&¥& IX. Uncle Trenchard 56 X. Sibyl takes the Lead 59 XI. How Stephen Trenchard Forgives 64 XII. Love, then, had Hope of Richer Store . . • .71 Xin. The Sweets of Life 80 XiV. Making Ready for Victory °ft XV. Town and County 9* ' XVI. A Mysterious Visitor ........ 103 XVTL The "Wanderer's Return HI XVIII. At Arm's Length lib XIX. A Dangerous Triumph - • 123 XX. Half Confidence l^ 4 XXI. Received by the County 139 XXII. Jennv's Visitor 1* XXIIL "Will Fortune never come with both hands full?" . . 1«* XXIV. Startling Information 160 XXV. Town Talk I™ XXVI. Between Love and Gold .....•• 17* XXVII. Sir Wilford has his own Way I' 1 XXVITI. Marion is raised to Distinction 1*^ XXIX. At the How l^ XXX. Tilberry Steeplechase !•'■ XXXI. Joel Pilgrim fi* XXXn. Alexis Comes to Grief j}» XXXHI. Fallen by the Wayside jj 2 ? XXXTV. Good Samaritans fj£ XXXV. Bitter Almonds * m m ' oak XXXVi. Village Slander ...» £*° XXXVTL Trot's History *" XXXVni. Gaining Time £** XXXIX. At Bay *» XL. On the Threshold of a Discovery £J< XLL A Father's Claim f '» XLH. A Wedding Eve . . . . . • • • • - XLIII. The Passing-Bell *°* XLTV. Dark Surmises *"* XLV. In the Surgery . . ••__.•• * * ' tm XLVL Stephen Trenchard surprises his Friends . . . . ovi XLVTI. " It is not now as it has been of yore " . . . • |>15 XL VEIL *"Tis held that sorrow makes us wise " . . . • *** XLIX. "But here is one who loves you as of old' . . . •»«» L. Alexis Investigates • • ' t-t LL Mr. Levison Cross-examines &>* LIL The Podmores think of Emigration °»* LITI. Committed for Trial . ™ l L1V. " A Dark Tale Darkly Finished " {>'' Epilogue * * 7 L£/l^^- /sU<4<> ^U '<* DEAD MEN'S SHOES CHAPTER I. "plunged vs. the depth of helpless poverty. m A girl-woman alone on Battersea Bridge, reading a letter in the December sunset — one of those mild autumnal afternoons which hang upon the skirts of winter. A girl in years — a woman in cares. Dark brown eyes set in a pale, sharply set face ; mouth rosy and beautiful in form, but too firm in its lines to be altogether lovely in a woman. A girl whom the passers by look at interrogatively, wondering that so much beauty should go alone, and so pooriy clad. Her clothes are not common, but shabby — a black silk dress that has once been handsome and fashionable ; a black felt hat trimmed with threadbare velvet ; a sealskin jacket worn bald at the edges, and dull with exposure to hard weather ; gloves which indicate that to be gloved at all has cost the wearer a struggle ; boots whose decay is no less evident than the symmetry of the slender feet they cover. She * T alks listlessly up and down the pavement of the bridge — just the one quiet promenade to be found in this neighbourhood — reading a letter from home, or the place which was her home two years ago. She has seen much of the world during these two years — in her own opinion too much, for she has seen not the fair and shining fabric in life's loom, but the ragged sleave thereof. This is the letter which she reads, not once, but three times over, with deepest attention, as she paces up and down the quiet old bridge, while the sunset fades from the cold gray river, and from that Dutch picture of old red roofs and water-side shanties on the Middlesex shore, which painters have loved, and which the Thames Embankment may perchance have blotted out by this time : — € J)ead Men's Shoes. 11 Bed castle, December 11th, 186—. u My Dear Sibyl, 11 An event has happened which I think likely to exercise a wonderful influence for good upon all our lives. Stephen Trenchard, your mother's brother, the uncle Stephen you have all talked about as children, and whose wealth was your poo* mother's boast, has returned to England, after nearly thirty years' absence, yellow, wrinkled, and withered, and eccentric in manners and habits, but I think not unkindly disposed to any of us. He has taken a house at Redcastle, and is anxious to hav« his nieces about him, as he calls it. Marion has already exchanged the discomforts and deprivations of a parish doctor's household for the Oriental luxuries of Lancaster Lodge. I daresay you remember the house, a square stone building with two tall iron gates, and two lodges within thirty yards of the hall door. Some people will have grandeur at the sacrifice of consistency. He seems — I mean your uncle Stephen — to have taken a great fancy to Marion. I meet her lolling in his barouche, trying to look as if she had been accustomed to ride in a three hundred guinea carriage all her life, and really doing it very well. Jenny has also been to see her uncle, but he thought her rough and uncultivated, and I fear that, with her present deficiency of manners, she has little chance of pleasing him. I hav6 sent her to Miss Mercer's as a day scholar, since Michaelmas, but as she will talk to the boys going and returning, I really think the change is doing her more harm than good. I have dined with Mr. Trenchard, and can assure you that the splendour of his table is something to remember. I don't pretend to be a judge of wines, though I could give you a lecture upon tannic acid, alcohol, and so on — experience, to my mind, being better than theory, and my >pportunities of the rarest — but I know that after dining with Stephen Trenchard I felt as if my veins ran quicksilver. "Well, my dear, I want you to have your chance as well as Marion, and I think the best and wisest course for you will be to beg a month's holiday from your employer, Mrs. Hazleton, and come to spend Christmas with your poor old uncle Robert. No doubt if you do, your rich old uncle Stephen will ask you to transfer your society to Lancaster Lodge, and then you and Marion will have equal chances. I dare say it will end by his asking one or both of you to live with him and keep his house. He has, I believe, something like a million to leave behind him, and you three girls are his nearest relations, and his natural heirs. He has spoken veiy kindly of your mother. " Let me know what Mrs. Hazleton says about a holiday. If a month is too much you might ask for a fortnight I should think it most unlikely that you need ever return to her. With " Plunged in the Depth of Helpless Poverty. 1 * Q such a man as old Trenchard for your uncle, and well disposed towards you, your teaching days ought to be over. " Your affectionate Uncle, " Robert Faunthorpe." " My teaching days," repeats the young woman, bitterly. " He little knows that they were the height of luxury compared p\ what has come after them." The letter is addressed to — MISS FAUNTHORPE, At Mrs. Hazleton's, 19, Lowther Street, Eccleston Square. It has been re-addressed by an humble friend of Miss Faun- thorpe's, in the person of Mrs. Hazleton's housemaid, who has enclosed the letter in an envelope directed to — MRS. STAN MORE, At Mrs. Bonnt's, 11, Dixon Street, Chelsea. An address which indicates a descent in the social scale from the semi-Belgravian gentility of Lowther Street, Eccleston Square. And how comes Miss Faunthorpe to be Mrs. Stanmore, while her affectionate uncle, Robert Faunthorpe, remains unaware of a transmutation which must needs have some influence for good or evil on his niece's future career? Marriage is one of those inadvertences which can hardly go for nothing even in the easiest life. " So Marion is exhibiting herself about Redcastle in a three hundred guinea barouche," says Mrs. Stanmore, putting the letter in her pocket, " while I have hardly shoes to my feet. I — who was supposed to be the handsome sister, and the clever sister, and the lucky sister ! And I dare not show my face in Redcastle, not even if half a million of money is to be lost by my absence. To think that uncle Stephen should choose just this particular time for his return ; to think that he should return at all, when Marion and I made up our minds ever so long ago that he was little better than a myth, and was sure to have married a begum without telling anybody, and to die in India, leaving all his money to horrid copper-coloured children. Lucky for Marion 1 " Then, after a pause, leaving the bridge and entering the shabby street leading to Cheyne Walk, she continues her self -commun- ing thus : — "What shall I say to uncle Robert? Suppose he were ta come to town and call at Mrs. Hazleton's. H© may have money £ Drail Men's Shoes. now to pay for the journey. It was safe enough before. Pool uncle Robert never had a spare pound, or ever wasted a shilling, except the shillings he had t<* pay for summonses because of being behindhand with the taxes. If he should come up to London ? Or if uncle Stephen should be in town and call in Lowther Street? More likely that. Anglo-Indians are such active creatures. What am I to do ? " Thus disjointedly run her thoughts, as she walks — very quickly now — along the narrow, shabby street, past the fried-fish shop, and the pork-butcher's, and the emporium for second-hand goods — from a picture of the Holy Family, alter Raffaelle, veiy much framed, to a flat iron, or a pair or bluchers — the greengrocer's, also coal merchant, the cook-shop, with its steam-tarnished windows and reeking odour of boiled beef and stick-jaw pudding. " That reminds me," Mrs. Stanmore says to herself, as the reek of vooked provisions salutes her nostrils, " there's nothing for dinner." She pauses and takes counsel with herself. Her eye wanders from the cook-shop to the fishmonger's, thence ranges to the pork butcher's. Her election lies among these. Cambridge sausages are savoury, but dear ; and Mrs. Bonny, the landlady, has a trick of overdoing all things entrusted to her culinary art. A pound of Cambridge sausages, reduced to grounds and grease, are hardly worth the shilling- they cost. Boiled beef is expensive and weighs heavy. For a cheap relish, a zest which shall make bread and butter supply the place of dinner, your fishmonger is your best friend. Mrs. Stanmore patronizes the finny tribe. She selects an eightpenny haddock, dried and salted, from the merchant's store, and carries it home with her, rolled up in brown paper. She stops at the cheap baker's for a half-quartern loaf, with which the bit over is not unacceptable. " I wonder what Marion would think if she could see me now ? " she asks herself ; " Marion who always complained of my pride, and called herself the Cinderella of the family. Her Cinderella-ship never brought her so low as this." Home ! bitter mockery of a sweet word. She turns out of the shabby street into a street still shabbier, narrow, dirty, and out at elbows. Yet at its worst not quite so bad as a modern street under the same conditions, for the red brick houses are subsiantial and roomy, and the worm-eaten oaken window-frames shut out the wiad better than the speculative builder's warpt*A and shrunken deal. The house which Mrs. Stanmore enters is dark and gloomy. The wail of a fretful child sounds from the basement as she lets herself in at the street door with a convenient latch-key. A glimmer from the kitchen stairs is the only light visible, and to this glimmer Mrs. Stanmore seems to address herself. " I've brought home a haddock, Mrs. Bonny. Will you be kind imough to broil it at eix oVlock ? " u Plunged in the Dcptn of Helpless Poverty. 7 * 9 "Ob, very well," answers a querulous voice from unseen depths below. " You can put the 'addock on the window-si:* I'll come and fetch it when I've got time ; but I can't say D«.» r uink about It's being done by six, for my fire's got low after uonin'. Th*. parlour has gone out to tea." This last remark has a reproachful sound, as woo should say 44 You never spare me trouble by going out visiti'g." Mrs. Stanmore deposits the dried fish, and ascends the dark, old-fashioned staircase, smelling of mice, whose hurried scamper is audible behind the mouldering wainscot. One room, the first floor front, comprises Mr. and Mrs. Stanmore's share of number eleven, Dixon Street. It is happily a rather large room, with three windows, provided with old-fashioned window-seats. The furniture is old like the house, worn and dingy, but solid furni- ture that has served several generations of housekeepers and a ragged regiment of lodgers. In the glow of a cheery little fire the dim old room has a homely, not unfriendly look. The old tent bedstead has been pushed into the most obscure corner. There are two arm-chairs, with faded chintz covers, a sofa, large and ponderous. There is a round table opposite the wide old fireplace, and another table against the wall, surmounted by a japanned iron tea-tray of a bright red ground with a landscape in the middle, a rosewood tea-caddy, a pair of btown glass decanters, empty, a family Bible — the landlady's — a ragged copy of Byron's " Don Juan," and two odd duodecimo volumes of " Tom Jones," in brown calf — the lodger's. Mrs. Stanmore lights a small paraffine lamp, takes off jacket and hat, and proceeds to prepare the evening meal. She has tea- things and tea-kettle to her hand in the roomy and mousey old cioset beside the fireplace — such a closet as is only to be found in old houses, large enough for half a dozen burglars to hide in, or a whole nursery of children to play in, and with all manner of odd corners and shelves, and perchance an inner cupboard lurking mysteriously in its panelled recesses. Mrs. Stanmore fills the kettle, and sets out the tea-things on the red japanned tray, and cuts a plate of bread and butter, and makes a round of toast deftly enough, though a year ago she waa about the least handy of her sex in such small domestic offices. That stern schoolmistress, necessity, has taught her many things, llow young she looks in the ruddy light of the fire, as she kneels on the hearth-rug toasting that round of bread for the poor meal that is to be dinner, tea, and supper all in one, for Mrs. Bonny's first- floor lodgers ! — how young and how pretty ! every feature 80 daintily fashioned, eyes so darkly lustrous, colouring so deli- cate ; young, and with much need of love and sympathy, of Comfort and careful tendance. " And so uncle Stephen has really come home — richer than we 10 Dead Men's Shoes. ever made him in our dreams when we were children — an«3 Marion is tasting all the pleasures bis wealth can buy for her, Marion whom I pitied so when I left her behind me at Redcastle. She might pity me now, from the depth of her heart, if she could see me. She might have written to tell me the change in her fortunes — selfish thing. I suppose it is on account of my not answering her last two letters — such stupid letters as they were too — full of ' I hope you are free from cold,' and ' I trust you are enjoying the nice autumn weather' — and uncle Robert's rheu- matic gout." She lapses into deeper meditation, looking into a red cavern in the heart of the fire, forgetful of the toast which hangs despon- dently upon the twopenny tin toasting-fork, shaped like Neptune's trident. Meditation full of rue, for she has done the most foolish thing a woman can do, except one, which is to repent too late of her folly ; and she is fast coming to that ultimate stage of foolishness, vain regret for an irrevocable act. She is still kneeling in front of the fire, absent-minded, absorbed, when the door opens, and a young man comes in, slowly, heavily, like one who brings no gladness with him, and has no hope of finding Eomfort at home. He comes quietly to the hearth, lays his hand upon Sibyl's shoulder, and addresses her not unkindly, but with little warmth in his tone. " Well, little old woman, brooding over the fire as usual ? What's the matter now ? " "Not much more than usual," his wife answers, without looking up. " You've had your customary luck, I suppose ? " she inquires, after a pause, during which her husband has taken off his shabby overcoat, and flung himself into one of the arm- chairs. " Yes, the wheel of fortune hasn't turned the other way yet It revolves persistently, but always — like the planets — in the same direction. The immutable laws of bad luck are not to bo abrogated in my favour. Th'3 fellows I wanted to see — butterfly friends of the past, who might lend me a fiver if I could catch them in the right humour — were all out. The situation I applied for has been given to somebody else. They had a hundred and thirty- nine applicants, the principal told me, and gave the berth to the applicant who dotted his i's with the nearest approach to mathe- matical precision. ' We take a man's handwriting as the physical expression of his mental bias,' said the principal, 'and what we want is precision.' Now you know I never dot my i's at all, or if I do the dot is so far from the letter as to make my meaning all the more unintelligible. So much for the clerkship. The commission agency we saw advertised turns out a ' do.' Agent Tequireb to put down fifty pounds as a guarantee of bona tides. I applied for an agency ia the wiii» trade, oifered to ». vounfi M Plunged in tTie Depth of Helpless Poverty." 11 gentleman moving in good society and able to push a new bran(J of champagne ; but when the wine merchant saw me, he asked, rather pertinently, if I moved in good society in this coat. I told him 1 was a gentleman by birth and education, and knew some of the best people in London. ' Very likely, my dear sir,' replies the grape-doctor, ' but you don't visit them. We want young men who dress well, and look as if they could afford to drink the wine they recommend ; men who have the appearance of wealth with the unscrupulousness of poverty.' Rather neatly put by our friend the goosebeny-f ermenter, wasn't it ? " " And you have done nothing, earned nothing, are no nearer earning anything than you were yesterday ? " asks Sibyl, without lifting her e3 r es to his face. Yet the time was, not a year ago, when to gaze upon that countenance seemed to her like reading a poem, when every turn of the handsome head, every sparkle of the dark eyes — eyes ever of uncertain hue, but always dark — was a thing to remember and dream about ; — when to watch him across a crowded room was quiet happiness, all-sufficing for an exacting love — when to hear his voice, gay or grave, was sweeter than music. And now he sits a few paces from her, worn out, weary, dispirited, in sore need of comfort, and she cannot raise her eye? from moody contemplation of the fire. The' difference is marked, the reason obvious. A year ago he was an undeclared lover — to- day he is an actual husband. Then there was not a many, petalled flower which did not suggest the question, "Loves me, loves me not ? " Now he has loved her and won her, and they have essayed to sail along the river of life together, and found the navigation difficult — ay, hard and bitter as that weedy swamp through which Sir Samuel Baker's craft was toilfully dragged under Afric's torrid sky. " You couldn't give a neater definition of my position," replies Alex Secretan, otherwise Stanmore. He has striven to hide his destitution under an assumed name, just as his wife has kept the secret of an imprudent marriage by retaining a false address. Either mystery may be discovered at any moment, so various are the accidents of life. " Don't consider me frivolous if I remind you that I haven't eaten anything since half-past eight this morning, and the peram- bulation of stony-hearted London is conducive to an inward craving. I won't call the feeling by so healthy a name as hunger. Jt's a compound sensation of sickness and emptiness. Is there anything to eat except bread and butter ? It's a very nice thing in its way, but one comes to object to it on the same ground that Louis the Fourteenth's confessor took about partridges." "Mrs. Bonny is broiling a haddock," replies Sibyl, listlessly. " What good Catholics we are ! keeping Advent all the week 1$ Dead Men's Shoes. through. We hud bloaters yesterday, and dried sprats the day before. All our days are Ember days." " Fish is the cheapest thing I can get, Alex." " No doubt, but it generally entails after expense in the way of an extra half-pint of beer. No matter. Let Mrs. Bonny bring forth the haddock," exclaimed Alexis, applying himself diligently to the toast, which Sibyl has just buttered. She tinkles the bell gently, as a polite hint to Mrs. Bonny. She dare not give a peremptory ring, as she might for a servant whose wages she paid. Mrs. Bonny — when letting her lodgings — professes to give attendance to her lodgers, but that attendance is scanty, and yielded as a favour rather than a right. A lodger who wants extra luxuries, such as onion sauce with a shoulder of mutton, or fried liver and bacon for supper, must make things very sweet to Mrs. Bonny. An order for the theatre, or even an occasional tumbler of grog has a mollifying effect on her disposi- tion ; the loan of a newspaper soothes her sensitive mind. The Stanmores are too poor to offer even these small attentions, and are sometimes backward in the payment of their rent, and thus receive stinted service grudgingly given. Sibyl pours out the tea languidly, and with the air of a person out of health. She eats a little bread and butter, but without appetite, and when the haddock appears at last, borne by a slipshod girl, Mr. Stanmora has that fish all to himself, Sibyl refusing any portion thereof. Alexis contemplates her pityingly — tenderly even; — that haggard, sickly look in the delicate face touches him. " Poor girl, how pale and ill you look I No appetite too. That's a bad sign. I wish I could have brought you home some- thing more tempting than this old finnan. A bird, a sweetbread, or something of that land." " I could not eat the most exquisite dinner that was ever cooked, Alex, so you needn't trouble yourself to regret that. But I do wish for something, very much." " What is it, darling ? You ought to have every wish gratified just now. You would, if you had married a rich cheesemonger, or a wharfinger, or a packer, or a cotton-spinner, or a brass- i'ounder, anything except that lowest animal in the scale of creation, a broken-down swell. What is it, Sibyl ? " " I want ten pounds, Alex," she answers, intently, her elbow on the table, her chin supported by her hand, her eyes upon his face, attitude and expression alike earnest. " Ten pounds, my dearest I We have been wanting ten pounds ever since our honeymoon." " Don't speak of our honeymoon," exclaimed Sibyl, fretfully. " It. maddens me when I think how you squandered money that might have kept us in comfort for a year." " My love, you are so easily maddened," remonstrates Alexis, " Plunged in the Depth of Helpless Poverty" 13 placidly — he has never been seen out of temper. " I dare say it was foolish to go the pace quite as fast as we did, but you had never seen Paris, and April in Paris with the woman one loves is the nearest approach that I can imagine to paradise." " You speak as if you had tried it often," says Sibyl, with a sneer. " Bah, child, a mere fagon de parler. Do you remember our drives to the Cascade, in the balmy spring nights, when the stars were shining on the Bois, and how we used to sit in the lamp-lit gardens of the cafe, eating ices and making love ? If ever we grow rich, Sibyl, we'll go back to Paris and have another honey- moon. But how about these ten pounds, little woman ? What can you want with ten pounds ? " The young wife, rises, glides behind her husband's chair, and, leaning on his shoulder, whispers something in his ear, a some- thing at which he smiles tenderly, sadly, and, turning in his chair, draws the young face — so wan and yet so fair — down to his lips. " By Jove ! " he exclaims, " poor little woman, I am a brute, never to have thought of it. You want to buy clothes for the poor little beggar who is to make his first appearance upon the ctage of life, before the innocent lambkins have begun to bleat in the meadows, undisputed heir to his father's impecuniosity. The lower animals have the advantage of us in that respect, by the by. The lambkins come into the world amply provided. You shall have the money, Sibyl. Yes, if I have to borrow, beg f rob for it. You shall have it somehow, even if I were driven to beg of my bitterest foe, ay, of Stephen Trenchard himself." His arm is round her, and he feels her start at the name. " Don't be frightened, little woman. That's only a figure of speech. I never saw Stephen Trenchard in my life, and as to begging of him, there's nothing more unlikely, since he is, to the best of my knowledge, an inhabitant of the city of palaces, otherwise Calcutta." " He might have come back to England, Alex, without your knowing anything about it," suggests Sibyl. " Ay, that might he have done easily, child, seeing that he is a very insignificant person in this big busy world, and that I know nothing whatever about him, except that he did me deadly wrong before I was born." M And you were taught to hate him ? " "Yes verily, before I learned my catechism I learned to hate Stephen Trenchard with a righteous and a godly hate, for was he not the falsest and meanest of men ? and the Scripture does not forbid us to hate falsehood and meanness. II Eve had hated the serpent a little, humanity in general would not have gone wrong. Trenchard was like the serpent, a creature that crawled, a 14 Dead Men's Shoes. wriggling worm in the guise of a man. He wriggled and wormed himself into the fortune that should have been my father's ; he wriggled and wormed himself into the heart of my father's first love ; and he did all this wrong, — deliberate wrong, mark you, basely conceived, the study of his days and nights, with a smiling face, clasping his victim's hand in friendship all the while, so that no thunderbolt falling from the skies could have surprised my father more than the discovery that his arch enemy was there, hiding under the mask of his humble friend." Alexis has risen, and paces the room, fired by this memory of a lesson learned in earliest boyhood. As deeply as he loved his dead father, so deeply does he hate his father's enemy and betrayer. Sibyl watches him, thoughtful and perplexed. Of all things difficult to impossibility, nothing could seem more so than to reconcile her love and duty to her husband, and her desire to win her uncle's fortune, CHAPTER H. "O WOBLD, THY SLIPPEEY TURNS !" Given a ten-pound note which must be had. Query, where to get it ? A problem not over-easy of solution for a man who has exhausted the generosity of those few friends who are generous, and discovered the hollowness of those numerous acquaintances who, not ill-natured in the beaten way of friendship, will do anything for a friend except open their purse-strings. A sharp December morning. The wind has changed in the night from south-west to due east, and there has been a light fall of snow, which is whitening the various and picturesque roofs of Chelsea, and hangs on the ragged elm branches on Cheyne Walk. The river is dun colour, the sky iron-gray, as if the atmosphere were heavily charged with snow. Butchers' boys, cabmen, and those denizens of the street who seem to get through their daily round of labour with an ample margin of leisure for gossip and standing about at corners, look up at the darkened vault of heaven and opine that there will be a heavy fall of snow before night. This is the cold world which Alexis Secretan faces, leaving his wife asleep in the old tent bed at number eleven, Dixon Street. She has fallen into slothful habits of late, pleading as her excuse that there is bo little to get up for, now-a-days. Certainly not pleasure or prosperity, not even so much as a new book to read, for does not that ragged old " Don Juan," whose bitterest verses • 4 World, thy Slippery Turn* l w 15 Alexis gloats over in his gloomiest moods, constitute, with graceless M Toin Jones," the entire stock of literature in Sibyl Secretan's reach ? Ten pounds. He faces the bitter blast blowing up the river from Plumstead and Woolwich and all the chilly eastern marshes, and seeming to concentrate its biting power upon innocent Cheyne Walk, he faces the rasping wind moodily, puzzling out this insolvable problem, where to get ten pounds ! Where to get it ? that is the only question. The how to get it has been settled from the beginning. He must borrow it. He has almost outgrown the sense of degradation which accompanies the earlier stages of the borrower's piteous career, — he has almost reached the lower depth of the hardy and habitual borrower. He has but to settle with himself upon whom he shall make his demand. For himself he might perchance never have stooped to borrow. He would have emigrated rather, and lived by iha sweat of his brow in some new country where men are equal,, and poverty less than a crime ; or, his heart failing him, he might have flung himself and his difficulties off Waterloo Bridge, and bo made an easy end of them ; but with a young and beloved wife dependent on him for daily bread he has sacrificed pride and independence, manhood and honesty even, he sometimes thinks, and for the last six months has lived a wretched hand- to-mouth existence, trying to get employment all the time, and occasionally earning a fortuitous five-pound note, but supporting the burden of life for the most part by the aid of loans obtained from the associates of happier days. He is not a nian upon whom so pitiful a position sits lightly ; though— being gifted by nature with a peculiarly sweet and easy temper — he has a way of taking his troubles placidly, especially in the presence of hia wife, and his railings at Fate and Fortune, though frequent, are philosophical rather than angry or vindictive. He is a man who, if Nature's bounties are to be counted as a heritage, is not undowered. Eminently handsome, of a noble presence, athletic, with a constitution to which illness and disease are unknown — with a voice that can soothe or charm, threaten or command — an eye that dominates man and the lesser animals alike — a quick, bright intellect — a wondrous power of endurance — that noble quality which in a horse we call " stay," which in man is perhaps the crowning characteristic of manhood, — with such gifts as these, Alexis Secretan should hardly count himself ill furnished for the battle of life. Unhappily, the old fairy story of the Princess's christening gifts repeats itself more or less in every man's lif e. Among the numerous good fairies who were invisible guests at Alexis Secretin's baptismal feast two evil fairies slipped in unawares. These were Poverty and Unthrift. " He shall have little of this world's goods," said the first 15 Dead Men's S!>,oe$. u And lie shall squander that little," added the second. This baptismal curse has been fulfilled. The only son of u disinherited father, Alexis has yet escaped the chastening influence of that sharp schoolmaster, Poverty. His mother's fortune was enough to support father and son in luxurious idle- ness, and in a happy-go-lucky, easy kind of life in foreign cities, where life is cheaper, gayer, and brighter than at home. At seventeen his father's influence was sufficient to obtain him a commission in a crack regiment. Father and mother died within a year of each other, and soon after Alexis had put on his epaulettes. The remnant of his mother's fortune — the bulk thereof having been anticipated, and made away with from year to year as necessity impelled — served to keep the young man going in an expensive profession for about five years, dining which he had the good fortune to see some active service, distin- guish himself by various displays of reckless daring, and obtain a captaincy. At the end of the fifth year he had spent the last shilling of his capital, and was in debt. Knowing the impossi- bility of living on his pay, he sold out, and for some time — about a year and a half — contrived to live upon the proceeds of his commission, having thus sacrificed his military career to the necessities of eighteen months' idleness, and to that miserable condition of a noble profession which makes it impossible that a gentleman should live by his sword. Alexis reviews the ranks of his acquaintances as he walks Londonwards. He has exhausted the bounty of his easy-going, and, in some cases, open-handed brother officers. No hope of help there. His foreign education has left him without school friends near at hand. Honest Max, or jovial Fritz of Heidelberg might advance him a thaler — or a handful of groschen — were they within reach, but their normal state is impecuniosity. There is but one source left undrained. Even in this depth of destitution he has not yet appealed to his mother's sole surviving sister, his aunt Louisa, co-heiress with his mother of a rich Man- chester manufacturer, and more fortunately married than lria mother. Aunt Louisa is the wife of Dudley Gorsuch, barrister, in large practice, and member for Glaseford, in the Potteries, a self-made man, self-important, and worshipping rank and mam- mon, as the Ammonites worshipped Moloch. On this bleak December morning it occurs to Alexis that aunt Louisa, being of his mother's kin, must have some green spot in her nature, some place in her heart accessible to softer feeling, were it but the size of a pin's point, and that he, her nephew, destitute and forlorn, ought to be able to find that place. He has dined at her house when he was a dashing young officer, well dressed, well surrounded ; has been entertained bounteously by her, made much of, presented to her friends with * O World, thy Slippery Tunis ! " }fr ■ome touch of pride, being verily a young 1 man for women to be proud of in his prosperous days. At that happier time ami,* Louisa appeared to him worldly, but good-natured, hospitable, benevolent even. He is at the bottom of Grosvenor Place by this time, and ha» made up his mind to try aunt Louisa. Mr. and Mrs. Gorsuch live in a street out of Grosvenor Place, too expensive a street for Mr. Gorsuch's means, which are larger in appearance than reality ; but a fine house in a fine neighbour- hood is a standing evidence of wealth, and as such is worth all it costs. There are so many things in which prudent careful people can save money ; notably in their meals and the food they give their servants, since these matters appertain to tho inner economy of a household, and are secrets to the outer world Mrs. Gorsuch pinches in all domestic details, even down to scouring-paper. Mr. Gorsuch gives three state dinners in the season, supplied by Gunter, banquets of imposing appearance, but washed down with wines that range from half a crown to four and sixpence per bottle. Alexis, fully aware of his broken-down appearance, is too wise to put forward his relationship as a claim to be admitted, despite the footman's suspicious look. He simply asks to see Mrs. Gorsuch, but he gives his real name, Mr. Secretan. He is left in the hall while the footman communicates with his mistress, whose voice is heard in the library at the back of the hall. " She can hardly deny herself when I can hear her talking," thinks Alexis. She does not deny herself. The man ushers him into the library — a square apartment with a gloomy outlook, and two pompous bookcases, containing law books, and a few of those classic authors whose works are more largely bought than read. A fire burns frostily and cheerily in the bright steel grate. Mrs. Gorsuch sits at a table, with a row of tradesmen's books and a ponderous plated inkstand before her. She has been trying to reconcile discrepancies between the butcher's account of meat delivered and her own idea of the meat that ought to have been consumed. Three pounds of rump steak sit heavily upon her soul. She cannot see how these three pounds of butcher's meat can have been honestly eaten, and she is haunted by the image of an all-devouring policeman — or those blood' suckers, the cook's relatives. She is a little dried-up looking woman, with stiff bands of light auburn hair, pepper-castored with gray ; a brown merino gown, a pinched-looking lace cap, and a double eye-glass attached to a chain which glitters in the rosy light of the fire, as she turn* to look at her visitor, glass in hand. IB Dead Men's Shoes. " Alex ! " she exclaims, " Good heavens, what a change." She saw hiin last as a guest at one of ber state dinners, elegant, prosperous-looking, with the easy, self-assured air of a man certain of success in life. She sees him now reduced to the lowest ebb in the tide of man's existence. He comes to her as a beggar. Mendicancy is written on his face. " Yes, there's a marked decadence from the young man about town, is there not?" he replies. "You see the brand which Destitution stamps upon her children. I have fallen very low in the world since I used to come to your swell parties. You were veiy kind to me in those days, aunt," — Mrs. Gorsuch winces, knowing so well what is coming — " so kind that I have made up my mind to sue for a small kindness to-day. It goes against the grain, but " " Before we talk about kindnesses, Alexis, perhaps you will be good enough to explain how you have sunk to this absolutely disreputable condition ? " asked Mrs. Gorsuch, looking at her nephew's boots. " The easiest thing in the world," answers Alexis, with agreeable recklessness. " I have spent all my money, and have not yet acquired the knack of earning more." He sees, dimly, that there is little to be hoped from this flesh and blood of his, and that placid despair which is his normal condition enables him to take things easily. " Earning ! " echoes aunt Louisa with a bitter sneer. " It isn't in any of your race to earn the bread they eat. My iather made his fortune by honest industry, your father thought he honoured our family when he exchanged his landless gentility for my sister's thirty thousand pounds. Poor Maud ! it was a luckless day that brought him across her path." " Reserve your pity, aunt Louisa. My mother's married life was a happy one. I can bear witness to that." " Happy ! " exclaims Mrs. Gorsuch, contemptuously. " Wan she in society ? " This question she evidently considers unanswerable. Alexis respects her opinion, and makes no reply. " Can you compare her position with mine? " " Certainly not. You have a handsome house in a fashionable street, a bishop for your right-hand neighbour, an earl on youi left hand. You have the orthodox establishment of a lady, and all the cares thatiaccompany it. My mother lived a roving life in some of the loveliest places of this earth, ind had no servant but the maid who waited on her when she was well and nursed her when she was ill, and loved her dearly always. My mother's society consisted of the few friends who were faithful to her through all changes of fortune. Those do not count, of course. No, she was not in society ; but perhaps when you and she compare " World, thy Slippery Turns I " 19 notes as to your earthly experiences in a wiser world you may find that the balance has been more evenly adjusted than you suppose now." Mrs. Gorsuch has hardly heard him. Her mind is troubled by a grave doubt. " I hope you did not tell the butler that you are my nephew," she says, anxiously. "I had too much discretion for that. And now, aunt, not wishing to intrude myself or my boots (he has perceived her uneasy glances at those patched offenders against the decencies of life) upon you longer than is absolutely necessary, I will come to the point. Will you lend me, or give me, ten pounds ? If Fate is against me you may call it a gift, but if Fortune favour mo it shall be repaid tenfold. I needn't tell you how badly I want money. My appearance testifies to my necessities, but it is not for myself that I am a beggar. It is for my wife, soon to become a mother." " What ? " almost shrieks Mrs. Gorsuch. " Married ! Without income or profession, you have linked yourself to some unhappy creature ? " " Yes, we have taken the liberty to unite our destitution. If the worst comes to the worst the same pan of charcoal that serves for one will accommodate the other." " Your impiety shocks but does not surprise me," says Mrs. Gorsuch. " Such sinful imprudence could hardly be found in a man of religious principles." " No, prudence and piety generally go in double harness. Well, aunt, I have my answer. You won't lend or give me the money ? " " In the first place, I have not such a sum to lend. Mr. Gorsuch's position demands the expenditure of our income. We are never in debt," with a shudder, " but we have never anything to spare. I had to strain every nerve in order to pay our annual contribution to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." " And you have nothing left for a starving nephew at home." " Even if I wei - e in a position to advance you this money — which I repeat lam not — I cannot see that your condition would be materially improved by the loan. Where would you be when the money was spent ? " " Exactly where I am now. The money is not for myself, hut for my wife. I should not touch a sixpence of it" "Who was this unfortunate young woman when you married her ? " " Will you lend me ten pounds ? " asks Alexis, ignoring the question. " Sadly to be pitied, poor creature, whoever she waa. Some young person of inferior position, I dare say." SO Dead Mm'* Shoes. " "Will you lend me ten pounds ? " "I have already told you that I have no such sura at my disposal, Alexis," replies Mrs. Gorsuch. And then, hesitatingly, reluctantly extracting a coin from a plethoric-looking Russia leather purse, she adds, " If half a sovereign will be of soma email assistance " " It won't," answered her nephew, abruptly. " I dare say I could make as much in a day by sweeping a crossing, and I shouldn't feel myself so degraded as if I took the money from you. Good-bye, aunt." He has opened the door before he concludes, and aunt Louisa endures agonies for the rest of the day, fearful that the butler, or man of all work, heard that last address. Remorse for her treatment of her nephew troubles her not at all. "He cannot say that I sent him away empty-handed," she reflects. " I offered him half a sovereign." CHAPTER III. THE TRUE METAL. Alexis Secretan turns his back upon the solemn responsibilities of Tubal Street, Grosvenor Place, sick with anger and despair. He is ftngry with himself rather than with his aunt. He loathes himself for having invited such humiliation. " I ought to have known her better," he muses. " A woman who gives showy dinners and cheap wines, and talks of her friend the Duchess of Landsend, or the Countess of John-o'- Groat ; a woman whose name appears in the subscription list of all the orthodox charities, just under the nobility, and who never keeps a servant six months. And yet she is my mother's sister, of the same race ; my mother, whose nature was all kindness, and with whom to give was as natural as to breathe." He stands at Hyde Park Corner, indifferent to the east wind and the falling snow, — line small snow-flakes that lie unmelted where they fall. " Now which way shall I turn my«alf in search of a friendly •oul ? " he asks. _e turns south-westward, perhaps t« escape that biting easterly blast, and walks towards Brompton, listlessly, hopelessly, walking fast to keep himself warm, but with no settled purpose. Past the Bell and Horns Tavern he stops and looks up at sne of the houses in the high road, a house with a front garde* —or railed enclosure, which courtesy calls garden — a c**owy The True STetai, 21 parallelogram, in which flourishes four melancholy bushes, like dwarf cypresses in a graveyard. The house is neat and bright- looking, and a bill in the parlour window announces that apart- ments are to be let within. Alexis opens the gate as if familiar with its structure, goes up to the door hesitatingly, knocks, and asks to see Mr. Plowden. He is ushered forthwith into the back parlour, where a man of about his own age, pale and thoughtful-looking, sits by an indifferent fire painting a map. A pile of unpainted maps, a battered old tin paint-box and brushes lie on the table before him. The thin white hand travels dexterously, rapidly over the paper, leaving a delicate line of colour behind it. The map-painter looks up at Alexis, brush in hand, surveys him from head to foot, wonderingly, and drops the brush, full oi colour, on the map. " Captain Secretan ! " he exclaims, " is it possible ? " " It's true, at any rate," answers Alexis, holding out his hand, which the other grasps affectionately. "Theoretically impossible, perhaps, but absolutely true. Just wash off that splash of cobalt, Dick. I shouldn't like you to spoil one of your maps on my account." " I'm so glad to see you," says Richard Plowden, dabbing the map with a sponge rather nervously. " I was afraid you'd quite forgotten me, and that we should never see youhere again, either as a lodger or a friend. However, here you are, and I'm heartily glad to see you," poking the dingy little fire vigorously, and then holding out his hand again to Alexis ; " but I'm afraid things haven't been going so well with you as they ought. You look " " Poor," interjects Alexis. " You're not far out. Poverty and «mall-pox are unmistakable diseases. You can see them in a man's face. Before you say another kind word to me, Dick, I must tell you the truth — the naked, unpleasant truth. I come to you as a beggar. Knowing how hard you work for every shilling you earn — knowing what a good fellow you are — good son, good friend, good Christian — I am mean enough to come here and ask you to help me. The worthless drone appeals to the honest, independent bee." " So far as I can help you," replies Mr. Plowden, with un- diminished kindliness, "I am at your service. You were a profitable lodger to my mother, and a kind friend to me. It isn't many gentlemen in your position who would have condescended to associate with a lame invalid, who gets his living by painting maps. I know those evenings when you used to come and smoke your pipe down here were some of the happiest in my fife." He walks about the room as he speaks, drags a chair to the fireside for Alexis, takes a loaf of bread, a bottle of anchovies, « pat of butter, and a bottle of ginger wine out of the chiffonier. 2* Dead Men's Shoe** spreads a napkin, and arranges this temperate refreshment on one side of the table, pushing his maps and colour-box to the other. He walks lame, but is active and hardy notwithstanding. " Do you suppose I should have spent many evenings with you if I had not found your company pleasant, Dick?" says Alexis, lightly. " I found that you had read more and thought more than any fellow of my acquaintance, and it was refreshing to me to hear your ideas upon all manner of subjects. And then I flattered myself that you liked me, and were pleased with my talk of the gay world ; above all, about that stage you love so well and see so little of. Do you remember how we used to discuss the actors of the day, Dick, and settle how Shakespeare ought to be interpreted ? " " Do you think 1 can ever forget ? " asks Richard Plowden. " I've not so many friends that I can afford to forget the one who was the first to tell me I had a mind. Do you know, Cap- tain Secretan, that I've had the impertinence to write a book since then? Do peg into those anchovies, captain, and don't mind cutting the knobs off the loaf. I like crumb as well as crust." " A book, Dick. An essay on the genius of Shakespeare ! " " Nothing so ambitious, or so unlikely to sell. A geography for schools, on a new system. It is not published yet, but I have reason to believe that it will be, and that I shall make a little money by it. So you may have less compunction in borrowing a pound or two." " Dear old Dick 1 " exclaims Alexis, who has been doing ample justice to the anchovies and bread and butter, and warming him- self with a glass of ginger wine. " Unhappily, it is not a ques- tion of a pound or two. I want ten pounds." Richard Plowden's countenance falls. It is not thst he would measure his friendship, but ten pounds is an awful sum. " If I ever can repay it I will, and with interest at a more than ■usurious rate. But it is almost a mockery to talk of repayment in my present condition." Richard limps to the chiffonier without a word, takes out a little japanned cash-box, unlocks it, and extracts therefrom a five-pound note and five sovereigns. " I had the money ready for the Christmas rent," he says, " but you are welcome to it. We shall be able to rub along without it, I dare say." What pinching and deprivation this rubbing along process will cost, Alexis can pretty well guess, for he has seen how the widow Plowden and her son live at the best of times. He takes the money with a faltering hand, and turns away hk« face to hide the tears that disfigure it, the first that he has shed uce he wept for his mother's death. The True Metal 23 Presently he grows cheerful again, resumes his seat, finishes his luncheon, and then tells Richard Plowden the story of his Jecadence, an unvarnished tale which his humble friend hears with deepest interest. " If you could put me in the way of earning a few shillings a week by any kind of labour, however humble, you would be doing me even a greater favour than you have done me this day ; and yet, knowing your circumstances as I do, I feel as if you had given me ten years of your life instead of ten pounds." Richard Plowden promises that he will turn the matter over in his mind, and see what he can do, and so the two young men part, as firm friends as in the days when Mrs. Plowden's first-floor lodger, the dashing young captain, was the object of her son's affectionate admiration, his ideal of all that is noble and splendid in manhood. CHAPTER IV. "HAD THE CHANC2 BEEN WITH US THAT HAS NOT BEEN." Alexis speeds homeward joyously, elate as if he had conquered fortune. He has borrowed money from a social inferior, and yet does not feel humiliated. That interview with Richard Plowden has cheered him wondrously. The patient, gentle soul working at monotonous task-work in a gloomy back parlour, with no out- look save blank wall and cistern, working uncomplainingly, nay, even cheerfully, has read him a lesson. There must be work for a strong, healthy fellow like himself when a cripple in a back room can earn his living. Alexis begins to think he has tried \ife at the wrong end, that in striving for some shabby-genteel, reduced-gentleman's occupation, he has overlooked those lowlier and less sophisticated avocations which offer themselves to every honest man. " We'll emigrate as soon as the little woman is strong enough for a sea voyage," he tells himself, " and I'll turn shepherd on the Australian downs." Sibyl receives him with an eager look, full of questioning. She is sitting on the hearth-rug as he comes into the room, in her favourite attitude, looking into the fire, her ruffled hair golden in the ruddy fight, her eyes heavy with thought or care. His elated aspect tells her that he has been successful. She rises and runs to him, trembling with anxiety. 44 Have you got the money ? " "Yes, Sibyl, Of all my friends, the one who could least 24 De tit Men's Shoes. afford to lose it was the only one to lend it- Here it is, little one. You must make it go a long way, for it has cost me sore humiliation." " It was lent grudgingly, then ? " " Xo ; but it was refused heartlessly by the wrong person before I hit upon the right one. Make the most of it, my love, now you Ye got it" His wife takes the little parcel of money from his hand, slowly, jooking downward, and without a word. " You are pleased, little woman?" " It was very good of you to try so hard," she answers in a low voice. She begins to busy herself about her husband's dinner without another word. This evening she gives him half a pound of rump- steak, an unwonted feast, at which his soul rejoices. '• I am faring sumptuously to-day," he says, as she sits oppo- site to him, pouring out the tea with a listless, absent air, winch he takes for physical languor. u I have had a superb luncheon already." All that evening Sibyl is unwontedly silent, and Alexis, not carina: to describe his interview with Mrs. Go-ranch, had not much to tell her after he has related Kichard Plowden's generosity. He has recourse to the tattered leaves of " Don Juan," and sits sniggering over his favourite passages, and feeling as if he and the poet were both outside the human race generally, and could afford to ridicule and despise it. He sallies forth early next morning, despite the snow, which now clothes the land as a garment, and goes straight to Brorap- ton, to have another cheeiy talk with Dick Plowden, and to inquire whether that back-parlour philosopher has hit upon any method by which he, Alexis, may earn his daily bread. Richard is hopeful. He has an uncle engaged in a large shipping agent's office, an uncle who would have obtained employment for Richard himself, had Richard's legs been more serviceable in active life. To this uncle, Mr. Sampson Plowden, Dick writes a long letter, setting forth his friend's capacities and desire for employment ; and, armed with this recommendation, Alexis speeds to the offices of Messrs. Keel and Skrew, in a narrow alley out of Fenchurch Street. He seea Sampson Plow- den, an active little elderly man, who asks if he can write a good hand, and if he is quick at accounts. Alexis asks for a sheet of paper, and writes a few lines in a clerk-like hand, taking care to dot his i's this time, and then volunteers to solve any arithmetical puzzle that Mr. Plowden likes to set him. - Well. I'll take your word and Dick's as to the book-keeping," replies Mr. Plowden. " We employ a good many clerks, and Detunes have to send one to Australia, which makes a vacancy. " Had the Chance been with w«." 25 The next time this occurs you shall hear of it. The junior clerks are in my department, and it's in my province to engage or dismiss them. I'll bear you in mind, Mr. Stanmore. " If you could send me to Australia," hazards Alexis, glowing with hope, " it would suit me admirably." " Well, well, that would be a matter involving much conside- ration. However, you shall hear from me at the first opportunity." This is not much, but it is something ; for Mr. Plowden looks like a man who means what he says, and Dick has given him a high character for integrity and kindness of heart. Alexis plods homewards, cheered and sustained by sorrow's pole-star, Hope. He lets himself in at number eleven, Dixon Street, the door being on the latch, and goes upstairs, prepared to find Sibyl in a brighter frame of mind than usual, busy at her needlework most likely, the lamp burning, the hearth swept, the evening meal set out, with neatness which lends its charm even to poverty. The room looks curiously blank and dreary as he enters it. The fire has gone out ; cheerless sight, with that white world outside, and the thermometer below freezing-point. There is no tea-tray, no white cloth on the table, no lamp burning. The dusk is just light enough to show him that the room is empty, and that no preparation has been made for his refreshment. He goes back to the landing and calls over the balusters to his landlady — " Has my wife been out long, Mrs. Bonny ? " " She went out just before dinner-time," screams a voice from below. Dinner-time with Mrs. Bonny means one o'clock. " She has gone to buy things, I dare say," thinks Alexis ; " gone to London most likely. She ought to have been home by half- past four, though, if she went as early as one. Did she leave any message, Mrs. Bonny?" he asks, calling over the balusters again. "No," replies the landlady, curtly, "6he didn't leave no message, but she took a carpet bag." "A carpet bag," repeats Alexis, with a puzzled air, as he goes back to the blank, cold room. " What could she want with a carpet bag ? To bring the things home, perhaps, foolish little thing 1 As if a parcel wasn't lighter to carry than a carpet bag." He gropes for wood and coals in the bottom of the roomy cupboard, and lights a fire, patiently, toilfully, not unskilfully, with hands which have learned many offices unknown to the elegant Captain Secretan. He is dispirited by his wife's absence, but not angry. That placid, easy temper of his is full of tenderness and indulgence for the " little woman " whose brief married life has been so full of care, who approaches the mystery of maternity under such norrowful conditions. He lights his fire, brings out a loaf, a starveling elice of cheese, and some small-beer in a bottle, and 26 Dead Men'* Shoe*. sits by the hearth to eat his meal in the firelight. As he eats and drinks his eyes wander thoughtfully round the firelit room, j«ta of flame flashing and twinkling on the wainscot. " Not a bad old room by any means," he thinks, " if one had just enough money to live in it comfortably ? " He fancies that in Sampson Plowden's friendship he has found the clue that shall extricate him from the maze of adversity. How happy Sibyl and he might be in this humble old room were he but employed as clerk at Messrs. Keel and Skrew's with a Balaiy of, say thirty shillings a week. Not an ambitious desire, su rely, in a young man whose family history is set forth with some flourish in Burke's " Landed Gentry." " I shall have something pleasant to tell the little woman when Bhe comes home, at any rate," thinks Alexis, as he sips the flat fourpenny ale, put carefully away after last night's supper. A pert little flame spurts out of a knob of coal just at this moment, brightening the whole room, and Secretan's eye, wan- dering idly as he muses, is attracted by a spot of white upon the sideboard. " A letter, by Jove ! " he exclaims. " Who the deuce can have written to me, when not a mortal knows my address?" He rises — listlessly — apprehending no advantage from the letter, lights the lamp, and goes over to the sideboard. The letter is from his wife. "Dear Alexis, " Our misery of the last few months has opened my eyes to the sad truth that it would have been far better for both of us had we never met, or had we been wise enough to defer our marriage till we had some settled means of living. What am I but a burden to you ? How many situations there are in which you could get your living were you alone and unfettered ! while I could at least return to the dull drudgery of teaching, and escape the pinch of absolute poverty. Do not think me cold-hearted, dear Alexis, when I tell you that I am weaiy of our continual struggle, and that I have resolved to end it by an act which may provoke your indignation, but which, I feel assured, will result in your advantage. I set you free from the burden of a wife whom you have found it too bitter a task to support. You have rarely uttered a complaint, but I have seen despair in your face often enough to learn that it has settled in your heart. Without m« you may begin the world afresh. Apart from you I shall hav% opportunities of prosperity as Miss Faunthorpe, which I coul<£ never have as Mrs. Secretan. If my lot changes, and fortune smiles, as I dare to hope it will, you shall hear of me ; and even if you blame me for a separation which your anger may call a desertion, believe at least that in severanco as in union, I shal{ ba ever your true and loyal wife, Si8Yi«' r »s " Had the Chance been with u$. n 27 Alexis reads and re-reads this letter like a man who ha§ lost tha power of understanding his mother tongue, and pores over familiar words as though they were the hieroglyphics of an Assyrian inscription. So cold, so heartless, so deliberate. His heart sickens at the thought of such cruelty. In all his adversity, with starvation staring him in the face, he has thought of his wife as part of himself ; has never considered the responsibility of pro- viding for her as doubling the difficulty of existence ; has never for a moment remembered that life might be easier to him without her. He has been sorry for her, has thought of her deprivations, her endurance, but of the burden upon himself — never. All hopes and dreams of a happier future have centred themselves in her. To win a brighter home for her, to surround her with comfort, has been his one ambition. Reckless as his marriage was, he has never repented it. Fettered hand and foot as he has found himself by that ill-considered act, he has never wished the tie loosened. He stands with the letter in his hand repeating the words to nimself incredulously. It must be a jest — a trick to test bis love — anything but the base and bitter truth. He puts the letter in his pocket at last, goes downstairs, and penetrates the sacred domain of Mrs. Bonny ; nav .ely, the front kitchen, which is at once the parlour or living-room, where Mr. Bonny, employed as a railway porter, tastes the sweets of domestic leisure, and the apartment in which Mrs. Bonny cooks for her lodgers. The back kitchen makes a cheerful bedroom, and in summer-time, when Mr. Bonny trains scarlet runners over the window, enjoys a rustic outlook. Alexis is received somewhat coldly by Mrs. Bonny, that lady being intent upon frying sausages for the railway porter's even- ing repast, and resenting all intrusion upon her private domain on principle. He questions her closely as to the mode and manner of his wife's departure, but she can tell him no more than ehe has told him already. Mrs. Stanmore went out between twelve and one o'clock, carrying a small carpet bag. M I shouldn't have known anything about it if I hadn't hap- pened to meet her as I was fetching of the dinner beer, our Mary Ann being washing, and no one else to fetch it." " Did she say nothing to you ? " " Not a word ; she just gives me a nod, in her off-hand way, 6nd walks on." That is all. Alexis goes upstairs again, heavily, slowly, and paces the deserted room. By-and-by he pauses before a rickety old chest of drawers with brass handles and locks, opens a drawer, and finds it empty. It is the drawer that contained his wife's poor remains of a wardrobe that had never been richly furnished £S Dead Men's Shoes. a few under garments, a collar or two, and so on. These she hag evidently taken with her. Nothing could have been more deli- berate than her departure. Presently a curious idea occurs to him, improbable, but it takes A strong hold upon him nevertheless. Has she gone to make away with herself? and is this heartless letter of hers a tender device to save him the pain of knowing that she had been driven by despair to suicide ? This seems to him more likely, more natural than that the wife he loves can desert him ; can, with coldest calculation, barter love and truth against the chances of prosperity. What those chances are he knows not. He is so ignorant of his wife's family and surroundings as not to know that Sibyl Faunthorpe is the niece of Stephen Trenchard. Why he is thus unenlightened is a question that can be only answered by a retrospect, and will be best answered in Sibyl's own words. CHAPTER V. 8IBYL FAUNTHOBPE'S DIARY. Lowther Street, November 14, 186 — . I suppose to keep a diary is about as foolish a thing as any one can do — waste of time in the present, and self-abasement in the future. I dare say I shall hate myself when I read over these pages in years to come, and see what a stupid creature I was at nineteen years of age. However, I am driven to scribble about myself and my feelings for want of anything better to do in the long, lonely evenings, when the children are gone to bed, and Mrs. Hazleton is out, and I have the dreaiy schoolroom all to myself. I used to read any novel I could find hang about downstairs, and bring up here for an evening, till Mrs. Hazleton found me out and forbade it. " Novels, my dear Miss Faunthorpe," she preached, "are the worst possible reading for a young woman in your position — enervating the mind, weakening the logical faculty, which in your brain I regret to say is sorely deficient." I felt inclined to ask her why she reads novels if they are so injurious She has a knack of reading one's thoughts, and answered my objection before I could give it expression. " For the head of a household, who must always have some portion of care and anxiety, novel-reading is an innocent relaxation ; but tho instructor of youth should employ her leisure in widening her circl* of knowledge. The books in the study bookcase are quite of Sibyl Faunthorpe' 3 Diary. 2'5 your service, Miss Faunthorpe, whenever you like to avail your- self of them," and then she sailed out of the room to go to a dinner party, dressed in maroon velvet and old Brussels lace, and looking very handsome — for an old woman. She must be five- and forty at the least. Perhaps I ought not to complain of my bondage, for I might be worse off than I am. Mrs. Hazleton is fond of preaching, but she is not unkind to me. She has no grown-up daughters, and whenever she has company I am asked down to the drawing- room to play and sing and make myself generally useful ; and as she has a good deal of company, this happens tolerably often. Luckily, music is my strong point. When Mrs. Hazleton is in a good humour she takes me for a drive in the park, and I see the world and hear what is going on. I go to a fashionable church with the children on Sundays and Saints' days, and am altogether much better off than in my uncle Robert's poverty-stricken house- hold, in dull old Redcastle, where I knew no one worth knowing, and where life is only another name for vegetation. I am sure the cabbages in uncle's wretched kitchen-garden had quite as much enjoyment of life as Marion and I — more indeed, for they had sunshine and perpetual idleness, and bees and butterflies buzzing and skimming about them, while we had old house-linen to patch and darn, and the tradesmen's books to puzzle over, and "enny to teach, and mend for, and scold, and puddings to make, and buttons to sew on from January to December. I think there nevei. was such a man as uncle Robert for wrenching the buttons off his shirts, and pushing his toes through his socks. So, at the worst, though I have to grind French, Italian, and German verbs in a mill all the week through, and listen to those wretched children strumming Kalkbrenner's exercises three hour* a day, I am better off than Marion. I have forty pounds a year to spend upon clothes, and I see a great many nice people. Mrs. Hazleton boasts that she only knows the best people. " I am no tuft-hunter, my dear," she tells me when she is in one of her expansive moods. "You will see very few titles in my card- basket ; but the people I know belong to some of the best families m England." December 3. — Such a tiresome, dreary week. Mrs. Hazleton has dined out four evenings out of six, and now on the fifth she has taken off the children to see the new actor at the Haymarket. " I am sorry there won't be room for you in the box, Miss Faunthorpe," she said, with her chilly politeness, after I had been toiling for an hour helping Moyson, the children's maid, to tie luucinda's ribbons, and brush Laura's hair, and sew on a tucker for Magdalen. So here I am at half -past seven o'clock, my hearth irwept, and my fire made up, as solitary a3 an old maid with a •mall annuity. 