years 
 alter the wife's death the husband liad returned from exile or 
 imprisonment, embittered so much the more, so much the more 
 vindictive, so nmch the more malipjnant for all that ho had suffered 
 in that interval, and had taken the first opportunity to attack a 
 hated household. That he would strike again if he should bo 
 allowed to live and be at large Theodore had no doubt. A second 
 murder, and a third nuu-der, seemed the natural secpience of the 
 first. He remembered the murders of the Jermys at Stanfield 
 Hall — the savage hatred which tried to slay four people, two of 
 whom were utterly unconnected with the wrong that called for 
 vengeance. In the face of such a story as that of the murderer 
 Rush, who could say that Theodore's a])i)rehension of an insatiable 
 malignity, wreaking itself in further bloodshed, was gi'oundless ? 
 
 He left Dovecotes disheartened, hardly knowing what his next 
 step was to be, and very hopeless of tracking a man who had so 
 contrived as to be unseen ujion his deadly errand. He must have 
 come and gone verily like a thief in the night, sheltered by darkness, 
 meeting no one ; and yet there was the evidence of the servants at 
 the inquest, who swore to having heard mysterious footsteps outside 
 the house late at night upon more than one occasion shortly before 
 the murder. If the murderer had been about upon several nights, 
 creeping round by the open windows of the reception rooms, 
 watching his opportiniity, what had ho done with himself in the 
 day? Where had he hidden liimself; how had ho evaded the 
 prying eyes of a village, which is all eyes, all ears for the unex- 
 plained stranger ?
 
 3o6 The Day will come. 
 
 CHAPTEK XXIX. 
 
 "When haughty expectations prostrate lie 
 And grandeur crouches like a guiltj' thing." 
 
 Theodore walked moodily along the lane leading to the West Gate, 
 brooding over discrepancies and difficulties in the case which ho 
 had set himself to unravel. As he drew near Mrs. Porter's cottage 
 he saw Lord Cheriton come out of the porch, unattended. He 
 came slowly down the steps to the gate, with his head bent, and 
 his shoulders stooping wearily, an attitude which was totally unhke 
 his usual erect carriage, an attitude which told distinctly of mental 
 trouble. 
 
 Theodore overtook him, and walked by liis side, at the risk of 
 being considered intrusive. He was very curious as to his kinsman's 
 motive for visiting Mrs. Porter, after yesterday's conversation about 
 Mercy. 
 
 " Have you been trying to bring about a reconciliation between 
 mother and daughter ? " he asked. 
 
 " No. I have told you that little good could result from bringing 
 those two obstinate spirits together. You have seen for yourself 
 what the daughter can be — how perverse, how cruel, what a 
 creature of prejudice and whim. The mother's nature is still 
 harder. What good could come of bringing such a daughter back 
 to such a mother ? No, it was with no hope of reconciliation that 
 I called upon Mrs. Porter. I have been thinking very seriously of 
 your friend Ramsay's suggestion of mental trouble. I regret that I 
 did not act upon the hint sooner, and get my friend Mainwaring to 
 see her, and advise upon the case. I shall certainly consult him 
 about her — but as he has a very important practice, and a large 
 establishment under his care, it may be very difficult for him to 
 come to Cheriton. I think, therefore, it might be well to send her 
 up to the neighbourhood of London — to some quiet northern suburb, 
 for instance, within half an hour's drive of Mainwaiing's asylum, 
 which is near Cheshunt ; then, if it should be deemed advisable to 
 place her under restraint for a time — ^though I cannot suppose that 
 likely — the business could be easily accomphshed. 
 
 " Your idea then would be " 
 
 "To take her up to London, with her servant, as soon as I have 
 found comfortable lodgings for her in a quiet neighbourhood. I have
 
 TJie Day tvill come. 307 
 
 proposed the journey to lier tliis afternoon, on the ground of. licr 
 being out of healtli and in need of special advice. I told her 
 that people had remarked uj)on her altered appearance, and that 
 I was anxious she should have the liest medical care. She did not 
 deny that she was ailing. I think, therefore, there will he very 
 little difficulty in getting her away when I am ready to remove her." 
 
 " What is your own impression as to her mental condition ? " 
 
 " I regret to say that my imjn-ession very much resembles that of 
 your friend. I see a great change in her since I last had any 
 conversation Avith her. Yes, I fear that there is something amiss, 
 and that it is no longer well for her to live in that cottage, with a 
 young girl for her only companion. It would be iar better for her 
 to be in a private asylum — where, hers being a very mild case, life 
 might be made easy and agreeable for her. I know my friend 
 Mainwaring to be a man of infinite benevolence, and that there 
 would be nothing wanting to lighten her burden." 
 
 He sighed heavilj'. There was a look in his face of imutterable 
 care, of a despondency which saw no issue, no ray of light far off in 
 the thickening gloom. Theodore thought ho looked aged by several 
 years since yesterday, as if the evidence of the pistol had struck him 
 to the heart. 
 
 " He knows now that it was his own sin that brought about this 
 evil," thought Theodore. 
 
 He could conceive the agony of the fothcr's heart, knowing that 
 for his own -wTong-doing his innocent daughter had been called upon 
 to make so terrible an expiation. He could penetrate into the dark 
 recesses of the sinner's mind, where remorse for that early error, 
 and for all the false stejis which it had necessitated, dominated 
 every other thought. Till yesterday James Dalbrook might have 
 supposed In's sin a thing of the past, atoned for and forgiven — its 
 evil consequences suilered in the past, the account ruled olf in the 
 book of late, and the acquittance given. To-day he knew that his 
 sin had cost him his daughter's happiness ; and over and above 
 tliat horror of the past there lay before him the hazard of some 
 still gi'eater horror in the future. Could anybody wonder that his 
 eyes were sunken and dull, as thoj^ never had been before within 
 Theodore's memory ? Could any! )ody wonder at the strained look 
 in the broad, open forehead, beneath which tho eyes looked out 
 wide apart under strongly-marked brows; or at the hard lines about 
 the mouth, which told of shaqjest mental pain ? 
 
 Late that evening, when Lady Chcriton had gone to bod, Theo- 
 dore approached the subject of the jiistol. 
 
 "Did you compare the ball with the revolver that was fdund 
 yesterday? " he asked. 
 
 "Yes. The ball fits the bore. T don't know that tho fact goes
 
 3o8 The Day will come. 
 
 to prove mucli — but so far as it goes it is now in the knowledge of 
 our local police. Unfortunately they are not the most brilliant 
 intellects I know of." 
 
 " If you Avill let me have the pistol to-night before we go to bed 
 I will go up to town by an early train to-morrow and take it to 
 Scotland Yard, as you suggested." 
 
 " I suggested nothing of the kind, my dear Theodore. I attach 
 very little importance to the discovery of the pistol as a means 
 towards discovering the murderer. I said you might take it to 
 Scotland Yard if you liked — that was all." 
 
 " I should like to do so. I should feel better satisfied " 
 
 " Oh, satisfy yourself, by all means," interrupted Lord Cheriton 
 irritably. " You are great upon the science of circumstantial 
 evidence. There is the pistol," taking it out of a drawer in the 
 large wi-iting-table. " Do what you like with it." 
 
 " You are not offended with me I hope ? " 
 
 " No, I am only tired — tired of the whole business, and of the 
 everlasting talk there has been about it. If it is a vendetta, if the 
 hand that killed Godfrey Carmichael is to kill me, and my daughter, 
 and her son — if my race is to be eradicated from the face of this 
 earth by an unappeasable hatred I cannot help my fate. I cannot 
 parry the impending blow. Nor can you or Scotland Yard protect 
 me from my foe, Theodore." 
 
 " Scotland Yard may find your foe and lock him up." 
 
 " I doubt it. But do as you please." 
 
 Theodore's train left Wareham at nine o'clock. There was a 
 still earlier train at seven, by which farmers and other enterprising 
 spirits who wanted to take time by the forelock were accustomed 
 to travel ; but to be in time for the nine o'clock train Theodore had 
 to leave Cheriton at a quarter to eight, and to drive to the distant 
 town in the dog-cart made and provided for station work, and 
 drawn by one of two smart cobs kept for the purpose. 
 
 He left the park by the West Gate. He had to wait longer than 
 usual for the opening of the gate ; and when the chubby-cheeked 
 maid-servant came down the steps with a key in her hand and 
 unlocked the gate there was that in her manner which indicated a 
 fluttered mind. 
 
 " Oh, if you please, sir, I'm sorry to keep you waiting so long, 
 but I couldn't find the key just at first, though I thought I'd hung 
 it up on the nail last night after I locked the gate — but I was so upset 
 at my mistress leaving so suddenly — never saying a word about it 
 beforehand — that I hardly knew what I was doing." 
 
 Theodore stopped the groom as he drove through the gate. He 
 had a few minutes to spare, and could aft'ord himself time to question 
 the girl, who had a look of desiring to be interrogated.
 
 TJie Day will come. 309 
 
 '■What is tliis about your mistress leaving suddenly? " he asked" 
 " Do you mean that Mrs. Porter has gone away — on a journey." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, sir. She that never left homo before since I was 
 a child — for I've known her ever since I can remember, and never 
 knew her to be away for so much as a single night. And the first 
 thing this morning when I was lighting the kitchen fire she opens 
 the door and just looks in and says — * Martha, I'm going to London. 
 Don't expect me back till you see me. There's a letter on the 
 parlour table,' she says. ' Let it lie there till it's called for — don't 
 you touch it, nor yet the box,' and she shuts the kitchen door and 
 walks off just as quietly as if she was going to early church, as she 
 has done many a time before it was daylight. I was that upset 
 that I knelt before the stove a good few minutes before I could 
 realize that she was gone — and then I run out and looked after her. 
 She was almost out of sight, walking up tlie lane towards Cheriton." 
 
 "Had she no luggage — did she take nothing with her? " 
 
 " Nothing. Not so much as a hand-bag." 
 
 *' What time was this ? " 
 
 " It struck six a few minutes after I went hack to the kitchen." 
 
 " What about the letter — and the box your mistress spoke of? " 
 
 '•There they are, sir, on the parlour table, where she left thorn. 
 Till not going to touch them," said the girl, with emphasis. " She 
 told me not, and I'm not going to disobey her." 
 
 " To whom is the letter addressed ? " 
 
 " Do you mean who it's for, sir ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " It's for his lordship — and it's to lie there till his lordship sends 
 for it." 
 
 "In that case I may as well give it to his lordship's servant, who 
 can take it up to the house iiresentlj'." 
 
 " I don't know if that will be right, sir. She said it was to be 
 called for." 
 
 " Then we call for it. I, his lordship's cousin, and James, his 
 lordship's groom. Won't that do for you ? " 
 
 " I suppose that will be right, sir," the girl answered doubtfully. 
 "The letter and the box are both on the table, and I wasn't to 
 interfere with either of 'em, and I'm not going to it. That's all I 
 can say." 
 
 The girl was swollen with the importance of her mission as being 
 associated with a mystery, and she was also in lively dread of her 
 very severe nu'stress, who might come down the lane at any moment 
 and surju-ise her in some act of dereliction. 
 
 Theodore passed her by and went into the sitting-room where he 
 had taken tea with the Kcmpstcrs and Cuthbert IJamsay. 
 
 A letter lay on the carved oak taltle in front of the window, and 
 beside the letter there stood a waluut-wood box, eighteen inches
 
 3IO The Day will come. 
 
 by nine. The letter was addressed, in a bold, characteristic hand, 
 to Lord Cheriton. To be called for. The box had a small brass 
 plate upon the lid, and a name engraved upon the plate — 
 
 Thomas C. Dakcy, 
 9th Foot. 
 
 No one who had ever seen such a box before could doubt that this 
 was a pistol-case. It was unlocked, and Theodore lifted the lid. 
 
 One pistol lay in its place, neatly fitted into the velvet-lined 
 receptacle. The place for the second pistol was vacant. 
 
 Theodore took the Colt's revolver from his pocket and fitted it 
 into the place beside the other pistol. It fitted exactly, and the two 
 pistols were alike in all respects — alike as to size and fashion, alike 
 as to the little silver plate upon the butt, and the initials, " T. D." 
 
 Thomas Darcy! Darcy was tlie name of Evelyn Strangway's 
 husband, and one of those pistols which had belonged at some period 
 to Evelyn Strangway's husband had been found in the well in the 
 fruit garden, and the other ia possession of Lord Cheriton's protegee 
 and pensioner, the humble dependant at his gates, Mrs. Porter. 
 
 Theodore changed his mind as to his plan of procedure. He did 
 not send Mrs. Porter's letter to Lord Cheriton by the groom as he 
 had intended, after he himself had been driven to Wareham. His 
 journej' to London might be deferred now; indeed, in his present 
 condition of mind, he was not the man to mterview the authorities 
 of Scotland Yard. He left Mrs. Porter's letter in its place beside 
 the pistol-case, and wrote a hasty line to his kinsman at Mrs. Porter's 
 writing-table, where all the materials for con-espondence were 
 arranged ready to his hand. 
 
 " The West Lodge, 8.15. Pray come to me here at once, if you 
 can. I have made a terrible discovery. There is a letter for you. 
 Mrs. Porter has gone to London." 
 
 He put these lines into &\\ envelope, sealed it, and then took it 
 out to the groom, who was waiting stolidly, neatly tickling the cob's 
 ears now and again, with an artistic circular movement of the lash, 
 which brought into play all the power and ease of his wn'st. 
 
 " Drive back to the house with that note as fast as you can," said 
 Theodore, " and let his lordship know that I am waiting for him 
 here."
 
 The Day will conic. 3 1 1 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ' ' Thy love and bate are both unwise ones, lady." 
 
 " Well, Theodore, wliat is your discovery? " asked Lord Chcriton 
 lialf an hour later, the two men standing face to face in Mrs. Porter's 
 sitting-room, amidst the silence of the summer morning, a gigantic 
 bee buzzing in the brown velvet lieart of a tall simflower, painfully 
 audible to the younger man's strained cars. 
 
 ''There is a letter, sir. You had better read that before I say 
 anything," answered Theodore. 
 
 It was years since he had called his cousin sir, not since lie had 
 been a schoolboy, and had been encouraged to open his mind upon 
 ])olitics or cricket, over his single glass of claret, after ditnier. On 
 those occasions a boyish respect for gi-eatness had prompted tho 
 ceremonioTis address ; to-day it came to his lips involuntarily — as if 
 a barrier of ice were suddenly interposed between himself and 
 the man he had esteemed and admired for so many years of his 
 life. 
 
 LordCheriton held the letter in his hand unopened, while he stood 
 looking at the pistol-case, where both pistols occupied their places — 
 one bright and undamaged, the other rusted and spoilt, as to outward 
 appearance at least. He was ghastly pale, but not much more so 
 than he had looked yesterday after he left Mrs. Porter's cottage. 
 
 "That is my discovery," said Theodore, ]iointing to the pistols. 
 "I stopped short in my journey to Scotland Yard when 1 found 
 that case upon the table here. I want to secure Juanita and her 
 son from the possibilities of an insatiable hatred — but I don't want 
 to bring trouble — or disgrace — upon you, if I can help it. You 
 liave always been good to me. Lord Chcriton. You have regarded 
 the claims of kindred. It would be base in nn; if I wore to forget 
 that you are of my own blood — that you have a right to ray 
 allegiance. Tell me, for God's sake, what I am to do. Tnist me, 
 if yoi can. I know so much already that it will be wisest and best 
 for you to let mo know all — so that I may help you to find the 
 murderer, and to avoid any reopening of old wounds." 
 
 " I doubt if you or any one else can help me, Theodore," said 
 Lord Cheriton wearily, looking straight before him through the open
 
 ,12 The Day will come. 
 
 lattice and across the little flower-garden where the roses were still 
 in their plenitude of colour and perfume. " I doubt if all my worldly 
 experience will enable me to help myself even. There is a pass to 
 which a man may come in his life — not wholly by his own fault — at 
 which his case seems hopeless. He sees himself suddenly brought 
 to a dead stop, deep in the mire of an impassable road, and with the 
 words ' No thoroughfare ' staring him in the face. I have come to 
 just tliat point." 
 
 " Oh, but there is alwaj^s an issue from every difficulty for a man 
 of courage and resolution," said Theodore. "I know you are not a 
 man to be easily broken down by Fate. I am half in the light and 
 half in the dark. It must have been the owner of that pistol who 
 killed Godfrey Carmichael — but how came the case and the fellow- 
 pistol into Mrs. Porter's possession? Was she that man's accomplice? 
 And who was he, and what was he, that she should be associated 
 with him ? " 
 
 " You believe that it was a man who fired that pistol? " 
 
 " Most assuredly. I believe it was the man whose wife lived for 
 many years at Myrtle Cottage, Camberwell Grove ; the man who 
 called upon a house-agent at Camberwell to make inquiries about his 
 wife, and who called himself by the name she bore in the neighbour- 
 hood — the name of Danvers. Danvers may have been only an alias 
 for Darcy, and in that case the man who called upon tlie agent was 
 the husband of Evelyn Strangway, and the woman who lived for so 
 many years in the seclusion of Myitle Cottage was old Squire 
 Strangway's only daughter, and Captain Darcy's runaway vdfe." 
 
 "And you think Tom Darcy murdered my son-in-law?" asked 
 Lord Cheriton, with a ghastly smile. 
 
 " I do." 
 
 "And what do you suppose to have been the motive of that 
 murder? " 
 
 " Revenge — revenge upon the man who tempted his wife away 
 from him." 
 
 " The cur who ill-used and neglected his wife — whose conduct 
 drove her from her wretched home, and justified her abandonment 
 of him — was never man enough to conceive such a revenge, or to 
 hate with such a hatred. However, in this case we need not enter 
 upon the question of motive. There is one reason why Tom Darcy 
 cannot be suspected of any part in Sir Godfrey's murder. He died 
 nine years ago, and was buried at my expense in Norwood 
 Cemetery." 
 
 " Great God ! then who could have fired that pistol? " 
 
 " The answer to that question is most likely here," repHed Lord 
 Cheriton quietly, as he tore open the envelope of Mi's. Porter's 
 letter. 
 
 The letter was brief but comprehensive, and all-sufficing.
 
 The Day will come. 313 
 
 " You know now who killed your cherished daughter's hubbiiud. 
 If slie is like me she will carry her sorrow to the gi'ave. If she is 
 like nie all her days will he darkened by cruel memories. Your 
 broken promise blighted my life. I have blij^dited her hfe — an eyo 
 for an eye. 1 told you three and twenty years ago that a day would 
 come when you would be sorry for havuig abandoned me. I think 
 that day Ims come. 
 
 " Evelyn D.vecy." 
 
 Lord Chcriton handed the letter to his kinsman without a word. 
 
 " Since you know so much of my history you may as well know 
 all," he said ; " so know the thorny pillow which a man makes for 
 himself when he sacriiices the best years of his life to an illicit love." 
 
 Theodore read those ghastly lines in silence. The signature told 
 all. 
 
 " What in Heaven's name brought Evelyn Strangway to be a 
 lodgekeeper at the entrance of the house where she was born?" he 
 asked, at last. "How could you permit such a life-long humilia- 
 tion ? " 
 
 '• It was her o^\^l desire — it was at her insistence I allowed her to 
 come here. I opposed her fancy with all my power of argument, 
 with all the strength of opposition. I ollered to provide her with a 
 home in town or country — at home or abroad — near at hand or at 
 the Antipodes. I oilcrcd to settle four hundred a year upon her — 
 to suik capital to that amount — to make her future and that of — our 
 child — secure against the chances of late." 
 
 "Your child — j\Iercy ! " exclaimed Theodore. 
 
 " Yes, ]\Iercy. My daughter and hers. You understand now 
 why she refused my help. She would take nothing from her father. 
 There was a like perversity in mother and daughter, a determination 
 to make me (hiiik the cup of remorse to the dregs. Oh, Theodore, 
 it is a long and shameful story. To you — for the first time in my 
 life — to you only among mankind these lips have spoken of it. I 
 have kept my secret. I have broodeil upon it in the slow hours of 
 many and many a wakeful night. I have never forgotten — I have 
 not been allowed to forget. If time could have erased or softened 
 that bitter memory under other conditions I know not ; but for mo 
 the case was hojieless. IMy victim was there, at my gates, a 
 perpetual memento of my folly and my wrong-doing." 
 
 " Strange that a woman of retinement and education should elect 
 to fill so degrading a position ! " 
 
 *' Perhaps only a relincd and highly educated woman could have 
 devised so refined a punishment. ' Let me live near yon,' she 
 pleaded ; ' let me live at the gate of the jiark I loved so well when 
 1 was a child— let me see you pass sometimes — open the gate for you 
 and just see you go by — without a word, without a look even upon
 
 314 The Day will come. 
 
 your part. It will be some consoLation for me in my lonely, loveless 
 life. I shall know that at least I am not forgotten.' Forgotten ? as 
 if it had been possible for me to forget, in the liappiest circumstances, 
 even if she had made for herself a liome at the farthest extremity 
 of Europe, or in the remotest of our colonies. As it was, her 
 presence embittered the place I loved — the gi'eat reward and aim of 
 my hfe. Her shadow fell across my young wife's pathway — her 
 influence darkened all my days." 
 
 He began to pace np and down the little room ■with a feverish air. 
 He seemed to find a sort of relief in talking of this burden which he 
 had borne so long in secret — home with a smile upon his lips, 
 suffering that silent agony which strong men have borne again and 
 again in the history of mankind, carrying their silent punishment 
 upon them till the grave revealed the hidden canker, and laid 
 bare the festering wound which had rankled misuspected by the 
 world. 
 
