PRIVATE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 C . A. DOYLE 
 Please return promptly 
 
 No. .
 
 WHAT ffOOLD YOU WLOTE? 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "WHAT WILL THE WORLD SAY?" 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 BELFORD, CLARKE & CO. 
 
 ST. LOUIS: 
 
 BELFORD & CLARKE PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 1881.
 
 Printed and Bound by DONOHUE & HENNEBERRY, Chicago.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE OLD HOME ..., I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 IN THE SUNSHINE 9 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 "WHAT WOULD You DO, LOVE?"...., 17 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE " MERMAID." 27 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 MORS JANUA 40 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 NOV^E VlT^E 48 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HOME-COMING 62 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 FENCED IN 72 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DORA DEMONSTRATES 86 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 OVER THE WINE AND WALNUTS 97 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 DILEMMAS 105 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND 1 16 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CANIS IN PU^ESEPI 133 
 
 N 
 
 213SS17
 
 vi Contents. 
 
 FAOK 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PAYING THE B'ILL 147 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 DEMETER . 154 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 BY PRINCIPLE 168 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 LONG FIELD FARM 180 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 LATE FOR LUNCHEON . ., 192 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PAYING VISITS , 201 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 EXPLANATIONS 212 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 THE POSTERN GATE 225 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 WHAT THE DAY BROUGHT FORTH.... 236 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 CONSENTING WITH SINNERS 244 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 BETWEEN Two FIRES 256 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 A MYSTERY 270 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 BIDDEN TO THE QUEST 282 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THOROUGH _. . . 295 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 PASSING IT ON 309
 
 Contents. vii 
 
 MOB 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 IHK ORDEAL 320 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 UNDER HOME ARREST 332 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 THE OFFER OF FORGIVENESS 341 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 THE AIR CASTLE 355 
 
 CHAHTER XXXIII. 
 ADDED TO THE ESTATE 365 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 THE CLEFT STICK 374 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 ABANDONED TO HERSELF 385 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 DISILLUSIONED 399 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 HAMLEY, M.P 412 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 WHAT MILLTOWN SAID 420 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 THE LAST LOOK 432 
 
 CHAPTER XL. * 
 
 FREE TO PLEAD 447 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 THE SHADOW IN THE WOOD 457 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 TRUTH AND SEEMING 469
 
 WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE? 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE OLD HOME. 
 
 '0 one out in the world talkftd much of the beauty of Bar- 
 Bands, because few knew how beautiful it was, and 
 only those who lived there loved it. Perhaps the 
 fishermen might have wished that the iron-bound coast had 
 been a trifle less picturesque, and by so much the less danger- 
 ous, and that the mighty cliffs and long lines of sharp- ridged 
 rocks running far out to sea and narrowing the passage to the 
 cove to a mere thread, could have been exchanged for one of 
 those quiet, smooth, land-locked bays where the sea is only a 
 bigger kind of lake, and the fish take quietly to the nets, and 
 keep in them when they get there. And perhaps the farmers 
 cared less for the solemn grandeur of the wide and rugged up- 
 lands, with their old-world memorials of granite quoit and crom- 
 lech, "castle" and earn, holy chapel and haunted rounds of 
 stone-struck " Merry Maidens," which gave the purple moors 
 such a special character, than they did for the storms that 
 swept ovr their fields, beating down grass and corn as if a 
 troop of cavalry had passed through them, and ruining in an 
 hour the labour of months. But the fishermen forgave the 
 magnificent cruelty of the jagged and caverned coast for tlie 
 sake of its wealth in cod and pilchard ; if the cliffs were barren 
 of all save ling and heather, golden gorse and sweet shy sea- 
 side flowers, they were just the right height for the " huers " 
 wutching for the " schools ; " and seine-fishing prospered if 
 agriculture had but a hard time of it. And seine-fishing meant 
 wealth and good living to the whole community when it wa
 
 2 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 large " school," and poverty, distress, debt, and well-nigh star- 
 vation, when it fell short. 
 
 Then again, counting up the mercies, which perhaps is the 
 wisest kind of arithmetic when dealing with things human, the 
 children and women were healthy, and no doctor could have 
 picked up even half a living at Barsands, which saved the pub- 
 lic pocket on that side ; and there were large tracts of common- 
 land swarming with rabbits, where the people had the right of 
 pasturage, turf-cutting, and free-warren, which somewhat com- 
 pensated for the want of wood and productive gardens charac- 
 teristic of this special stretch of coast land. 
 
 It was a breezy, healthy, untrammelled kind of place ; a place 
 which had no large landholders, no resident gentry, and which 
 did not seem to have any lord of the manor, resident or absent. 
 Or, if it had, then one who did not trouble himself about his 
 manorial privileges, but left everything as he found it, to na- 
 ture and the community. There were innumerable rights of 
 way about, but very few made roads, and not one that could 
 be called good. A noticeable paucity of fences, and those 
 which existed generously dilapidated, with untrustworthy 
 gates and breached stiles, gave a haphazard communistic look 
 to the division of fields and farms which did not show great 
 territorial tenacity, but seemed as if everything belonged to 
 everybody alike ; and there was not a bolt shot nor a door 
 locked in the whole village by night or by day whether the 
 house inmates were helpless through sleep, or absent at market, 
 or to " preachin' " at the Wesleyan chapel. 
 
 They were a poor set at Barsands doubtless ; unlettered ; 
 unmannered, if you will ; but they were innocent folk in their 
 Way, hard-working, high-minded, and honest to a proverb. 
 
 This did not, however, make them amenable to law qua law; 
 and the man who would have taken it in hand to deprive the in- 
 habitants of Barsands of what they considered their rights of cove 
 or cammon, or to coerce them into ways unaccustomed and un- 
 congenial, would have had tafight for it, though he came with his 
 pockets stuffed full of the Queen's writs. They were a stiff- 
 necked, clannish set of people ; and, as their betters had left 
 them alone for so long now, the general feeling of the place was 
 decidedly in favour of being left alone to the end. 
 
 It wai a small community, all told ; a mere fishing village
 
 THE OLD HOME. 3 
 
 on the North Cornwall coast, where a handful of stalwart men 
 fought with the sea for their daily living, and put money in the 
 Penrose bank when their take of " fair maids" was more than 
 ordinarily successful. The clergyman, who took pupils to eke 
 out a scanty income, and who lived inland three miles over the 
 hill, coming into Barsands only for an alternate Sunday ser- 
 vice, and when he did come addressing empty benches for the 
 Wesleyans had got the majority of souls, as they have all 
 through Cornwall ; Captain Kemball, an old naval officer, who 
 lived with his niece Patricia at Holdfast Cottage, at the turn 
 of the valley, and Miss Pritchard, who, with her two sisters, 
 kept a young ladies' boarding school on the Penrose road, were 
 the sole representatives of the wealth, rank and learning of the 
 world. The rest of the community consisted of the fisher-folk, 
 congregated for the most part in a little nest of huts and cabins 
 between the cliff at the mouth of the cove where the fish-houses 
 were ; the coast-guards in their shining black cottages, sur- 
 rounded by dazzling white walls on the slope of Penthill and 
 just below the signal station ; a handful of poorly living day- 
 labourers, who did odd jobs about the boats or the beasts, 
 the cove or the farms indifferently ; and the small traders in 
 the village, who combined several callings in one, and, as in 
 the post-office, mixed up letters and Queen's heads, bacon, tape, 
 candles, pennyworths of medicine, sugar, and the like, with no 
 more sense of classification than there was among the fish when 
 the net was hauled in. 
 
 There was only one house that ventured to style itself an 
 inn. This was the Lame Duck, kept by one Mrs. Jose, or, as 
 she was generally called, Mother Jose, in whose hand lay vir- 
 tually the whole of the inland trade of Barsands. Left a widow 
 with five sons thirty years ago, she had made a good fight in 
 her day, and she was now enjoying her reward, if not in ease 
 of living, yet in worldly gear and local power. She was a po- 
 tentate after a kind in the little village, and was reputed to be 
 worth untold gold. She kept the Lame Duck, and she kept it 
 well ; and she horsed, ran, and personally conducted the omni- 
 bus that went twice a week in summer to the market town. 
 This was Penrose, fifteen miles off; and the way lay over a 
 wild, whisht country, with a road that was simply a dry water- 
 course in summer and a wet one in winter. It was not much
 
 4 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 of a market when you got there ; but it was the best to be had, 
 and the Barsands people thought it could not be bettered. 
 
 The five sons who had been left as five dead weights on the 
 woman's hands in those sorrowful days of thirty years ago, 
 were now all parts of the clever mechanism of her life ; and 
 she took care that they should be paying parts. Not one of 
 them was his own master yet, not one married or in his own 
 home. Two worked on the farm and got journeyman's wages, 
 no more ; one helped in the house, brewed, kept the accounts 
 and the peace when needed ; one drove the omnibus, and 
 looked after the horses on the off days ; and the last was a kind 
 of general agent for the house in Penrose, where he sold the 
 surplus produce of the farm and booked travellers and merchan- 
 dise by the Barsands coach as they called the shaky old van, 
 omnibus-rigged. It was a powerful combination , and Mother 
 Jose, a mighty woman cf sixty-three, standing five feet eight 
 " in her stocking feet," and as free with her fists as she was 
 close with her pocket, was more regarded in the place than 
 queen or clergy. All the people who were in debt (and they 
 were not a few) were in debt to her ; and the mixture of fear 
 and respect, gratitude, hatred and envy which was added to 
 the heavy interest she claimed " on account," was almost as 
 strong as a superstition. 
 
 In summer the little village was quite gay with such simple- 
 minded strangers as could endure the primitive arrangements 
 of the place, arid find more pleasure in noble scenery than in a 
 good dinner. Sometimes a party of fashionable London tour- 
 ists would alight from Mother Jose's omnibus like a flight of 
 peacocks settling down besides the Dorkings. But they seldom 
 stayed long. Barsands supplies, with the meat running short 
 and no fish to be had because of the rough weather, vegetables 
 unattainable, and the " clomb " bread turning out as hard as a 
 stone and as bitter as the butter itself, was not very tempting 
 fare for fine folk accustomed to metropolitan profusion and 
 perfection. Bathing, too, in the open, with only sharp 
 rocks, black with close-set mussels and jewelled with sea-ane- 
 mones, shining like rubies and emeralds in the sun, for a dress- 
 ing room unless they cared to run for at least a hundred 
 yards over the rough boulders, and take shelter in the caverns 
 tapestried with Asplenium marinum, or the fairy foliage of the
 
 THE OLD HOME. 5 
 
 trite maiden hair going out into the water alone to do trie 
 best they could for themselves, when the long, green Atlantic 
 waves came rolling in was shocking to the gentlemen and la- 
 dies who could bear the full dress of the London season and 
 the dangers of the streets. So the fashionable people came 
 one day, and looked about them the next, and went away the 
 third, hungry, tired and sleepy, not having been able to make 
 life sweet or restful with such accommodation as the Lame 
 Duck afforded. And Barsands, therefore, escaped the perils of 
 popularity, and was left pretty much'in its primitive condition. 
 
 To be sure, there was more stability of stay in the odd-look- 
 ing artist men and women in hideous umbrella hats who 
 might be seen trying to give the forms of those stern old gran- 
 ite cliffs, shaggy with pale grey moss and solemn with purple 
 shadows, of which not the best could represent the true grand- 
 eur trying to give the life and motion and purity of those 
 heaving lines of liquid beryl which came on with such noble 
 strength and splendour of curve and colour, to break against 
 the rocks with a light and grace more exquisite still and fail- 
 ing here too all save one ; but failing in a good cause and on 
 a glorious mission. And sometimes a grave kind of elderly 
 woman, may be with her young companion, might comedown 
 for several weeks at a stretch, spending her time chiefly in 
 looking for wild flowers inland, and sea-anemones on the 
 vein of slate that broke edgewise through the granite of the 
 cove. The fishermen wondered what she wanted with her 
 weeds and her " beasts," the creatures that used to crawl by 
 dozens into their crab-pots, and were regarded as of no value 
 to men or gods, being good for neither food nor bait: but 
 when they had said, " Lord ! the ridic'lous foolishness of they 
 Londoners!" they had given reason sufficient and dismissed 
 the subject as too trivial for more attention. 
 
 Barsands however did not place much store by these cas- 
 uals, but got along in the best way it could with its regular 
 inhabitants, who, at the most, were few. 
 
 The ladies' school kept by Miss Pritchard numbered some 
 eight boarders,children of the well-to-do tradesmen in Penrose. 
 The resident governesses were the younger Misses Pritchard, 
 who had been expressly educated for that purpose, one having 
 been six months in Paris and the other the same length of time
 
 ft "WEIAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 in Germany, and both considered as good as natives of either 
 country respectively. Added to the permament eight, one day- 
 scholar of an uncertain kind had also drunk of the Pritchardian 
 spring. This was Patricia Kemball, the niece of that wooden- 
 legged old captain at Holdfast Cottage of whom mention has 
 been already made ; a scholar said by the three ladies among 
 themselves to be eminently unsatisfactory, and doing credit to 
 no one. Last year, however, Patricia being then seventeen, 
 her education had been considered finished ; so that even the 
 desultory kind of teaching which had gone by that name for 
 twelve years had run itself dry, and no more schooling was held 
 to be necessary for a girl who knew absolutely nothing of all 
 that other girls are taught to prize as the best things women 
 can learn. 
 