9? Dead: Mere 8 Shoes. I have been down to the study, and chosen a couple of volumes, the best I could find in a dry-as-dust collection of antiquities — the " Citizen of the "World " and a volume of the Spectator, — but I don't feel equal to reading either. It suits my present humour better to scribble my complaints against fortune in this ridiculous book of mine. What a lucky woman Mrs. Hazleton is ! Married to a wealthy Indian judge, and left a widow six years ago with xn ample fortune ; too old to care about marrying again, but not too old to be admired and made much of by her friends ; her children young enough to be kept in the schoolroom for the next four years. Impossible to imagine a more independent position. What a contrast between her fate and mine ! I have never known what it is to have my own way, and yet, when I was a child, I thought I had only to be "grown up" in order to taste all the sweets of life. Perhaps that was because of the nonsense people talked about my good looks. I can fancy no greater misfortune for a girl in my position than to be brought up with the idea of being a beauty. When I was a little thing people were always drawing comparisons between Marion and me to Marion's disadvantage ; and before I was twelve I knew quite well that I was the pretty Miss Faunthorpe. Even old Hester, who never had a civil word for me at the best of times, used to feed my vanity with her taunts about my pretty face and my uselessness. " Handsome is that handsome does," she used to say, by which I knew very well that she thought me handsome. Then came school, and I was set up as a beauty, and courted and petted by one-half of the girls, and detested by the other half, and nagged at by Marion, who was set against me by the dis- agreeable comparisons people were always making between us. What was the consequence of all this ? I grew up with the idea that as soon as I left school, some rich young man, handsome and agreeable into the bargain, would fall in love with ine at first sight, and that I should be married in grand style at the parish church — six bridesmaids and ever so many carriages and pairs — before the admiring eyes of all Redcastle. I came homo to uncle Robert's dull red house, prepared for conquest Life would be like a fairy tale. Some fine summer morning the hand- some young prince would appear, and I should be raised at once from Cinderella's obscurity to Cinderella's high fortune. Foolish creature that I was! I used to lay awake at night telling Marion the grand things I would do for her when I was married. " Where is the prince to come from, Sib ?" she asked me once, rather maliciously. " You know there are not above three such young men in Redcastle — young Taylor, the lawyer's son ; Mr. Lacy, the biscuit manufacturer ; and George Pinsford, thecoach- moker." Sibyl FauntTiorpe'a Diary. 31 ,£ Biscuit manufacturer!" I exclaimed. "Do you suppose I leeuld many a low tradesman ? Aren't there the comity iamilies, •rapid ?" Well, here I am, after two weary years' home life with uncle Robert, who I must say is the dearest old thing in the world. Here I am, nearly twenty, and no nearer finding the prince of fairy lore than when I left Miss Worrie's establishment for young ladies at Kilmorden, after three years' experience as pupil-teacher. Here I am, a poor drudge of a governess, at just ten pounds a quarter, thankful for being asked down to the drawing-room, where my beauty goes for very little. All Mrs. Hazleton's friends have found out by this time that I am " only the governess," and have left off asking one another who I am, as they used to do at first with some show of interest. I sing, or play, and some one who has been chattering the whole time says languidly, " Very nice, really. Thank you, Miss Faun- thorpe." And I sit in the angle between the back drawing-room fireplace and the window-curtain for the rest of the evening, watching and listening, with no more part in what is going on than if I were at a theatre. Let me look in the glass and see what this lauded beauty is which has brought me so little luck. A small straight nose very sharply cut. a short upper lip, under lip a thought too full, teeth good, ehin round and dimpled, face a perfect oval, eyes darkest brown ; the sort of eyes which, I believe, are usually called black. Hair dark brown, with a tinge of gold where it ripples — the colour usually called chestnut. Present expression discontent and a tendency to ill temper. I have given up that foolish notion of a rich husband, but I some- times indulge in another day-dream, perhaps just as foolish. What if my rich uncle, Stephen Trenchard, were to come home, take a fancy to me, and leave me a fortune ? Such things have hap- pened. I remember how my poor mother used to talk of her brother Stephen, the Indian merchant, and of the ship that was coming home to bring her ease and comfort, and which never came. Will the ship come home for me, I wonder, now that my poor mother has been lying ten years in her quiet grave ? December 13. — The most wonderful thing has happened — the most unlooked for, the most extraordinary. My heart beats so fast at the mere thought of it, that I am almost breathless as I write these lines* My hand trembles, and the letters look blurred and dim before my eyes. I have seen the son of Philip Secretan, my uncle Stephen's deadly enemy — the man whom he supplanted in the affections of a weak old father — for surely any father must be weak who would disinherit his son in favour of a dependant, the man from whom he received the injury that lamed him ^or life. How , 82 Dead Men's Shoes. often have I heard my mother tell the story, al ways putting he? brother's conduct in the most favourable light ! He was honest, indefatigable, steady — a favourite clerk in the firm of Secretan Brothers, Manchester merchants. He fully deserved the un- expected fortune that came to him, while Philip's dissipation and extravagance were justly rewarded by disinheritance. Yet some- how in spite of poor mamma's special pleading, my sympathy was always with this unfortunate Mr. Secretan, who saw his father's wealth pass into the possession of his father's confidential clerk. I once asked mamma what kind of a man this Philip Secretin was. She told me that she had only seen him once in her life, but that he impressed her as being remarkably handsome and a perfect gentleman. And now I have seen his son, Captain Secretan. He was at Mrs. Hazleton's party last night. I had no idea who he was till afterwards. He was standing before the fireplace in the back drawing-room when I went back to my corner after singing " Porghi Amor," standing with his back to the fire talking to old Colonel Syceman. He is tall and strong-looking, and has, to my mind, a most beautiful countenance. I never called a man beautiful before, and I dare say I shall laugh at the expression when I read over this stupid diary some day ; but I cannot call his face less than beautiful. It is such a noble face, with just the grand look I could fancy in Achilles. I was reading Pope's " Iliad " to the children this afternoon, and I thought of Captain Secretan every time Achilles spoke. It seemed to me almost as if I could see him standing up before me, confronting Agamem- non. He is dark, with boldly cut features, a good-humoured expression about the mouth, and a somewhat dreamy look in the dark gray eyes. I have seen handsomer faces, but none that ever interested me as deeply. He is a man I should believe in w?th all my soul if he were my friend ; a man I should lean upon as on a rock of defence if he were of my kindred. But he is nothing to me, and I am hardly likely to see him again. Mrs. Hazleton spoke of him at luncheon to-day as a foolish young fellow who has sold his commission, and whose future career must be disastrous unless some distant relations were to die and leave him their property. As a rule, distant relations are not so obliging. She spoke with her reverential tone of his family, which is one of the oldest in Hampshire, although his grandfather was a Manchester merchant ; and she informed me that his first cousin, once removed, is a baronet, Sir Douglas Secretan, with a large estate in somewhere or other. I wonder whether I shall ever see him again. December 30. — I have seen him again, three, four, five, six, Sibyl Faunthorpe's Diary. 83 seven times. Three times in Mrs. Hazleton's drawing-room, three times in the park, when I was out walking with the children ; and once in Desmond Street when I had gone out alone to post a letter. I dare say it was very wrong, and that I shall be ashamed of myself when I read over this dreadful diary, but when Captain Secretan asked me whether I ever walked in the park with tha children, I said yes ; and when he askad me what time, I said between three and five ; and after that, when he asked me if I ever went out alone, I told him yes, sometimes, just before half- past five, to post my home letter. How kind he is ! how clever ! how interesting ! and how well we seem to know each other, though we have only met seven times ! There is evidently no association for him in the name of Faunthorpe. This is only natural, as my mother did not marry till some years after her brother's quarrel with Philip Secretan. How much I regret, now, that I did not learn the exact par- ticulars of that quarrel ! I have only a vague idea of the cir- cumstances ; but from what my mother told me, I know that, although Philip Secretan was the sufferer, my uncle Stephen was as vindictive as if he also had been injured. Perhaps the injurer is sometimes more angry than the injured My mother always declared that her brother was innocent of guile or wrong-doing from first to last, but now that I know Mr. Secretan's son I feel still more inclined to side with my uncle's enemy. He, Captain Secretan, has told me the history of his life, his careless happy youth spent abroad, with a father and mothei whom he idolized. He was educated at Heidelberg, came from Heidelberg to Woolwich, to an army tutor, joined his regiment at twenty, and sold out after five years' service, a few months ago. He has now all the world before him, he says, and has only to choose a career. He is energetic and clever, and can hardly miss success in anything he may attempt. How changed our walks seem, now that there is always the chance of meeting him ! As I see him coming to meet us along the wintry avenue, the familiar scene seems to grow beautiful, the sun shines brighter, the birds break out into singing. They may have been singing before, perhaps, and I too absorbed to hear them ; but it seems as if they began a glad chorus at his coming. I did not think that winter afternoons could be so beautiful ; the calm still air, the blue-gray sky, the black tracery of the tall elm trees against the yellow sunset. He told me yesterday that his father would have been a rich man, but for the treachery of a friend whom he had loved and trusted. A cold, sick feeling came over me, just as if the treachery had been mine, and I had nuddenly come face to face with my ▼iotim. c 34 Dead Men's Shoes. " The only lesson my father ever taught roe was to revile that man's name, and to carry my hatred of him to the grave. An evil lesson for a kind-hearted man to teach, you'll say ; but for all that, I don't believe there ever beat a kinder heart than my father's." I can easily believe this. Kindness and sweet temper are Captain Secretan's chief characteristics ; a bright good humour which cheers one like sunsliine. A way of looking at life on the pleasantest side which would inspire hopefulness in the most dismal mind. I know how low-spirited, discontented, and wretched I wan growing just before I knew him, and how changed and brightened life seems to me now. The children doat upon him, and are as pleased as I am tc meet him in our walks. He talks to them about all their small pleasures, and is able to interest himself in their ideas much better than I, who spend my life with them. Sometimes he paces up and down the broad walk with the three girls hanging about him, telling them one of the fairy tales we all know so well, and he has a way of giving a new charm and interest to the old 6tories, while his little touches of modern slang come in here and there with the funniest eflect, and set us off laughing *ill the tree-tops seem to shake with our laughter. " How odd that we should meet you again to-day, Captain Secretan ! " cried Magdalen the day before yesterday, when we found him at the entrance of the broad walk. " Not at all odd, if you insist on coming this way, little one," he said. " This is my afternoon constitutional. But if you very much object I'll take the other side of the park." " Oh, no, no, please come always," shouted the three ; and then they asked for Cinderella, Captain Secretan's modernized Cinderella, whose ball dress was made in New Bond Street, and whose cruel step-mother had a box on the second tier at Covent Garden. It was yesterday afternoon that I met him in Desmond Street, a dreaiy drizzling afternoon, which made me think the sooner the year came to an end the better. I had been feeling rather depressed and disheartened all the morning. The children had • all gone to a morning performance of the pantomime at Drury Lane, and I had the day to myself, as Mrs. Hazleton graciously informed me. I don't think leisure is an unalloyed good for those who have few pleasant thoughts to brighten their solitude. I sat mending my clothes, and thinking about Captain Secretan. My thoughts were not happy ones. I was shocked to find what a hold this stranger had taken upon my mind, and how difficult it was for me to think of any one else, or to imagine my life without him. Yet I knew that he was nothing, and never could be anything, to me. Poor, but proud, and of good birth, moving Sibyl FauntTiorjpe's Diary. 35 in what Mrs. Hazleton calls the best society, he will naturally select a woman of fortune for his wife. He is handsome, agree- able, has many gifts which distinguish him from the common run of young men, and will have no difficulty in making an advantageous marriage. Of an obscure little pauper like me he would never think seriously for a moment, unless his thoughts were dishonourable ; and I know him and trust him well enough already to wager my life against that. What has he to do with me, then, or I with him ? Absolutely nothing. We are only fooling each other by this friendship, which is so sweet to me, and which must needs have some charm for him, since he takes the trouble to cultivate it. Better for both of us that we should see each other no more, or only upon the public stage of Mrs. Hazleton's drawing-room. I will tell him so seriously and honestly the next time we are alone together for a minute or two, while the three girls march on before us. This doesn't often happen, for I think Lucinda is more deeply in love with the captain than ! What was I going to write ? Than a girl of twelve ought to be. This is the lecture which I read myself yesterday while I worked at that tiresome mending. All my Christmas quarter's salary will go for a black silk dress, as I must have one good and fashionably made gown to wear downstairs. I wanted so much to have sent uncle Kobert a little present, and I should have liked to buy Marion a winter hat ; but that is out of the question. Shall I have my dress made with flounces, or a trained skirt? It was dark when I went out to post my letter ; dark, and wet, and uncomfortable, and there was nothing farther from my thoughts than the idea of meeting Captain Secretan between Lowther Street and the post office, though I am bound to confess that the captain himself was not very far from my thoughts. I had posted my letter, and was coming away from the office, when a tall man, looking very big in a great rough overcoat, crossed the road and came towards me. I knew him in a moment, but a strange shy feeling came over me, and I walked on ever so fast, pretending not to know him. The street is quiet and lonely, and I heard his footsteps hurrying after me. " Do you always walk like a sporting pedestrian when you are itlone, Miss Faunthorpe ? " he asked, coming by my side. I started a little at the sound of his voice, although I knew so well that he was there. Yesterday was one of my nervous days, I suppose. I said something about its being such a disagreeable evening. " Yes," he answered, with his good-tempered laugh, " the old year is making himself as obnoxious as he can, in order that we may not regret him. It is rather unpleasant weather. You dis- like this drizzling rain I dare say. I rather like it, for it remind* S6 Dead Men's ™,oes. me of grouse-shooting in the Highlands. I was even going to ask you to take a little walk round Eccleston Square before you go back to your schoolroom." " I couldn't think of such a thing," I answered, sharply, feeling that the proposal was an impertinence. " Couldn't you ? Then it wasn't right in me to propose it, I suppose," he replied, placidly. " And yet I should be so glad of half an hour's v.\uiet talk with you. It's very nice telling tho children fairy stories, but rather a hindrance to conversation. Well, we'll postpone the walk round the square till we've plea- ea nter weather and you know me better. Do you know I have been thinking of you so much in the last few days." Had he ? There must be something sympathetic in our thoughts then, for he has never been out of mine. We had turned into Lowther Street by this time, and I was weak enough to be glad that it is such a long street. I would not have gone three yards out of my way with him if the happi- ness of my life had depended on it, but there was no harm in letting him walk as far as Mrs. Hazleton's door with me. " Yes, 1 have bevM thinking about you a good deal, Miss Faun- thorpe," he said, after a pause. " I have been thinking what might have happened if I had been a rich man and free to follow my own inclination." This was telling me plainly that he was neither rich nor free. " Can you guess what I fancied would have happened in that case ? " " No, indeed." " I thought it just possible that I might have been tempted to ask you to be my wife." He waited for my reply, but I was dumb. I felt choking, and could not find a word to answer him. " What would you have said in that case ? " Some diabolical counsellor suggested a flippant answer instead of a serious one. "Isn't your question rather like Lord Dundreary's?" 1 askett. " If you had had a brother, do you think he would have liked cheese ? " " 1 see," he sa^i, with a disappointed tone, " I am not to expect a serious answer to a hypothetical question. I dare 6ay you are right, Miss Faunthorpe. In all life's delicate questions women are always wiser than men." I thought that he had taken the easiest way of telling me that his circumstances forbade him to think of marrying me. " In that case," I said to myself , " he has no right to waylay me as I come from the post ; " and I tried to feel very angry with him. Sibyl FauntTiorpe s Diary. 37 n So you didn't go home to spend your Christmas holidays ? " he said presently. " Home 1 Do you suppose I could afford to travel to York- shire and back for a week's pleasure ? Besides, I have no real home. My sisters and I are dependent on my uncle's bounty, and he is only a parish doctor, who finds it a hard thing to pay his butcher and baker." I was determined to let him know how poor I am, and how wise he has been in coming to the conclusion that I am no wife for him. " Poor little thing," he said compassionately, and his pity did me good somehow. It did not gall, as most people's pity does. " J*oor little girl," he said again, after a few moments' silence. " An orphan, and sent out into the world to bear the burden of servitude and all ill-usage ' that patient merit from the unworthy takes.' One would suppose that you could hardly be worse off than you are at present." This was not very cheering, but I said nothing. We were near Mrs. Hazleton's door by this time and yet we had been walking slowly. " Any change would be for the better, one would think," he Baid, musingly. " A change that would give this poor little waif a sworn protector and defender, — a husband pledged to toil for her and cherish her. But a poor husband — a man at war with fortune — bah ! I'll tell you what it is, Miss Faunthorpe," he burst out suddenly, "with your lovely face you ought to make a brilliant marriage." " So I was told when I was sixteen," said I, " but I'm almost twenty, and the fairy prince in the shape of a rich husband hasn't appeared yet." "You wouldn't despise an eligible opportunity of exchanging Mrs. Hazleton's schoolroom for a house in Kensington Palace Gardens, I suppose ? You have a feminine inclination for fine *lothes, servants with powdered heads, carriages and horses, and a box at the opera ? " " I am human, and I don't pretend to be superior to the weak- nesses of humanity," I answered, feeling that I was making myself intensely disagreeable. He provoked me, somehow, by his nonchalant manner of discussing my position and prospects. Luckily, we were quite at the door now, and I was able to beat a retreat before anything still more unpleasant had been said upon either side. " Good afternoon, Captain Secretan," I said. "It must be good-bye," he answered, "I am going int»- Norfolk to-morrow for a month's shooting/' I felt as if he had said that he was going to Australia, but I only answered " Oh, in that case, good-bye ; " and bo we shook 88 bead Meris Shoes. hands again, and then he lifted his bat and went away, while 1 gave the bell a good sharp pull that insured its being answered promptly. I don't quite know whether I like him or hate him ; but whichever feeling it is, it must be rather strong of its kind, as I cannot get him out of my thoughts. I am inclined to think that it is hatred. What could be more disagreeable or humiliating than his way of speaking about me before my face, as if I had been miles away ? " Poor thing, poor little waif 1 " I grow hot and red when I thank of it. Jan. 14. — The year is just a fortnight old. There has been enow, but bright, clear weather, a blue sky, and sunshine. We walk in Kensington Gardens everyday, and meet him every day. He makes the three girls run races with their hoops, he being iampire, and during the race he and I are able to talk without »estraint. He only stopped four days in Norfolk. He told me that the shooting was very good, but that he was bored to death after the second day, and yet it was in a pleasant country house t i< *■ on either side — in 1 1 it* event of my The Elite of Redcastle. 41 proving inefficient, she said. Not in the event of my not liking the situation. Oh dear no, of course not. I am so agitated that I can hardly write. This day month I am to have my boxes packed, and go quietly away in a cab at ten o'clock in the morning, drive to the station and deposit my luggage, and then meet Alexis, with whom I shall drive back to the quietest little church in Ecclestonia, where we are to be married. No witnesses but the pew-opener and the clerk ; no announcement in the Times. The secret of our marriage kept from everybody who knows us, at the outset, at any rate, so that if Stephen Trenchard dies in India — a likely thing after all — I may still inherit my share of his fortune. Dear old uncle Robert is such an easy-going man, that as long as I tell him I am com- fortably situated with my employer he will never put himself out of the way to know more. He has not an acquaintance in London whom he could ask to call upon me at Mrs. Hazleton's. There is no such isolation as poverty. I have arranged with Jane Diraond, the under housemaid, about my letters. She will receive any that come to Lowther Street for me, and post any that I send her to be posted. I have given her quite a heap of things, the weeding out of my wardroie, and made her my friend for life. March 11. To-morrow is to be my wedding day. Oh, fearful day ! on which hangs all my life to come. Will the future be blessed or accursed for to-morrow's vows ? I wish Marion and uncle Robert could have been with me. It would all have seemed more real. I remember my foolish fancies — my castles in the air. The grand wedding at which I used to see myself figuring as chief performer ; my white satin dress and Brussels flounces ; the carriages ; the favours ; the crowd ; Mendelssohn's Wedding March ; the joyous peal of bells. Those bells are sounding in my ears to-night. To-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow ! Before noon to-morrow I jhall have ceased to be Sibyl Faunthorpe. My name will be Sibyl Secretan — name of all others most abhorrent to my uncle, Stephen Trenchard. CHAPTER VI. THE ELITE OF KEDCASTLB. Redoabtle is a country town. It is not a manufacturing town, oi a seaport, or a garrison town, or a settlement in any manner des.'gned to be of wide and general use to society. It exists for iteelt' alone, and is exclusive to a fault. It is on the high road to uowliere. Erase it from the map of England to-morrow, and 42 Dead Mens SJioes. nobody but its own inhabitants would be the worse off for its evanishment. It produces nothing but elderly people with limited incomes, and scandal. For the cultivation of this last article Redcastle is like a mushroom bed in a cellar, a dark corner of the land in which fungi abound and flourish. It is not a bad town in which to enjoy a brief span of repose from the turmoil and bustle of the industrial and commercial world ; — the world of labour and pleasure, profit, loss, and pain Not a bad old town in which to dream away a joyless, painless old age. But to live in Redcastle, to bound one's hopes within its brick and mortar confines, to regulate one's life by its petty proprieties and narrow creed I Heaven pity that wretch to whom destiny flings the lot of life-long bondage in Redcastle. It is a clean old town. Scarcely in laborious Holland, where the servant maids scrub the chimney-pots and pipe-clay the gutters, would you find a cleaner. A rainy day, which makes mud and slush in busier places, only washes down and renovates Red- castle. The one wide street, with its massive old brick houses, square, and strong, and substantial — the historic gateway, which divides the one street into two, Below Bar and Above Bar — and the fine old O ach and Horses Inn, where seldom coaches or horses are seen to s~op, the inn which, save for the mildest indulgence in billiards, and brandy and soda among the j-outh of the town, seems to exist rather as a part and parcel of Redcastle, an insti- tution essential to the honour and glory of the town, than for any commercial purpose, since it appears morally impossible that the establishment can be self-supporting, — all these are the pink of cleanliness. The pretty little minster, more architecturally perfect than many a grander fane, looks as if it were kept under a glass shade. The market-place presents on off days a broad expanse of spotless pavement blinking and smiling up at the sun. The turn- pike road on which Redcastle lies is one of the best in Yorkshire ; the narrow lanes and by-streets leading up to that broad stretch of common land known as Redcastle Woods, apparently for the sole reason that it is barren of anything taller than a hazel-bush, are innocent of mud or smoke. The scanty suburbs of the town present a sprinkling of smallish houses, for the most part unin- teresting of aspect, but all scrupulously clean. Those modern edifices, the Wesleyan Chapel, the Independent Chapel, and that masonic temple the Athena Lodge, are of whitest freestone, with Binning windows, and hearthstoned steps embellishing their classic porticoes. Redcastle, producing nothing, and offering no attraction to visitors, is naturally not a wealthy settlement. The rich inhabi- tants of Redcastle can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. Yet there is perhaps no town in England in winch respect for wealth is more deeply implanted in the human mind. It is a The Elite of Redcastle. ft fiaying of the profane that twopence halfpenny will not consort with twopence in Redcastle, but this is not a true saying, for more than it worships wealth does Redcastle worship appearances, and if A, with twopence, can pnt on the semblance of threepence, ha shall be assuredly held highter than 0, who lacks the art to obtain as much out of twopence halfpenny. The elite of Redcastle — that is to say, persons of fixed incom*. or established professional earning, ranging from eight to eighteen hundred per annum, live within a narrow circle. The houses im- mediately below Bar, and the houses immediately above Bar, shelter the aristocracy of the town. Below Bar, grave old red- brick houses of the early Georgian period, roomy, and comfortable within, respectable of aspect without ; above Bar, houses of a more modern date, stone facades, French windows, porches, verandahs, larger gardens, and ostentatious stabling, rarely used, gave for the accommodation of a pony chaise, like one of Falstaff 'a buck baskets. Within this charmed circle, in the largest of the stone-fronted houses above Bar, resides Colonel Stormont, who enjoys the privi- leges of retirement and half -pay, cheered by the society of his wife and family, the family consisting of a grown-up son and two grown-up daughters who, of various views upon other ques- tions, are at one in the opinion that Redcastle was called into being for their especial behoof, and who regulate their conduct by that idea. Colonel and Mrs. Stormont take the lead in Redcastle society. Their names are at the head of the croquet and archery club, which black-balls every one who is suspected of having once had a cousin connected with trade. They are chief patrons of the assize and masonic balls. They sanctify the more chaste and classic of the Redcastle concerts with their august presence, or, at least, Mrs. Stormont allows her name to grace the list of patronesses, and add a lustre to the programme of the evening's harmony. If St. Cecilia had come to life again she could hardly have been in more request among the conceit-givers than Mrs. Stormont, who scarcely knows Mozart from Offenbach, or Beethoven from Brinley Richards. To offend Colonel and Mrs. Stormont would be to be at war with Redcastle ; and it is doubtful if any one so unfortunately placed could continue to reside in the town. He would be obliged to depart, exiled by that awful ban ; like Ovid from Rome, or Pante from Florence. In the large stucco-fronted house with the Norman turret resides Mr. Marlin Spyke, the great shipbuilder of Krampstou-on- Tybur. Mr. and Mrs. Spyke live with some splendour, but a self- contained kind of life, not conducive to wide popularity. They receive very little company, their names grace the subscription 44 Dead Men's Shoes, list of no local charity, they patronize no local entertainment, they attend no masonic or benevolent hall. They are negatively great, and will be remembered when they are dead for the many noble deeds they have not done. After the Stormonts and the Marlin Spykes come the profes- sional classes below Bar ; Mr. Jewson, the chief local solicitor and vestry clerk ; Dr. Mitsand, an elderly man of some distinc- tion, being one of the army surgeons who endured and ameliorated the miseries of the Crimean war ; Mr. Groshen, the banker ; Mr. Farrer, the curate ; and a few others, whom it is need l< iS8 to par- ticularize. On the outskirts of the town reside three or four gentlemen who derive their income from houses or lands, are more rustic in their bearing and attire than the inhabitants of the citadel, and in a general way give themselves airs, as affecting to belong to the county families. Afar off in their various fast- nesses, isolated, inaccessible, unapproachable, live the county f amilies. A few of them are on visiting terms with the Stormonts, Dr. Mitsand, and the clergy of Kedcastle ; but they regard the town otherwise fas a depot for groceries and draperies, and a centre of Radicalism for the lower classes. Their big family landaus with tall, slab-sided horses and brass harness, pervade the street on fine afternoons ; their sons trot briskly through the quiet town on hunting mornings in well-worn pink. They turn out occasionally for a concert, and take care to testify by loud talk and laughter among themselves, and a supercilious con- templation of the rest of the audience through eye-glasses, that they hold themselves as creatures apart from the towns- people. Within ten miles of Eedcastle is that thriving seaport, Krampston-on-Tybur, famous for shipbuilding, ropemaking, linseed crushing, sugar baking, and general exportation and importation. Krampston has noisy, bustling streets, miles of quays, labyrinths of docks, drawbridges that arrest the pedestrian at every turn, so intersected is the land by narrow inlets of water. Krampston has very little " society," in the Redcastle sense of that word, but it has commercial activity, the vigorously throb- bing pulse of active and useful life, name, and place and power in the world. The word " Krampston " branded on bale or packing-case is familiar in Buenos Ayres or Sierra Leone, in Pernambuco or Timbuctoo, while the name of Redcastle is hardly known out of the post office or British Gazetteer. Among the elite of Redcastle — the archons — the equestrian order — Robert Faunthorpe, surgeon and parish doctor, has no place. The elite give him good-day when they meet him trudg- ing toilfully above or below Bar, or trotting meekly along one of the lanes on his unkempt pony. Good, easy-going little man, ever ready to help the helpless to whom he ministers, ofttfl Drifting into Haven. 45 squeezing a shilling or a sixpence out of his ill-furnished purso where he feels that drugs alone are of no avail. Kindly gentle- man though he is, the ilite of Redcastle cannot recognise him as a member of their order. He lives in a shabby red house at the fag-end of the town, grooms his pony, digs in the garden, keeps one old woman-servant of eccentric aspect ; he takes snuff in- ordinately — perhaps it is his only consolation — and the normal shabbiness of his clothes is enhanced by the process. His existence is altogether unorthodox. He is beyond the pale. True that he has reared three orphan nieces, the children of a brother who died penniless ten years ago ; and it is hardly to be supposed that this act of benevolence has not cost him as much as the maintainance of a groom and gardener. But Redcastle cannot recognise these small charities. They judge a man as they judge his house, by the front which he presents to the world. They would recognise the groom and gardener as elements of social status. They smile gently at the idea of the three orphan nieces as a harmless eccentricity of that eccentric little man, Dr. Faunthorpe. Happily Robert Faunthorpe, M.R.C.S., and Dr. by courtesy, is of all men the last to regret that social heaven to which he has never ascended. He sees Colonel and Mrs. Stormont, Dr. Mitsand, and Mr. and Mrs. Groshen revolving in their orbits as he sees the planets, and envies them no more. The idea that they do him any unkind ness by not inviting him to their dinner parties, by not extending the hand of friendship to his fatherless nieces, never enters his mind. He is so simple-minded a little man that he is content to go his way and let other people go theirs. An eccentric, evidently, as Redcastle opines. CHAPTER VII. DRIFTING INTO HAVEN. It is a soft, calm evening, early in April, and Dr. Faunthorpe's shabby old house is as much brightened by the westering sun- light as it can be brightened by anything less than the three coats of paint for which its worm-eaten woodwork has been languishing for the last twenty years. There has not been a five- pound note expended upon the repair or the beautitication of Robert Faunthorpe's house within the memory of the oldest inhabitant of Redcastle. It is scrupulously clean, and that is the best that can be said of it. There is a small garden in front, where flouribh those homely perennials which demand little cars *A Dead Men's Shoes. and no artificial nutriment, — lupins, Canterbury belle, flags, London pride, polyanthuses, primroses, and wall-flowers. Behind the house there is a long strip of ground where the surgeon cultivates cabbages and potatoes, leeks and potherbs, leaving only two narrow borders for floriculture. Happily there are ancient rose bushes in these neglected borders, — rose bushes from which Beauty's father might have gathered those large red cup-shaped cabbage roses that grow in a child's picture book. The borders are edged with box, tall and thick, — box that has been growing for a century. The low red walls, crumbling into hollows where the birds have pecked at the brickwork, crowned with dragon's- mouth, stonecrop, and houseleek, would be delicious in a picture, and are not unlovely in reality. At the bottom of this long narrow garden there is a patch of ground set ap rt for thebenefit of Scrub, the pony, upon which grow purple-flowered tares, three 'crops in a twelvemonth sometimes. Within, the house has a certain air of homely comfort. The 6habby old furniture has that well-worn look which in some wise endears goods and chattels to their owners. Beeswax and labour have done their best to brighten and beautify the ancient mahogany bureaus, the clumsy walnutwood bedsteads and tables, — made at a time when walnutwood was aln»ostas cheap as deal. Cracked old jars and bottles of common blue delf adorn the tall narrow wooden mantelpieces ; curtains of watered moreen, once crimson, but faded to a tawny brown, drape the deeply recessed windows of parlour and surgery. The rooms are spacious, but low ; the ceilings sustained by massive beams painted black. The walls are for the most part paneled, and the paneling has been painted a dingy pink or a dirty drab. To keep this paneling spotless is the old servant's anxious care, and much house- flannel and soft soap are expended thereupon to Dr. Faunthorpe's aggravation, — that good easy man having no passion for cleanli- ness in the abstract. A wide stone passage leads from the front door to the half- glass door opening into the back garden, thus letting light and air through the old house. A clumsy mahogany-framed barometer, a row of hat-pegs, and a faded map of England are the only furniture of this passage, or hall, as a modern house-agent would call it. A roomy, solid old staircase, with shallow treads, and ponderous balusters, leads to the upper chambers, which are numerous and of fair size. To the right of the front door is the parlour, on the left the surgery. Behind the surgery is the best parlour; behind the every -day parlour is the large stone-paved kitchen. For this house, with its acre of garden, Dr. Faunthorpe pays twenty pounds a year ; so there is some saving of house-rent in residence at Redcastle, if your soul aspires not after any higher Drifting into Haven. 47 etate than comfortable vegetation, and you are content to inhabit the inferior end of the town. Dr. Faunthorpe paces his front garden on this calm April evening, smoking his pipe. He is a smoker as well as a snuffer, and finds solace in tobacco after his daily round. This is his hour of rest and leisure. True that it may be broken in upon at any moment by some sudden call for his services, but his regular daily labour, his measured grind at life's mill, is over. He prefers the small front garden for his evening pipe to the larger ground at the back, — first, because he is to the fore if wanted ; and secondly, because, his house being on the high road, it is just possible that something may go by, vehicle or passenger, to the enlivenment of his leisure. He is meditative and silent, but not alone. His niece Marion, a tall girl with wavy light hair, and a pre-Eaphaelite figure, stands in a listless attitude by the gate. His niece Jenny, an overgrown girl of twelve, with a very short frock and stalwart legs, encased in brown worsted stockings, is watering the flowers, and making as much mess as it is possible to make in the opera- tion. " Just look what puddles you are making in the path, stupid," exclaims the elder sister, peevishly regarding the efforts of her junior. " I do wish you'd leave things alone. You're always up to some mischief or other." " I suppose I shouldn't be mischievous if I let the primroses die for want of water," remonstrates the junior, in no wise abashed. "That's what you'd do, with your laziness and fine- lady ways. You were bad enough before you went to stay with uncle Stephen, but you're ever so much worse now. I'm sure I wish he'd kept you there instead of sending you back, like a bad penny. Uncle Eobert and I were as jolly as sandboys while you were away." The young person sets down her water-pot and delivers this diatribe with arms akimbo, like Madame Angot's daughter. Marion shudders. " Sandboys 1 What an expression for a young lady ! " she ejaculates. " Pray where's the harm in sandboys ? " demands the incorri- gible Jenny. " They're more respectable than you, as far as I can see, for they get their own living." "My dear," remonstrates uncle Eobert mildly, "that is not the 1?ay to address your elder sister." " Why does she come and loaf about here, then, with her etuckupishness ? Why doesn't she go and be a governess likft Sibyl ? If she heard what Hester says of her she'd be ashamed, of herself." " My love, you have no right to quote Hester." 43 Dead Men's Shoes. " Hester is an impertinent, mischief -making creature," exclaims Marion. " And as to your sister going out as a governess, my dear," continues uncle Robert mildly, " with her expectations it would be about the most foolish thing she could do." " Expectations, — dead men's shoes 1 " exclaims the terrible child, twirling the watering-can so tbat its last drops sprinkle Marion's pretty blue dress. " I should hate myself if / was mean enough to calculate upon what any one would leave me." " Quite Hght of you," says Marion, with a supercilious laugh — that sneering school-girl laugh, which we all remember to have been crushed by occasionally in our youth, — " for certainly no one is likely to leave you money." " I dare say not, with you in the way," answers the irrepressible Jenny. " They'd feel they were doing an act of charity bestow- ing their fortune on you, for it would be the same as leaving it to the Asylum for Idiots. One simpleton provided for, at any rate." With this the imp swings round upon her heels as on a pivot, brandishes the watering-pot as an Indian savage his club, and gallops into the house. Jane Faunthorpe never walks. She has the action of an unbroken colt, and seems, when in motion, to have as many legs as that animal. When she comes downstairs there is a sound as of a sack of coals flung from the upper story. How the old house sustains itself under her youthful vigour is a mystery to the parish doctor. " I'd run after her and give her a good box on the ears," says Marion, viciously, " if I didn't want to see the omnibus go by." The omnibus is a stunted covered vehicle, like a carrier's cart, garnished with glazed windows, which plies between the station and the outskirts of Redcastle, and it is nearly time for this con- veyance to pass with its evening freight. There are sometimes as many as five people arrive by the six o'clock train from Krampston, — nay, the Krampston train sometimes brings that rare bird, a passenger from London. " It's a pity you ever sent that child to a day school, uncle Robert," Marion remarks presently, wiping the waterspots daintily from her dress. " She was bad enough before, but now she is 6imply intolerable." " My love, I couldn't afford a boarding school, and I was obliged to send her somewhere," replies the surgeon, in his long- suffering way. " At home she was learning only to dig potatoes and to whistle, neither of which pursuits is an attractive accom- plishment in a young lady. The child is not bad at bottom." *• Perhaps not," answers Marion, snappishly, " but the bottom must be a long way down. I've never come to it yet." " She is vei7» warm-hearted." Drifting into Raven. 49 " Yes, if warmth of heart consists in rushing at one like an avalanche, hugging one round the neck like a bear, and rumpling one's collar atrociously, without the faintest provocation." " She is not of an idle disposition," remonstrates the uncle " I found her cleaning the back kitchen windows at half -past sis this morning. No one had asked her to do it." " Of course not. That's just the reason she did it." "If you would take a little more pains with her, Marion," suggests Dr. Faunthorpe, timidly " Pains ! I might take agonies, and without the least effect. Didn't I begin to teach her music " " Yes, my dear, but you didn't go on." " Well, you junt try to teach her anything, uncle Robert — just try — that's all," says Marion, with awful significance, and then breaks out with a sigh, " Oh dear, is this precious old omnibus never coming? " " It is rather late, my dear. But as it isn't going to bring us any one we care about, we needn't worry ourselves about it." " It would be something to look at just for a minute. If you only knew what a difference there is between the look-out down here and above Bar. There there's almost always something going by — Mrs. Stormont's basket carriage, or Master Groshen's pony, or the butcher's cart." " Ah, my dear, I'm afraid that long visit to your uncle Tren- chard has spoiled you for my quiet home." " No, it hasn't, uncle," answers the girl, with a little gush of feeling in the midst of her petulance, just strong enough to show the better side of her nature — " no, it hasn't, for this is home and ihat isn't. I should always feel that if I spent the rest of my life with uncle Stephen. Of all the old fidgets ! Well, I suppose I oughtn't to say anything against him, for he has been very kind to me in his way. He has given me a good deal of money from first to last, though I must say he doled it out stingily, as if he liked the money better than me ; and it is nice staying at his house — one feels one's self somebody. Only think of the Stormonts, and the Groshens and the Marlin Spykes calling on him before he had been three weeks in Redcastle, while you've lived here thirty years and they've never called upon you." " People at this end of the town are not visited, my dear," replies the doctor, mildly, as one who bows to the mysterious ways of Providence and questions not. " I dare say the elite of Redcastle called upon your uncle out of kindness, he being a Btranger." " He being a millionaire, uncle, that's what you mean. Very much they'd have called upon him if he'd been a stranger who wanted to get his living. Think of the Stormonts giving a dinner party on purpose for him, and inviting me — alter ignoring D 50 Dead Men's Shoes. tae for the last four years^-staring me in the face, after church, for two hundred Sundays, and taking no more interest in me than if I were a stone cherub on a tablet in the minster, and now, all of a sudden, being so fond of me. It's too ridiculous. It I was as worldly as they are, I'd take a little more pains not lo show it." " The world is worldly, my love," replies uncle Robert, with his resigned air. " You can hardly expect it to be otherwise. For my part, I am very glad to think that the Stormonts have taken notice of you, and that you've been invited out with Mr. Tren chard. It may lead to your making a good marriage, though you needn't set your mind upon that now, as it is tolerably certain your uncle will leave you an independence. I only wish Sibyl were at home to have her share of good fortune." " It's her own fault if she isn't," says Marion. M Say rather her conscientiousness, my dear. She doesn't like to leave Mrs. Hazleton in a difficulty about her children ; and very right too. But I hope Mrs. Hazleton will suit herself with a new governess very soon, and let Sibyl come home. Mr. Trenchard has asked for her so often, and it really seems flying in the face of Providence for her to be out of the way." " If 6he wasn't a stupid, she wouldn't be at Mrs. Hazleton's beck and call," says Maiion, and then exclaims, shrilly, " Here's the omnibus, and lots of people inside. Why, there's some one nodding to us — a lady in a gray hat — and — I declare, the 'bus is stopping. Why, it's Sibyl." The blundering vehicle stops before Dr. Faunthorpe's gate ; a shabby carpet bag — only a carpet bag — is handed down from the roof, and in the next instant Sibyl is in the homely little garden, sobbing hysterically on her uncle's shoulder. He presses her to his breast tenderly, and looks in the pale, wan faoe. "Why, my darling, how ill you look — how changed — how thin!" " I've had so much hard work, uncle," she answers faintly, " but, thank God, I am at home at last." CHAPTER VIII. THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. M Home at last," cries the wanderer, with glad thankfulness. This is a night of rejoicing in Dr. Faunthorpe's modest dwelling. Th* prodigal daughter has returned, and the fatted calf, or at The Return of the Prodigal. 61 least bo much of him as a cutlet, fried as only Hester can fry a veal cutlet, is served up in her honour. How cheery and homely the common parlour, with its shabby old furniture, dimly illumi- nated by two composite candles which leave the panelled corners in densest shadow, seems to those tired eyes ! " It is so nice to be at home again, uncle," says Sibyl lovingly, IB she draws her chair a little nearer the doctor's at supper-time. "What an old dear Hester isl and how deliciously she cooks 1" "If you're so fond of home, I wonder you stayed away so long'," remarks Marion, who cannot help being occasionally disagreeable in her petty way. There was nothing large-minded about Marion, Sibyl used to complain. She would never commit 11 big sin, but would forfeit heaven by a multitude of infinitesimal faults. " Marion's faults are like the animalcules in a glass of water," remarked Sibyl on another occasion, " too minute to be seen without a microscope, but making the water unwholesome all the same." "I had to stop away to suit other people's convenience," replies the prodigal, looking downward as she squeezes lemon juice upon her cutlet. " How altered you must be ! " says that odious Marion. " Other people's convenience used to be the last thing you thought about. When is your luggage coming ? " " My luggage ? I brought it with me." " I mean the rest of your luggage. The omnibus man brought in nothing but a carpet bag." " That is my luggage," answers Sibyl, colouring to the roots of her hair. It is the first tinge of red that has warmed her delicate cheek since her arrival. " I gave one of Mrs. Hazleton's servants that horrid old heavy trunk of mine." " But your dresses, your linen, you can't get them all into that carpet bag," cries Marion, almost in a shriek. To be without a variety of clothes is the last calamity she can conceive among the miseries of humanity. " I have not one dress besides this. You can't have any notion how one's dresses wear out in a schoolroom — mischievous romping girls pulling one about all day long, ink spilt in every direction, candle-grease on all the tables, cups of tea perpetually turned over. I was determined to buy nothing during the last quarter, bo I wore my old dresses till they were almost in rags, and gave them to my favourite housemaid when I came away." " I dare say it was an excellent plan," says M«ion, shrugging her thin shoulders, " but you won't be in a condition to make a very good appearance in Eedcastle till you've new things. People will expect you to bring down the London fashions too. They come out on the first of March, don't they ?" 52 Dead Men's Shoes. " What a pity Fate made you a gentleman's daughter, Marion," remarks Sibyl, with a cold sneer. " You would have made such a capital milliner. Your soul would have been in your work." Dr. Faunthorpe sits back in his chair, reposeful, after that little bit of hot supper, which is not an every day luxury. The small snappings and snarlings of his nieces hardly discompose him, he is so used to their sisterly talk. He is glad to have his handsome niece at home again, seated close to his chair, with all those familiar winning ways which have won her the first place in his heart ; small gushings of loving speech, tender little smiles* gentle touches of a white fluttering hand — graces of manner which may mean very little, but are very sweet ; petty Grcean arts which have beguiled honest men to ruin and death before to-day. " My darling," he says presently, as the dark brown eyes smile upon him, brightening in the candlelight, " I am so glad you've come back. It wasn't wise to stay away so long at the risk of vexing your uncle Trenchard : but I'll say no more about that. You are here, and all is well. You must go and see him to- morrow. "How can she," exclaims Marion, "in that gown?" pointing contemptuously to Sibyl's shabby alpaca, an alpaca which has Been much service, cockled by the rain, and frayed at the edges of the cuffs, and with that shrunken and dwindled appearance that ill used garments are apt to assume. "Pshaw, what does her gown matter? You can lend her a gown. You have gowns enough and to spare." "None that will tit Sibyl," replies Marion, who prides herself on her superior height. " She's welcome to wear one, but it : 11 he two inches on the ground." " Can't she run a tuck, or cut a bit off?" argues uncle Robert. " I sha 1 1 have to give you a tonic, my love," he adds, contemplating his elder niece anxiously, "you are looking so fagged and worn." " I am at home with you, uncle Robert ; that is the best tonic for me,'' replies the girl fondly. She is fond of him to-night. This shabby old home, which she abandoned in sheer discontent two years ago, seems very dear to her just now. It is a haven for a storm-beaten soul. " You will have a better home than this, my pet, I hope, for the greater part of your time," answers the doctor cheerily. 44 I've no doubt your uncle Trenchard will ask you to stay with Dim as he did Marion. She was quite three months at Lancaster Lodge, and is to go back again by and by. I look upon her a* little more than a visitor here ; but she is kind enough to make the best of her old uncle Robert's humdrum house." " It is a great relief to be here for a change, uncle," answers Xlariou. " 1 felt a fine lady ft uncle Trenchard's, but I feel my The Return of the Prodigal. 53 Own mistress here. If it wasn't for that tyrannical old Hester, your house would be liberty hall ; and I can forgive even Hester when she is in a good humour and makes hot cakes for breakfast." An hour later and uncle Robert has smoked his after-supper pipe, and the girls are in their bedroom, the old room which Sibyl knows so well, with its ridiculous flowered paper, low ceiling, and high painted dado, and curious brass safety bolts upon the door, as if burglars were a contingency to be provided against in that humble dwelling. How well she remembers the long narrow chimney-piece, the basket-shaped grate with its wide hobs, the open-work brass fender, the painted four-post bedstead, drab and green, with skimpy dimity valance, and two starveling curtains. The rickety deal dressing-table, the streaky looking ■ glass, which used to reflect a fair girl's face wondering at its own beauty. The tall mahogany wardrobe that never was opened without threatening to topple over and wreak destruction on its violator. The scanty strips of bedside carpet, dull in colour and perplexing in pattern. How often has she pored and puzzled over those interwoven scrolls, in sheer idleness of thought. All things are unchanged. There are the wretched old ornaments on the mantelpiece. The pasteboard spill-boxes, adorned with faded gold paper, ancient works of art by fingers that have long been dust. The little black Wedgwood vases, urn-shaped, funereal. The hand screens with lithographs of Dr. Syntax pasted there- upon, and more paper gilding. The two black profile miniatures of dead and forgotten relatives. It seems a dear old room somehow to Sibyl to-night, for it brings back the feelings of her innocent girlish days, when life, if it had few pleasures, had no cares. Now life means perplexity. Existence is an entanglement from which only some happy turn of fortune can extricate her. She sits in her old place on the window-seat, and loosens the long twisted roll of rich brown hair, which falls over her bare shoulders like shining drapery. " Goodness 1" cries Marion, "how skinny your shoulders have grown ! " "Have they?" says Sibyl, coolly, glancing downwards at a white neck and arms in which the bones are too sharply defined for beauty. " Then we shall look more like sisters when we wear low dresses. Your shoulders were always skinny." Marion is silenced for the moment, and proceeds with the destruction of that elaborate edifice of hair and hair-pads which she constructs with infinite pains every morning, even though no one outside her own small family circle is likely to be gratified by the sight thereof. Marion's hair has been washed and doctored to the fashionable pre-Raphaelite colour. It is thick and fluffy, and short, only just covering the points of her bony shoulder?. Dead Men's Shoes. and standing ont round her head like an exaggerated nimbns. It is not bad hair altogether, and Marion thinks it one of her strong points, like her pre-Eaphaelite figure, her long narrow foot, eighteen-inch waist, arched eyebrows, white teeth, and other small graces, some of which are the praiseworthy result of I |>atient training. " Do let me see your pretty things, Sibyl," the younger sister exclaims presently, twisting one of her yellow tresses in and out of a hair-pin. The elder looks up, startled out of a profound reverie. " What pretty things ? " " Well, you must have something to show me — presents — things you have bought out of your salary. I'm sure I should have a lot to show out of forty pounds a year for two years. Glove-boxes, sealskin purses, card-rases, nei.k-ties, lace, gloves, and so on. I dare say that carpet bag is bursting with them." " It is doing nothing of the kind. I found that it was as much as I could do to dress myself decently for Mrs. Hazleton's parties and pay my laundress. Evening dresses are so unprofitable." " They must be, if you have nothing to show out of eighty pounds. I never thought you could bring yourself to wear such a dress as that alpaca thing," adds Marion, pointing contemptu- ously to Sibyl's shabby gown hanging on a peg upon the door. " I expected to see you come home quite a woman of fashion." •* People who teach unruly children, and have to take them out walking in all weathers, have not much chance of being fashion- ably dressed," answers Sibyl, wearily. " Perhaps if you could contrive to put dress out of your mind for five minutes or so, Marion, we might have a little rational conversation." "Oh, very well ; of course I know what an inferior mind mine is. You used to tell me so often enough. But you were once rather fond of talking about dress, and I thought, perhaps, if you've nothing to show me you might like to see my dresses — not home-made. Miss Eyiett has made every one, and a pretty price she has charged me." Marion wrenches open the refractory doof of the wardrobe, and displays three calico-shrouded garments, hanging in a row, like eheeted ghosts. One by one she brings forth these treasures, whisking off their covering, and displaying each to Sibyl with a dexterous twirl of her arm. A bronze brown silk; a pale gray, "Ifith elaborate ruchings of satin ; a black silk, which stands ou end for very richness of fabric. " There," she exclaims, swelling with pride, " I wore the gray —new — at Colonel Stormont's." u At Colonel Stormont's 1 Is the world coming to an end, or what convulsion of nature brought you and the Stormonla together ? " The Return of the Prodigal. 55 u I was asked to dinner with uncle Trenchard." "And uncle Trenchard gave you the money to buy those dresses, of course." " Yes. He said, 'Well, my dear, I suppose you'll want a new gown ; ' and then he gave a heavy sigh, and took a bank note out of an old-fashioned red pocket-book, and then he looked at the note so long that I was afraid he was going to change hia mind, and then he gave another sigh, deeper than the first, and handed me the note — a ten-pound note. I tried to kiss him the first time, but he didn't seem to like that, for he gave me a little peevish push, and said, ' There, my dear, that '11 do.' " " Funny old man ! How many ten-pound notes has he given you?" " Four altogether. He always sighs just in the same way, as if every note was a wrench. He's inordinately rich, of course, but it seems to hurt him so to part with his money that I can't help thinking of that dreadful story of Douglas Jerrold's, ' The Man made of Money,' and fancying that uncle Trenchard is unrolling a bit of himself when he gives away a bank note." u It's only such people who get inordinately rich," replies Sibyl, plaiting her long thick hah- into one massive tail for the night. " And how did you get on with uncle Trenchard, upon the whole ? " " Oh, very well indeed. It was so nice driving about in his new barouche, with a lovely pair of chestnuts, and feeling one's self looked up to by all Redcastle ; and I had a splendid bedroom and dressing-room, and we dined at half -past seven every day, with two men waiting upon us. I used to feel afraid of them just at first,' especially the butler, who looks the image of Mr. Grosheu the banker, and that took away from the grandeur ; but I soon got accustomed to them, and learned to speak to them in an off- hand way, just like Mrs. Stormont." " Marion," says Sibyl, earnestly, "do you think uncle Trenchard intends to leave us his money ? " " Well, I should think he must leave it to us or to hospitals ; and if we can manage to please him " "We must please him, Marion, and wind ourselves into his withered old heart somehow. It would be ridiculous, abominable, shameful, for the money to be left to hospitals when we want it so badly. It's no use to enjoy the luxuries of his house, to take a ten-pound note from him now and then. That kind of thing will only make poverty seem worse to us afterwards. We must have his fortune." Her eyes dilate and brighten, her lips tremble faintly as she leaves off speaking, and then her face changes in a moment, and tears run down her wan cheeks. " Gracious, Sibyl I " cnee Marion, rushing at hor with a bottle 66 Dead Men's Shoes. of eau cfe Cologne and a towel, and dabbing her forehead vitl the perfume. " I declare you're quite hysterical. Of course vvja must have his money — if we can get it. What has the hdgeiy old thing come home to England for except to make oui acquaintance and leave us his fortune ? He has as good as said bo ever so many times." Marion's sisterly attentions check that hysterical attack of Sibyl's, and the two girls lie down side by side aiiectionately, after a brief formula in the way of evening prayer. Deep in the chill spring night Sibyl's head tosses restlessly on the pillow, and the sleeper's lips murmur sorrowfully in troubled dreams, — " Alex, Alex — don't be so cruel, Alex. Forgive — you know — your sake — yes, yes — as much as for my own." So pleads the sinner's vexed soul ; self -excusing, self -accusing, even in dreams. CHAPTER IX. UNOLE TBENCHAED. Stephen Tbenchaed paces his smooth gravel walk in the April sunshine, after tiffin, looking at the sparrows, and blackbirds, and thrushes disporting blithely on his velvet lawn, or hopping away into the shadow of evergreens — great masses of laurel and lau- rustinus, rhododendron and bay, which surround the smooth expanse of grass in a semicircular sweep. Very perfect is the order of Mr. Trenchard's garden — not a yellow leaf on the laurels, not a daisy peeping pertly, silver- white, from the lawn, not a branch that grows awry. In the kitchen-garden yonder, far away behind the shrubbery, the fan- shaped fruit-trees look like geometrical patterns on the yellow- brick walls. The apples and pears are all wired into exactest growth, and not a twig is allowed its own way. Mr. Trenchard is in his garden by six o'clock every morning, and Ins severe eye interrogates the smallest sprig of groundsel, and rebukes the very slugs that vie with him in early rising. Mr. Trenchard is not a master to be trifled with, and his gardeners know it. For every shilling he expends he will have twelve pennyworth of labour — nay, thirteen or fourteen pennyworth if he can get it. Woe be to the wretch who tries to put him off with eleven pence half- penny worth of industry 1 " I've had to work for my money," says Mr. Trenchard, u and I expect value for my money from other people." He walks briskly up and down, louking to the right and left Unclt Trenchard. 