 " She was cruelly treated by her husband, Theodore. A yoimg 
 and beautiful woman, married to a profligate and a sot. It had been 
 a love-match, as the world cafls it — that is to say, a marriage brought 
 about by a schoolgirl's impatience to break her bonds, and a woman's 
 first delight in hearing herself called beautiful. She had flung herself 
 away upon a handsome reprobate; and three or four years after 
 marriage she found herself alone and neglected in a shabby lodging 
 in one of the squalidest streets off the Strand. I can see the 
 wretched rooms she lived in, to-day, as I stand here- — the lodging- 
 house furniture, the dingy curtains darkening the dirty windows 
 looking into the dirty street. What a home for youth and beauty ! " 
 
 He paused, with an impatient sigh, took another turn across the 
 narrow space, and then resumed : 
 
 "Our acquaintance began by accident — under an umbrella. I 
 met them together one night, husband and Avife, leaving the little 
 Strand Theatre in the rain. I heard him tell her that it was not 
 worth while to take a cab, they were so near home ; and something 
 in her proud, handsome face and her contemptuous way of repljang 
 to him caught my attention and interested me in her. I offered my 
 umbrella, and we all three walked to Essex Street together. Just 
 in that fortuitous way began the alliance which was to give its 
 colour to all ray life. The husband cultivated my acquaintance — 
 was glad to meet me at my club — and dined with me as often as I 
 cared to asked him. We used to go to Essex Street after dining 
 together, and finish the evening with her, and so by degrees I came 
 to know all about her-— that she was the only daughter of the owner 
 of Cheriton Chase ; that she was very handsome, and very clever, 
 though only half-educated ; that she had offended her father by her 
 marriage, and that she had not brought her husband a penny ; that 
 he neglected her, and that he drank ; and that she was miserable. I
 
 The Day will come. 315 
 
 came to know this very soon ; I cajnc vcrj' poon to love her. She was 
 the first woman I liacl ever cared for, and I loved her passionately." 
 
 He took another tnrn, and sighed again, regi'etfully, despairingly, 
 as one who looks back upon the pallid ghost of a love that has long 
 been dead. 
 
 " It began with pity. I was so soiTy for her, poor soul, her 
 wasted life, her slighted beauty. God knows that for a long time I 
 had no thought of sin. Gradually the yearning to see more of her, 
 to bring some brightness and i)leasuro into her life, became too 
 strong for prudence, and I persuaded her to meet me unknown to 
 her husband. We planned little excursions, innocent enough in 
 themselves, a mornmg drive and a modest luncheon at Richmond, 
 or Greenwich, or Jack Straw's Castle, a trip to Hampton Court or 
 Windsor by boat or rail. She had hardly any acquaintances in 
 London, and there was little fear of her being recognized. We 
 went to a theatre together now and then, and sat in a dark stage 
 box, happy, talking of an impossible future in the intervals of the 
 performance. We never said as much, but I think we had both a 
 vague idea that Providence would help us — that her husband would 
 die young, and leave us free to bo happy together. Yes, we were 
 very fond of each other, very single-hearted in those days. She 
 was only two and twenty, remember, and I was still a young man." 
 
 Another pause, another sigh, and a look across tho roses, as if 
 across the long lapse of years to an imforgotten past. 
 
 " Heaven knows how long we might have gone on in this way, 
 without sin, if not without treacherj' to the husband, who cared so 
 little for his wife that it seemed scarcely dishonourable to deceive 
 him. Our fate was precipitated by circumstances. Darcy sur- 
 prised a little note of mine, asking Evelj'n to meet me at a theatre. 
 He attacked his wife brutally, refused to believe anything except 
 the worst. He called her by names that were new and hideous to 
 her ear, and her soul rose up in arms against him. She defied him, 
 ran out of the house, took a cab, and came to my chambers in tlie 
 foggy November evening. Slie came to me helpless, friendless, 
 with no one in this wide world to love her or to j)rotect her, except 
 me. This was the turning-j)oint. Of course she could not stay 
 there to bo seen by my clerk and my laundress. I took her to 
 Salisbmy that night, and we spent a fortnight moving from village 
 to village along tho south coast of Devonshire. My liopo was 
 that Darcy would apply for a divorce, and that in less than 
 a year I might m.ake the woman I loved my wife. I rejoiced 
 in tlie thought of his obscurity and hers. Tho record of tho 
 case would pass imuoticed in the papers, and years hence, ■when 
 I should have made a position at the Bar, nobody need know tliat 
 tho wife I loved and honoured was once the nmaway wife of 
 another man. I had argued without aHowing for the malignity of
 
 3i6 The Day will come. 
 
 a cur. Davcy wrote his wife one of the most diaboHcal letters that 
 ever was penned by man ; he wi'caked his vemon upon her— upon 
 her, the weaker sinner ; he called her by all the vile epithets in his 
 copious vocabulary, and he told her that she shoidd never have the 
 right to the name of an honest woman, for that he would sooner 
 hang himself than divorce her. And so she was to drag her chain 
 for the rest of his days ; and so she was to pay the bitter price of 
 having trusted her young life to a low-bred scoundrel." 
 
 "Hard luck for both of you," said Theodore. 
 
 " Yes, it was indeed hard luck. If you could know how truly 
 and entirely I loved her ia those days — how completely happy we 
 should have been in each other's society, but for the embittering 
 consciousness of our false position. Cut off by his malevolence 
 from escape by divorce, we naturally hoped for a day when we 
 should be released by his death. His habits were not those which 
 conduce to length of years. 
 
 " We talked of the future — we had our plans and dreams about 
 that life which was to be ours in after-days, when I should be 
 making a large income, and when she would be really my wife. 
 With that hope before her she was content to live in the strictest 
 seclusion, to economize in every detail of our existence, to know no 
 pleasure except that of my society. Never did a handsome woman 
 resign herself to a duller or more unselfish existence — and yet I 
 beheve for the first few years she was happy. We were both happy 
 — and we were full of hope. 
 
 "I remember the day she first suggested to me that I shouxd 
 buy Cheriton Chase when it came into the market. I was begin- 
 ning to be employed in important cases, and to get big fees marked 
 upon my briefs, and I had taken silk. I had made my name, and I 
 was saving money. Yet the suggestion that I should buy a large 
 estate was too wild for any one but a woman to have made. From 
 that hour, however, it was Evelyn's idee fixe. She had a passionate 
 love for her birthplace, an overweening pride in her race and name. 
 She urged me to accumulate money — the estate would be sacrificed 
 at half its value, perhaps, — would go for an old song. She became 
 rigidly economical, would hardly allow herself a new gown, and her 
 keenest delight was in the deposit notes I brought her, as my 
 money accumulated at the Union Bank. She had no idea of 
 investments, or interest for my accumulations. Her notions about 
 money were a child's notions — the idea of saving a large sum to 
 buy the desire of her heart ; and the desire of her heart was 
 Cheriton Chase. 
 
 " God knows I was honest and earnest enough in those days. I 
 meant to buy that estate, for her sake, if it was possible to be done. 
 I meant to many her directly she was free to become my wife. My 
 fidehty had not wavered after a union of ten years and more — but
 
 The Day will come. 317 
 
 Darcy was very far from dyinp;. lie had hunted out his wife in her 
 quiet retreat, had threatcneil and annoyed her, and I had heea 
 obliged to buy him oft' by paying liis passage to Canada — wliere he 
 had been quartered -rtith his regiment j-ears before, and which he 
 pretended would open a new field for him. Our case, so far as 
 he was concerned, seemed hopeless, and I was beginning to feel 
 the darkness of the outlook, when I made Maria Morales' acquaint- 
 ance. 
 
 " It was the old, old story, Theodore. God forbid you should 
 ever go through that hackneyed experience. Just as the old chain 
 was beginning to drag heavily, a new face appeared upon my path- 
 way — a girlish face, bright with promise and hope. I saw the 
 opportunity of a union wliicli would smooth my way to a great 
 position — crown the edifice of my fortune, give me a wife of whom 
 I might be proud. Could I ever have been proud of the woman 
 who had sacrificed her good name for my sake ? I was bound to 
 her by every consideration of honour and duty. But there was the 
 fatal stain across both our lives. I could not take her into society 
 wthout the fear of hearing malignant whispers as we passed. How- 
 ever well these social secrets may be kept, there is always some 
 enemy to hunt them out, and the antecedents of James Dalbrook's 
 ^vife would have been public property. 
 
 " And here was a beautiful and innocent girl who loved me well 
 enough to accept me as her husband although I was twenty years 
 her senior, loved me with that youthful upward-looking love which 
 is of all sentiments the most attractive to a man who has lived a 
 hard work-a-day life in a hard work-a-day world. To spend an 
 hour with Maria was to feel a Sabbath peaccfulncss which solaced 
 and refreshed my soul. I felt ten years younger when I was with 
 her than I felt in my own — home." 
 
 He stopped, with a heart-broken sigh. 
 
 " Oh, Theodore, beware of such burdens as that which I laid 
 upon my shoulders ; beware of such a chain as I wound about my 
 steps. What a dastard a man feels himself when his love begins to 
 cool for the woman who cast her life upon one chance — who leans 
 upon him as the beginning and end of her existence. I have 
 walked up and dowTi tlie quiet pathway before Myrtle Cottage for 
 an hour at a stretch, dreading to go in, lest she should read my 
 treason in my face. The break came at last — suddenly. I jmltered 
 with my fate for a long time. I carried on a kind of Platonic flirta- 
 tion with Maria Morales, taking monstrous pains to let her know 
 that I never meant to go beyond Platonics — reminding her of the 
 difference of our ages, and of my almost paternal regard — the vain 
 subterfuge of a self-deluded man. One moment of impulse swept 
 away all barriers, and I left Onslow Square Maria's engaged liusband. 
 Her father's generosity precipitated matters. Squire Strangway had
 
 3i8 The Day will come. 
 
 o 
 
 been dead nearly a year, and the estate was in the hands of the 
 mortgagee, wlio had been trying to sell it for some time. My 
 futm'c father-iu-law was eager for the purchase directly I suggested 
 it to him, and my wife's dowry afforded me the means of realizing 
 Evelyn's long-cherished dream." 
 
 " Cruel for her, poor creature." 
 
 " Cruel — brutal — diabolical ! I felt the blackness of my treason, 
 and yet it had been brought about by circumstances rather than by 
 any deliberate act of mine. I had to go to the woman who still 
 loved me, and still trusted me, and tell her wliat I was going to do. 
 I had to do this, and I did it — ^by word of mouth — face to face — not 
 resorting to the coward's expedient of pen and ink. God help me, 
 the memory of that scene is with me now. It was too terrible for 
 words; but after the storm came a calm, and a week later I went 
 across to Boulogne with her, and saw her comfortably established 
 there at a private hotel, where she was to remain as long as she 
 liked, while she made up her mind as to her future residence. The 
 furniture was sent to the Pantechnicon. The home, was broken up 
 for ever." 
 
 " And the daughter, where was she? " 
 
 Lord Cheriton answered with a smile of infinite bitterness. 
 
 " The daughter had troubled us very little. Evelyn was not an 
 exacting mother. The child's existence was a burden to her — 
 rendered hateful by the stigma upon her birth, which the mother 
 could not forget. Mercy's infancy was spent in a Buckinghamshire 
 village, in the cottage of her foster-mother. Mother and daughter 
 never lived under the same roof till they came here together, when 
 Mercy was seven years old." 
 
 " Yet, according to village tradition, Mrs. Porter was passionately 
 fond of her daughter, and broken-hearted at her loss." 
 
 " Village tradition often lies. I do not beheve that Evelyn ever 
 loved her child. She bitterly felt the circumstances of her birth — 
 she bitterly resented her unhappy fate; but I believe it was her 
 pride, her deep sense of wrong done to herself, which tortured her 
 rather than her love for her only child. She is a strange woman, 
 Theodore — a woman who could do that deed — a woman who could 
 write that letter. Your friend has fathomed her imhappy secret. 
 She was a mad Avoman when she fired that shot. She was mad 
 when she penned that letter. And now, Theodore, I have trusted 
 you as I have never before trusted mortal man. I have ripped 
 open an old wound. You know all, and you see what lies before 
 me. I have to find that woman and to save her from the conse- 
 quences of her crime, and to save my daughter and my gi'andson 
 from the hazards of a mad woman's malignity. You can help me, 
 Theodore, if you can keep a cool, clear brain, and do just what I 
 ask you to do, and no more."
 
 The Day zuill come. 319 
 
 Ho put aside his emotion witli one Btupcndous effort, and became 
 a man of iron, cool, resolute, unllincliiui^. 
 
 " I will obey you im}»licitly," said Theodore. 
 
 He had been completely won by his kinsman's candour. Had 
 James Dalbrook told him anything less than the truth ho would 
 have despised him. As it was, he felt that he could still respect 
 him, in spite of that fatal error, which had brought such deadly 
 retribution. 
 
 " It is early j-et," said Lord Cheriton, looking at his watch, and 
 from that to the neat little clock on the mantelpiece, where tho 
 hands pointed to twenty minutes past nine. " The dog-cart is 
 waiting outside. Do you drive to the Priory and put yourself on 
 guard there till — till that unhappy woman has been traced. You 
 can tell Juanita that I have sent you there — that I have heard of 
 dangerous characters being about, and that I am afraid of her being 
 in the house with only servants. My wife shall follow you later, 
 and can stay at tho Priory while I am away from home, which t 
 must be, perhaps, for some time. I have to find her, Theodore." ^ 
 
 " Have you any idea where she may be gone ? " 
 
 " For tho moment, none. She may have made her way to the 
 nearest river and thrown herself in. Living or dead, I have to find 
 her. That is my business. And when 1 have found her I havo 
 to get her put away out of tho reach of the law. That is my 
 business." y 
 
 " God help you to caiTy it through," said Theodore. " I shall 
 stay at the Priory till I hear from you. Be so kind as to ask Lady 
 Cheriton to bring my portmanteau and dressing-bag in her carnage 
 this afternoon. I may tell Juanita that her mother is coming to-day, 
 may I not?" 
 
 " Decidedly ! Good-bye. God bless you, Theodore. I know 
 that I may rely upon your holding your tongue. I know I can rely 
 upon your active help if I should need you." 
 
 And 60 with a cordial grasp of hands they parted, Theodore to 
 take his seat in the dog-cart, and drive towards tho Priory to offer 
 himself to his cousin as her guest for an indefinite period. It was 
 a curious position in which he found himself; but the delight of 
 being in Juanita's society, of being in somewise her protector, was 
 a counterbalance to the embarrassing conditions under which he was 
 to approach her.
 
 320 The Day ivill come. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 " Love's reason's without reason." 
 
 The cob was all the fresher for the impatience which he had 
 suffered in standing for nearly an hour in the lane, and he bowled 
 the dog-cart along the level roads at a tremendous pace. Theodore 
 arrived at the Priory before eleven, and foimd Juanita sitting on 
 the lawn with her baby in her lap, and the dog Styx at her side. 
 His heart leapt with gladness at the sight of her sitting there, safe 
 and happy, in the morning sunshine, for his morbid imagination 
 had been at work as he drove along, and he had been haunted by 
 hideous visions of some swift and bloody act which might be done 
 by the fugitive mad woman before he could reach the Priory. What 
 deed might not be done by a woman in the state of mind which 
 that woman must have been in when she left the evidence and the 
 confession of her crime upon the table and fled out of her house in 
 the early morning ? A silent thanksgiving went up from his heart 
 to his God as he saw Juanita sitting in the sunshine, smiling at him, 
 holding out her hand to him in surprised welcome. She was safe, 
 and it was his business to guard her against that deadly enemy. 
 He knew now whence the danger v/as to come — whose the hand he 
 had to fear. It was no longer a nameless enemy, an iuscrutable 
 peril from which he had to defend her. 
 
 " How early you are, Theodore. Everybody is weL, I hope — 
 there is nothing wrong at home ? " 
 
 " No. Every one is well. Your father is going to London for a 
 few days, and your mother is coming to stay with you during his 
 absence, and I come to throw mj^self on your hospitality while she 
 is here. His lordship has heard of some suspicious characters in 
 your neighbourhood, and has taken it into his head that it wiU be 
 well for you to have me as your guest until your brothers-in-law 
 come to you for the shooting. I hope you won't mind having me, 
 Juanita?" 
 
 " IMind, no ; I am dehghted to have you, and my mother, too. I 
 was begiiming to feel rather lonely, and had half decided on carrying 
 baby otf to Swanage. Isn't he a fortunate boy to have two doating 
 grandmothers ? " She checked herself with a sudden sigh, 
 remembering in what respect the richly-dowered infant was so 
 much poorer than other babies. " Yes, darling," she murmured,
 
 The Day zuill conic. 3 2 1 
 
 heiiiliii.ii over tlic sleeping face, rosy amidst its lace and ribbons as 
 ii nestled against her arm. *' Yes, there is plenty of lovo for you 
 upon earth, my fatherless one ; and, who knows, perhaps his love 
 is watching over you in heaven." 
 
 After tliis maternal interlude she remembered the obhgations of 
 hospitality. 
 
 " Have you breakfasted, Theodore ? You must have left Cheritou 
 very early." 
 
 Theodore did not tell her how early, but he confessed to having 
 taken only a cup of tea. 
 
 "Then I will order some breakfast out here for you. It is such 
 a perfect morning. Baby and I will stay with you while you take 
 yonr breakfast." 
 
 She called the nurse, who was close by, and gave her orders, and 
 presently the gipsy table was brought out, and a cosy breakfast was 
 arranged upon the shining damask, and Theodore was having his 
 roft'ee poured out for him by the loveHest hands he had ever seen, 
 while the imrse paraded up and dowTa the la^\^l with the newly- 
 awakened baby. 
 
 '' I cannot understand my father taking an alarm of that kind," 
 Juanita said, presently, after a thoughtful silence. " It is so unlike 
 him. As if any harm could come to me from tramps or gipsies, or 
 even professional burglars, with half a dozen men-servants in the 
 house, and all my jewels safe at the Bank. Theodore, does it mean 
 anything?" she asked, suddenly. "Does it mean that my father 
 has found out something about tlie murder ? " 
 
 He was silent, painfully embarrassed by this home question. To 
 answer it would be to break faith with Lord Cheriton ; to refuse to 
 answer was in some manner to break his promise to Juanita. 
 
 " I must ask you to lot me leave that question unanswered for a 
 few days," he said. " Whatever discovery has been made it is your 
 father's discovery, and not mine. His lips alone can tell it to you." 
 
 " You know who murdered my husband? " 
 
 " No, Juanita, I know nothing. The light we are following may 
 be a false one." 
 
 He remembered how many lying confessions of crime had been 
 made by lunacy since the history of crime began — how poor dis- 
 traught creatures who would not have killed a worm had taken 
 upon themselves the burden of notorious assassinations, and had 
 put the police to the trouble of proving them self-accusing perjurers. 
 Might not ^Irs. Porter be such an one as these ? 
 
 " Ah ! but you are following some new hght — you are on the 
 track of his murderer? " 
 
 " I think we are. But you must be patient, Juanita. Y'ou must 
 wait till your father may choose to speak. Tlie business is out of 
 my hands now, and has passed into his." 
 
 T
 
 The Day ivill come. 
 
 '• And he is going to London to-day, you say — he is going upon 
 that business ? " 
 
 " I have said too much ahready, Juanita. I entreat you to ask 
 me no more." 
 
 She gave an impatient sigh, and turned from her cousin to tlie 
 dog, as if he were the more interesting companion of the two. 
 
 "Wei], I suppose I must be content to wait," she said ; "but if 
 you knew what I have sufiFered — what I shaH sufifer till that mystery 
 is solved — you would not wonder if I feel angry at being kept in the 
 dark. Has your friend gone back to London ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but he is coming again before my holiday is over. You 
 like him, I know, Juanita," he added, looking at her somewhat 
 earnestly. 
 
 " Yes, I like him," she answered, carelessly, but with a faint 
 blush. "I suppose most people hke him, do they not? He is so 
 bright and clever." 
 
 " I am very glad you like liim. He is the most valued friend I 
 have — indeed, I might almost say he is the only friend I made for 
 myself at the University. I made plenty of acquaintances, but very 
 few I cared to meet in after-life. Ramsay was like a brother. It 
 would have been a real grief to me if our friendship had not lasted." 
 
 " He is ambitious, is he not? " 
 
 " Very ambitious." 
 
 "And proud?" 
 
 " Very proud ; but it is a noble pride — the pride that keeps a 
 man straight in all his doings — the pride that prefers bread and 
 cheese in a garret to turtle and venison at a parvenu's table. He is 
 a splendid fellow, Nita, and I am proud of his friendship." 
 
 "Is he very busy, that he should be so determined to leave 
 Dorchester ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he is full of work always. I thought he might have been 
 content to take two or three weeks' quiet reading in our sleepy old 
 town, but he wanted to get back to the hospital. He will come 
 back for a day or two when the whim seizes him. He has always 
 been erratic in his pleasures, but steady as a rock in his work."
 
 TIic Day will come. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 ' The heaviness and guilt within my lio.som 
 Takes off my manhood." 
 
 LoBD CiiERiTON put the pistol-casG under his arm and left tlie 
 cottage. The case was covered by his loose summer overcoat, and 
 anybody meeting him in the Park might have supposed that he 
 was carrying a book, or might have failed to observe that he was 
 carrying anything whatever. As it happened ho met nobody 
 between the West Gate and the house. Ho went in at the open 
 window of the library, locked the pistol-case in one of the capacious 
 drawers of the large writing-table — drawers which contained many 
 of his most important documents, and which were provided with 
 the safest lever locks. 
 
 When this was done he went to his wife's morning-room, where 
 she was generally to be foimd at this hour, her light breakfast 
 finished, and her newspaper-reading or letter-writing begun. 
 
 " Where have you been so early, James? " she asked, looking up 
 at him with an atfectionato smile. "I was surprised to hear you 
 had gone out before breakfast." 
 