 This was the Captain's doing, not the ladies'. He did not 
 like the " old maids," as he called them ; sometimes "old cats," 
 as a variation ; and they did not like him. They thought he 
 should have married Miss Matilda fifteen years ago, and that 
 he had behaved ill in consequence ; and he took it that they had 
 made a dead set at him ; and as he wanted nothing with any 
 of them, and least of all with Miss Matilda, he resented their 
 attentions as indelicate, burglarious, and unfair. So there was 
 war between the two houses ; and it told well for the Captain's 
 generosity that he thought more of Patricia's well being than 
 his own distaste, and sent her to profit by his enemies' brains 
 and to put money in their pockets in return. 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that his system was a trying 
 one ; and it was well that Patricia was a good girl by nature, 
 else his peculiar method of upbringing might have proved more 
 meritorious in design than advantageous in result. To be sure 
 he had taught her to speak the truth ; to be loyal to her word 
 and faithful to her trust; to abhor suspicion ; to be obedient to 
 her superiors, and to sacrifice herself when need was with cheer- 
 fulness and without regret. His moral motto had been " Tho- 
 rough," if his intellectual system had been patch-work ; and his 
 pupil had learnt as he had taught. For the rest, he himself had 
 instructed her in coast-line geography, in astronomy, and the 
 art of navigation. She knew the name and purpose of every 
 shroud and sail in the model of his old ship, the Holdfast, which 
 he had rigged up on the lawn, the flags of all nations, and the
 
 HIE OLD HOME. 7 
 
 meaning of ship-signals ; she could read off-hand the difference 
 between the lines of a* man-of-war and a merchantman ; and 
 she cherished a grave contempt for iron-clads and steam. But 
 she could neither tat nor crochet, for all that the Misses Prit- 
 chard had made both these arts salient accomplishments in 
 their programme ; though, to do her justice, she could darn 
 stockings, hem and stitch and sew, make a pudding, and bud 
 roses, with the best. Also she could skate like a bird and 
 climb trees like a squirrel ; and she liked galloping over the 
 moors better than she liked any other pleasure in the world 
 save boating in a breeze with the Mermaid in good humour. 
 
 The Misses Pritchard said she would be ruined if this kind of 
 thing went on. When they saw her streaming over the country 
 with her flapping straw hat half-way down her back, and her 
 long brown hair flying like a mane behind her, they said the Cap- 
 tain was a very self-willed old man to let her go on so. It was 
 downright shameful ; and he would live to repent it. And they 
 said it so often that at last the Captain himself caught the echo, 
 and became doubtful of the wisdom of his ways. Then he 
 would send Pat, as he called her, for another quarter ; begin- 
 ning regularly and with the strictest intentions, but invariably 
 ending by keeping her at home four days out of the six, honestly 
 convinced that he was doing the best for her in his power, and 
 that his own private lessons, added to exercise and fresh air, 
 were more to the purpose than all she could learn in the " kit- 
 ten house," as he irreverently called the school. 
 
 Then again he began to doubt, when the Misses Pritchard 
 had said something more than ordinarily tart, and he had heard 
 of it, as he always did ; and tormented himself with conscien- 
 tious scruples. But when he looked at her, and noted how she 
 had thriven on her training, with such an exuberance of life, 
 such a power and splendour of girlish health and beauty as h 
 had never seen surpassed not even in the South Seas where 
 he had left a dusky, sleek-haired romance in old days that 
 haunted him he stifled his misgivings ; shut his eyes to all but 
 the fact that she was perfect in constitution, in principles, and 
 in temper ; lovely to look at and good to be with ; and that she 
 had never given him a day's uneasiness during the twelve years 
 of his guardianship. Still, he was conscious that at eighteen 
 years of age she needed more in her home life than the society
 
 8 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 of an old sea-captain, though he could tell her about the Chinese 
 war where he had lost his leg, and teach her the names of the 
 constellations and all the technicalities of the Holdfast model. 
 
 The question, however, was ; What was it she needed ? and 
 how could he get it for her, even if he found out ? His means 
 were limited, and his knowledge of the world on a par with his 
 means ; but he must do something all the same. So he took 
 the thought to heart, and racked his brains night and day to 
 discover what it was Patricia ought to have to perfect her educa- 
 tion and condition " the cats " being of no more good and 
 when he had found it he would give it, let it cost what it would. 
 
 Meanwhile Patricia lived on, blithe as bird in bower, con- 
 scious of no loss in her life, feeling no pain, foreseeing no sor- 
 row. Youth, health, a conscience as clear as the sky, and love 
 as warm as the sun, made up the glad catalogue of her days. 
 She knew no evil and she feared none. Her duty was plain 
 before her and her path had neither thorns nor dubious turns. 
 Truth, reverence, obedience ; there was nothing hard nor diffi- 
 cult in these ; bred as she had been, the contrary lines would 
 have been the difficulties. No falsehood had ever passed her 
 lips ; no shadow of subterfuge, of sly pretence, of fair-seeming 
 which was seeming only, of disloyalty to her word, of insin- 
 cerity to herself, or irreverent questioning or comment on 
 others, had ever sullied the stainless innocence of her soul. 
 Frank and free, loyal and loving, with the. sea and the rocks, 
 the wild flowers and the wild birds as her playmates, Gordon 
 as her friend, her uncle to reverence, to obey, and God, who 
 was never her tyrant, to fear only her Father Invisible to 
 worship what more could she want 1 Had she been asked, 
 she would have said " Nothing." Her life was one of abso- 
 lute contentment, of cloudless joy; and strong of heart ond 
 energy, rich in vitality, in cheerfulness, in youth, she felt as if 
 nothing could ever touch or harm her ; as if she could neither 
 die out of existence nor be crushed by circumstance ; as if she 
 must always be as she was now happy, free, and fearless, and 
 with a conscience void of offence towards God and man.
 
 IN THE SUNSHBOL 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 IN THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 K;j HE Captain was sitting in the porch of the cottage, which 
 gave to the South and.looked ou the sea. The wind 
 stirred the fringe of curly snow-white hair that hung 
 ahout his ruddy weather-beaten face, and blew out the folds 
 of the Union . Jack flying from the flagstaff before his 
 house. The white clouds scudded over the bright blue sky ; 
 the white waves leaped about the feet of the old- grey cliffs 
 and broke into backward streams of spray as they came tum- 
 bling in-shore ; the birds sang as if they thought the spring 
 had come again ; a few brave bees hummed over the latest 
 flowers ; and the golden leaves of the autumn trees shook and 
 rustled in the sunshine as the wind passed through the branches. 
 Everywhere was movement, everywhere freshness and the sen- 
 timent of life and freedom. And this bright October day, 
 this blithe and genial farewell of the golden autumn time, was 
 in true harmony with the cheerful spirit of the old man sitting 
 in the porch, and feeling past seventy as he was how good 
 a thing it was to live. 
 
 If only he knew what was best for Patricia ! When once 
 this problem was solved he should not have a care left. It was 
 his only anxiety ; and she dear child God bless her ! how 
 unconscious she was that he was bearing this cross for her I 
 
 In a life so eventful as his, and with a temperament the 
 reverse of indifferent given indeed to exaggerate rather than 
 reduce any question whatsoever took enormous proportions, 
 and a difficulty of decision became a moral burden grievously 
 oppressive with a sense of responsibilty though never making 
 him downcast nor ill-tempered. 
 
 Sitting there in the porch, touched by the sun and stirred 
 by the wind whiles sweeping the horizon with his glass, whiles 
 fingering his round rasped chin as if counsel lurked among the 
 stubbly beard-roots, suddenly the solution struck him. It
 
 10 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 came like an inspiration born of the sunshine, and the wind on 
 this swift and hurrying October day. A lady companion ! 
 That was it. A lady companion who would teach her all 
 those little feminine graces he could not supply ; nor, for the 
 matter of that, could the Miss Pritchards, with all their preten- 
 sions and " parly vouing ; " who would put the supreme touch on 
 this jewel which nature had fashioned so nobly, and over which 
 he had wrought so tenderly with such ability as had been given 
 him. Yes, that was just it ; and his thought was the Eureka 
 over again. 
 
 He heard Patricia's fresh young voice trilling out the " Min- 
 strel Boy," as she was industriously fighting her way upstairs 
 through a refractory bit of sewing. It was a rent in her gown, 
 made yesterday when she climbed the apple tree and came 
 down with a run, as a practical lesson on the folly of trusting 
 to rotten branches. 
 
 " Hi there, my love ! " he shouted. 
 
 " Yes, uncle," said Patricia thrusting her head out of the 
 window, which was framed in by the crimson leaves of a Vir- 
 ginia creeper. It was like a picture by Jordaens, only better 
 done. 
 
 " Come down, I want to speak to you," said Captain Kern- 
 ball ; and Patricia throwing her work on the floor, came down 
 the stairs, two at a time, and jumped across the hall like a 
 school boy into th , porch. 
 
 " Yes, uncle, she said in her clear voice, louder than most 
 girls voices because the Captain was a trifle deaf. " What do 
 you wanb ? " 
 
 " I want to speak to you, my dear," said Captain Kemball 
 gravely. 
 
 She looked at him with a little surprise. The unusual solem- 
 nity of his voice struck her. 
 
 " All right, I am ready," she answered ; and sat herself 
 down on the opposite bench, her hands folded on her lap, and 
 her attitude " attention." 
 
 He raised his eyes to her fondly. There was nothing that 
 pleased him more than this ready, heartsome acquiescence 
 which was one of Patricia's characteristics. There was no skulk- 
 ; ng about her. Whatever she might have in hand she left it at a 
 word or a sign from him ; always with that sunny smile on her
 
 IN THE SUNSHINE. 11 
 
 fresh fair face, always with that frank look in her dark grey 
 ryes, and that air of almost soldierly attention in her upright 
 Mipple figure, which gave the value of meaning to please to 
 all she did. She was alive, body and soul, heart and brain ; 
 and even her silence was more active than many people's 
 words. 
 
 " Patricia," said Captain Kemball, " I have found it." 
 
 " Yes, uncle," she repeated for the third time. " What have 
 you found ? " 
 
 " What you want, my dear." 
 
 " Oh ! But I did not know I wanted anything," she said, 
 with a pretty perplexity on her face. 
 
 " Yes you do, my dear," he answered positively. 
 
 " Very well." She smiled. " If you say so, I suppose I do ; 
 but I did not know it. What is it ? " 
 
 " A lady companion." 
 
 " A lady what ? " said Patricia with the air of one who has 
 heard and has not understood. 
 
 " A lady companion," repeated the Captain gallantly stick- 
 ing to his guns. She was not going to be " nasty " surely 
 and for the first time in her life ? 
 
 " What on earth can have put that notion into your head, 
 uncle ? " asked Patricia in amazement. " What do I want with 
 a lady companion 1 She would be horribly in our way yours 
 as well as mine." 
 
 " As for mine," he said resignedly, " I should not object to 
 anything that was for your good." 
 
 There was no affectation in this. He too thought this lady 
 companion would be horribly in his way ; but he would bear 
 this cross as cheerfully as he had borne that of his own per- 
 plexity before. 
 
 " But what do I want with a lady companion at all ? " 
 reiterated his niece. " I am very happy as I am ; as happy as 
 the day is long ; and I am sure we should not get on better with 
 a third person in the house. Why, uncle dear, what a funny 
 idea ! " 
 
 " But you will like it, Pat ? " he said. 
 
 " I am sure I should not," said Patricia ; " and I cannot 
 think why you should say so. There would be nothing to like 
 in having a stranger always with one. Fancy never being able
 
 12 "-WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 to be alone to our two selves again ! Oh, uncle, how horrid !" 
 And here she asked again : " Who can have put such an idea 
 into your head ? " 
 
 " Providence," said the Captain gravely. 
 
 And Patricia did not laugh. 
 
 " Very well, uncle dear," she answered after a short pause. 
 " You know best, of course. If you really think it right that 
 we should have a lady companion here for my sake, we will 
 get one; but I hope you will be quite sure that it is the right 
 thing to do before you decide, because it will be difficult, look 
 at it how we will. You see the house is so small, and the 
 spare bedroom wants furnishing, and we ought to have a new 
 carpet in the sitting-room ; Sarah and I have darned that old 
 thing till we can darn it no more. And we want some cups 
 and saucers, and lots of things in the kitchen, and a coal- 
 scoop; Sarah says she scatters the small coals through the 
 holes in the old one. And the dinner-set is all chipped and 
 half of it broken. There is no end to it all when we once be- 
 gin! And a lady companion is an awfully expensive thing, 
 I have heard; and, of course, though we can go on very well 
 "as we are, she must have everything ship-shape and nice when 
 she comes. But you know best," she repeated cheerfully, 
 leaning forward and laying her hand on his; " and whatever 
 you wish, you are very sure I shall say yes, are you not, dear ?" 
 
 " God bless you! to be sure I am, my girl," answered the 
 Captain warmly. " And now that you tell me all this, I '11 
 look into my balance and think of it." 
 
 " Meanwhile, I must go and finish my mending, said 
 Patricia with a kind of conscientious solemnity. 
 
 Needlework was about the most sobering occupation she 
 knew; it kept her so still and took so much time. 
 
 "All right, dear. But I say, Pat, I do not like to know 
 that things are wanting in the house which we should be 
 obliged to have if the lady companion came. My girl ought 
 to be as well found as any lady companion that ever stepped. 
 Eh "how have you let things go so far a drift? Have you 
 had a cat, childvean ? " 
 
 Patricia laughed. " No; our cat has been time and wear." 
 she answered. "That's enough, too, Sarah says." 
 