57 with an eye bright and quick as a bird's, a small black eye, which looks the blacker tor its whitened lashes. He is of middle height, very thin, veiy yellow. He has sharply cut features ; nose thin, pointed, and aggressive-looking ; lips also thin, and of a dis- agreeable pallid hue ; eyebrows iron-gray , thick and bushy ; brow narrow ; perceptive ridge strongly marked, upper head receding; hair thick, short, and iron-gray, like the eyebrows, brushed into two sharp points, like a terrier's ears. Mr. Trenchard wears nankeen waistcoat and trousers, very loose for his lean limbs, and a glossy black frock coat, also loose, a black satin scarf with a gold pin, and high shirt collars ; a double gold eye-glass dangles on his breast, a glass which he wears for show rather than use, but which intensities the severity of his countenance when he reproves his gardeners or lectures his butler. He is a man who has toiled early and late, until the other day, when he took it into his head to give up his counting-house to a junior partner, and come back to England and enjoy the evening of his life at his ease. He has been a man of one idea all his days, and the single object of his existence has been the accu- mulation of money. The process of money-making, the honour and homage which the world renders the reputed millionaire — these have been so sweet to him that the question of what he is to do with his wealth has rarely presented itself seriously to his mind. On his sixty-ninth birthday he awoke suddenly to the con- eciousness that whatever personal enjoyment he meant to have out of his wealth must be obtained within the next ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Even with his vigorous constitution he could hardly hope to live beyond the age of eighty-five. Forty years in India must take something out of a man, be he never so tem- perate, and abstemiousness has been one of Stephen Trenchard's virtues. So at sixty-nine he said to himself, " It is time to go back to England ; let the world see what a position I have made for myself, and take all the good I can out of life." His seventieth birthday has not yet arrived, and he has built for his soul a lordly treasure-house, or in other words he haa taken upon lease, decorated, and furnished Lancaster Lodge, one of the best houses in his father's native town of Kedcastle ; he has hired servants, purchased carriages and horses, and begun a plain-sailing Englishman's life on a very liberal scale. The result so far has been eminently satisfactory. His house to him a kingdom is, he rules his servants, indoor and outdoor, with a rod of iron, and feels himself a potentate. Very pleasant to him is the incense which Redcastle offers to his wealth. People whose fathers and grandfathers snubbed off 68 Dead Men's Shoes. ignored his father, the struggling solicitor, bow down and worship the Anglo-Indian Plutocrat He accepts their adoration with supreme coolness, and a quiet arrogance which his admirers extol as innate aristocracy of mind. It has pleased him to permit his nieco Marion Faunthorpe to bask in the sunshine of his favour. She is not handsome enough to charm his eye, which is critical in the matter of feminine beauty, nor is she clever enough to amuse him ; but she is rather a pretty thing to have about his house, and she does very well for a listener when he is in the humour to tell his prosy old stories of dead and gone Calcutta scandals. She knows how to hold her tongue when he is inclined to be silent, is solicitous for his small comforts, quiet as a mouse when he takes his after- dinner nap. She behaves gracefully at table, neither eats nor drinks too much, looks stylish when fashionably dressed, moves about the house quietly, and is not altogether deficient in tact. He is content, therefore, to tolerate her as a frequent guest, but does not appreciate her warmly enough to ask her to take up her permanent abode with him. He has made many inquiries about Sibyl, and he has been vexed by her non-appearance. The Stormonts, the Groshens, and other notabilities have praised the absent girl's beauty, having found out all at once that a young person whose existence they never troubled themselves to acknowledge was the loveliest girl in Redcastle. " Quite the belle of the place, I assure you, Mr. Trenchard," says Mrs. Stormont. "Indeed," remarked Stephen Trenchard. "She was invited out very much, I suppose." " Well, no, dear Mr. Trenchard, she was too young, you know — almost a child. And then your brother-in-law is so retiring. Wg> could never have got him out of his shell." If there is one thing in that region of trifles outside the money market which Mr. Trenchard appreciates it is beauty in woman. Having heard his eldest niece so enthusiastically praised, he is particularly anxious to see her, ever so much the more anxious because her indifference has thwarted him. " She must be a queer kind of girl," he tells himself, " to hang back from a rich uncle, to prefer drudging as a governess to sponging upon me. Marion is glad enough to take all she can get, and would kneel down and kiss my shoe-string if I asked her. Her feelings are transparent enough- This other one must be something out of the common." A wonderful advantage this for Sibyl at starting ; though it is an advantage she has gained accidentally. The great lodge bell clangs out, while Mr. Trenchard paces up and down, and startles the respectable tranquillity of Above Bar with its clamour. He takes out his watch. Too early for a Sibyl takes the Lead. 69 ceremonious visit. Mr. Trenchard walks round by the side windows of his large square mansion, and comes within view of the gate. Two ladies enter, both young and slim, both tall, but one rather shorter than the other. The taller gives a little eager cry and runs forward to him, the second advances more slowly. " Dear uncle Stephen," cries Marion, pursing up her lips to be kissed, an operation which uncle Stephen performs with a slightly reluctant air, " Sibyl has come home quite unexpectedly," Marion is always out of breath at the beginning of a visit, a pretty gushing way which some peuple call charming, " and I thought I might bring her — to — see you — dear uncle John." " Thought you might bring her. Of course you might bring her. Haven't I been asking to see her e^er since Christmas? So that is Sibyl, is it? " looking at the g'aceful figure lingering on the sunlit grass a few yards away from him. The bright face is flushed with palest rose, the dark full eyes are looking slily at him, the dark brown hair is burnished by the sun. A fair picture of peerless youth for crabbed age to admire. " So that is Sibyl ! Yes, 6he is very lovely. Those sycophants haven't exaggerated. Come here, my love, come to your old uncle. Naughty child, why did you stay away so long ? " He holds out his lean old arms, he folds her to his breast, he kisses her lovingly, paternally, as he has never yet kissed Marion, despite her affectionate blandishments. " Well, I never I " Marion exclaims inwardly, standing a little aloof, and feeling that her reign is over. CHAPTER X. SIBYL TAKES THE LEAD. The favourable impression which Sibyl makes on her uncle Stephen Trenchard is a fact too obvious for diversity of opinion. Marion reluctantly, sullenly even, admits that truth, with many sneers and innuendoes about winning manners and hollow - heartedness. " I have never laid myself out to please uncle Stephen as Sibyl lays herself out," murmurs the injured maiden. " I can't flatter people with my looks. I haven't Sibyl's caressing ways. I can't pretend more affection than I feel ; and I must say that uncle Stephen's dry little jerky ways of speaking and looking at one are not calculated to develop affection." 60 Dead Men's Shoes. Thus argues Marion in the easy atmosphere of uncle Robert's every day parlour. The girls are seated at supper with Dr. Faunthorpe trifling with morsels of bread and cheese, after having dined with Mr. Trenchard. "I did not find him hard or dry," replies Sibyl. "He seems really kind and affectionate, and I was grateful to him for hia warm welcome. I don't know what you mean by my laying myself out to please him. I remembered that he was poor mamma's only brother, and our own flesh and blood, the uncle I had heard so much about years ago, and I was naturally touched by our meeting." " Ah," says Marion, " what an advantage it is for a woman to be able to cry when she likes ! How do you manage it, Sib ? " " If the tears came into my eyes to-day it was because I am not very strong just now, Marion," answers Sibyl, reddening. "You are really the most horrid girl I ever met with." " However horrid I am, I am not double-faced," replies the other promptly. " I should be ashamed to court uncle Trenchard if I were you, when I remember the things you've said about him." "What things?" " What a convenient memory yours is ! Haven't you said that you despised him for his meanness as a young man — that he won his way in the world by double dealing, by base flattery of his patron — that all your sympathy was with the young man he supplanted, Mr. Secretan ? " At that name Sibyl flushes crimson, and then grows ashy pale. " Ah, I see you do remember," cries Marion, triumphantly. " Marion," exclaims the mild little surgeon, with a rare flash of anger, " I will not have your sister teased in this manner. How dare you accuse her of falsehood or hypocrisy? She has as good a right to Stephen Trenchard's favour as you have." " Yes, and to his fortune. Let her have it all," cries Marion, tempted to go into hysterics, but thinking better of it immediately. " She is to go and stay with him, and keep house for him, directly she can get her things ready, which, considering she came home without a rag, must take some time. She is to pay him a long visit. I'm nobody now." "My love, you have had your innings," pleads the pacific doctor. " Oh, of course, and just as I have got to understand his ways and know how to please him I am pushed aside." " My dear, his sense of justice will induce him to distribut© his bounty fairly." " His sense of justice did not prevent his kissing Sibyl more affectionately than l«e has ever kissed me." Sibyl takes the Lead. 61 u Mere fancy on your part, I have no doubt," say8 the doctor. After this Little burst of temper Marion calms down and is tolerably placable. She even discusses her sister's outfit with some show of interest. Mr. Trenchard has given Sibyl five-and- twenty pounds. " I suppose you are pretty well provided with cash, little one," he said, just before she wished him good-night, " an independent-minded young woman like you who goes out into the world to get her own living is sure to have a well-lined purse." Sibyl blushed, and owned that her purse had no lining at all. u Ah, I see, sent help home to the old doctor," muttered Mr. Trenchard, fortunately not loud enough for Marion to hear, or that sharp-tongued young person would inevitably have set him right. " Well, well, very right, very proper." And then the crimson pocket-book was slowly brought forth, and Mr. Trenchard sighed a desponding sigh as he opened it, a sigh that was like a funeral gun for his departed bank notes. Sibyl went back to the dingy old house at the bottom of the town richer by five-and-twenty pounds than when she left it at mid-day. The girls go out gaily enough next morning to Cai-michael's, the haberdashery, linendrapery, and silk mercery establishment of Eedcastle, to supply the void in Sibyl's wardrobe. Five-and- twenty pounds is not much for a young lady of large ideas, but Sibyl, schooled in the philosophy of small means, makes the most of that sum. She spends all her money at Carmichael's, and trusts to Providence and Stephen Trenchard for means to pay Miss Eylett for the making up of her dresses, and Mr. Korksoll, the bootmaker, for the equipment of her pretty little feet. It ia astonishing how far away from the thoughts of Miss Eylett and Mr. Korksoll seems the notion of payment now that Miss Faun- thorpe's rich uncle has returned from the Indies. " You are to eend the things home to me at Lancaster Lodge," days Sibyl, and that seems as good as paying for them. Sibyl has asked for a week in which to prepare herself for this important visit, and that week is occupied in the 6titching, hemming, sewing, felling, gathering, and trimming of under- clothing — the fashion of ready-made linen not having yet vitiated the housewifely habits of Redcastle. The lower middle classes make their own garments, laboriously, and are proud of their toil ; the upper classes employ school children, reduced widows, or virtuous orphans for the labour, and contrive thereby to exercise a good deal of patronage at a very small expenditure. Sibyl revives considerably during this week of preparation. She manages to rest a good deal, other people taking the chief burden of getting her clothes made on their shoulders. She lies op the sofa in the shabby old parlour, staring idly at the white and yellow spring flowers that brighten the dull brown beds 62 Dead Metis Shoes. yonder in the familiar garden, the white pear blossoms tossing gaily in the light April wind, the jonquils peeping over the tall Ibox border, the sword-shaded lily of the valley leaves cleaving the damp mould in the shadow of the bulging moss-grown wall, Bummer's harbinger in the shape of a butterfly skimming over the tender rose leaves. A dull old house verily — a limited prospect, this long strip of walled garden, yet sweet and soothing to one who has suffered. Sweet to lie at rest on the slumberous sofa, with no thought or care for the day, and with but vaguest thought of the morrow. " If uncle Trenchard leaves me a fortune life will be made so easy," Sibyl muses, her arms folded above her head, her eyes fixed dreamily on the waving white pearl-bloom, " I shall have but to call Alex back to me, and we can be happy together again, and taste the sweets of life again, as we did in our briel bright honeymoon. Poverty and love cannot live long together ; but love with plenty of money — that means paradise." The future, dimly veiled though it is, seems very easy to her just now. She is elated by her uncle's evident admiration of her. She has made just the impression that she would have wished to make upon that fate-disposing relative. To follow up that impression will be simple enough. Has she not been told of her winning ways, of those small fascinations which make a woman powerful for good or evil ? Ha& she not been always her uncle Robert's favourite, everybody's favourite, without effort on her own part? while Marion, painfully anxious to please, lias been looked on rather as a nuisance, a vivacious nonentity of whom one might easily have too much. Mr. Trenchard's carriage calls every afternoon, with its coach- man and footman in respectable Puritan drab liveries, to take the two young ladies for an airing ; Mr. Trenchard himself rarely making any use of the equipage, which he keeps rather as an appendage of his state than for pleasure or convenience. It is very agreeable to Sibyl to drive up the long street, with its ascending scale of social importance, from the shabby old houses at uncle Robert's end of the town to the stately stone mansions above Bar. Very agreeable to pass the elite whom Marion has just begun to know, and salutes with delighted becks and bows, but whom Sibyl surveys with a stony stare, affecting to have not the faintest notion who they are. "That Faunthorpe girl is handsomer than ever," says Colonel Stormont to his wife, whom he is driving in a pony carriage a Bize or two larger than a washing basket. " She is pretty sure to come in for a tidy share of the old fellow's money, I should think. Not a bad match for* Frederick." Frederick is the hope of the Stormonts — great at cricket, croquet, and athletics, fire brigade and volunteer rifle corps ; a Sibyl takes the Lead. 83 youth with very thin legs, and not much body, who wears a cutaway coat that just clears his hips, and has never been seen in an overcoat, or without a flower in his button-hole. " No family," says Mrs. Stormont, pursing up her lips. " Family be bothered ! " remarks the colonel. " Old Trenchard is rolling in money. What's the good of family ? It won't keep a roof over your head, or pay the tax-gatherer. Commerce is the thing now-a-days. If Fred doesn't marry a rich woman pretty soon he'll have to go into commerce. You ought to take notice of those Faunthorpe girls." " I'll call next week," replies Mrs. Stormont, obediently. Sibyl's beauty is the talk of the town. Redcastle is suddenly awakened to the consciousness of loveliness that scarcely moved it to admiration two years ago, although the girl's beauty had then the bloom and freshness of unchastened youth. Perhaps she is really lovelier now. Sorrow and passion have passed there, and left the exalted look of an awakened soul, where there was before only girlish innocence, curious and wondering about a world of which it knew nothing. She has eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The mystery of life has been re- vealed to her. Be sure that Eve's beauty had a deeper meaning after she came out by the fatal gate where the angel with the flaming sword kept watch and ward. The carriage comes at the week's end to fetch Miss Faunthorpe and her belongings, to the tribulation of her young sister Jenny, who has had so much of Marion lately that she is deeply grieved to lose Sibyl. " It will be ever so much worse for me when you're gone," she says. " You do stand up for a fellow sometimes. She'll be sending me upstairs for her handkerchief or her keys three times an hour, and making me crimp her hair till my fingers ache, and unpick her old dresses. I wish uncle Trenchard would let me go with you. I shouldn't cost much or be in his way. And now uncle Robert says I'm not to go to school any more, because it makes me vulgar, and Marion is to go on with my education. A nice education it will be I I don't believe she knows when William the Conqueror came over, or who invented potatoes." Sibyl tears herself from the lamenting damsel, kisses uncle Robert with a plaintive little look more expressive of gratitude than many a lengthy oration, and takes her place in the barouche, which becomes her as a frame does a picture, and 6eems as much her attribute as Jvno's car to the goddess. "Good-bye, Poverty," she says to herself as the chestnuts throw up their fore-legs as if they were playing cup and ball, and dash off towards the Bar. " It shall go hard with me if my nam* is not written in Uncle Trenchard's will before long." £4 Dead Men's Shoe*. CHAPTER XL BOW STEPHEN TRENCHARD FORGIVE3. The new life at Lancaster Lodge suits Sibyl as if she had been created for no other purpose than to sit at her uncle's table, pour out his coffee, air his newspapers, play or sing to him in the evenings, and take her own pleasure for the rest of the day. Housekeeping is an easy burden in so well-ordered an establish- ment. The trained servants perf orm their duties, light for the most part, with mechanical precision. The service is too good to be forfeited by scamped work, or forgetfulness of the master's wishes. Stephen Trenchard has let his servants understand that he will have fullest value for his money, that there must be no talents stowed away in napkins in his household. He has contrived to inspire them with wholesome fear, and is served to the utmost of their power. Sibyl is not afflicted with a genius for domestic matters. She remembers with a shudder those days in Dixon Street when she had to cater for a penniless husband, and make ninepence do the work of a shilling. She remembers this weary time, and reposes in her low easy chair, novel in hand, the garden smiling at her through the open French window, horses and carriages at her disposal, luxury around her, all Redcastle subjugated and more or less prostrated at her feet, — she keenly remembers the past, and deems her present life worthy some sacrifice, more especially as the present is made still brighter by vague hopes of happiness, and a reconciliation of all life's perplexities in the future. She has her dark moments, naturally. What life is without shadow ? There are moments when she thinks of one she has fondly loved — fondly loves still, perhaps, in some sealed chamber of her heart. There are hours in which she wonders, with re- morseful wonder, how he fares whom she so ruthlessly abandoned. " For his future advantage," she tells herself ; " as Mrs. Secretan I should have forfeited my uncle's fortune — as Miss Faunthorpe I may win it and share it with my husband." Established as Stephen Trenchard's favourite niece, Sibyl findt herself an object of unbounded interest and admiration with the elite. Mrs. Stormont, although overtlowinsr with kindness, at first ehows some disposition to patronize, but finding this eldest Miss Faunthorpe a young woman not amenable to patronage, changes her note and accepts Mr. Trenchard's niece as " one of ourselves." elected and choseu to sit in the high places of Bed- tats tie. ftow SteoHen Trenchant Porgives. ?,~> "The girl has a wonderful air," argues Mrs. Stormont, " when you consider that she is totally without family." " Talking of family," muses the colonel, " I hope it's all right about old Trenchard's money, and that he hasn't left any niggers over in Calcutta to whom he may leave his fortune." " My dear Keginald, I'm surprised at you," exclaims the lady, with a look of horror. " Mr. Trenchard goes to church every Sunday, and is altogether a most correct person. " We don't know what he may have been in India, though," says the colonel. " He may have been a devil-worshipper, and danced an exaggerated highland fling at devil-dances ; or a Mahometan, or a Brahmin, or a Thug. He seems to have plenty of money, and that's about all we know of him." Notwithstanding which ignorance as to Stephen Trenchard's antecedents the colonel and his wife continue to court and cherish him, arranging the nicest little dinners for him, with Mr. Groshen to sit opposite to him and discourse upon the money market ; lavishing affection on Sibyl, inquiring kindly about the exiled Marion — as remote at the unvisited end of the town as if she had been removed to another hemisphere — and making themselves generally subservient and agreeable. Frederick Stormont, with his cutaway coat and legs like sticks of sealing wax, calls fre- quently at Lancaster Lodge, and is deeply interested in everything that interests Sibyl, — the flower-garden, the horses ; he even volunteers to be interested in the poultry, but bottles his enthusiasm upon finding that Miss Faunthorpe has no taste for Dorkings, Spaniards, or Cochin-Chinas. There is a billiard-room at Lancaster Lodge, and Frederick is great at billiards. He drops in of an evening, and plays with Mr. Trenchard ; he teaches Sibyl how to handle her cue, and dis- courses wisely on the theory of angles. "Well, pretty one," says Mr. Trenchard one night, when Fred has taken Iris departure with obvious reluctance, and uncle and nieoe are loitering by the billiard-table, Sibyl leaning over the green cloth to aim at the distant red, dressed in pale gray silk, with innumerable flounces, and knots of mauve ribbon dotted about among them, a masterpiece of Miss Eylett's art. " Well, Jny pet, I think it's pretty clear what that young gentleman comes here for." " Billiards, I should think," replies Sibyl, pushing her cue gently backwards and forwards as she meditates her aim. " They have no table at the Stormonts, and it is cheaper for him to play here than at the ' Coach and Horses.' " " The billiard-table is a very good excuse, my dear, but the gentleman comes to see you." " Poor thread-paper 1 " exclaimed Sibyl, with a contemptuous laugh. " For his own sake — if the thing can feel — I hope not." % Dead lien's Shoe*. " Why, he'd be a very good match for yon, -wouldn't he?" asks herr uncie, looking keenly at her from under his penthouse brows. "These Stormonts are great people, the leaders of RedcaRtl© society. You could hardly do better than marry into their set." " If I were likely ever to marry, which I'm not," says Sibyl, pocketing her ball triumphantly off the red, " I'd marry a man." " Never likely to marry ! what do you mean by that ? " " Simply that I'm quite happy as I am, and that I mean to stop with you, and take care of you, please uncle Stephen, until you get tired of me." She has been living with her rich uncle nearly three months, and there is no more talk of her being a visitor at Lancaster Lodge. It is her home. Marion may come and go, but Sibyl remains. Stephen Trenchard cannot do without her. " I shan't get tired of you in a hurry," answers Mr. Trenchard, " but I think for your own sake you ought to marry when you get a good opportunity. I was only joking about that whipper- wiapper, who walks about the place as if the very paving stones were his property, and couldn't give you change for a five-pound not» if you asked him for it. He's not the man for you. But with your pretty face you are sure to find the right kind of man before long, a man with brains and money, and when you do I hope you'll be wise enough to marry him. It's all very well while I'm here to take care of you, but when I'm dead and gone " " When you are dead and gone I shall have your money, yon dear old thing," thinks Sibyl, but says not a word. She only goea to her uncle's side, and lays her face upon his shoulder, and gives him one of those gentle little caresses which Marion would as soon have offered to the Zoological Garden's tiger as to her Anglo- Indian uncle. " Yes, pretty one, I should like to see you well married before my time comes," says Stephen Trenchard. " Now you know, uncle, that you are under a solemn agree- ment with me to live till you are ninety," replies Sibyl, shaking her finger at him with playful menace. She has grown very intimate with her uncle in these three months, her playing, her singing, her bright talk, her sparkling, vivacious little ways have won the old man's confidence. Stern to all the rest of the world, implacable in all his dealing with men, suspicious alike of equals and inferiors, tyrannical to his wervants, he is yet wondrously gentle to Sibyl. His inherent meanness, his mental incapacity to give, cannot be wholly sub- jugated even by her influence, but what money he bestows upon her he gives less grudgingly than to Marion. He feels the loss of so many pounds a shade less keenly when Sibyl's pleasure is in question, and though he grumbles sorely at the costliness of a Itow Stephen Trenchard ForgivcA. 67 Woman's toilet he is pleased to see his niece expensively dressed, and may in time come to regard her costume as one of the acces- sories of hiB own grandeur, like his stables or hothouses. Rarely, despite the confidence that is established between them, lias Mr. Trenchard talked to Sibyl of his past life, of his youth never. He tells her his prosy old stories of Calcutta society, of men with whom he has had commercial dealings, of clever frauds and chicaneries which he chuckles over as the coups d'etat of the trading world, but of himself he speaks very little. Never, above all, has the fatal name of Secretan crossed his lips ; and Sibyl in longing to find out the state of his feelings now, after this lapse of time, in relation to that name. If he had learned, in the lapse of years, to forgive the man ho injured and over-reached, if he had grown to feel some touch of remorseful pity for the supplanted son, what a happiness it would be to fall on her knees at his feet and confess the secret of her life, to be pardoned for her duplicity, set free from the toil and trouble of falsehood, able to call her proud young hus- band back to her side, and to begin life again, honest in the sight of man and at peace with God ! She is continually musing upon this question, and would givo much for an opportunity of sounding her uncle's feelings. It comes one day unawares, and she has no longer need to speculate or wonder about Stephen Trenchard's sediments upon cne sub- ject of an old enemy. It is a drowsy July afternoon. The summer is at its hottest, and Mr. Trenchard and his niece are sitting on the lawn after that elaborate meal, half breakfast, half luncheon, which tire Anglo-Indian calls tiffin. The lawn behind Lancaster Lodge is a delightful place on a warm summer day. Three or four old tlms, a spreading cedar, a Spanish chestnut, and a couple of noble plane trees afford abundant shade. The grass is smooth as velvet. Garden chairs, low and luxurious, are dotted about under the trees. Newspapers, and Sibyl's work-basket, bestrew the light iron table. Changing lights and shadows flit and flicker among the leaves, and Stephen Trenchard's lean figure, stretched to its full length, reposes at ease on a bamboo reclining chuir, a glass of potash water on one side of him, a cigar-case on the other. Sibyl is reading to him out of yesterday's Times, when ho interrupts her with a sudden sigh, which is almost a groan. M What is Ae matter, uncle Stephen ? " " You had better leave off, — even your soft voice irritates me." ' " Your nervous headache not gone yet, uncle Stephen ? " " Gone 1 It's worse than ever. This English summer is more oppressive than Indian heat, or it Booms so to mo at any rate," 68 Dead Men's Shots. Sibyl searches in the little work-basket lined with blue satin, fishes out a silver-stoppered scent-bottle, and is on her knees hy her uncle's side in a moment, dabbing his yellow forehead with her handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne. " Thank you, my dear, that will do. I don't care about it." He gives her an impatient little push, as disapproving so much fuss, but not before she has disarranged one of those terrier-ear wisps of iron-gray hair, and been startled by a scar which dis- figures the forehead beneath it, a long narrow seam, which crosses the temple diagonally just below the roots of the hair. " Uncle Stephen, were you ever in battle ? " " Battle, child ? What nonsense ! Of course not." " Or in a J mutiny — or anything ? How did you get this dread- ful scar ? " " From the foul blow of a scoundrel," answers Stephen Tren- ehard, deadly pale. " From the man who lamed me for life. Did you never hear your mother speak of Philip Secretan ? " " Y°s. uncle Stephen, I have heard her say that he treated you very badly." " Oh, she owned as much, did she ? The world in general would have it that I used him badly, that I had no right to the money his father left me — a paltry thirty thousand ; that I ought *.o have stood on one side and said, ' No, blood is thicker than cvater. You've been an idler and a profligate — a bad son, the business would have gone to wreck and ruin if it had been left to you to save it. I've toiled, I've slaved, I've planned and plotted, I've borne the heat and burden of the day ; but still you are the son, and you've a right to come in at the eleventh hou.- <*tnd rob me of my just reward, simply because you are the son. J That's what the world would have had me do, in the high and mighty justice it is so good at dealing out for other people, and bo bad at yielding on its own account. Some went so far as to say that the will was forged, and I was the forger. Luckily for me, old Mr. Secretan had published his intention of disinheriting his son, and making me his heir, the year of the great Manchester failures, when his house tottered, and I had the luck to save it by a desperate stroke of business." " He was very fond of you, I suppose, this old Mr. Secretan ? " asks Sibyl, breathlessly. " Fond of me V Yes, perhaps as much as it was in his natura to be fond of anything, except money. He hated his son, knowing that he was a spendthrift, and would squander every shilling the old man had toiled for. He trusted me — he looked up to me. ' If you were my son,' he used to say, ' I shouldn't be tortured by the thought that this business would go to ruin when I'm in my grave.' The day he said that for the first time I made up my mind that I was to be his heir. Philip's i ollitl How Stephen Tren.crio.rd Forgives. 69 find vices helped me, but my own patience and industry were- the chief agents." " And there was a quarrel between you and Philip Secretan ? " asks Sibyl, seated on the grass and plucking up little tufts of it nervously, as she watches her uncle's vindictive face with eager eyes, reading doom there. " Yes, when the will had been read, and he knew the worst — he ought to have expected it if he had a grain of ssnse, — Philip Secretan followed me out into the grounds. His father's house was a few miles outside Manchester, a fine old place enough, but neglected, — the old man was too fond of money to spend much on house or gardens. Philip followed me to the back of the grounds, where there was a wild bit of shrubbery and a hollow that had once been a stone quarry, and which had been left, either because people didn't care about the expense of filling it, or because they fancied it was picturesque. In any case it was dangerous, and an abomination that ought to have been don. away with. Well, I was close to the edge of this hollow — there being a short cut to the Manchester road just beyond it — when Philip overtook me. He didn't spare me, I can tell you, for, apart from the money question, there was an old sore between ns. The girl he wanted to many had done me the honour to prefer his father's confidential clerk. She was a sensible girl, and saw the point to which our lives were drifting. When he had called me reptile, and a few other equally agreeable names, finding that he couldn't sting me into retaliation by abuse of that kind, he came close up to me and 6truck me across the face with his open hand. ' There, cur,' he cried, ' and let's see if that will warm your fish's blood into manly feeling.' I had been in a burning rage all the time at his insolence, but had held myself in check, in pity for his disappointment, which was hard to bear, no doubt, richly as he had deserved it. I was a man, and the shame of a blow was too much even for my sluggish temper, trained to patience by long servitude. I closed with hiin, and we wrestled together on that path by the quarry. Now mark the cowardice of tins fine gentleman, who boasted of his honour, and called me a sneak and reptile ! He was twice my match in weight and size, three times my match in training, a practised atldete, a skilled boxer, every muscle developed by exercise. To use his force against mine was simply murder. I was the shuttlecock, and he the battledore. 1 had a confused sense of blows raining on my head, as from a Nasmyth's hammer, coloured sparks dancing before my eyes, fire shooting out of my brain, and then I was hurled bodily jnto'^he air, and fell crashing through the brushwood into the quarry. It seemed like falling from the highest cliff that breasts the Atlantic." " How dreadful 1 " says Sibyl, with a gasp. 70 Dead Mai's Shoes. " It was deep in the night when I awoke, and the stars were shining. I wondered where I was, and how I came to see the pole-star looking straight down at me. Pain came befor memory, acute, agonizing pain, and then I knew that my leg ha>,_ been shattered somehow. I lay in the quarry till past eight o'clock next morning, suffering indescribable torture. At last, however, some labourers heard my faint cries for help, found me, and carried me to the nearest roadside inn, whence I was conveyed to the Manchester Infirmary. Here I lay for five months — the most miserable months of my fife — while the frac- tured bones united. It was a compound fracture, and for some time I was threatened with amputation. When I rose from the hospital bed I was lame for life. The broken leg had contracted in the process of healing. Surgery had done its best for me, and had saved my leg ; but surgery left me a cripple, for which life-long injury I had to thank Philip Secretan. I had to thank him for something else too, for the girl who had pretended to love me chose this time for throwing me over, and making a better match." " And in those weary months, lying on your bed of pain, you learned to forgive your enemy," suggests Sibyl, very gently. " Learned to forgive him 1 Yes, if forgiveness means undying hatred ; if forgiveness means the rankling memory of an un- atonable wrong ; if forgiveness means to remember him and curse him every time a change of wind brings back the old grinding pain in this crippled limb. If that means forgiveness, Philip Secretan and his race are forgiven." " His race ? " falters Sibyl. " You could feel no rancour against his children." " I could. I do," answers the old man, vindictively. " Let no viper of that blood cross my path. ' The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' There's Scripture for you. I believe i r » that good old heathen creed one reads of in Greek legends, jf an accursed race. Of Philip Secretan's after career I know little or nothing. He had the devil's luck as well as his own, and married a woman with money, soon after his father's death, but I never heard what became of him. He may be living or dead. If he lives let him keep out of my way. If he has left children, my dearest hope is that they are penniless, homeless, street Arabs, whose playground is the gutter, whose ultimate destiny is the gallows." " Uncle, for mercy's sake " * ; My curse fight on him and his seed to the third generation / There, child, don't cry. You should have known better than to tempt me u> talk q£ Philip S ■•■'■>'" Love, then, Itad Ju>pe of Richer Store. 71 CHAPTER XIL LOVE, THEN, HAD HOPE OF RICHER STORE. After that summer day under the plane-trees, Sibyl utters the name of Secretan no more. Hope of relenting on her uncle's part there is none. If Alexis could forgive the man who in his version of the story came basely between father and eon to cheat the son of his heritage, and tricked the lover out of his mistress, Stephen Trenchard's stubborn soul would still remain unsoftened. Reconciliation between these two was impossible. To retain her uncle's favour and inherit a portion of his wealth, Sibyl must keep the secret of her marriage. A painful part to play even for a mind not untrained in deceit ; but a necessary part, Sibyl tells herself. A difficult game, but for a stake well worth the winning. She has no exact measure of her uncle's possessions. He has never talked to her of his investments, or told her his income, but she has a fixed idea that his wealth is almost without limit, that, like the Rothschilds or the Duke of Westminister, he could scarcely state the sum-total of Ids riches if he were asked for exact figures. His fortune is a rolling mass of gold, she pnpposes, which grows larger at every turn, like a snowball. The respects he sees paid to him by the elect of Redcastle estab- lishes her in this conviction of Stephen Trenchard's importance, for she knows that in this case importance can only mean money. Lancaster Lodge is one of those handsomely finished, solidly built houses which adorn the outskirts of every country town, and are like temples dedicated to the genius of commonplace : houses in which the butler's pantry has been as carefully considered as the drawing-room, and in winch my lady's boudoir is just as unlovely as John Thomas's attic under the leads. All the principal rooms are large and square and lofty. The passages are broad and straight. The staircase is well propor- tioned, ventilated and lighted to perfection. Impossible to fiud fault with a house which, as the house agent proudly puts it, possesses all the requirements for a gentleman's family . Equally impossible to feel the slightest interest in a mansion which neither awes by its splendour nor attracts by its eccentricity, nor charms by the lowlier graces of homeliness and simplicity. A coffin descending that mathematical staircase would loose it3 awfulness in the pervading atmosphere of commonplace. A cradle in any of those rooms would seem to have lost its way m nl wandered into a desert, where baby-life could not endure. I\0 sadly sweet fancies of domestic joys that are no more entwine 72 Dead Men's Shoes. themselves about this dwelling of Stephen Trencnard's. It looks like what it is — an old bachelor's house, — and Mr. Trenchard could hardly have chosen a habitation more completely in harmony with his own character. The Redcastle upholsterer, a man whose stocfe m trade appears to consist of two easy chairs and a sideboard — but who can do great things at a push, — has furnished Lancaster Lodge with appropriate splendour. All is solid and grandiose ; dark crimson draperies — velvet in the dining-room and library, satin brocade in the drawing-room — subdue the garish light and give a sombre grandeur to the rooms. Heavy oak furniture, thickest Turkey and Persian carpets ; varied spoil of carved black wood, ivory, porcelain, and Bombay inlaid work, which Mr. Trenchard has brought home with him from India, — everywhere the evidence of wealth. To Sibyl the house seems simply perfect. Its luxury, its soft silent splendour, contrast so pleasantly with the humble homeliness of her uncle Robert's old-fashioned, low-ceiled rooms ; the stealthy-footed footman, who spends so much of his time looking at nothing particular out of the hall window, that he grows sedentary in his habits, and fancies he has disease of the heart ; the ponderous butler in his glossy black suit and irreproachable white tie ; the smart maid-servants, in crisped starched cambric, tight-waisted, prim, supercilious, as if Mr. Trenchard's importance as the richest man in Redcastle shed reflected glory upon them. The household has an air of quiet dignity which impresses Sibyl wonderfully. Her soul reposes itself in this land of fatness. She looks back at her life in Dixon Street, its one room, its manifold privations, veritable starvation hovering near like the wan spectre of approaching doom, and the change seems too wonderful for anything but a dream. Does she think of the husband who shared her poverty, T\jhom she abandoned to endure misfortune alone, deserted in the darkest hour of their wedded life? What does she not think of him ? Memory and regret are interwoven with the fabric of her life. She consoles herself — justifies her deser- tion of Alexis — by the idea that life must have been made easy to him by their separation. As a married man with a helpless wife to provide for, he was like a vessel waterlogged ; relieved of that burden, heis the same ship free to sail for any port in quest of fortune. One night, in the solitude of her prettily furnished bedroom, all rose-coloured chintz and shining maple, furnished especially for a young lady's occupation at Mr. Trenchard's order, Sihyl takes out an insignificant paper-covered book from among her most sacred possessions, and opens it with a hand that trembles a little a« she sits alone in the lamplight. It is like opening the grave of the past. Tlmt little sixpenny book is the diary she kept at Mrs. Hazleton's — her brief love story. Love, then, had hope of Richer Store. 73 Tearfully, sorrowfully, she reads that record of her first and only Jove, the story of a time when in singleness of mind and simplicity she surrendered her heart to its conqueror. "I love him, I love him, I love him," she reads, almost blinded by tears. She remembers the gush of passionate feeling with which these- foolish words were written. " And one little year after I wrote that line I deserted him," she says to herself, won- dering at her own hardness of heart. " What a fool I must have been when I wrote this book I " This is her verdict as she closes the volume ; yet she feels as if it were the best and brightest part of her life in which those foolish pages were written, and that she was happier in those days than she is now, although she has become a personage in Redcastle. She looks round her room- wonderingly, glancing at the maple wardrobe which contains so many pretty dresses, Buch a treasury of ribbons and lace, and the frivolities women love. " Would I exchange all this, and the hope of a fortune from my uncle, for the dismal second-floor schoolroom at Mrs. I fazleton's, and the freshness and sweetness of first love?" she asks herself ; and for a moment it seems to her that could a good fairy give her back the days that are no more, she would be a gainer by the exchange. If she could know that her husband was safe and well, that he had prospered since she left him, or that things had gone tolerably well with him, she might feel more at ease than she does. But she knows nothing of what has happened to him sines the beginning of the year, when he was seen at Redcastle, a dismal apparition ; and of this appearance of his she only hears by chance, a few days after her perusal of her diary, from no less * person than her younger sister Jane, otherwise Jenny. Sibyl is spending the day with her uncle Robert, a visit which ranks as a condescension now that she is on iniimate terms with the Stormonts, the Groshens, Dr. Mitsand, and, in a word, tho elite of Redcastle. She is received by her indulgent old uncle with all honour. Hester prepares an extra good dinner, a dainty little loin of veal, and a currie of yesterday's roast mutton, followed by the unwonted extravagance of a tart and a pudding. Marion sees this relaxation of the economic bow with certain eniflitigs and bridlings, indicative of suppressed indignation. " I never knew such a time-server as Hester," she remarks, as she surveys the table, laid as for a feast, a clean tablecloth in the middle of the week, almonds and raisins for dessert, an altogether ruinous*- expenditure. "She didn't make this fuss about you when you were at home, but now she pays her court to the heiress elect." * No more an heiress elect than you or Jenny, I should imagine," 74 Dead Men's Shoea. •replies Sibyl, lightly. " I think it is pretty clear that uncle Trenchard means to leave his money among us, though he has not said as much." " Yes, and the lion's share to you, no doubt, though he fe*} cnown me longest," says Marion, snappishly. u A precious sight of his money I'm likely to get, when he never so much as asks me to go and see him," observes Jenny whereupon both sisters swoop down upon her in denunciation of such a noun of quantity as " a precious sight." " Where do you pick up your language, child ? " cries Sibyl. " Not in the streets surely, since Marion teaches you, and you have no occasion to be running about." " A fat lot Marion teaches me ! " says the incorrigible child. " She nags at me for an hour and a half by the kitchen clock every morning, and calls that education." " Pray, in what edition of Lindley Murray do you find the verb ' to nag ? ' " demands Marion, with the air of a pedagogue. " It's as good a verb as any other. I nag, thou naggest, he or she nags, generally she ; or take it in Latin if you like, Nago, nngas, nagat, nagamus, nagatis, nagant ; first conjugation ; per- fect, nagavi." " I'm afraid that Jane has rather an unruly temper," remarks Dr. Faunthorpe, mildly. " Oh, of course it's Jane. Marion is never aggravating. You don't find me unruly, do you, uncle?" Jane adds coaxingly, as Bhe sidles up to the gentle, easy -tempered little doctor, who has gone through life placidly bearing other people's burdens, and has never murmured against a destiny that has weighted him with three orphan nieces. Later in the afternoon Sibyl and Jane are alone together in the garden, Marion having lost her temper at croquet, and left them to themselves. The little bit of grass upon which they play is not many sizes bigger than the billiard-table at Lancaster House. The balls and mallets are in the last stage of shabbiness, and chipped intoicosa- hedrons. " You must both come to afternoon tea to-morrow, if it's fine, and play croquet on uncle Trenchard's lawn," says Sibyl, con- descendingly, as if she were inviting them to her own house. Perhaps this patronizing invitation has something to do with Marion's loss of temper five minutes afterwards, when Jenny sends her ball into a distant cabbage bed. The sources of bad humour are more often complex than simple. It is a warm September afternoon, one of those days in which people incline to sitting in gardens rather than walking on dusty hi;;h roads. Sibyl sits on the grass as she was wont to do three years ago, before she was anybody's heiress. Jenny sprawls. Love, then, had hope of Richer Store. 75 with an appalling display of legs and boots and rusty bootlaces, at her sister s side. " Now, Sibyl 1 " she says, eagerly, u tell us about the parties you go to." " Pray, who is your companion ? " inquires Sibyl, with a con- temptuous droop of her heavy eyelids. " 1 see no one here but yourself." "I don't know what you mean," says Jane, staring. " No more do I when you say tell us." " Oh, lor, as if it mattered ! You're as bad as Marion. Now do be nice, Sib, for once in a way, and tell me what it's like going to the Stormonts. Only fancy you're being asked there ever so many times ; and to think how often I've passed their door when we've been out for walks, and the inside of it has seemed as far off as heaven ; further, indeed, for they say we're sure to go to heaven if we're good, but we're not sore of going to the Stor- monts unless we're rich. What's it like, Sib ? do tell." " Well, they live in a house, as you know, since you've seen the outside of it, and they eat their dinner at a table, just as we ther side of the course, exactly opposite the barouche. A shabby old pony carriage, quite the most ancient vehicle of its kind in Redcastle, a dilapidated, unkempt pony, with his nose in a nose-bag, an elderly gentleman in a discoloured white hat, a young woman in pink muslin, and a girl of nondescript appear- ance, in short petticoats, standing on the back seat of the pony carnage, in order the better to survey the brilliant scene, and making a positively awful exhibition of her legs. These are uncle Kobert, Marion, and Jenny. Sibyl beholds them with unmitigated consternation. She will be obliged to acknowledge them presently, to avow her relationship to that wretched chaise, that odious pony, in the face of the county families, nay, the highest and mightiest of the high and mighty — the Cardonnels of the How, people she has heard the Stor- monts talk about with as much reverence as if they had the prosperity of the county in their keeping, wound up the sun like a clock, and turned on the rain from a tap in their custody. "This is Marion's doings," thinks Sibyl, indignantly. "That girl is capable of anything. To think that they must needs come and perch themselves exactly opposite us ! " There seems deliberate malice in the act. A few minutes ago there was only empty space where the pony-chaise stands now. The chaise has been placed there since the arrival of the barouche. Dr. Faunthorpe surveys his niece's party mildly through hia spectacles ; Marion nods and kisses her hand ; but Sibyl, once having seen her danger, looks every way except towards the doctor's chaise. Jenny, more energetic than her elders, is not to \>e baffled. Finding nods and hand-kissing unnoticud, she raises her shrill young voice, and screams, " Sibyl, Sibyl 1 Look this way, Sibyl." " Who is that leggy child calling? " asks Sir Wilford, looking at Jenny through his race-glass, which brings her to the end of his nose. " What un excitable young person ! And what a funny party 1 A little old man in spectacles and a white hat, a tall Town and County. 97 young woman with ginger hair, and that leggy child dancing about upon the cushions. And what a pony ! The very one Noah had in the ark, I should think." Sibyl grows crimson. Can she acknowledge her kith and kin after this ? While she hesitates, Mrs. Stormont raises her gold- rimmed binoculars, and scrutinizes the opposite party. _ " Why, my dear," she exclaims, not sorry to set off any obliga- tion involved in the loan of the barouche by the humiliation of its owner, " it's that dear, good little man, Dr. Faunthorpe, and your sisters. _ I wonder you didn't recognise the pony ; there's not another like him in Redcastle." " Is that little girl your sister ? " says Sir Wilf ord. " I beg your pardon and hers if I said anything impertinent. She seems a fine high-spirited girl, but in an awful state of excitement. Shall I bring her across to you ? She wants to speak to you, I fancy." " Oil, pray leave her where she is," replies Sibyl. " She's a dreadful nuisance. There, there, child," nodding to the obnoxi- ous hoyden ; " won't that do ? " Jane kisses her hand again vehemently, and having succeeded in attracting her sister's attention, seems tolerably resigned. Sibyl feels that her maize-coloured silk and India muslin, the barouche, and all things are a failure after this. And there are the Miss Cardonnels in their plain holland gowns, with satchels at their waists, brown hats, brown feathers, brown holland um- brellas — singularly plain attire, which looks in better form for a racecourse than Sibyl's flower-show costume. Sir Wilford stands by the barouche for an hour or more, and tells Sibyl all about the horses. He devotes himself to her almost exclusively before the face of Redcastle. Fred Stormont, pounding restlessly about upon the gray, and bringing that excited animal to anchor beside the barouche, when he can, feeln that he is nowhere, and begins to think that he has erred on th* side of caution and hesitancy in his wooing of Stephen Trenchard's niece. _ The races may not be good races from a professional point of view,— -the horses may be the very refuse of famous stables, but the excitement and exhilaration of the crowd are not lessened by that fact. No weighty stakes are lost or won, but eveiy one seems happy. Broad grins are the only wear. There is a great deal of picnicking between the races, and people who would have lived through the day at home on a biscuit and a glass of sherry, do wild things in the consumption of lobster salad, chicken, mayonnaise, and pigeon pie. Mrs. Stormont has provided the most refined of baskets, — delicate papers of anchovy and chicken sandwiches, fragile biscuits, some choice fruit, and a bottle of dry sherry. These J8 Dead Meris Shoes, favours she dispenses to her party, whi]« Sir Wilford and hie people are devouring their lobster salad on the roof of the drag, enlivened by a running fire of champagne corks. Fred, roving to and fro on the gray, declines the maternal sherry. "No thanks, mother ; when I'm dry myself I don't want mf wine dry. I'll go and do a bitter at the stand presently. Sibyl has gradually recovered that death-blow of the pony carriage. Sir Wilford Cardonnel's attentions have put her in a good humour. It is as if some prince of the blood-royal had paid her homage in the presence of his subjects, and she knows that Mrs. Groshen and Mrs. Marlin Spyke, the Miss Jewsons, and above all dearest Eose and Violet, will be provoked to envy by the distinction thus conferred upon her. Indeed, dear Eose'a brow has a cloudy look already, and Violet is snappish. Only Mrs. Stormont preserves her equanimity, and smiles upon the baronet when he re-descends from the drag and takes up his position beside the barouche. Sibyl's ignorance of racing matters is curiously attractive to him from its novelty, his sisters being learned in the minutest details of the turf, and as well up in stable talk as their brother's stud groom, under whom they have graduated. He lingers by her side till the races are nearly over, and his grooms go to fetch the horses. The important duty of seeing these animals put to distracts him a little, but he comes back again at the last to say good-bye to Mrs. Stormont and her daughters and to Sibyl. " I should like you to know my sisters," he says, " I am sure you'd suit each other," — a mendacious assertion inspired by the exigencies of the situation, Sir Wilford knowing very well that town and county have seldom an idea in common. He has not ventured to bring about an introduction on the course, his sisters being at an inconvenient altitude, and of an uncertain temper. But he feels that he must contrive to see more of Miss Faan- thorpe somehow or other. Who can she be? She is too ricVy dressed for a governess, and the Stormonts are too civil to he. ", Yet she must be a nobody, or Mrs. Stormont would have tak< care to parade her people. He resolves to call on the Stormontc in a day or two, and find out all about their protegie ; and sustained by this resolution, he takes his reluctant leave. How splendid his coach looks to Sibyl ! the four broad-chested bays, with then honest English-looking heads, horses that mean work, the steel chains, the black harness, austerely simple in its mounting, tha grooms in Lincoln green, the two girls in brown holland nodding i >d-bye to the Stormonts as Sir Wilford drives away, making a wide sweep upon the turf, his horses going as if this was the happiest moment of then lives, bis grooms climbing into their Town and County. 90 S laces after the team has started, with some hazard of Jo.f6 and mb, but with honour to themselves. " Charming man, Sir Wilford Cardonnel," says Mrs. St^rrnont. "The Cardonnels are one of the oldest of our county families. How do you like him, Sibyl ? " "He seems good-natured," replies Sibyl, carelessly. What are the Cardonnels to her? and what avails this young man's admira- tion, save to flaunt in the face of her acquaintance ? Her name is written in the Book of Fate, and in the registers of St. Apollonius, Pimlico. " The soul of good nature. His sisters are charming too ; great friends of Rose and Violet's'" " Uncommon intimate," says Fred, who has dragged that unyielding gray up to the carriage once more. "They see one another twice a year, I should think. For my part, I detest the county people. They're a parcel of narrow-minded snobs, who think the beginning and end of life is to ride straight to hounds." Having relieved his jealous pangs by this vindictive burst, Fred goes to look after Mr. Trenchard's horses, and presently the barouche falls in with the line of vehicles driving towards the town, Fred and the gray in attendance, that animal suddenly amenable to reason now that he is going back to his stable. Sibyl drives home with the Stormonts, with whom she is to dine. " I do hope your dear uncle will join us at dinner," says Mrs. Stormont. That hope is nipped in the bud, for among the day's letters Mrs. Stormont finds a note from Stephen Trenchard : — " Dear Mrs. Stormont, " 1 do not feel well enough to avail myself of your kind invitation for this evening, so must ask you to excuse me. I will send the carnage for Sibyl at half-past ten. " Yours very truly, " Stephen Trenchard." u I'm afraid your uncle is breaking up, my dear," remarks Mrs. Stormont with a sigh. " I saw a change in him when I called the other day." " That is strange," says Sibyl, " for he has not been actually ill. He has not kept his room for a single day." " He is a man of iron nerves, my love, and would be reluctant to give way to illness, but I feel sure that he is declining. At his age, and after a life in India, you cannot expect to have him with you many years." Sibyl looks grave. No, she has not counted on her uncle living many years, or at least when she de&erted her husband sii© 100 Dead Men' 8 Shoes. told herself that the old man's life could be but brief, and that a few years of patience would be rewarded by fortune and inde- pendence for all her life to come. But since she has lived with uncle Trenchard she has been inclined to think differently. In his wiry frame and active habits, his temperance, his iron nerves, there seems the promise of life prolonged to its utmost limits. He may live to be ninety, and she be almost an old woman ere she reap the wages of her toil ; and in that case what is to become of Alexis ? Mrs. Stormont's remark inspires a new hope. The end maj not be so far off after all. She is not ungrateful to her uncle, she is not without some kind of affection for him, but the hope, of reunion with her husband, of forgiveness and atonement, is sweet. CHAPTER XVL A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR. The dinner at the Stormonts is as other dinners in'the same house. The guests are Mr. and Mrs. Groshen, Dr. and Mrs. Mitsand, and ono Miss Mitsand, the ugliest, as Fred remarks with a sense of injury. The flower-pots on the table, the silver dishes, the ruby hock glasses, the finger-glasses engraved with the Greek key pattern, the talk, the twaddle, Mrs. Groshcn's Honiton lace, how well Sibyl know them all ! She breathes a sigh for the days that are gone, before that slow, pompous banquet is ended, and thinks that after all there was more pleasure in a haddock and a cup of tea in Dixon Street than in all this provincial splendour. The talk is chiefly of the races, who was there and who was not there. The county families are brought on the table, and discussed fully, together \\ ith the genealogies, which are as well known and as complicated as if they were Greek heroes or demigods. Mrs. Stormont praises Sir Wilford Cardonnel, and those dear girls his sisters, and talks of the rose-garden and ferneries at the How ; whereby she bears down rather heavily upon Mrs. Groshen, who has never been bidden to that earthly paradise. Mr. Groshen opines that Sir Wilfred is better off than most of the county people, whom he disparages as a shabby lot, but adds that at the rate Sir Wilford is going on with his drags and hunters he is likelv U. outrun the constable before he is many years older. A Mystenom Visitor. 101 That the evening entertainment which follows the feast is dull, not even Mrs. Stonnont's dearest friend Mrs. Groshen could deny, were her views taken on the subject. Sibyl knows every piece of furniture in the drawing-room by heart, every photograph in the album. She knows the Miss Stormont's favourite fantasias better than those performers themselves, or they would play more correctly. She knows exactly how she will be asked to play one of her lovely pieces, or to sing one of her sweet songs, and how the young ladies will pretend to delight in Chopin, and the elders praise her wonderful "fingering," and how stifled yawns will at intervals prevail among the company. She knows how Violet will tell her about some new fern she has discovered, " such a darling " ; and how Rose will ask her if she is going on the Continent this year, ami will then favour her with some interesting facts about her Swiss tour with papa three years ago. What a blessed relief when the clock on the mantelpiece strikes eleven ! Sibyl has been wondering for ever so long why her carriage has not been announced. "Dear Mrs. Stormont, I think they must have forgotten me," she says. " But we are such near neighbours, I can walk home easily." " My love, it is quite early ; don't talk of going ; the carriage will come for you, I am sure. We want another of those deli- cious sonatas. Not going, surely, Mrs. Groshen," cries Mrs. Stormont, rejoicing in her soul to see the banker and his wife advancing to her, stately and smiling, to tell her that they have spent " a most enjoyable evening." Every one discovers that it is frightfully late. No one would have supposed it for an instant. How swift are the pinions of Time when pleasure quickens them ! Mrs. Stormont, pressed by Sibyl, makes an inquiry about Mr. Trenchard's carriage. It has not come. " We walked here," says Mr. Groshen. " Matilda grumbled about her dress, but I wouldn't have my horses harnessed again after they had come from the racecourse, and I couldn't havt. them standing in harness while she changed her dress. It is no use having fine horses if you don't study them a little. And we're such near neighbours. We'll take care of you, Miss Faunthorpe, if you don't mind walking." " I should like it," says Sibyl, with a longing look at the cool purple night beyond the open window of the gaslit room. Fred springs up eagerly from the ottoman on which he has been sitting in patient attendance on the unattractive Miss Mitsand. "Let me see you home, Miss Faunthorpe. I F&all be de- lighted." 102 Dead MerCs Shoe». Sibyl runs away to put on her bonnet, and the guests Issue forth in a bevy. Dr. Mitsand's useful brougham is waiting, the others walk home in the tranquil perfumed air. Fred offers hi& arm, which Sibyl accepts with the infinite ease of indifference* Mr. and Mrs. Groshen make themselves agreeable by walking on briskly. "Isn't it a lovely night?" gasps Fred, rapturously. "Yes, it's very fine. We generally have nice evenings in June." " Ye-es," replies Fred, after judicious consideration. " I think we do. Nice long evenings, at any rate. The twenty-first being the longest day, of course, is a reason. Nice month for races, too ; but rather rainy sometimes, don't you think? " Sibyl concedes the point. " I remember one wet June — poured all the month — regular cats and dogs. The racecourse was a morass ; of course the heaviest timbered horse won. Here we are, I declare, close to Lancaster Lodge ! How I wish it was further off ! " " Not very flattering to me to wish us less near neighbours,'* Bays Sibyl, laughing. " Oh, come now, Miss Faunthorpe, you know I don't mean that ; but just for to-night, for the sake of prolonging this delightful walk." "Don't talk nonsense, please," says Sibyl. "And be land enough to ring the bell." They are standing at the gate by this time, and Fred lingers, as if loth to perform that necessary duty. He rings, and the lodgekeepcr opens the side gate. Sibyl offers Mr.Stormont her hand on the threshold, but gives him no invitation to enter the domain. " Good night," she says, and then cries suddenly, " Do you hear that?" 1 It is a most melodious jug-jugging from a dark clump of chestnuts near the gate. "I hear something chirping," replies Fred, dubiously. "It's the nightingale. It sings every night just at this time. Isn't it exquisite?" " Rather throaty," says Fred. " Good night," repeats Sibyl, shutting the gate in hid face. " Horrid young man ! " she ejaculates. How dark, and coo], and silent, save for those nightingales, the grounds are to-night 1 She is in no hurry to go into the house. The dewy turf, the tall black trees standing out against a sky of mixed light and colour, tho moon rising grandly above the elms yonder, just where the Lancaster Lodge grounds meet th e i] rr f Uedcastle i'ark, Sir John Boldero's domain — all ifl beautiful A Mysterious Visitor. 103 Sibyl walks slowly along the shrubberied drive, and round to the lawn behind the honse, that wide sweep of velvet grass upon which she and her uncle spend the summer afternoons. Mr. Trenchard's study is on this side of the house. The lighted windows inform Sibyl that he has not yet retired for the night. The study opens on the lawn by a half-glass door. She can go into the house this way, and surprise her forgetful uncle by her return, and tell him all about her day, about Sir Wilford Cardonnel's attentions, of which she is proud. She thinks it will please her uncle to know that one of the magnates of the land has admired her. She goes towards this glass door, but makes a dead stop before one of the study windows, startled by what she sees there. It is nothing very remarkable, perhaps, at the first showing, only uncle Stephen and a stranger ; but the stranger is no ordinary person, and there is that in Stephen Trenchard's face which makes the scene remarkable. The lamp burns brightly on the official-looking table, which is spread with papers — formidable-looking papers, bristling with figures, ruled with red ink. They are laid open, as if for inspec- tion, and among them lies an open ledger. Sibyl has no experience which can teach her the exact naturo of these papers, but she knows instinctively that they must have some relation to commerce. Stephen Trenchard's face is black as thunder. His left hand lies on that open ledger ; with the right he points to a column of figures, running his square forefinger down the column with a vicious dig of the nail here and there, as much as to say, " Look at that, sir, and at that ! " and " What do you say to that ? " The stranger stands at Mr. Trenchard's elbow. He is a foreigner — an Oriental — Sibyl thinks, though his plain and fault- less clothes are perfectly English. He has a dark olive skin, eyes black as night, an aquiline nose, a narrow oval face, and silky blue-black hair. He is something less than the middle height, stout, and sleek. His lips move softly, and his plump yellow hand seems to expostulate as Stephen Trenchard scowls at the figures. " Who can he be ? " wonders Sibyl, abandoning all intention of seeing her uncle to-night. " Some Indian friend of uncle Stephen's, I suppose. But what can all those papers mean, and why does uncle Stephen look so angry ? He looked just like that when he spoke of Philip Secretan." She goes round to the front of the house. The hall door is open, and the footman is airing himself on the threshold, listen- ing to the nightingales. " Why wasn't the carriage sent for me ? " asks SibyL •' Indeed, ma'am, I don't know. Was it ordered ? " 104 Dead Men's Shoes. " I suppose so. Mr. Trenchard said he would send it" " I'm afraid master must have forgotten, ma'am. I didn't take no message to the coachman. Perhaps it was the gentleman coming to see him that put it out of his mind." " I suppose so. Who is the gentleman ? Do you know ? " " No, ma'am, there was no name given. The gentleman came after dinner, about nine o'clock. He came from London, I believe. The London train hadn't been long in when he came, and he's been with Mr. Trenchard ever since." " Is he going to stay here to-night ? " " I don't know, ma'am. There's been nothing said, but Mr* Skinner had the Blue Room got ready in case it should be wanted, as a premonitory measure." Sibyl yawns languidly, and goes upstairs to her own room, puzzled, but not seriously disturbed. This stranger has come on some business errand evidently. She knows that her uncle'a temper is not particularly placid, and concludes that he has been irritated by some vexation of a commercial character. Yet she cannot understand how this can be, since she has been taught to believe that Mr. Trenchard has retired from business. Curiosity would impel her to await the stranger's departure in the drawing-room, or to discover whether he is to remain for the night ; but she does not care to encounter her uncle in his present temper, and he would doubtless be offended by anything that «ould look like espionage. It is nearly midnight when 6he goes to Ip-"' ^m. Her windows open on the garden, and are above those c ^e study. She seats herself by an open window, and looks out into the cool, shadowy garden. Presently she hears a voice raised in anger, her uncle's voice, she knows ; but the stranger's tones never reach her ear. " His voice is like his looks, I dare say," she thinks, " soft, and silky, and cunning. I shouldn't think he was the kind of man uncle Trenchard woukl trust." She wastes more than an hour in undressing, brushing her hair, putting away her finery. The clocks strike one, but those lighted windows still shine upon the dark turf below. " What a long interview ! " she thinks. " This Indian gentle- man must surely be going to stay all night. He would never leave the house at such an hoia - as this." She falls asleep at last, worn out by the fatigues of the day, but at the last moment hears that angry voice of her uncle's sud • denly raised in a gust of passion. She wakes next morniug with an uneasy sense of something having gone wrong ; but it is some moments before that 6cene in the room beneath flashes back upon her. " Who can that man be?" she asks hersolf again, "and why- was undo Trenchard so angry ? Some Indian merchant, perhaps, A Mystrrioua Visitor. 