 He looked at her in silence for a few moments — lost in thought. 
 The beautiful and gracious face turned towards him in gentle inquiry 
 had never frowned upon Ixim in all their years of wedded life. 
 Never had that tranquil affection failed him. There had been no 
 dramatic passion in their love, no fierce alternations of despair and 
 bliss — no doubts, no jealousies. His girlish wife had given herself 
 to him in implicit trustfulness, fond of Jiim, and proud of liini, 
 beheving in him with a faith second only to her faith in God. For 
 three and twenty years of cloudless wedded life she iiad made his 
 days happy. Never in all those years had she given him reason for 
 one hour of doubt or trouble. She had been liis loving and loyal 
 helpmate, sharing his hopes and his ambitions, caring for the people 
 he cared for, respecting even his prejudices, shaping her life in all 
 things to please him. 
 
 Great heaven ! what a contrast with tliat other woman, whoso 
 fiery and exacting love had made liis life subordinate to hers — 
 whose jealousy had claimed the total surrender of all other ties, of 
 all other pleasures, had cut him off from all the advantages of
 
 324 The Day will come. 
 
 vsociety, had deprived him o£ the power to make friends among his 
 fellow-men, had kept him as her bond-slave, accepting nothing less 
 than a complete isolation from all that men hold best in life. 
 
 He looked at his wife's calm beauty — where scarce a line upon 
 the ivory-white forehead marked the progress of years — the soft, 
 gazelle-like eyes lifted so meekly to meet his o\vi:. He compared 
 this placid face with that other face, handsome, too, after its 
 fashion — long after the bloom of youth had gone — but marked m 
 every feature with the traces of a nervous temperament, a fiery 
 temper, the face of a woman in whose character there were none of 
 the elements of domestic happiness — or, in a word, the face of a 
 Strangway, the daughter of a perverse and unhappy race, from 
 whose line no life of happiness and well-doing had arisen within the 
 memory of man. 
 
 '' My dear Maria, I was wrong in not leaving a message. I was 
 sent for to Mrs. Porter's cottage. She has gone away in rather a 
 mysterious manner." 
 
 " Gone awaj' ! " 
 
 " Yes. That in itself is rather astonishing, you know ; but there 
 was something so strange in her manner of leaving that I feel it my 
 duty to look after her. I shall go up to town by the midday train. 
 I have other business which may keep me in London for a few 
 days, till the shooting begins, perhaps. I have sent Theodore to 
 the Priorj^ to tell Juanita that you are going to her this afternoon, 
 and that j'ou will stay ^^^th her till I come back." 
 
 " That is disposing of me rather as if I were a chattel," said his 
 wife, smiling. 
 
 '' I knew you would be glad of a few days' quiet baby- worship at 
 the Priory, and I knew this house would be dull for you without 
 any visitors." 
 
 "Yes, there is always a gloom upon the house when you are 
 away — a much deeper gloom since last summer. No sooner am I 
 alone than I begin to think of that dreadful night when my poor 
 ghl saw her murdered husband lying at her feet. Yes, James, you 
 are right in sending me away. I shall be happy at the Priory with 
 ray darUng — and she can never again be happy with me in this 
 house." 
 
 Lord Cheriton breakfasted in his wife's room — it was only an 
 apology for breakfast, for he was too agitated to eat ; but he re- 
 freshed himself with a cup of strong tea, and he enjoyed the restful- 
 ness of his wfe's companionship while he sat there waiting for the 
 carriage which was to take him to Wareham. 
 
 " What makes you so uneasy about Mrs. Porter ? " Lady Cheriton 
 asked presently. 
 
 " The suddenness and strangeness of her departure, in the first 
 place. It would have been only natural she should have com-
 
 The Day ivill come. 325 
 
 municated with you or me before slie left. And, in tlic second 
 place, I have been made imeasy by an observation of Vlx. Ramsay's. 
 He has conceived tlie opinion that Mrs. Porter is not altogether 
 riglit in her mind — that tliere is a strain of madness." 
 
 " Oh, James, that would be dreadful ! " 
 
 " Yes, it would be dreadful to think of her wandering about alone. 
 The very fact that she has hardly left that cottage for the last 
 twenty years, except to go to church, would make her nervous and 
 helpless among strangers and in a strange town. She would hardly 
 be able to take care of herself, perhaps — and if, in addition to this, 
 her mind is not quite right " 
 
 "Oh, poor thing! It is terrible to think of it. And you do not 
 even know where she has gone? " 
 
 " Rlie told the servant she was going to London. God knows 
 whether that is true or iiilse. She took no luggage, not even a 
 hand-bag." 
 
 '' She may have gone to her daughter." 
 
 "To Mercy? Yes, that is an idea. It never occurred to mc. 
 She has been so cold and hard about her daughter in all tlicse years 
 — and yet it may be so. She may have relented at last." 
 
 A servant announced the carriage. Ilis Lordship's portmanteau 
 liad been got in, and all was ready. 
 
 " Good-bye, Maria. I have no time to lose, as I have inquiries to 
 make and telegi"ams to despatch at the station." 
 
 " You will stay in Victoria Street, of course ? " 
 
 " Yes. I shall telegraph to j\Irs. Begby. I am taking Wilson ; I 
 shall be very well taken care of, be sure, dearest." 
 
 Ho kissed her and hurried away. He sighed as he left that 
 atmosphere of perfect peace— sighed again as he thought of the 
 business that lay before liim. He had to iind her — this murderess — 
 he had to prove that she was mad — if it were possible — and to put 
 her away for the rest of her days in some safe retreat, secure from 
 the hazard of discovery — a hard and bitter task for the man who 
 had once loved her, and whose love had been her destruction. 
 
 He made his inquiries of the station-master. Yes, !Mrs. Porter 
 had left by the early train. She had taken a second-class ticket 
 for Waterloo. 
 
 Lord Cheriton telegraphed to iliss Marian Gray, at 69, Hercules 
 Buildings, Lambeth — 
 
 '•If your mother is with you when you receive this, I beg you to 
 detain her till 1 come. 
 
 " CiiKniTOX." 
 
 His wife's suggestion seemed to him like inspiration. Where 
 else could that desolate woman seek for a shelter but under the roof
 
 326 The Day will come. 
 
 ■which sheltered her only child? She was utterly friendless in 
 London and elsewhere — unless, indeed, her old governess Sarah 
 Newton could be counted as a friend. 
 
 The Weymouth up-train steamed in, and he took his seat in the 
 corner of a first-class compartment, where he was tolerably secure 
 of being left to himself for the whole of the journey, guards and 
 porters conspiring to protect his seclusion, albeit he had not taken 
 the trouble to engage a compartment. His greatness was known 
 all along the line. 
 
 He had ample leisure for thought during that three hours' journey, 
 leisure to live over again that life of long ago which had been brought 
 so vividly back to his memory by the events of to-day. He had 
 made it his business to forget that past life, so far as forgetfulness 
 was possible, with that living reminder for ever at his gate. Habit 
 had even reconciled him to the presence of Mrs. Porter at the West 
 Lodge. Her supreme quietude had argued her contentment. 
 Never by so much as one imprudent word, or one equivocal look, 
 had she aroused his wife's doubts as to her past relations with her 
 employer. She had been accepted by all the httle world of Cheriton, 
 she had behaved in the most exemplary manner ; and although he 
 had never driven in at the West Gate, and seen her standing there 
 in her attitude of stern humility, without a pang of remorse and a 
 stinging sense of shame, yet that sharp moment of pain being past, 
 he was able to submit to her existence as the one last forfeit he had 
 to pay for his sin. And now he knew that the statue-like calm of 
 her face, as she had looked up at him in the clear hght, under the 
 branching beeches, had been only the mask of hidden fires — that 
 through all those years in which she had seemed the image of quiet 
 resignation, of submission to a mournful fate, she had been garnering 
 up her vengeance to wreak it upon the offender in his most imguarded 
 hour, piercing the breast of the father through the innocent heart of 
 the child. He knew now that hatred had been for ever at his doors, 
 that angry pride had watched his going in and corning out, imder 
 the guise of humility — that by day and by night hideous thoughts 
 had been busy in that hj'per-active brain, such thoughts as point 
 the way to madness and to crime. 
 
 When he had made up his mind to break his promise to Evelyn 
 Darcy, and to marry another woman, fifteen years her junior, he 
 had told himself that the wi'ench once made, the link once sundered, 
 all would be over. She would submit as other women have sub- 
 mitted to the common end of such ties. She could not deem herself 
 more unfortunate than those other women had been, since his 
 attachment had endured far longer than the average span of illicit 
 loves. He had been patient and faithful and unselfish in his devotion 
 for more than a decade. He would have gone on waiting perhaps 
 had there been a ray of hope; but Tom Darcy had shown a
 
 The Day zuill come. 327 
 
 malignant pel■^^i^5tency in keeping alive ; aud even were Tom Darcy 
 dead how bitter a thing it would be for the fashionable Queen's 
 Counsel to enter society with a wife of damaged character. In tho 
 old days of hopefulness and fond love they had told each other that 
 the stain upon the past need never be known in that brilliant future 
 to which they both looked forward ; but now he told himself that 
 despite their secluded life the facts of that past would ooze out. 
 People would insist upon finding out who Mr. Dalbrook's \vifo was. 
 It would not bo enough to say, " She is there — handsome, clever, 
 and a lady." Society would peer and pry into the background of 
 her life. "\Vhose daughter was she ? Had she been married before? 
 And in that case who was her husband? Where had she lived 
 before her recent marriage ? Had she spent her earlier years in the 
 Colonies or on the Continent, or how was it that society had seen 
 nothing of her ? 
 
 Those inevitable questions would have made his life a burden and 
 jier life an agony, James Dalbrook told himself; even had Darcy 
 been so complaisant as to die and leave them free to rehabilitate 
 their position by marriage ; but Darcy had shown no disposition 
 towards dying, and now here was a lovely girl with a fortune willing 
 to marry him — a girl to whom his heart had gone out, despite his 
 conscientious endeavour to be faithful to that old attachment. 
 
 To-day, in his agony of remorse and apprehension, he could recall 
 the scene of their severance as well as if it had happened yester- 
 daj'. 
 
 He had gone home in the chill March twilight, in that depressing 
 season when the pale spring flowers, daflbdils, primroses, and 
 narcissus are fighting their ineffectual battle with the cutting east 
 wind, when the sparrows have eaten the hearts of all the crocuses, 
 and the scanty grass in suburban gardens is white with dust, when 
 the too-early lighted lamps have a sickly look in the windy streets, 
 and the neglected fires in suburban drawing-rooms are more dismal 
 than fireless hearths. 
 
 Camberwcll-Grove was not at its best in this bleak March season. 
 The time had been when the long narrow garden at Myrtle Cottage 
 was carefully kept, and when Evel}m had taken a pride in the old- 
 fashioned flower-borders and the blossoming creepers upon the 
 verandah, but for the last two or three years she had been careless 
 and indifferent, and one jobbing-gardener having left the neighbour- 
 hood she had taken no pains to get another in his place ; nor had 
 she done any of that weeding and watering and pruning, which had 
 at one time helped to shorten the long light evenings. A weariness 
 of all things had come upon her, tired out with waiting for brighter 
 days. 
 
 He had refused Don Jose's pressing invitation to dine in Onslow 
 Square. lie had turned his back upon the warm brightness of
 
 328 The Day will come. 
 
 iiewly-fiirtiished drawing-rooms, an atmosphere of hot-house flowers, 
 great rush baskets of tuHps, hyacinths, and narcissus, low vases of 
 HUes of the valley and Parma violets ; and amidst all this brightness 
 and colour the beautiftd Spanish girl, with her pale, clear complexion 
 and soft black eyes. He had left his newly-betrothed wife reluctant 
 to let him go, in order to face the most painful crisis that can occur 
 in any man's life ; in order to tell the woman who had loved and 
 trusted him that love was at an end between them ; that the bond 
 was broken, and his promise of no account. 
 
 " I expected you earher, James," she said, opening the door to him. 
 
 It was rarely that the door was opened by a servant when he 
 went home. She was always waiting for his knock. 
 
 " Yes, it is late, I know. I have been detained. I have lingered 
 a little on the way — I walked from the West End." 
 
 " What, all the way? By the Walworth Road, that low neigh- 
 bourhood you dislike so much ? " 
 
 " I did not care where I walked, Evelyn. I was too miserable to 
 think about my surroundings." 
 
 " Miserable ? " she asked, looking at him searchingly, and growing 
 pale as she looked, as if the pallor of his fiice reflected itself in hers, 
 '' what should make you miserable ? " 
 
 They were standing in the drawing-room, where the moderator 
 lamp upon the table shone bright and clear upon his troubled face. 
 
 " You have lost your money, James — you have speculated — you 
 won't be able to buy Cheriton Chase," she said breathlessly. 
 
 " Nonsense, Evelpi. Don't you know that you have the deposit 
 notes for every pound I ever saved locked up in your desk." 
 
 " Ah, but you might speculate — you may have ruined yourself, 
 all the same." 
 
 " I have not ruined myself that way, Eveljai. Oh ! for God's 
 sake, forgive me, pity me, if you can. I have engaged myself to a 
 girl who loves me, though I am twenty years her senior ; a girl who 
 is proud of me and beheves in me. This engagement means a new 
 and happy life for me, and may mean release for you — who knows ? 
 We have neither of us been happy lately. I think we have both 
 felt that the end must come." 
 
 She laid her hand upon his breast, holding the lapel of his coat 
 tightly with her thin white fingers, as if she would pin him there 
 for ever, looking straight into his eyes, with her own eyes dilated 
 and flaming. 
 
 " Y'^oii are a coward and a traitor ! " she said, between her clenched 
 teeth. " You are lying, and j^ou know you are lying. The tie has 
 grown weaker for you, perhaps — not for me. For me every year 
 has strengthened it — for me every hope I have has pointed to one 
 future — the future in which I am to be your wife. You know what 
 mv husband's habits are — you know what his life is worth as com*
 
 The Day zuill come. 329 
 
 pared witli yours. You know that wc must Le near the ciul of our 
 probation, that suddenly, without an hour's warning, wo may hear 
 of his death, and you will be freo to givo mo the name and placo T 
 have earned by ten years' fidelity, and patience, and self-denial. 
 You know this, and that my lifo is bound up in yours ; that I cannot 
 exist without you except as tho most miserable of women ; that I 
 have not a friend in tho world, not a hope in tho world, not an 
 ambition in tho world but you ; and you look me in tho face with 
 those cold, cruel eyes, and tell mo you have engaged yourself to a 
 girl twent}' years your junior, that you are going to cast me ofl" — 
 me, your wife of ten years — more than wife in devotion, more than 
 wife in self-sacrifice " 
 
 " God knows the sacrifice was mutual, Evel\ni. If there has been 
 surrender on your side there has been surrender on mine. I havo 
 turned my back upon society just at tho time when it would havo 
 been most onjoyablo and most valuable. But I won't even try to 
 excuse myself. 1 have acted very badly — I deserve tho worst you 
 can say of me. t thought I was sure of myself, 1 thought I was 
 rock ; but the hour of temptation came, and I was not strong enough 
 to withstand it. ]>e generous, Evelyn. Clasp hands and forgive me. 
 Wherever I am and whatever I do your welfare shall be my firet, 
 most sacred care. The money I havo saved shall be invested 
 for your benefit — shall be secured to your use and our daughter's 
 after you." 
 
 " Sloney, benefit," she cried, wildly. " How dare you talk to mo 
 of money ? How dare j'ou put my wrongs in the balance against 
 your sordid money ? Do you think money can help mo to forget 
 you — or to hate myself less than I do for having loved and trusted 
 you ? " 
 
 And then followed a paroxysm of passionate despair at tho 
 memory of which, after all the intervening j'ears of peace and 
 prosperity, wedded lovo and deadened conscience, his blood ran 
 cold. He found himself face to face with a woman's frenzy, im- 
 potent to comfort or to tranquillize her. There was a moment when 
 he had to exert bmto force to prevent her from dashing her brains 
 out against the wall. 
 
 All through that long, hideous night ho watched by her, and 
 pleaded with her, and guarded her from her own violence. At one 
 time he was on his knees before her, oflcring to give up the desiro 
 of his heart, to break his solemn engagement of a few hours old, and 
 to remain true to her till the end of time ; but she spurned his 
 offered sacrifice. 
 
 "What, now that I know you love another woman? What, 
 keep you by my side, while I know your heart is elsewhere ? What, 
 have you mine by the strength of a chain, like a galloy-slave hnked 
 to his gaol-companion, knowing that you hate me ? Not for worlds
 
 330 The Day will come. 
 
 —not to be. a duchesf!. No, no, no ! The wrong is done — the 
 wrong was in withdrawing your love. Tlicre is no such thing as 
 laithfulness from you to me. All is over." 
 
 He argued against himself — implored her lo accept his sacritice. 
 
 " I would do anything in this world, pay any price, rather than 
 see such despair as I have seen to-night," he said, standing in the 
 cold, grey dawn, haggard and aged hy the long night of agony, 
 heside the bed where that convulsed form lay writhing, with tear- 
 disfigured face, lips wounded and blood-stained, strained eye-balls, 
 and dishevelled hair. 
 
 She was adamant against his pleading. 
 
 " You cannot give me back my trust in you. lam not the coarse, 
 common creature yoix think me. I do not want to keep your dull 
 clay when your heart has gone to another. I will show you that I 
 can live without you." 
 
 This was the beginning of a calmer mood, which he was fain to 
 welcome, though he knew that it was the icy calmness of despair. 
 Before the world was astir in Camberwell Grove she had grown 
 curiously quiet and rational. She had bathed her distorted features 
 and bound up her hair. She was clothed and in her right mind again ; 
 and she sat quietly listening while he told her the story of his 
 temptation, and how this new love had crept into his heart unawares, 
 and how an innocent girl's naive preference had flattered him into 
 infidelity to the love of ten j^ears. She hstened quietlj' while he 
 spoke of the future, trying to make a sunny picture of the new home, 
 in England or abroad, which she was to create for herself. 
 
 "You have been far too self-denying," he said; "you have 
 sacrificed even your own comfort to help me to grow rich. Yon 
 must at least share my prosperity. Money need be no object 
 in your futm-e existence. Chose your new home where you 
 will, and let it be as bright and enjoyable as ample means can 
 make it." 
 
 " I will take nothing from you but the bare necessities of existence," 
 she said. " I will go to the obscurest spot that I can find, and rot 
 there alone, or with my daughter, as j'ou think fit. I may ask one 
 favour of you. Get me out of this house as soon as you can. I 
 was once happy here," she added hoarselj", looking round the 
 room with an expression that tortured him. 
 
 " I wll take you across the Channel to-day, if you like. Change 
 of air and scene may do you good. You have lived too long in this 
 place." 
 
 " Ten years too long," she answered, with a faint laugh. 
 
 He went across to Boulogne with her by the night mad, estab- 
 lished her in a private hotel in the Grande Rue, and left her there 
 within an hour of their landing, with a pocket-book containing a 
 hundred pounds in her lap. Nothing could exceed his tenderness
 
 The Day will come. 
 
 oo 
 
 ill this parting; nor could any man's compassion for a woman, lin 
 had ceased to love be deeper than his. He was full of thoughtful - 
 ness for her future. lie implored her to think of him as her devoted 
 friend, to whom her welfare was of the uttermost importance, to call 
 upon him unhesitatingly for any help in any scheme of life which 
 the might make for herself. 
 
 '' I shall warehouse your furniture at tho I'antechnicon, so that 
 wherever you fix your future abode it may be conveyed there," ho 
 s'lid. " Wc took some pains in choosing those things, and you may 
 ]'i(>fcr them to newer, and even better furniture. A\'ritc to me 
 wlicn you have made yoiu" choice of a new home."' 
 
 " Home," she echoed, and that was all. 
 
 "When you have found that home and settled down there, you 
 will have Mercy to share your life, will you not?" he pleaded. 
 " The child ^vill be a comfort to you." 
 
 " A comfort, yes. She was born under such happy conditions — 
 slie has such reason to be proud of her parentage ! Mercy — Mercy 
 what? She must have some kind of surname, I suppose, before 
 she is mucli older. What is she to be called? " 
 
 "You are very cruel, Evelyn. What docs a name matter? " 
 
 " Everything. A name means a history. Should I bo here — and 
 you bidcUng me good-bye — if my name were Dalbrook? It is ju^-L 
 because my name is not Dalbrook that yon can cast me adrift — like 
 ta rotten boat wiiich a man sends down the stream to bo stranded 
 on a mudbank, and moulder there piecemeal, inch by inch."
 
 332 The Day luill come. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 *' One little flash of summer light, 
 One brief and passionate dream." 
 
 liORD Ciii'.iUTOx sent liis valet and his portmanteau to Victoria 
 Street in a cab, and walked to Hercules Buildings. It Avas a short 
 distance from the terminus, and the movement was a relief to his 
 troubled brain. He was strangely agitated in approaching the girl 
 whom he had known only as Mercy Porter, who had lived to 
 twenty-seven years of age, almost as a stranger to him, whom he 
 had looked upon in her girlhood with a keen and painful interest, 
 but an interest which he had never betrayed by one outward sign. 
 It was her mother's perversity and wrongheadedness, he told 
 himself, which had necessitated this complete estrangement. Had 
 she consented to bring up her daughter anywhere else he might 
 have acted in somewise as a father to her. But she had chosen to 
 plant the girl there, at his gates, in the sight of his wife and her 
 child; and he was thus constrained to ignore the tie, to repress 
 every token of interest, every sign of emotion, to act his lifelong 
 lie, and play his part of benefactor and patron to the end. 
 
 And now he had reason to beheve that Mercy had discovered the 
 secret of her birth. Her contemptuous refusal of his bounty could 
 proceed, he thought, from no other cause. She knew that he was 
 her father, and she would accept no boon from a father who had 
 denied her his name and his love. 
 
 She resented her mother's wrongs, as well as her own. His heart 
 sank at the thought of standing before her — his daughter and his 
 judge ! 
 
 The house in Hercules Buildings was decent and clean-looking. 
 The woman who opened the door told him that Miss Gray was at 
 home, and directed him to the second-floor back. 
 