 " Well, well, we'll see to it," he said, adjusting his glass.
 
 IN THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 * Was that all you wanted with me, dear 1 " 
 
 " Yes, for the present," said Captain Kemball, his glass to his 
 eye. " There's a fine Prussian, Pat ! " he cried. " She'll give 
 those poor mounseers some trouble if ever she comes across 
 them. Bad sailors, those mounseers. Lord ! what a fine ship ! " 
 
 Patricia went over to him and looked through the glass too. 
 " Yes, she's a beauty," she said as she handed him back his 
 telescope. 
 
 Then she kissed the top of the dear bald head, as was her 
 wont, and went back to her own room to darn her skirt. But 
 she sang no more of the " Minstrel Boy." A chord beside thc^e 
 of his own harp was broken for to-day. 
 
 Presently her uncle called to her again. He had come out ol 
 the porch and was standing on the gravel-walk, whence he could 
 see her as she sat by the window sewing. 
 
 " I have it, my girl," he said in a cheery voice. This was Ins 
 second Eureka within the hour. 
 
 "Yes, uncle?" she answered looking up, her bright fact 
 slightly flushed. 
 
 " I will write to your Aunt Hamley and be guided by her 
 advice." 
 
 Fora few seconds Patricia did not speak. She was apparantlv 
 too much occupied with a rebellious length of hair that would 
 fall over her face to be able to give her full mind to Aunt 
 Hamley; but she soon cleared her eyes and said, bravely 
 enough if not quite in her usual key : " Do so, dear ; you know 
 best." 
 
 " I knew you would say that," cried Captain Kemball tri- 
 umphantly. Bless your dear innocent heart. I can read you 
 like a book ! Always the same steady discipline in the ship, 
 and the old uncle's command submitted to without a murmur. 
 If you knew how we old folks prize this ready obedience Pat! ' 
 
 " Well, I should be very ungrateful else," said Patricia. 
 
 " And that would not be like you," he said. 
 
 " I hope not," she answered gravely. 
 
 "Now, I'll go and write to your Aunt Hamley," said tlie 
 Captain. " She'll understand this matter, and 1 do not." 
 
 On which he turned and went into the house, and Patricia 
 heard him knocking things about downstairs opening half a 
 dozen drawers tor one, fighting over split pens and dried- up
 
 14 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 ink, and making as much noise and as many preparations be- 
 fore settling down to write a letter of a few lines to his sister 
 as if he was going to board an enemy. 
 
 Now, Aunt Hamley was Patricia's one standing dread in 
 life. She was her uncle's, consequently her dead father's, only 
 sister ; but since her marriage with Jabez Hamley, the rich 
 brewer of Milltown, and possessor of Abbey Holme, which had 
 relieved him from the necessity of her further support, she had 
 kept up very little intercourse with her surviving brother, 
 Both men had been objectionable persons, each in his own way, 
 to her mind. The one was a long-haired artist who declined 
 to go into the Church on conscientious (she called them un- 
 conscientious) grounds ; the other was a sailor of demo 
 cratic habits, with no manners to speak of, and promotion 
 cut short by the loss of his limb. Had Reginald, Patricia's 
 father, been even successful in his questionable career, 
 and employed to paint the Queen and the Royal Family, 
 instead of being a wretched dreamer who threw away his time 
 over his ideas ideas, indeed ! as if a man could live by ideas ! 
 or had Captain Robert not met with that accident and so had 
 gone on to be an admiral and a K.C.B. like his father before 
 him, she would not have minded so much ; but an unsuccessful 
 painter and a shunted captain they were vessels if not of wrath 
 yet of very unrefined clay, and she declined handling them save 
 at a distance. 
 
 When Reginald died, twelve years ago, she did certainly offer 
 to take the penniless little girl to her own childless home and 
 bring her up to ladylike habits and womanly refinements. She 
 would have done her duty by her, had her offer been accepted, 
 and she would have liked her the better the more entire her 
 dependence ; but the Captain elected to take the child himself, 
 and Aunt Hamley had never quite forgiven him. The plan had 
 distressed as well as disaj>pointed her. Men were doubtful 
 creatures at the best, in her opinion. As husbands, she held 
 theoretically by the doctrine of wifely submission and obedi- 
 ence, as women often do when the rod wherewith they rule is 
 of iron sharply pointed ; but outside this theoretical premier- 
 ship, beyond doing all the hard work of the world that women 
 may live softly and fare richly, taking care of their ladies in a 
 crowd, looking after the luggage and the tickets at a railway
 
 IN THE SUNSHINE. 16 
 
 station, and managing the business details of life, she did not 
 see of what good they were. When it came to an old sea- 
 captain, with a wooden leg and only his half-pay and pension, 
 taking charge of a little girl of six, and never a lady in the 
 establishment to see that her hair was properly brushed, or that 
 her boot-tags were neatly tucked in and her clothes nicely 
 made, she was more disgusted at the selfishness and home-help- 
 lessness of the sex than she had ever been before ; and this was 
 saying much. 
 
 This refusal to let her have Patricia had not only offended 
 her with her brother, but had given her a distaste for the girl 
 herself. Though she had never seen her since her cherubic 
 days of short frocks and scratched legs, she was sure that she 
 had " grown up undesirable by the logical necessity of her 
 training ; " and she did not care that Dora Drummond, Mr. 
 Hamley's young cousin whom she had adopted in default of 
 Patricia after her brother's refusal, should have such question- 
 able companionship. 
 
 " She must be dreadful," she used to say when discussing hei 
 unknown niece in family conclave ; and both Mr. Hamley and 
 Dora used to say, " Dreadful indeed ! " in concert. 
 
 Neither of these last-mentioned persons wanted to see Mrs. 
 Hamley become interested in her niece. To Mr. Hamley the 
 adoption of his own cousin had been a matter of intense pride 
 and satisfaction ; and such a cousin too ! fit to be a queen, he 
 used to think. And dear Dora, though not noticeably jealous", 
 naturally wished to keep her standing intact, and did not de- 
 sire a rival Hence, no word of praise that was impossible, 
 for no one knew if she was praiseworthy or not but no word 
 of indulgent hope was ever coupled with Patricia's name at 
 Abbey Holme, and the idea of her was associated with a certain 
 steadfast disfavour that bore its fruits in the time to come, and 
 made itself felt even now in the time at hand. 
 
 Patricia had thus some cause for the sudden dismay that 
 overcame her when her uncle said he would write to Aunt 
 Hamley for her advice and be guided by it. She knew by in- 
 tuition that all the advice they would have from Abbey Holme 
 would be hard and uncomfortable so lar as she was concerned ; 
 and who knows } perhaps her uncle would adopt it, whatever 
 it might be, even if it hurt himself to do so. He had hi*
 
 16 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 crotchets at times, and was not always in the same humour ; 
 and his conscience had a trick of self-torturing when he was not 
 quite well, which led him to acts of pain and penance, happily 
 of short duration if severe while they lasted. 
 
 Right or wrong, however, this idea of a lady companion had 
 taken possession of him ; and with it the necessity " of consult- 
 ing his sister Hamley in a matter so purely out of his line." So 
 acting on the theory of the providential inspiration of his 
 thought, he wrote now on the instant to Abbey Holme, at 
 Mill town, as has been said ; and in doing so felt he had washed 
 his hands of half his responsibility and all his difficulty.
 
 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE 1" 17 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, 
 
 fHIS was the first break in Patricia's life ; a break as yet 
 only potential, not actual. But it brought her up with 
 a round turn, as she herself would have said, and made 
 her reflect on her position, for the first time seriously. For the 
 first time too, it opened the gate of the future, and gave her a 
 glimpse of the possibilities lying within. 
 
 Her uncle's darling, to be sure, that she knew she was ; the 
 light of his days, the apple of his eye, He could no more get 
 on without her than the trees and the flowers in the garden 
 could live, without the sun. She knew all this well enough; 
 had always known it with more or less consciousness from the 
 time when she was brought to the cottage in her little black 
 frock, with her doll in her arms, and Uncle Robert, whose name 
 was associated in her childish mind with perennial sugarplums 
 and almost the only toys she ever had, had taken her on his 
 knees and had kissed her and her doll too, and h.-ul told her with 
 a husky voice that he would be her father now, and that she 
 was to be a good girl and say her prayers, and never do any- 
 thing behind backs she was afraid of all the world seeing. 
 
 From that time she had taken her place and had rooted. 
 And she had been happy ; who indeed happier ? It had been just 
 the life that had suited best with her physical temperament and 
 her moral nature. She was nothing of a dreamer, nor yet of a 
 casuist ; si e was contented with things as they were ; things 
 she could tmich and understand without going to their roots or 
 questioning eternal causes. She liked to know that she was 
 doing right, but she did not care to analyse her own sensations, 
 nor to understand exactly where her right might have broad- 
 ened into wrong. Certainly she was not over well educated 
 nor yet intellectually inclined. Hitherto she had not cared 
 greatly for reading, save history, which was true and therefore 
 
 B
 
 ifc "WHAT worm YOU no, 
 
 fascinating enough ; and her uncle, had not made her read mnch 
 beside the Bible and Shakespeare, which last he had Bowdler- 
 ised on his own account with a broad pen and very thick ink. 
 But on the other hand she had learnt a good deal of natural 
 history, and what she knew of life was by the village dramas 
 acted before her eyes, not by theories thought out by others. 
 As yet she had more conscience than consciousness, and a 
 moral sense keener than her intellectual perceptions. 
 
 Her physical life, too, suited her as exactly as the rest. Two- 
 thirds of it was passed in the open air, chiefly in strong exer- 
 cise ; and her home occupations were for the most part active 
 outside her needle-work and her evening backgammon with 
 her uncle. Her health was perfect, and her strength greater 
 than the strength of most women, save such as work in the 
 fields or the like. And she loved to use it. And as, happily 
 for her, her uncle did not think it part of the eternal rule of 
 right that women should be defrauded of their inheritance of 
 health and development, she did use it, and to good purpose. 
 Thus it was that she never knew what it was to be sick or 
 sorry, depressed or doubtful, out of heart or out of temper, or 
 at cross purposes with life at home or abroad. 
 
 But with all this fullness of joy in the present her future was 
 not assured. Her uncle was not her father, and she had no 
 claims hereafter, if many privileges now. If anything happened 
 she did not realise for the instant what could happen so 
 that she had to turn out into the world, what could she do 
 whereby to gain her own bread 1 Absolutely nothing, unless 
 her physical strength might turn to some account ; and how 
 could it ? Women were wanted for fingers, not muscles ; 
 clever heads, not powerful hands. If ever that day of need 
 came, of all girls living she, so rich in life's best wealth now, 
 would be the most to be despised then. It came to her with a 
 shock, a blow. She almost started as she saw the truth of her 
 position, and felt herself for the moment degraded by her igno- 
 rance, her uselessness, anywhere but where she was. 
 
 A she sat by the window, her work fallen from her hands, 
 her eyes fixed on the sea that stretched from the familiar shore 
 far away into the unknown, so like her own life ah, so like all 
 life ! she tried to reason it out fairly and to convince herself 
 that the dear old man's instinct was right. She had been
 
 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE t" 19 
 
 happy and she had been well loved, as also she had loved. She 
 was strong and not afraid ; and she knew a few things that 
 were of use in their way, and had been of gieat use hitherto. 
 But she wanted more. She wanted the power of self-help if 
 she needed it ; she wanted more education and to be made 
 more like other women ; and she wanced to be taught how to 
 make money in the time to come when there would be no one 
 to give it to her. For must not t'nkt time come in the ordinary 
 course of things ? However far off and until now, when she 
 was holding this innocent parliament with herself she had 
 never once foreseen either the time or the fact was it not to be 
 expected that her dear uncle should die before her ? And if 
 he did, she would be left absolutely penniless. He had nothing 
 but his half-pay and pension ; and he had not saved, if he was 
 not in debt. He had told her so, many a time ; and how could 
 she wish him to save when distress was about, and the poor 
 men and destitute women and children had to be fed and 
 clothed in the hard winters of bad fishing years 1 Perhaps that 
 was what he was thinking of now the real meaning of this 
 new idea of his about his sister's advice and the lady companion. 
 He was thinking of what would be best for her in the future 
 when he should not be with her dear, good, unselfish uncle ! 
 And she had shrunk from the proposition what a wicked thing 
 to do ! Ah, she would be so good to-night ! She would show 
 him that she was sorry she had been so cowardly, and that she 
 was ready to do all, accept all, he proposed. How grieved she 
 would be when she was alone in the world to remember her 
 misdeeds ! When she was alone when the supreme decree 
 had gone forth 1 
 
 Like a picture actually before her she suddenly realised the 
 loss of her second father, and saw him lying there dead, and 
 gone for ever from her. It was so vivid, she felt as if she could 
 have touched him. With a kind of startled cry she put up 
 her hands to her face, and broke into sobs with a strange and 
 bitter pain. 
 
 If her uncle had seen her at this moment he would have 
 thought she was crying because of the lady companion, which 
 would have made him more determined than before ; and he 
 would have thought her temper had " turned nasty," though that 
 was not her way ; and he would have been wounded and annoyed.
 