105 to whom he lias lent money. The loss of a few thousands ought not to make him so angry. It must be a like a drop in the ocean compared with his immense wealth. But then I know he is fond of money, and that it pains liiin to part even with a ten-pound note." She dresses, and goes down to the dining room, looking as fresh as the newly opened roses, to which the nightingale sings at sun- down. Mr. Trenchnrd is in his accustomed seat, the big crimson morocco arm-chair drawn into the bay-window. The sashes are up, and the sweet morning air comes in across the flower-beds. Eight o'clock is the hour for breakfast, winter and summer, at Lancaster Lodge, and unpunctuality is little less than a crime in the eyes of Stephen Trenchard, who is usually dressed in his blue frock coat and nankeen waistcoat and trousers by six, and prowling about the grounds to the discomfiture of his gar- deners. He is a shade paler than usual, and has purple shadows under his eyes. His hand shakes a little, Sibyl thinks, as he turns the leaves of the Manchester daily, which he reads eveiy morning before breakfast. The face he turns to her as she bends over him to administer her morning kiss has an old and wan look in the sunshine. Can it be that Mrs. Stormont is light, and that Stephen Trenchard is breaking up ? There are no early prayers at Lancaster Lodge. Mr. Trenchard has his ideas upon religion, and his own particular creed by which he is to stand or fall, no doubt ; but whatever these are, he keeps them strictly to himself. He never goes to church, a neglect of duty which in a person of Mr. Trenchard's consequence Redcastle regards as an eccentricity, but which would make a social outlaw of a small butcher or baker. He has no objection to Sibyl's attendance at the minster, where she exhibits the latest fashions ®n Sunday mornings. He is no declared infidel. He simply ignores religion, as a thing he has been able to dispense with all ins life. Sibyl takes her place before the silver urn, and begins the business of tea-making. Mr. Trenchard drinks green tea un- mixed w»th black, and is very particular about the preparation of the beverago. Marion has never succeeded in pleasing him in this matter. Sicyl has never failed. " You are looking so tired this morning, dear uncle 1" she says, in her soft winning voice. M You were up very late last night, were you not ? " " How do you know that ? You wei i in bed, I suppose ? " " Not till twelve o'clock. I stayed rathev late at the Stormonts, thinking you would send the carriage for me." " The carriage ? ah, to be sure. I forgot." " It didn't matter in the least I walked home. That horcl 103 Dead Men's Shoes. Fred brought me. Such a lovely night, the walk would have been delightful with any one else." " Ah, you don't like young Stonnont ? " says Mr. Trenchard, looking sharply at her. " I'm glad of it, child. He's a genteel pauper at best. You must marry some one better than that." Sibyl pales at the mention of marriage. " I don't mean to marry at all, uncle. I'm much happier as I am, with you." " Stuff and nonsense, my dear ! Marriage is a woman's mission, and with your pretty face you are sure to get a rich husband." " You wouldn't have me marry for money, uncle Trenchard I " cries Sibyl, with a horrified look. Here is this old man, rolling in wealth, and yet counselling a mercenary marriage. " I wouldn't have you maiTy without money. You are no girl to play at love in a cottage. That's a game you'd soon grow tired of." Sibyl starts as if she had been stung. "Don't talk of marriage, uncle Trenchard. The subject is hateful to me. There is no one in Eedcastle that I care for, or am ever likely to care for." " I am sony to near it," replies Mr. Trenchard, with a moody look, as he resumes his newspaper. Stephen Trenchard is not a man who riots in the good things of this life. His breakfast consists of a cup of green tea and a little bit of dry toast. His other meals are of the simplest. But there Is considerable epicureanism in his simplicity, and he resented a bad dinner as a personal injury. " I expected to find a visitor here this morning," Sibyl says presently, too curious to be silent on the subject of that nocturnal interview in Mr. Trenchard's study. M Indeed ! Have you invited any one ? " "I should not take such a liberty without your permission — unless it were Marion or Jenny. I thought the gentleman who was with you last night would stay ." Her uncle looks at her with a darker frown than she has ever provoked before. "The gentleman came on business, and left as soon as his business was concluded," replies Mr. Trenchard, in chilling tones. " The less you trouble yourself about my affairs, Sibyl, the better for our mutual happiness." " I only wondered " falters Sibyl. " Don't wonder. It's a must unprofitable occupation of the mind. Who told you there was any one with me last night ? " u I saw him." " Saw him ? How ? " u The night was so lovely, that I walked round the garden A Mysterious Visitor. 107 after Fred Stormont left me at the gate, and I was coming in at your study door, seeing your lamp burning, when I saw that you v.- ere not alone." "The gentleman you saw is a Calcutta merchant, an old acquaintance, who wanted my advice in a critical turn of his ajl'airs. And now you know all that there is to be known, and may leave off wondering." Mr. Trenchard sips his tea and nibbles his dry toast in silence, and presently disappears altogether behind the county paper. Sibyl is disappointed. She expected to be questioned about yesterday, to be asked if she had made any conquests, to be able to describe Sir Wilford Cardonnel's obvious subjugation, and the effect which it produced on the Stormonts, — Rose's envious looks, Violet's constrained civility, Fred's anguish of mind as he curveted on the unmanageable gray. Finding her uncle indisposed for conversation, Sibyl leaves the dining-room as soon as deoency permits, and flits away to her favourite retreat — the garden. Life winch is all a summer holi- day is pleasant enough, doubtless ; but oh, how monotonous ! and, in Sibyl's case, how lonely ! This morning, exhausted with yesterday's excitement, she throws herself back in her low wicker chair wearily, and sighs two or three times in a quarter of an hour without knowing why, — sighs for the days that are gone — for poverty and Alexis, perhaps, though she would hardly confess as much. The roses glorify the garden, the trees cast their deep cool shadows on the sunny grass ; the house yonder, with all its windows shining in the sun, its Venetians, its flower-boxes, its prosperous air, as of a habitation for which wealth has done its uttermost, — all these things remind her that her lot has fallen in a pleasant place. Yet she yearns for something more. How soon will it come ? How soon will the heritage for which she awaits be hers ? Mrs. Stormont has noticed a change in Stephen Trenchard, and that change has been very obvious to Sibyl's eyes this morning. She struggles against sordid, mercenary thoughts, but they are too strong for her. She cannot help speculating about the future which seems drawing nearer, that future which is to re-unite her to Alexis — to open the door of a new glad world, to release her from this dull bondage in the narrow paths of provincial pretence and respectability. She knows that she is her uncle's favourite niece. Marion is suffered to come and go, but is rarely favoured with so much as a civil word or a kindly glance from Mr. Trenchard. Jenny ho openly abominates. Her noisy bouncing waj-s distress him beyond measure, and she is rarely admitted to his presence. Sibyl therefore concludes that — although Mr. Trenchard, out oi 108 Dead Men's Shoes. kindly feeling 1 , may leave a few thousands to Marion and Jenny, just enough to secure them a competence— the bulk of his fortune will be hers. That vast wealth which has made Red- castle bow down before him will be hers ; and Redcastle, which already fawns upon her — honouring her prospective riches — will fall prostrate and worship her. " Poor uncle Trenchard," she thinks, compassionately. " What is the good of money to the old ? His prosperity comes at the wrong end of life. What can his wealth give him ? A fine house, where he lives alone, a splendid solitude. Horses which he rarely uses. For all the personal gratification he has out of his wealth he would be as well off with six hundred a year. But he has the homage of Redcastle, which would not be e.iven to a man of limited income, even though he devoted half his revenue to acts of charity." Sibyl sees the end of her bondage coming near, and thinks of Alexis with tender longing for reunion. Will he come back to her? Will he forgive her? Yes, a thousand tipies yes. He loves her too well to be obdurate. Whatever anger he may have felt at her abandonment of him will melt away before her smiles. It is a trial to be so ignorant of his fate, not to know where he is or what he is doing, whether fortune has been kind or cruel to him. Great heaven ! if he should be dead ! If the fight should have been too hard, and he fallen ! Her heart grows cold at the mere thought that such a thing is possible. She shudders, clasps her hands over her eyes as if to shut out the horrid spectacle. If he were dead ; hope's airy palace built on a fatal quicksand ; and the future she has looked forward to a future never to be realized ! No, she will not think of anything so hideous. Fate must be kind to true love, and she has loved her husband truly, even when deserting him to secure fortune. She remembers how often she has heard him say that it is easy for a single man to fight the battle of life, that alone he could have struggled on somehow, could have obtained employment, could have roamed the world till he found just the one spot where he could prosper. He has never said it reproach- fully. He was too fond of her for that. Rut he has said it ; and the memory of that speech is a consoling thought to Sibyl just now. " He has emigrated, I dare say," she thinks. " He had a longing to try his luck in Australia. He is on the other side of the world, most likely, and when I am free to call him back to me, I shall have to wait ever so long before he can come." She is aroused from this reverie, from tho deepest deep of thought, by the mellifluous soprano of Mas. Stormont, raised A Mysterious Visitor. 109 inquiringly — that society voice in which a comedy actress makes some trivial inquiry at the wing before she appears on the stage. " In the garden ? " screams Mrs. Stormont. " Dear child 1 I will find her." Mrs. Stormont emerges from the shrubbery, rustling in a flounced cambric morning dress. She wears a black lace shawl, her last summer's bonnet " done up" inexpensively by'ber maid, and in honest truth has been " up town" to pay her tradesmen's weekly accounts. The Stormonts, though near, are good pay. " Old Mother Stormont will haggle about the bone in a bit of brisket, and she will worry about hdr Sunday sirloin," says Mr. Heffer, the butcher, " but she do pay uncommon reglar, I will say that for the old gal." Familiarity, induced by Mrs. Stormont's frequent personal visits of complaint or inspection at Mr. Heifer's shop, has bred contempt in that citizen's mind. The customers he respects are those who never cross his threshold or weigh his meat. Mr. Stormont is followed by a tall stranger in gray, who looks about him admiringly, and whom Sibyl hardly recognises at the first glance. " Charming place — kept so well, too — garden much neater than my fellows keep the How. How-d'ye-do, Miss Faunthorpe ? Hope you weren't tired by the races yesterday." Sibyl blushes becomingly, startled by this sudden appearance of the mighty Sir Wilford Cardonnel— startled out of all sad thoughts, and gratified by this proof of her power. "I met this tiresome Sir Wilford in the market-place, Sibyl," says Mrs. Stormont with juvenile playfulness — which sits upon her portly middle age about as becomingly as the airy gauze bonnet on her pepper-and-salt chignon, — " and he insisted upon my bringing him to call on you. I hope you are not shocked with us for invading you at such a barbarous hour." Sibyl assures Mrs. Stormont that the hour is a matter of no importance. " You are just as glad to see us as if we had come in proper visiting hours," exclaims the lady. " What a dear candid child she is ! I don't know what you did with my poor Fred las* night, Sibyl, but you sent him home quite low-spirited." This is said with meaning, and Sir Wilford looks at the speaker curiously. n " Poor Fred," he cries in his loud voice, " I think it must have been the bumping he got on that bony gray that made him low- spirited." " I'm afraid I said good night rather abruptly," says Sibyl, " which was very ungrateful of me after his kindness in seeing me home. But I was vexed with him for not appreciating out nightingales." $10 Dead Men's Shoes. " Not appreciate the nightingales ! Ho^. ^td ! M exclaims Mrs. Stormont. " Fred has such an ear for music." " Shouldn't have thought it from his trotting," remarks the candid Sir Wilford. " Man with a good ear always keeps time in the saddle. So you've nightingales here, Miss Faunthorpe ? Shouldn't have thought it, so near the town. We've no end of 'em at the How. Jug-jug-jug from sundown till midnight. I should like to show you our gardens at the How, by the by. Mrs. Stormont might drive you over some day." Mrs. Stormont, divided between her desire to be intimate with the best of the county families, and her maternal solicitude for Fred, whose interests are evidently in peril, can only smi!e blandly and assentingly. To drive over to the How in a friendly way is to take the highest rank in Redcastle society. Mrs Groshen will feel absolutely crushed when she is told of such a visit. And after all, poor Fred's courtship hangs on hand dis- mally, and may never come to anything. Sibyl, although courted by the whole family, has given no token of preference for the eldest hope. Sibyl with Stephen Trenchard's fortune, and exalt' d into Lady Cardonnel, would be a splendid person to know. The dear girls, Rose and Violet, would be asked to stay at the How, no doubt ; might make splendid matches, marry into the coun'.y. The conversation meanders on in the same elevated strain for half an hour while Sibyl and her visitors walk round the garden, Sir Wilford admiring everything " monstrously," to use his own phrase, and grumbling a good deal about those " fellows " of his at the How. " I never saw such flower-beds," he says ; " there's not a dead leaf among 'em." " My uncle is very particular about the garden," says Sibyl. " That reminds me that I must ask to be introduced to your oncle." " I dare say he is in his study," replies Sibyl. " I'll run and see." She has an idea that it would hardly do to takfe Sir Wilford to her uncle without some note of preparation, Mr. Trenchard being somewhat out of sorts to-day. She is saved the trouble of going to the study, however, for Stephen Trenchard is seen coming across the lawn in his Panama hat, and they all three go to meet him. He receives Mrs. Stor- rifont and Sir Wilford graciously, and, the luncheon bell ringing while he is conversing with them, insists upon their staying to luncheon. So they all go together to the dining-room, Mrs. Stor- mont protesting that her absence will be the cause of consterna- tion at home. Sibyl is fluttered and a little pleased at the idea of having made such an important conquest, — a useless triumph, of course, for a. womau in her position, ba*, one that flatters womanly vanity. The Wanderer's Return. Ill CHAPTER XVII. THE WANDERER'S RETURN. TnE great city lies seething like some unholy caldron under the biazing August sun, when a lonely wayfarer returns to it after two years' exile on the other side of the world. Rank and fashion, middle-class wealth, professional respectability, have deserted the airy western squares and streets for English watering-places, Welsh mountains, Scottish moors, Irish lakes, or broiling Con- tinental esplanades, spas, conversation-houses, Rhine steamers, and so on ; but from this eastern end of the city there is no such exodus ; here life holds on patiently through the dog days, here labour knows no respite, and the grinding of the universal mill slackens not. Alexis Secretan, just disembarked from the famous clipper ship Oronolco, surveys the dingy street, the driving crowd, with wonder, not unmingled with loathing. What a weary city it seems to this man, who walked its stony ways two years ago a seeker for bread, and for the most part found only the natural product of the soil — a stone ! He has found fortune kinder at the antipodes, man more friendly, Nature more liberal of her smiles, less shut out and constrained by brick and mortar. He has achieved no sudden prosperity, he has worked hard and honestly, and has done well ; so well as to be able to come back to this sophisticated, unfriendly city, whither fate draws him as a magnet. It is not possible for a man to feel more lonely than this re- turning wayfarer. In all the vast city which spreads itself about and around him there lives only one person from whom he can hope for a friendly smile of welcome. His humble friend Dick Plowden is the only being to whom he can go with any certainty of not being considered a bore and an intruder. His old brother officera — the companions of his brief day of prosperity, — alas ! he wore out the friendship of those when he sank to tuat lowest grade in the animal creation — the borrowing animal. Dear old Dick ! honest, friendly Dick, to whom he has long since repaid that ten-pound note borrowed for the false wife who deserted him — it is to Dick he goes naturally to-day, as brother goes to brother. It is to Dick's recommendation to Messrs. Keel and Skrew he owes the honourable independence of the last two years. But for Dick's influence he would never have got tlwit itair start in a new world wliich has enabled him to keep his head IIS Dead Men's Shoes. above water, and do Messrs. Keel and Skrew honourable service on the other side of the globe. He can afford to take a hansom, and drive to the Brompton Road as fast as a broken-down thorough-bred can take him. Dear old Dick is in the little back parlour hard at work, as on that snowy day when desperation guided Alexis to that last resource of the desperate — the humble friend of better days. But Dick is not occupied to-day in the mechanical drudgery of map- painting ; he is writing a book, a little book on astronomy, for the use of schools, — that elementary geography of his having been a success. He starts up at sight of Alexis, who has pushed by the maid- of-all-work and entered unannounced. The two men greet each other heartily. " Captain Secretan ! What a delightful surprise ! and looking so well too, so handsome, just like my original captain, who took mother's first floor." " Dear old Dick ! " " But I did not expect you home for ever so long. I thought you were going to stop at Sidney, working for the firm until you had made your fortune." " Fortune is all very well, Dick — and the firm is all very well. They have been liberal employers, and I have worked honestly for them. But the soul of man needs something more than fifteen per cent, commission upon all his dealings. There was an emptiness in my heart, Dick, out yonder — a cavity that needed filling somehow, — so I took the first opportunity to slip across to the old world, though God knows there's little chance of filling the vacuum here. However, I shall only stop a month or so, and then go back again. The firm has been very kind about the matter. I told them my health was failing, and that the voyage home was my only hope of getting strong again, so they gave me a free passage both ways, and I'm to hold counsel with them about the opening of a new branch of the business out yonder." " And were you really ill ? " asks Richard Plowden, eym pathetically. " What I told the firm was not much more than the truth, old fellow. When heart-sickness sets in, bodily sickness is pretty sure to follow. My nights were growing sleepless, full of bad thoughts. Well, Dick, you can guess my first question. Any news — of her V " Richard Plowden shakes his head despondingly. " I am the last to hear of her," he says, — " I who live as much out of the world as if I were a hermit in a cave." " She might have come to you to inquire about my fate, know- ing you were the only friend adversity had left me." The tVahderer's UetuYn. 113 ,! She has never come." " Nor written ? " "Not a line. Forgive me if I wound you, Captain Secre- tan " " C;il I me Alex, Dick, or we shall quarrel." " Forgive me if I seem to speak hardly of her, but upon my honour, Alex, it seems to me that you have nothing to do but to forget her. She deserted you when you had the most need of her jove, when, if she had been a true woman, she would have clung to you most fondly." "Granted, Dick. She was selfish, base, cowardly. We had sunk together into the slough of despond, and she contrived to scramble out of it and leave me in the mire. She was clever enough to make use of me to accomplish her escape, sent me out among hard-hearted humanity to borrow, beg, or steal the means by which she meant to separate herself from my fallen fortunes. Do you tlu'nk I came across the world to seek for her? No, Dick, I am not such a fool. I have been cheated once. I shall never be her dupe again. Do you think I could ever trust her any more ? — that if fortune smiled upon us, and she pre- tonded to love me, I could feel any confidence in her truth, any security in her affection? The void in my heart is to be filled, but not by her. I came back to the old world to look for my child, — the child that was to be born to me when my cruel wife left me." " You do not even know that the child survived its birth ? " " What a Job's comforter you are, Dick ! I know nothing except that I am going to hunt for the mother in order that I may find the child." " The law would give the custody &£ zc young a child to the mother." " I snap my fingers at the law. Tirih ig great and shall prevail. So base a wife must be an unworthy mother. I will find her price for the child. She will sell that as she sold me — for a mess of pottage. When I left England I was desperate — mad, perhaps, or I should not have left the land that held my child. My loneliness in that strange world yonder awakened a father's feelings, I found out how dreary a prospect life is to a man who stands alone — a blank and barren desert, with no green oasis — no distent city to which he may direct his steps — a lonely pilgrimage leading nowhere." " How shall you commence your search ? " " I have thought of that question many a time on board tho Oronoko. There is little choice of plan left open to me. You remember that before Messrs. Keel and Skrew took me into their employment, T went to Redcastle, the place my wife came from when she came to Loauon as Mtb. liazletun's governess. I saw 114 Dead Men's Shoes. Sibyl's younger sister, made my inquiries, and found that Sibyl had not been heard of at Redcastle. She had not gone straight Lome to her uncle, the parish doctor, as I had supposed it pro- bable she would, and flung herself and her troubles upon his shoulders. No, she was too artful for that. She had soma deeper game in view — some rich relative from whom she had expectations, as I gathered dimly from her letter. I could hn 110 Dead Metis Shaea. himself, and then he adds aloud. " If one of you simpletons will take the trouble to call Jane Dimond, she will be able to tell you that I'm a gentleman, and that I have not come after the tea- spoons or the umbrellas. I'll wait in the street for her. You "•an tell her that a gentleman from Australia wants a few words with her." Cook and footman whisper doubtfully for half a minute, and then shut the door upon Mr. Secretan, leaving him to infer their acquiescence with his request. He paces the pavement for five minutes or so, and then the good-natured Jane Dimond comes down the 6teps, while cook and footman stand in the doorway to watch the proceedings. They see Jane gesticulate as in extreme surprise at sight of Alexis, and then the two walk a little further off, quite out of earshot, to the aggravation of Jane's fellow-servants, whose curiosity is by this time raised to the highest pitch. " I shouldn't wonder if he was some haristocratic arf -brother of ers," says cook, who is a devoted student of ' Reynolds's Mysteries of London.' " Life is full of family secrets and such like." "Lor, sir," says Jane Dimond, when she has recovered the shock of surprise ; " I thought you was dead and gone." " Did you, Jane. Why?"" " Because I fancied if you was in the land of the livin' you wouldn't have turned a deaf ear to that advertisement." " What advertisement ? " " The advertisement as Miss Faunthorpe — I beg pardon, Mrs. ., n " Never mind the name, girl. Tell me all about the advertise- ment." Jane explains herself in a roundabout way, but in due course Alexis knows all that Jane knows, except his wife's present abode. That the girl refuses to tell even to him. " She told me to keep it a secret, and I'm not going to tell no ©ne without her permission," says Jane resolutely. This resolve the husband combats, but in vain. " I'll arst her leaf to tell you, and when I've got her leaf I'll tell you," answers Jane, " Wild horses wouldn't move me f rum that." " Telegraph to her then directly," cries Alexis, taking out a handful of silver. " Come with me to the nearest telegraph office, and I'll write the message for you. You can put in the address yourself." " No, I won't send her no telegrafts, lest I should get her into trouble with her friends. I'll write to her." " Inexorable girl I Is she in the country ? " " Yes." At Arm" 1 )} Length. 119 u And the country post is gone ever so long. I shall have to wait twenty-four hours before you can get her answer." " I can't help that," says Jane, with an inflexible air. "She's trusted me, and I'll do my dooty by her. As you've stayed away so long it can't hurt you to stay a little longer." " Stayed away so long, cruel girl ! Don't you know that it was she who left me ? " " Whatever she did, I make no doubt she did it for the best," answers Jane, true to the fair young governess whose donations of lace and ribbon, soiled gloves, darned stockings, and friendly smiles, had won her heart years ago. " S*» here, Jane," says Alexis, unfolding a five-pound note. M Here's something to buy you a silk gown for Sundays. Now don't you think that you could contrive to tell me the address at once ? You know my wife wishes to see me. The advertisement says that." " No, it don't," answers Jane, taking a tiny slip of paper out of her shabby old portemonnaie. "The advertisement says nothing of the kind." She reads as follows : — " S. S. to Alexis. You are not forgotten. In all I do I am faithful to your interests. I look forward to our reunion. Wait and hope, as I do. Write and tell me where you are, and what you are doing. — Address, S. S., Post Office, Hale Street, Pimlico." " There, you see," exclaims Jane, triumphant. " There's not a word about wanting to see you. She only wants to hear from you." " Heartless woman ! " mutters Alexia. " Yet I'm glad she was just a little anxious to know my fate. I'll go to a coffee-house, and write to her, and bring the letter to you to post. There's the silk gown for you all the same, Jane, to show that I bear no malice." " Oh, sir ! " cries the housemaid, overcome by this generosity, "Icouldn'think " " You needn't think about it. You've only to take the money and buy your gown. I'll go and write my letter." He goes to the nearest coffee-house and writes to Sibyl. There is a touch of bitterness in the composition, though his wounded heart "is full of love for her all the time. Neither exile nor the sense of her unkindness have been strong enough to exclude her from his heart He may pretend to himself and to his friend Dick Plowden that he has ceased to love his wife, that he seeks his child alone ; but the mere fact that she has sought to obtain tidings of him is enough to melt his heart, to change pride and anger to love and pardon. " Whatever the exalted sphere in which you now move," he writes, " you may be glad to know that your desertion has not • 120 Dead Men's Shoes. quite been the death of me. I have contrived to live, somehow, though indignation against your cruelty has lacerated my heart, and love for the wife who deserted me has proved an incurable disease. I have not starved or been driven to hang myself, and I have come back from the other side of the world because I have a foolish hankering to know the fate of the woman who swore at the altar to love, honour, and obey me, and kept her vow by abandoning me in my darkest hour of need. Where are you, Sibyl ? and with whom ? What has been your reward for desert- ing me? Has your scheme of life been a wise one ? Have your hopes prospered ? " Write and answer all these questions freely and fully if you recognise the tie which, in the sight of God and man, makes ue two one. Tell me about our child, the infant I have never seen, yet whose baby face has haunted my dreams. You have given your babe to the care of strangers, perhaps, but I conclude you have watched over its welfare. " Tell me further if there are in your life — prosperous as it may be — some few weaker moments when your heart yearns for reunion with the husband you once loved. But no, love, I will show you an easier way« Do not stop to answer one of these questions. " Write, Sibyl, from your heart to mine. Tell me in three words to come to you, and I will come. I will come, dear, and all the past, all that you have made me suffer, shall be forgotten and forgiven in the rapture of our reunion. — Yours for ever, if you will have it so, — Alexis." He is swayed to and fro by diverse passions as he writes this letter, now all bitterness, now fond unreasoning love. He has not the courage to read over his effusion, but seals and addresses it hastily, and hurries back to Lowther Street. There is no diffi- culty about admittance this time. Jane Dimond opens the door, receives the letter, and promises to post it that evening. It is too late for any of the provincial mails, but it is something Vo be assured that there shall be no needless delay. " I shall call for the answer the day after to-morrow, in the evening. You ought to have it by that time," says Alexis, and it seems to him that the interval will be an unendurable space of time. He thinks about that advertisement as he goes back to the Brompton Road. Sibyl must have cared for him a little, despite her heartless abandonment of him, or she would not have felt this anxiety to be informed of his fate. She would not have committed herself by an act likely to entangle her fate with his. Once having released herself from him she would have held her- self altogether aloof — she would have stretched no friendly hand across (he gulf if she had not loved him. Her heart was eliil liia, he tells himself, when she wade that appeal to At Arm's Length. 121 him. Whatever her scheme of life — whatever game she was playing — her heart was true to him. Comforted by this assurance he is inclined to be wondrously indulgent, to forgive much, should she but prove herself worthy k> be forgiven. He tries to occupy himself with hard-headed business during that weary interval in which he waits for Sibyl's reply. He goes down to Messrs. Keel and Skrew's office, and enters upon the discussion of certain extensions and improvements in the Australian branch of the business, improvements which his ex- perience of the colony has suggested to him. He is well received, and his views approved by Mr. Keel, the senior partner — a gen- tleman with large ideas, a palatial villa on Clapham Common, vineries, pineries, succession houses, and a stable which is a perennial source of profit to the horse dealers and the veterinary surgeon, and a well-spring of heart-burning and annoyance to its proprietor. Mr. Keel is a gentleman who talks of thousands as meaner people talk of sixpences, and is rumoured to have started in life thirty years ago as a stevedore, and to have founded his fortunes upon the ill-gotten gains supposed to be inseparable from that function. Mr. Keel is pleased with Mr. Secretan's suggestions. " You're about the only fellow I ever sent out who seems to understand the Australian trade," he says approvingly, " and I shall push you, young man, mark my words, I shall push you." Cheered by this assurance, Alexis thinks what a nice thing it will be for him to go back to Sidney with his wife and child for his companions, if Sibyl will but show herself true metal after all, and if his child lives. Two formidable " ifs." He builds a delightful castle in the air, and looks so well, fed upon this nutriment of hope, that Samuel Plowden scrutinizes him with a serio-comic expression when he returns to the outer office after his interview with Mr. Keel. " Why, I thought you came home on sick leave, youngster," Rays the kindly clerk. " By Jupiter, I never saw anyone looking better." " All the effect of the voyage, Mr. Plowden, I assure you. I was a shadow when I went on boaid at Sidney." The second day after Mr. Secretan's interview with Jane Dimond lias come, and in the evening Alexis knocks at the fami'iar door in Lowther Street, with a heart that seems to beat louder than tU knocker. Jane Dimond appears promptly, and divining his impatience, fives him ihe expected letter without a word. He wrings her hand in speechless gratitude, as if the letter were a boon from oer J bids her a brief good night, and eoes away with his prize. 122 Dead Men's Shoes, He would rather read the letter in the street, tmwatched, than open it in Mrs. Hazleton's hall, under the housemaid's friendly eyes. Yes, it is from Sibyl, in the hand he knows so well. The last letter he received from her was that cruel renunciation, that most heartless farewell— the loosening, nay, the severing of every link between them. She writes to him again. There is com- munion between them once more. The thought thrills him. She begins well at all events : — " Dearest — dearest — dearest ! " There is love's foolish rapture in a gush of pen and ink. " Thank God for your dear letter, though it is not altogether kind. Still it promises forgiveness for my wrong-doing, and that is much. Thank God for the knowledge that you are living and well. My heart grew very heavy when that advertisement of mine remained unanswered. " You ask me if my scheme of life has realized what I counted upon, if my hopes have prospered. I can say yes to both those questions. I am on the road to high fortune, fortune which you and I will share in happy days to come if you are as true to me as I am to you, though seeming estranged. In a very little while, dear, my most anxious hopes will be realized. The realization is so near that it would be worse than folly to sacrifica those hopes now, as I must sacrifice them if I were to obey p' 1 , and say come to me. " I long to see you, my heart aches, my soul sickens at the thought that we must wait for the hour or! reunion. But I am not so weak a slave to impulse as to abandon my prize, just as it is almost won. We must wait, dearest. I ask from you patience and trust. I give you my daily prayers, my nightly dreams. There is no wrong-doing in my scheme of life. I injure no one, least of all do I wrong you. I only forego the happiness of sharing your life for a little while in order to make it brighter afterwards. "Write to me, dear husband, from time to time, and let mo write to you, but let our correspondence pass through the hands of that good girl, Jane Dimond. I know j r our impulsive nature, and I cannot trust you with my address, for fear you should come here and destroy all my plans. 1 am known in my present circle only as Miss Faunthorpe. All my hopes would be ship- wrecked if I stood confessed as Mrs. Secretan. Yet, believe me, there is no shadow of wrong to you in this concealment. It ia for our mutual welfare. You ask me about our child, Alexis. Our child, our son, is ttife and well. I dare tell you no more lhan that. " Ever, through all changes and dangers, your true and loving wife, SisyW A Dangerous TriumpTi. 122 " Is she mad ?" Alexis asks himself, indignantly, after reading this letter. "Does she think I am to be put off with loving words and assurances of constancy ? Does she suppose that she can keep me at a distance by concealing her address and writing to me under cover to a housemaid ? Wherever she may have hidden herself, my business shall be to find her, and my first visit shall be to Redcastle. I'll go straight to her uncle, the doctor, and unearth this mystery." CHAPTER XIX A DANGEROUS TRIUMPH. THAT visit of Sir Wilford Cardonnel's to Lancaster Lodge ?8 followed in about ten days by a second morning call, the baronet being supported on this occasion by his elder sister, a rather strong-minded young woman, who rejoices in the pastoral name of Phoebe. " My sisters are dying to know you,'* says Sir Wilford, with a gU6h of enthusiasm, after the necessary introductions have been gone through in a slipshod way, Sir Wilford being careless of the rules and ceremonies of polite life. Miss Cardonnel's countenance does not support her brother's statement by any gleam of light from the spirit within. She is looking round the handsome — upholsterer's — drawing-room with a critical air, taking stock of the big Japanese vases, so like those in the window of the chief grocer at Krainpston, the crimson satin curtains, and sofas, half an acre or so of looking-glass, the black boys in front of the console table, holding up golden baskets of emptiness in their ebony arms. A room so different from the spacious saloon at the How, with its faded curtains and fine old pictures, its tulipwood coffee-tables and threadbare carpets, its crystal chandeliers, and cabinets of old English china, collected by the grandmothers and great-grandmothers of the reigning family. " What a pity these commercial people have everything so fine ind so new ! " thinks Miss Cardonnel. " If they didn't burst out into all this splendour one might forget they were parvenus. The girl is pretty, I suppose, or what most people call pretty. Features too sharply cut for my taste." Miss Cardonnel's features are of the blunt order, and her face inclines to that typo of beauty which the vulgar mind classifies &8 " puddingy." They have found Sibyl in the drawing-room, looking her very 124 Dead Men's Shoe*. prettiest in white muslin, much adorned with Valenciennes, straw- coloured bows dotted about here and there among the flouncinjrs and ruchings, and a broad straw-coloured sash tied with that artistic carelessness which is one of Sibyl's gifts. She has a running account now at Carmichael's, the leading draper of fied« castle, and orders what she likes. The account has been running for the past twelve months, and indulgent as her millionaire uncle is, Sibyl rather dreads the hour when the sum-total of this account shall be brought under his notice. But in a dull provincial town what excitement can a pretty girl have except a little extravagance in the way of dross ? Even matrons whose beauty is a matter of tradition are apt to plunge into a vortex of millinery for want of any other whirlpool wherein to rotate. Stephen Trenchard receives his guests with a marked gracious- ness, accepts Sir Wilford's friendly advances greedily, and tries to make himself agreeable to MissGirdonnel, who is rather more stony and unimpressionable than she ought to be if she comes prepared to extend the hand of friendship. " I am very glad for my niece to make pleasant — indeed dis- tinguished acquaintance,"' says Mr. Trenchard. " People in Eedcastle have been very kind, Mrs. Stormont especially, quite motherly in her goodness to Sibyl. But I am better pleased for her to know county people, there is a — a difference." "Yes, I suppose you find it so," replies Miss Cardonnel coolly, as if she felt that she belonged to another order of bipeds. " Mrs. Stormont is nice, of course," with seraphic patronage, " veiy good family, I believe, the Stormonts," — this dubiously, as much as to say, " so they tell me, poor creatures, but I haven't seen the particulars in Burke." Sir Wilford has come to ask when Mr. Trenchard is going to drive Miss Faunthorpe over to the How. " If you want to see our roses, you know, you must not lose any time, you know," he adds, emphatically, — " must they, Phoebe ? " " The roses are nearly over now, Wilford," replies Miss Car- donnel, which remark is not exactly a warm invitation. " Oh, stuff 1 why, you were saying that the Dijons were just in their glory tliis very morning, while we were waiting for the phaeton. \v hen will you come, Miss Faunthorpe ? To-morrow —Wednesday — Thursday ? " " We dine at the Friary on Wednesday, Wilford." " Ah, to be sure. To-morrow, then ? " Sibyl looks embarrassed. This marked attention from the head of a county family kindles no flush of gratified vanity on her cheek to-day. Sir Wilford's admiration was pleasant enough on the racecourse, a triumph in the sight of all Redca6tle. but the matter is now growing more seiiouq. She begins to tbin& A Dangerous Triumph. 12ft that shehaa really made a conquest, that Sir Wilford is disagree- ably in earnest. " It is like the realization of my childish dream about a rich husband, and all the bells in Redcastle ringing for my wedding," she says to herself, " only it comes too late. I am not sorry that it is so. I have no regret. I made my choice, and shall be proud to stand by it when the time comes. Only it is curious that the childish dream should come true after all." "Will you come to the How to-morrow," Mr. Trench ard?" asks Sir Wilford. " We have some old pictures that you may like to see. There's a Vandyke my father used to think great things of, and our gardens are worth a visit in this weather, though I'm always blowing up those beggars of gardeners. Come early, and we can do the gardens before luncheon, and the pictures after." "My uncle so seldom goes out in the morning," says Sibyl, quickly, as if eager to find an excuse for declining. " But this invitation is too tempting to be refused," interposes Mr. Trenchard. " I have heard wonders of the How. Mis. Stormont is very fond of talking about the How vineries and the How stables." "Then you'll come to-morrow," exclaims Sir Wilford,delightodly. Miss Cardonnel is lost in contemplation of the lights and shadows on the lawn, seen under the Spanish blind, which affords but a limited view of the garden. " If that day will suit Miss Cardonnel's engagements." "Oh, I shall be very happy, I'm sure," replies the young lady thus directly appealed to. After this Miss Cardonnel is tolerably civil, and talks to Sibyl a little, questioning her about her habits and amusements,— whether she rides, is fond of croquet, archery, and so on, with rather a district-visiting air, as of a kindly inquirer letting herself down to the level of the lower classes. " You have a croquet club, or something of that sort in Red- castle," she says, loftily, as if she had never had the institution clearly explained to her. " I rather think my sister and I are honorary members, but we've never been." " Yes, thel-e is a club for croquet and archery. They meet in Sir John Boldero's park." " Very nice for you, I dare say," remarks Miss Cardonnel, as much as to say, " People of your class nrust be provided vith amusements of some kind." They all take a little stroll in the garden presently, and Mise Cardonnel deigns to admire the fine old plane-trees on the lawn. It is a considerable relief to move about in the sunshine, and have flower beds and standard roses to look at and talk about, after that forced conversation in the drawing-room. 12S Dead Mai's ahoed. "I think your ribbon borders are better than ours " remarks Miss Cardonnel. " Those are the stables, I suppose," looking at the slated roofs which appear just above the shrubbery. M Have you many saddle-horses ? " " Only the one my uncle bought for me. The groom rides one of the carriage horses." Miss Cardonnel visibly shudders. " And is your horse nice ? " " She's a darling, very pretty, and very gentle." M Indeed," says Miss Cardonnel. " I hate gentle horses. 1 like a horse to be lively, and give me something to do. It must be rather dull work for you riding alone, if you're not particularly fond of riding." " Oh, but I'm very fond of riding." " You don't hunt, I suppose ? " "No, my uncle would hardly like that, I think." " I dare say not. Wilf ord, your roans must be very tired of waiting, and I have some more calls to make." Mr. Trenchard begs his guests to stay to luncheon. " Thanks ; you are very good, but it would be quite impossible," replies Miss Cardonnel, decisively. " I have so much to do before I go home. Then we are to see you at the How to-morrow. Good-bye — Come, "Wilford, pray." Sir Wilford, who has been gazing at Sibyl, and forgetting the engagements of life and time, follows his sister reluctantly, after a cordial leave-taking. " Well, little woman, I think there's no doubt about your hav- ing made a conquest there," says Stephen Trenchard, directly the Cardonnels have vanished. His tone is at once more cheerful and more affectionate than it has been for some little time, for a period dating from that night on which he received his nameless visitor. " Please don't talk about conquests, uncle." " Nonsense, child ! It's a subject I'm very glad to talk about. I want you to marry well. I should like you to make a brilliant marriage, Sibyl, before I am gone." " Dear uncle, pray don't " u My love, I'm an old man, — tough and wiry enough, it is true, but well on in years. I can't expect to livef or ever. And I should like to see you well placed in life before I say my nunc dimittit" " What does it matter, uncle ? " says Sibyl impatiently. It is so tiresome of this old man — rolling in wealth, and of course intending to bequeath a considerable portion of his riches to her — to harp thus persistently upon the advantages of a good marriage. What could a rich husband avail to one who is to be no richly dowered ? Two fortunes are no better than one if the «ne bo large enough for e\erj earthly dc*im. A Dangerous Triumph. 127 " Believe me, clear uncle, I liave no idea of marrying. I never shall marry. And as for Sir Wilford Cardonnel," adds Sibyl with asperity, "I positively hate him." She has her husband's letter in her bosom — that letter written in the Pimlico coffee-house, and transmitted through Jane I >iinond's toil-stained hands, — and the idea of any other man's admiration is revolting to her. If — if she dared but tell her uncle the truth ! If he had not this rooted hatred of bis dead enemy's race, how different life might be ! " Hate a fine, handsome young man — one of the best men in the county — who has come out of his way to pay you attention ! 1 m ashamed of you, Sibyl," exclaims Stephen Trenchard, and liis bristling brows contract threateningly over his keen dark eyes as lie scrutinizes Sibyl's pale face. " I hope there is no one else in the background," he says, " no scamp whose acquaintance you made in London. Perhaps that's the reason why you stayed away so long after I had asked to see y She would give much to say more — to entreat him once again to be patient and to look forward to their reunion later — to accept her by-and-bye, burdened with the weight of Stephen Trenchard's wealth. But the astute Podmore, having heard the note of leave-taking, waits to show the visitor out, and Alexia is presently escorted to the hall door as if by the warder of a prison. He goes out of that house well-nigh heart-broken, though pride has enabled him to bear himself quietly enough, and even to make light of his disappointment. " 1 loved her so well that it is hard to find her worthless," he tells himself. " Not one spark of generous feeling — all sordid greed of gain. Had I told her of my altered fortunes she would nave come to me. Yes, she might, perhaps, have surrendered Stephen Trenchard's larger wealth. But I thank God I had resolution enough to keep that secret. And so good-bye my dream of domestic life, my hope of an heir to inherit my name. I stand alone henceforth, wifeless with a wife, childless though a child lias been born to me, whose baby face I was not permitted to cee." CHAPTER XXVIL SIR WILFORD HAS HIS OWN WAT. When her husband is gone, and the full significance of that meeting and parting comes home to her, Sibyl feels as if all the hope and glory of her life- were departed with him. She does not repent her decision. Were Alexis to offer her the same choice again she would decide in exactly the same manner. In her limited way of looking at the question there is no possibility of arriving at any other determination. It would seem to hei utterly unreasonable, an act of absolute lunacy to throw away a fortune which is ready to drop into her lap, for which she has waited patiently, living her false life, suppressing the truer instincts of her heart and mind for nearly three years. She wonders that a man of the world can demand such a sacrifice, can cling to so foolish a prejudice as hereditary hatred, and even carry that passion so far as to hate his enemy's money. To her mind the inheritance of Stephen Trenchard's fortune by Alexis Secretau's wife appears a wise and beneficent settlement of an Sir WUford "has Ms own voafy. 179 old debt No doubt her uncle Stephen was right, and that Philip Secretan was a spendthrift who deserved to be disinherited. His father's fortune held over, quadrupled, increased tenfold perhaps, in Stephen's prudent hands, would pass to Alexis, and justice would be done to the dead father through the living son. Sibyl cannot believe that Alexis will be obdurate when the hour of her freedom comes with Stephen Trenchard's death. " Xo, I will not despair," she says to herself, drying her tearful eyes, and looking at her white face in the glass over the low marble chimney-piece. " Cruel as he was to-night, he loves me too well to repudiate me by-and-bye when I am free to return to him. Poor fellow ! How could he reject fortune if it were mine to give him ; he, who has suffered the sharp stings of poverty, and who has to work for his daily bread ? How could he turn his back upon the bright new life that would lie before us if my uncle's money were mine — not life within the four walls of a handsome dungeon, like this house, but life wherever earth is loveliest — in Paris, in Italy, sailing in our yacht on the Mediter- ranean, free as birds, without a care or a thought except how to get the most pleasure out of our youth and wealth and freedom ? " Comforted by reflections like these, Sibyl calms herself, and prepares to continue her part of ministering angel to Stephen Trenchard. Illness makes the old man irritable, and the character is not the easiest in the world to perform. She trembles at the thought of what would happen if her uncle and her husband were to meet — of what might have hap- pened this very evening but for Mr. Trenchard's most fortunate indisposition. What limit would there be to the old man's fury if he were to discover that he had been cheated of his affection — that the niece he had loved and favoured was the wife of his enemy's son ? That revelation would have destroyed her hopes, beggared her of that golden chance which seems to her scarcely less than the actual possession of Ids fortune. She has no easy part to play this evening when she goes up to her aijrte's room, and finds him sitting by his fire awake and watchful — the Times lying uncut on the little table beside his capacious arm-chair. "What have you been doing all the evening, child ? " he asks testily.^ " I've been waiting for you to read me the City article — waiting upwards of an hour by that clock," he adds, with a glance at the gilded timepiece on the mantel shelf. " I'm so sorry, dear uncle. I thought you were asleep." " You might have taken the trouble to come and ascertain the fact I have not dosed my eyes since Podmore brought me my ceef tea. Who is this gentleman, pray, who has detained you 90 long ? " a ISO Dead Men's Shoei. Sibyl ia unprepared for this question. She had taped ht» uncle would have known nothing about that untimely visitor. " A gentleman, uncle ? " " Yes. Podrnore told me you had a gentleman with you. Some one who wanted to see me on particular business, and, being told that I was ill, asked to see you instead. What did the fellow want ? w " He wanted you to subscribe to a fund for building a new church at Krampston, uncle," replies Sibyl, with a desperate plunge. Some lie she must needs invent, no matter what shape it took. " Some new sect, if I understood him rightly. I told him I did not think you would care to subscribe, but that he might call again, if he liked, when you are well." " Humph ! You might have given him a decided negative at once. There are churches enough in the world, and new sects enough, without my squandering money on the fools who want more. The fellow was with you a long time. Why couldn't you get rid of him sooner ? " " He insisted upon showing me plans, and a list of subscribers, and he told me a good deal about the church." " You ought to know how to keep such fellows at a distance. Some swindler, no doubt. And he was with you nearly an hour, according to Podrnore." " Shall I read you the City article, uncle Trenchard ? " aska Sibyl, anxious to end this embarrassing discussion. She seats herself a little way behind Mr. Trenchard's chair, well in the shadow. " Yes, you can read, but come nearer the lamp, child ; it makes me uncomfortable to know that you are straining your eyes in the dark there." Sibyl obeys reluctantly, fearing that the traces of agitation may still disfigure her countenance. Luckily, the lamp has a velvet shade which casts the light on the paper in her hand, and not on the face bending over it. Mr. Trenchard scans her curiously, notwithstanding. His suspicions have been aroused by that evening visitor — a hand- some young man, according to Podrnore, a lover, perhaps, ani that story of the Krampston Church all a fable. Mr. Trenchard has employed too much fiction in the course of his own career to be easily deluded by a figment of the female brain. He says nothing, however, content to suspect, and to keep his Buspicions to himself for the present He languishes for some days more under the burden of what Dr. Mitsand calls a slight bronchial attack, and in about a week is able to come downstairs again, and seems almost as active and alert as ever, Sibyl thinks, wondering whether there is really any foundation for that idea about his M breaking up." Sir Wilford has his ovm vcty. 181 Dr. Mitsand is Mr. Trenchard's medical attendant. It is not to be supposed that the precious life of a millionaire could be trusted to poor little Dr. Faunthorpe, who has the care of the parish, and goes Ins rounds in a positively disreputable pony- carriage. Dr. Mitsand's neat single brougham and fine pair of bay cobs are a standing evidence of his respectability and Ins skill. If he were not a clever doctor how could he afford those cobs ? " Wonderful constitution, your uncle's, Miss Faunthorpe," says Dr. Mitsand, cheerily, on the occasion of his last professional visit. " Quite set up again, you see, complexion clearer, eye brighter, liver in better order. I congratulate you upon having an uncle who ought to live as long as Lyndhurst or Brougham." Sibyl tries to look glad, but her heart sinks at the thought that this fine constitution of her uncle's places the hope of reunion with Alexis very far off. " What a miserable situation mine must be when such horrid thoughts are forced upon me ! " she reflects. " I almost wish I were Marion, dawdling away life in that old house at the bottom of the town, without a care." Sibyl's cares are rendered heavier just at this time by the marked attentions of Sir Wilford Cardonnel, attentions which, however delightful they might be to her vanity in the beginning of things, have now become hateful to her, the more so as her uncle will not allow her any way of escape from this entangle- ment. She sees before her the inevitable end in a proposal from Sir Wilford, and her rejection of it, which act of seeming idiocy will doubtless provoke her uncle's anger, perhaps forfeit his good graces for ever ; and then all her patience, all her pretty little flatteries and gentle ministerings to an irritable old man will have been wasted. She will have grieved and offended her hue- band, perhaps alienated his affections — for nothing. She wili be bankrupt both ways. These possibilities occur to her mind sometimes. Difficulties crowd upon her and hem her in on every side. The dread of Sir Wilford taking that decisive step, which he evidently intends to take sooner or later, is always before her ; and she has another ever-present fear in the thought that Alexis may reappear at any moment, and reveal himself to Stephen Trenchard. There are hours of her life in which she feels sorely tempted to run away from wealth as she ran away from poverty ; and it is possible that if she had known where to find her husband she would have acted upon this impulse. But he has vanished out of her existence. In the fear and confusion of that jriof visit of his she did not even ask his place of abode w mode of life. Prudence and that deep-rooted worship of wealth which is 182 Dead Men's Shoes. Bomotlmos engendered by a long apprenticeship to poverty keepa Sibyl constant to the rack of her daily difficulties, despite these occasional longings for escape. She contrives by a certain dis- tance of manner, which is in no wise ungracious, to defer Sir Wilford's declaration of his passion. The bluff and genial baronet is as shy as a girl in the presence of the woman he loves, and so long as he can enjoy Sibyl's society, is in no hurry to precipitate matters. Small as are the tokens of favour which ehe has bestowed upon him, Sir Wilford has no apprehension of being refused by her when it shall please him to ask the fateful question. He is too good a match for the possibility of a refusal. It does not enter into his notion of possibilities that he, Sir Wilford Cardonuel, of The How, could be rejected by any woman out of the peerage. He is kept at a distance by Sibyl's coldness, but in no wise disheartened. " I'm in no hurry, you know," he says to himself. " I like to know something about a woman before I ask her to be my wife. I should like to make sure she cared a little about me, in a quiet way. So many women have thrown themselves at my head, that 1 like this one all the better for not going so fast. More likely to be a good stayer, I should think. I don't want to win with a rush. I'd rather take my time and come in quietly." Thus muses Sir Wilford in the solitude of his study — a room chiefly devoted to treatises on the turf and farriery, whips, single sticks, gloves, favourite bits and bridles, a small menagerie of stuffed dogs, from Sebastian, tlie favourite old hound, defunct at a ripe old age, blind of one eye, and short of one ear, to Mite, the smallest terrier ever seen in the West Riding, a minute white animal, with pointed pink paws and a strong likeness to a rat. " I ought to see more of her," thinks Sir Wilford. " It's no use asking her and the old party to dinner, or dining with them. I shall never make the running that way. I feel as strange with her when I haven't seen her for a week or two as if I'd only just been introduced to her. It's like beginning our acquaintance over again. I must make Phoebe ask them here to stay. That'll be the best plan. A week in the same house with her will show mo what kind of girl she is, better than a twelvemonth's morning calling and dining." And having made up his mind, Sir Wilford is not slow to act upon his decision. " Hi, Jess, old lady," ho calls to his favourite, a splendid red Better, graceful and ladylike enough in her habits to be admitted as a house dog, though not without protest from Phoebe. Jess vanquishes Miss Cardonnel's objections by pretending to adore her, is as artful as a court favourite, and has as many per- quisites. Sir Wilford goes straight to the morning-room, where hia two Sir Wilford has his own waif. 183 sisters employ themselves industriously between breakfast &ni luncheon, writing innumerable letters, examining the house« keeper's weekly accounts, the head gardener's book, and other household volumes, working point lace, practising classical sonatas which reduce them to the verge of lunacy, and making winter clothing for their various pensioners. Christmas is just over, and the Christmas gaieties and benevo- lences done with. It is the beginning of the New Year — fino healthy weather — the ground not too hard for horses or hounds, and Sir Wilford in good humour with the arrangement of things. " Well, Phoebe, what people are you going to ask for Tilberry steeplechase ? " he inquires, as Miss Cardonnel looks up from her desk, where she is just declaring herself to remain her dearest Cecilia's ever affectionate friend — Cecilia being the fifth dearest friend she has addressed this morning. Tilberry steeplechase is an important fixture in this part of the world. It is a race at which gentlemen jockeys disport them- selves. It comes in the winter, when outdoor amusements are rare. Altogether Tilberry steeplechase is a benefaction. "I've written the last of my invitations this morning," replies Phoebe, who is somewhat inclined to forget that she is prime minister and not the king, and to commit herself to important treasures without the preliminary formula of consultation with her sovereign. " I have asked General and Mrs. McTower and Belinda — the eldest, you know ; — and I thought we ought to be civil to the Vicar of Redcastle for once in a way, so I've asked Mr and Mrs. Chasubel and the son. He won't make much difference, and you can put him in the barracks." The barracks is a range of small bedrooms over the offices, devoted to bachelor visitors of indistinction. "Very well ; I've no objection to the Chasubels. Who else?" " The Radnors, and the Vernons, and Cecilia Hawtree." " Too many women," says Sir Wilford. " Cecilia is my particular friend," remarks Miss Cardonnel, with dignity. "Oh, well, let her come." " She is coming the day after to-morrow," observes Miss Car donnel. " I have just written to say I shall send the omnibus to meet her." " What the dooce can one young woman want with a family bus, built to carry ten ? " exclaims Sir Wilford. "She will have her maid," replies Miss Cardonnel, "and h*r portmanteaux." " Ah, boxes enough to load a goods train, I dare say," mutters Sir Wilford. " Well, that's all your list, I suppose ? " " Yes, Wilford," 184 Bead Men's Shoes. " Then I'll give you mine." " Do you want to ask any one else?" exclaims Miss Cardonnel, with an injured air. " I fancied I had thought of every one you would have cared about asking." " You've thought of a good many I don't care about." "But, my dear Wilford, I don't see how I can possibly ask any more. I've filled all the best bed-rooms." " Then you must empty some of them. I want you to ask Colonel and Mrs. Stormont, and that son of their's on the gray." " But, Wilford, Mrs. Stormont is such a horrid old person — BO pushing." " Never mind that. We often have horrid old persons." " And the son, — I don't know what he's like off that gray, but he's utterly odious on it." " Stupid young cad, rather, but good fun. Be sure you tell him to bring the gray." " Why should we have the Stormonts to stay with us, Wil- ford ? " demands Lavinia, the younger sister, looking up from an easel, upon which she has been copying a drawing-master's landscape, and fondly deluding herself with the idea that she can paint. " It's all very well to ask them to dinner once in a way, or to a garden party, but why have them in the house ? " " Simply because I wish it, Vinnie. I don't often indulge in whims. Say that this is one, if you like." " Oh, of course, if you really wish it. But I think it's rather a dangerous precedent," replies Phoebe. "All the Kedcastle people will be expecting to be asked to stay here." " The butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers. Well, they can go down to their graves in a state of expectation," says Sir Wilford, " and now Phoebe, I want you to write a particularly nice letter — cordial, and all that kind of thing, you know — to Miss Faunthorpe, asking her and Mr. Trenchard over for the race veek." " I ought to have known what was coming," exclaims Phcebe. "Well, naturally, I shouldn't be civil to the Stormonts without a motive. Mrs. Stormont introduced me to Miss Faunthorpe, you see, and I shouldn't like the old lady to think I'd make a cat's-paw of her." Phcebe is inwardly rebellious, but too wise to revolt outwardly. She has seen the sun set on her twenty-ninth birthday, and has been mistress of the How, the sole and sovereign domestic power, for the last ten years. It will be a hard thing, to lay down her sceptre, to retire from that lordly dwelling-place, and to become Miss Cardonnel of nowhere in particular, a young lady whose non-success in the matrimonial line sympathising friends will lament over. And Phcebe feels that the day when her sceptro must be ao resigned is not very far off, now that Wilford* >vho Marion is raised to Distinction. 