 " Is she alone ? " he asked. " Has there been no one with her 
 this morning? " 
 
 " No, sir. She don't have anybody come to see her once in six 
 months, except Miss Newton." 
 
 Lady Cheriton's conjecture was not the inspiration he had thought.
 
 The Day ivill come. 
 
 OO:) 
 
 ^Irs. Porter luul not made licr way here. AVliat if slic liad doubled 
 back after starting in tlic train for Ijoudon — got out at tho first 
 station and gone to the Priory — to realize that ghastly apprehension 
 of Theodore Dalbrook's, and to follow up her scheme of vengeance 
 by some new crime. Once admit tliat she was mad, and there was 
 no limit to tho evil she might attempt and do. His only comfort 
 was in tho idea that Juauita's cousin was there, on the alert to 
 guard her from every jxissiblo attack. 
 
 lie knocked at the door of tho back room on the second-floor 
 landing, and it was opened by tlio faded woman ho had seen last 
 in her fresh young beauty, a fair, bright face at a rustic case- 
 ment, framed in verdure. Tho face was sadly aged since he had 
 looked upon it, and if it was beautiful still it was with the beauty 
 of outline and expression, rather than of youthful freslmcss and 
 colouring. 
 
 Tlie grave sad eyes were lifted to his face as Mercy made way 
 for him to enter. !Sho placed a chair for him, and stood a little 
 way off, waiting for him to speak. Uo looked at the small room 
 with iulinito sadness. Her neatness and ingenuity had made the 
 best of the poorest means, and tho shabby httle room had as fresh 
 and gay an air as if it had been a room in an Alpine chalet, or a 
 farmhouse in Normandj'. The poor little pallet-bed was hidden by 
 white dimity curtains, tho washstand was screened by a drapery of 
 the samo white dimity, daintily arranged wilii bright ribbon bows. 
 There was a shelf of neatly bound books above the mantelpiece, 
 and there were bits of Jajjanese china here and tiierc, giving a 
 touch of brilliant colour to tlie cheap v.jiito pajier on tho walls and 
 tho white drajicrics. Tho room had lioen furnished by ]\Iorcy her- 
 self. The chairs were of wicker work, cushioned and decorated by 
 Mercy's clever hands. There was a pine chest of drawers, with a 
 Japanese looking-glass hanging above it, and there was a quaint 
 little japanned table of bright vermilion at the side of ^lercy's arm- 
 chair. That poor little second-lloor bedroom, with its one window, 
 anid most unlovely outlook, was ^Mercy's only source of pride. She 
 had pinched herself to buy those inexjiensive cliairs, and tho luxury 
 of the Japanese glass, the lacquered tea-tray with its Satsuma cups 
 and saucers, and tho turquoise and absinthe tinted vases, all those 
 tiifling details which made her room so dilVcrent from the rooms of 
 most work -girls. She had stained and waxed the old deal boards 
 with her own hands, and it was her own labour that kept tho tloor 
 polished and dustless, and the window-panes bright and clear. Tho 
 natural instinct of a lady showed itself in that love of fair surround- 
 ings. 
 
 " I hoped to find your mother with you," said Lord Cheriton. 
 "Why? I received your telegram, and could not understand 
 what it nieant. Is there anything wrong with my mother ? "
 
 334 ^^^ ^'^y '^^^^^ come. 
 
 " She left Ler home early this mornmg — suddenly — no one 
 knows why or wherefore. I am intensely anxious to find her." 
 
 "But why? She has been able to take care of herself very 
 well for the last twenty years. You have not been particularly 
 interested in her all that time. Why should you be anxious to- 
 day?" 
 
 " Because I have reason to think that all is not well with her — 
 that her mind is not quite right — and I am full of fear lest she 
 should do something rash." 
 
 " God help her," sighed Mercy, the pale face growing just a shade 
 whiter. " If j'ou had seen much of her in the years that are gone 
 j'our fears would not have come so late in the da)'." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean that her mind has been unsettled ever since I was old 
 enough to observe and to understand her. I was little more than a 
 child when I found out that she had brooded upon one great 
 sorrow until all her thoughts were warped — all charity and kindly 
 feelmg were dead in her — dead or frozen into a dreadful numbness, 
 a torpor of the soul. She never really loved me — me, her only 
 child, who tried very hard to win her love. God knows how I loved 
 her, having no one else to love. There was always a barrier 
 between us — the bamer of some bitter memory. I could never get 
 near her heart." 
 
 He did not answer for some minutes, but stood up looking out of 
 the window at the dreary prospect of slated roof and smoke- 
 blackened chimney-pot, prospect in wloich a few red tiles or an old 
 gable-end were as a glimpse of beauty, amidst the all-pervadmg 
 greyness and cruel monotony of form and hue. He felt a constrauat 
 upon him such as he had never felt in all his life before — felt tongue- 
 tied, helpless, paralyzed by a deep sense of shame and self-humilia- 
 tion before this unacknowledged daughter, who under happier 
 circumstances might have looked up to him and honoured him as 
 the first among men. In this bitter hour the name that he had won 
 for himself in the world, the fortune which his talent had earned for 
 him were as dust and ashes — the bitter ashes beneath the dazzling 
 brightness of the dead sea fruit. 
 
 " Why do you stop in this back room, Mercy ? " he asked abruptly. 
 " Why do you condemn yourself to look out upon chimney-pots 
 and blackened roofs, when you have all the world to choose from if 
 you like? Why in pity's name did you refuse my offer of an 
 income?" 
 
 " Because I will take nothing from you — nothing — nothing — 
 nothing!" 
 
 Her hps closed in a rigid Hne after that reiterated word. Her 
 eyes looked straight before her, cold, calm, resolute. 
 
 •'' Why are you so hard upon me ? "
 
 TJic Day will come. 335 
 
 " Wliy? You ask mo why — you, who let me live at your j^atos 
 in meek dependence on your bounty, nameless, fatherless, living a 
 life of miserablo monotony wth a heart-broken woman in whose 
 frozen breast even maternal lovo was dead. You who patted nio 
 on the head once in half-a-year, and patronized mc, and conde- 
 scended to me, as if I were of another race and of a dillerent clay. 
 You, my father — you who could be content to let mo grow from a 
 child to a woman and never once let j'our heart go out to me, and 
 never once be moved to clasp mc in your arms and confess the tie 
 between us. You who saw mo como to your fine house and go 
 away, and often pretended, not to see me, or passed mo with a side- 
 glance and a little motion of your hand as if I were a dog that ran 
 by j'ou in the street. You, my father — you, whoso friend saw me 
 80 friendless and alone that he could lie to me with impunity, know- 
 ing there was no one in this world to take my part or to call him to 
 account for his lies. Had you been different, my fate might have 
 been different." 
 
 " He was a villain, Mercy. God knows, I have suffered enough 
 on that score. I would have called him to account, I would have 
 punished him ; but I had to think of my wife. I daiod not act — 
 there was a monster in my path before which the boldest man 
 sometimes turns coward— publicity. Who was it told you, Mercy 
 — when was it that you discovered my secret? " 
 
 " He told mc — taunted me with my mother's story. He had 
 guessed it, I think ; but though he had no proofs to give me, instinct 
 told me that it was true. Sly mother's life and character had 
 always been a mystery to me. I understood both by the light of 
 that revelation." 
 
 *' He told you the truth, Mercy. Yes, all my life as regards you 
 was a solemn sham. It was your mother's determination to live at 
 Cheriton, and nowhere else, which made me a stranger to my own 
 child. Had your homo been elsewhere — far from my wife and 
 her surroundings — I might have acted in some wise a f;\ther'8 
 part. I might have acknowledged our relationship — 1 might have 
 Been you from time to time in the freedom of paternal intercourse 
 — I could have interested myself in your education, watched over 
 your welfare. As it was, I had to play my difficult part as best I 
 might." 
 
 "You would have had to reckon with my mother's broken heart 
 wherever she had lived," answered Mercy. " Do you think I could 
 have ever valued your fatherly interest, knowing the measure of her 
 ^v^ong? In my ignorance I looked up to you as otu' benefactor. 
 You cheated me of my gi-atitude and respect — you, who were the 
 cause of all our sorrows. I sav/ my mother's mind growing more 
 and more embittered as the years went by. My youth was spent 
 with a woman whose lip? had forgotten how to smile — with ;i
 
 ;^j6 The Day zvill come. 
 
 mother who never f>poke a motherly word, or kissed her child with 
 a motherly kiss. And then when love came — or that which seemed 
 love — can you wonder that I was weak and helpless in the hour of 
 temptation — I, who had never known what tenderness meant before 
 I heard his voice, before his Ups touched mine ? The only happi- 
 ness I ever knew upon this earth was my happiness with him. It 
 was short enough, God knows, but it was something. It was my 
 only sunshine — the only year in all my life in which the world 
 seemed beautiful and life worth living. Yes, it was at least a dream 
 of loving and being loved ; but it was followed by a bitter waking." 
 
 " He was a scoundrel, Mercy. You were not his first victim ; but 
 his youth was past, and I beUeved in his reform. I should not have 
 asked him to my wife's house had I not so believed. When I 
 heard that he had tempted you away from your mother I was in 
 despair. I would have made any sacrifice to save you, except the 
 one sacrifice of facing a hideous scandal, except the sacrifice of my 
 social position and my wife's happiness. Had you alone been in 
 question I might have taken a bolder and more generous course, 
 but you are right when you say I had to reckon with your mother. 
 I might have confessed the existence of my daughter — might have 
 secm-ed my wife's kindness and sympathy for that daughter — but 
 how could I say to her, The woman who lives beside your gate is 
 the woman who ought to have been my wife, and who for ten 
 years was to me as a wife, and relied upon my promise that no 
 other woman upon earth should ever occupy that place ? I was 
 fettered, Mercy, caught in the toils, powerless to act a manly part. 
 I did what I could. I tried to trace you and Trema;vne — failed, 
 and never knew what had become of him till I read of his death in 
 Afghanistan. He was a married man when he crossed your path, 
 separated from his wife, who had not used him over weU. It was 
 the knowledge of his domestic troubles that inclined me to hold out 
 the hand of friendship to him at that time. He behaved infamously 
 to you, I fear, my poor girl." 
 
 '' He only did what most men do, I suppose, under the same 
 circumstances. He only acted as you acted to my mother. He 
 grew tired of me. Only his weariness came in less than ten years — 
 in less than two. He took me roaming all over the world in his 
 yacht. Those days and nights at sea — or lying off some white 
 city, gleaming against a backgi-ound of olive-clad hills — were like 
 one long dream of beauty. Sometimes we lived on shore for a little 
 w'hile — in some obscure "fishing -village, where there was no one from 
 England to ask who we were. We spent one long winter coasting 
 about between Algiers and Tunis. I could hardly believe that it was 
 winter in that world of purple sea and sky and almost perpetual sun- 
 shine. We spent half a year among the Greek islands — we stayed at
 
 The Day will conic. 337 
 
 Constantinople — and sailed from there to Naples. It was at Naples 
 I caught a lever, and lay ill on board the yacht. It was a tedious 
 illness, a lonp; night of darkness and delirium. When I recovered 
 Colonel Tremayne was gone. He had left tho yacht on the first 
 day of my unconsciousness, leaving mo in charge of a sister of mercy 
 and three sailors. He had sold the yacht, wJiich was to pass into 
 the new OA\Tier's possession as soon as I was strong enough to go on 
 shore. He left me a letter, telling mo that h«i had deposited liftj' 
 pounds for me at the English bankers where ha had been in tho 
 habit of cashing cheques. I had been at the bank with him on moro 
 than one occasion. IIo advised me to stay in the South, and get a 
 situation as governess in an Italian family. He was obliged to go 
 back to England on account of monetary difficulties, but he hoped 
 to be able to meet mc later. lie did not even take the trouble to 
 tell me where a letter would find him. He had abandoned me at 
 the beginning of a dangerous illness — left mc to live or die — friend- 
 less in a foreign land."
 
 JO 
 
 38 T/ic Day luill come. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 " Poor wretches that depcnrl 
 On frrcatness' favour dream as I have done, 
 Wake and find nothing." 
 
 Lord Ciieriton heard the story of his daughter's fate in silence. 
 It was an old and a common story, and any words of reprobation 
 uttered now would have seemed a mockery from the hps of the 
 father who had allowed his daughter's seducer to go impunished. 
 
 " What did you do in your loneliness ? " he asked, alter a pause. 
 
 "I wandered from village to village for some months, living as 
 the peasants live. I did not take Colonel Tremayne's advice, and 
 offer myself as a teacher of youth. I did not try to enter a respect- 
 able home imder a false character. I lived among peasants and as 
 they lived, and my money lasted a long time. I had always been 
 fond of needlework, so I bought some materials before I left Naples, 
 and I used to sit in the olive woods, or by the sea shore, making 
 baby linen, which I was able to dispose of when my Avanderings 
 brought me to Genoa, where I lived in a garret all through the 
 winter after my illness. I remained in Italy for more than a year, 
 and then my heart sickened of the beauty of the sea and sky, the 
 streets of palaces, the orange groves and olive woods, the bright 
 monotony of loveliness. Some of my own misery seemed to have 
 mixed itself with all that was loveliest in that Southern world, and 
 I felt as if grey skies and dull streets would be a relief to me. So I 
 came to London, and found this lodging, and have managed to live — 
 as you see — ever since. I have no wish to live any better. I have 
 only one friend in the world. I have no desire to change. If my 
 mother cared for me and wanted me I would go to her — but she 
 never wanted me in the past, and I doubt if she will ever want me 
 in the future." 
 
 " Your mother is a most unhappy woman, Mercy, and she has 
 made her unhappiness a part of my life, and a part of other Hves. 
 She left her home this morning, alone, without giving any one notice 
 "where she was going, or why she was going. I am full of fear about 
 Jier. My only hope was to find her here."
 
 The Day zuill come. 339 
 
 "And not having found her here, what are you going to. do? 
 Where will you look for her ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I am altogether at fanlt. She had no friends in 
 London, or anywhere else. She had isolated herself most completely. 
 At Cheriton she was respected, but she made no friends. How 
 could she make friends in a place where her whole existence was a 
 secret? Ah, Mercy, have compassion upon me in my trouble — 
 give me something of a child's love, for the burden of my sin is too 
 heavy for me to bear." 
 
 lie sank into a chair, covering his face with his hands, and she 
 knew that the strong man was crj'ing like a child. 
 
 Her heart was touched by his distress, as a woman if not as a 
 daughter. 
 
 " I am sorry for you in your trouble," she said, in a low voice, 
 " and I would gladly help you if I could. But I cannot forget my 
 mother's broken heart — the slow torture of long years. I had to 
 look on and see her suffer, not even knowing the cause of licr sorrow, 
 utterly unable to comfort her. Sorrow had hardened her. She 
 was hard to me, a hard task-mistress rather than a mother. And 
 now you tell me she has gone away, no one knows where. What 
 can I do to help you and her? " 
 
 '' God knows if you can do anvthing, Mercy," he answered, looking 
 up at her gently, relieved somewhat by those unaccustomed tears. 
 
 He took her hand, which she did not withhold from him. 
 
 "Sit doAvn, Mercy," he said, "sit here by my side, and let us 
 consider calmly what we can do. Your mother has no friends to 
 whom she could go, no one, unless it were Miss Newton." 
 
 •■ Miss Newi;on," cried Mercy. " What docs my mother know of 
 Jliss Newton?" 
 
 "They were acquainted many years ago, but your mother would 
 liardly go to her now." 
 
 " My mother knew Jliss Newton, my one friend? " 
 
 " Yes, long ago. How did you come to know her ? " 
 
 " She sought me out. It is the business of her life to seek out 
 those who have most need of her, to whom her friendship can do 
 most good. Siie hoard of me from a girl who lives in this house, and 
 she came to nic and invited me to her lodgings, and brightened ray 
 life by her kindness. And did she really know my mother, years 
 ago ? " 
 
 " Yes, more than thirty years ago, when they were both young." 
 
 "How strange that is. 
 
 " I am thinking, Mercy ; I am trjing to think what refuge your 
 mother could have found in Loudon? Remember I liave to think 
 of her as of one who is scarcely accountable for her actions. I have 
 to tliink of her as under the influence of one fixed idea — not governed 
 by the same laws that govern other people."
 
 340 The Day will conic. 
 
 " I am powerless to help you," answered I\Iercy, l-iopelossl5\ I 
 ■will do anything you tell me to do — but of all people in this world I 
 am least able to advise you. I know nothing of my mother's life 
 except as I saw it at Cheriton — one long weariness." 
 
 "You shall know all by-and-by; all. I will stand before you as 
 a criminal before his judge. I will lay bare my heart to you as a 
 penitent before his father-confessor — and then perhaps, when you 
 have heard the whole story, you will take compassion upon me — you 
 will understand how hard a part I had to play — and that I was riot 
 altogether vile. I will say no more about your life here, and your 
 future life, as I would have it, until that confession has been made. 
 Then it will remain for you to decide whether I am woithy to be 
 treated in somewise as a father." 
 
 She sat in silence, with her head bent OA'er her folded hands. PTe 
 looked at the dejected droop of the head, the grey threads in the 
 auburn liair, the hollow cheek, the attenuated features and wan 
 complexion, and remembered how brilliant a creature she had been 
 in the first bloom of her beauty, and wn'th what furtive apprehensive 
 glances he, her father, had admired that girlish face. She was 
 handsomer in those days than ever her mother had been, Avith a 
 softer, more refined loveliness than the Strangway t\^e. And he 
 had let this flower grow beside his gate like a weed, and be trampled 
 under foot like a Aveed ; and now the face bore upon it all the traces 
 of suffering, the lines about the mouth had taken the same embittered 
 look that he remembered only too well in Evel^Ti Darcy, that look 
 of silent protest against Fate. 
 
 He watched her for some miiuites in an agonj^ of remorse. She 
 was his daughter, and it had been his duty to shelter her from the 
 storms of life — and he had let the storms beat upon that undefended 
 head, he had let her suffer as the nameless waifs of this world have 
 to suffer, uncared for, unavenged. 
 
 If she should ever be brought to forgive him, could he ever forgive 
 himself? 
 
 But he had nearer anxieties than these sad thoughts of that which 
 might have been and that which was. He had the missing woman 
 to thmk of, and the evil that might come to herself or others from 
 her being at large. He had to speculate upon her motive in leaving 
 Cheriton. 
 
 Perhaps it was only a natural result of his interview with her 
 yesterday afternoon, when he had shown her the pistol, and told her 
 where it had been found, that pistol which he and she knew po well 
 — one of a pair that had been in her husband's possession at the 
 time of her marriage — which had been pledged while they were 
 living in Essex Street, and when their funds were at the lowest. 
 She had kept the duplicate, with other duplicates which Darcy 'a 
 carelessness abandoned to her— and afterwards some womanish
 
 TJic Day will come. 341 
 
 apprehension of danger in the somewhat isolated cottage in Camber- 
 well Grove — some talk of burglarions attacks in the neighbourhood 
 — had induced her to redeem the pistols, and thoy had been kept in 
 their case on the table beside her bed for years. No burglar had 
 ever troubled the quiet cottage, where there was neither plate-chest 
 nor jewel-case to tempt an attack. The pistols had never been 
 used. They had been packed u]i with other things and stored in 
 the Pantechnicon, and James 1 )albrook had forgotten the existence 
 of Captain Darcy's revolvers till the builder's ibreman showed him 
 the pistol that had been found in the well. Tiien there came back 
 upon him, in a Hash, the memory of the case that had stood beside 
 his bed, and the fact that the pistols had been sent down to Cheriton 
 with ]\[rs. Darcy's other goods. That pistol could not have passed 
 out of her possession without her knowledge and cuusent. If hers 
 was not the hand that pulled the trigger, she must, at least, have 
 furnished the weapon, and she must have known the murderer. 
 
 He told her as mucii as this, yesterday afternoon, when he showed 
 her the pistol. 8he heard hira in dogged silence, looking at him with 
 wide-open eyes, in which the dilatation of the pupil never altered. 
 She neitlier admitted nor denied anything. He could extoi-t no 
 answer from her, except some scornful and evasive retort. And bo 
 he left her in despair, having wanied her that discovery was now a 
 question of time. The finding of the pistol would put the police on 
 the right track, and link by link the chain of circumstantial evidence 
 would be fitted together. 
 
 '* You had better tell me the truth, and let me help you, if I can," 
 he told her. 
 
 She had acted upon his warning perhaps, but without his help. 
 It was like her perverse nature to go out into the world alone, to 
 make a mysterious disappearance just at the time when suspicion 
 might at any moment be directed towards her, just when it was most 
 essential tliat there should be not the slightest deviation from the 
 sluggish course of her every-day life. 
 
 Lord Cheriton started up suddenly. 
 
 '• Yes, that is at least an idea," he muttered. " Good-bye, Mercy. 
 I have thought of a ])lace where your mother might possibly go — a 
 place associated witli her past life. It is a forlorn hope, but 1 may 
 as well look for her there. Wherever and whenever 1 find her you 
 will come to her, will you not, if she should need your love ? " 
 
 " Of course 1 will go to her — and if she has no other shelter 1 can 
 bring her here. I should not be afraid to work for her." 
 
 " It is cruel of you to talk of working for lier. You know that 
 the want of money has never been an element in her troubles. She 
 might have lived an easy and refined life among pleasant people if 
 bhe would have been persuaded by me. As it w.h. 1 did what 1 
 cuuld to make her life comfortable."'
 