 20 " WHAT WOULD YOU T>O, LOVE ? " 
 
 No one however did see her, and she soon dried her eyes 
 again ; tears not being luxuries to her as they are to some 
 being indeed amongst the rarest events of her life. 
 
 " Crying never did any one any good yet," she said to her- 
 self ; " and I had better make my dear uncle happy while he 
 lives than sit here and sob over his death, which would make 
 him unhappy, and will not be till I am an old woman. And I 
 will not vex him any more about this lady companion who is to 
 come. I don't like the idea, and I don't want her for pleasure ; 
 but it is my duty to be obedient, and I dare say she will teach 
 me a lot of things I ought to know. Oh, I dare say it will be 
 all right ! only I hope she will not be like Miss Pritchard 
 who always looks as if she had been eating green gooseberries. 
 Perhaps she will be a darling. Why not ? There are more 
 good people in the world than bad, and why should she not be 
 one of them ? But if Aunt Hamley chooses her ? Well ! if 
 Aunt Hamley chooses her she will perhaps be nice all the same, 
 and at any rate I will try to love her and to make her happy." 
 
 On which she shook off her hair from her face, threw back 
 her shoulders, straightened her slender figure which had 
 drooped together as she had pondered, looked out frank and 
 brave to sea and sky ; and then, as if to meet her brighter 
 mood, she heard a firm, swift, manly step come down the lane 
 and stop at the little wicket-gate of the garden. Immediately 
 after she was leaning out of the window framed in by the crim- 
 son foliage, with the sunlight pouring on her like a golden glory, 
 laughing to a fair-haired young man in a sailor's cap and jacket 
 who stood on the lawn below, 
 
 " Why, Gordon ! I thought you had run away without bid- 
 ding us good-bye ! " she said. 
 
 And Gordon Frere, laughing too, answered with just the 
 faintest dash of Irish accent in his voice : " Ah now, Patricia, 
 could you think so meanly of me as that ! " 
 
 " Well, it was not like you, certainly," said Patricia ; " but 
 people do odd things sometimes, you know." 
 
 " I don't think I should ever do anything quite so odd aa 
 that," he said. 
 
 On which she laughed again, and said, " No ! " 
 
 Presently the Captain, who had finished his letter to his 
 sister Hamley, came out into the porch again.
 
 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE I" 21 
 
 " Hullo, Gordon ! where have you been all this time 1 " he 
 said. 
 
 " That's just what I have been asking," said Patricia. 
 
 Not that she had in words, but her thoughts had meant the 
 same thing. 
 
 " To London, sir," said Gordon, with a look up at the face 
 framed in the scarlet leaves. 
 
 " Ay 1 and what may you have been doing there, boy? " 
 
 " It was only an uninteresting bit of family business on my 
 coming of age," said Gordon. " Lawyers and deeds, and no 
 end of fees to pay and musty old courts to visit." 
 
 " Lawyers sharks ! " said Captain Kemball with a shudder. 
 
 He was not an enlightened old gentleman, though he was a 
 good one ; and he cherished his superstitions. 
 
 " Well, perhaps," answered the young man hesitatingly. 
 " And yet it saves a world of trouble to have a fellow at one's 
 elbow who knows everything where you know nothing, and 
 who sees so jolly far ahead ! It is like telling fortunes by the 
 cards ; and when that old family lawyer of ours, that Mr. 
 Fletcher, whom I believe I once mentioned to you but you 
 know him for yourself, don't, you, sir 1 " 
 
 " To be sure I do. The Fletchers come from Milltown where 
 I was born and bred," said the Captain, " and that Fletcher 
 you speak of has been our family lawyer for three generations 
 at least, not that man, but the house." 
 
 " I thought three generations a long time for one life," 
 laughed Patricia. 
 
 She had come downstairs while they were talking, and was 
 standing now by the door. She had bathed her eyes and put 
 up her hair afresh, and had even gone to the coquettish length 
 of a bright bit of ribbon about her throat and a bow of the 
 same colour dark sailor-blue among the glossy brown of her 
 luxuriant hair ; and as she stood there she made a picture more 
 beautuul, Gordon thought, than ever poet imagined or painter 
 drew. 
 
 "We must mind our tackle now the pilot's aboard eh, 
 Gordon 1 " said the Captain, looking at her proudly. 
 
 And Gordon said "Yes," with mil meaning. 
 
 " I am glad you know the Fletchers," then said the Captain. 
 "One likes one's friends to be in good hands. There is a
 
 23 " \VH AT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 Catherine Fletcher too," he added, looking with an odd kind 
 of expression at Patricia. " She was a beauty in her young 
 days. All Milltown was mad after her. " She and her brother 
 Henry live still at Milltown, I believe. He was a doctor, but 
 he left the profession when the old man died ; and a fine fellow 
 he used to be, I remember." 
 
 " So is Mr. Fletcher in London," said Gordon ; " and so 
 sharp and clever ! When he used to come in with his mathe- 
 matical way of putting things that I thought were all different, 
 as I said, it was like fortune-telling somehow. I know he used 
 to make me feel the most of a fool I have ever felt." 
 
 " Eh ? Then he must have known his alphabet," said the 
 Captain waggishly ; and Gordon laughed and blushed. 
 
 He was a fine young fellow, brave and strong, but not be- 
 yond blushing like a girl on occasions. 
 
 " True all the same," he continued. " What I thought was 
 as plain as that two and two make four, he showed me had 
 this bearing and that meaning I had never seen, and that my 
 two and two made five or six or nothing at all ! I used to feel 
 in a foreign land in that old office of his, where I knew neither 
 the language nor the country and had to walk as if blindfold, 
 under guidance." 
 
 " Long may it remain a foreign country to you and us all ! " 
 said the Captain fervently. 
 
 " I think there must be a born antipathy between sailors and 
 lawyers," put in Patricia. 
 
 " Land-sharks and sea-sharks," said her uncle quite gravely ; 
 " and, of the two, the land-sharks are the worst." 
 
 " But this special shark of Gordon's, this Mr. Fletcher, he 
 seems to be harmless enough t" she said. 
 
 "Fletcher 1 ? yes, he's about the best you'll find," her uncle 
 answered. " If he was not one of the devil's advocates I should 
 say he was about as good a man as ever walked on the face of 
 the earth. He has a strain of honesty, that man, which has 
 stood in his way more than once ; he'll never make his fortune 
 out of the ruin of other people's." 
 
 " He'll do better he'll deal justly by other people's," said 
 Gordon ; and then the conversation dropped. 
 
 But it left on Patricia a cheery impression. She was glad 
 that Gordon had an honest man for his legal adviser when he
 
 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ! " 23 
 
 had business on hand, a man he could trust as the caretaker of 
 his fortunes while he was away at sea doing his duty to his 
 country, which would not be half grateful enough, she used to 
 think, if he came to grief in her service like her uncle, or mourn 
 him as he deserved to be mourned if he went down altogether 
 in the fight. 
 
 She and Gordon were great friends. When she spoke of 
 him, and was conscious that she had to account for the familiar 
 terms on which they were t6gether, as happened sometimes, if 
 rarely, she invariably said, " We have been brought up to- 
 gether, like brother and sister." And this was true. He had 
 been educated at Mr. Ramsey's, the clergyman who lived at 
 St. John s and served Barsands as well ; while his mother and 
 sisters did battle with small means and large pretensions in 
 Germany, And as the journey was expensive and the Frere 
 finances limited, he had seldom gone over to them ; a big, 
 healthy, English boy, destined for the sea and as wild as a colt, 
 not being the kind of thing specially desired by a nervous 
 woman in a small foreign apartment, with a couple of showy- 
 looking daughters to dress and marry. By which it had come 
 about that the captain had taken possession of him in his holi- 
 days, and Patricia had learned to regard him as a brother, or 
 something very like one. 
 
 When he first went away to the Britannia training ship she 
 felt as if she had lost part of her very self. She was but a 
 little lassie at the time, but she always remembered how she 
 had cried when he turned the corner, and she saw him for 
 the last time out on the Penrose Koad, waving, his cap ; and 
 how for days and days after there seemed to be no sun left 
 in the sky. Now she was glad he had chosen the profession. 
 Naturally, to her mind it was the finest a man could 
 choose. Had not her dear uncle, and her grandfather 
 before him, been its shining lights ? For though when he had 
 got fairly afloat it took him away so much, yet when he did 
 come home St. John's Vicarage and Holdfast Cottage were 
 always " home " to the poor boy who had never known any 
 other it sent him back with such an atmosphere of youthful 
 heroism about him, such a sense of dangers braved and diffi- 
 culties overcome and a noble life's work nobly begun, that she 
 could not grudge the separation which had borne such glorious
 
 24 " WHAT WOULD YOU no, LOVE ? 
 
 fruits already, and which was to bear others even more glorious 
 in the days to come. She would not, if she could, have kept 
 Gordon ' moidering " away his youth at Barsands. Pleasant 
 as it was to have him as her companion when she tore about 
 the country on her shaggy, ill-groomed pony, or beat up against 
 the wind in the Mermaid, she knew that a life of idleness, 
 though ever so delightful, was not the right thing for a man. 
 And it gave her a little joy to feel that for his good she could 
 conquer her own desires, and even rejoice at the cause if she 
 grieved over the fact of their separation. But let him be gone 
 as long as he would, slie was ever entirely loyal to him in his 
 absence, never forgot him in her prayers, never took any one 
 else to be her brother in his stead, but always kept him first in 
 his generation in her heart, as beseemed a steadfast and affec- 
 tionate sifter. 
 
 She IOT ed him as young things of the right kind do love each 
 other, without fear or introspection. She scarcely could re- 
 member the time when Gordon Frere was not part of her life, 
 and when she did not love him as much as she loved her uncle, 
 if differently. It was not a thing to think about at all. It 
 was a tact ; just as much as sisterhood or daughterhood is a 
 fact. Gordon was Gordon to her ; and when she had said that 
 she had said all. 
 
 And yet this time she had been conscious of the slightest 
 possible little change in their relations. It Was not coolness 
 by no means coolness ; but just a dash of shyness and reserve, 
 as if there was something of which they were a little afraid to 
 speak, and as if they both felt they must be more careful some- 
 how than they used to be. But it was so slight a change that 
 Patricia was resolute not to accept it ; and as Gordon, on his 
 side, seemed to struggle against the shadowy influence in the 
 best way he could, the old joyous harmony that had been for 
 so many years unbroken between them still went on, and this 
 visit of the bright young sailor to his friends at home was as 
 happy as all the others had been. 
 
 " Any news when you join 1" asked Captain KembalL 
 
 Gordon looked at Patricia ; Patricia looked at him. 
 
 " In three days," he said, and turned his face to the sea. 
 
 " Oh, Gordon ! that is a month too soon ! " cried Patricia in 
 frank sorrow. " I thought you said you were to stay till the 
 third week in November ? "
 
 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE t " 25 
 
 " So I did ; but the Lords have ordered us away the third 
 week in October, you see," he answered. 
 
 " What a pity ! We do miss you so when you go. It seems 
 to get worse every time ! " said Patricia. 
 
 The young man's eyes glistened. " Well, I am glad you are 
 so sorry, Patricia ! " he said frankly. 
 
 " You are ? What a horrid speech and how Irish ! " she 
 laughed. 
 
 " Isn't it better than to go and think not a living soul on 
 shore regrets you 1 ?" asked Gordon looking at her earnestly. 
 
 "Yes, Pat," said the Captain taking up the strain; "you 
 don't know what it is to keep watch on a dark night, and be 
 thinking of the dear ones at home, and knowing that they are 
 thinking of you, and feeling their blessed hearts so pitiful to 
 hear the wind blow." 
 
 " It's hard lines for the poor fellows who have no one to care 
 a button for them," put in Gordon ; '' aud I, for one, don't 
 envy them. So youUl please keep on being sorry, Patricia, do 
 you hear ? "' 
 
 " Well, Gordon, I suppose we shall^said Patricia, with her 
 hand on her uncle's shoulder. " We miss you horribly when 
 you go away, don't v/e, uncle 1 Life isn't the same thing with- 
 out you, and you will take away the last of the summer this 
 time. However" and she sighed. The sigh meant resigna- 
 tion and " what must be, must be." 
 
 " Don't make a Molly of him, Pat," said the old Captain, 
 going into the house. 
 
 " It's good news you tell me ; I wouldn't have it altered ; I 
 like you to miss me when I go," continued Gordon gravely. 
 
 Without knowing why, Patricia suddenly felt herself grow 
 pale, and an odd kind of tremor passed over her. 
 
 " I hear Sarah with the tea-things ; come and have some tea," 
 she said abruptly. 
 
 " All right. And you will sing me ' Dermot asthore ' after V 
 asked Gordon in a rather lower voice than usual ; for he too, 
 generally spoke as if a northwester was blowing in his teeth. 
 
 " Yes, it you wish it," was the reply. 
 
 '' I do wish it, very much, Patricia. I want to hear ' Der- 
 mot ' and ; What would you do, Love ? ' and when 1 am toss- 
 ing about at sea I shall remember them and you and thja 
 evening,"
 
 26 "WHAT WOULD rOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " Why this evening specially 1 " asked Patricia: 
 
 But though she tried to speak in her usual frank way, some- 
 thing it was almost like wool seemed to have got into her 
 throat that changed the quality of her voice, even to her own 
 ears. Neither could she look at Gordon as she was accustomed 
 to look at him. She felt bashful, and as if her eyes refused to 
 go his way. Altogether it was uncomfortable, and she felt in- 
 clined to run away and hide herself where he could not find 
 her. Nor was he quite the same to her. A trouble, dim, 
 formless, but real, seemed to have fallen between them ; and 
 yet it was not the trouble of unkindness. 
 