185 has hie fathers obstinate temper, poor dear fellow, has taken a ridiculous fancy to this Miss Faunthorpe, a mere nobody, with nothing but a pretty face and a rich uncle to recommend her to notice. Sir Wilford waits while his sister writes the letter of invita- tion, which she is obliged to make much warmer in tone than inclination would prompt; the baronet looking over her shoulder all the while. When the letter is in its envelope he surprises Phoebe by taking it from her and putting it in his pocket. " I am going over to Redcastle this afternoon," he says, " so I can deliver the letter and bring you back an answer. I should like you to give Miss Faunthorpe the tapestry room." " My dear Wilford, what are you thinking of ? I have ever so many married couples coming. I must put her in one of the small rooms in the Kneller gallery." " Oh, very well," replies Sir Wilford, " she'll have the pick of the rooms, perhaps, some of these days. — Hi, Jess, old woman." With which awful threat Sir Wilford withdraws, leaving his sisters free to discuss the calamity that lowers over their house. CHAPTER XXVIIL MARION IS RAISED TO DISTINCTION. Sir Wilford, clad in the latest fashion in checks, a rough and fleecy raiment which his father would have deemed better suited to clothe his gamekeeper or groom than himself, and mounted on Bull of Bashan, is a sight to behold this winter afternoon as he trots gaily down the wide avenue at the How, and emerges there- from on a bold and open country. The Bull is a little fresh this afternoon, which, being interpreted, means that the grooms have been too lazy to take the superfluous energy out of that amiable animal for the last two days, whereby the Bull behaves like a quad- ruped newly introduced to a strange country, where all sights and sounds, colours and shapes of objects, lights and shadows, are new to him. He shies ferociously at every trunk in the long line of elms, and indulges in a serpentine movement for the length of the avenue. He takes objection to the colour of the gravel where the road has been mended ; and on suddenly beholding the white gate, which he ought to know as well as his own manger, recoils on his haunches, and curls himself up into a ball, and in this 6hape canters furiously into the road, startling the 1 86 Dead Men's Shoes. lazy waggoner asleep upon his wain, and rousing a flight of rooks from then- afternoon repose by the clatter of his iron shoes. The cawing of the rooks finishes the Bull altogether, and sends him off: like a maniac, or demoniacally possessed animal ; but Sir IVilford having now got him into the open country is able to " take it out of him " over a fine stretch of moorland, and brings him back to the high road a couple of miles further off, a sub- dued and subjugated beast, willing to settle into a comfortable trot, which, with an occasional interval of walking, carries Sir Wilford into Redcastle by afternoon tea-time, that pleasant hour betwixt day and night, when labour rests, or should rest, from its cares, and the household music of the kettle singing on the hob speaks peace to the soul of the weary. Mr. Trenchard is taking afternoon tea with his two nieces, Sibyl and Marion, in the frrelit drawing-room at Lancaster Lodge a room which, like most other rooms, looks its best by that un- certain fight, now gorgeous in the glow of crimson and gold, anon wrapped in shadow. Marion has been invited to spend the day ; the two girls have employed the short winter afternoon vr> a review of Sibyl's last new dresses, an inspection which has not been conducive to the younger sister's peace of mind or good temper. At the announcement of Sir Wilford Cardonnel however, Marion brightens a little, and is glad. " How lucky he should have called to-doy ! " she thinks. " Sibyl is too mean to ask me here on purpose to see him, and now he must be introduced to me and I can talk about knowing him as well as Sibyl. What will Maria Harrison say, I wonder, when I tell her that I am quite intimate with Sir Wilford Car- donnel ? " Marion little knows the mighty honour which fate has reserved for her — little dreams that by the happy accident of her presence at Lancaster Lodge this afternoon she is to be raised to a giddy height of grandeur, from which she will hardly be able to glance downwards without vertigo. Sir Wilford is presented to Miss Marion Faunthorpe in due form by Mr. Trenchard, and the conversation becomes at once general and sprightly, glancing upon such original topics as the probability of a hard frost before long, the advantage of the present weather from a sporting point of view, the health and well-being of the baronet's stud, the superlative virtues and capabilities of his latest equine purchase, the probability of a day's good racing at Tilberry. " You ought to see Tilberry steeplechase," says Sir Wilford. "Tilberry Common's only three miles from the How, you know, and it's an uncommonly good day's sport, gentlemen jocks, and that kind of thing. I've ridden there myself, but I didn't enter Marion is raised to Distinction. 187 anything this year. You ought really, you know, Miss Faun- thorpe ; in point of fact, I came over here this afternoon on purpose to ask you and Mr. Trenchard to come and stay with ug, next week. My sister gave me a letter for you. She's dreadfully anxious for yon to come, and I think the change of air would do Mr. Trenchard good. We stand a good bit higher than you do, you know, and get a sniff off the moors — remarkably healthy, that kind of thing, I'm told. Do say yes now, Mr. Trenchard," he urges, handing Sibyl the letter. " I'm afraid my dear uncle's health won't permit him to leave home/' answers Sibyl. " He has been quite an invalid lately, you know, Sir Wilford." " All the more reason he should have change of air — brace him up, you know. Capital thing for invalids, moorland air. And if Miss Mary Ann " " Marion," interjects that young lady. Not even by Sir Wilford Cardonnel will she submit to be called Mary Ann. " If Miss Miriam " " Marion." " I beg your pardon, I'm shaw. If Miss Marion will come I shall be delighted, and I'm sure my sister will be quite awfully glad." Marion blushes crimson with delight at such an invitation. M You're too kind," she gasps. " I positively doat upon races." " I shouldn't have thought your passion for them had had time to reach such a height," says Sibyl, sneeringly, "since you never were at a race in your life before last year's summer meeting." She is provoked at Marion's eagerness to accept an invitation, the acceptance of which can only bring embarrassment upon her, Sibyl. " That means you'll come," exclaims Sir Wilford, answering Marion, " and, of course, if you say yes, Miss Faunthorpe can't say no. Sisters always think alike — two cherries on one stalk, like Juno's swans, together and inseparable, you know ; and now we only want Mr. Trenchard's acquiescence." " I should be a churl to refuse so hospitable an invitation, and deprive these girls of so much pleasure," replies Stephen Tren- chard. "Bravo!" cries Sir Wilford; "then it's all settled. You'll come next Saturday ? " " I don't think I could be ready by Saturday," murmurs Marion, with an awful fear upon the subject of her wardrobe, which will need herculean labours of cutting and contriving, and some expenditure of cash, before it can be fit for the halls of Car- donnel, 188 Dead Men's Shoes. " Pray, dear uncle, do not think of us," says Sibyl, " I don't a* all care about races, and, much as I appreciate Miss Cardonnel's kind invitation, I really would rather not accept it, for fear the fatigue and the excitement should be too much for you." " Nasty thing," thinks Marion, " she refuses just because I'm invited." "Artful puss," thinks Stephen, " she keeps him on by holding him off." " Don't be afraid about your uncle, Miss Faunthorpe," says Sir Wilford, "we shall be awfully careful of him." " I'm not quite so decrepid as my niece thinks me," says Mr. Trenchard, " and I shall quite enjoy a few days at the How." "That's glorious," cries Sir Wilford, "On Saturday, then. You'll drive over in time for luncheon ? Be sure you bring your habit, Miss Faunthorpe. I've a chestnut mare that will suit you to perfection. And I can mount you too, Miss Marion, if you like riding ? " " I positively adore it," gushes Marion. " Sibyl and I used to take it in turns to ride uncle Robert's pony when we were little things. I was so sorry when the pony grew too small for us." Sir Wilford, having settled this important question, and drunk three cups of tea, chiefly for the pleasure of having his cup and saucer handed him by Sibyl, departs, leaving the elder sister heavy-hearted, the younger in a state of wild excitement, which her natural awe of Stephen Trenchard can hardly subdue. " What am I to do about my things, Sibyl ? " she whispers, as the two girls sit side by side on a sofa by the fire. "What things?" "My dresses, jackets, gloves, hats, boots, everything. I've hardly a rag that's fit to wear at the How." "Then you oughtn't to have accepted the invitation. You might have seen that you were only asked because you hap- pened to be here, and Sir Wilford could not very well leave you out." " How unkind of you to say that ! " " It's preposterous to accept an invitation when you have no clothes fit to be worn at the house you're asked to visit. You ought to have refused." " Ought I ? That's very nice and sisterly of you, I'm sure. Veiy much like twin cherries and Juno's fiddlesticks. Just the only chance I ever had of enjoying myself and seeing life, — going into society, in fact, and a chance tliat would give me quite a new position in Redcastle, bring those horrid Stormonts and that disgusting Mrs. Groshen to their senses ; and you expect me to refuse it. It's positively unnatural of you, Sibyl." And Marion relieves her bursting heart with a gush of teara, Marion it raised to Distinction. 189 95 Why, what's the matter, girl ? " cries Stephen Trenchard, Starting from that placid b! umber into which the fire-glow and the subdued murmur of the girls' voices have beguiled him. " You don't come here to cry, I hope, Marion. If we make you unhappy you'd better stay away." Mr. Trenchard is not the kind of man to allow his afternoon repose to be disturbed by a whimpering niece. His young kinsfolk must make themselves agreeable if they hope to retain his favour. " It's all Sibyl's unkindness," says Marion, swallowing her sobs in an unpleasantly convulsive manner. " She hasn't a bit of heart, she never had. When Sir Wilford Cardonnel has invited me and all, she throws my poverty in my face, and says I must refuse the invitation on account of my things." " What does the girl mean by things ? " " I simply reminded Marion that the invitation gives us very short notice, and that her wardrobe is hardly fit for visiting at the How." " Oh, is that all ? " exclaims Mr. Trenchard. " That shan't stand in your way, Marion. You can get whatever you want for this visit at Carmichael's, and have it put down to Sibyl's account." " Oh, uncle, you are too good, too generous," gasps Marion, forgetting how often she has inveighed against Mr. Trenchard'a meanness. " Don't make a fuss, please, Marion," says Stephen, closing his eyes again. Sibyl is gloomy. She would do much to prevent this visit, were there any way open to her by which it could be prevented. She feels that to visit at Sir Wilford's house is a kind of treason against her husband. True that the baronet is not yet her declared admirer, but his admiration is not the less obvious, and the town gossips have already been busy with her name and Sir Wilford's. How provoking uncle Trenchard is — and Marion too ! She hates them both, and preserves a sullen manner towards Marion all the evening, a sullenness which that young lady imputes to jealousy. " Perhaps she thinks that Sir Wilford might be fickle enough to admire me a little," muses Marion, elated beyond measure by the prospect of her visit, and the idea of getting " things" at Carmichael's. M Of course Sibyl is the beauty, we all know that ; but I flatter myself I have a little more animation than she has, and in the long run, fascinating manners are more admired than good looks." Fortified thus in her self-esteem Marion departs in the highest spirits, after having made Sibyl promise to go shopping with hai next morning. 190 Dead Men's SuoeS. Sibyl makes her preparations for the visit with a heavy heart She assists Marion kindly enough now that she has resigned herself to the inevitable. She lends her sister the aid of het eounsel, and considerably chastens Marion's taste in colours and patterns, a taste which inclines to the "loud" and "fast," large checks, big metal buttons, yachting jackets, and small pork-pie hats. Sibyl takes care that her sister shall be dressed like a lady, which may be done cheaply, and not like a fashion plate, the latter involving lavish expenditure, and often resulting in dis- appointment. Sibyl selects hues which harmonize with Marion's hair and complexion, and not the last new colour, which the shopman presses upon her, as if novelty and beauty were con- vertible terms. " I'm afraid you'll make me an awful dowdy," remonstrates Marion, who is inclined to object to the combination of rich brown and soft cream-colour, which Sibyl recommends for a walking costume, and this languid shade of blue, relieved by ruchings, pipings, and flouncings of palest Balmon, which Sibyl declares will make a lovely dinner dress. " See what Miss Eylett will say to my choice," says Sibyl. M Oh, of course that old Eylett will side with you. She knows how to flatter a good customer." " Choose for yourself then, Marion, and be happy." " Well, upon my word, I don't know what to have," says Marion, surveying the counter, and biting the tip of her gloved forefinger to assist cogitation. " There's that lovely peach, I should like of all things, and that heavenly maize. Think of it trimmed with black lace." "Charming for a brunette, but odious for a blonde. And to trim it properly you would want at least fifty pounds' worth of lace." "That apple-green brocade, then, with the lovely rosebuds." " Admirable for a dowager, but quite unsuited to you." " 1 wonder if uncle Trenchard would mind my having a ruby velvet ? I have always fancied a ruby velvet." " With a diamond tiara, of course. Most appropriate for a country surgeon's niece, especially when he's the parish doctor." " Well, I suppose you'd better choose. I'll have the blue and tsalmon, but it's a horrid thin silk." " Quite good enough for an evening drese, which will be done for when its freshness is gone." So Marion finally accepts Sibyl's superior judgment. Her pur- chases include a pretty gray merino for mornings and walking, a rich brown silk, the pale blue dinner dress, and handsome black cloth jacket, garments which are judiciously bought for some- thing lcs3 than thirty pounds. With these materials the two Mivrion is raised, to Distinction 191 frirls drivo straight to Miss Eylett, who, with much persuasion from Sibyl, is induced to promise the three dresses for Saturday morning. " And now all you have to do is to get Hester to wash and iron your white muslins," says Sibyl, " so that you may havo some simple dresses for the quiet evenings. I'll lend you a sash or two." " Upon my word, Sib, you're quite a darling. What made you so disagreeable last night ? " " I don't want to go to the How, and I was vexed with you and uncle Trenchard for snapping at the invitation." " Don't want to go to the How 1 " cries Marion, with as much astonishment as if Sibyl had said she didn't wish to go to heaven. " Don't want to go to the How, when it's the grandest chance you ever had in your life, and people are beginning to say that you can be Lady Cardonnel if you like." " People are idiots and busybodies. I don't want to be Lady Cardonnel, or Lady anybody else." " Sibyl, don't be so affected ! " exclaims Marion, disgusted by a repudiation which she believes thoroughly insincere. Mr. Trenchard's carriage deposits Marion at the shabby old house beyond the minster, and Jenny comes rushing out into the wintry air — last year's tartan frock a good deal too short for those obtrusive legs of hers — to kiss Sibyl, to the disgust of the coachman, who looks upon this branch of his employer's family as a low lot. " That's the worst of living with these here nowo riches," he. complains to John the footman. " They may climb the ladder of fortune theirselves, but they leave their relations a-grovellin' at the bottom." " What do you mean by nowo riches ? " inquires the simple John. s ' Well, parwennoos, stoopid, if you must 'av the wernackerler." Hester and Jenny Fnunthorpe have rather a hard time of it for the rest of this important week, Hester at the wash-tub and the ironing-board, Jane engaged in darning stockings and sewin ■ on tapes and buttons, her sister's wardrobe requiring more sma.l repairs than are consistent with a notion of order and industry in its owner. " Well, you have let your tilings go to seed, Marion," renin rl » Jane. "If it hadn't been for this visit of yours I should think you must have dropped to pieces altogether before long." " You're an impertinent chit," exclaims Marion, frowning over a complicated darn. " Well, you might be civil when I'm toiling like a slave for you. n " You may help me or leave it alone, just as you please. It's no pleasur* *° be under an obligation to you." 192 Dead Men's Shoes. " As far as inclination goes, Td much rather leave it alone," replies the argumentative Jane, " but for the credit of the family I shall do my best to prevent you going into society with youi heels coming through your stockings. But I can't help saying that I think you'd find it better for the health of your stockings to darn them before they come to this ;" and Jenny emphasizes her remark by thrusting her hand through a yawning chasm in the stocking she is operating upon. " Keep your opinions to yourself, and don't make the holes bigger by sticking your enormous hand through them," says Marion. " This is a grateful world," murmurs Jane, resignedly. Dr. Faunthorpe is pleased at the idea of his younger niece's pleasure, though the visit to the How will drag a pound or two out of his scantily furnished purse, pounds already engaged for tax or water rate, as the case may be, and the subtraction of which will throw his financial arrangements out of gear for ever so long. But Robert Faunthorpe is one of those good little men whose mission upon this earth seems to be to suffer and be patient, if not to suffer and be strong. Nay, is there not exceeding strength in this quiet patience, this placid endurance of loss and depriva- tion, this uncomplaining surrender of all that the selfish live for? Humboldt wisely says that if every man is said to have his own destiny in his hands, that saying must be read to mean, not that he has the power to alter fate, but rather the power to make the best of bad fortune, and by his gentle acceptance of ill to trans- mute evil into good. Deprivations, small acts of self-abnegation which would have hurt another man, gave Dr. Faunthorpe a pleasant feeling, a genial sense of warmth and comfort in the region of the heart, which had the effect of whisky toddy or any other comfortable stimulant. CHAPTER XXIX. AT THE HOW. Saturday shows bright and fair, a fine winter day, hoar frost on the hedges. The roads are dry, but not too hard for the horses ; the minster towers stand out, sharply defined against the clear cold blue ; rooks are screaming loud in the ragged elm boughs ; robins singing merrily ; a blithe day in the new-bom year^ a day which inspires Redcastle with the idea that trade is brisker than At t7ie How. 193 it has been, and things in general looking up, so potent is the in- fluence of fine weather. Never has Marion Faunthorpe felt so proud or happy as whej her uncle's carnage calls for her and her boxes, and she takes ler seat opposite Mr. Trenchard, who, by right divine of his -hree-score years and ten, occupies the post of honour wrapped to the chin in sable, and with a tiger-skin rug over his knees. " Did you shoot that tiger yourself, dear uncle ?" asks Marion, bent on making herself agreeable. " No, child," replies the dear uncle rather snappishly, " I had something better to do in India than to shoot tigers." " But it's veiy nice shooting big game, isn't it, uncle ? Some people go to India on purpose for that, don't they ? " " Fools do, perhaps. There's no accounting for their taste." The little surgeon has come out to the gate to see his niece off. Nay, he has actually stolen an hour from the parish in order to behold the glory of her departure. He seems as pleased to see her happiness as if he himself were going to the How, and at the last moment the girl feels touched. " You dear, darling old uncle," she says, hanging round his neck, and forgetting the possibility of damage to her new hat, " how good you always are ! — always — always — always, and I'm an ungrateful wretch." " My love, you are not ungrateful, and you have very little to be grateful for." " Everything you mean, uncle Robert. I shall think of you ever so many times a day at the How ; and if the dinners are very nice I shall so wish you could be with us." " Thank you, my dear. I shall think of you, and miss you very much." " I'm going to keep house," exclaims Jenny, lolling against th» £ate, and swaying to and fro distractingly as she talks; "and make tea and all ; nobody to tell me not to take too much butter ; and Hester Avill give us my favourite puddings, I know, if I quill her cap borders." So after embracing the doctor in this demonstrative fashion, Marion enters the carriage with tears in her eyes, to the aggrava- tion of Stephen Trenchard, who hates tears and fuss and emotion of all kinds, except the thrill of delight which accompanies a successful stroke of business. "Crying again," he exclaims testily. "What's the matter now ? " " There's nothing the matter, dear uncle. Only I'm so happy ; and I felt a little overcome at leaving uncle Robert." " It's a pity you should leave him at all if the parting is so pathetic," sneers Mr. Trenchard. " Oh, Sibyl, I've had such a nice little note from Miss Cardonnel 194 Dead MerCs Shoes. to confirm Sir Wilford's invitation," says Marion ; and she exhibits a formal note, in which the polite Phoebe expresses her satisfaction at having heard from her brother that Miss Marion Fannthorpe has promised to accompany her sister on Saturday. The drive is delightful for any one with an unburdened mind, and even Sibyl feels the sweetness of the clear winter air, and determines to make the best of an awkward concatenation of events. After all, it is better to be lolling in uncle Trenchard's carriage on one's way to a delightful old country bouse than to be grinding at French or German verbs in Mrs. Hazleton's cheer- less second-floor schoolroom, badly warmed by a fire that seems always made of the dullest coals that ever came from the bosom of the earth. And all this is but the filling up of a gap in bet life. This chasm of time bridged over and she will be with Alexis once more, and they will have uncle Trenchard's money to spend and be happy ever afterwards. She has persuaded herself that let Alexis make what protestations he pleases in the present, he will take her to his heart again gladly when the fitting time comes. "And in the meantime there is no use in my moping and making myself miserable," reflects Sibyl, her spirits elevated by atmospheric influences, and the prospect of being the object of general admiration. " I wonder if there will be many people there? " she speculates presently. " People with titles," suggests Marion ; " a duke perhaps. I should like to see a duke — or a duchess. That would be better still. Think of her dresses, Sib. Mustn't they be magnificent! " Sibyl smiles the languid smile of contempt at her sister's sim- plicity. "As if there were a sliding scale for the toilet," she saye. " "Why, cotton spinners' wives dress as well as duchesses now-a- days. They employ the same milliners, and pay their bills quicker." " It's dreadful to think of," replies Marion. M It seems like turning things topsy-turvy, you know." They are at the How by this time, a domain which Marion enters open-eyed and dumb with awe. Sir Wilford comes out into the porch to receive them, and gives directions about their luggage, and makes himself generally busy. Then he calls out Phoebe and introduces Marion to her, at which Marion, being almost tongue-tied by shyness, says, " Thank you." " You show the Miss Faunthorpes their rooms, Phoebe," says the hospitable baronet ; but this is a length to which Miss Car- donnel will not go, though she conducted her dearest Cecilia to her apartment half an hour ago with her arm round Cecilia's eeverely trained waist. " Perker knows all about the rooms," she says, whereupon At the Bow. 195 appears the essence of respectability in a black silk gown and email cap, otherwise Mrs. Porker the housekeeper. Sibyl and Marion follow this personage up the broad oak stair- case to a long perspective of corridor, in which Mrs. Perker opens two doors next each other, and reveals twin bedchambers neatly furnished with maple and chintz. " I thought you two ladies would like to be next each other," remarks the housekeeper obligingly, as if the choice of the rooms were entirely her own. " We do, very much," exclaims Marion, who regains her power of speech in this inferior presence. " I'm very glad I'm to be near Sibyl. I should be awfully afraid of ghosts in this great rambling house." Mrs. Perker smiles condescendingly, as if she were a superior order of being, accustomed to large houses and family spectres. " It is a rambling old place," she says, " but I shouldn't fancy myself in one of your fine lightsome modern houses, all glare and gilding." " And there is a ghost, I dare say," says Marion, with thrilling interest. The housekeeper screws up her lips and smiles significantly, as if she could, and if she would, tell of as many apparitions as appear in the tragedy of " Macbeth." " There has never been a ghost owned to at the How," she pays, " and I wouldn't breathe the name of such a thing in Miss Cardonnel's hearing, but people have been frightened — strangers. It may have been rats, or it may have been the wind. I can't say. But there are friends of the family who wouldn't sleep ic this corridor, no, not for a thousand pounds." Marion shudders, and almost wishes herself back in the shabby old house at the end of Redcastle. " So here are your rooms, young ladies, opening into each other." " How nice ! " exclaims Marion. Never in her life has she felt more warmly attached to Sibyl than she does at this moment. Fires burn cheerily in both rooms, and each apartment has that thoroughly comfortable and convenient air only to be seen in a well-ordered country house, and altogether distinct from the cheerless precision of an hotel bedchamber. There is the nice little writing-table, with all things needful for correspondence, in front of the fire ; the easy chair ; the otindles, and pincushion, and a hothouse flower or two in a slender plass on the dressing-table. All smiles a welcome to tho stranger — not Miss Cardonnel's welcome, by the way, but Mrs. Perker's. " I've given your maid a nice room on the second floor, within 196 Dead 3fen's Shoes. easy reach of this, ma'am," says the housekeeper, at which Marion's eyes open wide with wonder. " I have no maid," replies Sibyl, unabashed by that humilia* ting fact ; " I am accustomed to wait upon myself." " Indeed, ma'am. Some young ladies prefer it, I know. For my own part I couldn't bear anybody fidgeting about me. And if you should require any assistance Miss Cardonnel's maid will be very happy." "Thanks, no, my sister can help me if I want her." And Sibyl proceeds to open her handsome portmanteaus, while Marion contrives to stand before the shabby receptacle which contains her property, lest the scrutinizing eye of Mrs. Perker should behold its dilapidation. The housekeeper bustles off, and leaves the two girls to them- selves. "It's rather like going to school again, isn't it, Sibyl?" in- quires Marion, whose spirits have sunk a little, oppressed by the unfamiliar splendours of the How. " I feel just as I did the day we went to Miss Worries, and I can't help fancying we shall be told off into our different classes when we go down- stairs." The sound of the luncheon-bell reminds the sisters that they have no time to waste, and they go downstairs together presently, conscious that they are looking nice enough to face even un- friendly criticism. Sir Wilford is lounging in the hall, and they go in to luncheon under his wing. Fred Stormont is near the dining-room door, and rushes to meet Sibyl and her sister ; and Mrs. Stormont gives a friendly bow from the other end of the table, where she sits among the stately matrons and the bald- headed fathers of the land ; and they begin to feel themselves more at home, as Marion whispers to her sister. The conversation at luncheon runs more continuously upon the present company's absent brothers and sisters, and cousins, and nieces, and sons and daughters-in-law, than is quite congenial \o the feelings of a stranger totally unacquainted with these relations, but Marion manages to get up a little talk about nothing particular with Fred Stormont, which, beheld from afar, looks like flirtation, and causes the young man's anxious mother to put up her gold eye-glass and look at him through it, wondering how that silly Frederick can be so ridiculous as to waste his attentions upon the wrong sister. " I suppose Mr. Trenchard will leave the girl five thousand pounds or so," thinks Mrs. Stormont, "but what would be the use of that to a young man with Fred's expensive habits ? " Tilbcrry StecplecJiate. 197 CHAPTER XXX. TILBERRY STEEPLECHASE. The guests assembled at the How soon divide themselves into sections or groups, like the various members of the lower animal creation. Mr. and Mrs. Chasubel draw around them the more seriously minded of the younger visitors, — Lavinia Cardonnel ; Cecilia Hawtree, who has a poetical mind, and is Anglican to the verge of Romanism ; Laura and Mary Radnor, who are great upon church decoration and choir singing ; and some others. General Mactower attracts the young men, as it were, into a focus of sporting talk, varied with anecdotes of the London world, which, according to the General, is about as Anle a world as could well exist without calling down a burning fiery rain for its destruction. Sir Wilford contrives to be attentive to all his guests, but shows himself so particular in his devotion to Sibyl that other people cannot afford to be uncivil to her, even were they disposed to snub so lovely a girl. The matrons and their daughters admit the fact of Miss Faun- thorpe's beauty, but with certain reservations. They admire her complexion, but opine that its transparent purity of tint argues a consumptive tendency. " And what a dreadful thing for poor Sir Wilford to marry a consumptive wife, my dear 1 " says Mrs. Radnor, in an awful voice. "And to have consumptive children," adds her daughter Laura. "Poor little dears," exclaims Miss Hawtree, compassionating the sorrows of these unborn infants in advance. "I think it quite wicked of consumptive people to marry, don't you, Mrs. Radnor?" " Yes, my love, there ought to be a law against it." " What pretty manners Miss Faunthorpe has ! " remarks Mrs. Vernon, whose daughter possesses every attraction except good Iooks and agreeable manners, — "so sweet, so caressing. But don't you think — I hardly like to say it, for it sounds so un- charitable, and I should be the last to say anything uncharitable after dear Mr. Chasubel's moving discourse this morning, — don't you think she seems rather artful ? " " As deep as Garrick," says the outspoken Mrs. Radnor. "She actually seems to discourage Sir Wilford's attentions, quite pretends to avoid him, makes believe to prefer ladies' 19b Dead Hen's Shoea, society, when we all know that she must be delighted at the idea •f making such a brilliant match." " When we know that the girl is brought here on purpose to marry him," rejoins Mrs. Radnor. " The old uncle has set hia heart upon it, of course, and will leave her the whole of his property, to the detriment of her two sisters ; there's another girl at Redcastle, Mrs. Stormont tells me. Very unjust, I call it." This conversation takes place on Sunday afternoon, in a cosy circle round the morning-room fire, while Sibyl and some of the younger guests are walking in the park. Sunday evening affords an opportunity for the display of musical genius, or talent, as the case may be ; and after the daughters of the land have done the most they can with Miss Lindsay's sacred ballads, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Chopin, Sibyl takes her turn at the instrument, and surpasses all her forerunners, not so much by the brilliancy of her singing or playing as by the thought and feeling which pervade both. In the long empty days at Lan- caster Lodge her piano has been her friend and companion, the confidante of all her vague regrets and fear.s, — her sorrowful love for her absent husband. Memory and hope have spoken to her in many a tender strain of Mozart's, in the deeper pathos of Beethoven, or Mendelssohn's dreamy melody. Sir Wilford Cardonnel knows very little about music, save that of his hounds giving tongue in the chill morning air that blows over heath and moor, but he is not the less pleased that Sibyl should excel in the musical line. His future wife ought to be an accomplished person. He *s glad, too, that she should "take the shine " out of Phoebe and Vinnie, neither of them highly gifted by Apollo, though both have laboured hard, and flourish at a quickish pace through unmelodious fantasias, arpeggio-ing up and down the piano with a movement which their brother calls a rough gallop. Altogether Sibyl is a success at the How. No one can dispute that. Marion looks on and wonders at her sister's calm accept- ance of the general homage. She wears her honours as to the manner born, while Marion feels overpowered with shyness all through that aristocratic Sabbath ; and says " Thank you," for everything, from an introduction or a compliment, to the too hasty removal of her plate by an all-accomplished serving-man. By Monday morning, however, even Marion is quite at her case, save for an inward awe of Phoebe and Lavinia who, behind their brother's back, give her a little of the de haut en has manner by which intrusive commoners are crushed. But Fred Stormont takes her under his protection, and finding Sibyl unapproachable H.midst her various admirers, consoles himself 1 with a mild fiirta- t on with Marion, to which even his watchful parent reconciles V>rself, reflecting that, after all, a dower of five thousand pounds Tilberry Steeplechase. 199 •—or possibly ten — is better than nothing, and that, no heiress being forthcoming, dear Frederick might make Marion happy by proposing to her. After breakfast on Monday there is a general inspection of the stables, at which even Mr. Chasubel, the High Church parson, assists, and in the course of which he entertains the company with anecdotes of his hard riding days at Oxford, and his prowess in the hunting-field. The horses are led out for admiration, and the guests commit themselves to various opinions, at which the nether lips of the Yorkshire grooms work convulsively in the respectful endeavour to avoid a grin. Tuesday is the race day, and there is a consultation as to how people are to go : the faster of the party — including all the young ladies — inclining to the saddle, the middle-aged and portly being satisfied with a seat on the drag, or in Miss Cardonnel's barouche. " You will ride, of course ? " says Sir "Wilford to Frederick. " Oh, by all means ; I shall go on the Dutchman. Here he is, poor old fellow, looking as fresh as paint." An officious boy has just led the bony gray into the quad- rangle, where eveiy eye is now directed to him. " Why, where the deuce did you get that beast from, Car- donnel ? " cries General Mactower, as the lad whisks off the Dutchman's checked raiment, and exhibits his angular haunches and dejected neck. " Never saw such a screw in your stable." " It's Mr. Stormont's horse," says the boy, grinning. " Beg your pardon, Stormont," says the General, " I dare say ne looks better in action. Very good for leather, no doubt." " He may not be much to look at," says Fred, wounded yet apologetic; "but he's a devil to go." " Ah, I dare say, those bony ones are sometimes." " Well, Stormont, you'll ride the Dutchman," resumes Sir Wilford, "that's capital. You can take care of Miss Marion Faunthorpe." " Delighted, I'm sure," gasps Fred, with an inward sinking. He knows too well that on the Dutchman he has enough to do to take care of himself, and that a whole hunting-field might be spilt around him without his being able to afford help to the fallen. " You haven't ridden much lately, I think you told me, Miss Marion, says Sir Wilford to that young lady, who has been going into raptures about all the horses with long manes and sleek skins. "Not since I was quite a little thing, but I idolize riding." " And you'll not be afraid to ride to Tilberry to-morrow. It's a nice quiet road." " I shall like it of all tilings." 205 Dead Men's Shoes. " Very well, Chanter, you must find me a safe mount for this young lady. She hasn't been riding much lately." " One of the old ones, eh, Sir Wilf ord ? " " Yes, old and steady. But something good to look at, you know." " There's Brown Fixture, Sir Wilford, an uncommon good 'oss, and as safe as a church." " Yes, Fixture '11 do, nothing like an old steeplechaser." " Fixture's as steady as a Christian," says the groom, " and such a memory too, nobody 'd think how that 'oss do remember. He ain't forgot the day he bolted with Jem Kirk, tho' it's nigh Beven year ago. He never do pass that corner o' th' 'eath but what 'e'll prick up his old ears, and stick 'em back'ards and give a bit of a quiver, as if he'd like to have another lark." " He mustn't have any larks with Miss Faunthorpe," says Sir Wilford. " Lor, bless you, no, Sir Wilford, that's seven year ago. Fix- ture's as steady as a house. The smallest of our boys rides him beautiful." " Well, Miss Marion, I think you'll be safe on Fixture, especially -with Stormont to take care of you." Marion looks gratefully at Frederick, with a vague idea that he is going to escort her with a leading rein, and that under his care she would be safe upon the winner of the Leger. " And now let's have a look at Juno," says Wilford. " That's the mare I mean for you, Miss Faunthorpe, and I think every one will allow she's a perfect beauty. My sister Phoebe wants her badly, but I'm afraid of Phoebe's eleven stone." That substantially built damsel gives her brother an indignant look at this brutal remark, which could only come from one's own flesh and blood. li When I want a horse I shan't ask you to choose him for me, Wilford," she says. Juno is led forth and unveiled — a chesnut, glossy as the nut itself when it bursts from its green casing, and beautiful in form, with a small head and a Greek profile — ox-eyed like her misriity namesake. •• How lovely 1 " exclaim all the young ladies, envying Sibyl. This selection of the best horse in the stud for Miss Faun- thorpe is tantamount to a proposal, thinks every one, and from this time forwaijd Sibyl is regarded as the future Lady Cardonnel, and honoured accordingly. Has he or has he not proposed ? the council of matrons ask one another by-and-bye in the comfortable morning-room where they have assembled to write their letters and read tho newspapers. The majority opine that tho offer has been made and accepted, ttnd that Mr. Trenchard is hero to arrange about settlements. Tilberry Steeplechase. 201 u Pheebe Cardonnel must know," hazards Mru. Ohasubel, this conversation taking place in the absence of the Miss Cardonnela, who are playing billiards with their younger guests. " She may, but she's such a reserved girl, there's no getting anything out of her ; and as it's evident that she and Lavinia hate the idea of their brother's marrying, it's a subject we can't approach very well." " I feel sure he has proposed," says Mrs. Eadnor. He looks as if it was a settled thing." " He may have settled it all in his own mind, but not yet declared himself," responds Mrs. Chasubel. " He must know that tbere is no chance of rejection." Mrs. Chasubel is right. Sir Wilford is fixed as fate, but has not yet found an opportunity to ask the fatal question. Sibyl is always in a crowd. She contrives to avoid anything approaching a tete-a-tete. And a man can hardly propose during a game of pyramids, or on a crowded drag with a spirited team in his hand, or as he hands his beloved a cup of tea at kettledrum time, or on the stairs, or in church. Sir Wilford bides his time, therefore, and is patient. The important Tuesday is a fine clear day, with a high wind, but no frost. Tilberry Races begin at half -past one, so there is no time for luncheon at the How, and a necessity for picnic baskets on the drag, veiy much to the delight of all the younger guests, who prefer to take their refreshment uncomfortably out of doors to the commonplace convenience of the dining-room. At a quarter before one the horses and carriages are brought round to the porch, and Marion, in a borrowed habit and chim- ney-pot hat, which is balanced rather hazardously on a small mountain of padded hair, awaits, with some faint apprehension, her first ride on anything larger than Tommy, the old pony. She has not yet seen Brown Fixture, and as she stands on tho top step with Fred Stormont at her side she surveys the animals timorously. There is Juno, satin-skinned and proud of bearing, arching her graceful neck, and gazing pensively at the company with her ox-eyes, pawing the ground a little with one delicate hoof, as if eager to take flight. And here is Sibyl, looking her prettiest, a email, slender prettiness, in neatly fitting riding habit, and hat poised at exactly the right angle. Sir Wilford is at hand to mount her, and there is the usual careful adjustment of stirrup and skirt, curb and snaille. " I wonder which is my horse ? " says Marion, with an appeal- ing look at Mr. Stormont. " Which is Fixture, boy ? " asks Fred of an attendant lad. " This here, sir," answers the youth. "This here" is the animal in his charge, a tall brute, with a 202 Dead Men's Shoe3. neck a yard long, and, in the language of the stable, too much daylight underneath. " Good gracious ! " cries Marion, appalled at the aspect of this animal, " am I to go up there ? " " He's a big one, isn't he ? " responds Fred. " Capital stride I should think, get over plenty of ground in his gallop. Looka like an old steeplechaser, doesn't he ? " " He looks very dreadful," says Marion, dubiously. " Oh, you needn't be afraid of him. He's steady enough, depend upon it. Sir Wilford's head man wouldn't put you on an unsafe horse." " I hope not," says Marion. " But you'll take care of me, won't you, Mr. Stormont ? " " I'll do my best," answers Fred. " Ah, here's the Dutchman, rather fresh, I'm afraid." This last remark has reference to an uncouth attempt of the Dutchman to back into an adjacent shrubbery, on being dragged out of which he entangles himself clumsily with the other horses. The drag and barouche have driven off by this time, and everybody is mounted except Marion and her swain. Mounting Marion upon Fixture is not the easiest operation in mechanics. She gives a tremendous spring, but always at the wrong moment, and after two or three false starts she is hoisted to a level with Fixture's saddle, only to remain there suspended in mid air until allowed to slide gently to earth again. " I'm afraid I'm not a good, hand at mounting a lady," murmurs the patient Frederick, after he has made himself almost apoplectic in the endeavour, and now an experienced groom comes forward, tells Marion exactly at what angle to put her left leg, and throws her up into the saddle as if she were a ball. " Gracious ! " she exclaims, " I'm here at last, but oh, how high it is I " She surveys the earth beneath her with a sense of awe ; it is like being on a mountain top, and not half so safe. She gives a little cry of surprise when Fixture begins to move, as if motion were the last thing one might expect from a horse. The rest of the riders have gone down the avenue, Sir Wilford riding Bull of Bashan, and keeping close beside Sibyl on Juno. Frederick now clambers upon the Dutchman, who to the last moment struggles to elude his half-proprietor, as if desirous to prove that a horse cannot serve two masters. Fixture caracoles gently upon the gravel sweep while Fred is mounting, but even these gentle movements strike terror to the unaccustomed soul of Marion. " I'm afraid he's very spirited," she remarks to one of the grooms. u Lord, mum, he's nigh twelve year old, there's none too much Tilherry Steeplechase. 203 spcrrit in him. You'd best ride him on the curb if you're any ways timid." •' Which is the curb ? " inquires Marion. The man shows her, and adjusts her reins, which she has been clntrhing in her right hand in an inextricable tangle. " But do you think I can manage him with the reins in my left hand ? " she asks. " It seems so left-handed, I'm afraid I shan't have any power over him." " You can hold on with both hands if you're timersome, miss, but the lighter you handle Fixture the better. He's got a very nice mouth, and he don't stand being sawed at. Ride him on the curh if you like, but let your 'and foller 'is 'ed." This language is as dark as Hebrew to Marion. She has but one thought, and that is that she would fain be at rest in the barouche or the drag, nay, safe at home in the obscurity of domestic life, with cross Hester and impertinent Jane. Any- where, anywhere, off the back of Brown Fixture, who has just caught sight of some obnoxious object, and has made himself into an arch from which Marion feels as if she were sliding. Fred has now brought the Dutchman so far into subjection as to turn his nose towards the avenue, and Fixture being clutched and jerked in the same direction by Marion, the two set out, as uncomfortable a couple as ever enjoyed the delights of equestrian exercise. When they are well out of ear-shot the grooms and boys burst into a simultaneous guffaw. " After this we must have some beer," says the head man. " I'm blest if ever I see such a brace o' cockneys. I ain't had such a laugh since Chrizzlemas." Fixture proves himself worthy of his reputation, and goes down the avenue with amiable sobriety, nay, would be perfect in his conduct were it not for that brute the Dutchman, who shies at sight of a rabbit, wheels round altogether at sight of a rook, and otherwise disgraces himself by convulsive movements and collapses which disturb Fixture's equanimity, though he evidently regards them with contempt. The brown horse behaves so well, however, that when they have walked down the avenue and emerged upon the road, Marion begins to feel quite easy in her mind, and to think that after all she really does doat upon riding. But for the Dutchman's evil example Fixture would behave admirably all the way to Tilbeny, a nice level road, with little to alarm a reasonable equine mind. The Dutchman is, however, a creature without reasonableness of mind, and contrives to see objects of hjrror in the clearest road, whereby Marion is every now and then startled from her equanimity by a sudden bouncing of Mr. Stormont's horse against hers, a movement by which sh» Carrowly escaped being pushed into a ditch, 204 Dead Men's Shoes. " Isn't your horse a little wrong in his mind, Mr. Stormont ?" Bhe asks, after one of these encounters. " He puts his ears back in such a dreadful way, and starts and plunges so awfully." " Only high spirit," replies Fred, " all thoroughbreds do it." "Then I think I'd rather ride an unthorough-bred," says Marion. When they have walked for about half a mile Frederick suggests a gentle trot, to which proposal Marion acquiesces smilingly. But the very beginning of the gentle trot makes her breathless, and she finds herself jerked about in her saddle in a most ferocious way. She holds on to the reins, however, with both hands, and endures stoutly, till Fred, in charity, reins in the Dutchman, whereupon Fixture stops as if some spring had been touched in his internal economy, and nearly pitches Marioe cut of the saddle by the suddenness of his stoppage. " I'm afraid you don't quite enjoy trotting," says Fred. Marion pants for a little while, struggling with the innumerable hair-j.ins which sustain her pyramid of plaits, before she can recover breath enough to answer. " I dare say it's very nice," she replies at last, " but it jerks one, don't you think ? Perhaps Fixture is not a good trotter ? " " I think if you were to rise with him, and sit a little more in the middle of your saddle, you might find it more comfortable," suggests Frederick. " Do you think so ? I'll try next time." Fred endeavours to explain the theory of trotting, which, although he has not quite conquered the practice, is firmly im- pressed upon his mind " Now," he says, flattering himself that he has made it all clear, " suppose we try again ? " A shake of the reins makes the Dutchman lunge violently forward as if he wanted to dash his brains out upon the road, and starts Fixture in a really delightful trot, if poor Marion only knew it. She bobs up and down as if she were bathing, but when she rises the horse doesn't, and the effect is even more jerky than before. She is just beginning to despair, when the red glow of a cottage fire, shining through an open door, appals the Dutch- man's soul, and sends him into a wild canter, in which Fixture immediately joins. The horses tear along the road like the herd of swine driven down a steep place, and Marion, frightened, but rather enjoying the swinging pace, finds herself rising in her saddle as high as anyone could desire. Inspired by the clatter of their hoofs the brutes rush on for eoine distance, Fred as powerless to pull up the Dutchman as ho would be to stop a steam engine at express pace, or stay the pas- sage of the north wind. When the horses have had enough they stop. Tilberry Steeplechase. 205 u l think I rose pretty well then," remarks Marion, self- corn f)lacently. " Just now, when vou were cantering ? " " Yes." " But you oughtn't rise in the canter, you know," says Fred " You must sit as if you were part of your horse ; ' sit down on him and ride him,' as the jockeys say." " Good gracious ! It's very puzzling," exclaims Marion. " All practice. You must contrive to ride more." M Yes, I should like it above all things. Uncle Trenchard has bought Sibyl a horse. But I am not so favoured." " Ah, it's a good thing to be the favourite, isn't it ? " That canter has brought them nearly to the racecourse. They overtake the rest of their party, Sibyl looking as cool and com- for-',able upon Juno as if she were sitting in her favourite easy chair at Lancaster Lodge, while Marion is painfully conscious that the last half -hour's unaccustomed exercise has made an object of her. " How have you enjoyed your ride?" asks Sibyl, coming to her side. " Oh, pretty well," replies Marion, rather crossly. " I'm not accustomed to riding, like you, you know I haven't a horse of my own. Isn't rny hair dreadful ? " " It's rather rough. But that doesn't matter." " Oh, not in the least — to you." " How do you like Fixture ? " asks Sir Wilford, coming up to them. " Very well, thank you. But I think he uses the wrong legs when he trots." Tilberry racecourse is a long strip of meadow land by the side of a river, rather a dreary scene on a gray winter's day, were it not for the carriages, horses, tax carts, and various vehicles whicb' enliven it, and the eager crowd on foot. Sir Wilford and his party are the most important group upon the ground, the rest of the assembly consisting chiefly of tenant farmers and their families, with a sprinkling of the Redcastle tradespeople, and a few smart carriages belonging to the manu- facturing classes, chiefly noticeable for the newness of their harness, the splendour of their liveries, and the indifferent quality of their horses. Sir Wilford pats Fixture's neck with a friendly air as he stands beside Marion. "Poor old Fixture. Capital fellow he used to be six or seven years ago. I've ridden him many a time over this very course. Won a cup with him once, poor old chap. I wonder if he remembers?'' " Where's the steeple, Sir Wilford ? " asks Marion, looking round at the landscape. 208 Dead Men's Shoes. "The what?" " The steeple. It's a steeplechase, isn't it?" Sir Wilford smiles at the damsel's innocence. M Steeplechase — across country, you know, and all that. There'* no necessity for a steeple." " Oh, I thought you chose a steeple, and then rode straight to it, over hedges and ditches, and everything." " We've sunk the steeple. But we £ro over the hedges and ditches. There's the saddling bell. Yes, Fixture does remember." " I wish he didn't," says Marion nervously, as the animal pricks up his ears, and begins to curvet in a restless manner, which makes it rather difficult to hold him. The equestrians are drawn up in a line by the side of the race- course. There are no railings to divide the course from the rest of the meadow. It is only marked out by a line of sods turned up by the spade, and a post at intervals. The timber jumps are by no means desperate, and are well guarded by furze bushes ; tlie water jump is a muddy ditch about twenty feet broad. " I wish you'd hold him for me," says Marion, appealing to Mr. Stormont. " He's been so dreadfully excited since that bell rang." Fred clutches at Fixture's rein for a minute or so, and tries at the same time to soothe the Dutchman, who has just expresssd his antipathy to a very small child in a pinafore, eating a large piece of parliament. Fixture shuffles about a little, and then seems to grow calm. Sir Wilford and his party ride up and down, impatient for the beginning of the sport. Marion and her protector keep together by the course. The bell rings again, louder this time. There is a gust of ex- citement in the very wind. The signal is given, the gaily coloured jackets blaze out against the cold gray sky, the horses are off! with a rush — Fixture following them. He has stood like a statue to see them go by, then, as they passed him, he has gathered himself together, and pursued them like a maniac. The old steeplechaser has not forgotten his trade. There is a cry of horror from Sir Wilford and his party, a roar — half terror, half laughter — from the crowd, as Marion is borne along, her arms frantically encircling the animal's neck, herplaitt flying in the win'', her shrill shrieks ringing out upon the air. Sha drops something at every stage of her journey. First her whip, then her handkerchief,, then her hat, then one of the plaits, an artificial enrichment which she has deemed a necessarya ppendago to a very good head of hair. On Hies Fixture, struggling for a place, feeling that he must win or perish in the attempt. Marion, with her face buried in his mane, sees nothing, knows nothing, Tilberry Steeplechase. 207 except that she is miraculously holding on somehow, and that sudden death is imminent. The timber jump is before them, and the spectators hold their breaths, anticipating a fearful fall, per- haps a deadly one, when Sir Wilford gallops across on Bull of Bashan, and contrives to catch Fixture's bridle just as he is lifting himself to the leap. The old steeplechaser swings on one side and lands Marion comfortably on the turf, where she lies motionless till kindly hands raise her. She is only stunned, and comes to her senses after a minute or so to find herself the centre of a sympathetic crowd. " Poor dear ! " says a woman, " she did hold on well, didn't she ? It was beautiful." Sibyl is on the scene by this time, and dismounts to assist the fallen one. " You're not hurt, are you, dear ? " she inquires, anxiously. " I don't know whereabouts it is," replies Marion, clutching her dishevelled plaits, " but I feel as if I was all but killed— somewhere." Brandy flasks are produced, and the eufferer is persuaded to take two or three sips of the spirit. " Back all right, I hope," says Sir Wilford, who has delivered over the excited Fixture to a groom. _ " I feel as limp as if it was broken," replies Marion. " When did I fall ? was it the day before yesterday, or longer aero than that?" & & " My love, it was just this minute." "Then I've had a long dream," replies Marion, putting her hand to her head ; " such a long dream. I feel as if I had been riding steeplechases on horrid runaway horses for the last three weeks." " I shall never forgive myself for putting you on Fixture," says Sir Wilford, with a conscience-stricken air, "but I really thought he was the quietest old horse in the stable." " Oh, I don't mind it a bit," answers Marion, who enjoys being the object of general attention. " In fact, I rather like it. It's very exciting, you know." " Uncommonly," mutters Sir Wilford, who has had as bad a fright as he ever experienced in his life. " I thought you wen> done for when he came to that fence. If it hadn't been for the Bull— well, we won't talk about it." Here a small boy brings Marion the fallen plait of false hair, which looks something like a defunct snake as he hands it to her, whereat there is a faint titter. After twisting herself about a little in the arms of her sup- porters, Marion announces that she has no bones broken, to her knowledge. 203 Dead Men's Shoes. " My spine may go all wrong to-morrow, and make me » cripple for life," she says, " but I think I cap walk now." " Shall I mount you again, ma'am ? " asks the groom, who it holding Fixture. That quadruped is bathed in perspiration, stands like a block of wood, and droops his head despondently aa if fully aware that he has made a fool of himself. " You might ride him home safe enough ma'am. He's quiet now." "What, get u^on him again?" cries Marion. "No, thank you." " Bring hit < the barouche," says Sir Wilford, and Marion is fed to that vehicle, where the Miss Cardonnels inform her that they have been suffering agonies of anxiety on her behoof, though neither they nor Mrs. and Miss Radnor have left their seats. " We knew we could be no use," Phoebe remarks, apolo- getically, " and we should have only increased the confusion if we had come to you." " It's such a dangerous thing to ride when one is not used to it," remarks Vinnie, soothingly. " Wilford ought to have known better than to put you on that dreadful old horse." Marion, who felt herself a person of importance amidst tha crowd on the racecourse, shrinks into dire insignificance amongst these fine ladies in the carriage. She is screwed in, bodkin, between Phoebe and Mrs. Radnor. She knows she is looking an object in her battered hat and disordered tresses, and she can see nothing whatever of the race. The four ladies talk their usual family talk of uncles and cousins, nephews and nieces, and people they know ; discuss the domestic affairs of the niece who is just married ; review the prospects of the nephew who is going to marry ; talk about the cousin who has just had a baby, and the unjust will of the uncle lately deceased ; until Marion absolutely wishes herself away from these privileged ones, and thinks how nice it would be to be reading a novel on the parlour sofa at uncle Robert's, the sofa wheeled cosily up to the fire, and Jenny kneeling on the hearth toasting muffins. " If my back is broken, it'll be a comfort to be a doctor'* niece," she tells herself consolingly. It is dusk when the last race is run, and the How party turn their faces homeward. A three-mile ride in the winter twilight lies between them and kettledrum ; an excellent opportunity for a tete-c-tete with Sibyl, thinks Sir Wilford, who has found it impossible to secure half an hour of that young lady's society at the How. There she is always surrounded. He contrives to leave the course close at her side, and to keep well in front of the other equestrians. Bull is quiet enough now and quite content to lapse into a lazy walk, having been indulged with half a dozen tearing gallons across the level ground near Tillerry Steeplechase. 209 the racecourse. Juno and Bull step side by side, solemnly as a pair of Flemish funeral horses, which have never done anything but " black work " since they were foaled. It is a fine level road, a copse on one side, the moor upon the other. Wintry stars begin to twinkle in the gray, cottage fires gleam now and then across the road. " Now is my time," thinks Sir Wilford. "I hope you are not frightened at riding in the dark," he begins, with a gush of originality. " Not at all. In the first place I don't call this gray twilight darkness, and in the second place I feel myself quite safe in your care." " I am glad of that," 6ays Sir Wilford. " I am very glad you feel yourself safe with me, Sibyl." This is the casting of the die. After this utterance of her Christian name Sir Wilford feels he has committed himself to the deed. Receding now were as difficult as to go on. " Yes, Sibyl, I am glad, for I want to be your protector all the days of my life. I want this dear little hand," taking the hand that droops carelessly at her side, with gold-handled whip lightly held, " I want this hand for mine. Oh, I think you must have 6een ever so long ago that I love you. I have made no secret of my attachment, Sibyl. You are the first woman 1 ever met that I would care to make mistress of the How — you are the only woman I ever have asked — the only woman I ever shall ask to be my wife." "Oh, stop, stop, Sir Wilford! Not one word more!" cries Sibyl. " Forgive me for having let you say so much." While he has been talking she has decided on her course. A bold step, but the only one open to her. This young man is honourable, generous-minded. She will, she must trust him with her secret. " Forgive you, Sibyl, for what ? " "Forgive me, if you ever can. I have been so wrong. I have acted so meanly. Forgive me for not having understood you better, for not having told you the truth about myself. I have led you on perhaps, most unwillingly, but still I may have led you on to make this generous offer." "Generous be hanged!" cries the impetuous Sir Wilford. " There's no generosity in a man trying to get the tiling he most desires. Don't talk about leading me on, Sibyl. Of course, you led me on — that is to say, you couldn't help seeing that I love you to distraction, and you've let me go on loving you. There's Jo leading a fellow on in that. You're like one of the stars up yonder, and just let yourself be admired. But you're not going to reject me, Sibyl. I can't believe that." He does not believe it Upon his own personal merits he has o 210 Dead Men's SJioes. formed no decTaed opinion. He knows that he is tolerably good- looking, does justice to his tailor's handiwork, rides straight to hounds, and is free from vice. But he puts himself out of the jcale altogether, and reckons upon his position and surroundings. That there is any woman in Yorkshire who would refuse to ba mistress of the How and the How stables is more than he can believe. " You won't reject me, Sibyl ? " he repeats. " Indeed, Sir Wilford, I have no alternative. I can make you but one answer." " And that is " " No." " Oh, come, you can't mean it, Sibyl." " I do mean it." " You're in love with some other fellow. Not that cur, Fred Stonnont, I hope? " " If I thought about Mr. Stonnont at all I should detest him." " Who is it, then ? " " Sir Wilford, will you keep a secret if I confide one to you? " " Have I any claim to be considered a gentleman ? " M Yes, yes, I know I may trust you." "Go on," says Sir Wilford, sunk in gloom. " You know very little of my history, I think, Sir Wilford,** begins Sibyl, in a low but steady voice, "although you have done me the greatest honour in your power to confer upon me. Perhaps all you know is that I have been adopted by my uncls Stephen, and that he is likely to leave me a fortune. I have no certainty that he will do so, but I have every reason to believe it." " Yes, yes. I know all about that." " But you do not know, perhaps, that when my uncle camt from India I was absent from Redcastle. I had gone to London to get my living as a governess. It was a dreary life, and would have seemed drearier, I dare say, but for one event which happened to diversify it. I was weak enough to fall in love with a gentleman who had as little to marry upon <\s I had." " Poor child ! Passing fancy — romantic attachment. You'll outlive that, Sibyl." " It will outlive me, for we contrived to mafc.3 the bond last- ing Without the knowledge of any of my family 1 was foolish eno Jgh to get married ! The man I married is the son of Mr. Trench^rd's worst enemy. My only chance of inheriting my unt le's fortune was the concealment of my marriage. I have the.efo.Te contrived to keep the secret, and you are the first to whom 1 ^ave ever revealed it. If you betray me I am ruined." " Beti xy you ! What do you take me for ? " cries Sir Wilford. "*Tou are a married woman, and your husband is living ? " Tilberry Steeplechase. 311 "Yea." " And he suffers you to keep up this deception — to stoop to this meanness. Forgive me " " For calling things by their right names— yes, I forgive you. There are no words too hard for my conduct ; and yet, perhaps, if you could measure the depth of miseiy I had sunk into before I made up my mind to try for uncle Trenchard's fortune, even you might pity me." " Pity ! Yes, Sibyl, I pity you with all my heart ; but I can't help despising your husband." " Do not despise him. What I have done has been done with- out his knowledge or consent. He only traced me to my present home a very little while ago, and he then told me that he would repudiate me and my fortune when the day came for me to possess it." " And yet you continue the deception ? " " Would it not be positive idiocy to abandon it just now, when the end is in all probability very near ? My uncle has not many years to live." 44 He looks rather shaky, poor old fellow — liver, I dare say." " Why should I make a revelation that would be a shock to him, and do no good to any one else ? If my husband really loves me he will be true to me as I am to him, and all will be well for us by-and-bye." " And you'll secure the old man's money," says Sir Wilf ord. 44 Trust a woman for looking after the main chance." " You despise me, Sir Wllford," falters Sibyl, humiliated. " No, no ; nothing of the kind. Only when one comes to talk of money, it takes a little of the bloom off, you know. I had looked up to you as an angel — something quite ethereal, you know. And when one comes down to pounds, shillings, and pence — well, it's rather a long way to come, you know." 44 You'll keep my secret ? " 44 Consider it buiied in the deepest grave that ever was dug." 44 And if you are tempted to despise, if you do despise me, as I fear you must, try to remember that you have never known what it is to be poor, that there is a depth of misery ; abject fear for to-morrow's bread ; the dread of being turned out of one's wretched shelter into the street, the horror of being clothed in rags, driven to the workhouse. Consider that you have never known these things. I have, and my deception grew out of them. If I told the truth to-morrow I might have to go back to all those unforgotten horrors. If I play my part steadily to the end, I may secure a happy future for my husband and myself." 44 Upon my word it's a very trying position, Miss Faunthorpe, and I -feel for you with all my heart. It would have been kinder 212 Dead Men's Shoes. to me if you had given me a hint of the truth a little sooner, and spared me — well, spared me a very bitter disappointment Yet I can but thank you for having trusted me at the last." "One word more, Sir Wilford. Pray do not let my uncle suppose that you have asked me to be your wife. He would never forgive me for my rejection of you." " I'll take care of that. He shall think me the most miserable object in creation — a male flirt — a man who dangles about a pretty woman meaning nothing but his own amusement. I'll bear the brunt of the old gentleman's anger, Miss Faunthorpe, rely upon it ; and if ever you want a friend, remember that, in spite of his disappointment, Wilford Cardonnel is yours to the death 1 " CHAPTER XXXI. JOEL PILGRIM. That evening after Tilberry races is the gayest night there haa yet been at the How. There is a dinner party, matrons and maidens wear their finest dresses, each assuming that one last and newest fashion which the Princess Metternich, or some one of equal importance, has made the rage in Paris. Even poor Marion, revived by strong tea and an hour's comfortable slumber, puts on her blue and salmon dinner dress, and feels that she is looking lovely. Yet, although most of the ladies at the How are tolerably satis- fied with their own appearance, there is none among them who would venture to deny Sibyl Faunthorpe's claim to that apple of discord from whose pips sprang Troja's fall, and the slaughter of many heroes. She is paler than usual this evening, but her eyes are !