 342 The Day will come. 
 
 " Yes, I know she had plenty of money. She gave me expensive 
 masters, as if she had been a woman of fortune. I used to wonder 
 how she could afford it. We lived very simply, almost like hermits, 
 but there seemed alwaj's money for everything she wanted. Our 
 clothes, our furniture, and books seemed far too good for our station. 
 I used to wonder who and what we were ; and I have been asked 
 questions sometimes about my former home. What did I remember 
 of my childhood ? Wliere had I lived before my father died ? I 
 could tell people nothing. I only remembered a cottage among 
 fields, and the faces of the woman who nursed me and her children 
 who played with me. I I'emembered nothing but the cottage, and 
 the great cornfields, and the lanes and hedgerows, till one summer 
 day my mother came in a carriage, and took me on a jom'ney by 
 the railroad — a journey that lasted a long time, for we had to wait 
 and change trains more than once — and in the evening I found 
 myself at Cheriton. That was all of my life that I could recall, and 
 I did not even know the name of the woman with whom I lived till 
 I was seven years old, or of the village near her cottage." 
 
 " You were hardly used, Mercy ; but it was not all my fault." 
 
 He would not tell her that it was his wish to have her reared at 
 Myrtle Cottage, where he would have watched her infancy and 
 childhood ; he would not tell her that it was the mother's sensitive- 
 ness, her resentful consciousness of her false position, which had 
 banished the child. 
 
 " You will come to me whenever I summon you, Mercy ? " he 
 said. 
 
 " Yes, I will come." 
 
 He held out his hand, and she gave him hers, which was cold as 
 death. He drew her to his breast, and kissed the pallid, care-worn 
 forehead, and so they paited, father and daughter, the daughter 
 acknowledged for the firtt time at seven-and-twenty years of 
 age. 
 
 Lord Cheriton hailed the first hansom he found upon liis way, 
 and told the man to drive him to CamberweU Grove. 
 
 The neighbourhood through which he went was curiously un- 
 familiar after the changes and forgetfulness of twenty years ; and 
 yet it was curiously familiar to him, and brought back the memory 
 of that dead time, when a man who was himself, and yet not him- 
 self, had gone to and fro that road until its every shop-front and 
 every street corner seemed engraven upon his brain. 
 
 It is a busy, teeming world — a world of seething humanity^ 
 jostling, striving, anxious, hollow-cheeked and eager-eyed. He had 
 chosen to plant his hidden Eden upon " the Surrey side," and had 
 gone to and fro by that squalid highway with a contented spirit, 
 because it was a world in which he was least likely to meet any of 
 his professional brotherhood. What other barrister in decent
 
 The Day luill cmnc. 343 
 
 practice, what other Queen's Counsel, ahove all, was likely to pitch 
 liis teut at Caniberwell? There mi^'ht bo old-fashioned men who 
 would bo content to grow their early cucumbers, and gloat over 
 their pines and peaches in .some citizen's paradise on Clapham 
 Common. There might be men who would resign themselves to 
 life at Wandsworth ; but where was the spirit so lowly within the 
 ])recincts of the Lamb who would stoop to live in a place wliich was 
 accessible only by the Elephant and Castle and the Walworth 
 Koad ? Do not the very names of those places stink in the nostrils 
 of gentility '? The Elephant has never held up his trmik since the 
 glories of the Queen's Bench departed, since Icliabod was written 
 on those walls against which Lord Huntingtower played rackets, 
 and in whose shadow so many of Earth's great ones have paced up 
 and down in the days when the noble debtor was still a person 
 apart and distinguished, not amenable to the laws which govern tho 
 bankrupt trader. 
 
 He had borne with the Walworth Road because it lay so far out 
 of gentility's track. The very odour of the neighbourhood was 
 famihar — the reek of cooked meats and stale vegetables, blended 
 with all-pervading fumes of beer. But there were numerous 
 changes. He missed familiar shops and well-remembered features. 
 All that had been shabby of old looked still shabbier to-day. How 
 often he had tramped those pavements, economizing the cost of a 
 cab, and not caring to rub shoulders with the habitues of the knife- 
 board on Atlas or Waterloo. The walk had suited him. He could 
 think out the brief read overnight as he tramped to Westminster in 
 the morning. How well ho remembered the cool breath of the 
 river blowing up the Westminster lioad on bright spring mornings, 
 when the llower-girls were oilering violets and primroses at the 
 street corners. How well he remembered the change to a cleaner 
 and a statelier world when he had crossed the bridge — tho solemn 
 grandeur of Westminster Hall, the close, sickly atmosphere of tho 
 crowded courts. Looking back he wondered how he bore the 
 monotony of that laborious life, forgetting that ho had been borno 
 up and carried along by his ambition, always looking onward to the 
 day when his name and fortune should be made, and he should 
 taste the strong wine of success. He remembered what an idle 
 dream Evelyn's idea of buying the Cheriton estate had seemed to 
 him when tirst she mooted it ; how he had talked of it only to 
 indulge her fancy, as one discusses impossible things with a child ; 
 and how by slow degrees the notion of its feasibility had crept into 
 his mind ; how he had begun to calculate tho possibilities of his 
 future savings ; how he had covered stray half-sheets of paper with 
 elaborate calculations, taking pleasure in the mere figures as if they 
 were actual money. He remembered how, when he had saved five 
 thousand pounds, a rabid eagerness to accumulate took hold of him,
 
 344 '^^^^ -^^y ^^^^ come. 
 
 and with what keen eyes he used to look at the figures on a brief. 
 He had caught the infection of Evelyn's sanguine temper, and ol 
 Evelyn's parsimonious habits. They used to hang over his bank- 
 book sometimes of an evening, as Paolo and Francesca hung over 
 the story of Launcelot, calculating how much could be spared to be 
 placed on deposit, how little they could contrive to live on for the 
 next quarter. As the hoard increased Evelyn grew to gi"udge 
 herself the smallest luxury, a few floweiing plants for the di-awing- 
 room, a day's hire of the jobbing gardener, a drive in a hansom to 
 Richmond or Greenwich, httle pleasures that had relieved the 
 monotony of their isolation. 
 
 '' My father cannot live many years," she told James Dalbrook, 
 " and when he dies the estate will have to be sold. I have often 
 heard him say so." 
 
 Mr. Dalbrook went on a stolen journey to Cheriton, and saw 
 every bit of the estate which he could get to see. ' He was careful 
 to say nothing of this expedition to Evelyn lest she should want to 
 go with liim, as he felt that her presence would have been a diffi- 
 cult}'. Some one might have recognized the Sqiiire's young 
 daughter in the mature woman. 
 
 He went back to London passionately in love with the property, 
 which he remembered as one of the paradises of his boyhood, in the 
 days when he had been fond of long excursions on foot to Corfe, or 
 Swanage, or tlie great sunburnt hUls by the sea. He saw Cheriton 
 Chase now with the entranced eyes of an ambitious man to whom 
 territorial possession seemed the ci'owning glory of life. 
 
 He had saved ten thousand pounds, very little compared with the 
 sum which would be requked ; but he told himself that when he 
 had amassed another ten he might feel secure of being able to buy 
 the estate, since it would be easy to raise seventy per cent, of the 
 purchase money on mortgage. He began to see his way to the 
 realization of that dream. He would have to go on living laborious 
 days — to go on with those habits of self-denial which had already 
 become a second nature — even after the prize was won ; but he saw 
 himself the owner of that noble old house, amidst a park and wood- 
 land that were the growth of centuries ; and he thought of the 
 delight of restorujg and uuproviug and repairing, after fifty years of 
 slipshod poverty and gradual decay. 
 
 And now, as the hoard increased to twelve, fifteen, eighteen 
 thousand, James Dalbrook began to talk to his companion of their 
 future ownership of Cheriton as a certainty. They plamied tlie 
 rooms they were to occupy; they allotted their small stock of furni- 
 tm-e about the old mansion house — things they had bought by slow 
 degrees in the happy hunting-grounds of Wardour Street and the 
 Portland Road, and which were all good of their kind. They dis- 
 cussed the number of servants that they could manage to carry on
 
 The Day will covie. 345 
 
 with fur tlio first few years, while economy would still be needful. 
 It was understood between them, though rarely spoken about, that 
 Tom Darcy woidd bo dead before that fruition of their dreams. He 
 had been sent off to Canada, a broken man. Who coiUd doubt that 
 a few years more would see the end of that worthless existence ? 
 And then the bond between those two who had held to each other 
 RO faithfully woidd be realized, and Evelyn could go back to tho 
 house in which she was bom, its proud and happy mistress. 
 
 She had fed upon those dreams, lived upon them, had thought of 
 little else jn her solitary days, in the isolation of her home. She 
 had put away her child with stern resolve that no dilliculty should 
 arise out of that existence when she came to take her ])lace in 
 society as James Dalbrook's wife. She never meant to acknowledge 
 the daughter born at Myrtle Cottage, She would do her duty to 
 the child somehow ; but not in that way. 
 
 Lord Cheriton remembered all these things as the cab rattled 
 along the Walworth Koad. Our waking thouglits have sometimes 
 almost the rapidity of our dreams. He surveyed tiie panorama of 
 the past; recalled the final bitterness of that meeting at Boulogne, 
 when he went over to see !Mrs. Darcy, and when he had to tell her 
 that he was master of Cheriton Chase, by the help of his wife's 
 dowry, and that he had begun life there on a far more dignified 
 footing tlian they two had contemplated. 
 
 She received the announcement "with sullen silence, but he could 
 see that it hurt her like the thrust of a sword. She stood before 
 him with a lowering brow, white to the lips, her thin fingers twisting 
 themselves in and out of each other with a convulsive moment, and 
 one comer of the bloodless under lip caught under the sharp white 
 teeth fiercely. 
 
 " Well," she said at last, " I congratulate j'ou. Cheriton has a 
 new master; and if the lady of the house is not the woman whose 
 shadow I used to see there in my dreams — it matters very little to 
 you. You are the gainer in all ways. You have got the place you 
 wanted ; and a fair young wife instead of a faded — mistress." 
 
 She lifted uj) her eyes, pale with anguish, and looked at him with 
 an expression he had never been able to forget. 
 
 He was silent under this thrust, and then, after a troubled pause, 
 he asked her if she had made up her mind where her future days 
 were to be spent. He was only desirous to see her settled in some 
 ])retty neighbourhood, in the nicest house that she could find for 
 herself, or that he could choose for her. 
 
 "Do not let money bo any consideration," he said. "My fees 
 are rolling in very fast this year, and they are big fees. I want tu 
 Bee you happUy cucumstanced, with ilercy." 
 
 " There is only one place 1 care to live in," she answered, " and 
 that is Cheriton Chase."
 
 346 The Day will co7ne. 
 
 He told lier, with a sad smile, that Cheritou was the only place 
 that was impossible for her. 
 
 " It is not impossible. Do you think I want to be a fine lady, or 
 to tell people that I was once Evelyn Strangway ? I only want to 
 live upon the soil I love — and to see you, sometimes, as you go past 
 my door. There is the West Lodge, now — one of the most 
 picturesque old cottages in England. I loved it when I was a girl. 
 Sally Newton and I used to picnic there, when my father and 1 
 were not on speaking terms. Who is living in that cottage now ? " 
 
 " One of the gardeners." 
 ; " Turn out the gardener and let me live there." 
 
 He rejected the idea as preposterous, degrading, that she should 
 live at the lodge gates, she who had once been the Squire's 
 daughter. 
 
 " Do not talk to me of degradation," she answered, bitterly. 
 " There will be no degradation for me in hving at your gates, now 
 that you and I are strangers. My degradation belongs to the past. 
 Nothing in the future can touch me. I am nameless henceforward, 
 a nuUity." 
 
 " But if you should be recognized there ? " 
 
 " Who is there to recognize me ? Do you think there is one line 
 or one look of Evelyn Strangway's sixteen-year-old face left in my 
 face to-day ? " 
 
 Knowing the portrait in the hall at Cheriton he was fain to 
 confess that the change was complete. It would have been difficult 
 for any one to find the fines of that proud young beauty in the 
 careworn features and sunken cheeks of the woman who stood 
 before him now. The months that had gone by since their parting 
 had aged her as much as if they had been years. 
 
 " If your husband should find you there? " 
 
 " Not hkely ! It is the very last place in which he would 
 look for me ; and the chances are against his ever returning to 
 England." 
 
 " Why is yom- mind set upon hving at Cheriton ? " 
 
 " Why ? Because I have ch-eamt and thought of that place till 
 my love for it has become almost a disease ; because I have not the 
 faintest interest in any other spot upon earth. I don't care how I 
 live there. I have no pride left in me. Pride, self-respect, care for 
 myself died a sudden death one day you know of, when I found that 
 5'ou had ceased to care for me, when I awoke from a long dream 
 and knew that my place in life was lost. I shall be content to 
 vegetate in that cottage — and — and if you tliink I ought to have 
 Mercy with me, why Mercy can be there too. I shall be Mrs. 
 Jones, or Mrs. Brown, and there can be no particular reason why 
 Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Brown should not have a daughter." 
 1 She was so earnest, so intent, so resolute upon this and nothing
 
 The Day 10 ill come. 347 
 
 else tlian this, that ho was constrained to yiclil to hn- wishes, ami 
 once having yiekled, he did all in his power tu make her lile com- 
 fortable and free from humiliation. lie iiad the cottage as taste- 
 fully restored as if he had been going to occupy it himself; ho 
 opened an account for !Mrs. Porter at a Dorchester Bank, and paid 
 iu four hundred pounds to her credit, and ho told her that the same 
 amount would be paid in yearly on the 1st of January. There should 
 be nothing uncertain or pinched in her circumstances. 
 
 This being done, he resigned himself as best he might to bear the 
 burden of that unwelcome presence at his gates. He and the woman 
 who was to have been his wife rarely spoke to each other during 
 those long slow years in which the master of Cheriton gi'ew iu 
 iionour and dignity and in the respect of his fellow-men. He 
 whoso career Evelyn Darcy had watched from the very dawn 
 of success was now a personage, a man of mark in his native 
 county, a man who could afford to hold out the hand of friend- 
 ship to his less distinguished relatives, and who could afford 
 to confess liimsclf the son of a small shopkeeper iu the county 
 town. 
 
 Lady Cheriton had been inclined to interest herself in the lonely 
 woman at the West Lodge. She was impressed by the unmistak- 
 able refinement of Mrs. Porter's appearance, and wanted to befriend 
 her ; but Lord Cheriton had forbidden any friendly relations between 
 his wife and the lodge-keeper, on the ground that she was a woman 
 of very peculiar temper, that she would resent anything like patron- 
 age, and that siio would infinitely prefer being left alone to being 
 taken up or petted. The tender-hearted ^laria, always submissive 
 to the husband she adored, had obeyed witliout question ; but some 
 years after, when Mercy was gi'owing up and being educated by the 
 best masters available in the neighbourhood, Lady Cheriton had 
 taken a fancy to the hard-worked girl, and had interested herself 
 warmly in her progress; and thus it had ha]ipcned tliat althougli 
 Mrs. Porter never was known to cross tiie tiircshold of tiic great 
 house, her daughter went there often, and was made much of by 
 Lady Cheriton, and admired by Juanitix, whoso accomplishments 
 were still iu embryo, while ^lercy was far advanced in music and 
 modern languages. 
 
 '• I suppose her mother means her to go out as a governess by- 
 and-by," Lady Cheriton told her husband. •* ISho is over-educated 
 for any other walk in life, and in any case she is over-worked. I 
 feel very sorry for her when I see how tired she looks sometimes, 
 and how anxious she is about her studies. Juanita must never bo 
 allowed to toil like that." 
 
 Lord Cheriton remembered all tiiat had happened witli reference 
 to the woman who called herself Mrs. Porter, iu all these long ycai-s 
 — his daughter Juanita's lifetime. IShe had seen the funeral trains
 
 348 The Day will come. 
 
 of his infaut sons pass through the gate beside her cottage— she 
 had seen the httle coffins covered with snow-white flowers, and she 
 must have known the bitterness of his disappointment. She had 
 lived at the West Lodge for all these years, and had made no sign 
 of a rebellious heart, of anger, jealousy, or revengeful feeling. He 
 had believed that she was really content so to live ; that in granting 
 what she had asked of him he had satisfied her, and that her sense 
 of wrong was appeased. At first he had lived in feverish apprehen- 
 sion of some outbreak or scene — some revelation made to the wife 
 he loved, or to the friends whose esteem he valued ; but as the 
 years went by without bringing him any trouble of this kind, 
 he had ceased to think with uneasiness of that sinister figui'e at his 
 gates. 
 
 And now by the light of the hideous confession which he carried 
 in his breast pocket he knew that in all those years she had been 
 cherishing her sense of ^\Tong, heaping up anger and revenge and 
 malice and every deadly feeling engendered of disappointed love, 
 against the day of wrath. Could he wonder if her mind had given 
 way under that slow torture, untU the concealed madness of years 
 culminated in an act of wild revenge — a seemingly motiveless 
 crime ? Heaven knows by what distorted reasoning she had 
 arrived at the resolve to strike her deadly blow there rather than 
 elsewhere. Heaven knows what sudden access of malignity might 
 have been caused by the spectacle of the honeymoon lovers and 
 their innocent bliss. 
 
 The cab had turned into Camberwell Grove, and now he asked 
 himself if it were not the wildest lancy to suppose that she might 
 have gone back to Myrtle Cottage, or that she might be hanging 
 about the neighbourhood of her old home. The cottage was in all 
 probability occupied, and even if she had Avandered that way she 
 would most likely have come and gone before now. The idea had 
 flashed into his mind as he sat in Mercy's room, the idea that in her 
 distracted state all her thoughts might revert to the past, and that 
 lier first impulse might lead her to revisit the house in which she had 
 lived so long.
 
 The Day zvill conic. 349 
 
 CHArTER XXXV. 
 
 " The love of these is like the lightning spear, 
 And shrivels whom it touches. They consnnie 
 All things within their reach, and, last of all, 
 Their lonely selves." 
 
 'I'liE cottage was to he let. A hoard ofTering it upon a repairing 
 lease announced the fact. 
 
 Lord Cheriton opened the familiar e^ate. The very sound wth 
 which it swung hack as he passed recalled a Hfe that was gone, that 
 had left nothing but an exceeding bitter sorrow. How weedy and 
 dejected the narrow garden looked in the sunshine — how moss-grown 
 the gravel path which ho and Eveh'n had once taken such pains 
 to weed and roll, in those early days when that modest suburban 
 retreat seemed a happy home, and the demon of ennui had not yet 
 darkened their threshold. 
 
 He entered the well-remembered porch over which the Virginia 
 creeper hung in rank luxuriance. The house was not unoccupied, 
 for slipshod feet came along the passage at the sound of the bell, and 
 he heard children's voices in the back premises. 
 
 A slatternly woman, A\nth a year-old baby on her left arm, opened 
 the door. 
 
 " Has a lady called here this morning? " lie asked. 
 
 "Yes, sir, there is a lady here now — in the drawing-room," tho 
 woman answered eagerly. '' I hope you belong to her, for I've been 
 feeling a bit nervous about her, with nio and the children alone in 
 the house, and my husband not coming back till night time. I'm 
 afraid she's not quite right in her head.'' 
 
 "Yes, I belong to her. I have cnme to fotch lirr." 
 
 He went into the drawing-room — the room that had looked pretty 
 and picturesque enough in those unforgotten days — a small room 
 furnished with quaint old secretaire and bookcase, Chippendale 
 chairs, and a carved oak table, a pair of old blue-and-whito jars on 
 the top of a dark mahogany buroau, a high, brass fender that used 
 to glitter in the firelight, sober brown damask curtains, and half-a- 
 dozen Bartolozzi engravings of rustic subjects, in neat oval frames — 
 a room that always looked like a Dutch picture. 
 
 Now that room was a scene of squalor and desolation. For
 
 <550 The Day will come. 
 
 furniture there was nothing but a shabby Pembroke table, wantinx; 
 two castors, and two old cane-seated chairs, in each of which the 
 cane was broken and bulging. A dilapidated doll, in a ragged red 
 gauze frock, sprawled amidst the dirt on the bare floor, and a greasy 
 rug lay in front of the fireless hearth. 
 
 Mrs. Porter was sitting with her elbows on the table, and her head 
 resting on her clasped hands. She did not notice Lord Cheriton's 
 approach till he was standing close beside her, -when she looked up 
 at him. 
 
 At tirst her gaze expressed trouble and bewilderment ; then her 
 (;xce brightened into a quiet smile, a look of long ago. 
 
 "You are earlier than usual, James," she said, holding out her 
 hand. 
 
 He took the hand in his ; it was hot and dry, as if "with a raging 
 fever. It was the hand of a murderess ; but it was also the hand of 
 his victim, and he could not refuse to take it. 
 
 " "Was your work over so soon to-day ? " she asked. " I'm afraid 
 it will be ever so long before dinner will be ready, and the house is 
 all in a muddle — everj^hing wretched " — looking about her with a 
 puzzled air. "I can't think what has happened to the rooms," she 
 muttered. " Seiwants are so troublesome." 
 
 She passed her hand across her forehead, as if her head were 
 paining her, and then looked at him helplessly. 
 
 " You are ill, Evelyn," he said, gently. 
 
 It was twenty years since he had called her by the name that had 
 been so often on his lips in this house. It was almost as if the very 
 atmosphere of the house, even in its desolation, recalled the old link 
 between them, and made him forgetful of what had happened in 
 Dorsetshire. 
 
 " No. I have a headache, that is all. I shall set to work 
 presently and make everj'thing comfortable for you. Only I can't 
 lind Mar}^ — I can't get on without Mary. I don't like the look of 
 that charwoman — a wretched, untidy creature — and I don't know 
 what she has done with the firrniture. I suppose she moved it in 
 order to clean the rooms. It is just like their tricks, clearing out 
 the furniture and then dawdling ever so long before they begin to 
 scrub the floors." 
 
 He looked at her earnestly, wondering whether she was pretend- 
 ing, whether she had repented that written acknowledgment of her 
 crime, and was simulating madness. No, it was real enough. The 
 eyes, with their dull fixed look and dilated pupils, the troubled move- 
 ments of the hands, the tremulous lips, all told of the unsettled brain. 
 There was but one course before him, to get her madness established 
 as an accepted fact before there was any chance of her crime being 
 discovered. 
 