 " Why ? I will not tell you now, Patricia ; but some day I 
 will," said Gordon, looking at the gold band of his cap as if it 
 was something he had never seen before, and sinking his voice, 
 which trembled. 
 
 " Mysteries ] oh, I hate mysteries ! " she cried, making a 
 sudden effort to conquer her strange sensations, and laughing 
 in a way scarcely natural to her, as with an odd feeling of 
 escape she ran into the dining-room where she mismanaged 
 the tea, or, as the Captain called it, "spoilt the brew." 
 
 As she did not know very well what she was about she 
 scalded herself, which effectually awakened her from the con- 
 fusion of her state ; and she did not get entangled again that 
 evening, not even when she had finished " What would you do, 
 Love ? " and Gordon had asked her, with his honest blue eyes 
 raised fully into hers, " Is that what you'd do, Patricia, to any 
 poor fellow who loved you and had bad chances 1 " and she had 
 answered heartily, " Yes, T would, Gordon." 
 
 "You'd not believe an ill word, and not be frightened by a 
 cold fortune 1" he asked. 
 
 " I ? No ! not all the world could turn me from one I 
 loved ! " she said warmly. 
 
 " I believe you, Patricia ! " said Gordon ; and his face beamed 
 with something more tender than a smile, deeper than mere 
 pleasure. " You are the truest-hearted girl that ever stepped. 
 Man or woman would be safe with you ! " 
 
 " Gordon, how can you talk such nonsense ! " said Patricia. 
 
 But her cheeks flushed with pleasure, and she felt very happy 
 that he thought her so true-hearted.
 
 THE " MERMAID." J7 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE "MERMAID." 
 
 ATURALLY the chief amusement at Barsands was 
 boating, for those who owned anything that would 
 float, between a tub and a cockleshell ; though for the 
 matter of that, there was only the Captain to keep a pleasure- 
 boat at all the rest being fishing and seine-boats only, of 
 larger or smaller dimensions. And, naturally again, Captain 
 Kemball, and Gordon Frere when he was on shore, were never 
 happier than when they were cruising about the rocks and 
 islands which made this special reach of coast so dangerous. 
 
 Patricia was generally with them, in accordance with the 
 Captain's idea that the right kind of feminine education was to 
 make women as brave as men, heroically indifferent to danger 
 and clever in getting out of it ; courage and presence of mind 
 being the qualities he most admired after truth and loyalty. 
 And Patricia was really a very good seawoman. She could 
 handle the tiller ropes as well as if she had been a pilot on her 
 own account, and she knew every shoal, and rock, and current 
 as accurately as if she had been the hydrographer of the station 
 Her uncle used to call her "the mermaid" sometimes; and 
 when he hit on the idea, he re-christened his boat, which, unti 
 then had been the Young Holdfast, the Mermaid, too, in honou 
 of her. He was fond of innocent little jokes, decent man 
 and one of them was to declare gravely to such siraut** 4 " 
 as he might have seen gaping at hei pranks in the watftr -- f i 
 she could swim like a fish that he had -seen many iiiaitutvi 
 in his time ; shoals of them about the Pacific Isles ; AH t tt 
 this creature there was half a one, web-footed inside h-j r,.*t, 
 and with the neatest little uorsa nn, just like a lnl}' !ri!. 
 between her shoulders. And ho always maintained that un* 
 of them benighted Loridoiers for the most part looked as t/ 
 they believed him. So th it, instead of being in the way on 
 board the Mermaid, if a gale came on and they had to dodge
 
 28 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? ' 
 
 the wind to slip by the Gridiron, she was of as much use, save 
 in absolute strength of muscle, as the best A.B. on the Admi- 
 ralty books. 
 
 .The next day the three went out for a long cruise. It was a 
 bright breezy day, just such as yesterday had been, only per- 
 haps more brilliant and more vigorous ; with a full wind that 
 sent the little boat merrily along, and just enough sea on to 
 make her " dance like a lady," said Gordon, as she slipped from 
 wave to wave and laid over to the breeze till her sail dipped 
 into the water. The " white horses " were out, but they only 
 gave greater animation to the scene ; and they were not so 
 much horses as ponies, said the Captain, bonny little beasts, 
 sent out by Neptune to view the world and report below ; but 
 to see them breaking and leaping beneath the wind, and to see 
 how the Mermaid danced and courtesied as they met her, would 
 have made a landsman shudder. As it was, it was a sea and 
 sky which to sailors and sea-birds were perfection. 
 
 There was no wool in Patricia's throat to-day, no mist before 
 her eyes. The strong north-east wind seemed to have cleared 
 both her and Gordon from that formless trouble of the night 
 before, and the happy companionship they had always known, 
 affectionate and unconscious, had come back as if it had never 
 received a check. 
 
 Long after, both Gordon and Patricia remembered this 
 morning as one of the golden memories of their youth. It was 
 Ithe last sail the pleasant triad had together ; the last time the 
 Captain did the ordering arid Gordon the hard work which, 
 however, was not very hard while she, with the ropes in her 
 hand, steered close or clear, luffed, fell off a point, or put the 
 helm hard a-port as she noted the signs of sea and land ; the 
 last time she watched the sail flap heavily against the mast as 
 they -shifted the boom and she set the tiller shai p, then felt the 
 seaman's glow of satisfaction as she saw the canvas slowly fill, 
 in sign that the little boat had not missed stays, and that they 
 were off on another tack, cheating the wind and zigzagging 
 defiantly right in its very teeth ; the last time she served out 
 their simple dinners on the cuddy rooi she eating hers stand- 
 ing while the Captain took the tiller ropes for a spell, and 
 looked at his boat and his niece with about equal admiration. 
 How well the one sailed, how grandly the other grew i How
 
 THE "MERMAID." 29 
 
 the new white canvas of the Mermaid filled and bellied with 
 that perfect line, in its way as beautiful as the curve of a swan's 
 neck or the slant of a bird's wing ! And how prettily the wind 
 caught the girl's dress and eddied it into billowy wreaths like 
 a purple cloud, while it tore her bright brown hair from its 
 slender fastenings, and blew it in shining tangles across her 
 face! 
 
 Beautiful Patricia always was. Her enemies, if she had had 
 any, must have confessed this ; but to-day she surpassed herself. 
 Even her uncle, who had nothing of that sickly sentimentality 
 which moons and maunders over a woman's beauty as if it was 
 a thing to reverence like a virtue, and who cared more for 
 what she was than for how she looked even he, as we have 
 said, was filled with a strangely vivid sense of the nymph-like 
 splendour of her loveliness as she stood there so young and 
 fresh, so full of happy life, and so unconscious of her charm 1 
 Gordon Frere made a surreptitious sketch in his pocket-book, 
 of which she, intent on an enormous sandwich, was in nowise 
 aware. She nearly caught him though, as she suddenly looked 
 back to the little world on board from her alternate contempla- 
 tion of the horizon and her hunch of bread. But he smuggled 
 away the book in time, and all she saw were two blue eyes 
 looking at her roguishly and a handsome face lighted up by a 
 smile. Then she smiled too, in her responsive way, and the 
 sketch never got discovered nor completed. Gordon scarcely 
 needed it to remind him of the girl or the boat, or his own 
 thoughts and feelings of this day. 
 
 There was something that seemed to move them all to remain 
 out as long as possible on this cruise. It was one of those days 
 which make an ineffaceable impression on the memory, and 
 which seem different altogether from others. There are times 
 when the fields and the sea and the sky seem nothing more 
 than a mere face something to look at, to admire* if one will, 
 but not to understand, and not to remember with special de- 
 light ; and there are days which seem to show us something 
 beyond and behind, and to put us in harmony with the inner 
 heart of nature. And these we never forget, nor the aspect of 
 the world as we looked at it then. To Patricia it was as if the 
 universe had been swept and garnished airesh, and life had just 
 begun, and all things been made beautiful and new since fc^e
 
 30 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE? " 
 
 sun broke over the hills this morning. There were no ghosts of 
 dead loves, no sorrows, no sighings about earth and sky to-day. 
 It might have been the first day of creation, for its sense of 
 buoyant freshness to her the first hour of time when was no 
 Fast with its tears and funeral faces, only the glad Present and 
 the hope of the Future ; and she might have been Eve ere yet 
 the Serpent had whispered to her, and before the flaming sword 
 had bet?n drawn. 
 
 In Gordon's mind ran a strange confusion of texts about the 
 sons of men and the daughters of God that came down to them, 
 and it did not trouble hirn that he read the words wrong- 
 handed ; while the Captain's heart went back with his memory 
 some forty years and more, when the world used LO be newly 
 swept and garnished for him too, and the sons of men fell in 
 with the daughters of God on the roads by which he travelled. 
 
 So they sailed and laughed and talked and had long spells of 
 silence ; sometimes of a silence that meant dreaming, sometimes 
 only watching ; while the little Mermaid ran before the wind 
 with a clean sweep and a light pair of heels, and shook and 
 swayed and tossed impatiently, as they put her about and forced 
 her out of her natural course, and art and science conquered 
 nature and the elements in the old way. And now it was getting 
 dusk when they finally put her head straight for Barsands, and 
 steered for home. 
 
 As the evening drew in the weather changed. The bright 
 flecked sky became thick and grey, the sun went down behind 
 a heavy bank of purple clouds, the wind rose, and the rain began 
 to fall. A storm was coming up with the tide, and the tide was 
 running swift and high. This dangerous caost-line, full of sharp 
 sunken rocks and strong currents as it was, needed both clever 
 seamanship and clear weather to render it practicable ; and it 
 was a constantly recurring triumph in a small way when the 
 Captain and his niece brought the Mermaid safe into harbour 
 again, and defeated for another time Mother Jose's standing pro- 
 phecy, that the pair of them would be drowned one of these 
 fine days ; and then where would they be 1 
 
 This time there seemed a desperate chance that the prophecy 
 might be nearer fulfilment than was desirable. But the party on 
 board did not take much heed. They put the boat about, and 
 she answered gallantly to the helm. So far well; but the
 
 THE "MERMAID." 3] 
 
 freshening gale obliged them presently to close-reef their sail, and 
 then they began to look somewhat anxiously to their stays and 
 bolts. Even such a slight press of canvas as iheMermaid carried 
 was soon more than she could bear in the weather that had 
 come on; and now their only course was to make all snug, to 
 steer well and carefully, edg / away before the wind, and to do 
 the best they could with a chtticult job. 
 
 Moment by moment things looked worse. The evening 
 settled down darker and wilder at every quarter of an hour that 
 passed. The wind, which had backed sharp from north-east to 
 south-west, had risen to a gale setting dead in-shore, and the 
 tide and the currents swept along with tumultuous violence. 
 Already the Gridiron, that dreaded reef of rocks, was one line 
 of boiling surf from end to end ; and the tide was not yet more 
 than half high ; and the cliffs were dim with the spray that was 
 cast up about them. But while they steered well, and the boat 
 obeyed the helm, they were in no real peril ; though, sometimes 
 buried in the trough, sometimes flung up to the crest of the 
 giant waves, the little Mermaid looked as if her last hour had 
 come, and as if she could not possibly live in such a sea. 
 
 On they went, each face gradually getting graver, each heart 
 more anxious, but the bonny boat holding her own bravely, 
 when suddenly a tremendous wave, breaking athwart, tore away 
 her rudder and left her masterless in the storm. As the sea 
 struck her she" gave a lurch and heeled over on her side ; but 
 she righted herself in time, and rose gallantly to the wave, 
 trembling in every inch of her as she went forward with a leap 
 like a race-horse touched by the whip and the spur. Gordon 
 did what he could to utilise the sweep as a rudder ; but the sea 
 was too strong ; and after trying all the expedients open to them 
 they were forced to let things be, and to take counsel of hope 
 and courage only. On she went, driven with a force they could 
 neither check nor resist. Under bare poles as she was, the 
 storm swept her before it like a leaf in a mill-race. They were 
 powerless to prevent or to guide. Hitherto, man and science 
 had been the masters, now the elements were supreme and man 
 was the slave, and too probably, the victim. 
 
 The boat drifted fast, and the precious moments flew with it. 
 If only they could weather Penthill Point, where many a good 
 ship's bones lay bleaching at the bottom, the wind would
 
 32 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 serve them well ; they would leave the Gridiron clear to the 
 left and be blown straight into Barsands harbour. Would they 
 weather it t Yes, if the wind changed but hajif a point, so as 
 to set them straight for the harbour ; no, if it blew dead in- 
 shore, as it blew now ; and no, too, if it changed more than that 
 half-point, for then they would fall on the Gridiron. But it 
 did not change. It carried them on to their destruction straight 
 as an arrow flies. Every wave that rose bore them nearer, 
 every moment of time that rushed into eternity drove them 
 closer to the cliff, and diminished their chances of escape by so 
 much. It was an ugly look-out ; and they knew their danger. 
 