>right with a feverous excitement, and there is more brilliancy in her pallor than in other women's carnation. Mr. Trenchard observes that look of unusual excitement, and sees that the hand which waves the large white fan trembles a little now and then. He has heard from some friendly gossips how Sir Wilford and Sibyl rode on ahead of all the others during the return home, and he draws his own conclusions from Sibyl's suppressed agitation and this fact The baronet has proposed, he tells himself. Sibyl is to all intents and purposes mistress of fortune and the How. Mr. Trenchard rejoices in this consum- mation as if it took a load off his mind. He smiles sweetly upon his niece, and once, when he is near her for a few minute* be/'"-e they go to dinner, he ventures to hint at his thoughts. Joel Pilgrim. 213 " How pretty you are looking, my pet ! " he whispers, " but a little over-excited. You have something to tell me, haven't you ? " " Nothing out of the common, dear uncle." " What, not about your ride home ? Come, you see a little bird has been before you." " Little birds are generally more inventive than veracious, uncle." And at this point the bachelor appointed to that honour offers Sibyl his arm, and the procession files off to the dining-room. The long drawing-room, once a chapel, is at its fullest about an hour after dinner. Sibyl has just risen from the piano, where she has played Chopin and Schumann to the delight, real or affected, of her auditory. Stephen Trenchard stands with his back to the low marble chimney-piece, surveying the room in which his lovely niece forms so important a feature, flattering himself with the fancy that this room will be hers before long, that she will be its acknowledged mistress as she is now its queen. He looks round for Sir Wilford, wondering not to see that captive of love exhibiting his fetters more conspicuously, but Sir Wilford is standing on the hearth-rug at the other end of the room — there are two fireplaces in the drawing-room — talking hunting talk with a brace of rubicund sportsmen who look as if their systems were permeated with old port. While Mr. Trenchard is wondering that Sir Wilford should hold himself thus aloof from the object of his devotion, the butler throws open a distant door, and announces — " Mr. Joel Pilgrim." Everybody looks up at the announcement, and at the entrance of the person to whom the name belongs. The name is strange to all ears save Mr. Trenchard's. The person is a stranger to ail eyes save. Mr. Trenchard's and Sibyl's. Not a welcome announcement, by any means, judging by the sudden angry look that darkens Stephen Trenchard's countenance, spreading over it an additional shade of sallowness, deepening the bistre beneath his eyes, hardening the lines about his mouth. He crosses the room hurriedly, and takes the stranger by the hand. " My dear Pilgrim, what brings you here ? At so late an hour, too." " I have to apologize for what must naturally appear an in- trusion," replies Mr. Pilgrim, in a voice which is peculiarly soft and conciliatory, " but the commercial man's habitual selfishness is my only excuse — if a vice can be an excuse for a solecism. I wanted to see you to ask your advice upon an affair of con- siderable moment. I went to Redcastle, found you were staying here, and hired a fly to bring me on. The roads were dark, the 214 Dead Men's Shoes. horse slow, and the flyman stupid. Thus I am ahove an honr later than I need have been, though in any case I must have been late, as I only reached Redcastle at seven o'clock. " You might have waited till to-morrow," says Mr. Trenchar " « unappeased by this apology. " I was too anxious to wait. I hope Sir Wilford Cardonnei and his family will pardon my impertinence." He looks towards Sir Wilford, who has come forward at the announcement of a guest. " Very happy to see any friend of Mr. Trenchard's," Bays the good-natured baronet. " I'm afraid you have had a cold drive." " It is not particularly warm upon your moors for a man born in Calcutta." " Have you dined, by the way ? " " I dined by the way. I stopped in Redcastle just long enough to dine." " You mustn't go Dack to-night," says Sir Wilford, hospitably. " You can have your chat with your friend Mr. Trenchard in the library, and then come back to us to finish the evening. I'll order a room to be got ready for you." " You are really too good," replies Mr. Pilgrim, hesitating, and with a glance at Mr. Trenchard. " But you have no valise," interjects Stephen Trenchard, " im- possible for you to stay. Come to the library, and I'll soon settle this business for you." Mr. Pilgrim smiles a subdued smile, murmurs his grateful acknowledgment of Sir Wilford's kindness, and bows himself out after Stephen Trenchard. There is a general sense of relief among the company when that sleek head and swarthy face are withdrawn from their midst. "What a peculiar-looking person!" exclaims Mrs. Stormont, who is sitting near Sibyl. "What an unpleasant-looking person I" responds the out- spoken Mrs. Radnor. " Do you know him, Sibyl ? " inquires Mrs. Stormont. " I have seen him — once before. He is an Indian friend of my uncie's." " He has never stayed at Lancaster Lodge, I think," hazards Mrs. Stormont. " No, he has never stayed there. He only called one evening on business." " He must live in the neighbourhood then, I suppose ? " u I should hardly think so." Curiosity has been awakened by this late visitor. There is something out of the common in his appearance, and Mr. Tren- chard's vexation at his coming has been tolerably apparent to every one. Joel Pihjrnn. 2Io Mr. Trenchard and his friend are closeted In the library for kbout an hour, then a bell rings, and the stranger is conducted back to his fly, whose departing wheels are heard in the drawing- room half an hour after all other guests have gone, and just as the house party are bidding one another good night. It is a quarter past twelve. " I wonder Mr. Trenchard has not let that poor man stay," says Mrs. Stormont ; " a nasty drive back to Redcastle at this time of night — such a horrid road after dark, — and those flymen are tipsy half their time." " Perhaps Mr. Trenchard wouldn't much care if the man were turned over into a ditch," rejoins Mrs. Radnor. " He's the most unpleasant-looking person I ever saw. Did you see how those black eyes of his seemed to take us all in ? He's just my idea of a Thug." Mrs. Stormont has no very clear notion of Thugs, but admits that the stranger's expression has impressed her unfavourably. At breakfast the next morning there is general surprise when Mr. Trenchard announces his intention of returning to Redcastle in the course of the day. He has had letters from India winch demand his attention — he has some property over there which the Government talk of buying, — and it will be very advan tageous for him if the transaction comes off. It is a matter which requires prompt negotiation. " I am extremely sony to curtail such a pleasant visit, espe- cially on account of these girls," he adds. The Misses Cardonnel express their deep regret, but do not urge Mr. Trenchard to reconsider his decision. Sir Wilford expresses his sorrow, but even he does not press his guests to remain, much to the surprise of the lookers on, who speculate curiously on Mr. Trenchard's motive for going, and Sir Wil- ford 's reason for taking his sweetheart's departure so easily. " Don't you see that it's all settled between them ? " says Mrs. Radnor to Mrs. Chasubel. " He has made her an offer and been accepted, and I dare say the old man wants to consult his lawyers about settlements. He'll give her a fortune on her marriage, no doubt." Sibyl is very glad to go, though she feels much more comfort- able in Sir Wilford's society now that he and she understand each other. Marion is bitterly disappointed at this abrupt termi- nation to her visit, and is inclined to grumble about the money wasted on those lovely dresses, till she reflects that the money was not hers, and that it is something to have secured the dresses. There will be some pleasure in disporting herself be- fore Maria Harrison in that brown silk costume. So the sisters go upstairs and pack, aided, or in some measure hindered, by Miss Cardonnel's maid, whose services that young lady poliLe'y 216 Dead Men's Shoes. offers for the occasion. Mrs. Parker is rewarded for her civilities, morning cups of tea and other small attentions, and before luncheon all is ready for departure. Mr. Trenchard has sent a groom to Redcastle to order his carriage to fetch him at three o'clock. Sir Wilford is absent from the luncheon table for the first time since the coming of his guests. Phoebe and Lavinia are unusually cheerful ; indeed, Sibyl fancies that there is a general accession of cheerfulness among the feminine portion of the community. The gentlemen, on the other hand, deplore Miss Faunthorpe's departure with a flattering vehemence. They declare that a star is about to vanish from their sky, and a good deal more to the same effect. Even Mr. Chasubel has admired Sibyl, and has told people in confidence that she is the image of a Madonna by Guido in the Vatican, a nice way of telling people that he has been in Rome, and is an art critic in his way. Fred Stormont sits next to Marion and bewails his loss. " We ought to have gone out riding together ever so many times more," he says. " I should have made you a first-rate horsewoman," an assertion that savours of rashness when it is remembered that Mr. Stormont has not yet succeeded in making himself a capable horseman. At three o'clock Mr. Trenchard's carriage is at the door, the portmanteaus are in, the servants feed, and all things ready. Just at this last moment Sir Wilford appears, looking very much like his own gamekeeper, in velveteen coat, cords, and leather gaiters, and with his gun in his hand. " I hope you'll all excuse me for forgetting the luncheon bell," he says to the company generally, most of whom have come out into the hall to say good-bye to Mr. Trenchard and his nieces. " The birds were very wild, and Glenny and I forgot the progress of the enemy. I made quite a rush home to say good-bye to Mr. Trenchard." "It will not be a long parting, I hope," replies Stephen Trenchard. " You must come and dine with us directly you are free." " I shall be charmed. Good-bye Miss Faunthorpe." Sibyl and Sir Wilford shake hands, at least thirty pairs of eyes watching the operation. They shake hands in a formal and orthodox manner, and no one can detect so much as a secret pressure — love's Masonic grip. He leads her to the carriage, and when she is seated, and the coachman has gathered up the reins, he leans over for the last word, and one last pressure of the little hand he had hoped to make his own. "Trust me," he says. " You have almost broke my heart, but you may trust me." Mr. Trenchard is silent and gloomy throughout the homeward drive. Sibyl, although glad to be separated from Sir Wilford, Joel Pilgrim. 217 looks forward deapondingly to the solitude and monotony of her life at Lancaster Lodge after the gaiety and variety of the last few days. At the How she has not had leisure for sad thoughts ! no time for self-reproach, regret, and all the illness that attends her selfish course. She has been the centre of an admiring circle, her vanity gratified to the uttermost, and life has seemed one round of pleasure. Marion is loquacious as usual, and rattles on with her criticisms upon the How and its visitors, from Mrs. Radnor's exaggerated aquiline nose, which always blushed after luncheon, " as if it was ashamed of belonging to any one who drank so much sherry," says Marion, to the Miss Vernons' high-heeled boots, "in which I know they suffer agonies," adds Marion. Neither Stephen Trenchard nor Sibyl responds to these remarks, but the babble runs on intermittingly till they come to the lower end of the town, and to uncle Robert's green garden gate. Jenny, the omnipresent, rushes out at the sound of the carriage wheels, her hair flying in the wind, and receives her sister with a volley of " goodness graciouses," and " sure to goodnesses," and numerous embraces which are like the gambadoes of an infant hippopotamus, or the friskings of a friendly sea-lion. Mr. Trenchard gives a sigh of relief when Marion and her boxes have been deposited ; nor is Sibyl sorry to dispense with her sister's vivacious society. " You will find a visitor at my house, Sibyl," says Stephen Trenchard, as they drive towards the Bar, " a visitor whom I expect you to treat with all consideration, as he is a particular friend of mine." " Mr. Pilgrim, uncle ? " asks Sibyl, startled. " Yes, Mr. Pilgrim. I did not wish him to take advantage of Sir Wilford's hospitality, nor did I want him to go back to London without proper entertainment, so I invited him to spend a week or so at Lancaster Lodge." " And that was the reason you left the How so soon ? " "That and other reasons influenced me. There is that pro- perty I spoke about at luncheon." " To be sure ; I forgot that." " I hope my leaving so suddenly has not been a disappointment to you, Sibyl?" " Not at all, dear uncle." M And that I have in no way prevented the triumph which I fully expected you to win. Pray be candid with me, my dear child. Sir Wilford has proposed to you, and you have accepted him ? You ought to have hastened to tell me of an event which you know must give me unalloyed pleasure." " My dear uncle, I have nothing to tell. I am as far from being Lady Cardonnel as ever I was in my life." 218 Dead Men's Shoes. u I'm very sorry to bear it. What was Sir Wilford talking about when you rode home from Tilberry together last night ? Mr. Stormont told me that you and he rode ahead of the others." " We were talking about the commonest subjects in the world, uncle. Horses, races, Marion's adventure on Fixture, and th» merits of Juno — the mare I was riding." " Humph ! I fully made up my mind that he had taken that opportunity of proposing to you." " I am sorry you should feel disappointed, uncle. But I really don't understand why you should wish me to marry. It's not very flattering to me." " You ought to understand, child. My time is growing short, and I should like to see you established in a brilliant position before I go." " My position will be brilliant enough when I am in possession of your wealth," thinks Sibyl, but she acknowledges her uncle's anxiety for her welfare with a tender murmur, expressive of the desire that he should live for ever. Mr. Pilgrim comes out to the door to receive Mr. Trenchard and his niece, and for the first time in her life Sibyl touches his hand. It is curiously soft and flaccid, and gives her an unpleasant sensation, as if she had touched some strange animal, some member of the stoat or mole tribe. " So glad to see you baek ! " he says to Mr. Trenchard, in the blandest voice. " I was afraid the attractions of that fine old country house " " You ought to know that when I say a thing I abide by it," answers Mr. Trenchard, curtly. " Mr. Pilgrim, my niece, Miss Faunthorpe." " If you knew how I have been longing for this opportunity, Miss Faunthorpe." " Don't waste time on compliments, Joel ; Sibyl will scarcely have time to change her dress for dinner." Sibyl runs upstairs to her room, cheerful with blazing fire and lighted candles — a very different chamber to return to from that dark first-floor front of Mrs. Bonny's, where one had to grope for lucifer match and candlestick in the winter dusk. Yet so unreasonable a thing is human nature, that on this January evening Sibyl would gladly exchange these luxurious surround- ings of hers for the one pair room in Chelsea, could the wheel of time make a backward revolution and give her back h^r husband's confidence and love. The stranger's presence has impressed her disagreeably. There is something in her uncle's manner to Mr. Pilgrim, and in Mr. Pilgrim's manner to her uncle, that inspires distrust. The evening at Lancaster Lodge is very quiet and dreary after the +.Aad8 Comes to Chief. 219 life and bustle of the How. Mr. Trenchardand his Indian friend retire to the study after dinner to talk business, and Sibyl is left alone with her books and piano. She finds comfort in neither, and perhaps, were Alexis to appear before her to-night on the same errand that brought him to Redcastle a few weeks ago, she would exchange all her chances of wealth to follow his uncertain fortunes. CHAPTER XXXIL ALEXIS COMES TO GRIEF. That interview at Redcastle has embittered Alexis Secretan's feelings towards his mercenary wife. Love has given place to contempt. A woman who could set the hope of wealth against her fidelity to him is unworthy of another thought of his. He goes back to Cheswold reckless, angry, wounded to the core of his heart, and he tells himself that he is indifferent to his wife's fate, that he cares not if he never see her false face again. The blow that has hit him hardest, he thinks, is the knowledge of his boy's death. That son whose fair young face he has pictured in many a day-dream — seen vividly in many a vision of his sleep, — the son who was to inherit Cheswold in the days to come — the son for whose sake it would have been so proud and pleasant a labour to add field to field, and extend the boundaries of that modest manor — this unknown but fondly loved eon is lost to him, nay, has never lived save as the infant of a day old. The chubby yearling, the bonny boy of two summers, whose image, limned by fancy, has been almost a livi ng thing for him, has had no existence. The loss of this shadow hangs upon him heavily. He is no longer the gay young squire who enjoyed the novel pleasures of wealth and social status. He is gloomy and absent-minded, and avoids all intercourse with his neighbours, save in the hunting- field, where he rides like a man who hold* his neck as a triile not worth his care. In this desolation of his mind he turns to two sources fof comfort— the first, his faithful friend, Richard Plowden, whom he detains at Cheswold for an unlimited period, to the peril of the Brompton fernery ; the second, his stable, to which he devotes himself a good deal at this time. His two hunters are considered the handsomest animals and Ihe straightest goors in this part of the country, and his reputa- 220 Dead Men's Shoes. tion is advanced among the rustic population by his reckless riding. " I know you'll come to grief some of these days, Alexis," says the f aithful Dick, who looks on his friend's proceedings with much dread. " Blokus, the gardener, told me yesterday that you ride with what he calls a 'plaguey loose rein,' and that you don't know the country well enough to run such risks. I don't like that tall brute of yours a bit." " Not Bayard ? " exclaims Alexis, who resents this abuse of hia last acquisition, a fine bay horse, sixteen two and a half, and described at Tattersall's as the cleverest thing in hunters. " Why, he's the best horse I ever rode. Such a mouth ! You might ride him with a skein of silk." " But you see you haven't ridden many horses," responds the prudent Richard. " You're half a foreigner. You haven't been brought up like these country squires, who have spent half their lives in the pigskin. It is pigskin, isn't it ? " " Yes, Dick. And do you suppose I didn't ride when I was in the army, and hunt into the bargain ? And do you suppose I didn't ride in the colonies, where a man thinks nothing of forty miles in the saddle?" "I don't know anything about the colonies, Alex, but you weren't brought up to following the hounds like these Hamp- shire gentlemen, and I feel wretched every day you ride that new horse of yours, expecting to see you brought home on a shutter." "And if I were, Dick, would it matter to any one except you?" " Alex 1 " cries Dick, reproachfully. " Yes, old fellow, I know you'd be sorry, but not so sorry as the heir-at-law would be glad. Who is my heir-at-law, by the way ? I must make a will, Dick. Some part of all these good things of ours must go to the only being I care for." " His wife," thinks the simple-minded Dick. Alexis rides over to Winchester that very afternoon, and is closeted for an hour with Mr. Scrodgers, the lawyer, to whom he gives instructions for a concise and simple will. He leaves his real estate to his next of kin on his father's side, who shall bear the name of Secretan, or, in the absence of any Buch Secretan, to his next of kin on his mother's side, exclusive of Mrs. Gorsuch and her children, who shall assume the name of Secretan. " I feel myself bound to do this much out of reverence for the good old name," he says, " out of gratitude to my cousin Matilda, who honoured the name in my unworthy person. But my personal property I shall leave to the one friend whose fincerity I am assured of, and who stood by me when I was at Alexis Cornea to Grief. 221 the bottom of the ladder. I owe it perhaps to him that Miss Secretan's bequest found me an honest man, and not .. blackguard or a swindler." " Very right, very proper," murmurs Mr. Scrodgers, wondering whether he is to be put down for a mourning ring, or a legacy of a hundred guineas or so. He is old, and Alexis is young, it ia true, whereby tbe chances of his inheriting any such legacy seem slender. But then Mr. Scrodgers is careful of himself, and these young men hunt, and drink more brandy and soda than is good for them, and shoot with new-fangled guns, and drive tandem with untried horses after dark. There might be a chance of his getting the legacy, should so proper an idea occur to his client. But Alexis furnishes his instructions without remember- ing the claims of Mr. Scrodgers. He leaves Richard Plowden all his personal property, furniture, books, horses, and pictures. " They ought to realise enough to make that honest fellow independent for the rest of his days," thinks Alexis ; "and now if Bayard makes an end of me some fine morning, I shall at least have done one good thing in my life." Mr. Scrodgers drives over to the Grange next morning in his highly respectable four-wheeled chaise, and the will is executed, but Mr. Secretan tells his friend nothing about its contents, nor is Richard Plowden curious. There breathes not on this earth a less mercenary creature. He is grateful beyond measure for his friend's affection, proud and happy that his presence at the Grange can give pleasure to Alexis. He plods on at his schopl books every morning in the snug quietude of the study, and in the afternoon takes long and solitary walks, while Alexis spends his day in the hunting-field. The neighbourhood is full of rustic beauty, even in winter, and Richard, who has spent almost all the days of his lif e amidst a wilderness of brick and mortar, is delighted with these country lanes, these noble old trees, beautiful in their leafless majesty, these grassy hills crowned with dark pine trees, the blue river that winds through the green valleys, these peaceful English homesteads nestling in sheltered spots, and here and there a picturesque old water-mill, with a big brown wheel that never seems to go round. Like many lame people Dick can get over a good deal of ground, and get along as fast as those who have the full use of their legs. He grows strong in this pure air, and gets young again. His complexion loses its sickly tint. Those transparent hands of his lose much of their delicacy. " If you go on in this way, Dick, I shall find my refined and intellectual friend of the Brompton Road developing into a Hampshire chawbacon," says Alexis, jocosely, as they breakfast together luxuriously, in fr^t of a blazing wood fire, one hunting 222 Dead Men's Shoes. mornip*— the master of the Grange arrayed in pink and tops read;" jc the day's sport, Dick in a comfortable suit of gray homespun. " I do so enjoy your lovely scenery," replies Dick. " There's only one thing that makes me uneasy. 1 * " Your mother " " No, it's not about mother herself. She has some extra good lodgers in the drawing-room floor, and is as happy as the day is long. What I'm afraid of is that she'll give the ferns too much water. Mother has such an idea of watering plants. She thinks the more you drench them the better they grow, and she's rather self-opinionated in those matters, dear 60ul ! I tremble for my polypodium." " I'm glad it isn't any other kind of Polly you tremble for, Dick," replies Alexis. " What a close old fellow you are, by the way ! you never told me anything about your experience in that tender passion which makes fools of the wisest of us sooner or later." " Simply because I have had nothing to tell." " Nonsense ! Were you never in love ? " 11 Never. I have admired feminine loveliness and goodness in the abstract, but it never came near enough to me to tempt me to fall in love with it." " Happy man ! " exclaims Alexis. " To escape love is to shun man's worst peril ; — " ' For Boon or late Love is his own avenger.' " It is the middle of February, one of those days on which the mists of morning linger on the face of the land, as if they loved it. Gleams of sun pierce that silvery veil, and the westerly breeze seems rather autumnal than wintry. The two friends part in excellent spirits, Alexis riding off gaily on his covert hack, Titmouse, a pretty little gray mare. Bayard has been sent on before. " How's the bay this morning, Joe ? " asks Mr. Secretan as he mounts. " Fresh as paint, sir; but 1 thinks as you did ought to have 'ad him hexercised a bit yesterday " " Nonsense, Joe ! I don't ca»e a straw for a horse when all the spirit has been taken out of bim. That boy of yours gallops like the deuce when he gets tb»? chance, I know. I don't care about having Bayard spoiled th».t way." "I hopes Bay-hard won't spoil you," mutters the groom, as Titmouse carries his master down the drive. " I hope you're not afraid of that bay horse, Marshall," says Richard, when Titmouse and b*r rider are out of sight. " No, sir, I ain't afraid of no 'oss going, and I don't say there's any 'arm in Bay-hard. But the 'oss is young and silly, and my Aleods Comes to Grief. 223 master — welT, 1 ain't going to be disrespectuous to so good a master as him, or I should say he's young and silly too." " But he's a good rider, isn't he ? " " He's a good 'and at sittin' on a 'oss, Mr. Plowden, but there's summot more nor that wanted to make a good rider." This conversation, superadded to honest Dick's own fears, flakes him feel rather uncomfortable ; but when he has started on his rustic ramble the sun shines out of the mist, the west wind is so balmy and caressing, earth is altogether so lovely in ner wintry garb, that Dick's spirits rise, and he tells himself that a bold brave fellow like Alexis is not the kind of man to come to harm in the hunting-field. It is your timid rider rather who is liable to misfortune. So Dick goes his way, and his way of late has generally been the same way. There is a tiny village about three miles from Cheswold — a village so small that compared with it Cheswold is quite an important settlement. This other village consists of a cluster of labourers' cottages, with whitewashed walls, thatched roofs steeply sloping, and long strips of garden which would be quite an acquisition to many a suburban villa. There is a queer httle old church at which there is service eveiy alternate Sunday after- noon, and there are a water-mill and a homestead with a farm of about thirty acres appertaining thereto. This mill is the chief feature of the scene, and it is to the mill that Dick has come. It is a picturesque old place, big water-wheel, gurgling mill-race, and placid pool. The willows that lean across the water look centuries old. The low white dwelling-house, with its steeply sloping thatch, its white plastered walls crossed and recrossed by timbers painted black, must have been here in the days of Elizabeth. The snowdrops peeping over the tall box border yonder are half a century old, and have spread and multiplied in the shelter of the southern wall. There is a roomy old porch with wooden benches, and it is in this porch Dick takes his rest after his three miles walk. It is about a month since he came here one biting January afternoon — the roads white with snow, the hedges loaded with a fine crop of icicles, the ditches ice-bound, and black as ink. On «o cold a day it surprised him a little to see a girl of delicate and /efined appearance at work with garden scissors and basket in the little bit of ground in front of the homestead by the mill. She was plainly dressed in a gray stuff gown and black apron, and wore a little scarlet shawl tied across her chest, but her head was bare — a very pretty head, Dick thought, with dark brown hair, that made a rippling line across the forehead, and was gathered in a loose knot at tjbe back. He was not quite clear in his mind a single flight of shallow oak stairs to the best bedchamber, the freshest and brightest of rooms, with two broad latticed windows overlooking the mill-stream and the willows, with their background of green hills. A man might find worse quarters than these in the hour of distress. Even in the midst of his grief Dick glances round the room admiringly, and thinks what a treasure old Benfield, the miller, has in his granddaughter, for it is Linda's taste, of course, which beautifies his home. They lay Alexis on the pure white counterpane, and Linda sponges his temples with eau de Cologne, until presently the heavy eyelids are lifted, and the patient looks about him won- deringly. He recognises Dick, and fancies himself at home at the Grange. This young woman in gray is one of the housemaids, no doubt. now soft and white her hand is ! He did not think he had so pretty a servant in his staff. •• Well, old fellow," he says faintly, and with a wan smile, "you were right. Such a cockney as I oughtn't to go across country with your born Nimrods. Bayard's youth and silliness sent me flying over rather a stiff bit of timber, and I'm afraid Bayard himself is demolished. By Jove, it was a thundering smash ! I wonder if I have any bones whole ? I feel as if they were all broken up in short lengths, like barley-sugar." " Thank God you can make a joke of it," exclaims Dick. " But you mustn't talk. You've been spitting blood, you know." " I thought there was something unpleasant going on internally. How did they contrive to bring me home? I haven't the slightest recollection of the transit." '• Home ? " echoes Dick, puzzled. u Yes. I am at home, am I not ? Or how do I find you by my side ? " " By a fortunate accident, dear old fellow. You are at Dorley Mill, close by the place where you fell, and in good hands, I am sure. And now not another word till the doctor has seen you." Old John Benfield, the miller, who has left his work on hearing of the accident, come* in at this moment, carrying a ateamiryr Fallen by the Wayside. 229 glass of brandy and water, which he believes to be a specific for all earthly ills. •' Sup it up, sir," he says ; and Alexis is about to comply, when a firm hand takes away the glass. " Not on any account, grandfather. He has been spitting blood." ''All the more reason why he should have something warm and comforting," says Mr. Benfield. rf You must get him some cold brandy and water, grandfather.'' "Very well, little lass, it's always for you to order and me to obey ; " and the old gentleman departs to perform his hospitable duty. " Dick," says Alexis presently, " T should feel happier in my mind if you'd go and see what has become of that poor bea=:. Bayard." '• 111 go, Alex. But I execrate the brute. If I were to hear that all his four legs were broken I shouldn't care." '• Nonsense, Dick ! The beast is only young and silly. VTe were both too ambitious — wanted to fly too high." Richard leaves the sufferer unwillingly, and goes in quest of the bay. It is not long before he discovers the horse, a g deal chipped and knocked about, but in no wise seriously damaged, in the stable of the one small inn which adorns Dorley village — a house which you would hardly recognise as one of public enter- tainment, were it not for a dingy board above the front door — said door having snnk into the yielding soil of Dorley in a de- spondent and one-sided manner. Standing in the semi-darkness of a dilapidated stable, principally inhabited by cocks and hens, Bayard wears the dejected and hang- dog aspect of a horse that knows he has committed himself. He gives a deprecatory snort at the sight of Richard, and com- ports himself altogether in a submissive and even crouching manner. " Ah," says Dick, looking at him as ferociously as it is post for the mildest of men to look — " ah. you murderer ! I v. . there was a law for hanging such as you." He hurries back to Alexis, and tells him that the brute is all right •"Not a bone broken. He only broke your bones, the beast." The Cheswold doctor comes presently, having driven over at a slashing pace to so important a patient Richard supports his friend during the medical examination, which is alow and painful. The ribs are much hurt, one bone has been pressed inwards, whence the blood-spitting. It is altogether a serious case. •• I should like you to sea Krysis, of Winchester." says Mr. Skalpel, the local surgeon. " I shall not set the arm till to- 230 Dead Men's Shoes. morrow. There is a little swelling, and there's a slight tendency to inflammation. I'll send a lotion, which must be applied con- tinually. You ought to have a trained nurse, by the way." " I'd as soon have a ghoul," says Alexis, at which the sur- geon fears his mind is beginning to wander. "I detest hired curses." " Can't I nurse him ? " asks Diek. " I'm strong and wakeful, and I'll obey your instructions to the letter." " You might be of use undoubtedly, but I think a skilled hos- pital nurse " " Send me to an infirmary at once," cries Alexis, peevishly. " I won't have a hospital hag near me." " See how the suggestion irritates him," says Dick. " Could not his old housekeeper come over from the Grange ? " " That might do. Yes, she nursed Miss Secretan, I know. I'll call as I go home and tell her to come over." " Do nothing of the kind," exclaims Alexis. " I'll have no old women pottering about me till they come to lay me out. Mrs. Bodlow's a very good soul in her place — makes an admirable curry, and fries potatoes to perfection ; but I won't have her at my bedside in the middle of the night. I'd as soon wake up and see the witches in ' Macbeth.' " " Nervous temperament, very," murmurs the surgeon. " Let Dick — my friend here — nurse me, and no one else," says Alexis. The surgeon gives way. The servant of the house will no doubt be able to assist. All may be well. It would not do to offend such a patient, and this promises to be a long business — a very long business — if it is to result in recovery. There is a possibility of the case being brought to a sad and sudden endinsr. Mr. Skalpel takes Dick out on to the stairs. " It is not a hopeless case ? " falters Dick, almost breaking down. " Hopeless, my dear sir ! far from that. But I will not disguise from you that it is very serious. There are grave dangers. The greatest care is needed. Much must depend on the state of the blood. Mr. Secretan is a person of steady habits — or, to put it plainly, not a drinking man, I hope ; — not given to the pernici- ous practice which our modern slang calls ' pegging? ' " " Half a bottle of claret at and after dinner is about the extent of his dissipation." " That's a good hearing. We shall pull him through, but remember that good nursing is the main point. Lf you find yourself tsnequal to the task we must get a trained nurse— foolish prejudice, very — not old hags by any means. Many of theai nice-looking young women." Good Samaritans* 23] Downstairs Mr. Skalpel sees Linda, and inquires as to the pos« sibility of assistance in the sick room. " I'm quite ready to give my help, if I can be of any use,* says Linda, cheerfully. " No one better," replies the surgeon ; " it was your good nursing that got your grandfather through that bad attack of bronchitis last winter. He'd have been in bis grave but for you." " Dear old grandfather ! " Bays Linda, affectionately. " But you mustn't over-exert yourself , you know. I don't want two patients instead of one." " Don't be afraid, Mr. Skalpel. Elizabeth will help me." Elizabeth is the maid of all work, a buxom girl who seems to be in a perpetual state of expansion, for her gowns are always too small for her, a girl with a brickdust complexion, big black eyes like damsons, a double chin, and a countenance expressive of supreme good nature. " Humph," says Mr. Skalpel ; " I don't know about Elizabeth. Elizabeth has enough to do to take charge of that troublesome adopted 6on of yours." Rather a queer look comes over the doctor's face as he speaks of the child — a look of some feeling closely akin to dislike. " Trot is never troublesome," replies Linda, and again her colour brightens as it did when Richard Plowden questioned her about the boy's relationship to herself. CHAPTER XXXIV. GOOD SAMARITANS. For many weary days and nights the patient fluctuates between improvement and retrogression. The business is a long one, as Mr. Skalpel prophesied. Alexis approaches that mysterious border-land which lies between life and death. Mind and memory are dark. He sees shadowy forms at his bedside,—- sees the unreal more often than the real, knows not where he is or what he is, and slowly awakening at last, as from one long troubled dream — a dream of almost infinite duration and^ of wondrous variety — he feels like a child new born to life, seeking dimly to decipher the unknown characters of a strange alphabet. Who is this with the gentle face, the mild and thoughtful eyes, shadowy hair, and soft white hands, who ministers to him bo patiently, whose voice has such a soothing influence? 23*2 Dead Men's Shoes. Is it his wife ? A flash of sudden hope quickens the throb- bing of his heart ; he tries to raise himself up in his bed, when a strong hand restrains him, and a familiar voice says,— " Alexis, dear old fellow, be careful. Mr. Skalpel says you mustn't exert yourself." It is no longer winter. The lattices are open, and through the tender green of the willows smiles the blue April sky. Birds are singing — there is a perfume of violets in the room — blessed heralds of spring. Yes, there they are, violets and primroses on the dressing-table — violets and primroses on the little table by his bed. Oh, welcome spring — welcome sense of new-created life in his own frame ! tu lt was good cf you to come to me," he murmurs, with half- closed eyes, " good of you to nurse me. All forgotten, all for- given. We shall be very happy now, Sibyl." He thinks his wife is at his side, — a melancholy delusion, which makes Kichard Plowden very uncomfortable. " My dear Alexis," he says soothingly, " it is not Sibyl ; we didn't know where to send for her. The lady who has nursed you was a stranger to you until the day of your accident, but if she had been your sister she could not have done more." Alexis closes his eyes with a heavy sigh. " She is very good," he murmurs resignedly, " and I have reason to be grateful. I took her for my wife — a foolish mistake. I ought to have known better. But I am afraid my mind has been wandering a little." He turns restlessly on his pillow, opens his eyes again, and looks wonderingly round. " Violets ! " he exclaims. " How good of you to get me violets at this time of year ! What a blue sky for February ! " " February ! " cries Richard. " My dear fellow, it is the nine- teenth of April." " April ? And I have been lying here " " A little over two months." Alexis feels inexpressibly shocked at this revelation. What 1 the days and nights have been passing, sunrise and sunset, moons waning, and he has been lying there like a log, or like a madman, full of strange fancies, and unconscious of the flight of time. This loss of two months seems to him in some wise terrible. It is as if he had been lying dead. " I suppose I have been very ill," he says at last. " Very ill, dear boy ; so near death's door that we have often feared the door would open and you would pass the threshold. Thank Heaven, we were able to keep you fast on this side. You have to thank Miss Challice for your hfe, — there never was such A nurse." u You forget that you have done more than half the nursing, Good SamantaM. 233 Mr. Plowden," remonstrates Linda, who sits with her face some- what shrouded by the dimity bed-curtain. " I , nothing of the kind. I've tried to obey your instruc- tions, but at best I'm a clumsy assistant." " You are the best of fellows," says Alexis, stretching out his feeble hand to clasp his friend's. " As for Miss Challice," he continues, " I haven't the faintest idea who she is, or how she comes to be interested in me ; but I'm intensely grateful." He falls asleep after this, and slumbers peacefully for some hours. When he awakes it is tea-time, the lattices are closed, and a young moon shines in through the diamond panes. A fire bums cheerfully in the old-fashioned fireplace opposite the foot of the bed. Firelight and moonbeams shine into the room, flashes of silver and gleams of ruddy gold light up the old furniture, the cups and saucers and the old silver tea-pot on the round table by the fire. They shine, too, on a quiet figure by the hearth, the graceful form of a girl dressed in gray, who has fallen asleep in an old bamboo arm-chair by the hearth. " That's Miss Whatshername, I suppose," Alexis says to himself. "Curious business, very. Where am I, I wonder? This hardly looks like the Grange." He tries to raise himself into a sitting position, in order the better to inspect the premises. The process is painful enough to wring a groan from him, and the groan awakens his nurse. " You mustn't do that," says the gentle voice which has argued and pleaded with him so often in his delirium, but which seems quite unknown to him to-night. " You mustn't try to sit up yet awhile." " Not yet awhile," repeats Alexis. " I've been ill over two months, and I'm getting better — I believe you will. I am getting better." " You are much better — you are getting well very fast." * Oh, this is getting well very fast, is it ? And after two months I am not to try to raise myself in my bed. Do you know, it strikes me that's getting well rather slowly." " You mustn't be impatient. The injury to your ribs brought on inflammation of the lungs. You have been in great danger." " And you — a stranger — have nursed me ? " " Not a stranger. Providence brought you to our door ; you are our neighbour." " • Which of these, think you ? ' " murmurs Alexis. " Yes, you have been verily my neighbour, in the Gospel sense of the word. How shall I ever thank you enough, Miss " " Challice," 6ays Linda, as he pauses at a loss for the name. " Believe me, Mr. Secretan, I need no thanks. My grandfather and I are very happy to have been of use to you." 234 Dead Men's Shoes. " Dick Plowden says you have saved my life. Where is Diet by the way ? " " He has gone to lie down for a short time. He has had very little rest of late, poor fellow. And now shall I give you some tea ? ' " Yes, if you will be so good. I should like some tea." She pours out a cup and brings it to him, and raises his head upon the heaped-up pillows which sustain his weary frame, and puts the cup to his lips. It is a curious sensation for him, this awakening to life ; curious to look into this strange face in the uncertain firelight, to hear this gentle voice, to feel the soft touch of these white womanly hands. " If this were but my wife, it would indeed be awakening to new life and new happiness," he thinks, and the thought that another can so minister to him while his wife treads her selfish way, ignorant of his pain, is very bitter. " I think I could hold the teacup myself," he says, and he makes the attempt feebly, with a tremulous hand. " Capital ! " exclaims Linda. " How strong you are getting ! " " Oh, this is getting strong, is it ? " enquires Alexis. " I should like to have seen myself when I was weak. I must have been a pleasing spectacle." He falls asleep by-and-bye in the firelight, and sleeps long, for he has at this stage of his illness a wonderful capacity for sleep. When he awakes the fire is burning low, and the dim glimmer of a night lamp suggests some sepulchral hour betwixt night and morning. Eichard Plowden occupies the easy chair by the fire. " Where is Miss — Miss — Challice ? " asks the invalid. " In bed, and sound asleep, I hope. She has sat up night after night to watch you, Alex." " She is very good." " She is an angel, or as near an approach to the angelic as one can hope to meet with upon earth," replies Eichard, with enthusiasm. " Who is 8he, Dick ? and by what concatenation of events do I find myself in a strange house, watched over by a strange young lady ? " Eichard explains. ' : Indeed. This is Dorley Mill, and my fair nurse is the miller's granddaughter. If I were a bachelor now, this might be the opening 6cene of a charming romance. But I should have taken that young lady for something superior to a miller's granddaughter ; she has an air of refinement." " She belongs by inheritance to the world of art. Her father was a painter." " Challice — yes, I remember, I have seen pictures of his. He died young, I think." Good Samaritani. 235 M He did, and left this young lady an orphan." Mr. Secretan, finding himself able to sit up in bed, and hold a glass or a cup, during the next two or three days shows great anxiety to be taken back to the Grange. He rs anxious to resume the business of life — to see his horses, his gardens, to bo within reach of his library. He is quite horrified when Mr. Skalpel informs him that he is likely to be obliged to remain at Dorley Mill for three weeks or a month before he will be strong enough to bear the shaking involred in the easiest journey. " You need not be in a hurry to leave," says the surgeon, " you have been well taken care of, I am sure." " I should be an ungrateful hound if I were to forget that fot a moment," replies Alexis, " but I should really like to relievo this house of my presence ; I have given so much trouble." " That is all past," says Linda. " Our only trouble was the fear that you would not recover." " Mr. Benfield must consider me an intolerable nuisance." " He does nothing of the kind," says Dick ; " he is looking forward to your going downstairs as if it were some grand holiday." Alexis sighs. The comforts and indulgences of a sick room pall upon his active temperament. But he resigns himself to the inevitable, and Linda and Richard do their utmost to make his life happy. Now that bodily strength begins slowly to return he suffers from extreme mental depression. He feels as if this coming back to life were something of a mistake, that it might have been better to have slipped quietly through the dark portal. He feels that he has nothing to live for, neither wife nor child. No kith nor kin, only the beaten round of a prosperous man's existence. " I who have tasted the bitter cup of poverty ought to find con- tentment in prosperity," he tells himself ; but as the days lengthen slowly to their lingering close he is not content. " He's dreadfully low-spirked," says Dick to his assistant nurse. " What are we to do to cheer him up a little ? " Linda sighs and looks doubtful ; but in the course of the afternoon she brings up some of her favourite books, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dickens, and offers to read to^the invalid. He is delighted. Any relief is welcome that will take him away from his own thoughts. He chooses the " Midsummer Night's Dream," and Linda reads at his bidding. " We'll have one of the tragedies when I'm stronger," he says. " I couldn't stand ' Hamlet ' or ' Lear ' yet awhile." From this time forward the reading becomes an institution. Linda is a good reader, her voice round and full, her emphasis always intelligent. Alexis makes a closer acquaintance with 236 Bead Men's Shoe*. Tennyson than he has ever made before now, sad renews his boyish delight in Dickens. In about a week after that first reading he is well enough to go downstairs to the cheerful parlour, but not without support from Richard's sustaining arms. There is no longer any talk of his going back to the Grange yet awbile. He knows his own weakness now, and is resigned to the tedium of a slow recovery. " You are all so good to me," he says, with tears in his eyes, " I should be a fool to wish myself away from you." It is a sunny afternoon in early May when he goes downstairs for the first time. Linda has done her uttermost to make the room bright and cheerful. There are flowers, sweet spring flowers on the chimney-piece, table, and chiffonier ; violets, primroses, hyacinths, narcissus, pale monthly roses from the southern wall. A fire bums gaily in the old-fashioned grate ; for the invalid is chilly, and May sunshine uncertain. The in- valid's couch has been arranged in the cosiest corner by the fire ; snow-white pillows, Berlin wool coverlet, knitted by Linda's own hands as a Christmas present for her grandfather. The brown wainscot walls are brightened with water-colour landscapes in a higher style of art than Alexis would have expected to find at Dorley Mill ; but he learns by-and-bye that they are all the work of Linda's pencil. " What a pretty room ! " cries Alexis, when he is established on his sofa, " and what a pretty picture that water-mill makes against the blue sky 1 I feel ever so much better for the change." He enjoys the novelty of the apartment as much as if he had come into a new country, and his spirits begin to rise imme- diately. "Now I feel that I am really getting well," he says. It is three o'clock in the afternoon. Mr. Benfield is to come in at five to tea, and there is to be quite a grand tea-drinking in honour of Mr. Secretan's convalescence. The simple-hearted old man is almost as delighted at his guest's recovery as if the Squiro of Cheswold were his son. Linda seats herself in her favourite chair by the open window. Dick places himself by the foot of the couch. The invalid lies in a lazy silence, looking out at the willows and the mill-stream, and the green hills beyond. How lovely nature seems to him after his nights of pain and darkness ! Presently he hears a small voice calling "mammie," and a small hand makes ineffectual attempts to turn the handle of the door. Linda runs to the door, and the prettiest child Alexia «ver remembers to have seen runs into the room. He has soft golden curls all over his small head, rosy cheeks, bold brown eyes, and the open confiding look of a child that haft Good Samaritan*. 237 been reared in love's tender keeping. He clings to Linda's dress. " Mammie, mammie dear," he cries, " Trot wants oo, Trot nenner sees oo now. Oo viz de genlamum ? " " The gentleman has been very ill, darling, and he wanted me more than Trot does." " Oo tell tory. Trot want oo allvis." " You had Elizabeth to take care of you, pet. Elizabeth is very kind." " See isn't. Me hate Lithabess." " Oh, you naughty boy. Look, Trot, this is the sick gentleman. Go and shake hands." " Me won't. Me hate the genlamum." " Oh, Trot ! " " Cause he keeps oo away from Trot." " But he won't do that any more, Trot," says Alexis, delighted with this infantile grumbler. " Come to me, my little man, and let's make friends. See what I've got here ! " And Alexis produces his watch, that unfailing resource of a man who wants to amuse a child. Atsight of the watch and jingling bunch of lockets and seals the little one's eyes open their widest, and be creeps a little nearer the enemy. " I don't like oo," he says, " but I'll look at oor watch." With this protest he goes close up to Alexis, and allows him- self to be entertained. " What a darling little fellow ! " says Alexis. " A nephew of yours, I suppose, Miss Challice ? " "No, he is ao relation. He is a little boy my grandfather adopted." " How good of him ! The son of an old friend, I conclude." " No. We adopted him to save him from the workhouse." " Ah, that is like you — just as you took me in to save me from death." Alexis does not like to ask any further questions, yet he would be glad to know more about this fascinating little fellow, who soon grows friendly and familiar, and nestles his golden head in the invalid's waistcoat, and plays with the seals and lockets. Presently the miller comes m to tea, and the table is spread with a simple feast, new-laid eggs, cream, cakes of Linda's manu- facture, and strawberry jam, which Elizabeth, the maid of all work, secretly believes to be the best strawberry jam in Hampshire. Trot sits up in his high chair at the table, and behaves very prettily, though he disposes of more bread and jam, and follows it up with more cake than Alexis can suppose beneficial to his internal economy ; but then Mr. Secretan has seen very little of children and their ways. 238 Dead Men's Shoes. Henceforward Trot is a wonderful favourite with him. He allows the little fellow to come into his room at all times and seasons, he sends Dick to Winchester for a cargo of picture-books, and Trot sits upon the invalid's bed for hours together looking at the pictures, and demanding explanations thereof. When the pictures have been explained to Trot by Alexis, Trot insists on explaining them over again to the explainer, and lays down the law about them and philosophises upon them in a delightful way. Never before has Alexis had any dealings with a child. It ia a new experience to him. The little fellow amuses him for hours together. The thought that his own son might have grown into just such a boy as this seems a bond of union between him and Trot. The boy grows wondrous fond of him, and places him second only to mammie in his measure of love. " Have you had Trot long ? " Alexis asks one day of Linda. " Ever since he was a fortnight old." u What a charge for you ! His parents are dead, of course ?" "I know nothing about his parents." 11 Indeed ! Poor little waif and stray. If you were not so very fond of him I should beg him of you, and make him my son and heir." " I couldn't bear to part with him. You are not in earnest, of course, but even if you were, and offered him the greatest ad- vantages, I don't think I could bring myself to part with him. I have suffered so much for his sake. Perhaps that is why I love him so dearly." "Suffered'? But how?" " Pray do not ask me. I cannot possibly tell you. It is all past and gone now, and I try to forget it. But it was very bitter." This sets Alexis thinking, and the thoughts that come of it trouble him. He sees but one solution of the enigma, and that is one which casts the shadow of disgrace on Linda Challice. Can she, this gentle, lovable girl, with her fair innocent face, be something less pure and perfect than he has believed her ? The suspicion pains him as keenly as if she were his sister or his plighted wife. He lies awake for many a weary hour pondering over this painful question. For a little while even his heart turns from poor Trot, who is distressed at finding his new friend less kind, but Trot soon makes himself beloved again. Whatever misery this liltle brown-eyed boy may have unconsciously occa« sioned, Alexis cannot help loving him. Bitter Almonds* CHAPTER XXXV. BITTER ALMONDS. From January to May is rather a lengthy period for a friendly visit, but although the hawthorns are flowering in Recfcaetle woods, and May is nearly'ended, Joel Pilgrim is still at Lancaster Lodge. He has taken up his abode there as if he meant to stay for flie rest of his life, Sibyl thinks. She has grown tired of waiting to hear of his approaching departure. He talks about going sometimes, but never definitely. He must go back to India before very long, he says, and Sibyl languishes for him to Sx the date. He goes up to London on business now and then, but returns in a few days, and makes himself more insufferable than ever. Sibyl has never hated any one as she detests this man. His presence makes life a burden to her. The luxurious tranquillity of her^ existence, the reposeful days, the pleasures of wealth, are all poisoned by Mr. Pilgrim's company, and yet he treats her with the utmost politeness, with deference even, and obviously admires her to enthusiasm. This admiration is the most painful part of the business. " If he only hated me as I hate him we might get on very Veil together," thinks Sibyl ; "but as it is, the creature gives me he sensation of living in a glass case with a boa constrictor." Mr. Pilgrim does not enter Eedcastle society, though the elite are quite ready to take him by the hand in the fullness of their love for Stephen Trenchard. Mr. Pilgrim is of a reserved temper, and prefers the tranquillity of Lancaster Lodge to the dwellings of strangers. He dines well, and drinks deeply after dinner, but the wine makes no more impression upon him than upon the decanters. Mr. Trenchard and he are often closeted together _ in business conference, but they never talk business before Sibyl. She has a vague idea that Mr. Pilgrim is a mer- chant, and that his house of business is in Calcutta, but she has no knowledge of his merchandise. One day Mr. Trenchard complains to her, and with some bitter- ness, of her coolness to Joel Pilgrim. " I think I have been kind enough to you to deserve that you should be civil to any friend of mine, Sibyl," he says ; " and yet you are positively rude to Mr. Pilgrim." u I am not intentionally so, uncle Trenchard." 840 Dead Men's Shs>9» " Then your notion of good manners must be a very eurioM one. Nonsense, Sibyl ! you can be winning enough, fascinating enough, when you please. Yet to this young man " " Young ! " echoes Sibyl. " He must be five-and-thirty if he'i a day." " No matter, child, he is a young man to me. For him, I say — the son of my oldest friend — you have nothing but cold lookB and insulting speeches. It is very hard upon me, Sibyl." " My dear uncle, I did not know you were so fond of this Mr. Pilgrim. I have fancied sometimes that his visit was rather a trouble to you." " I have been worried about his affairs now and then. The man himself is very dear to me." " Then I will try to be more polite to him, my dear uncle, for your sake." " I want you to try something more than that, Sibyl. You discouraged Sir Wilford Cardonnel's attentions for some inscru- table reason of your own — don't deny it, girl, you must have dis- couraged him, for I know he was over head and ears in love with you, and now he only makes a formal call once in six weeks. You might have had the first position in this part of the world if you bad chosen, but you did not so choose. I saw you fling away your chance, and I did not reproach you. But now I come to something that touches me closer. Joel — the only son of my " he pauses with a curious smile — "only friend, Joel Pilgrim, a man of strong brain and strong feelings, has fallen in love with you. Not a butterfly passion like Sir Wilford's, mind you, to be blown aside by a breath of yours, but an enduring love. Now I have set my heart on seeing Joel and you man and wife." " Why should you be so anxious to see me married, uncle Trenchard? You wanted me to many Sir Wilford, and now you want me to marry this Mr. Pilgrim, with Indian blood in his veins." " I wanted you to marry Sir Wilford because he could give you a great position. I want you to marry Joel because Joel is dear to me, and to see you two united would be to secure the happiness of the only two people I love." " Don't be angry with me, uncle Trenchard, but I had as soon you told me a serpent loved me as this Mr. Pilgrim." She feels that in speaking thus frankly she runs the risk of offending her uncle, for once in her life she is truthful. Her uncle is less angry than she had expected. " Nonsense, child ! " he says carelessly. a You are full of prejudice. You must learn to think better of my friend's eon." " Is he the son of that friend whose death distressed you •» much, uncle ? " asks Sibyl. "What death? When?" Sitter Almonctt. 241 •• One evening last summer, when you read the announcement In the paper." Mr. Trenchard looks at her curiously for a moment. " Yes, yes," he says, " that was the man." From this time Joel Pilgrim is more open in his attentions He follows Sibyl like her shadow, rides with her, drives with her, walks in the garden, plays billiards with her, stands beside the piano when she plays or sings, reads the books she reads, associates himself with every hour of her day and every pursuit of her life. She knows not what it is to be alone. She takes the utmost pains, in a quiet way, to let Mr. Pilgrim see that his attentions are odious to her. She never favours him with an encouraging look or word, yet he pursues his course doggedly, like a man who comes from a land where women's opinions and inclinations go for nothing. People in Redcastle are not slow to talk of Mr. Pilgrim just as they talked of Sir Wilford Cardonnel. It is now evident to the mind of Redcastle that Sir Wilford has cooled and fallen off in his attentions, and that this Anglo-Indian, with his dark face and sleek hair — a real Hindoo, perhaps, some people suggest — is to be Miss Faunthorpe's husband. "They wouldn't go out riding together if it wasn't a settled thing," says Mrs. Groshen to Mrs. Stormont, " and in my day it was not considered correct for a young lady to go out alone with her engaged husband. But young ladies are changed." " It's money I suppose," remarks Mrs. Stormont, thinking of the main question and not of details. " I have no doubt this Calcutta merchant is immensely rich, and Mr. Trenchard wishes to unite the two fortunes. I thought Sibyl looked very unhappy the last time I called. If she had been allowed to follow her own inclinations things would have taken a different turn. I don't think she ever had such a genuine liking for any one as for my Fred." " She didn't show it much in her manner," says Mrs. Groshen, smiling amiably. " She is not a girl to let every one read her feelings," retorts Mrs. Stormont. " What is that some one says in a play about wearing one's heart outside one's dress? She's not that sort of girl. But I know she liked Fred. I sincerely pity her, poor child." The Stormonts see less of Mr. Trenchard and his niece after Joel Pilgrim's advent. This strange guest of the old man's, who will not go out visiting, even to the best people in Redcastle, seems a stumblingblock to social intercourse. Mr. Trenchard has also taken to refusing invitations, and Sibyl is dull and spiritless, and is even losing her beauty, Mrs. Groshen remarks, with a touch of satisfaction, Q 242 JOead Men's Shoes. " Those brilliant complexions go off so soon," she says. H TO tell you what it is, my dear, you may depend upon it that things are not quite right at Lancaster Lodge. There's something underhanded going on there." " But what ? " inquires Mrs. Stormont, bursting with curiosity, for the solemnity of her friend's countenance implies a spirit that has penetrated Mr. Trenchard's secrets. " I don't know what," replies Mrs. Groshen, in the most disap- pointing way, " but I have an instinct that tells me there is something wrong." " There is an atmosphere of gloom in the house, I admit. I feel sure that girl is being forced into a distasteful engagement." So gossips Redcastle, and not altogether without foundation, for the gloom deepens in Stephen Trenchard's house — a gloom which is not to be enlivened by upholsterer's work in the way of gilding and crimson tabouret, or by luxurious dinners served on porcelain and silver, or by fine raiment, or any of the tilings that Stephen Trenchard's money or credit can buy. If it were not for one wicked hope, Sibyl would assuredly fly the hateful abode that holds Joel Pilgrim, but that evil hope nerves her to remain. Mr. Trenchard has been showing signs of rapid decay. The east winds of March and April have withered him. Dr. Mitsand talks less confidently of his patient's fine constitution, and urges extreme care. He expatiates on the perils of our treacherous climate, and suggests that Mr. Trenchard shall spend next winter in the south of France. Stephen Trenchard has grown nervous and fretful. He com- plains of sleepless nights, and his failing appetite is obvious to all his household. Do not these signs betoken the beginning of the end ? " I will stay," Sibyl says to herself, and she fancies there is something almost heroic in the resolution. " However loathsome that man makes himself, I will wait for the end. Perhaps his passion for me is only a pretence, after all — a trap to catch me. If he can prove me disobedient, or force me to run away, ho may induce my uncle to alter his will, and leave him everything. That may be his plan — a deep-laid plot to ruin me." Robert Faunthorpe dines with his rich brother-in-law about once in six months, a purely ceremonial visit, which is irksome to both men, though uncle Stephen is very civil, and uncle Robert enjoys the unwonted gratification of an excellent dinner and rare old wine. On the occasion of his last visit, near the end of April, Dr. Faunthorpe sees so marked a change in his brother-in- law that he goes home full of it, and tells Marion that he does not think her uncle is long for this world. u What a slwinio 1 " says Mai ion, meaning Sibyl's conduct, and Bitter Almonds. 