 "Do not trouble about anvthing," he said, gcntlv. "I will get
 
 The Day will conic. 351 
 
 pnmc of llio fiii-niliiro l)roiip;ht back presently, and I ^vill get yon a 
 pervant. Will you wait quietly here, while I sec about two or three 
 small matters ? " 
 
 " Yes, I will wait ; but don't be long. It seems such a long whilo 
 since yesterday," she said, looking round the room in a forlorn Avay, 
 '• and everything is so strangely altered. Don't be long, if you must 
 go out." 
 
 He promised to return in half an hour, and then he went out and 
 spoke to the woman. 
 
 " How did she come here, and when ? " 
 
 " She walked up to the door. It was just dinner-time — half-past 
 twelve o'clock. I thought it was some one to sec the house, so I 
 let her in without asking any questions, and I showed her all the 
 rooms, and it was some time before I saw she was wrong in her 
 head. She looked about her just as people mostly do look, and she 
 was very thoughtful, as if she was considering whether the place 
 would suit. And then after she'd been a long time looking at tho 
 rooms and the garden, she went back into the drawing-room, and 
 sat down at the table. I told her I should be glad if she could 
 make it convenient to leave, as I had my washing to do. But she 
 said she lived here, this was her home, and she told me to go away 
 and get on with my work. She gave me such a scare that I didn't 
 know how to answer her. She spoke vciy mild, and I could see 
 that she was a lady ; but I could see that she was out of hor mind, 
 and that frightened me, for fear she should take a violent turn, and 
 I all alone in the house with those young children. I was afraid to 
 contradict her, so I just let her please herself and sit in the dramng- 
 room alone, wdiile I got on with my bit of washing, and kept the 
 children well out of the way. I never felt more tlmnkful in my life 
 than when you rang the boll."' 
 
 " I am going as far as the post-ofllce to send ofl' some telegrams, 
 and I want you to take care she doesn't leave this liouse while I'm 
 away," said Lord riioriton, emphasizing his request wth a sovereign. 
 
 "Thank you kindly, sir. I'll do my host. I'm sm-c I'm sorry 
 for her with all my heart, poor dear lady." 
 
 " And I want you to give me the use of this house for to-day — 
 and possibly for to-night, if by any chance I should not be able to 
 get her away to-night." 
 
 " Yes, sir, yon are free and welcome to the house as far as it's 
 mine to give leave — and it's been empty too long for there to be 
 much chance of a tenant tnrning up between now and to-morrow." 
 
 "Very good. Then I shall send in a little furniture — ;iust enough 
 to make her comfortable for a few hours — and when I come back 
 you can get her something to eat, and make her some tea." 
 
 " Yes, sir. You won't be gone long, I hojie, for fear she should 
 turn violent ? "
 
 35- ^-^JiG Day will come. 
 
 " She will not ilo tbat. She has never been violent." 
 
 " I am very glad to hear that. Appearances are so deceitful 
 sometimes when folks are ^vrong in their heads." 
 
 Lord Cheriton had told the cabman to wait. He got into the cab 
 and drove to the nearest upholsterer's, where he hired a table, a 
 comfortable sofa, a couple of chairs, a small square carpet, and 
 some pillows and blankets, in the event of Mrs. Porter having to 
 bivouac in IMyrtle Cottage. He meant her only to leave that 
 shelter for a place of restraint, under medical care. 
 
 This done, he went to the post-office and telegraphed first to 
 ^farian Gray, Hercules Buildings : — 
 
 " Your mother is at Mj'rtle Cottage, Camberwell Grove, and very 
 ill. Go to her without delay. — Cheeitox." 
 
 His second telegram was to Dr. Mainwaring, Welbeck Street :— 
 
 "Meet me as soon as possible at Myrtle Cottage, Camberwell 
 Green, and send a trained nurse, experienced in mental cases, to the 
 same address. I want your advice upon a case in which time is of 
 vital importance." 
 
 He sent another telegram to another medical man. Dr. Wilmot, 
 also an old acquaintance, and a fourth to Theodore Dalbrook, at the 
 Priorj' : — 
 
 "Mrs. Porter is in London, and in my care. You need have no 
 further apprehension." 
 
 He was back at ]\Iyrtle Cottage within the half-hour, and was 
 able to direct the men who had just brought a small van containing 
 the furniture. He saw the things carried into the room that had 
 been the dining-room, which was emptj' — the policeman's family 
 preferring to camp in the kitchen — and had them an-anged there 
 with some appearance of comfort. Then he went back to the 
 drawing-room, where Mrs. Porter was standing at the window, 
 staring at the weeping-ash. 
 
 " I didn't know the tree was so big," she muttered. 
 
 "The dining-room is in better order," he said, gently, "will you 
 come and sit there, while they get you some tea? " 
 
 " Yes, James," she answered, meeklj-, and then she added, with 
 almost the voice and manner of twenty years ago, " tell me about 
 your day." 
 
 She followed him into the other room, and seated herself opposiio 
 liim, looking at him expectantly. " Tell me about your day in tlie 
 law courts. Was it dull or interesting ? Had you any great case 
 on? I forget. I forget." 
 
 She had always questioned him on his return from the law courts :
 
 The Day zvill come. 353 
 
 nl)c liail reail tlio ic|ioit.s of all liis oases, and all his rivals' cases, 
 interesting herself in everything that concerned his career. And 
 now there was no nmcli of the past in her manner that his licart 
 aclied as he listened to her. lie could not humour her delusion. 
 
 "I have sent for your dau_c:;htcr," lie said p-avcly, thinking tliat 
 name might bring her hack to a sense of the present time. " She 
 will be here before long, I believe. I hope vou will receive her 
 kindly." 
 
 "Why liave you sent for her?" she cned, vexed and startled. 
 "She is very well where she is — happy and well. Ilie nurse told 
 me so in her last letter. I can't have her here. You know tliat, 
 James, — you know how people would talk by-and-by — how they 
 would ferret out the truth — by-and-by, when we want to stand clear 
 of the past " 
 
 "Evelyn, the past is long past, and -our child is a woman — a 
 sorrowful woman. I want you to take her to your heart again, if 
 you have any heart left in you."' 
 
 "I have not," she cried, with a sudden change, appalling in its 
 instantaneousness. " ^ly heart died within me twenty years ago, 
 when you broke it ; in this house, yes, in this house, James 
 Ualbrook, God help me ! I have been di'eaming! I thought I was 
 living here again in the old time, and that you had come home to 
 me, as you used to come, liefore you broke your promise and 
 abandoned me to many a rich young wife. Heart ! No, I have a 
 fiery scorpion hero, whore my heart used to be. Do you think if I 
 had had a heart I could have killed Mm — that young man who 
 never injured me by so much as one scornful word ? It was the 
 thought of your daughter tliat maddened me — the thought of lier 
 happiness, the sound of the church bells and the cheering, and 
 the sight of tJie flags and garlands and laurel arches — while my 
 daughter, your nameless, unacknowledged child, was an outcast, 
 and I who should have been your wife, and the liappy mother of 
 just as happy a bride, I was living in that silent solitary cottage 
 alone and unloved — ujion the land where my father and his forefathers 
 liad been owners of the soil. I had dreamed the dream and you 
 had realized it. All through those moonlight nights T was awake 
 and roaming about in the park, from midnight till dawn, thinking, 
 thinking, thinking, till I felt as if my brain must burst with the 
 agony of thought. And then 1 remembered Tom Darcy's pistols, and 
 I took one of them with me of a night. 1 hardly knew why I carried 
 that iiistol about with me, but I felt a necessity to kill something. 
 Once 1 was near shooting one of the red deer, but the creaturo 
 looked at me with its plaintive eyes, so bold and so tame in his 
 sense of security, and I fondled him instead of kiUing him. And 
 then I took to prowling about by the house, and I saw those two in 
 the lamp-lit room, in their wedded happiness — their ircddrd happi- 
 
 2a
 
 354 ^'^^ ^<^y "^^'^^ come. 
 
 iiess, James, not such a miiou as ours, secret, durkeiiecl by a clou'l 
 of shame. I saw your daughter in her bright young beauty, the 
 proud, triumphant wife : and then a devilish thought took hold of 
 me — the thought of seeing her widowed, broken-hearted; the 
 thought that I might be her evil Destiny — that just by stretching 
 out my arm and pulling a tiigger I could bring down all that pride 
 into the dust — could bring youth and beauty down to my level of 
 dull despair." 
 
 " It was a devilish thought." 
 
 " It was ; but it was my thought all the same ; for three days 
 and three nights it was never absent from my mind, God luiows 
 how I got through the common business of the day — how the few 
 people with whom I came in contact did not see mmxler in my face ! 
 I watched and waited for my opportunity ; and when the moment 
 came I did not waver. There are old people at Cheriton who conld 
 tell you that Evelyn Strangway at fifteen years old was as good a 
 shot as either of her brothers. My hand had not forgotten its cun- 
 ning; and your daughter was a widow three weeks after she was 
 made a wife. By so much as she was happier than I, by so much 
 was her joy briefer than mine." 
 
 She sank into a corner of the large armchair and covered her 
 face with her hands, muttering to herself. He heard the words — 
 " I made myself her Evil Destiny' ; I was her fate — Nemesis, 
 Nemesis ! The sins of the fathers ! It is the Scripture." 
 
 He could not stay in the room with her after that confession. 
 She had been perfectly coherent in telling the story of her crime ; 
 and it seemed to him that even now she gloated over the evil slie 
 had wrought — that had it been in her power to imdo her work by 
 the lifting of her hand she would hardly have used that power. 
 She seemed a malignant spirit, rejoicing in evil. 
 
 He went out into the passage and told the policeman's wife to 
 look after her, and then he went to the desolate drawing-room and 
 Avalked up and down the bare boards waiting for the arrival of one 
 or both of the doctors. 
 
 What would tlieij think of her mental condition. She had been 
 curiously coherent just now. The temporary delusion had passed 
 away like a cloud. She had spoken as a person fully conscious of 
 her acts, and accountable for them. Judged by her speech just 
 now she was a criminal who deserved the sternest measure of tlie 
 law. 
 
 But he who knew of those long years of brooding, he who knew 
 the story of her wrongs, and how those ^n•ongs must have acted upon 
 that proud and stubborn spirit, to him there seemed little doubt 
 that her mind had long lost its balance, and that her crime had been 
 the culminating crisis of a long period of melancholia. He Avalted 
 the verdict oi^ the doctors with acutest anxiety, for only In an
 
 The Day will come. 355 
 
 asylum did ho soo Pafety lor llli^! unhnppy .siiiiior. 'J'lic liiiiliii-^ of 
 the pistol would inevitably bo talked about at Chcriton, and it was 
 possible that at any moment suspicion m'vj}\i take the right direction. 
 To got her away, to pjct hor hidden from the world was his most 
 ardent desire ; but this was not inconsistent with In's desire to s]i;no 
 her, to do the best that rould be done for her. The tliought that 
 he had ruined her life — that his wrong-doing was at the root of all 
 her miseries — was never absent from his mind. 
 
 Dr. ^lainwaring was the first to arrive. lie was a man of 
 supreme refinement, gentle, compassionate, an artist by talent and 
 temperament, intellectual to the tips of his frngors. lie had made 
 insanity and the care of the insane the work of his life, as his father 
 and grandfather had done before him, and he enjoyc<l the privilege 
 of having been born in an age of enlighteinuent, whicli they had 
 not even foreseen in their happiest anticipations. lie had met Lord 
 Cheriton often in London society, and had visited liim in the 
 country, and they were as close friends as two busy men of the 
 world can be. 
 
 He was mystified by so sudden a suiinnons and to such a locality ; 
 but he had too much tact to betray any surprise. He listened 
 quietly to Lord Chcriton's explanation that he was wanted to form 
 an opinion of a dependent whose state of mind had given cause for 
 uneasiness. 
 
 " I will say very little about her till yon have seen her," said 
 Cheriton. " If it should appear to you and to my friend Wilniot, 
 whom I have asked to meet you, — if you should decide that she 
 ought to be piaffed under restraint, I should wish her to be removed 
 immediately to your house at Cheshunt. I know that she will bo 
 made as happj' there as her state of mind Avill admit, and I 
 shall rely upon your kind consideration for making this a .special 
 case." 
 
 " You may be assured I shall do my uttermost for any one in 
 whom you are interested, my dear Cheriton, but indeed 1 tiiiidc yon 
 must know that I do my uttermost in every case. It is only in 
 some small details that T can ever show special attention. Is this 
 poor lady very violent? " 
 
 "No, she is very quiet."' 
 
 " And there is no suicidal mania, I impe V " 
 
 " 1 have seen no evidence; of it ; but she loft her home in a strarge 
 and motiveless manner this morning, and that, coupled Avith other 
 indications in the past, gave me the alarm." 
 
 " Has she any delusions ? " 
 
 "Yes, it was under a delusion that she came to this empty house. 
 She lived here many years ago. and on talking to jier just now I 
 found her unconscious of the lapse of time, and fancying that all 
 things were still as they were when she was a young woman."
 
 [56 The Day zuill come. 
 
 " Has she liarl any illness lately? " 
 
 " None that I know of." 
 
 " I fear there can be little douht as to her malady. Will you 
 take me to her? She will be less alarmed if you arc with me. 
 Oh, by the bye, the nurse you asked for will be here almost 
 immediately." 
 
 "I am glad of that. There is only a wretched slattern in the 
 house, whom I don't like to see in attendance upon my poor 
 friend." 
 
 Lord Cheriton and the doctor went into the room, where Mrs. 
 Porter was sitting facing the window, staring moodily at the trailing 
 tendrils of Virginia creeper and passion-flower hanging from the roof 
 of the verandah and shutting out the light. There was something 
 unspeakably desolate in that glimpse of neglected garden seen 
 athwart the neglected verdure, with the smoky London sky as a 
 background. 
 
 She looked round quickly at the sound of footsteps, and started 
 up from her chair. 
 
 " Who is this man ? " she asked, turning to Lord Cheriton. 
 " Are you going to send me to prison ? You have lost no time." 
 
 '' This gentleman is my old friend, and he is interested in helping 
 you if he can." 
 
 "You had better leave us together," said Dr. Mainwaring, gently. 
 
 Lord Cheriton left the room silently, and paced the narrow 
 entrance hall, listening with intense anxiety to the low murmuring 
 sound of voices on the other side of the door. 
 
 There were no loud tones from cither speaker. There could be 
 neither anger nor profound agitation Tipon Mrs. Porter's side, the 
 listener thought, as he awaited the result of the interview. A knock 
 at the hall-door startled him from his expectancy, and he hastened 
 to admit the new arrival. 
 
 It was his other medical friend. Dr. Wilmot, stout and jovial, 
 more adapted to assist at a wedding than a funeral, more fitted to 
 prescribe for wine-bibbing aldermen or dowagers who needed to be 
 " kept up " on Rosderer or Mumm, than to stand beside the bed of 
 agony, or listening to the ra^nngs of a mind distraught. Mainwaring 
 came out of the dining-room at the sound of voices in the hall. 
 
 " Ah, how do you do, Wilmot ? You will have very little trouble 
 in making up your mind about this poor soul. Go in and talk to 
 her while I take a turn in the garden with his Lordship." 
 
 He opened the dining-room door, and Dr. Wilmot passed in, 
 ^^miling, agreeable, and beginning at once in an oily voice, " My 
 dear lady, my friend Mainwaring suggests that I should have a 
 little chat with you while — while Lord Cheriton and he are admiring 
 the garden. A very nice garden, upon my word, for the immediate 
 Ticinity of London. One hardly expects such a nice bit of gi-oimd
 
 The Day will come. 357 
 
 nowadays. May I feel j'our pulse? Thanks, a little too rapid for 
 perfect health." 
 
 " What do you and that other man mean by all this pretence ? " 
 she exclaimed, indisuantly. " I am not ill. Are you a doctor, or a 
 policeman in disguise? If you want to take mo to prison I am 
 ready to go with you. I came to liondon on purpose to give myself 
 up. You need not heat about the bush. I am ready." 
 
 "Mad, very mad," thought Dr. Wilmot, detaining the unwilling 
 wrist, and noting its tumultuous pulsations by the second hand of 
 his professional watch. 
 
 Lord Cheriton and Dr. Jlainwaring were pacing slowly up and 
 down the moss-grown gravel while this was happening. 
 
 " How did you find her ? " 
 
 " Curiously calm and collected for the first part of the interview. 
 Had it not been for her troubled eye, and the nervous movements 
 of her hands, I should have supposed her as sane as you or I. I 
 talked to her of indiiVerent subjects, and her answers were con- 
 secutive and reasonable, although it was evident she resented my 
 presence. It was only when I asked her why she had come to 
 London that she became agitated and incohorent, and began to talk 
 about having committed a minder, and wisliing to give herself u|i 
 and make a full confession of her guilt. Instead of waiting for the 
 law to find her out she was going to find the law. She had no fear 
 of the result. Siie had long been tired of lier life, and she was not 
 afraid of the disgrace of a felon's death. Ilcr whole manner, as she 
 said this, showed a deep-rooted delusion, and I am of ojiinion that 
 her mind has been unhinged for a long time. That notion of an 
 imaginary crime is often a fi.xed idea in lunacy. A madman will 
 conceive a murder that never took place, or he will connect himself 
 with some actual murder, and insist upon his guilt, often with an 
 extraordinary appearance of truth and reality, until he is shaken by 
 severe cross-examination." 
 
 " You will receive her in your house at once ? "' 
 " I have no objection, if \Vilmot"s opinion coincides with mine ; 
 but another medical man must sign the certificate if she is to enter 
 my house. I have no doubt as to her being in a condition to 
 require restraint. She is not violent at ]iresent, but if slie is not 
 taken care of she will go wandering about in search of a police- 
 magistrate, and with increasing excitement there will bo every like- 
 liiiood of acute mania. Ah, hero comes "Wihuut. Well, what do 
 you thiidv of the case, Wihnot?" 
 
 " Mad, imdeniably mad. Slie took me for a policeman, and 
 raved about a murder for which she wanted to give hei'self up to 
 justice." 
 
 " A fixed delusion, you see," said Mainwaring. with a gentle sigh. 
 "Do you know how long she has had tliis idea, (Jhcriton?"
 
 35S TJie Day will come. 
 
 " Indeed, I do not. Her position on my estate was a peculiar 
 one. She lived at one of the lodges, but her status was not that of 
 an ordinary dependent. She was her own mistress, and lived a 
 very sohtary life — after her daughter left her. I have sent for the 
 daughter, who will be here presently, I hope. My first notice of 
 anything amiss was a hint dropped by a young medical man who 
 was visiting at Cheriton. He saw Mrs. Porter, and formed the 
 opinion that she either had been off her head in the past, or was 
 likely to go off her head in the future. That startled me, and I had 
 it in my mind to asli you to come down to see hei', Mainwaring, 
 when there came the sudden departure of this morning — a departure 
 which was so at variance with her former liabits that it made me 
 anxious for her safety. I followed her to London — first to her 
 daughter's lodging — and then here — where by mere guesswork, I 
 found her." 
 
 " Do you think that it may be the sad event of last year — the 
 murder of your son-in-law — which has put this notion into her 
 head?" 
 
 " It is not unlikely. That dreadfid event made a profomid 
 impression upon everybody at Cheriton. She, being a reserved and 
 thoughtful woman, may have brooded over it." 
 
 "Until she gi-ew to associate herself with the crime," said 
 AYilmot. "Nothing more likely. Was the murderer never found, 
 by the way?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 " But there can be no suspicion against this lady, I conclude. 
 She can have been in no way concerned in the crime ? " 
 
 " I think you have only to look at her in order to be satisfied 
 upon that point," said Lord Cheriton ; and the two physicians agreed 
 that the poor lady in question was not of the criminal type, and that 
 nothing was more common in the historj^ of mental aberration tlian 
 the hallucination to which she was a victim. 
 
 " Those monotonous lives of annuitants and genteel dependents — 
 exempt from labour, and to the outward 63^6 full of placid content- 
 ment, do not infrequently tend towards madness," said Dr. Wilmot. 
 "1 have seen more than one such case as this. There are some 
 minds that have no need of action or variety, some natures which 
 can vegetate in a harmless nullity. There are other tempers which 
 prey upon themselves in solitude, and brood upon fancies till they 
 lose touch of reahties. This lady is of the latter type, highly 
 organized, sensitive to a marked degree, of the fienus-h-ritabileP 
 
 "You will take all necessary steps at once? " said Lord Cheriton, 
 looking from one doctor to the other. 
 
 Both were consentient. Dr. Wilmot drove off at once to find the 
 nearest medical man, and brought him back in his carriage. A very 
 brief interview with the patient convinced this gentleman of tlie
 
 The Day ivill come. 359 
 
 necessity for gentle restraint, and the certificate was signed by Iiim 
 and Dr. "Wilmot. 
 
 It was six o'clock, and the shadows were deepening in the room 
 where Mrs. Porter was sitting, quiescent, silent, in a kind of apathy 
 from Avhicli she was scarcely roused by the entrance of the nurse 
 from Cheslnnit, a tall comely-looking woman of about thirty, neatly 
 dressed, and with pleasant manners. 
 
 ]\Irs. Porter sat there in her dull lethargy, the food that had been 
 prepared for her untasted at her side. The nurse looked at the 
 patient with a keen professional eye, and from the patient to the 
 tray where an ill-cooked chop stagnated in a pool of grease ; and 
 where the unused teacup showed that even the feminine refreshment 
 of tea had failed to tempt her. 
 
 '• She hasn't eaten anything," said the nm'se, " and she looks 
 weak and wasted, as if she had been for a long time without food. 
 You'd better send for some beef essence and a little brandy. Slie 
 ought to be kept up somehow, if she is to be taken to Cheshunt 
 to-night. It will be a long drive." 
 