 Not a word was spoken. The two men, with the girl be- 
 tween them, sat in the stern, holding on by the gunwale and 
 lightly lashed as well ; a quiet, resolute, silent triad ; each as 
 brave as the other, and each thinking for the others, " If only 
 they could be saved, I should be content to die ! " Sea birds 
 wheeled and screamed above their heads, and dipped their 
 slanting wings in the foam that flew over the masthead, as the 
 crests of the waves were cut as if by a knife and scattered into 
 plumes and streamers of spray. The wind howled through the 
 darkening sky, and whistled shrilly among the straining shrouds; 
 and the huge billows came thundering after the Mermaid as she 
 flew wildly before them, and overtaking her, deluged her with 
 water that swept her deck from end to end, and tried the tem- 
 per of the wood and hemp and iron of which her life had been 
 made. Faster and faster she drove before the gale, caught by 
 the wind and the tide and hurried dead upon the Point. They 
 seemed to be drawn as if by a magnet in this mad race of theirs 
 with death ; as if they were being hunted by the wind and 
 waves behind them. And then suddenly the huge black cliff 
 stood up sharp and square before them, and the spray cast off 
 from the face fell back on them in a blinding shower. 
 
 " Hold on ! " shouted the Captain. 
 
 And at the word came a shock that threw them all forward, 
 and a tearing, ripping noise, that told its own tale. 
 
 " Keep steady, girl ! There's a God in heaven ! " he said, 
 passing his arm around Patricia's waist as the boat reeled back, 
 quivering at the blow. 
 
 Divining more than hearing what he said, for the wind and 
 the waves drowned all other sounds but their own, Patricia put
 
 THE "MERMAID." 33 
 
 her arm about him too; but she did not speak. Then she 
 turned to Gordon, and smiled with a kind of sad but, brave 
 cheerfulness as she held out her other hand to him. 
 
 He took it and pressed it between both his own ; but he 
 could not answer back her smile. His handsome ruddy face 
 was set and blanched, his brows were contracted, his teeth 
 clenched tight. Brave as he was a man who emphatically had 
 never known physical fear he was sick with terror now. Not 
 for himself ; he would have died resolutely enough for his own 
 part ; but it seemed to take the manhood out of him sornehcw, 
 to think of her perishing before his eyes, and he unable to save 
 her by his strength or by his own sacrifice. There was no help 
 for it. The strongest swimmer that ever lived could not have 
 breasted the breakers foaming over the rocks at Peuthill Point j 
 the cliff had not a foothold where the waves might fling them 
 and leave them clinging till they were seen and taken off; and 
 a life-boat, even if there had been one at Barsands, could not 
 have put out. 
 
 The time, however, for any kind of suspense was shortening 
 with each pulse of the tide. Whatever sin each soul there was 
 conscious of, let it be confessed now in whispered prayer, hum- 
 bly but in trust. The Great Secret stood very near to each, and 
 in a few moments all would be over and all learnt. 
 
 Again and again the Mermaid was lifted by the waves and 
 flung like a toy against the cliff. It was pathetic to see the way 
 in which she bent to her fate, unresisting, trembling, tossed by 
 each incoming wave against the cruel granite, and beaten by 
 wind and water savagely. Her seams were opening ; her outer 
 planks were torn away and ground to splinters as she struck. 
 The work had been good to have held out so long. In the 
 midst of his solemn thoughts the Captain caught himself mea- 
 suring the quality of his boat as tenderly as he had reckoned 
 up Patricia's virtues ; but even the best work that ever man 
 laid could not have saved them now. It was the question only 
 of a few moments. She could not possibly hold out for more 
 than five at the longest against the strain that was put upon 
 her. 
 
 Five minutes and then of those three brave loving hearts, 
 the old and young, not one would be left to mourn the other ! 
 So far this would be merciful. The old life full of honour and
 
 34 " WHAT WOULD YOtT DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 the young full of hope they seem welded so closely one with 
 another, that the one without the other would be a blank. 
 But ah ! how much poorer the world would be for their loss ! 
 
 Involuntarily they pressed closer together ; not a tear, not a 
 murmur, among them ; only a closer grasp of hands, a stronger 
 strain of arms, and a sweet and calm farewell looked lovingly 
 from each to each. The one who, up to now, had seemed to 
 suffer most was the Captain, because he was in his own mind 
 the one to blame. He ought to have been more careful for her 
 so young, so good and that brave fellow there ! It was a 
 mournful ending for two lives so full of promise : and he had 
 tasted more than the bitterness of death for his own part in his 
 self-reproach and sorrow for them. So it had been up to now ; 
 but now, in the very presence of death, at the very footstool of 
 the Supreme, a strange calm had fallen on him as on the others. 
 It was a farewelj, but it was also love ; it was peace, confidence, 
 resignation ; but again, and above all, it was love ! 
 
 Again the Mermaid struck, again reeled back; and then, just 
 as the last flutter of hope was stilled and they had all looked 
 firmly in the face of death, loving and not afraid, a bright light 
 shot through the air, and the whizz of a rocket passing over 
 their heads brought a rope athwart the deck. The coastguard 
 on the look-out had seen them, and the imminence of their 
 peril had been their salvation. Close under the cliff as they were 
 the pitch was easy, and if there was time all would be saved. 
 
 Gordon sprang for the rope, and Patricia shrank back, push- 
 ing forward her uncle ; but the old man took her in one arm 
 like a child and thrust her to the front. To debate the point 
 was to lose all, and to yield to his unselfishness was her own 
 best unselfishness. So she stood quite calmly, and helped Gor- 
 don to lash the rope about her ; and in a few seconds she was 
 safely corded and the signal to haul away given. They watched 
 her in the dim twilight as she was drawn up by the men on 
 the cliff; she, guiding herself by one hand away from the sharp 
 jags and points of the rock while holding on to the rope by the 
 other, keeping her eyes turned downward to the sea where the 
 men she loved were still floating side by side with death, seem- 
 ing to make her own safety the assurance of theirs by the very 
 closeness of union among them ; as if one could not live or die 
 alone.
 
 THE " MERMAID. " 36 
 
 Then, over wind and surf they heard the men's glad cheer 
 as the girl was safely landed ; and immediately after another 
 rocket came for the Captain's help. Him too Gordon secured 
 and watched drawn up as Patricia had been before him ; and 
 now only the poor lad was left, sole captain, crew, and pilot ol 
 the wreck. But now he was comparatively indifferent, it the 
 Mermaid broke up before he could be saved and he knew 
 that though she still kept the form and semblance of a boat she 
 was no better than if she had been made of paper, and might 
 break up at the next blow if she went down and he with her, 
 at least the girl he loved was safe ; and the dear old Captain 
 he was saved too, to still care for her and protect her. 
 
 Looking always upward, he saw clearly, dark as it was, the 
 face of Patricia bending down from the heights, as if encourag- 
 ing him by her love. He saw the long, dank, dripping hair 
 falling like a veil as she bent ; he saw her eyes looking frankly, 
 yearning and loving too ; her Jijjs parted with the same tender 
 smile, the same kind of dumb speech that he had seen before 
 to-day, and that seemed to say so much in its silence. Doubt- 
 less it was all fancy, and what he saw was a mere dream ; but 
 at the time it was real, and lie took heart as he looked heart 
 for her sake. 
 
 Then came another muffled cheer from the cliff, and again, 
 for the third time, the rope fell ; and Gordon Frere caught it 
 and was saved. But just as his foot left the deck at the 
 first haul from above, the Mermaid's mast fell by the board, and 
 in a second the boat had disappeared as if by magic, and only 
 a mass of splintered wood eddying in the boiling surf told 
 where she had been. It was like taking a life by violence, and 
 they all felt when she went to pieces as if a playmate and a 
 friend had died. 
 
 The peril was past ; but could Gordon ever forget the cry of 
 joy with which Patricia wound both her arms about one of his, 
 as she clung to him for a moment with girlish abandonment? 
 could he ever forget the look in the dear eyes that met his, 
 a look so full of the very ecstasy of joy that they seemed to 
 shine like stars in the darkness ? And what was there in her 
 voice when she said : " Dearest Gordon oh ! my brave, dear 
 boy !" that went to his heart as if she had said much more than 
 the words 1
 
 96 " WHAT WOlTLD VOr T>0, I.OVE?" 
 
 It was not five minutes since he had sat by her in the boat, 
 hand-in-hand, looking at death together, yet it seemed now as 
 if it was a lifetime since. But that he was a man, and the two 
 coastguards were standing there, and the Captain was on the 
 other side of him wringing his hand, Patricia would have lenrnt 
 more of his heart, and her own, than she had yet fully fathomed. 
 All he could do, even for his own sake, to give back her caress, 
 was to press her clasped hands against him warmly, and say in 
 a voice that would tremble in spite of himself, " Brave and dear, 
 yourself, Patricia ! You helped to save us all." 
 
 " The one Mermaid has gone, the other is left," said Captain 
 Kemball, looking at his niece. Taking off his cap, he stood 
 bareheaded in the storm : " I thank thee, Lord, tor her life! " 
 he said reverently. And Gordon, taking off his cap too, said 
 "Amen." 
 
 Suddenly he blanched and staggered. 
 
 "Dear Uncle! Gordon, what is it!" cried Patricia, as she 
 caught him in her strong yotfhg arms just in time to prevent 
 his falling. 
 
 The old man had fainted : a thing he had never done in his 
 life before. 
 
 The coastguardsmen' and Gordon took him up among them, 
 carried him into the little shelter-hut by the signal ; where they 
 rubbed him and gave him brandy, and by care and tender 
 treatment, if rough method, succeeded in bringing him round. 
 But it was a long while first ; and at one time it seemed almost 
 hopeless. However, he came to himself at last, and sat up and 
 looked about him as usual. They wanted him to have a car or 
 cart, anything on wheels, sent up for him as far as it could tra- 
 vel. Gordon would have run down for it ; but the Captain, 
 who had a will of his own insisted on walking home. He was 
 never better in his life, he said ; and he rubbed up his curling 
 white hair, slapped his rotund chest, and chafed his chilly hands 
 with vigour. He did not know how he came to be such a fool, 
 fainting like a sick girl ! It was only because of that gipsy. 
 he supposed, pointing to Patricia. When he thought it was 
 all over with them he was sorry for her, and blamed himself 
 for it. He ought to have kept a smarter look-out, and not have 
 stayed so long. So he imagined the faintness was just the re- 
 action when he found his little girl safe. He was up to the
 
 THE "MERMAED.* 37 
 
 now ; no fear ! and he declined all further coddling. Cod- 
 dling was not the thing, he went on, when he carried her Majes- 
 ty's commission, eh, Gordon ] and he'd show them yet that he 
 was man enough for any two of them ! 
 
 So, with a kind of innocent rollick that yet was not like him- 
 self, and with a certain dazed look about him he bade the men 
 good night ; emptying his purse among them sailor fashion ; 
 and set off down the steep cliff path gaily enough. 
 
 It was a weary tramp. The night was pitch dark by now; 
 the storm was raging furiously ; they were all drenched through 
 and through to their bones, said the Captain; and the cliff 
 path was difficult for the mutilated pedestrian at the best of 
 times. To-night it was doubly so, being slippery as well as 
 rugged, and difficult to find in the blackness overhead. They 
 got down in sufficient safety on the whole; though the Captain 
 had one or two bad falls by the way which shook him terribly ; 
 and, weakened as he was already by excitement, fatigue, and 
 that strange fainting fit up above, he was fearfully strained by 
 the time they reached home. 
 
 "Ah, my dear, I am getting an old man 1 " he said to Pa- 
 tricia with a half-humorous melancholy, as he flung himself ex- 
 hausted on the sofa. " I must leave off these pranks for the 
 future. For the future, indeed! I have lost my boat, and 
 needs must, I'm thinking." 
 
 " Oh, we will save up our money and get another Mermaid I " 
 said Patricia cheerfully. " We should be lost without our boat ! 
 We must have another just like her the poor old Mermaid 1 " 
 
 " We'll have to content ourselves with you, my dear, as the 
 sole representative of the tribe," said the old man. " Hey, 
 Gordon ? " 
 
 " We might do worse," said Gordon with a sudden flush, as 
 he looked at the girl tenderly as a man looks when he loves. 
 
 The old man caught both the flush and the look. 
 
 " Give me your arm, boy," he then said with a strange soft- 
 ness of manner. " I feel a little the worse for wear to-night ; 
 do you help me upstairs. You won't be jealous, Pat 1 " 
 
 "Of Gordon? No indeed, whatever he were to do for you, 
 dear ! " she answered frankly. " Jealous of Gordon ! " she 
 laughed. 
 
 " That's right, my girl. Of all the fiends that ruin happiness,
 
 38 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 and dignity too, jealousy is one of the worst. Never give it 
 harboiwage in your heart, lass. Keep out jealousy and keep 
 in truth; and remember that a friend is a friend, and that your 
 word once passed, you must go to the stake before you break 
 it ! Now give me a kiss, and good night." 
 
 Patricia, laid her hand in his. " Dear Uncle ! " she said 
 fondly, bending her face to his. 
 
 He took her hand; then laid it side by side with Gordon's 
 as if measuring both together. 
 
 "It's a pleasant putte enough ! he said to the young man, 
 smiling. " Not a fine lady's useless little fist, but a good, ser- 
 viceable, womanly hand that can handle a rope and dandle a 
 baby, both as they should be done. I'm thinking it will be a 
 treasure some day to some one." 
 
 " Uncle ! " she remonstrated, with a burning face ; while Gor- 
 don gave her hand one strong silent pressure, answering, and 
 not looking at her: 
 
 "It will so, sir. And I hope he will get it who will prize it 
 most." 
 