243 not her uncle's decline ; " and here have I been estranged from him all the days of his life. It's a hard thing to be plotted out of one's expectations by a designing sister." " My love, we have no reason to suppose that Mr. Trenchard will act unjustly in the matter of his will," remonstrates the mild little doctor. "Oh dear no, he has acted so very justly all along ; never put Sibyl over my head, never dropped me after taking me up. Oh, of course not ! " To satire so subtle as this Dr. Faunthorpe finds no reply. He only sighs gently, and comforts himself with a pinch of snuff. Sibyl spends more time at the parish doctor's house just now than she has been used to do. It is the only place where Joel Pilgrim does not accompany her, and on this account it seems to her a haven of refuge. She is more amiable to Marion than of old, more friendly to Hester, more affectionate to Jenny. She feels happier — or at least more at peace — in the shabby old parlour, or the shabbier surgery, than anywhere else. Jenny, enlightened by Alexis, knows her sister's secret, and is therefore a person to be conciliated. She has sworn eternal fidelity, however, and has never given so much as a hint of the truth to Marion. It is a comfort to Sibyl in this time of trouble to lay her weary bead on Jenny's substantial shoulder and talk hopefully of the days to come, when she and Alexis are to be reunited. " He threatened never to forgive me," says Sibyl, " but I don't think he will keep his word." " I am sure he won't if you do your hair the new way," answers Jenny, with conviction. " It makes you look lovely." On Sibyl's next visit Marion is full of Mr. Trenchard's declining health, and talks about his death as if it were a settled business, appointed to come off within a given time. " You will be grand, Sibyl ! Shall you keep Lancaster Lodge and the carriages ? If I were you I should let the house furnished and go on the Continent. Travelling is so delightful, and if you wanted a companion you might take one of your Bisters." " How can you talk so horribly, Marion ? n exclaims Sibyl. u Who says uncle Trenchard is going to die ? " "Uncle Robert says he is not going to live long, and I suppose that's pretty much the same thing, only a nicer way of putting it. Uncle Robert ought to know, as a doctor. He generally knows about the parish patients. When he says they're going to get better they don't always do it, but when he says they're going to die they alwayB bear him out. He's very lucky in that" u You are the most dreadful girl, Marion." * Well, you needn't colour up and look pleased. That's quits 244 Deaa Meris Slides. as bad as talking horribly. I've a franker disposition than yoti, and I say tilings straight out. I suppose he'll leave Jenny and me something for mourning, out of respect to himself. I shall have a corded black silk, thick enough to stand alone. I always looked my best in black." " Did uncle Robert think that uncle Stephen looked very ill when he dined with us the other day?" asks Sibyl thought- fully. " Of course he did, or he wouldn't have said it. We say what we mean at this end of the town. They're more polite above Bar, and the more they say a thing the less they mean it. Mrs. Stormont told me she had taken a tremendous fancy to me when she thought I was uncle Stephen's f avourite." " Don't be so bitter, Marion." " If you had to have your boots soled and heeled twice over ^y a clumsy countiy cobbler you'd be bitter," replies the injured Marion. Finding this young lady's temper inclining to acidity Sibyl slips away to Jenny's favourite retreat — the surgery, where she finds the damsel seated on the hearth-rug busy at needlework, and performing wonders in the way of stocking-darning. Sibyl flings herself into Dr. Faunthorpe's easy chair in a de- spondent attitude, and sits there in moody silence, much to Jenny's discomfiture. " You might say ' how d'ye do ? ' to one," she remonstrates. u I beg your pardon, Jenny. It was mere absence of mind." " Oh, that's what you call absence of mind above Bar. Here- abouts we call it rudeness." " Don't be cross Jenny. I'm very unhappy." " I thought so," replies Jane, astutely, " you've come to see us so much oftener than you used to do, a sure sign that you are miserable. Are you unhappy about him ? " " About whom ? " " Oil, you know ; my brother-in-law." " Partly about him and partly for other reasons. I am worried to death." " But uncle Trenchard will die soon," says Jenny, cheerily, M and then all will come right. We shall go into mourning, and be great ewells." " Jenny, you really mustn't talk so." "What's the harm?" M You mustn't talk of poor uncle Stephen's death as if it were an event we were all looking forward to." " But we are," replies Jenny. " I'm sure Marion does nothing but talk about her mourning, and how she'll have it made. I'm sick of hearing of corded silks and para what's its name ? — and bugled fringe. X shan't haw* bugled fringe j it catches in Bitter Almond*. 245 everything, and one can't help scrunching the bugles. It's too great a temptation." " Uncle Trenchard is weak and ailing, but he may live fcr years." " No, he mayn't. Not if uncle Robert knows his business. He says he doesn't think uncle Trenchard will last the summer out. And then we shall come in for anything he has left us. Won't that be jolly ! I'd rather he didn't die till the end of the summer. The dusty roads would so Bpoil our mourning." " Jane, you are a perfect ghoul." " Oh, it's all very well for you to be grand and indifferent. You've had the use of his money all along. We are looking forward to coming into a small slice of it. If I'm not made a ward in Chancery and my money all tied up we'll have hot suppers every night." " Do stop that senseless chatter. Where does uncle Robert keep the laudanum ? I've a racking toothache." " That's why you look so miserable, I suppose. All the poisons are on that top shelf," and Jenny points to the topmost shelf in the darkest corner of the surgery, on which the quick eye of Alexis espied the blue bottle labelled prussic acid. If Jenny were not so deeply engaged with the complicated dilapidations of her stockings she would clamber upon the doctor's step-ladder and bring down the laudanum, but she goes on with her darning, and leaves Sibyl to get the bottle from its dusty repository. Sibyl ascends the step-ladder, and descends again with a bottle in her hand, takes an empty phial from a drawer, and pours some of the fluid from the larger bottle into it, dexterously and quickly. ''What a smell of bitter almonds!" cries Jenny. "You've got the wrong bottle I That's prussic acid ! " Quickly as she starts to her feet Sibyl has reascended the ladder, and replaced the blue bottle in its corner before she can reach her. " It's all right, Jenny. I know laudanum from prussic acid. What a fidgety, officious child you are ! " " I never knew laudanum to 6mell like bitter almonds," remonstrates Jenny, unconvinced. "Show me the bottle you put in your pocket." " I shall do nothing of the kind. Go on with your work, and don't be ridiculous." Jenny mounts the ladder, and examines the shelf that holds Dr. Faunthorpe's small collection of poisons. The laudanum and the prussic acid are in bottles of the same colour, but the prussic acid is inverted in a gallipot. Each is in its usual place, 24<5 Dead Men's Shoes. but Jane's quick eye perceives that while the laudanum bottle has its coating of dust undisturbed the dust has been rubbed off the prussic acid bottle. "I hope you are not doing anything dreadful, Sibyl," she /emarks solemnly. " Tampering with poison is a dangerous thing." " I have only taken a few drops of laudanum for my tooth- ache." " Well, I suppose I ought to believe you, as you're my elder sister. But I can't understand that smell of bitter almonds." "All your fancy, I assure you, Jenny. And now let's be good friends, and have a nice talk. Don't try to mend those holes. I will buy you some new stockii gs the next time I go to Car- michael's." " You're a dear ! " exclaims the volatile Jenny, forgetting all about that odour of bitter almonds. The sisters seat themselves side by side in the window seat, and talk of the future, Sibyl's future, which means reunion with Alexis. They will be rich, happy. Jenny is to live with them, and have a pony to ride. " And shall we have hot suppers?" inquires Jenny. " What a vulgar child you are 1 Of course not. We shall dine at eight." " That's rather the same thing under another name," says Jonny. CHAPTER XXXVI. VILLAGE SLANDER. The dfiys elide by at Dnrley Mill. Oh how gently, oh how sweetly, in what innocent rustic delights, in simple, childlike pleasures, shared and sanctified by the perpetual presence of a child! The willows have unfolded their tender young leaves. The white blossoms of the orchards have come and gone like all earth's fairest things, too brief,' too transitory. The lazy cattle revel in golden pastures ; the pine trees on the hill-tops put forth pale green shoots at the ends of their dark old boughs. It is the time of buttercups and young lambs, trout-fishing, and all delights of early summer, and it has brought along with it fair nights and days, healing and strength, to Alexis Secretan. Yet, strange to say, now that he is so much better, and nearly Village Slander. 24T well enough to bear the journey to the Grange, he Is no longer impatient to return thither. "My life would be so dull without Trot," he says. "I'm afraid I have fallen in love with Trot." And then he sighs deeply, and lapses into one of those despondent moods which come upon him sometimes. Linda bends very low over her work, and she too sighs, but so Bol'tly that the sigh reaches no e»r but Bichard Plowden's, who sits close beside her work-table. Alexis is well enough to go out of doors and walk a little way, assisted by bis cane on one side, and on the other by Linda or Richard. They take it in turns to accompany him in these brief walks ; and Linda shows him all the beauties of nature to be seen within a few hundred yards of the mill. They all sit out of doors a good deal in the balmy June weather, and Linda takes her work and books to the rustic bench under the willows, and Alexis has many an afternoon nap, lulled by the bubble of the mill-stream. But the day comes at last when Mr. Skalpel, who, if he has erred at all, has erred on the side of caution, pronounces that his piaient is quite well enough to bear the journey home. " And I do not say you could not have borne it a fortnight ago," adds the surgeon, " but I knew you to be particularly well off here, and one cannot be too careful." " Yes, I am very well off here," says Alexis, with a smothered sigh. " However, since you are well enough to walk the length of the village you are certainly well enough to bear a three-mile drive, and we have no excuse for keeping you here any longer." " No, I have no excuse for remaining," says Alexis, thought- fully. " Six weeks ago you were in a great hurry to go home. I could hardly persuade you to be patient." "Six weeks ago I was ill and fretful. Since then I have domesticated myself here, and now I feel as if Dorley Mill were home. Mr. Benfield and his granddaughter are so good to me ; and this little fellow," adds Alexis, laying his hand on the golden head of Trot, who lies at his feet with an open picture-book .spread out before him, " this little one and I have grown such friends that I don't know what I shall do without him." " Ah," says Mr. Skalpel, waxing grave, " poor little boy." * You speak as if he were no favourite of yours." " He is not," replies the surgeon. " He has caused too much ecandal to be a favourite of mine." " What do you mean by scandal ? " " Well, Mr. Secretan, country people are censorious. It's a very unworthy feeling on their part, but you'll find that country people are censorious," 248 Dead Men's Shoes. "I have discovered the same failing in London peoplt rccasionally," remarks Alexis. " And if anything happens which is not quite open and on the surface, countiy people are apt to take a narrow view of it. Now Mr. Benfield's adoption of this boy has given rise to some very unpleasant reports." " Why should it do so ? Is it not an act of charity, a most praiseworthy act ? " " Possibly, possibly, my dear Mr. Secretan. That is the way in which I have always endeavoured to see it, but one can't get other people to look at the thing with the same largenes* of view. There is my wife now, an admirable woman ; Miss Challice was a great favourite of hers before the appearance of this child ; she would have done anything for her ; but since this baby came on the scene my wife has quite turned against the poor girl, will hardly allow her name to be mentioned in her presence." " That seems rather hard." " It is hard, but it is human nature. There are some sharp angles in human nature. It isn't all Hogarth's line of beauty. You see this child made his appearance in a most mysterious way. If he had dropped from the moon it couldn't have been more sudden, and we know no more about his origin than we do of a moonstone." " Then people have talked unpleasantly about Miss Challice, I infer." " They have, Mr. Secretan. There have been hard things said in the village with reference to that child. The village mind is coarse, and the village vocabulary is limited. Spades are called spades." "And your villagers can hatch a lie out of their foul imaginations," says Alexis, in a tone that quite startles the placable doctor. " I have always stood up for Miss Challice," he says, " I have always defended her." " I am sorry there should be any need for defence," replies Alexis, sternly. " I am sorry the people of Dorley and its neighbourhood should be such savages and idiots as not- to recognise purity when they see it. I have lived nearly six months under the roof that shelters Miss Challice, and if she is not pure and perfect among women I have no power to recognise womanly purity and goodness." " I am entirely with you there, Mr. Secretan, yet I cannot help regretting that this child should have ever been brought here to occasion a scandal. There is a secret of some kind about his origin, and wherever there is a secret there is always food for elander. I am sony because I know Miss Challice has suffered,* Village Slander. 249 u What, the slanders have reached her ears ? " " Yes, on some occasions, and they have made her very Unhappy." " Poor girl ! Yet when I offered to adopt Trot, she would not near of such a thing." " I dare say not. The little fellow has wound himself about her heart, no doubt. They were always a soft-hearted race, these Bennelds. The old man has been an encourager of tramps and beggars, too easy by half. It doesn't do, Mr. Secretan." " Benevolence ? No, it seems a failure in this life." This conversation with the surgeon makes a strong impression upon Alexis. Instead of going downstairs to the sitting-room where Richard and Linda are expecting him, he remains in his own room all the afternoon, keeping the child for his companion. The little fellow will amuse himself for an hour together, play- ing about the room in his quiet little way, and perfectly happy. Alexis looks at him with infinite compassion. " Poor little waif, what is to be your fate in the years to come ? " he asks himself. " You cannot always have the calm shelter of Dorley Mill. The day will come when you will have to go out into the world to fight the battle of life — nameless, perhaps friendless, unless I am living to befriend you. Poor child, I would give much to know your history, and yet there are ques- tions I dare not ask. There is always the horrible doubt, the lurking fear that this village scandal may contain some grain of truth." He is disinclined for Linda's society that evening, and goes out at sunset for a solitary stroll, with no support but his cane. It is the first time he has walked without the help of Linda or Richard. He goes down to the willow-shaded path, contemplates the simple pastoral landscape in a thoughtful mood, scarcely seeing the objects he gazes at, and then strolls past that brief row of old-fashioned cottages which constitutes the village of Dorley. Some men are standing before the little public-house, and one of them seems considerably amused in a quiet way at the appear- ance of Alexis, pale and wan still, and leaning heavily on his cane. " He don't look up to much yet, do he ? " says one of those village worthies when Alexis has passed, but before he is out of- hearing. " No," says the man who grinned. " Ho looks a rare sight. Yon's the rich gentleman at the mill. Miss Challice's new lovyer." " Who says he's her sweetheart ? " asks the other. " Well, folks don't say it, may be, but they knows it pretty well, I should think." 250 Dead Men's Shoes. " That's the young woman that's got the 'dopted child," says the facetious man's friend. The humorist is a drunkard and ne'er-do-well, who has been refused employment at the mill, and is bitter against Mr. Benfield and his household. " ' Dopted child ! " he says, with his coarse laugh, raising his voice on purpose that Alexis may hear him. "There's many sech 'dopted children in these parts, but we calls 'em by another name. We calls 'em " He has just time to utter a blasphemous adjective, but not the substantive that is to follow it, for the adjective is thrust back between his teeih, as it were, by a blow which strikes him on the mouth and seems to loosen every tooth in his head. It ia astonishing how hard a weak man can hit when his arm is im- pelled by such passion as moves Alexis to-night. He staggers from the recoil of his own blow, and might fall were it not for a bystander's friendly arm stretched out to support him. " Sarve him right," says one of the sufferer's companions, as he stands before them, a piteous object, pouring his blood upon the dusty road, as in a libation to the great mother. " He didn't ought to have gone and said anything agen Miss Challice. She be a good friend to the poor folks." The injured man growls out some threat about " summonsing" and "ths beak." "Summon me before whom you please," replies Alexis. M I shall think this evening's work cheap at five pounds." Alexis goes back to the mill curiously moved by what has happened. " Why do I feel insult to her so keenly ? " he asks himself. " Is it that she is more to me than I dare avow even to my own heart ? Is there peril for my future peace in this quiet home that has sheltered my sickness and pain? Your fault, Sibyl, your fault. You have left your place to be occupied by another. Whatever evil befalls me is your work. Let it be my care that I bring no evil upon the good Samaritans who have succoured me in my weakness. Mr. Skalpel is right, I have no excuse for remaining at Dorley another day. But before I go I would give much to learn the secret of that child's adoption." He is not a little enfeebled by his act of violence and the pas- sion that accompanied it. His heart beats violently, and he is barely strong enough to get back to the mill, whore he arrives in a state of extreme exhaustion, and so pale as to frighten Linda and Richard almost as much as if his ghost had returned instead of hiiaeelf. " How ill you are looking, Mr. Secretan ! " says Linda anxiously, when she has arranged the pillows on his sofa and Trot's History. 251 brought him a tumbler of claret and water. " Yow "have been walking too fast, and alone." " I am sorry I look so ill," replies Alexis, " for Mr. Skalpel tells me I am quite well, and I am to go home to-morrow." " To-morrow ? " " Yes ; there is no excuse for my being a burden to you an] longer." " You have never been a burden," answers Linda, in a very low voice. Her face is hidden from Alexis, but not from Richard Plowden, who in their daily companionship has learned the meaning of that thoughtful countenance all too well. He reads her secret there to-night, and the knowledge pierces him to the heart* CHAPTER XXXVII. trot's history. Alexis wakes next morning with a throbbing head and a vagus sense of trouble and regret ; but upon the one question of his immediate return to the Grange his mind is fixed. There shall be no further delay. He has been long enough at Dorley — per- haps too long for his peace. "If any one had told me last Christmas that my heart could ever beat one throb in the minute faster for any woman living except my wife, I should have given him the lie boldly enough. Is it gratitude — respect — affection — that makes me think so much of my fair young nurse, and think it so hard a thing to part from her? Or is it a feeling that I am bound to stifle ? 1 hardly know how to answer that question even to mj'self. At worst the sentiment is a mild one. Passion has no part in my love — if love it be. It is pure and reverent, and I will say no word that shall sully it Yet I can but feel what new brightness might glorify my life if I were free to love this girl." He rises later than usual, and not before Trot has come to knock at his door and announce the hour. " Bekkust is weady for oo," says Trot ; " oo eggs is boiled. Trot found 'em in the henhouse ; Cothin Thina ones." "Dear little Trot! How I 6hall miss that baby voice, and those pretty baby ways ! " thinks Alexis. " Coming presently, Trot," he cries cheerily, and Trot makes his way downstair* rather noisily, as he alights upon every stair with a jump. It is noon when Alexis goes down to breakfast, a radiant summer noon, and the first strawberries from the garden ftro 252 Dead Men's Shoe$. upon the table, nestling among their aristocratic leaves. Linda is seated in her accustomed place by the window, her inexhaus- tible work-basket by her side. When she is not working for her grandfather or Trot she is making clothes for the poorest among her neighbours. " You accused me of looking ill last night, Miss Challice," says Alexis as they shake hands ; " and this morning I find you as pale as your lilies out yonder. What has happened to disturb you ? " " I have been told what you did yesterday evening," answers Linda, gravely. " What, my little escapade with one of your amiable neigh- bours," cries Alexis, lightly. " You don't mean to say people have been talking of such a trifle as that ? I think I taught the gentleman that it's bad manners to laugh at a sick man." " Was it for laughing at you that you struck him, Mr. Secretan ? " asks Linda. " Certainly. My cadaverous looks provoked his mirth, and if I do resemble the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, I don't choose to be laughed at before my face." " Oh, Mr. Secretan, I know all that was said by that man. Elizabeth has been in the village this morning, and people have told her all that happened. It was the slander against me which you resented. The old cruel slander which has pursued me ever since I took pity upon that desolate child." The tears roll slowly down her cheeks, but she wipes them hastily away and regains composure. She is not one of those women who wash out their grief in tears. " No one shall slander you in my presence, Miss Challice, and go unpunished. I'm sorry I let that foul-mouthed ruffian off so easily." " And you do not believe you " Her voice fails her, and again the unbidden tears start to her eyes. "I believe anything against you? No, Linda. But if you would trust me with your secret " " I have no secret," replies Linda, with a frank, steady look, more convincing than a world of protestation. " I have shrunk from talking to you of that dear little fellow's history only because it is a very sad one, and because the scandal which he has brought upon us has made the subject particularly painful to me. I should have been weak and cowardly if I had consented to part with my little darling just because people are wicked enough to speak evil of me, but I am not so brave as to endure their slander without pain. I have suffered deeply." " Tell me all, I entreat you. I think I love that child almost as well as you do. He is about the age my own son would have been had he lived — the son I never saw. That sounds curious, frofs History. 253 does it not ? but the history of my marriage is a very painfu/ one, Miss Challice, though I thank God it has no element of disgrace — and I "here he falters a little, as if the words he has to speak were somewhat difficult to say — "I still have the hope of reunion with my wife." lie may have some motive for speaking of Sibyl to-day, though she has heen very little in his thoughts of late. " Tell me all about Trot's birth." " Let me see you begin your breakfast first. It's rather a long story." " I am all attention." " It was about the end of March, three years ago, when I first eaw Trot. It was a bleak afternoon, windy and cold. I had gone out into the front garden to look for the first wall-flowers, when I saw a woman leaning against the railings for support. I did not see at first that she had a baby in her arms, it was so hidden by an old sealskin jacket. I asked her if she was ill, and she said yes, she was ill and tired. She had walked all the way from Winchester. I asked her to come in the porch and rest. She came in, and had hardly seated herself when she fainted, and would have fallen if I had not managed to support her in my arms. Then the baby began to cry, and I saw him for the first time — such a tiny thing. Fortunately I was accustomed to young babies, from having visited a good deal among our cottagers." " And you took them in, mother and child, and sheltered and nourished them ? " "What else could I do ? Elizabeth and I soon discovered that the poor creature was starving. She had been living on penny rolls for the last fortnight — ever since she bad left the workhouse, where her baby was born. Yes, that sounds dread- ful, doesn't it? Our darling Trot was born in Winchester Union." " Dreadful indeed from society's point of view. What kind of person was the mother ? " " I can hardly tell you. She was very ill when we took her in — worn and wasted to a mere Bhadow. She must have been very pretty when she was happy and well, but her beauty was all gone. She was very reserved, and though I tried to win her confidence, she would tell me nothing about herself — what she had been in the past, or what she hoped to be in the future. She seemed very unhappy, and though she was evidently fond of her baby, he seemed rather to add to her unhappiness. I felt that her story must be a very sorrowful one." " / nd you pitied her ? " " With all my heart. One day when she had been with us about a week, and was beginning to get a little better and 264 Dead Metis Shoes. stronger, I asked her if she had any home to go to. She had been talking about leaving us in a day or two. Yes, she said, she had a home, and she was going to it, but she did not know what to do with her baby. There were reasons why she could not take the baby home. And then she asked me if I knew any honest woman in the village who would take care of the child for a year or two, and trust to her sending payment for its main- tenance regularly after her return home. 1 told her that I was afraid none of our own villagers would take the responsibility of a stranger's child. They would want to know who and what she was before they trusted her. Of course I said this as kindlv as I could." " As if you could be anything but kind ! " exclaims Alexis. _" After this I could see she was very much disturbed in her mind. She sat with the baby in her lap, crying over it in a fret- ful way, and she was evidently in great trouble, and chiefly about the baby. I don't know how it was, but just then there came into my mind the thought of all I had ever heard about wretched women killing their children. I thought of this poor creature wandering about the country penniless, friendless, with a wailing infant in her arms, and how in some dreadful hour wandering by the side of a river, the temptation might come to her to drown this sweet, innocent little thing, which, even in its unconsciousness, seemed to cling to me, and to be happier in my arms than in its mother's. " Doubtless infants, like the lower animals, have an instinct that tells them when they are beloved," remarks Alexis. 11 ' If my grandfather would only let me keep your child ! ' I said, at which she burst into tears again, and threw her arms round my neck, and entreated me to take care of the little one, and promised me all kinds of rewards by-and-bye, when fortune smiled upon her. I told her I wanted no reward except the delight of making the little fellow happy, and teaching him to love me. I thought very little of the responsibility I was assum- ing, I am afraid. It seemed scarcely more to me than if I was < offering to take care of another kitten to add to our family of pets." " What did your grandfather say to the idea? " " Bless his kind heart, he never refused me anything in his life. Ho was rather against the notion at first, and he asked me if I had considered what a burden we should be taking upon our- eelves, and what we were to do with the baby when it grew up. *A baby's easy to keep ; ' he said ; ' a quart of new milk more or less won't hurt us, but what shall we do when he's a big fellow and wants schooling?' 'He can go to the mill and work for his living,' I said. ' Not if you bring him up as a pet and play- thing,' said grandfather, ' he'll be too good for the mill/ ■ Trot's History. 265 u And you had your way ? " "Yes ; I couldn't got that idea about the river out of my mind and I was determined the unhappy mother shouldn't take the baby away, so I talked my dear old grandfather into giving his consent, and he promised to adopt the child. The poor creature went down on her knees to me when I told her that I would take care of her baby, but she was not any more inclined to confido in me than she had been at the very first ; and two days after- wards she insisted upon leaving us, though I begged her to stay till she was stronger and better able to travel. She was resolute, so I gave her a couple of sovereigns, all the money I had of my own, and patched up her clothes a little. She was dreadfully shabby, poor thing, and at daybreak one morning she left us to walk to Winchester, where she was to take the parliamentary train to London." " You are sure she was going to London ? " " That is what she told me, and she was anxious to get to Winchester in time for the London train." " She did not even tell you her name ?" "No. 'I might give you a false name,' she said, 'but what would be the use of that ? If I live, and things prosper with me, you shall know all about me some day.' " ; * That was vague," says Alexis. " Did she wear a wedding ring?" " Yes, but she told me that it was one she had bought for a penny. ' I sold the real one to buy bread,' she said." "And she left her child without showing any grief? " "No, just at the last she broke down, clasped him to her breast, and cried over him bitterly." " Have you heard nothing of her since that time ? " " I have had no actual communication. But I have received three ten-pound notes at intervals each in a blank envelope, posted in London. I have put the money into the savings bank i'or my darling." " And the envelopes, you kept them, I suppose ? " " No, they were directed in a cramped unformed hand, like that of a very common person. I cannot think that it was the writing of Trot's mother, yet I feel sure the money must have come from her." "There was nothing written inside the envelope? " " Not a word. The bank note was wrapped in a blank 6heet of paper." " Provoking ! " exclaims Alexis. " I would give a great deal to know more about Trot's origin. His name of Trot, by the way, how did he come by that ? " " It is only a pet name which my grandfather gave him when he first began to walk and was always trotting about the house. 256 Ddad Metis Slide*. He was christened William after my grandfather, who stood tot him. We had him christened the week after his mother left us." " Poor little Trot, but for you he might have been left outside the fold. Poor little Trot, born in a workhouse, abandoned by his mother, fatherless, nameless ! Well, Miss Challice, hia schooling shall never trouble you or your grandfather. We'll send him to Winchester when he's old enough, and to Oxford after, and make a man of him. That shall be my duty, and it may be some small return for all the care you and your worthy grandfather have bestowed upon me." " You are too good. Believe me, we need no recompence." "No more did the good Samaritan. How long is it, by the way, since you received the last bank note ? " " Not more than two months ago. It came while you were very ill." " I thank you most sincerely for having told me this story. I am deeply interested in Trot, deeply moved by your goodness to him. It is a hard thing that such an act of divine charity should have brought sorrow upon you. It makes me detest your inno- cent rustics." " Do not blame them. It arises out of their ignorance " " No," cries Alexis sternly, " it arises out of their knowledge of evil, and incapacity to believe in good." CHAPTER XXXVIIL GAINING TIME. Not long does Mr. Pilgrim content himself with undeclared and Bilent homage. The day comes, too soon for Sibyl, when he opens the floodgates of his passion. He is a very different wooer from the honest-minded English gentleman, Sir Wilford Car- donnel, and Sibyl finds her position more painful than it has ever been yet. He follows her into the garden one June evening after dinner, when twilight iB creeping over Eedcastle, purpling the foliage in Sir John Boldero's park, and spreading a faint gray shadow over the brilliant flower-beds on Mr. Trenchard's lawn. " Why always avoid me ? " asks Joel tenderly, aa Sibyl quickens her pace at his coming. " I think the reason is obvious," she says. She has constrained herself to be civil to him since that remon- strance of hex uncle's, but to-night the tenderness of bis tone, its Gaining Time. 257 cily smoothness, its hypocritical sweetness, irritates her beyond til bearing. " You mean that my presence is disagreeable to you." " You may construe my remark in that way if you please. 1 may respect you as my uncle's friend, but you really give me a little too much of your society for me to value you on your own account." " But it is on my own account that I seek to be valued, Sibyl. A fig for the respect you pay your uncle's friends 1 Give me love for love, truth for truth." " Love ! " she echoes scornfully. " Yes, love ; am I so revolting a person that the word sounds obnoxious from my lips ? Yes, Sibyl, love. You know that I love you devotedly, passionately, with the kind of love that can conquer obstacles and win its wish in spite of all opposing in- fluences. There is nothing to oppose me but your own obdurate heart. Your uncle's most ardent desire is that you should be my wife." " You have worried him into expressing such a desire," replies Sibyl ; " but I do not believe that it is really his wish. His ardent desire before you came here was that I should marry Sir Wilford Cardonnel." " Sir Wilford Cardonnel has no claim upon your uncle's affec- tion — can never be to him what I am." " Whatever you may be to my uncle, I only know that the effect of your presence has been to alter him strangely for the worse. There has been no happiness in this house since you have lived in it." Happily for Sibyl, she does not see the vindictive look — a look of wrath that is almost deadly — which Joel Pilgrim turns upon her after this speech. Her eyes are fixed on the shadowy line of woodland which shuts out the world beyond Sir John Boldero's park. Joel takes time before replying to these uncomplimentary remarks, and his voice when he does reply has all its familiar blandness, — that oily smoothness which is so hateful to Sibyl. " Why do you say these hard things to me, Sibyl ? " he asks. " Is it to prove my love — to test my forbearance, and gauge the depth of my devotion by my power to endure your insults ? " " I have no wish to insult you," replies Sibyl, feeling that she has gone a little too far, and that this scene may be used to her disadvantage with her uncle. " We might be good friends if you would only leave me alone. I do not interfere with you. 1 am not jealous of your influence with my uncle. Why do you follow me about and persecute me with attentions which, as I have candidly told you, are disagreeable to me ? " "Why does the sunflower turn to the sun? I follow yen R 2558 Dead Men's Shoes. because I love you, and because I have sworn to win love for love." " That you will never do." " Yes, Sibyl, love will come by-and-bye with time and custom, when you are my wife." " That day will never dawn." " Yes, it will, Sibyl. You have played your cards too well to throw up the game just at the last, when you are close upon winning. Come, we will abandon poetical similes and lovers' talk, and settle the subject like a man and woman of the world. With all your sweetness there is a touch of worldly wisdom about you, Sibyl. We will speak plainly. You have set your heart upon inheriting your uncle's fortune, a prize worth winning, I grant — a diamond not to be found in every mine. You have wound yourself about the old man's heart, and have made yourself dear to him. You stand a good chance of being heiress to that incalculable wealth. But I come upon the scene, an adventurer, you think, perhaps, and one who seeks to deprive you of that vast inheritance. You are wrong, Sibyl. I have never schemed to inherit Stephen Trenchard's fortune ; but he and I have certain business relations, and he is necessary to me. He is fond of me too, after his own fashion — just as he is fond of you — and he has made up his mind that we two shall be one. If you thwart that desire you hazard his favour, nay, I will go so far as to say that I know your refusal to gratify this wish would lead him to alter his will." " And you know that he has made a will in my favour ? " cries Sibyl, betrayed into a question which, after a moment's reflec- tion, she feels ashamed at having asked, of this man most of all. " Yes," replies Mr. Pilgrim, deliberately. " I know that Stephen Trenchard has bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to you ; nay, I may go so far as to say his entire fortune. Your sisters will be disappointed, I fear, but you have made yourself the favourite, you see." " And he is soon to" die," reflects Sibyl. " If I offend him now by absolutely refusing to marry this man, I shall lose all. If I can gain time — a very little time, perhaps — all will be mine." " Give me your answer, Sibyl," pleads Joel. " I am ready to forgive all the cruel things you have said. A woman's hard words signify but little. Tell me that you will be my own sweet wife, that I may go back to India by-and-bye, with a fair princess from the west — fairer than a dream to Indian eyes. Give me hope, Sibyl." " Give me time," replies Sibyl. " I have told you that — that I do not understand you — that the idea of your affection is at present most painful to me. Give me time to overcome what is perhaps an unworthy prejudice on my part. I would make any Gaining Time. 259 possible sacrifice to please my uncle, who has been very good to me. With time, perhaps " " So be it," says Joel, offering her his hand, that small, cold hand, whose touch she so much dislikes. " Shake hands upon that, my princess. I will wait. You have no idea how patient I can be if I see my way clear to the end. Let Fortune say to me such or such a prize is there for you to win, and I will win it. 1 will win you, my love, if conquest lies within the limits of the possible." " And you will not torment me with attentions which " " Which only increase your prejudice against me. No, Sibyl, 1 will sink the lover and be only the man of the world. I will say to myself, ' My love knows that 'it is her interest to overcome her distaste for me, that to refuse my hand is to throw away fortune. I have only to be patient. All good things come to him who can wait, like yonder moon which pierces that summer cloud, and shines upon some belated traveller, just when the way seemed darkest.' Come, Sibyl, let us go back to our dear uncle — my uncle as well as yours, bj'-and-bye. The dew is falling, and your English compounds — or gardens, as you call them — are so damp." _ They go back to the drawing-room, where Stephen Trenchard sits reading by a brilliant carcel lamp, and the look which Sibyl turns upon him is perhaps the most awful look that has ever scrutinized his face, for it is the gaze of one who watches for the tokens of death. Is that true which they all say ? she wonders despairingly. Is the forecast shadow of the end dark upon his face already? Does that grayish tinge which overspreads the sallower tint beneath, mean only the slow advance of age ? or is it the awful' hue of swift approaching death ? She cannot tell. He is 60 fitful in his health and spirits, feeble to helplessness to- day, full of restless activity to-morrow. He looks up from his newspaper as they enter from the garden. " Well, young people, have you been enjoying the moonlight?" "Yes, we have had a pleasant stroll, the pleasantest I have had since I came to England. I never saw a moonrise tha* shone upon such content as I feel to-night," answers Joel. Sibyl tries not to shudder too obviously. " Shall I read to you, uncle ? " she asks, feeling that even tiy money article will be better than love-like speeches from, the lips of Joel Pilgrim. " No, my dear, I have finished my Times. You and Joel can play chess." It is a game of skill in which Joel excels and which Sibyl utterly detests. He has taught her to play just tolerably, and she would rather play chess with him — the game engaging all his faculties and exercising all his cunning— than hear him talk ; 260 Dead Men's Shoes. so she takes her place at xne board submissively, and Joel's tawny hands arrange the stately carven images, castles on elephants, Indian potentates for kings, Indian warriors for pawns, and Brahmins for bishops. For a little while after this interview in the garden Sibyl's life is more endurable, for Mr. Pilgrim's attentions are less marked. He does not follow her from room to room so persistently as he did before his declaration. He allows her to ride alone, horse- manship being an exercise which he cordially dislikes. She has leisure in which to brood upon the difficulties that hem her in, and calculate upon the hour which will bring her release. But this period of repose does not last long. One morning her uncle sends Podmore to summon her to his study. She finds him seated at his table, which is littered with papers and letters, and before him lies that oblong volume which she saw on the night after the races through the glass door, and which she sup- poses to be a ledger. Joel Pilgrim stands by the window, very serious of aspect, his tawny countenance a shade paler than usual. " I have sent for you to discuss a very important subject, Sibyl," begins Mr. Trenchard — " one that is vital to you and Joel." " Yes, uncle Stephen," she answers falteringly, feeling as if she were expected to reply in some wise. " Sit down, my dear. We may have much to say to each other ; " and Sibyl sinks into the nearest chair, dreading to hear the rest. " The last mail has brought Joel some unpleasant — I should rather say some unexpected — news about his business in Calcutta. He will have to return to India almost immediately." Joel gnaws his nether lip and turns his face away from the speaker, perhaps to hide that vindictive look in eye and lip. Sibyl's heart beats furiously, but her agitation is full of joy. Heaven has sent her a reprieve. Her tormentor is obliged to depart. There will be an end of that hateful question about marriage." " Yes, my dear, our poor Joel has to return to Calcutta by the next steamer, or the first steamer that he can be ready for, and be does not want to go back alone. You understand, Sibyl." Very ghastly is the change in Sibyl's face as she looks at her uncle, struck speechless by this sudden revulsion from gladness to despair. " You understand, my dear ? " repcatn fitephen Trenchard. M No, indeed, uncle." " You have promised to be Joel's wife " " No, uncle, I gave no promise," she falters, with white lips. " I only said that I would try to like him better — that " " Bah I that's a girl's vague way of putting it. You women Gaining Time. 261 always beat about the bush. Joel looks upon it as a promise, and so do I. It is a settled thing. You and Joel are to be man and wife, thus fulfilling the dearest wish of my heart, as Joel's oldest friend and your nearest kinsman. By this means you will mutually enjoy all I have to bequeath. In a word, I have set my heart upon this marriage, Sibyl, and it cannot take place too soon. Joel's recall to India is a reason why it should take place immediately. Joel will lose no time in obtaining the licence. Let me see — this is Tuesday. When does the nest Peninsular and Oriental leave Southampton, Joel ? " " On Monday." " Good ; you can be married on Saturday. You can go to York for the licence this afternoon, Joel." " But, uncle Stephen, so soon — in a few days — it is impossible." " Nonsense, child ! nothing is impossible to men of business, like Joel and me. We have managed more difficult things than this in our time, haven't we, Joel ? " A sardonic laugh is Joel's only answer. Persistent as he has been in his wooing, his air this morning is not exactly suggestive of delight, or of that enhancement which should belong to triumphant love. " But you are so ill, uncle — I could not leave you." " I am flattered by the affectionate thought, but I am not so ill as you suppose. And the idea that I have made you and Joel happy will be better than medicine." " My trousseau, uncle — my outfit ? To go to India at a few days' notice ! I assure you that any one would tell you it is impossible." "Any one might tell me any absurdity, but I should not be obliged to believe them. Do not let us have any more young lady- like objections, Sibyl. The matter is settled. Joel will go to York by the two o'clock train, and I will write to Mr. Chasubel to give notice of the wedding on Saturday. As to trousseau, as you call it, you must have finery enough to last your lifetime, I should think, judging from the length of your bill at Carmichael's ; and now go, my dear ; Joel and I have business matters to discuss for the next half-hour. Joel, salute your bride." Mr. Pilgrim intercepts Sibyl at the door, and takes her hand. He draws her towards him, as if about to kiss her on the lips ; but there is something in her look so repellant, nay. so abhorrent, that even his audacity is checked. He falls back a little, and raises her hand to his lips, and with this ceremonious salutation lets her go. " You are not a very warm lover, Joel," says Stephen Tren- chard, with a sneer, when the door has closed upon his niece. " The sun of the tropics doesn't seem to have infused much of its fir© into your veins " 2B2 Dead Mai's Shoe*. " You see me at a disadvantage'" replies the other, seating himself at the table, and examining one of those numerous docu- ments with a moody attentiveness that suggests trouble. " The girl hates me." " And you hate the girl. Is that it ? " "No. I think her one of the loveliest women I ever saw ; a prize worth winning at some cost of self-abasement. But her detestation for me is a little too obvious, and I must confess that I am somewhat less eager to win her than I was a few weeks ago." "Before I made certain confidences, eh,' Joel ? Nevermind. I told you I would make her marry you, and you see I mean ta keep my word. Loving or loathing will make very little differ ence to you, I take it. You will know how to make her obey you. You will have a pretty wife to uphold your position in Calcutta — a good card to play a* '**.ys where fools abound, as they do in the City of Palaces. And you will have the handling of my fortune." "I ought to be grateful," replies Joel, coldly, with his eyes still bent upon a column of figures. " And now, Joel, let us be business-like. I think you will confess that I have gone into your affairs thoroughly this morn- ing. There has been no impatience. I have not been betrayed into one angry word, but I have arrived at a conclusion, and I shall abide by it." " And that is " "I must have ten thousand pounds from you between this and Saturday at nine in the morning. Just two hours before your wedding. Or els^ " " Of else what ? " "The house of Pilgrim and Company will go down like a vessel that breaks her back — straight to the bottom, Joel." " It is quite impossible." " Not to a man of business, Joel. To great generals and clear- headed commercial men there is nothing impossible. We only print the word in our dictionaries for the weak and brainles* portion of humanity." " It is not to be done." " It is to be done, and it must be done," retorts Stephen Trenchard, bringing down his clenched fist upon the open ledg«« •— " ten thousand pounds in hard cash, Joel — a drop out of th» ocean, a brand from the burning. Borrow it, raise it how or where you can, among your English connections, but understand I must have it on Saturday morning, or before Saturday afternoon I shall have telegiaphed to my solicitors in Calcutta, and the house of Pilgrim will be doomed." " After all the money I have earned for you in the past ? " At Hay. ZbiJ "That past is long gone by, Joel — it is the pluperfect. You have been sucking my blood like a vampire for the la6t three years, and have left me all but bloodless. I must have that ten thousand pounds." CHAPTER XXXIX. AT BAT. It is evening. Stephen Trenchard has retired to his room immediately after dinner, looking wan and wearied, worn out Eerhaps by that interview with Joel Pilgrim in the study. Sibyl as offered to go to his room and read to him, and has had her offer refused. " I am tired, my dear, and want sleep if I can get it ; but that seems harder for me to obtain now than for a pauper to get gold. One would think the voice of doom had cried out to me, as it cried to Macbeth, ' Sleep no more ! ' " " Macbeth was a murderer, uncle. You should not compare yourself to him." " No ; I have never dipped my hands in blood. I have used the world pretty much as it has used me, I believe — give and take." Sibyl is alone in a small sitting-room adjoining her bedroom ', a pretty little room which Mr. Trenchard has allowed her to appropriate to herself, and which 6he has adorned with various elegant trifles from the Redcastle shops — books, engravings, statuettes — the things that women love. Here she sits to-night, a prey to something very near despair. She is now completely hemmed in. Only two modes of escape lie before her. The first and more obvious is flight. She can leave Lancaster Lodge. There is no constraint upon her. She is free to go away, penniless as when she came, leaving fortune behind her. The second and more hazardous alternative is to prevail upon Joel Pilgrim to abandon his design ; to induce him, of his own accord, to give up the idea of marriage until he is able to return from Calcutta. Ten o'clock strikes, and soon afterwards she hears the bell at the lodge entrance, and then wheels grinding over the gravel, and she knows that Mr. Pilgrim has returned with the licence. She has breathed more freely during his absence, and his return seems to bring an atmosphere of trouble and perplexity into the house. Will he come to her, or send for her to tell her that his 264 Dead Men's Shoes. hateful errand has heen successfully accomplished? She sits listening for his detested footstep. The ears of hate are as keen as those of love, and she knows that footfall only too well. Yes, there it comes along the carpeted corridor, slow and stealthy. " The jungle tigers walk like that, I dare say," thinks Sibyl. Joel opens the door softly and comes in. The dull yellow of his complexion is relieved by a crimson flush on the smooth cheeks. His black eyes glitter with an unaccustomed light. Mr. Pilgrim has dined more generously than usual at York, and has refreshed himself with soda and brandy more than once during the homeward journey. He is altogether a different man from that Joel Pilgrim who recoiled from Sibyl this morning, abashed by her coldness. " I saw the light in your window, my pretty one," he says, seating himself at the table where Sibyl is reading, and drawing his chair close to hers, " and I knew where to find you." " Hadn't you better go downstairs and order some supper, Mr. Pilgrim? It is nearly eleven o'clock, and the house will be going to bed almost immediately." " Let the house go to Gehenna," exclaims Joel ; ' I want nothing it can give me. I only want to see your lovely eyes, Sibyl, to hear your sweet voice, and to claim the kiss you denied me this morning. Look here," taking a paper from his breast pocket, " the Archbishop of York has given me permission to make you my wife ; the knot is to be tied next Saturday ; in four days, Sibjd — only four days, you who have been so cruel, you who have held me aloof so long, will be all my own. Yes, Sibyl ; you who have pretended to hate me " " Pretended ! " cries Sibyl, with an angry flash from her dark eyes. "My hatred has been very real." " I am glad of that. They say extremes meet. It will be an easy transition from hatred to love ; both are fiery passions. It is your lukewarm indifference that can never be kindled into affection." " Now is the time," thinks Sibyl, u if I am to make an appeal to his forbearance, his pity, his self-interest. I can but try him." " Mr. Pilgrim," she begins faltcringly. u What a formal mode of addressing your affianced lover — the man who has his marriage licence in his pocket ! " " I can call you by no other name," she answers. u I am going to be more candid to-night than I have ever been. You may betray my confidence, perhaps ruin me with my uncle ; I cannot help it. Between you, you have driven me to bay." " Very cruel of us," murmurs Joel, leaning back in his chair looking at her with an admiring smile. She is very lovely in her At Bay. 265 agitation; cheeks faintly flushed, eyes brilliant, parted lips of carnation. Her suffering moves him not a jot. " You have seen how I have striven to avoid you. You have put my avoidance down to hatred, and this perhaps has galled your pride — you have felt a natural anger against me, and you have re- solved to win me in order to revenge yourself upon my insolence." "A very subtle way of putting the case. No, Sibyl; I resolved to win you because you are lovely, and I love you. I need no Stronger reasons than those two." " You could not be determined to make me miserable unless I had provoked your anger. Forgive me for my seeming hatred ta you ; it was not really hatred of you, but love for another. My heart has long been given to another. I have pledged myself t4 be faitlif ul to him to the end of my life, no matter what obstacles might intervene to keep us asunder. There are reasons why I can never tell my uncle of this engagement, reasons why I must keep it faithfully in spite of the world." " No reason can stand against the archbishop's licence, and the fact that you and I are to be married on Saturday," replies Joel, with the same insolent smile — the smile of a schemer who ha» brought his plot to a triumphant issue. Sibyl has one argument still to offer. The strongest. " You tell me that my uncle has made a will in my favour, that he will leave me all his fortune," she says. "Yes, that is a settled thing. You heard him say that we were to have his wealth — you and I." " I did. And we can share it. Share it honourably and equally, without the hateful tie which would bring us nothing but misery. Kelcase me from this entanglement, Mr. Pilgrim. Tell my uncle that you would rather defer our marriage until you return from Calcutta. He is not likely to see that day. Do this, and I will pledge myself in any way that you may consider most binding. I will sign any document you choose to put before me, engaging myself to deliver over to you half my uncle's fortune, whatever it may be, the day I become possessed of it." " A very liberal and business-like offer," exclaims Joel, with a quiet sneer, which freezes all hope. It is so pitiless ! " But I would rather have the pretty wife and the whole of the fortune, aa by the existing arrangement I shall. Of course I shall knock off a handsome sum for pin-money. Your uncle hints that your tastes are somewhat extravagant, and Calcutta is not a place to teach economy. I shall not be a severe husband, and I shall like to see my wif e the queen of taste and fashion." Sibyl sits with her hands clasped on the table before her, un- healing, unheeding. She has made her last appeal, and she might as usefully have made it to stone. There is nothing for her now but flight. Yes, one alternative. She may confess all 266 Dead Men's Shoes. to Stephen Trenchard — tell him that she has been an impostor— that she has duped him into giving her his affection — that th» wealth he has bequeathed to her will be shared by the eon of hie unforgiven foe. No hope lies that way. She has played her desperate game to the last, and she must throw up the cards. Once resolved, courage and calmness return together. She glances at the Swiss toy clock on the chimney-piece. " Eleven o'clock, Mr. Pilgrim, and I am very tired. I really must wish you good night." She rises, gathers together her dainty fancy work, closes her book, and holds out her hand to Joel Pilgrim. But there is more of his native sunshine in Mr. Pilgrim's veins to-night than there was at noon to-day, and he is not to be satisfied with so cold a salutation from his affianced bride. " You refused me my kiss this morning, Sibyl. I must exercise my privilege to-night." His arm is round her, he tries to draw her towards him, but that slim form recoils from him as from something more hateful than death. " Do not touch me," exclaims Sibyl, in a voice that is scarcely above a whisper. " You cannot guess how much I would dare to escape such pollution. Look at this," taking a small glass phial from her pocket, and holding it up before him. " Do you know what this is? Sure and instant death. I would rather this should pass my lips than that your lips should touch them." "I did not know you were a member of the Borgia family, or that such delightful customs prevailed among young ladies in England," says Mr. Pilgrim, letting her go, and contemplating her excited countenance with a gloomy look. " But perhaps you are only playing with me, and that bottle of yours contains one of those homoeopathic preparations so fashionable now-a-days, a globule of poison diluted with a gallon of water." " It contains prussic acid, which I took from my uncle's sur- gery a few days ago, so that I might have one resource against all evils, even the horror of your touch." " Not very complimentary to the man who is to be your bus- kind next Saturday. Don't be foolish, Sibyl. Give me that bottle, and let me throw it under the grate." " No, you shall not take it from me," exclaims Sibyl, clenching her hand upon the phial, so tightly that it would need some exercise of Mr. Pilgrim's brute force to take it from her. " Keep it then," he cries savagely. " Keep it, and reconcile yourself to all the evil it may do you. You are a heartless and unreasonable woman, and deserve to suffer for your folly. Keep /our deadly poison, but remember your English proverb whicn tells you that it is dangerous to play with edged tools. And so On the Threshold of a Discovery. 267 good night, Miss Faunthorpe. I'm afraid I shall have a vixen for a wife, and get the worst of it in our domestic quarrels." Tli us, with a sneer, he leaves her. «• No resource," murmurs Sibyl, " none but flight — or — " she looks at the little bottle, full of a colourless liquid—" or this." CHAPTER XL. ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DISCOVERY. Alexis goes back to Cheswold Grange, and resumes the even tenor of his life, a prosperous country gentleman, with very little to occupy him, and plenty of leisure in which to muse upon destiny, and dream of the things that might have been. The hunting season has long been over. It is the time of roses, and he has no temptation to endanger his neck upon Bayard again just yet awhile. He rides his steady little brown mare in the shady roads and lanes round Cheswold, while Bayard stretches his noble limbs in the home paddock, and gathers strength for the crisp, clear days of October and the chill mists of No- vember. It is a pleasant life, but an idle one, and a thought too lonely. True that there is plenty of society in the neighbourhood, and Mr. Secretan, of Cheswold, is popular; but life cannot be a suc- cession of dinner parties, and Alexis has little inclination for croquet and garden parties, archery, fancy fairs, and any of those Binall amusements which beguile the long days of a country summer. The two young men have scarcely returned to the Grange when Hichard Plowden declares that he must go home. " I've been with you nearly a year, Alexis," he says. " I am sure you must be sick of my society." " VVhcn I am, be sure I'll let you know it, Dick," answers the other, laughing. " You're the best company in the world to me, for you're a kind of second self. I can talk to you as I can talk to no one else. You know all my secrets." M All of them? " asks Dick, gravely. 11 Yes, Dick, all — or if there is a vague, undeveloped thought or dream I have not shared with you, it has not been for want of confidence in y»ur fidelity." u I believe that," replies Dick, deeply moved. " But I must go 268 Dead Men's Shoes. home all the same. This kind of life is all very well for a short time, but it can't go on — it would spoil me for the rough work-a- day world." " Let it spoil you, Dick. Why should you ever go back to the work-a-day world '? You are my adopted brother, as dear to me as if we had slept in the same cradle, or lain in the same mother's arms. My home is yours, my income yours, and if Fate cuts me off untimely you will not find yourself unprovided for. Your mother is happy with her lodgers and her housekeeping, to say nothing of the fernery, which she tells you has flourished under her care. Why talk of leaving me, Dick ? " " You are too good ; and I am more grateful than any words of mine can tell. But I must go all the same." " You are not happy with me. Dick ? " " I have been most happy with you." " Have been. That means you are not happy now. It is you who are tired of my company. That long illness of mine wore you out. You had too much of me at Dorley Mill." At the name of Dorley Mill a spasm of pain passes across Bichard Plowden'a face — so faint that it might have escaped a less watchful observer than Alexis. But Alexis is sorely puzzled by Dick's desire to leave him, and is watchful of his friend's countenance. " Too much of your company — no, Alexis. You know that your company is like the wine of life for me." " And yet you persist in leaving me. There must be some reason." •'There is a reason — one that I can never tell you. A foolish reason. But strong enough to send me away from Cheswold." " And the roses, and the ferns, and all those bright things of summer you love so well — you to whom the hills and woods and wandering streams are new. You would exchange all the pleasures of the country for the Brompton Boad and the ever- flowing stream of many-coloured omnibuses, the cry of the hawker, the reek of the ham and beef shop, the glare of the gin- palace ? The reason must be a strong one, Dick." " It is as strong as fate." " And you will not trust me with it ? " "I cannot tell you my reasons. You would laugh at me, despise me." '• Try me, Dick. Suppose I can guess your secret" "Oh no, no! " cries Dick, with alarm. "Those days at Dorley Mill, when my broken ribs were slowly knitting themselves together again — peaceful, happy days, were they not, Dick ? That quaint Elizabethan homestead seemed more like home to both of us than this good old house of mine. It had the atmosphere of home, which this has not. There is bo On the Threshold of a Discovery. 269 6Uch tiring as home without the presence of a woman. We were very happy — in a tranquil, sleepy fashion — at Dorley, weren't we, Dick ? " " Very happy," answers Dick, looking down at an open book, the leaves of which he turns over recklessly, as if looking for me particular passage. " And now I begin to fear that Dorley Mill was an unlucky ace for both of us. Neither of us came away heart-whole." " Alex," cries Dick, looking up. " iMo half-confidences, old friend. You see I am not afraid to trust you. Such a confession comes amiss from me, you think — from me who am bound fast by an old tie — which, if the marriage could be broken by a wife's unkindness, might well have been cancelled for me last December, when I stood before that mer- cenary wife of mine and pleaded the cause of love agains< money. Do not be alarmed, Dick, I am not going to sophisticate The old tie is binding, and the old bond shall be honoured, though it should keep me a lonely man for the rest of my days. But I may be forgiven if I have had my dream of what might have been — if I have thought how fair and perfect my life might be made in this good old home of mine, were I but free to seek Linda Challice for my wife." "Yes," murmurs Dick, " I thought so." " You thought that I was human, Dick, and that it was not easy for me to feel all the sweetness of Linda's society — to be sheltered and cherished by her kindness — to know that I owed my life to her patient tenderness, and withhold my heart from her altogether. My heart went out to her, Dick, unawares, but by not so much as a word or look did I ever betray my secret. I woke one day to a full knowledge of my peril, and the next day I left Dorley Mill." " You acted nobly," cries Dick, clasping his friend's hand. "Yes, I suspected the truth, and it made my own thoughts all the more bitter. How could she think of me ? What a worm I must seem to her beside you ! " " She shall think of you, Dick. She shall learn to know your noble heart — your talents — your love of all that is lofty and lovely in life. She shall learn to understand you and appreciate you as I do. Trust to timcv Dick, and me. It shall be my task to win her for you." " Impossible," sighs Dick. " She is won already, and not by me." " Silence, Dick. There is treason against her in such an insinua- tion. She knew that I was married." " She must have known it at the last, but I am not quite sure that she knew it at first, unless anything you said when yo* awoke from your delirium may have enlightened her. I don't think, somehow, that she did know it. Bemember, you were » 270 Dead Metis Shoes. perfect stranger to her. You came to Dorley Mill as if you had dropped from the clouds. How should she know anything of your domestic history which has only been whispered amongst your neighbours ? " " You might have told her my painful story, Dick." " It was not my business. It would have been an impertinence in me to gahble about your affairs. I felt assured that you would tell her." " Why should I do so, Dick ? I am not a coxcomb. I fore- saw no peril to myself in my association with that sweet girl, still less did I imagine danger to her. I accepted all her bounties as if she had been verily a ministering angel lent to this lower world for a little while to be my comfort. Upon my word, Dick, I think there is a spice of folly — or unconscious jealousy, perhaps — in your notion that I am any more to Miss Challice than the traveller who fell by the wayside." " I can read her face," answers Dick, sorrowfully, " and it has told me her secret." Alexis is moved by this conviction of Richard Plowden's. For A) little he could be glad. He sees the fair young face, the bended brow, the soft eyes which have so often avoided his own. Dare he interpret those signs — those little looks which he re- members so well — as the tokens of a hidden passion ? Dare he suffer himself to believe that while Linda Challice ministered to him pity grew to love in her heart, as gratitude widened into love in his? The thought that it is so can bring him nothing but sorrow ; yet he finds himself encouraging the fancy not withstanding. " I am a weak fool, Dick," he cries at last, after pacing the firelit library for some time ; " and you ought not to say these things to me. Linda Challice does know that I have a wife. She learned it directly from my own lips ; but only on the morning before I left Dorley. But she shall know all my wretched story. She shall know that I deserve her pity, though I dare not ask for her love. I am bound to pay one more visit to Dorley Mill, if it is only to repeat my thanks for all her goodness to me. I will go to-morrow. I have ordered a little present for her from Loudon which I think she will like." " She is not a girl to care for presents," says Dick. •'You sulky old bear ! women love souvenirs and keepsakea." " Yes, when they love the giver." " You know that shabby silver watch she wears." u It was her father's," growls Dick ; "he wore it to the day of his death, or had it under his pillow on his death-bed. He died in Rome, you know, in something like impoverished circum- stances. I dare 6ay ho had a fine gold hunter when his pictures were the fashion." On the Threshold of a Discovery. 