 Lord Cheriton despatched the policeman's wife to the nearest 
 chemist's and the nearest wine merchant's, while he went himself 
 to a hvery stable and ordered a brougham and pair to be at jMyrtle 
 Cottage at seven o'clock. The certificate liad been signed, and 
 there was nothing to hinder the removal of the patient. He found 
 Mercy with her mother upon his return, but the mother had given 
 no sign of recognition, and the daughter sorrowfully acknowledged 
 the necessity of the case after Dr. I\lainwaring had gently explained 
 her mother's condition to her. 
 
 " I am not surprised," she said, with sad submission, " I saw it 
 coming years ago. I have lain awake many a night wlien I was a 
 girl listening to her footsteps as she walked up and down her bed- 
 room, and to the heart-broken sigh that she gave every now and 
 then, in the dead of the night, when she thought there was no one 
 to hear her." 
 
 An hour later the woman who for twenty years had been known 
 as Mrs. Porter, and who was to caiTy tliat name to her dying day, 
 was on her way to The Grange, Cheshunt, with her daughter and 
 the nurse in the carriage with her. She liad made no resistance, 
 had gone where she was asked to go, with an apathetic indifferenco, 
 had given no trouble ; but although her daughter had been with 
 her for an hour, doing all that tender attention could do to awaken 
 her memory, there had been not a word or a look from the mother 
 to betoken consciousness of her existence. 
 
 Yet it was clear that the mental powers were only clouded, not 
 extinguished ; for, as Lord Cheriton stood a little way outside the 
 ])orch watching her as she passed out to the carriage, she stopped 
 suddenly and looked at him.
 
 
 
 6o The Day will come. 
 
 " Will you and I ever meet again, James Dalbrook ? " she asked 
 solemnly. 
 
 He paled at the address in those clear, incisive tones, dreading 
 what she might say next 
 
 " I think it may be better we should not meet," he said gloomily. 
 " I have placed you in the care of those who will do the best that 
 can be done for you." 
 
 " You are sending me to a madhouse, in the cai-e of a mad doctor. 
 That is your substitute for Cheriton Chase ; the home I used to 
 dream about ages ago, in this house ; the home you and I were to 
 have shared as man and wife. It was my birth-place, James, and 
 I would to God it had been my grave before I ever looked upon 
 your face ! " 
 
 The nm-se hustled her charge into the carriage, muttering some- 
 thing about " delusions ; " but Dr. Mainwaring was too shrewd a 
 student of humanity not to perceive some meaning in these con- 
 secutive utterances. He had no doubt that Mrs. Porter was de- 
 ranged, and a person who would be the better for the moderate 
 restraint of a well-ordered asylum : but he had also no doubt that 
 she had her lucid intervals, and that in this farewell speech she had 
 let in the light upon her past relations with James Dalbrook, first 
 Baron Cheriton. 
 
 That revelation accounted for some points in the law-lord's 
 conduct which had hitherto been incompreiiensible to his friend the 
 doctor.
 
 The Day ivill come. 361 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 " J[ine after-life ! what is mine after-life ? 
 My day is closed ! the gloom of night is come ! 
 A hopeless darkness settles o'er my fate ! " 
 
 It seemed to Lord Clieriton as he drove to Victoria Street in Dr. 
 Maiuwaring's brougham, that the day wliicli had just come to an 
 end had been tlio longest day of his life, lie looked back at the 
 sunny morning liour in which he had lingered over the business of 
 the toilet, brooding upon that discovery of the pistol, his spirits 
 weighed down by a vague foreboding, a dim horror of approaching 
 evil, scarcely able to measure the extent of his own fears. Ho 
 recalled the moment at which his valet brought him Theodore's 
 brief summons to tlie West Lodge — a moment that had given new 
 reality to all he dreaded — a summons which told him that the 
 shadowy horror which had been beside his pillow all through the 
 night was going to take a tangible shape. Oh, God, how long it 
 seemed since that pencilled line was put into his hand — since he 
 stood in the blinding sunshine staring at the curt summons- 
 before he recovered himself so far as to turn to his servant with his 
 habitual grave authority, and give some trivial order about his over- 
 coat. 
 
 Since then what slow agonies of apprehension — what self-a))aso- 
 ment before the daughter whom ho met for the first time as his 
 daughter, face to face ! What terror lest the woman whom his 
 perfidy had driven to madness and to crime should be called upon 
 to answer to the law for that crime — while England should ring 
 with the story of Im treachery, and 1m hidden sin ! He felt as if 
 lie had lived through half a life-time of shame and agony between 
 the vivid light of the August morning and the cool gr(;y shadows of 
 the August night. He leant back in his corner of the cosy little 
 brougham, pale and dumb, a worn-out man, and his friend tiie 
 physician respected his silence. 
 
 "Will you come home and dine with me, Clieriton ?" said Dr. 
 Mainwaring, as they crossed the bridge. " It may be pleasanter for 
 you than tlie solitude of your own rooms." 
 
 " You are very good. No, I am not lit for society, not even for 
 yours. I am deeply indebted to you — I feel that you are indeed
 
 362 The Day will come. 
 
 my friend — and tliat you will do all that can be done to make that 
 broken life yonder endurable." 
 
 " You may be sure of that. T would do as much were Mrs. 
 Porter a nameless waif whom I had found by the road side ; but as 
 your friend she will have an unceasing interest for me. Shall you 
 stay long enough in town to be able to spare time to go and see her 
 at the Grange? " 
 
 " No, I must go back to Dorsetshire to-morrow. I doubt if I 
 shall ever see her again. Accept that foct as the strongest proof 
 of my confidence in you. Had I any doubt as to her treatment 
 I would see her from time to time, at whatever cost of pain to 
 m3'self." 
 
 " There is nothing but pain, then, in your present feeling about 
 that poor lady ? " 
 
 " Nothing but pain." 
 
 "And yet — forgive me if I touch an old wound — I think you must 
 once have loved her ? " 
 
 The shadows were deepening, the lamps shone with faint yellow 
 light upon the gi'ey stone parapet, and the interior of the carriage 
 was very dark. Perhaps it was the darkness which emboldened 
 Dr. Mainwaring to push his inquiry to this point. 
 
 " You are right," his friend answered slowly. " I loved her 
 once." 
 
 The brougham stopped at his lordship's door in Victoria Street, 
 and then drove northwards with the physician. There was time 
 for much serious reflection between Westminster and Welbeck 
 Street. 
 
 " My new patient must be carefully looked after," mused the doctor, 
 " for I'm afraid there's more meaning in her self-accusation than 
 there generally is in such cases, and that Sir Godfrey Carmichael's 
 murderer is now in my keeping." 
 
 The long August day passed very quietly at Milbrook Priory. 
 Lady Cheriton arrived in the afternoon, and the tliree generations 
 spent the summer hours on the lawn, mother and daughter sitting 
 at work under the tulip trees, grandson and nurse in that state of 
 perpetual motion which is infancy's only alternative with perpetual 
 y] umber. 
 
 Theodore sjient his afternoon in a somewhat restless fashion, and 
 appeared as if possessed by a rage for locomotion. Tie rambled 
 about the grounds, explored the shrubberies, and every yard of the 
 plantation that girdled the little park. He went to both lodges, and 
 talked to the caretaker at each. He made two different excursions 
 to the village, on pretence of making inquiries at the Post Office, 
 but in reality with the idea of meeting with, or hearing of, Mrs. 
 Porter, should she have wandered that way. He behaved hke a
 
 The Day will come. 363 
 
 mciiil)cr of tlio Bccrct police who had hoeii eharfjcil \vlt.!i tho 
 guardianship of the most precious life in tho land; and if his uiove- 
 nicnts betrayed the nervous anxiety of the amateur, ratlicr than 
 the business-like tramiuillity of the professional, lie made up in 
 earnestness ft)r what he lacked in trainini^ and cxi>erience. 
 
 It was on his return from his second sauntering perambulation of 
 the village that he foiuul Lord Cheriton's telegram waiting for him 
 at the Priory. The relief that message brought was mispeakable, 
 and his countenance showed the change in his feelings when ho 
 rejoined the two ladies on the lawn. 
 
 " Something very pleasant must have happened to you, Theodore," 
 said Juanita. "You have been looking the picture of gloom all day, 
 and now you are suddenly radiant. Ilave you been talking to one 
 of the Vicar's pretty daughters? " 
 
 " No, Juanitii ; neitlier of those wax-doll beauties glorifidl my 
 path. I heard their trel)Ie voices on the other side of the holly-liedge 
 as I passed the Vicarage, and I'm afraid they were quarrelling. 1 
 have had good news from London." 
 
 " From my father ? " 
 
 "Yes."^ 
 
 "Oh, Theodore, wliy do you torture me by hiding things from 
 me ? Something has happened, I know." 
 
 " You will know all in a few days, Juanita. Tliank God, a great 
 fear that has haunted me for some time jiast is now at an end. I 
 can look at you and your child without seeing the shadow of an 
 enemy across your jiath." 
 
 She looked at him searchingly. 
 
 "All this amounts to nothing," she said. " I have never feared 
 for myself or thought of myself. Will ray husband's death be 
 avenged, and soon, soon, soon? That is the question." 
 
 "That is a question which you yourself may ho called upon to 
 answer — and very soon," he said. 
 
 He would say no more, in spile of her feverish eagerness, her 
 impatient questionings. 
 
 " I have changed my mind, Juanita," he said presently. '• I will 
 not bore you w-ith my company till I am free to answer ynur 
 questions. The motive for my presence in this house is at an end. 
 
 " Is it? "What has become of the suspicious characters niy father 
 talked about?" 
 
 "The danger has not come this way — as he feared it might." 
 
 " Stay," she said. " Whether there is danger or not you are 
 going to stay. I will not be played fast and loose with by any 
 visitor. Mother likes to have you here, and baby likes you." 
 
 "Not so well as ho likes Cuthbert Ilamsay," retorted Theodore, 
 with almost involuntary bitterness. 
 
 This tims Juaqita's blush was an obvious fi\ct.
 
 304 '^^^^ ^^y ^^^"^^ come. 
 
 She walked aWciy from her cousin indignantly. 
 
 " You may go or stay, as you please," she said ; and ho stayed, 
 stayed to be a footstool under her feet if she hked — stayed with a 
 heart gnawed by jealousy, consumed by despair. 
 
 " It is useless — hopeless beyond the common measure of hope- 
 lessness," he told himself. " She never cared for me in the past, 
 and she will never care for me in the future. I am doomed to stand 
 for ever upon the same dull plane of affectionate indifference. If I 
 were dangerously ill she would nurse me ; if I were in difficulties 
 she would load me with benefits ; if I were dead slie would be sorry 
 for me ; but she is fonder of Ramsay, whom she has seen half a 
 dozen times in her life, than she will ever be of me." 
 
 Lord Cheriton returned to Dorsetshire on the following afternoon. 
 He drove from AVareham to the Priory, and had a long tete-a-tete 
 with Theodore in the garden before dinner. 
 
 " You have acted for my daughter throughout this miserable 
 business," he said, when he had told all that was to be told about 
 ]\Irs. Porter's seclusion at Cheshunt. " She has confided in you 
 more completely even than in me — her father, and I leave my 
 cause in your hands. You must plead to the daughter for the 
 erring fathex", whose sin has exercised a fatal influence upon her 
 life. Win her forgiveness for me — win her pity for that most 
 unhappy woman, if you can. It is a difficult task which I entrust 
 to you, "Theodore, but I believe in your power to move that generous 
 heart to mercy." 
 
 ''You may believe in my devotion to you both," said Theodore, 
 and Lord Cheriton left the Priory without seeing his wife and 
 daughter, who had gone to dress for dinner just before his arrival, 
 and who came to the drawing-room presently, both expecting to 
 lind him there. 
 
 Theodore explained his hasty departure as best he might. 
 
 " Your father drove over to speak to me upon a matter of business," 
 he said to Juanita. " He was tired after his journey, and preferred 
 going home to dine." 
 
 " He was not ill, I hope ? " cried Lady Cheriton, with a look of 
 alarm. 
 
 " No, there is nothing amiss with him, except fatigue." 
 
 Juanita looked at him intently, eager to question him, but the 
 butler's entrance to announce dinner stopped her, and she told 
 Theodore to give his arm to her mother, and followed them both to 
 the dining-room. 
 
 The meal was a mockery as far as two out of the three were con- 
 cerned. Juanita was nervous and ill at ease, impatient of the 
 lengthy ceremonial. Theodore ate hardly anything, but kept up a 
 slip-shod conversation with Lady Cheriton, talked about the grand-
 
 The Day ijill conic. 365 
 
 cliild's alinoMiial intelligence, and assured iicr in rt|ily to lier 
 reiterated inquiries that lier husband was not ill, was not even 
 looking ill, and that there was no reason for lier to go back to tho 
 Chase that night, as she was disposed to do. 
 
 Juanita rose abruptly before the grapes and pcaclics had been 
 taken round. 
 
 "Would ynn mind coming to my room at once, Theodore?" she 
 said. "1 want half an hour's talk with you .about — business. You 
 will excuse my leaving yon, won't you, mother ? " 
 
 "My dear child, I shall be glad to get half an hour in the nursery. 
 Boyle tells me that little rascal is never so lively as just before ho 
 settles down for tho night." 
 
 Lady Cheriton went off in one direction,. Juanita and Theodore in 
 the other. 
 
 The lamp was lighted in the study, on the table where two rows 
 of books told of the widow's studious solitude. 
 
 Theodore glanced at the titles of those neatly arranged volumes 
 and saw that they were mostly upon scientific subjects. 
 
 "I did not know that you were fond of science, Juanita?" he 
 said. 
 
 " I am not. I used to hate it. I am as ignorant as a baby. I 
 don't believe I know any more about the moon than Juliet did when 
 she accused it of inconstancy. Only when one comes to my age 
 one ought to improve one's self. Godfrey will be asking me questions 
 before I am much older — and when he Avants to know whether the 
 earth goes round the sun or the sun round the earth, I must bo 
 prepared to answer him." 
 
 She spoke with a nervous air, facing him in the soft clear lamp- 
 light, her hand upon tho row of books, her eyes eager and ques- 
 tioning. 
 
 " You have seen mv father, Theodore. Is the embargo removeil ? " 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "And you know who murdered my husband?" 
 
 " So far as the assassin's own confession is to be believed, yes." 
 
 " He has confessed — ho is in prison — ho will bo Jianged," she 
 cried breathlessl}'. 
 
 "The murderer has confessed — but is not in prison — and will not 
 be hanged — at least 1 trust not, in God's mercy." 
 
 " You arc full of pify for a murderer, Theodore," she cried bitterly. 
 "Have you no pity for my husband? Js his death to go unpun- 
 ished ? Js his life — the life that might have been as long as it was 
 happy — is that to count for nothing?" 
 
 '• It is to count for much, Juanita. Believe me, yoin* Inisliand is 
 avenged. His death was a sacrifice to a broken heart and a dis- 
 ordered brain. The hand that killed him is the hand of one who 
 cannot be called to account — the hand of a madwoman."'
 
 o 
 
 66 The Day ivill conic. 
 
 "A woman?" 
 
 "Yes, a -womaii. Tlie woman you have seen many a time as you 
 jiassed in and out of Clicritou Chase in your father's carriage by the 
 West (Jatc." 
 
 "Mrs. Porter?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Great God ! wliy did she kill my husband ? " 
 
 "Because she was imhappy — because she had suffered until 
 sorrow had obscured her intellect, till her life had become one long 
 thirst to do evil — one hatred of youth and beauty, and innocent 
 gladness like yours. She saw you in your wedded happiness, and 
 she thought of a happiness which was once her own day dream — 
 the hope and dream of patient, self-denying years. She struck at 
 you through your husband. She struck at your father through 
 you." 
 
 "My father! What was he to her — ever, except a friend and 
 benefactor? "' 
 
 " He was once more than that to Evelyn Strangway." 
 
 " Strangway ! " shrieked Juanita, clasping her hands. " Did I 
 not tell you so from the first ? It was the footstep of a Strangway 
 that crept past our window, while we sat together in our happiness, 
 without thought of peril. It w^is a Strangway who killed my 
 husband. You told me that they were all dead and gone — that the 
 race Avas extinct — that the people I feared were phantoms. I told 
 you it was a Strangway who fired that shot, and you see my 
 instinct was truer than your reason — and there was a Strangway at 
 our gates — disguised — under a false name — looking at us with 
 smooth, hypocritical smiles — nursing her wrath to keep it warm." 
 
 " Unhappily your instinct hit upon the fatal truth. The hatred 
 of the Strangways was not dead. One member of that family 
 survived, and cherished a more than common mahgnity against the 
 race that had blotted out the old name." 
 
 " But my father, how had he provoked her hatred ? " 
 
 "He once loved her, Juanita — many years ago — before he saw 
 your mother's face. Evelyn Strangway and he had been lovers — 
 pledged to each other by a solemn promise. As a man of honour 
 he should have kept that promise ; there w-ere stringent reasons 
 that bound him. But he saw your mother and loved her, and 
 broke with Evelyn Strangway — openly, with no immanly deceit ; 
 but still there was the broken promise, and that involved a deep 
 wrong. He believed that WTong forgiven. He believed the more 
 in her pardon because it was her earnest desire to live unrecognized 
 and unnoticed upon the; estate where she w^as born. He could not 
 fathom the depth of hatred in that warped nature. He did all that 
 there was left to him to do — having taken his own course .and 
 entered upon a new and fairer Ufe Avith the woman he loved — to
 
 The Day zviil come. 367 
 
 iii.iKi' aiiHiiu^ lu ilio woman he had deserted. He never suspe.ctcd 
 tlie deptli of her feelings — ho never snspected the seeds of madness, 
 with its ever present dangers. He did what in him hiy to atone for 
 the sin of liis youth ; hut that sin found him out, and it was his 
 bitter lot to see his beloved daughter the innocent victim of his 
 wrong-doing, llo trusted nic to tell yon this miserable story, 
 Juanita. He humbles himself in the dust before you, stricken at tho 
 thought of your sufi'oring. Ho appeals through me to your lovo 
 and to your pitv. How am I to answer him when I answer for 
 you?" 
 
 She was silent for some moments after lie had asked this linal 
 question, her eyes fixed, her chest heaving with the stormy beating 
 of her heart. 
 
 "What has become of this woman — this pitiless devil?" she 
 gasped. 
 
 '' She is in a madhouse." 
 
 " Is no punishment to overtake her ? Is she not to be tried 
 for her life ? Let them prove her mad, or lot them find her guilty, 
 and hang her — hang her — hang her. Her life for his, her worn-out 
 remnant of wretched, disappointed days for his bright young life, 
 with all its promise and all its hope." 
 
 " It would lie a poor revenge, Juanita, to take so poor a life. 
 This unhappy woman is under restraint that will, in all jirobability, 
 last till the day of her death. Her crime is known only to j-our 
 father and to me. Were it to become known to others she would 
 have to stand in the dock, and then the whole story would have to 
 be told — the story of your father's broken promise — of this woman's 
 3'outh, bound so closely 'with his that to many it would seem almost 
 as if they stood side by side at the bar. Do you think that the 
 fierce rapture of revenge could ever atone to you for having brought 
 dishonoiu' upon your father's declining years, Juanita? " 
 
 '' And my husband's death is to go unavenged ? " 
 
 "Do you think there is no retribution in the slow agony of a 
 shattered mind — the long blank days of old age in a lunatic asylum, 
 the apathy of a half-extinguished intellect varied by Hashes of 
 bitter memory. God help and pity such a criminal, for her punish- 
 ment must be heavier than hemp and quick-lime." 
 
 She seemed scarcely to hear him. She was walking up and 
 down the room, her hands clenched, her brows contracted over tho 
 fixed eyes. 
 
 " I caught just one glimpse of her as wo drove past ; but that 
 glimpse ought to have lieen enough," she said. " I can see her face 
 as we passed the lodge, looking out at ns from the parlour window, 
 within a few hours of nn' darling's death — a jiale vindictive face — ■ 
 yes, vindictive. I ought to have understood ; I ought to have taken 
 warning, and guarded my beloved one from her murderous hate."
 
 368 The Day will come. 
 
 "What am I to saj' to your father, Juanita? I ought not to 
 leave liim long in doubt. Think what it is for a father to humihate 
 himself before his daughter — to sue for pardon." 
 
 " Oh, but he must not do that. I have nothing to forgive. How 
 could he understand that there could be such diabolical mahgnity in 
 any human breast? How could he think that the wrong done by 
 him would be revenged upon that innocent head? Oh, if she had 
 gone a nearer way to revenge herself — if she had killed me, rather 
 than him. It is such bitterness to know that my love brought him 
 untimely death — that he might have been here now, happy, with 
 long years of honour and content before him if he had chosen any 
 other wife." 
 
 " It is hopeless to think of what might have been, Nita. Your 
 husband was happy in your love — and not unhappy in his death. 
 Such a fate is far better than the dull and slow decay which closes 
 many a fortunate life — the inch by inch dissolution of a protracted 
 old age — the gradual extinction of mind and feeling — the apathetic 
 end. You must not talk as if your husband's death was the 
 extremity of misfortune." 
 
 " It was — for me. Can I forget what it was to lose him ? Oh, 
 there is no use in talking of ray loss. I wanted to avenge his 
 death. I have lived for that — and I am cheated of even that poor 
 comfort." 
 
 "What shall I say to yoar fiither ? " 
 
 " Say that I will do nothing to injure him — or to distress my 
 mother. I will remember that I am their daughter, as well as 
 Godfrey's widow. Good night, Theodore. You have done your 
 uttermost to help me. We cannot help it, either of us, if Fate was 
 against us." 
 
 She gave him her hand, very cold, hut with the firm grasp of 
 friendship. The very touch of that hand told him he would never 
 be more to her than a friend. Not so is a woman's hand given 
 when the impassioned heart goes with it.
 
 The Day i^nll come. 369 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 "A malady 
 Preys on my heart that medicine cannot reach, 
 Invisible and cureless." 
 