 " Good night, lassie," said the Captain with a smile half 
 pleased, half pathetic. " It's all right. When I'm gone you'll 
 have him to take care of you. Sleep well and don't dream ; 
 or if you do, dream of those who love you." 
 
 " Good night, my dear my dearest dear ! " she exclaimed, 
 and threw her arms round his neck and kissed him fervently ; 
 he pressing her to his heart with a kind of passionate solemnity 
 of which Patricia had never seen the like in him before. 
 " Good night, Gordon," she then said, her eyes downcast, her 
 cheeks dyed crimson, and tears, she did not know why, begin- 
 ning to start. 
 
 " There, boy, give her a kiss ; you have earned it to-nigh t," 
 said the Captain, standing as it were between them, holding a 
 hand of each. " Kiss your friend, Pat, who has been so near 
 to death with you and who helped to save you." 
 
 Trembling as much as herself, Gordon drew her gently to- 
 wards him. The tears had come fully into her eyes by now, and 
 were falling slowly and heavily down her cheeks tears that 
 were alternated with a smile and a blush, and a wish that her 
 dear uncle had not said what he had ; and yet, what harm was 
 there in kissing her old friend ?
 
 THE "MERMAID." 39 
 
 Feeling that to obey his wish frankly was better modesty 
 than to object, she lifted up her face all wet as it was, and 
 Gordon, with almost as much bashfulness as her own, tremb- 
 ling, proud, happy, and yet shy, stooped his head and kissed 
 her full on the lips, with a reverent tenderness if also a frank 
 affection not lost on the Captain. 
 
 " Thank you for all you have done," said Patricia simply ; 
 and lighting her candle went off to bed with a trouble at her 
 heart she had never felt before. 
 
 She heard her uncle, helped by Gordon, stumble heavily up- 
 stairs. He walked as a drunken man might, and somehow the 
 failing footsteps struck a chill to her heart that seemed like the 
 beginning of disaster. Then she heard the young man's voice 
 and his in lower earnest talk ; and then a " Good night " said 
 cheerily, as Gordon closed the tloor and strode downstairs. 
 And after this she heard no more. 
 
 Thronging thoughts perplexed and possessed her, so that she 
 could not sleep, weary as she was. It seemed to her as if all 
 things had suddenly gone astray, and life was different alto- 
 gether to-night from what it had been this morning. In the 
 morning how bright everything had been ; in the evening how 
 dark and full of dread ! The Mermaid lost ; her uncle unlike 
 himself ; Gordon going away for at least two, and may be five, 
 years and. he too not the same old friend and chum that he 
 had been all these past years but this was not a change that 
 gave her the same pain the others gave her ; in the distance 
 Aunt Hatnley and the lad}' companion who would introduce a 
 new order of things, and perhaps an order they would not like. 
 these thoughts kept her awake far into the night. Her head 
 would keep on talking to her, as was her phrase ; but at last 
 she dropped asleep with the heavy slumber of the young, and 
 did not awake till quite late into the morning.
 
 40 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MORS JANUA. 
 
 HOCKED to find how late it was when she awoke Patricia 
 lu^rrit-d over her dressing, afraid of having kept her uncle 
 waiting for breakfast; which was one of the domestic offen- 
 ces he found it hard to forgive. The temper of the commander 
 still clung to him, and with the kindest heart in the world he 
 had one of the tightest hands when he exercised any discipline 
 at all. He was always captain in his own ship, he used to say, 
 and always intended to be ; and if his laws were few they were 
 positive. 
 
 Patricia however was needlessly alarmed. When she got 
 downstairs, full an hour after her usual time, she found that 
 her uncle had not yet risen. She was glad of this as ft enabled 
 her to help Sarah with the breakfast ; and with a womanly 
 instinct of the right sort she took pains to make it a breakfast 
 of special niceness, in reference to her uncle's fatigue and sei- 
 zure of the night before. But though it took rather a long 
 time to get ready, still the Captain, usually so punctual and 
 so early, was not astir. 
 
 She went up to his room and knocked at the door. There 
 was no answer. She knocked again ; still no answer. Again 
 and again ; each time louder than before as the imperiousness 
 of fear made itself 'felt. And then, holding her breath for she 
 knew not what unspoken dread, she opened the door and went in. 
 
 On the bed lay the old man still in the wet clothes of the 
 evening before. He had evidently flung himself there, weary 
 and exhausted, when Gordon left him ; and so had fallen asleep. 
 Asleep ? Was that white face sleeping ? When she took his 
 hand, and it hung so coldly strange and still in hers when she 
 kissed his face and found that so cold too, so rigid underneath 
 the skin, the glassy eyes not quite closed, the muuth opened, 
 the jaw diopped was that sleep ? Was it not rather the thing 
 she had seen only a day ago ? It was Death ; and she knew it.
 
 MORS JANUA. 41 
 
 Soon the servant came hurrying up to her loud call ; and 
 then the doctor from St. John's, who happened to be passing 
 through the village at the moment, was brought in ; and in less 
 than ten minutes the house downstairs was thronged with eager 
 questioners crowding up to hear the news, which had spread as 
 if the birds of the air had carried it, confirmed at the fountain 
 head. It was like a social earthquake in the village ; and even 
 brave men felt scared when they saw the cottage flag floating 
 half-mast high the coastguardsman who came in had done 
 that ; it would have been shameful and indelicate else, as bad 
 as a piano playing, or the first Sunday at church in bright 
 colours and heard that the fine old captain who was like a 
 father in the place, had been found dead in his bed God save 
 his soul alive ! and that a life which looked as if it had had 
 many years yet to run was cut short just when it was most 
 wanted. For the fate of the poor fatherless and motherless 
 girl, whom they had seen grow up among them like one of 
 their own, touched them all with pity ; and many a man's eyes 
 were moist that day, and many a woman felt her mother's heart 
 ache with pain, for the bright and friendly "maid" who had 
 always been the first to lend a helping hand when a neighbour 
 was down ; but who now wanted a stronger hand to help her 
 than any to be found in Barsands. 
 
 Whether she was pitied or deserted Patricia neither knew 
 nor for the moment cared. She would not leave the room where 
 her dead uncle lay, and she would not let go his hand. She 
 did not speak nor cry nor stir, but stood quite still with a dazed 
 kind of air, looking at him. Only once, when the doctor 
 handled him as she thought roughly, she put her arms over him 
 in the manner of protection, saying, " Don't do that you will 
 hurt him." 
 
 She could not realize the fact that this body, this person of 
 the one she had loved so tenderly and lived with so long was 
 no more now than the stones in the fields or the wood in the 
 forest. SI e was intellectually conscious that he was dead, but 
 she had still the feeling that he felt and saw and understood 
 though he was not able to speak to her, and that she must take 
 care of him against those who did not love him as she loved 
 him. But indeed she had not much conscious thought o any. 
 kind. She had only a general sense of darkness and a \Jull
 
 42 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 kind of pain, mixed up with a mocking and incongruous acti- 
 vity of eyesight that seemed half sacrilegious, as when she found 
 herself counting the worn buttons of his waistcoat and the 
 stripes on his grey flannel shirt. 
 
 The doctor spoke to her, and tried to reason with her ; but 
 though she heard his voice clearly enough, she did not under- 
 stand what he said. She wondered why he talked to her, and 
 she wished he would leave off; but outwardly she was patient, 
 and at one time he thought he was doing her good. Knowing 
 his profession, he did not like that tearless, half-bewildered and 
 half-stony look she had. If she had shrieked and sobbed, and 
 been even petulant and unreasonable, he would have under- 
 stood it better ; but this silent tenacity had an ugly look of 
 pressure, and he wanted to rouse her out of it. 
 
 Presently, in the midst of his talk, Gordon Frere, pale and 
 breathless, came rustling through the garden and up into the 
 room where Patricia was standing, still keeping guard over th* 
 dead. 
 
 The news had met him as he came in from St. John's, and 
 half a dozen people had stopped him in the village to repeat it. 
 
 " Patricia ! " he said, touching her lightly on the shoulder. 
 
 His voice seemed to break the spell. She turned hastily and 
 held out her hand. 
 
 " Oh, Gordon, how glad I am you have come ! you are all 
 I have left," she said. Look there, Gordon ! Gordon ! he is 
 dead ? " 
 
 Then she turned away her head, and covering her face with 
 her hands broke down into passionate sobs and tears, 
 
 And the doctor, looking at her critically, gave a little sigh of 
 relief and said to himself, " Now she'll do." 
 
 " My darling ! what can I do for you 1 " said Gordon, taking 
 her into his arms with a strange mixture of tenderness, protec- 
 tion, and shyness. " Patricia, don't give way like this, dear ; 
 you break my heart to see you ! " 
 
 " He was so fond of you, Gordon ! " said poor Patricia, look- 
 ing up into his face. " How he loved you ! " 
 
 " And how I loved him ?" answered the young man, brush- 
 ing his hand over his eyes. " We are one in our sorrow, dear 1 
 He was almost as much to me as he was to you ! " 
 
 " Ah, yes, you knew him, and he loved you," she repeated.
 
 MORS JAMTA. 43 
 
 * And I love you too," he said in a deep voice. 
 
 " Yes, I know you do," she answered simply, " You are 
 the only person in the world who does now all I have left." 
 
 " And I will be always yours always part of your very 
 self, if you will have me, darling ? We will never desert each 
 other never never ! " 
 
 " Never ! " she said, tears breaking her voice ; the poor 
 young people transacting their love affairs so innocently before 
 the doctor and in the presence of the dead 1 "But oh ! do not 
 (et us think of ourselves ; let us think o^f him," she added with 
 sudden remorse, turning towards the bed, where, flinging her- 
 self on her knees, she took the cold hand again in hers and 
 kissed it fervently as if asking pardon for her momentary dis- 
 loyalty. 
 
 And Gordon was not ashamed to feel his own eyes dim and 
 his eyelashes wet for sympathy and sorrow too. But he soon 
 lifted her up again, and made her sit down while he stood by 
 her, holding one of her hands in both of his ; her other laid 
 lightly on the clear dead. No more was said between them. 
 Quite quiet and silent they remained there, she gazing at the 
 white face with its falling wreath of snowy hair before her, 
 thinking only of him ; he looking at the white face too, but 
 thinking most of her and her desolate future. And in this 
 silent companionship of sorrow they felt drawn closer together 
 somehow than if they had spoken for hours. They were un- 
 conscious of time, or who came and went about them. They, 
 were together in the presence of the man they had both loved, 
 and whose spirit seemed with them stilL 
 
 So they would have stayed probably till night ; but the wo- 
 men who had been sent for those mysterious death-bed 
 women came to fulfil the last offices, and the doctor gave Gor- 
 don a sign to take Patricia away. He thought there would be 
 a difficulty and he had prepared his exhortations : but there 
 was none of that feminine exaggeration of character in her 
 which makes sorrowing women so often unmanageable. 
 Besides, she felt that Gordon was her master now ; that it was 
 .her duty to obey him as she had formerly obeyed her uncle. 
 When he said she was to go, she looked at him piteously, 
 mutely beseeching him for leave to stay ; but when he repeated 
 his words, drawing her as if to lift her from the chair, she got
 
 44 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 np at once, and though she wept afresh she went with the 
 simple obedience of a child. 
 
 Gordon kept with the poor desolate young thing the whole 
 day through. But the long hours came to an end at last, and 
 he too must leave her. It was his last leave-taking. He must 
 he off early in the morning for Portsmouth, and neither pity 
 nor sorrow, nor yet love, could make the time longer. They 
 had talked but little through the day, but they had kept very 
 near together. They seemed afraid of losing sight of each 
 other ; as if something would happen to separate thtm for ever 
 if they drifted apart for a moment. There had been no pre- 
 tence of reading, or of doing anything whatever with a purpose. 
 They had either sat in the little sitting-room, side by side on 
 the black horse-hair sofa, or they had wandered out into the 
 garden, scarcely noticing how gloomy the day was and how 
 bright yesterday I but looking at each familiar tree and flower 
 as people do who look for the last time. And they had stood 
 by the model of the old Holdfast, and had touched it with a 
 lingering fondness as if it had been a creature that could feel. 
 But as they walked round it, both Gordon who had sense, and 
 Patricia who was not fantastic, turned pale and looked at each 
 other with a sense of awe upon them, when they saw that, by 
 some means not evident, the storm last night had broken off 
 the figure-head of the resolute-looking being that had sym- 
 bolised the name, and that the legend underneath, painted by 
 his own hand, " Robert Kemball, R.N., Commander," had been 
 torn away with the device. They made no remark to each 
 other w heu. they saw this. They only looked up, and both were 
 very pale. It foreshadowed nothing, explained nothing; but 
 it gave them a feeling of superstitious dread that made the 
 present burden heavier. 
 
 The hours passed, as all hours do, and the last moment had 
 come. Many a time during the day Miss Pritchard and old 
 mother Jose had come down, wanting to be of use ; and now 
 the former, thinking that Patricia would be none the worse for 
 at least the appearance of womanly countenance, was knitting 
 a brown woollen antimacassar by the dim light of one kitchen 
 candle, lamenting in her heart the selfishness of the young in 
 Patricia's absorption in her grief for the one and her love for 
 the other, and thinking it was a good thing, as matters had
 
 MOBS JANUA. 46 
 
 turned, that her sister Matilda had never married that old man. 
 And yet, if she had, she would have had her pension, and Pa- 
 tricia would have gone to her own relations. Yet Miss Prit- 
 chard was by no means a bad hearted woman. She was ouly 
 human ; and she lived in a small place, with a very narrow 
 field in which to work out her life. 
 