271 " Poor fellow ! it was his watch, was it ? Then I'm afraid Lin Miss Challice won't care for the one I've bought her." Alexis takes a neat little morocco case out of a drawer in the library table, a dainty case lined with white velvet, on which reposes the most fascinating of watches — about the size of a florin. The case is dark purple enamel, with Linda's monogram in pearls, and round the watch is coiled a slender gold chain set with pearls. "Rather too pretty for a miller's granddaughter," says Dick. " But I've no doubt she'll be pleased. Did you buy anything for Mr. Benfield ? " " Yes, Dick, I didn't forget the miller ; " and from another drawer Alexis produces a splendid meerschaum pipe. " The old gentleman can smoke his tobacco in that when he sits by the fire after supper." " I don't suppose it will draw as well as his clay," murmurs Dick. The drawing-room at the Grange seems more than usually empty that evening when the two young men leave the dining- table. It is a wet night, and they lack the amusement which the gardens and stable yard afford them in the fine weather. Alexia has read all the magazines and newspapers, and is hardly in the humour for serious literature, although all his favourite authors, newly bound and newly arranged upon the shelves in the library, invite him to study. His mind is disturbed, he knows not why. He takes up a volume of Tennyson from the table and turns *\\q leaves idly till he comes to that exquisite poem called " Love and Duty." This he reads aloud, Richard Plowden listening intently. "That was written by a man, Dick," he says when he has finished. " Byron-worshipper as I am, I confess that there is more stamina in that than in all Childe Harold's wailing against destiny. But then Byron died in the flower of his manhood. We know not what noble fruit the tree might have borne had it grown to maturity. Byron never came to the age at which Scott began to be a poet, or at which Goethe wrote his masterpiece." After this Alexis and his friend talk of their favourite poets, and both brighten a little as their thoughts drift away from their own individual sorrows. Soon after breakfast next morning. Alexis mounts Titmouse and rides down to Dorley, through the perfumed lanes where the dog-roses and woodbine make a tangle of flowers among the young oak saplings and the sturdy hawthorn bushes. Dorley Mill is looking its prettiest as he rides along the winding track that leads to it. Trot is sitting in the porch playing with a very fat black and white puppy with a round stupid-looking head, a puppy that has not long been added to the population of Dorley. At the si^ht of Alexia, Trot lets fall his pinafore, and gives the 272 Dead Men's Shots. puppy a sudden drop in the world. It is the youthful animal's first experience of the uncertainty of friendship, and he yelps out his remonstrance against life's delusions. " Mammie ! " yells Trot, " mammie, come out, it's the genlamum." In spite of their familiarity, Trot has never learnt to call Alexis anything but the " genlamum." Linda is not forthcoming, and Trot remembers presently that inammie has gone down to the village. " She not be long," says Trot. " I'll show oo my noo puppy ; " and he introduces that animal, held firmly by the tail. " Daddie says he grow big — ever so big — bigger than Trot," gays the boy, opening his eyes tremendously wide. They are hazel eyes, with lashes of gold, which time will darken to brown. " I'll come in and wait, Trot," says Alexis, dismounting, and tying Titmouse to the gatepost. She is a lazy animal, and has no objection to stand there nibbling the grass by the wayside. He goes in at the familiar porch, beneath which he was carried unconscious on the day of his accident, and seats himself by Linda's work-table. How pleasant the room is to his sight I how home-like ! There are the books Linda read to him — the books that seemed to breathe a deeper pathos and holier tenderness when she read. There is her drawing-board with an unfinished landscape, a wind of the river overshadowed by willows. There are the flowers her hand has arranged ; there the sofa on which he passed so many reposeful hours of unthinking happiness. " Why did I permit myself to be so happy ? " he thinks, in self -reproach. " It was a pleasant dream, but the return to life's dull reality is a little hard to bear." He rouses himself from his musing mood, and begins to talk to Trot, taking Trot and the puppy on his knee together. Trot stops tolerably quiet ; but the puppy begins a perambulation — 4 voyage of discovery up and down Mr. Secretan's coat sleeves and collar, and even on to his head, which is more familiar than agreeable. " Well, Trot, you haven't forgotten me, I hope ? " " I not forgotten 00, but I don't love 00 no more," replies Trot, decisively. " Not love me any more ? Oh, Trot, that is cruel. Why not?" " Why 00 go 'way and make mammie cry ? " demands Trot, facing the accused with magisterial severity. Alexis crimsons at the interrogation. " I never made mammie cry," he falters. " That's a tory. Oo did. She cried the day 00 went, — she cried a little every day, she said it was a headache, — Trot knows better, she not such a coward as to cry for a headache. Trot doesn't cry when his head aches, he's a man 1 " On the TTiresJioId of a Discovert/. £?3 " Yes, but mammie's only a woman, Trot, and a headache mi^ht make her cry if it was a very bad one. Mammie wouldn't tell a story." "She says 7 mustn't," responds Trot, "but I think she did. Grown-up people may do anything. Mayn't they tell tones ? " " No, Trot, not good people. Only wicked people tell stones." A shadow flits across the threshold, and the subject of their conversation enters. Trot scrambles off! Mr. Secretan's knee and runs to his adopted mother. 11 1 told him he was naughty to go away and make oo cry," ys Trot, " and he says he didn't." " Foolish Trot. What silly notions you get into your head ! " says Linda, bending over the child and blushing deeply. Alexis sees the blush, and he sees something more than that. He sees that Linda has changed within the ten days that have gone by since he left Dorley Mill. A settled pallor succeeds that fleeting red. Her eyes are sunken, and there is a dark line beneath them, which deepens their colour, and gives a pathetic expression that touches him to the heart. She has cared for him,, she has been sorry for him, and he, poor fettered wretch, dare' say no word of his care or his sorrow for her. She must drink the cup of humiliation to the dregs, and know that the man to whom her innocent heart has gone forth is the property of another. " I have been anxious to come and tell you once more how gratefully I shall ever remember your goodness to me," says Alexis, after they have talked about Trot and Trot's puppy for a few minutes. The puppy is to grow up into a Newfoundland if it realizes the expectations of its friends, but there is an element of uncertainty in these things, and Alexis has a lurking convic- tion that this puppy will develop into the most mongrel of mongrels. " Believe me, neither my grandfather nor I consider our care of you a matter for gratitude, Mr. Secretan," replies Linda. " Providence brought you to our door. We should have been very unchristian-like if we had not cared for you. I think you must know that if you had been the poorest tramp that ever dropped down on the road-side we should have done the same." " I am quite sure of that," replies Alexis, " and that is why I have never ventured to speak about the expense that my illness must have entailed upon you." " Pray relieve your mind upon tlxit score. Your housekeeper sent all the broths and jellies, hothouse fruits, poultry, game, and wines from the Grange. I think you only cost us a few new-laid eggs and a little milk. Mrs. Bodlow kept our larder almost too well supplied in her anxiety that you should have nourishing diet" s 274 Dead MerCs Shoes. " Mis. Bodlow only did her duty. But lightly as you regard the obligation, Miss Challice, it is one which I shall carry to my dying day. If ever I am inclined to make a bad use of this life of mine, I will remember how hard you strove to win it back from the grave. I have ventured to bring you something — a little gold watch, with your initials on the back, which I hope you will wear sometimes in remembrance of the many weary hours you spent by the stranger's sick bed." " I will wear it always," replies Linda, with tears in her eyen. " Oo can't wear two wathes," exclaims Trot. " Oo wear oor fazer's wath." " I shall keep that among my treasures, Trot ; but it is nearly worn out, poor old watch, and I am sure this will keep better time." " Oo like this best 'cause the genlamum give it oo," cries the far-seeing Trot. Alexis pretends not to hear this last observation, and produces the meerschaum pipe, which Linda admires amazingly, and which Trot wants to have in his mouth and to make believe to smoke, as he does sometimes with daddie's homelier clay. " Dear little Trot," exclaims Alexis, " how your small voice would enliven us at Cheswold Grange. You cannot imagine how dull it is there, Miss Challice, in the long summer evenings." " No ? And yet I think I know how long the summer evenings can be. But Trot would not do much to enliven them. He is worn out by seven o'clock. Oh, by the way, talking of Trot, I have made one little discovery since you left us." " What is that ? " cries Alexis, eagerly. " Don't let me raise false expectations. It is such a trifle, scarcely worth mentioning, but you seemed anxious to find out our little darling's parentage, and this seems a clue, however small." " What is it ? Pray tell me. I am most anxious, more anxious than I can explain." "Pray do not excite yourself, Mi. Secretan. I was looking over some papers in my desk, the other day, when I came upon the blank sheet of note-paper which contained that last remit- tance for Trot, — I remember it on account of the peculiar way in which it was folded, — and I noticed for the first time that there was a name stamped upon it in the corner, the name of the •stationer who supplied it, no doubt." " Yes, of course." " I have saved the sheet of paper to show you. The name is Morgan, Redcastle." Alexis starts from his chair and seizes Trot as if he Avould take possession of him on the instant. Ho is speechless with en rp rise. A Father's Claim. 275 " You know the name of that place." " Know it ? yes. I have reason, bitter reason, to know it. A small town in Yorkshire. And that money, obviously sent by the child's mother, was sent from Kedcastle ? " " One would suppose so." " There can be no doubt of it. Tell me, Miss Challice, if I were to show you a photograph of the woman you sheltered, the mother of this boy, would you recognise her ? The picture I shall show you was taken in the bloom of her beauty. You saw her — should it indeed be the same woman — faded, worn by care and deprivation. Should you know the face under such altered conditions ? " "I should know it anywhere. But why should you be so agitated ? "Why should the mere name of this place excite you bo much ? " " Ask me no questions till I come back to you with the photo- graph," says Alexis. " I shall go and return as fast as my horse will carry me." " Pray be careful. Remember " " That I have been thrown ! Trust me, dear Miss Challice. I will run no risks. I am too anxious to settle the question of Trot's parentage." He takes the child in his arms, kisses him as he has never kissed him yet in all their friendly companionship, gives him back to Linda, and runs out at the gate. He has mounted Titmouse and is out of sight before Linda ha» recovered from her astonishment at his agitation. " Genlamum's in a hurry ! " exclaims Trot. CHAPTER XLL A father's claim. ^IExis scarcely knows what he is doing during that scamper back to Cheswold Grange. Titmouse, inspirited by the knowledge that she is going home to her stable and two o'clock feed, throws her shoulders forward and sends out her feet, trotting as if for a wager. " Take off her bridle and give her some corn," says Alexis to the groom who receives him. " I shall want her again in ten minutes." He goes to the library, unlocks a despatch box, and takes out 276 Dead Menrs Shoes. an oblong velvet case, containing his wife's portrait — a picture taken by a famous photographer during their bright Parisian honeymoon, — the portrait of a girl-bride, lovely, elegantly dressed, smiling at the unknown future, and unconscious that these happy, idle honeymoon hours were eating up the capital that should have served to start husband and wife in the business of life. It is a photograph of Sibyl at her best — before secret cares and hypocrisies had wrought their lines on her fair young face. Alexis contemplates the picture regretfully for a few moments before he puts it in his pocket. " Yes, she was very lovely then," he tells himself. " And there is nothing in this face that bespeaks a heart capable of treachery or deceit. It was poverty's bitter school that spoiled her. Some noble spirits grow strong by treading the rough ways of life — hers was too weak to survive the ordeal of mis- fortune. Poor child, she must have suffered ! " He is on Titmouse again and returning to Dorley in a few minutes, very much against the mare's inclination. She indulges in a stubborn crawl, or, being touched up with the whip, jogs and jolts her rider in an irregular trot, expressive of supreme ill- temper. Urged out of this, she sets off in a furious canter, as if to inform him that she has some " go " left in her yet, in spite of ill-usage, and may contrive to pitch him over her head if he is too aggravating. These devices finally bring Alexis to Dorley, where he finds Linda and Trot in the front garden, evidently on the watch for him. " I am so glad you have returned," cries Linda. " You have made me quite miserable." " Forgive me, dear Miss Challice, but if you knew what hopes that one little word Redcastle has raised in my mind ! See here " — he takes the case from his pocket and shows her Sibyl's photograph, — " does that face remind you of any face you have ever seen before ? " " Yes," she answers, pale to the lips, but without an instant's hesitation, " it is the portrait of Trot's mother. She was not so beautiful as that. She was thin and worn and haggard, but I should recognise the eyes and mouth anywhere. It is she." " This is the portrait of my wife, Linda ; and Trot, the help- less baby you adopted in order to save him from the hazards of his mother's distraction or despair, is my son." " You told me your son was dead." " I was taught to believe so. My wife, for some mysterious reason, told mo that cruel lie. She was ashamed, perhaps, of having abandoned our child to the care of another, and feared to tell me the truth." A Father's Claim. 277 " Are you sure ? " falters Linda. " You are not deceiving yourself and me ? " " If you are sure that this picture is the portrait of Trot's mother, there can be no doubt that Trot is my son." " And you will take him away from me," says Linda, piteously • * just when he has grown most dear. After all I have suffered —all I have borne patiently for his sake — I am to lose him. That is hard." " If you knew how I have pined for a son, Linda — what day- dreams I have woven about my little one's image — how bitter a grief I felt when I was told that wicked lie about his death — you would understand my rapture at rinding him, my eagerness to claim him for my own — my darling, my hope, my precious care, heir to the fortune that Providence has dropped into my lap — poorly deserved on my part Heaven knows. He shall be better worthy of it." "Yes," murmurs Linda, faintly, "I can understand. It is only natural. He is your son ; your rights are sacred." " And you have suffered for his sake, Linda. Your generosity has been rewarded by the world's injustice. But I can set all right. I shall claim him for my own, and every one round and about Cheswold and Dorley shall know all his story. Yes, I will not blush to tell the whole bitter truth. How my wife left me in poverty, and how my son was born in a workhouse." They are standing in the parlour, Trot watching their excited countenances, with wonder depicted upon his own. " You have a right to take him away," says Linda, sadly, " but I think you will take all the sunshine of our lives with him. My grandfather is almost as fond of him as I am." " I am not going to dissever old links, Linda. He shall come often to see you. He shall be taught to know you as the guardian angel of his infancy ; he shall always remember his first home." "Yes, but it will be his home no longer," replies Linda, with a sigh - Alexis is silent. He feels that he must seem a wretch, a destroyer, entering this happy household only to ruin its joy. But how can he forego his claim ? How can he relinquish the delight of watching his son's infancy develop into boyhood — guiding the baby mind, making the boy at once pupil and play- thing, source of all his pleasures in the present and all his hopes in the future ? At this juncture Trot, who has listened intently, arrives at the comprehension that he has a personal interest in the conver- sation. He catches at the idea that he is to be taken away- transferred from mammie to the genlamum, and he suddenly bursts in upon the conversation with a dismal howl 278 Dead Men's Slwet. " Me won't be took away ; me stay with mammie," cries the boy, and he clambers up into Linda's arms, and clings thei.e as if resolved to resist any attempt at dislodging him. " What, Trot," cries Alexis, smiling at the little one's excite- ment, " won't you come and live with me, and have a dear little Shetland pony to ride, and a big garden to play in, and a rock- ing-horse, — and a — lots of plum cakes and picture-books ? " Here Alexis's knowledge of juvenile weaknesses fails him, and he knows not what further temptation to offer. " Me won't have pony, me not want oor garden, me got nice big garden, me want mammie," cries Trot, and he clings still tighter to Linda. " Trot, shall I tell you a secret ? " " 'Ess," says Trot, who thinks that a secret must needs be something worth hearing. " You must come and live with me, Trot, my darling. God meant you and me to live together. I'm your father ! " " No, you not," screams the boy, " you're the genlamum with the broken arm. Me never have no f azer." " And you won't come to live at the Grange ? Such a large garden, six times as big as the garden here, and a Shetland pony with a long tail.'' " Me won't," cries Trot, emphatically. " Bozer de pony ! " " Trot has decided, Miss Chalhce," says Alexis, gravely. " If I were ungrateful enough, selfish enough, to wish to take him from you, his childish heart is true and fast. He shall stay with you, since you wish it, for the next few years at any rate. This shall be his home, and he shall come to Cheswold only as a visitor. You will let me have him sometimes ? " " Let you have him ! Oh, Mr. Secretan, are you not too generous in consenting to leave him with me ? " " I should be an ungrateful hound if I could refuse. You have made my son's infancy bright and happy. You have saved him from the evils of poverty — from his mother's selfishness. How can I be grateful enough to you ? " " Only let me keep my darling a little longer, and I am more than recompensed. I must be proud and happy too, when I have recovered a little from tins surprise, to know that he is your son — that his future will be bright and prosperous — his worldly position honourable, — to think that my little waif and stray should be the future squire of Cheswold. My grandfather will be so pleased. It is a triumph for me over liim, dear old man, for he said that I was very foolish to adopt a nameless child, and now my dearest has name and fortune, home and father." " We will make a good man of him between us, Miss Challice," says Alexis, more elated by this discovery than he was by tho A Father's Claim. 279 inheritance of Miss Secretan's estate. He has no doubt as to Trot's identity — there seems to him no room for doubt, yet he is anxious to make things as certain as possible — to secure independent evidence in case his claim to his son should ever be disputed. He goes back to the Grange only to get a fresh horse, and then rides into the quiet old cathedral town to talk the matter over with Mr. Scrodgers. He does not consider the provincial solicitor a Mansfield or a Cockbum ; but Mr. Scrodgers is th% best legal intellect available on the spot, and to Mr. Scrodgers he goes. The family solicitor listens to all Alexis has to tell with the gravity of a learned owl that has lived a century or so in the same ivy bush. He contracts his eyebrows, he purses up his lips, and looks as if he had known the whole story before, but, for some wise reason he had kept his knowledge to himself. "A curious case, Mr. Secretan," he says at last, "a very curious case. It's lucky your estate is not entailed." " Why so ? " " There might have been difficulties in the way of succession. It might not be easy to identify this infant — born in such a very irregular manner — as your son and heir. There might be sus- picions. The heir-at-law might file a bill in Chancery. I should consider it a very hazardous business were your estate entailed ; but you as an independent man, fettered by no entail, may leave your real property to Tom, Dick, or Harry. I should recom- mend you to take this infant into your hoiise at once, let him bear your name, let him be recognised by all your acquaintances as your son." "Yes, I shall take care of that. I shall tell everybody. But there is a difficulty about bringing him into my house. The lady who brought him up — who rescued him from I know not what misery — has a claim upon his affection, the strongest, and as strong a claim on my gratitude. To take him away from he? would be almost to break her heart." "Almost, not quite. There's a long distance between the two adverbs," replies the cynical Scrodgers. " Most women have their hearts almost broken once in their lives. Give her a new bonnet." " You do not know the lady, sir. She is not a woman to bo solaced by a new bonnet." " Hasn't she a head ? " asks Mr. Scrodgers. "I never knew a woman, with a head, that a bonnet wouldn't pacify. Half tho cases at the assizes, in which the female is a plaintiff, might be settled out of court if the defendant knew when and how to ofi'cj the solatium of a bonnet." 280 Dea& Mens Shoes. " I see, Mr. Scrodgers, you are a bachelor and a misogynist," Bays Alexis, smilingly. " No, 6ir," replies the lawyer, " I am a misogynist, and a married man." " The first thing I have to do is to alter my will," says Alexis, returning to the business question. "Decidedly. If you are convinced that this infant — hereinbefore named — is your son, you had better make a will in his favour." "Prepare one as fast as you can, Mr. Scrodgers, leaving the bequest to my good friend Plowden just as it stands." " You must have trustees in case of your dying before the child attains his majority." " Make Plowden trustee." " You should have a second in the event of Mr. Plowden's death." " How you lawyers remind us of our mortality ! Well, make Miss Challice the second trustee and guardian of the boy in case of my death. Nobody will ever love him better than she does." " And in the event of her marriage " " Marriage would make no difference in her. She would always love my bo} r ." Mr. Scrodgers relieves his doubtful mind by a faint smile. His idea of marriage is that it makes a very great difference. To his legal mind marriage transforms a man. Even the will he made as a bachelor is no longer valid, proving that in the eye of the law the married man and the bachelor are two distinct personages. "Then you would recommend me to get together all the evidence I can bearing upon my boy's birth," says Alexis. " I think it would be wise to do so. The fact of your parentage may never be disputed. You can dispose of the Cheswold estate as you choose, but still it might be well to have all necessary documents — an attested copy of your marriage certificate, and so on." "Yes, I was a reckless fellow when I married. Heaven knows what became of the certificate. My wife may have kept it. Certainly I didn't take any care of it. The parson had made her my wife. That was all I thought about on that be- wildering day." " Then you had better get a copy of the register without delay." " Yes, and I will go to the woman with whom my wife and I lodged. She will remember that my wife was expecting to become a mother when she left me. If that woman is to be found I will get from her a written declaration of that fact." A Wedding Eve. 281 " It would be as well to do so," says Mr. Serodgers, approvingly, and Alexis leaves him to prepare the new will, which he is to bring to the Grange early next morning. " Stay," says the lawyer on the threshold. " You haven't told me the infant's Christian name." " He was christened William." M No other name ? " " I believe not. But you can fill in the names to-morrow. I will ask that question in the meantime." Alexis goes back to Cheswold pondering on the lawyer's advice about his son. Mr. Serodgers has distinctly said that it is for the child's welfare, for the security of his future position, that he should be domiciled with his father ; and Alexis longs to have the little one under the same roof with him, to see him daily, hourly, to watch over bim sleeping and waking, to make him his plaything and companion. Against this natural desire there is the promise he has made to Linda Challice — the debt of gratitude he owes her. Hard to break that promise — hard to ignore that debt. CHAPTER XLIL A WEDDING EVE. The days pass with a frightful rapidity as it seems to Sibyl after that Tuesday night on which Joel Pilgrim came back from York with the marriage licence. Stephen Trenchard is ailing, and keeps his room for the greater part of the time, but Dr. Mitsand, a most careful man in all critical cases, conies to Lancaster Lodge only once a day, and there is no hint of danger. The doctor's manner has that plea- sant vivacity which suits a trifling derangement of the patient's system. He sits by the bedside and discourses upon local topics — the water company, sewage, and other agreeable subjects. On Thursday morning Sibyl lies in wait for him on the landing outside Mr. Trenchard's room. "You do not think my uncle veiy ill, do you, Dr. Mitsand?" she asks, with evident anxiety, a solicitude which the kindly old doctor thinks highly creditable to her, and which he remembers afterwards — to her disadvantage. " Certainly not, my dear Miss Faunthorpe," he replies, cheerily, " there is a little prostration ; our dear patient is very feeble ; 282 Dead Men's Shoe*. that is only to be expected at his time of life. There is a won- derful reserve of vigour about his constitution, exceptional recuperative power ; he is all muscle and sinew — no superfluous flesh ; and this, taken in conjunction with his temperate habits, would lead one to anticipate a long life. I fear his mind has been^ a little troubled lately. Very foolish. A man in his position should worry himself about nothing. But no doubt wealth has its responsibilities." " Then there is no reason for alarm ? " " Not the slightest. If there were I should call in my friend, Dr. Wilmot, of Krampston, for a consultation. Your uncle's is not a life to be trifled with," adds Dr. Miteand, solemnly, as if the life of a millionaire were a much bigger thing in creation than the existences of the vulgar herd. " Pray don't be uneasy, my dear young lady. And now I look at you I fear you have been fretting. You are looking pale and fatigued. And this little hand," as he shakes hands with her, " is very feverish." He lays his finger on her wrist. " Good gracious, what a pulse ! This won't do, my dear Miss Faunthorpe. Mental disturbance has been going on jhere. I'll send you a composing draught. You must keep yourself quiet for the next day or two, especially as you are so soon to start upon a long voyage. Your dear uncle has told me of the interesting event which is to take place next Saturday. Very sudden ! On account of Mr. Pilgrim's recall to Calcutta, yes — yes, I understand, and a very quiet wedding, your uncle's health not allowing — of course, of course. I shall take the liberty to be present in the church, in order to have the pleasure of congratulating you. I used to think our young friend Stormont was to be the happy man ; and then there was some talk of your becoming mistress of the How ; but you have managed to deceive us all, you 6ee." *' Yes," falters Sibyl, with a sickly smile. " Don't forget to take the composing draught. Good-bye." Distinctly does Dr. Mitsand remember the anxious look she turns upon him as he leaves her. "That's not a happy marriage," he tells his daughters at luncheon, " it's a case of hands, not hearts, my dears. All money, money, money 1 with these self-made men that question swallows up eveiy other consideration." It is long since Redcastle has had such a delightful subject foi gossip as this suddenly arranged wedding. Mrs. Chasubel has made a round of morning calls in order to tell her dear friends the startling news, and the marriage has been discussed from every point of view, the general idea being that Mr. Trenchard is a tyrant, and Sibyl the victim of his mercenary views. Mrs. Stormont's particular idea — which she imparts in confidence to everybody — js that Sibyl was devotedly attached to her dear A Wedding Eve. 283 Frederick, and that it is to prevent her eloping with Fred that Mr. Trenchard has hurried on her espousals with Joel Pilgrim. Inexorable time, like death, advances with measured tread. It is Friday, the eve of that ill-omened bridal, and Sibyl sits alone in her pretty morning-room — the room in which Joel found her on his return from York. She has made all her arrange- ments for her journey, packed her trunks, and labelled them for the steamer Ganges. Her own firm hand has written those labels — Mrs. Pilgrim, passenger to Calcutta — Joel looking on all the time with that ugly smile of his. One small leather bag ia nnlabelled, and in that Sibyl has put her little stook of trinkets, a small supply of under-linen, and the marble-paper covered book containing the diary she kept at Mrs. Hazleton's. She has kept no diary at Lancaster Lodge. She is alone now, exhausted by a long morning devoted to the task of packing. Marion has been with her, pretending to help, full of exclamations and con- gratulations, wonderment and curiosity. " It doesn't seem so much of a match after all," Marion has observed candidly. " But I suppose this Mr. Pilgrim is awfully rich, and money is what you like, Sibyl. However, I must say if I had been you, I should have tried to lead Sir Wilford Car- donnel on a little further. He did seem very much taken with you, and every one was surprised that it only ended in?a flirtation. But men are such deceivers, as some one says in an old song — one foot on somewhere, and one on somewhere else to one thing constant never." Sibyl has contrived to get rid of her sister a little before dinner-time. Marion is to be at the wedding, and is to officiate as sole bridesmaid, but there has not been time for her to get a new dress made, a fact which she does not omit to bewail with much lamentation. " It's the worst apology for a wedding / ever heard of," she remarks, " but I suppose you'll recompense yourself for all this with balls and parties when you get to Calcutta." " Yes," answers Sibyl, with a faint smile, " I shall enjoy myself immensely in Calcutta." It is seven o'clock, a lovely summer evening, and Sibyl sits by the disordered table, scattered with books and papers. She is very pale, and there is a look of apathy in her face and attitude, as if she had abandoned all effort and surrendered herself to fate. She is startled from this blank listlessness by the announcement of Sir Wilford Cardonnel. No visit could surprise her more than this at such a time. " Sir Wilford told me to say that he wishes most particularly to see you alone, ma'am," says the servant ; " he will not detain you long." g64 Dead Men's Shoes. u You had better bring him up here, Mr. Pilgrim is in the drawing-room, I suppose ? " " Yes, ma'am." " There is not much to attract him now in this white, wretched face," thinks Sibyl, with a hurried look at the glass, which reflects the shadow of a vanished beauty. Sir Wilford enters breathless, and evidently strongly agitated. " My dear Miss Faunthorpe," he says hurriedly, " I only came home from the north this afternoon, and heard of this intended marriage. I rode over at once. Can I be of any use ? You honoured me with your confidence, and I told you that if ever the hour should come when you would need a friend, you might command me. Let me be your friend to-day. Let me stand between you and the tyranny that is being practised — let me save you from " " A crime ! You are all that is good and generous, Sir Wil- ford ; and if I needed help I would ask for yours. But I need none " " What do you mean ? Your marriage is appointed for to- morrow morning. You, the wife of another man, are to bf married to this Mr. Pilgrim." "The marriage is appointed for to-morrow, but no such marriage will take place." " How will you prevent it ? " " In a very simple manner. The bride will be missing." " You are going away ? " " Yes. I am left with but one resource—flight ! I shall be far away from Redcastle at eleven o'clock to-morrow." " You are sure of being able to escape — sure that no coercion will be used?" " I think not. I have acted my part carefully during the last few days, and Mr. Pilgrim believes that I am resigned to the inevitable. My trunks are all packed for India. I have labelled them with my own hands." " And you have made every arrangement for going away ? asks Sir Wilford, anxiously. " You have friends to whom you can go ? " " Yes, I have made all arrangements. I have decided where to go," replies Sibyl after- a pause. " Pray trust me," pleads Sir Wilford, earnestly. " Think of me no longer as your lo> er, but your friend only. You must need friendly counsel. Do not take any step unadvisedly. You have played a desperate game for your uncle's fortune, and, as it now turns out, a losing game. Would it not be wiser — better in every way, even at this last moment, to confess the truth to your uncle? He might forgive you. You might even retain your hold upon his affection." A Wedding Eve. 285 " Impossible. You do not know my unci* Trenchard as I do. I thank you for your friendship, Sir Wilford. but this is a case in which advice is useless. There is but one course open to me. It is one that I ought to have taken long ago, perhaps — the only straight and womanly course. But I have stubbornly pursued my own plan, and the end is failure." " If you would only confide in me — if you would only tell me where you are going — to whom ? " " I am going to my husband." M Then I can say no more. I feel that you are taking the right course. If — if " here Sir Wilford hesitates and blushes — " if you should be in want of ready money for your travelling expenses, or for any emergency which you may not now foresee, pray suffer me to be your banker. I cashed a cheque at thu bank as I came up the town," taking out a well-filled pocket- book. " Let me lend you fifty or a hundred in small notes." " You are too good," exclaims Sibyl, touched by his thought- fulness. " But I have money, and money's worth which will serve me abundantly. I promise that if ever I am in desperate need of help — in such need as my husband and I have known in the past — I will apply to you. I will not be too proud to be a petitioner." " Thanks for that promise. And now good-bye. I will not intrude upon you any longer ; but if anything should happen within the next few hours — if there should be any attempt at constraint on the part of your uncle, or Mr. Pilgrim, send a messenger to me, and I will be at your side as soon as my horse can carry me ; or I will stay in Redcastle to-night, if you like, at the " Coach and Horses," so as to be nearer at hand in case I am wanted." " Believe me, there is no occasion. If the worst comes I have but to declare my marriage." " Then good-bye. I will not wish that we may meet under happier circumstances, for it will be happier for me not to see you. But I do most heartily wish you every happiness Provi- dence can bestow." "I am not very hopeful," answers Sibyl, with a sigh. "I begin to think that I flung away my chance of happiness when I tried to win fortune." And thus they part, Sir Wilford honestly anxious for the welfare of the woman he has loved, Sibyl touched by his de- votion. She goes down to the drawing-room presently, and finds Joel Pilgrim walking up and down in the twilight, with by no means a radiant brow. " You have had a visitor," be says, frowning upon her as she enters. 286 Dead Men's Shoes. " Only Sir "Wilford Cardonnel, to offer me his congratulations," ehe answers, lightly. 11 Only your former admirer," sneers Joel. " I should hardly have thought he would have considered your marriage a subject for his congratulations." •' He is more generous than you give him credit for being." " So it seems. I don't, as a rule, credit my acquaintance with an unlimited amount of generosity." They dine together tete-a-tete, and Sibyl seems at her brightest throughout the meal, which ia conducted with the strictest ceremony, and lasts a long time. Gladly would she have escaped the weariness of Mr. Pilgrim's detested society for these last few hours, but she wishes to disarm suspicion by every means in her power, so as to leave herself free and unfettered at the last. Her fascinations, which have stood her in such good stead with the rest of the world, seem to be wasted on Joel Pilgrim- He is gloomy and absent-minded all dinner-time, eats little, but drinks a good deal, and when Sibyl leaves him to return to the drawing-room he does not follow her with lover-like haste, but sits brooding over his wine for half an hour, and then goes straight upstairs to Stephen Trenchard's room. Mr. Trenchard is lying on the sofa, wrapped in his dressing- gown, with all the apparatus of invalidism around him, medicine bottles, hothouse grapes, soda water on the table by h?s side, a lire burning on the hearth, though it is nearly midsummer, for ill-health has made the Anglo-Indian inclined to chilliness and ohiverings. He looks up with a frown as Joel enters. " I thought you were never coming near me any more," he Bays fretfully. " I have been devoting myself to my intended bride. Such affection as she lavishes upon me deserves some return." " Spare that poor child your sneers. She is much too good for you. Have you succeeded ? " M Entirely. The bank consents to discount my bills for the required amount. I have told them that I am buying an estate in this neighbourhood, and have to complete the purchase to- morrow." " Have they sent you the money ? " asks Mr. Trenchard, eagerly. " No. But I shall have it to-morrow morning. I have tele~ graphed them that the purchase is to be completed to-morrow at eleven o'clock, and so it is, only it is another kind of purchase-^ the purchase of a lovely wife — which is to be concluded at that hour. I Bhall have the money — ten notes for a thousand each — by the first post to-morrow morning." "I'm glad of that" A Wedding Eve. 287 " Yon are drawing the life-blood out of the concern, remember. There is very little hope of the business surviving such a with- drawal of capital." "Then, my dear Joel, it must go. If it were a question of capital you might have some occasion to look unhappy about it, but as I am only absorbing your superfluous credit " " Superfluous," echoes Joel, derisively. "Yes, my dear Joel, a man of j T our abilities should be able to extend his credit to an almost illimitable measure. The more lie owes, the more reason his creditors have for upholding his credit. Debt is the most solid foundation a commercial house can be planted upon, for its pillars have their bases in other people's pockets. You're sure the bank will send the money ? " "As sure as one can be of anything in this world." " Eemember, no money.no marriage. And a telegram to my Calcutta lawyer to make short work of Pilgrim and Company." " I understand. No quarter. Don't be uneasy. Your demands shall be met and fullv satisfied. o o e o o It is midnight, and Lancaster Lodge is at rest. A light still burns, as it burns all night in Mr. Trcnchard's room, brighter than the ordinary lamps of a sick chamber, alight by which the invalid can read if he pleases ; for Mr. Trcnchard's slumbers are often disturbed, and in every night he has some wakeful hours. Pod- more, the butler, who sleeps in the room over his master's, comes down at stated intervals to give the invalid his medicine. A secondary door near the head of the bed in Mr. Trenchard's room opens on to a small landing on the back staircase leading to the servants' quarters. By this servants' staircase Podmore descends and ascends ; through this door, almost hidden by the ample draperies of the tall Arabian bed, he enters and departs, noise- less as a ghost in the silent watches of the night. Mr. Trenchard has protested more than once that he is quite well enough to look after his own medicine, and wakeful enough to take it at the appointed hours ; but Dr. Mitsand has laid a stress upon the matter, and has insisted upon Podmore being responsible for the regular administration of those gentle tonics, not strong enough to hurt a baby and too mild to take effect upon the constitution of a healthy rabbit. Whereby Podmore's nights arc made a burden to him from the necessity of arousing 1 himself at certain intervals, and the ticking of his big silver watch under his pillow is as the stroke of doom. Sibyl spends the quiet hour between midnight and one o'clock in writing to her uncle Stephen. That which she dares not tell him she finds courage to write, knowing that her letter can only reach his hands after she has left Redaastle, in all probability for ever. If b& vs desperately angry, as she believes he will be, she 288 Dead Men's Shoes. will not see his anger. If it is in his nature to forgive hef, severance may help to soften his feelings and touch his heart. After all it is just possible that the hold she has obtained upon his affections is too strong to be loosened, and that love may extinguish wrath. She would have been more ready to hope this before the coming of Joel Pilgrim, but 6he fancies that his presence xmder that roof has changed her uncle's feelings towards her, that as Joel's influence has increased hers has grown less. In that letter she tells Stephen Trenchard the true story of her marriage — tells how from utter destitution, with starvation staring her in the face she fled to him for shelter and comfort Of her hope of inheriting his fortune she says nothing, but her story in all other respects is fully and truthfully told. " When I first came beneath your roof," she writes, " I hoped to be able some day to tell you of my marriage, to win your pity and regard for my husband ; but when I discovered your rooted hatred of his name and race, when I found how deeply the old wound still rankled, I lost courage ar_d kept my secret, at the hazard of seeming the worst of deceivers should you ever discover the truth. " The hour has come when I can keep my secret no longer. I go out into the world to seek my husband, to share his home, however humble or however wretched. If you can bring your- self to forgive me, if you can believe that I have been grateful for all your goodness, as Heaven knows I have been, if you can take the more generous view of all past wrongs and extend your kindness to the guiltless son of your enemy it shall need but one word to bring me back to you. " Your grateful and dutiful niece, " Sibyl Secretan." She feels a thrill of joy and pride as she signs her own right- ful name for the first time since she left her husband. Even in this hour of uncertainty — the wide world, so cruel to unprotected poverty, all before her — she is glad that the mask has been thrown aside, and that she is her honest self once more. She addresses the letter to Stephen Trenchard in a bold, firm hand, and places it conspicuously on the mantelpiece of her little sitting-room, where it must be seen by the first person who enters the room next morning. "I have played my game and lost!" she thinks, as she lies flown for a few hours, if possible to rest, sleep she knows to be impossible. " If I had won I wonder whether success would ever have recompensed me for all I have suffered from the bitterness of an acted lie — for the many hours in which I have pretended ia be happy with a gnawing pain at my heart ? " The Paadng-BeU. 280 CHAPTER XLIII. THE PASSING-BELL. ABOUT half-past nine o'clock on that Saturday morning' which has been talked of as Sibyl Faunthorpe's wedding-day, Redcastle is disturbed by a sound of ill omen. No blithe marriage peai rings out on the soft summer air, but the slow and solemn pass- ing-bell tolls dismally from the minster tower, and strikes on every heart with its grim reminder of mortality. Let that bel> nound as often as it will, it carries always the same message, and something less or more than mortal must be the ear which can hear its direful note with indifference. Before the day is old, Redcastle has subject-matter for the talk of a year. Wonder, curiosity, and an atmosphere of excitement pervade the town. Business, if not suspended, is performed in an absent-minded, perfunctory manner. People group themselves in doorways, hang over counters, lounge in public-house bars, gather at the street corners, and there is but one name in every mouth, and that name is Trenchard. A name worn no more upon earth — a name that is a name, and nothing more henceforward. It is no longer the docket of humanity, but a mere collection of letters to be engraven on a tombstone. Stephen Trenchard is dead. He was found dead in his bed, at nine o'clock this morning, by the expectant bridegroom, who went to his room at that hour to wake him, and found him locked in a slumber for which earth has no key. " Very sudden ! " exclaims Redcastle. " We knew that the dear old gentleman was ailing, but we did not expect this. At his age, though, of course, life is precarious, the thread worn to attenuation, easily snapped. How about the old gentleman's will ? And is Miss Faunthorpe sole heiress?" "That will not be known till after the funeral," says Redcastle, " and we must languish for some days in suspense." " How does Miss Faunthorpe take it ? " asks Redcastle, " and Mr. Pilgrim? The match between those two will be off now, most likely. A sad loss for the gentleman, a happy escape fo» the lady. She will marry Sir Wilf ord Cardonnel after all, perhaps, and take a leading position in the county. How uncertain is life! How wonderful are the ways of Providence ! " Mrs. Stormont and Mrs. Groshen send out their pages for black- edged note-paper of superfine quality, and rather deeper than thr> usual complimentary mourning, and pen elaborate letters a? 290 Dead Men's Shoe*. condolence, interlarded with appropriate quotations from the Scriptures. The silver cord and the golden bowl are brought out, with various other similes, which, by much use or misuse, have been, asit were, dragged inthe gutter of commonplace composition. "I will venture to call to-morrow, my sweet friend," concludes Mrs. Stormont " to mingle my tears with yours. I hope you will feel equal to seeing me. Poor Fred is broken down with grief at the thought of what you must suffer." Inside Lancaster Lodge there is confusion worse than death. Dr. Mitsand has been summoned to the death-chamber, not at Joel Pilgrim's bidding. What can a doctor do for the dead ? Mr. Pilgrim has asked contemptuously. The best of them can do little enough for the living. It is Mrs. Skinner, the house- keeper, who has sent for Dr. Mitsand. Podmore is helpless and useless on this awful moming. He sits in his pantry stricken, as if the blow had stupefied him. The blinds are down in Stephen Trenchard's room as they are throughout the darkened house, but Joel, who has wandered in and out of the room while the last offices have been performed for the dead, has flung the windows wide open to the warm June morning, and the scent of the roses floats in from the garden below, mingled with the more subtle perfume of blossoming limes. Dr. Mitsand has started on his morning rounds when the messenger was sent for him, and it is noon when he calls at Lancaster Lodge. Joel receives him in the study, grave, sorrowful of countenance, but tranquil. " This is a sad event, Dr. Mitsand," he says. " Not more sad than it is unintelligible, Mr. Pilgrim," answers the doctor. " There was not the slightest indication of a fatal termination to Mr. Trenchard's illness when I saw him yesterday — nothing to alarm the most anxious of medical men." " Something wrong about the heart, I suppose," suggests Joel. " We shall see if it was that." " You mean " " I mean that this is a case which calls for an inquest. Yor would have no objection, I suppose ? As Mr. Trenchard's son- in-law, I naturally regard you as in some manner a member of his family." "Why should I object? But it is rather out of the usual course, is it not, to hold an inquest upon a man who has been in failing health for a long time, and whose death, although sudden, may be taken as the natural termination of his illness?" " I beg your pardon. Death comes too soon and too suddenly to bo taken as a natural termination here. I am as much sur« prised at Mr Trenchard's death as if I had left him yesterday in The Passing-Bell. 291 robust health. I gave Miss Faunthorpe my positive assurance that there was no danger, or likelihood of danger in her uncle's condition. Poor young lady ! The blow will be a terrible one for her. How does she bear it ? " "That is a question I cannot answer, for I have not seen her to- day. She went out this morning before breakfast — indeed, before any of the servants were up — and has not come in yet." " That is very strange. This was to have been her wedding day." " It was." " And she leaves the house before the servants are up, and does not appear again ? It is now between twelve and one." " It is strange, \nt true." Dr. Mitsand is evidently disturbed by this intelligence. "Pardon me, Mr. Pilgrim, if I eay something not quite agreeable to you," he says after a pause, "but was there no coercion used on the subject of this marriage? It was arranged rather suddenly, and we in Piedcastle had an idea that Miss Faunthorpe's affections were engaged in another direction. When I spoke to this poor young lady the day before yesterday, I certainly perceived indications of mental disturbance. She was feverish, unduly excited, her appearance haggard, her eyes sunken. Did 6he freely consent to this marriage, Mr. Pilgrim ? Were you and ehe on good terms ? " "On the best possible terms. Ask Podmore, who waited upon us at dinner yesterday when we dined tete-a-tete " " Then you can imagine no reason for what I may call Miss Faunthorpe's disappearance ? " "None whatever. Her trunks are packed for our Indian journey. She directed them with her own hands. I do not say that the alliance was a love match on her part, as it was on mine. But she knew that I was devoted to her, that her uncle had set his heart upon our marriage, and she was quite reconciled to the idea." " I am glad to hear that ; for I was inclined to fear that her wandering away at such an early hour this morning might be the result of mental disturbance — the mind thrown off its balance by extreme distress. She left the house before any one knew of her uncle's death, you say ? " " She certainly left the house before I knew of it," answers Joel, gravely. " And before it was known to any of the household ? " u Yes. She was gone when the servants went downstairs to open the house. They found the chain and bolta of the front door unfastened." " The lodgekeeper must have let her out." " No ; she must have gone out by a door in the garden wall 292 Dead Men's Shoes. which opens into the lane that divides Sir John Boldero's grounda from these. The door is locked on the inside, and the key hangs on a nail beside the door. This door was found to be unlocked and the key left in the lock." " Very deliberate," says Dr. Mitsand ; u but lunatics and sleep- walkers are wonderfully deliberate in their actions. The wind travels in a certain groove, but it goes steadily enough in that groove." The doctor's impression is that Sibyl, urged into an uncon- genial marriage, has been goaded into a state of temporary derangement. That is the theory by which he explains her extraordinary absence. "This poor girl may he wandering about the country," he exclaims, " and may come to harm. Have you made no attempt to find her?" " No. I have had enough to think about in the awful event of this morning. Until an hour or so ago I thought it possible that Miss Faunthorpe had gone to her uncle Robert's. She might have something to say to her sisters, I thought, on so eventful a morning. It was only when Marion came here at ten o'clock, expecting to find Sibyl, that I began to take alarm. And even then my mind was too much occupied to realize " " I understand. I sympathize with you, my dear sir," cries the good-natured doctor. " But I feel really concerned for this poor girl. For the dead we can do but little. Science will enable us to establish the cause of death, but beyond that last duty there is, alas ! nothing. But for the living we must be active. I should recommend you to send in every direction you can think of to search for Miss Faunthorpe, and to communicate with the police. With a mind thrown off its balance, one knows not what may happen. There is always the fear of a suicidal tendency." " True," says Joel Pilgrim, with a gloomy look which may mean fear, love, anxiety, or anything else, but which certainly indicates a mind ill at ease. " I will go down to the police office at once. I will send some of the servants to look for her." " One word before you go. Tell me how and when you dis- covered our poor friend's decease." "At nine o'clock in the morning. Podmore had gone to him at four to give him his medicine, and had left him sleeping tranquilly. I came down to breakfast at eight, breakfasted alone, and at »ine went upstairs to take my friend his letters, and to ask his advice about a business letter which the post had brought me. I knocked at his door — no answer ; knocked again, and louder — the same result. This alarmed me at once, for I knew him to be a light sleeper. I ran downstairs to the hall, called Podmore, and went up the back stairs with him to the other door ef Mr. Trenchard's room, a door always left unlocked to admit The Passing-Bell. 293 Podmore, who, as you know, has valeted his master of late. We went in, and found Mr. Trenchard lying to all appearance in a quiet sleep, but it was the sleep of death." " No signs of a struggle, no disturbance of the features ? " " None." " Very mysterious. There was nothing amiss with the heart ; no organic disease of any kind. I have used the stethoscope frequently since the bronchial tubes have been a little irritated. There never was a sounder organization." " You would like to see him ? " says Joel, interrogatively. " Immediately." The doctor goes upstairs to that darkened room where the master of Lancaster Lodge takes his last rest amidst the warm breath of roses and lime-blossoms. Every chair and table has been set in its place ; every fold of drapery straightened by methodical hands ; every species of litter — newspapers, medicine bottles, forgotten flowers left to wither in their vases — all the familiar rubbish of every-day existence has been cleared away — the chamber is funereal as death itself — mathematically exact as the tomb. Dr. Mitsand goes in alone, and remains there for about ten minutes. He comes out again looking very grave — nay, even troubled, like a man who has something on his mind — something heavier than that professional burden of a patient's death which a family doctor is called upon to carry so often that he acquires the knack of supporting his load easily. He finds Joel Pilgrim waiting for him on the broad landing outside — landing glorified by the bust of somebody with a sunken nose, and no pupils to his eyes, staring steadily into space. " He looks very peaceful, doesn't he ? " asks Joel, in a subdued voice. " Very." " His end must have been painless, I should think." " It must have been instantaneous, Mr. Pilgrim. I am sure of that." "The heart," suggests Joel. " No, sir. The heart was as sound as mine — or sounder. It ia not a case of heart disease." " Of what then ? " " The inquest will tell us that." u You still hold to the necessity of an inquest." u More than ever." " Will you tell me why ? " Joel inquires thoughtfully, smooth' ing down his silky moustache with a plump tawny hand. " Yes, when the inquest is over." Joel looks searchingly at the doctor's face, but. it tells him nothing. The Greek philosopher — Truth's first martvr — on tho 294 Dead Men's Shoes. landing does not present a more complete blankness of expres- sion than Dr. Mitsand offers to Joel's observation. " Oh, by the way," says Dr. Mitsand, "that is the door of Misa Fannthorpe's sitting-room, is it not ? " " Yes. That is the room she generally nses of a morning." " I should like to look round before we go downstairs. There might be something which would suggest the motive of her absence — a letter perhaps. You have not beeu in that room this morning? " " No." u Nor the servants ? " " Yes, some one must have been in to draw down the blinds." " True. Unless the blinds were down last night. They would be most likely. But I suppose the housemaid would arrange tue room this morning in the common course of things ? " " Naturally." Dr. Mitsand opens the door and goes in, followed by Joel. The room has been dusted and arranged by the housemaid, but the table near the window, covered with books, workboxes and feminine trifles of various kinds, remains just as Sibyl left it the night before. It is one of Sibyl's laws that this table shall not be touched. There is to be no tidying or arranging of the trifles she values — her books, her writing materials, her fancy work. The doctor's eye surveys the pretty little room. The sunshine is shut out by the lowered Venetians, but there is light enough for him to see everything. " I thought she might have left a letter somewhere," says Dr. Mitsand. " That is what young ladies generally do when thty run away from home." " We have no right to suppose that she has run away,' observes Joel. " True. Yet it looks rather like it." He has looked at the mantelpiece, at the cabinet with ita upholsterer's collection of pink and blue Sevres teacups, the in- evitable Marie Antoinette, — the eternal De Maintenon, the everlasting Pompadour, smirking behind plate-glass panels. No, there is no letter on cabinet or mantelpiece. He goes to the table, glances at the books, the dainty basket lined with rose- coloured satin, the shreds of lace, and ivory needle-cases and filigree thimble-boxes. Still no letter. How intently he examines all these trifles, peers into the basket, raises the lid of the work- box, always looking for that letter I He comes upon something presently that engages his particular attention, but it is not a letter, only a glass phial corked and empty, nestling in the satin-lined basket among needle -cases and reels of cctton. Dark Surmises. 295 "Dilute prussic acid," he says, sniffing at the cork cautiously. •That's curious."^ Joel watches him closely. "Very curious," echoes Joel, "but I believe young women sometimes use it for their complexions, don't they ? " " No. I've heard of their using arsenic, never prussic acid in any form. Miss Faunthorpe may have been taking the dilute ucid as a sedative. I'll take care of the bottle. She ought not to leave such things about." " But an empty bottle can do no harm," says Joel. " Perhaps not, but I may as well keep it. You'll remember where we found this bottle, Mr. Pilgrim," says Dr. Mitsand, as he drops the empty phial into his pocket. " Perhaps you will kindly call at the Kegistrar's and certify my poor friend's death," says Mr. Pilgrim. " Podmore tells me there is some kind of certificate necessary in these cases." " It is just that certificate which I do not feel myself at liberty to give until after the inquest," replies the doctor. "Why not?" " Because I do not know the cause of death." " But the arrangements for the funeral " " Must remain in abeyance till after the inquest." " Very unpleasant," says Joel. " Yes, death is apt to be unpleasant for the survivors, especially under certain circumstances," replies Dr. Mitsand, gravely. He leaves Joel, and goes straight to the coroner, his old friend and ally, a medical man who has retired from practice, and the two talk together gravely of the event that has darkened the windows of Lancaster Lodge. It is decided between them that the post-mortem examination shall take place immediately, and that, if possible, Mr. Pollintory, of Krampston, shall be ready to give evidence to-morrow at the inquest. The coroner gives an order for the post-mortem examination, and Dr. Mitsand writes a telegram to Mr. Pollintory, one of the medical staff of the Krampston Infirmary, a skilled chemist and analyst, and a man of some distinction in his own particular fine. CHAPTER XLIV. DARK SURMISES. In the old house at the lower end of the town there is surprise and agitation, and a flutter of excitement which throws all the machinery of life out of gear. Hester leaves her dishes unwashed, 29$ Dead Men's Shoes. and sits down in her disorderly kitchen to talk over Mr. Treft- ehard's death with the charwoman. They talk immensely, though they hardly know anything about the dread event, save such jetsam and flotsam of intelligence, chiefly false, as has been cast up on the shore of the High Street. But they evolve a great deal out of their inner consciousness. They speculate upon that ever- interesting subject, the will, and argue for and against Sibyl's appointment as sole heiress. " It wiH be an unjust will if he's left everything to her," says Hester, vindictively. " Ah, but she was the favourite, you see," pleads the charwoman, tilting her bonnet on to her eyebrows in her animation, " and so pretty, and such winning ways with her. I shouldn't wonder if all the money was left to her." " Then I hope she'll remember my poor old master, and all he's done for her and her sisters," says Hester. " They might all have gone to the workhouse if it hadn't been for him. Mr. Trenchard was across the seas and couldn't help 'em, and many a good meal Dr. Faunthorpe's gone without to bring up three hearty-eating girls." " I dare say Miss Faunthorpe will take her uncle to live with her at Lancaster Lodge," says the charwoman. " Such a lovely place ! I went in one evening that there was a dinner party, to help the kitchenmaid wash up. Why, the very scullery's ekal to some people's drawling rooms 1 " " Dr. Faunthorpe ain't going to live there, you may depend," replies Hester, decisively. " He don't want none of your finery. He likes his own house and his independence, and his water cake and bit of smoked bacon for breakfast." " It's odd Miss Fa«nthorpe being out this morning, when her sister went up," speculates the charwoman. " Yes, that's odd. It's my belief she was always against this Mr. Pilgrim, and her uncle had forced the marriage upon her, and she went off this morning to some of her fine friends to get out ©f the way. Them Cardonnels, perhaps, that she and Miss Marion was visiting - at Christmas." "Ah, they do say she might have married Sir Wilf ord Car- donnel if she'd liked," says the charwoman. " Of course she could," answers Hester, glad to exalt the family ehe has served so faithfully. " Only she's as full of fancies as an egg's full of meat, and she wouldn't have him." While this discussion goes on in the kitchen, Marion and Jenny eit in the parlour, occupied by all-absorbing thoughts of the dead man's will and their own mourning. They have not liked Stephen Trenchard well enough to feel any regret for his loss • nay, his death is an event to which they have looked forward as a turning-point — the beginning of brighter days — in their own Dark Surmises. 297 nVes. He is dead, and a painful interval of suspense must be endured before they can know what he has done for them. They are hopeful meanwhile, and wildly speculative — especially Jenny, whose ideas ramble among thousands and tens of thousands as they have never rambled before, save in the agreeable mazes of an arithmetic book. " You see he had such oceans of money," argues Jenny. "He could afford to make Sibyl a great heiress, and to leave us twenty thousand apiece quite easily. And the interest of twenty thousand pounds is a thousand a year. Uncle Eobert told me so. Fancy you and me with a thousand a year each ! No stocking-darning, no turning and twisting our winter dresses to make them do for spring. I shall go into long skirts immediately. " That will be a boon to the rest of humanity, for they'll hida your legs," replies Marion. " Shall you have crape tucks or flounces on your black silk ? " inquires Jenny, recurring to that inexhaustible topic, the mourning. " Whichever is the last fashion. Miss Eylett shall make our mourning, and she always has the newest style." " But we ought to have dresses ready for the day of the funeral," says Jenny. " And how can we get them before the will is read? TV e don't know whether we're heiresses or beggars." " Carmichael's people will let us have anything we want," replies Marion. " Depend upon it they'll give us any amount of credit now uncle Trenchard is dead. They know we must come in for some of his money." As the day goes on the fever of curiosity and wonder which has seized upon Eedcastle is intensified, for the flame is fed by new revelations of a startling character. First there is the news of Sibyl's disappearance ; and then it becomes known somehow that there is to be a post-mortem examination, followed by a coroner's inquest. This is really interesting, and would distinguish the deceased from the common ruck even if he had not been a millionaire. The two local papers are in a flutter of excitement, and rival reporters hang about Lancaster Lodge and question the respectable Podmore, whose large pale face — in shape and expres- sion somewhat resembling the station clock — assumes a troubled and bewildered look. From the coroner's house Dr. Mitsand goes on to his brother practitioner, Dr. Faunthorpe. That meek little man has just returned from a long round in his dilapidated chaise, and has 44 run in," as he calls it, to get a little bit of dinner. Regularly to dine is a luxury unknown to the parish doctor. The cloth ia laid in the homely parlour, the remains of joint or stew are kept in the oven, with a potato or two simmering in greasy gravy, and the doctor takes his repast hurriedly and alone an hour