 Mrs. Portku's cvanislimont created consideraMe talk in the littlo 
 village of Cheriton, and would doubtless have been the occasion of 
 Btill greater wonder but for the impenetrable stupidity of the youiif; 
 maidservant, from whom no detailed account of her mistres.s's 
 departure could bo extorted. Had the girl PIkuIio been observant 
 and loquacious she might have stimulated ]iublic curiosity by a 
 lively narrative of events ; setting forth Theodore Dalbrouk's 
 emotion at finding the lodge deserted ; and how ho had sent up to 
 the house for his Lordship ; and how his Lordship and !Mr. Dalbrook 
 had remained in earnest conversation for nearly an hour in tho 
 lodge parlour ; and how !Mrs. Porter had left a mahogany box upon 
 the table, a fiat mahogany box with brass corners, which Phcubo 
 liad never seen before ; and how this very box had disappeared 
 mysteriously when tho two gentlemen left. All this would have 
 afforded mental pabulum for the acuter wits of the village, and 
 would have formed tho nucleus of an interesting scandal, to bo 
 littered with bated breath over tho humble tea-tray, and to givo 
 zest to the unassuming muffin in the back parlours of small rustic, 
 shopkeepers. As it was. thanks to Phoebe's admirable stolidity, all 
 that was known of ^Irs. Porter's departure was that she had gone to 
 London by the early train on a certain morning, and that her 
 luggage had been sent after her, address unknown. 
 
 It was the general opinion that Mrs. Porter had had money left 
 her, and that she had reassumed her position in life as a genteel 
 personage. This afforded some scope for speculative gossip, but 
 not for a wide range of conjecture, and in less than a month after 
 ]\Irs. Porter's departure the only talk in relation to the West Lodgo 
 was the talk of who would succeed the vanished lady as its occupant. 
 This thrilling rpiestiou was promptly settled by the removal of tho 
 head gardener and his wife from their very commonplace abode in 
 tho village to the old English cottage. 
 
 Cheriton was furnished with a moro interesting topic of discourso 
 before the end of October, when it was "given out" that Lord and 
 
 2 u
 
 3/0 The Day tvill come. 
 
 Lady Cheriton were going to winter abroad, an announcement 
 which struck consternation to a village in which the great house 
 was the centre of light and leading, and the chief consumer of 
 butcher's meat, farm produce — over and above the supply from the 
 home-farm — and expensive gi'oceries ; not to mention hardware, 
 kitchen crockery, coals, saddlery, forage, and odds and ends of all 
 kinds. To shut up Cheriton Chase for six months was to paralyse 
 trade in Cheriton. 
 
 To draw down the blinds and close the shutters of the great 
 house was to spread a gloom over the best society in the neighbour- 
 hood, and to curtail the weekly offertory by about one-third. 
 
 Everybody admitted, however, that his Lordship had been looking 
 ill of late. He had aged suddenly, " as those fine, well set-up men 
 are apt to do," said Mr. Dolby, the doctor. He looked care-worn 
 and haggard. The village solicitor hoped that he had not been 
 dabbling with foreign loans — or had invested blindly in the fortune 
 of an impossible canal — yet opined that nothmg but the Stock 
 Exchange could make such a sudden change for the worse in any 
 man. Mr. Dolby declared that Lord Cheriton's lungs were as 
 sound as a bell, and that if he were ordered abroad it was not on 
 account of his chest. 
 
 Everybody pitied her Ladyship, and talked of her as despondiugly 
 as if it had been proposed to take her to Botany Bay m the days of 
 transportation for felony. It was so cruel to separate her from her 
 flower-gardens, her hothouses, her poultry -j-ard, and her daughter ; 
 for all which tilings a correct British matron was supposed to exist. 
 To take her from these placid domestic pleasures, from these strictly 
 lady-like interests, and to plunge her in a hotbed of vice such as 
 Monte Carlo — as pictured bj' the rustic mind — would be a kind of 
 moral murder. Cheriton recovered its equanimity somewhat upon 
 hearing that his Lordship was going to -winter at Mustapha Superieure 
 — but it was opined that even there baccarat and Parisian morals 
 would be in the ascendant, and a photogi'aph of a square in Algiers, 
 which looked like'a bit broken off the Rue de Pdvoli, was by no 
 means reassuring. 
 
 Yet, whatever Dr. Dolby might say as to the soundness of his 
 lungs, there remained the fact that his Lordship had altered for the 
 worse since the shooting season began. He Avho used to go out 
 daily with the guns, had this year not gone with them half a dozen 
 times in the whole season. Ho whose active habits and personal 
 superintendence of his estate had been the admiration of his neighbours 
 had taken to staying at home, dreaming over Horace or Juvenal in 
 the library. 
 
 Yes, Lord Cheriton was a broken man. From the hour in which 
 his daughter had laid her head upon his breast, and sobbed out fond 
 words of compassion and forgiveness for the weakness and the sin
 
 TJic Day will conic. 371 
 
 that had hroiight about lier one groat sorrow — from that hour James 
 l)albrook's zest of Hfo dwindled, and the tlu'ngs that lie liad cared 
 for pleased liim no more. Ilis lieart sickened as lie rode liis cob by 
 the familiar lanes, and surveyed -wide-spreading coru-field and 
 undulating pasture — sickened at the thought of that wretched 
 creature whose dream ho had darkened, whoso long-cherished hope 
 he had ruthlessly disappointed. The image of Evelyn Darcy, eating 
 out her heart in the dull monotony of a private madhouse, camo 
 between him and that sunlit prospect, haunted and tortured him 
 wherever he turned his eye. He had to give up the quiet morning 
 lides which had once been the most restful portion of the day, his 
 thinking hours, his time for leisurely discursive meditations, for 
 indulgence in happy thoughts and humorous reverie. 
 
 Ilis wife saw the change in him — knowing nothing of thd cause — 
 and lu'ged him to take advice. He gratified her by seeing Sir 
 William Jcnner, confessed to being fagged and out of spirits, and 
 '■l)tained just the advice he wanted — complete change of scene — a 
 winter in Egypt or Algiers. 
 
 '' We'll try Algiers first, and if we dun't like it we can try the 
 Kile," he said, and his wife, who would have gone to Vancouver 
 Island or Patagonia just as chcerfull)', forthwith ordered her trunks 
 to be packed, and began to take leave of her grandson, an operation 
 which would require weeks. 
 
 They left England in the middle of November, just when tlic last 
 loaves were being stripped from the oaks and beeches by tho 
 l)lustering south-west wind, which is a speciality in that part of tho 
 country, where it comes salt with the bitter breath of the sea, and 
 sometimes thick and gray with sea fog. 
 
 Mrs. Porter liad been nearly three montlis at Cheshimt Grange, 
 and Theodore had been three times to see her in that carefully- 
 chosen retreat, and on two of those visits had met lier daughter 
 Mercy, who went to her twice a week. 
 
 He had found Dr. Mainwaring's patient strangely calm and 
 tractable, professing herself contented with her life, and having 
 established her reputation among the other patients as a lady of 
 blameless character and reserved manners. 
 
 "I sometimes wonder how they would feel if they knew what I 
 did that night," she said to Theodore once, with a sinister smile. 
 '■ They think me a common-place person. They call my complaint 
 nervous debility. Nobody here would believe me if I were to tell 
 tliem that I murdered a man who never oflended mo by so much as 
 an uncivil word. They don't believe that such a deed as tiiat would 
 be possible in our day, and in our country. They think it was only 
 :i couple of centuries ago in Southern Europe that women knew tho 
 meaning of revenge." 
 
 This was the solitary occasion on which she spoke of her crime.
 
 372 The Day will come. 
 
 On the other visits he found her apathetic. Altliough she was 
 elaborately polite, it was evident that she did not recognize him. 
 She had, however, recognized her daughter, and now received her 
 with some faint show of tenderness, but not without a touch of fretful 
 impatience. It was evident that j\Iercy's presence gave her no 
 pleasure. 
 
 " I go to see her as often as Dr. Mainwaring allows me," Mercy 
 told Theodore, as they walked to the station together. " It is all I can 
 do — and it is very little." 
 
 " Have you thought any more of Lord Cheriton's earnest desire 
 to improve your position ? Have you learnt to take pity upon him, 
 to think more kindly of him, on account of all he has suffered ? " 
 
 "I am very sorry for him — but I can never accept any favour at 
 his hands. I can never forget what my mother's life has been like, 
 and who made her what she is." 
 
 " And is your own life to be always the same — a monotony of 
 
 toil?" 
 
 " I am used to such a life — but I have some thought of a change 
 in my employment. I had a long talk with your friend Mr. Eamsay 
 last night at Miss Newton's, and through his help I hope to learn to 
 be a sick-nurse. I should be of more use to my fellow-creatures in 
 that capacity than in stitching at fine needlework for rich people's 
 children." 
 
 " It would be a hard life, Mercy." 
 
 " I am content to live a hard life. I had my span of a soft life — 
 a life of idleness on a summer sea, amidst the loveliest spots upon 
 earth — a life that would have been like a glimpse of Heaven itself, 
 if it had not been for the consciousness of sin and disgrace. Do you 
 think I forget those, days on the Mediterranean, or forget that I liave 
 to atone for them ? The man I loved is dead — all that belonged to 
 that hfe has vanished like a dream." 
 
 They parted at the railway station, she to go to her place in a 
 dusty third-class carriage, he to a smoking carriage to smoke the 
 meditative pipe, and think sadly of those two blighted lives which 
 had been ground beneath the wheels of Lord Cheriton's triumphal 
 car. 
 
 Cheriton Chase was deserted, the blinds down, the servants on 
 board wages, the flowor-bcds empty and raked over for the winter ; 
 but at Milbrook Priory all was life and movement. The sisters and 
 their husbands were again established in their favourite rooms. 
 Lady Jane was again at hand to assist her daughter-in-law to bear 
 the burden of a family party, and all was much as it had been in the 
 previous winter, except that Juanita had a new interest in life, and 
 was able to take pleasure in many things that had been an oppression 
 to her spirits last year.
 
 The Day zuill conic. 
 
 o/o 
 
 Most of all were her feelings altered towards Mrs. (Jronvillo aud 
 her Diirscry. She was now warmly interested in the history of 
 Johnnie's measles, and deeply sympathetic about that constitutional 
 tendency towards swollen tonsils whicli was dear little Lucy's "weak 
 point." For must not her Godfrey inevitably i;ico the ordeal of 
 measles, and mi,<;ht not his tonsils show a like weakness at the 
 growing age? All those discussions about nursery dinners — tho 
 children who fed well and the cliildren who fed badlj' — those who 
 liked milk puddings and those who could not be induced to touch 
 them — the advisability of a basin of cornllour or brcad-and-milk at 
 bedtime, the murderous iniluence of buns and pastry, and the 
 lurking dangers of innocent-seeming jam — all these things, to hear 
 of which last year bored licr almost to exasperation, were now vita) 
 and spirit-moving questions. 
 
 The little visitors' nurseries were near the infimt Sir Godfrey's 
 rooms, and it was a deliglit to iind the baby taking ])lcasure in his 
 youthful cousins' society, and revelling in their noise. Ilis own 
 young lungs revealed their power and scope as they hail never done 
 before, and led the infant orchestra. Juanita spent hours in this 
 noisy society, sitting on the floor to be crawled over by lier son — 
 who was just beginning to discover the possibility of independent 
 locomotion — and to have her hair pulled affectionately by the 
 younger Grenvillrs, who found her the most accommodating iday- 
 fellow. She insisted that the children should dine at the family 
 luncheon table, much to the gratification of their mother and grand- 
 mother, and to the exasperation of Mrs. I\Iorningside, wlio, having 
 left her own chililren with their conscientious governess and nurses, 
 in the North of England, did not see why her midday meal should 
 be made intolerable by the boisterous egotism of her nephews and 
 nieces. 
 
 This was the condition of things at Christmas when Theodore 
 reajipeared at the Priory, having come to Dorchester for his Jiolidays, 
 after three months' earnest work. lie had been reading with a man 
 of some distinction at the Chancery Bar, and he had been writing for 
 one of the Law Journals. lie was struck by the change in his cousin. 
 She looked younger, briglitcr, and happier than she had ever looked 
 since her husband's death. No one could accuse her of having 
 forgotten him, of having grown indifTorent to his memory, for at the 
 least allusion which recalled his image her expression clouded, and 
 her eyes grew sad. But there could be no doubt that the dawn of 
 a happier existence was beginning to disperse the darkness of her 
 night of grief. The influence of her child had done much ; the 
 solution of the mvstery of her husband's death had done more to 
 relieve her mind' of its burden. She was no longer tortured by 
 wonder ; her thoughts were no longer forced to travel perpetually 
 along the same groove. She knew the worst, and pity for her father
 
 374 ^/^^ ^<^y "^^^^^ come. 
 
 prompted her to try to forget the wretch who had blighted her young 
 life. 
 
 She received Theodore with all her old kindness, with that easy 
 cordiality which was of all indications the most hopeless for the man 
 who loved her. She took him to the nm-series, where Christmas 
 fires blazed merrily, and Christmas gifts strewed the carpet, a plethora 
 of toys, a litter of foil paper and gold and silver fringe, and tissiie- 
 paper cocked hats and Pierrot caps, from the wreck of cracker 
 bonbons. Tlie children were masters of the situation in this 
 Christmas week. 
 
 " It is their season," said Juanita tenderly. " I don't think we can 
 ever do too much to make our children happy at this time, remem- 
 bering that He who made the season sacred was once a little child." 
 
 She took her baby up in her arms as she spoke, and pressed the 
 little face lovingly against her own. 
 
 " Why does Mr. Kamsay never come to see me ? " she asked with 
 a sudden lightness of tone. " He used to be so fond of baby." 
 
 " He is working hard at the hospital." 
 
 " And is he not to have any holiday with you ? " 
 
 « I fear not." 
 
 Her manner in making the inquiry, light as it was, told him so 
 much ; and he noticed how she bent her face over the child's flaxen 
 head as she talked of Ramsay. 
 
 "Why does he work so hard? " she asked, after a silence. 
 
 " He has never given me any reason, yet I have ray own idea 
 about his motive." 
 
 " And what is your idea ? " 
 
 " Have you ever heard of a man trying to live down a hopeless 
 attachment — trying to medicine a mind diseased with the strong 
 physic of intellectual labour. That is my case, Juanita ; and I am 
 inchned to think that it may be Eamsay's case too. He has altered 
 curiously within the last few months. I cannot get so near his 
 inner-self as I used to get : but I know him well enough to form a 
 shrewd opinion." 
 
 "I am sorry for you both," she said, with a little nervous laugh, 
 still hiding her face against the baby's incipient curls and wi'inkled 
 pink skin. " I am sorry you should be so sentimental." 
 
 " Sentimental, Nita ! Is it sentimental to cherish one love for 
 the best part of a lifetime, knowing that love to be hopeless all the 
 time ? If that is your idea of sentimentality, I confess myself senti- 
 mental. I have loved you ever since I knew the meaning of the 
 word love — and I have gone on loving you in spite of every dis- 
 com-agement. I loved you when your love was given to another. 
 Yes, I stood aside and harboured not one malevolent thought against 
 the man you had so blest and honoured. I have loved you in your 
 sorrow, as I loved you years ago in your light-hearted girlhood. I
 
 The Day loill coinc. 375 
 
 shall love you till I am dust; Imt I know that my love is hopeless. 
 Your very kindness — in its level uniformity of sweetness — has told 
 me that." 
 
 " Dear Theodore, if you knew how I value you — how I admiro 
 and respect you — I think you would bo content to accept my sisterly 
 regard," she said, looking up at him with tearful eyes. " Perhaps, 
 had wo met differently, as strangers, I might have felt differently — 
 Init from my fcarliest remembrance you have been to mo as a friend 
 and brother. I cannot teach myself any other love." 
 . " Ah, Nita, that other love comes untaught. You want no 
 teaching to love Cuthbcrt Ilamsay. Uon't be angiy ! I can't help 
 speaking of that which has been in my mind so long. I saw my 
 doom in your face when Cuthbert was here. I saw that ho could 
 interest you as I had never interested you. I saw that ho brought 
 fresh thoughts and fancies into your life. I saw that ho could 
 conquer where I was beaten." 
 
 '' You have no right to say that." 
 
 " I have the right that goes witii conviction, Juanita, and with 
 disinterested love. I have the right of my loyal friendship for tho 
 man who has shown himself loyal to me. Unless you or I mako 
 some sign to prevent him, Cuthbert Eamsay will liave made himself 
 an exile from this coimtry before the new year is a month old." 
 
 "What do you mean, Theodore? " 
 
 " I mean that he is in treaty with the leader of a scientific expe- 
 dition to the Antarctic Ocean. Tho ships will be away three years, 
 and if ho join that expedition as doctor he will bo absent for that 
 time, with tho usual hazard of being absent for ever." 
 
 "Why is he going?" 
 
 •'He has never given me any reason, but I suspect that tho 
 reason is you." 
 
 "Theodore!" 
 
 " If I read his secret right, he left this place deeply in lovo with 
 you. Ho knew I loved you, and that was ono reason for a man of 
 )us generous temper to withdraw. You aro rich and ho is poor, 
 that makes another reason, lie is too honourablo to come between 
 his friend and his friend's love. He is too proud to offer liimsclf 
 with only his talents and his unfulfilled ambition to a woman of 
 fortune. So he takes his old mistress Science for his comforter, and 
 is going to tho other side of tho world to watch tho ])lanets in the 
 Polar skies, and to keep the crew free of fever and scurvy, if ho can." 
 
 " Three years," faltered Juanita. " It would not be so very long 
 anywhere else — but those Polar expeditions so often end in death." 
 
 " Shall I tell him not to go ? " 
 
 " Pray do." 
 
 "I'm afraid I shall hardly prevail with him, unless " 
 
 "Unless what?"
 
 2)^6 The Day ivill come. 
 
 " Unless you will let mo say that you wish him to stay." 
 
 She blushed deepest crimson, and again had resource to the baby's 
 pink little head as a hiding-place for her confusion. 
 
 " Tell him anything you like. Ask him to come and romp with 
 the children next Easter. He is fond of children, and I am sure he 
 w^onld like my nephews and nieces. Ah, Theodore," she cried, 
 holding out her hand, " now you are indeed my brother. Forget 
 that you ever wished to be more, and let me hear of your having 
 found a new love by-and-by." 
 
 " By-and-by is easily said, Juanita." 
 
 What would that by-and-by have revealed could the curtain of 
 the Future have been lifted that Christmas Eve, as the children 
 danced in the shadowy room while their elders sat beside the fire 
 in the winter dusk ? A cofBn brought by land and sea, and laid 
 with stately ceremonial in the cemetery at Dorchester. A respectful 
 obituary notice of Lord Cheriton, with a laudatory biogi-aphy, setting 
 forth his remarkable gifts and his honourable career : much wonder- 
 ment among his Lordship's friends at the premature termination of 
 that prosperous life — a man of sixty who had looked ten years 
 younger, and whose vigorous constitution and grand bearing had 
 denoted one of the semi-immortals — a Brougham, a Lyndhurst, or a 
 St. Leonards. 
 
 "What else ? A lovely matron, proud of her handsome Scotch 
 husband and his scientific successes, reigning over one of the most 
 delightful houses in London, a house in which the brightest lights 
 of the intellectual w^orld are to be found shining in a congenial 
 atmosphere. Sir Godfrey Carmichael's wndow, now Cuthbert Kam- 
 say's wife, and one of the leaders in all movements that tend towards 
 the welfare and enlightenment of mankind. 
 
 What else ? A rising barrister, living quietly in a secluded old 
 house at Chiswick, with a sweet serious-looking wife, and two lovely 
 babies, supremely contented with his lot and with his home, which 
 is managed for him with that perfection of art which conceals art. 
 His wife and he are of exactly the same age, have the same deep 
 love of good books, good pictures, and good music, and the same 
 indifference to frivolous pleasures and fashionable amusements. 
 They have a few friends, carefully chosen, and of choicest quality, 
 and amongst the most honoiu-ed of these is Sarah Newton, still brisk 
 and active, though her abundant hair is snow white, and there are 
 the deep lines of age about her shrewd and kindly eyes. They have 
 their garden with its old cedars, and old -walls shutting off the world 
 of gig-and-villa respectability. They have their boathouse and 
 boats, in which they live for the most part on summer evenings, and 
 they have hardly anything left to wish for — except a lock and weir. 
 
 The barrister is Theodore Dalbrook, and his wife's name is Mercy.
 
 The Day luill cofue. 377 
 
 He found her four years ago estaLlislied as nurse at Chesliunt 
 Grange, administering to her mother till the day of lier death, which 
 happened by a strange fatality within a few hours of that other 
 death in Algiers, a sudden death by cerebral apoplexy, swift as a 
 thunder-clap. lie found her there, and saw her frequently in his 
 duty visits to the Asylum — visits ])aid in peiformanco of a promise 
 to his unhappy kinsman — and little by little that sympathy which 
 he had felt for her in the first hour of their acquaintance warmed 
 and ripened into love, and in IMercy, the woman who had sinned 
 and paid the bitter penalty of sin, he found the consoling angel of 
 his disappointed youth. 
 
 The world knows nothing of her story. That dead past is buried 
 deeper than ever ship went down into the treacherous waters of the 
 tideless sea. To ^lorcy herself, in her jtlenitudo of domestic bliss, 
 it seems as if it was another woman wlio shed those bitter tears 
 and drank that cup of shame. The world knows only that Theo- 
 dore Dalbrook has a lovely and devoted wife, who thoroughly 
 understands and realizes the duties of her position. 
 
 Lord Cheriton's will, executed three months before his death at 
 Mustapha Superieure, bequeathed a life interest in the sum of 
 £20,000 Consols to Sarah Newton, spinster, the principal to go to 
 Mercy Darcy— otherwise Mercy Porter— upon that lady's death. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LOM)ON : PRISTKD nv WILLIAM CLOWES AND SON?, UMITEP, 
 SIAMTCIUU SIKEtl AND CUAUISQ CKOSS
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
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