 " Well ! time's up ; I must go, Patricia." said Gordon. 
 
 He was pale and desperately agitated. Up to this moment 
 he had been the calmer, and more self-controlled of the two ; 
 now their positions were reversed, and it was he who had to 
 be comforted. 
 
 " What o'clock is it t " asked Patricia, waking up as if from 
 a tlream. 
 
 " Ten," said Miss Pritchard demurely. 
 
 " Yes, it's time for you to go," she answered. " Uncle likes 
 the house shut up at ten." 
 
 " You'll write to me ?" he said, standing and holding her 
 hands in his. " You know you will probably have to move 
 from here ; you cannot stay here alone ; so I shall not know 
 where you are unless you tell me." 
 
 " You need not be afraid of her being left, Mr. Frere. I 
 will look after her till she gets a better protectress," said Miss 
 Pritchard in her precise voice. 
 
 She meant it kindly, but her words came in with a horrible 
 jar on the young lovers. They had forgotten she was there, 
 forgotten all but each other : and now her voice broke in be- 
 tween them like a sign of the world and the future, and the 
 conventionalities too, which were about to divide them. 
 
 " Yes, of course I will write," said Patricia, " And I shall 
 want to hear from you too, Gordon- I shall have only your 
 letters to make me happy. Happy ! I shall never be happy 
 again ! " she cried. And she believed what she said. 
 
 The ancient schoolmistress shook her head softly ; and 
 though the tears were in her eyes, tears of honest human sym- 
 pathy falling over her unlovely work, she knew by experience 
 that time is not eternity and that the " never" of the young is 
 of very short duration. 
 
 " Come upstairs with me," then said Gordon. " I would 
 like to say my last good-bye to him." 
 
 " God bless you, dear ! " cried Patricia, flinging back her
 
 46 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 head with a gesture peculiar to herself, and which meant an out- 
 pour of love and thanks greater than she could put into words. 
 
 Her lips quivering and his set firm, hand in hand they went 
 up the stairs and into the shabby little room that was now a 
 sacred temple to them.' 
 
 " Make a prayer with me, Patricia," Gordon said. " It willa 
 be good to remember." 
 
 " Yes," she answered ; and she looked at the dead man so 
 she would have looked had he been alive for his approval. 
 
 Kneeling down by the side of the bed they said the Lord's 
 Prayer together, like two children at their good-night ; nothing 
 more ; tut both felt it their sacrament. Then they stood up 
 still holding by each other. 
 
 " And you will not forget me ?" said Gordon in a husky voice. 
 
 " Forget you ! How can I forget you 1 " she answered. 
 
 " Nor love any one else, nor let any one else love you 1 " 
 
 M What do you mean, dear ? How should I love, or whom V 
 
 " You feel then you are engaged to me, Patricia ? that you 
 have promised to be my wife through good report and evil re- 
 port, through poverty and all loss 1 " 
 
 " Was that what you meant last night 1 " said Patricia 
 simply, " I did not understand you quite. If it is I am glad. 
 Yes, I will be your wife, Gordon, and I will not love any one 
 else, nor let any one love me." 
 
 " God bless you ! Oh, how can I thank you enough for these 
 dear words ! He would have been glad, darling. He said so 
 to me last night, and I was to have come to-day to get your 
 promise. He wanted to know that you loved me, from your 
 own mouth, before I went away. You do not mind having to 
 say now at such a sad time, do you, dear 1 You do not think I 
 am selfish in putting it to you now and here? I could scarcely 
 go away and leave it in doubt." 
 
 " It would have been cruel if you had," she answered. 
 
 " You like to feel bound to me, pledged to be my wife, to 
 care for no one else, only me, all through your life 1 " 
 
 She looked him full in the eyes : " Like it, dear ! it is the 
 only comfort I have," she said. 
 
 At another time she would have been shy and bashful, she 
 would have laughed and cried and blushed ; but the whole 
 thing was too solemn now for any of the pretty follies or trepi-
 
 MORS JANtJA. 47 
 
 dations of love. It was an oath they were pledging, not a man 
 wooing and a woman being won. 
 
 " And you \vill always feel that I anvyours ? as much as if we 
 were married already ? " continued Gordon. " If there is any 
 thing in which I or my affairs my money, Patricia can be of 
 use to you, do not hesitate to go to Mr. Fletcher, and tell him 
 who you are, and that I sent you. It breaks my heart to think 
 how utterly alone and unfriended I am leaving you. If it were 
 nut for the dishonour I would stay and look after you." 
 
 " I shall have your love and his," said Patricia, struggling 
 against her tears and conquering them ; "and I will not let any- 
 thing make me cowardly or complaining. I will bear my fate 
 cheerfully, whatever it may be, for his sake and yours. I will 
 be worthy of you both, Gordon." 
 
 " I trust you, Patricia darling, beloved 1 I trust you for all 
 strength and honour as I trust the sun for shining," said Gor- 
 don fervently. " Never let us lose trust in each other I in 
 yqu, and you in me. Darling, promise me that." 
 
 " Never, Gordon ! I could not live if I did not trust you. 
 Will you always believe in me 1 ?" she said, with a yearning 
 kind of look. 
 
 " Will I always believe in the sun? Could I doubt you, Patricia? 
 If you came to me in rags, loaded with the world's scorn, I 
 would believe you before the world I Now, good-bye, and God 
 bless you, my heart's dear love ! " 
 
 " Good-bye, Gordon ; and God bless you too ! " said Patricia. 
 
 " You will give me one kiss again to-night ? You may, now you 
 are my promised wife. I would not ask you if you ought not." 
 
 " I have given you my love and my word, and that may well 
 follow," she said, and put her arms round him frankly. 
 
 He held her pressed close to his heart with one arm, passing 
 his other hand lovingly over her hair, holding back her face 
 while he looked long and tenderly into it. 
 
 " My beloved ! " he said,, and kissed her. 
 
 With a great sob he loosened her arms and his own, and she 
 heai'd him dash down the stairs, and through the gate and so on 
 to the stony village road. She heard no more ; and Miss Prit- 
 chard running up at the sound of her fall, found her lying pale 
 and senseless on the floor. Her strong spirit had given way, 
 and the brave heart yielded to its pain at last.
 
 48 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 viral. 
 
 EXT day's post brought a letter from Aunt Hamley to 
 her brother. It was not a very long letter, but it said 
 a good deal in its space. It was written in a fine 
 pointed hand, with long, sweeping tails and graceful curves 
 that ran far into the next line, giving the page a tangled and 
 cobwebbed look, more ladylike than legible. 
 
 It set forth in the beginning, as if it had been a legal de- 
 claration, the writer's womanly satisfaction that he, Kobert 
 Kemball, had at last seen the fatal mistake he had made, before 
 it was too late, if indeed it was not already too late to remedy 
 it No one but himself, it said, with one of what the Captain 
 used to call Rosanna's characteristic digs, would have thought 
 of bringing up a young lady without some older lady to guide 
 and instruct her. Whatever harm came of it however, her 
 brother Robert must never forget that she, Rosanna Hamley, 
 had lifted up her voice against it from the first though vainly. 
 As it was, she was glad to see him awakening to a sense of his 
 true position ; and she decidedly recommended him to look out 
 for a lady companion forthwith or rather, she proposed to do 
 so for him herself. There were one or two highly-trained 
 persons at Milltown of whose circumstances she knew something; 
 poor, and for whom a small salary with a comfortable home 
 would suffice ; women perfectly well-bred and fitted for the 
 work of reducing an undisciplined young person to the ladylike 
 demeanour demanded by society. She assumed that Patricia 
 was undisciplined; poor girl, how indeed could she be any- 
 thing else I Then she went on to say, that if her brother and 
 his "niece she said " your niece," not " my " nor " our " 
 would like to come over to Abbey Holme for a week or so she 
 would be better able to give advice ; and she would be glad to 
 welcome them there. She could not deny, nor would she, that 
 there had been differences between her brother Robert and
 
 NOV.fi VITA. 
 
 herself, and this would be a good way of healing them, 
 being of use to both himself and his niece. She could say no 
 more. If he would accept, her offer, he was to write at once and 
 say when they were coming , if he rejected it, she did not see 
 how she could help farther in the matter, as, on second thoughts, 
 it would be undesirable to engage a lady so entirely in the dark 
 as she would be were she not made better acquainted with his 
 niece before she looked out. The letter ended with a post- 
 script : " Dear Dora Drummond," it said, " Mr. Handey's 
 cousin, and the child of my adoption failing Patricia, whom 
 you refused to me is the best proof I can give of my fitness 
 for advising on the subject of young ladies' education; also of 
 what my training would have done for your niece. I think, 
 when you see Dora, you will acknowledge that the grace, good 
 breeding, and perfect self-command 1 have laboured so hard to 
 inculcate have been thoroughly well learnt. Her association 
 will do Patricia good ; and her principles are, I am happy to 
 say, too firmly fixed for me to be afraid of undesirable associa- 
 tions on her own account." 
 
 This was the elaborately-worded letter that came in answer 
 to the Captain's brief and bluff request for a few words of advice: 
 "Should he get a lady companion for Patricia? She was 
 eighteen now, and he wished her to have the best of everything. 
 What did his sister Rosanna think 1 ?" 
 
 Patricia read this letter as it it had reference to another life. 
 Her vague disquiet at the idea of the lady companion seemed 
 so childish now in the face of the terrible reality that had come ; 
 and so far off! It seemed as i. it was months ago, and at the 
 other side of a wide river, since her uncle hail called her into 
 the porch to listen to the project over which he had been brood- 
 ing, and which startled her so much. It was only three days, 
 since, but a lifetime lay between. Three days ago she was a 
 happy child ; now she was a sorrowful woman. It was like 
 waking up from a dream ; or rather, it was like a dream itself 
 as if that happy past was the reality still, and this dreadful 
 present a mere vision, a nightmare, from which she would awake 
 in the morning, to hear her uncle knocking up the house as 
 usual his kind old face, framed in its silver hair, beaming 
 with affection, and freshened with the morning air, looking up 
 to the window from the lawn as he called out, " Hi, there lazy- 
 D
 
 60 " WH A.T WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 bones! Past six o'clock, and you still abed I Tumble up, 
 tumble up, or I'll be at you ! " 
 
 But, ah ! it was all too real ! He was dead ; Gordon was 
 away ; there was no return, no escape to the beloved past ; she 
 had to realise the present, and to live through it. 
 
 Fortunately for her she had no one at this moment on whom 
 she could fall back. She was the sole mistress of all that was 
 left, and she must exert herself. Men may die, but men must 
 live ; and those who are left must be provided for on the day 
 when the beloved lie dead all the same as on other days. The 
 morning breaks and the evening wanes, and there is the up- 
 rising and the downsitting, as if no light had gone out, and no 
 one's life was the poorer for its loss. But a short time can be 
 spared from active work for the filling in of a grave, let who 
 will lie there. To the young this is impious and horrible ; but 
 it must be. Patricia would rather have sat in sackcloth and 
 ashes by the side of the dear dead than have worn Irer ordinary 
 gown that very skirt which she had mended in the sunshine 
 on the other side of the gulf, and so many years ago ! But 
 sackcloth and ashes and giving oneself up to mute mourning on 
 the floor do not square with the ordinary run of things in daily 
 life, and she had to bestir herself; to enter into consultations 
 with Miss Pritchard and Mother Jose, the one about her mourn- 
 ing, the other about the undertaker at Penrose, to whom word 
 must be sent to morrow being Mother Jose's " day in." A.nd 
 when she had read Aunt Hamley's letter, she had to write to 
 Abbey Holme to tell them of the loss that had befallen her. 
 The chances are that without this letter as a reminder she 
 would have forgotten her aunt's existence for the first part, and 
 would then have shrunk from bringing herself before her notice 
 for the second. 
 
 The answer came by telegram -Mother Jose brought it in 
 to save the expense of the messenger ; and before Patricia had 
 read it herself, all Barsands knew of it and half the village had 
 spelt it over. It was short but important : 
 
 "Mr. Hnmlpy sets off to-day for Barsands. He will bring 
 you back with him." 
 
 Mors janua vilce. Not only for the beloved dead but also for 
 her. Through the gate of his grave she walked straight from 
 tke old to the new, from, the known to the unknown, from joy-
 
 VWM. 51 
 
 ous security to doubt and dread. Life atAunt Hamley's ! She 
 shivered, and thought how cold the nignt was and how soon 
 the winter had come this year ! But she was not going to mope 
 and give way for a fancy, she thought. She was not of the kind 
 to create spectres for want of a braver resolve to meet cheer- 
 fully what was before her. At the worst, Aunt Hamley-,was 
 her father's sister and her dear dead uncle's : and with too such 
 men for her brothers she could not be all bad. And then the 
 natural buoyancy of youth came in to help her. She had 
 known only love and liberty hitherto ; and may be love and 
 liberty would brighten out on her from the foreboded gloom of 
 Abbey Holme. And, if not, what was the good of her promise 
 to bear all things cheerfully, if her strength could not stand a 
 trial 1 It was easy to be brave in the air ; better to prove by 
 deeds and be pr.oved by trial ! 
 
 With this she dismissed herself and her future from her 
 mind. And if she had thought of either, it had been rather in 
 reference to being and doing as her beloved uncle would have 
 wished, not because she cared miichatthis moment what would 
 or would not become of her. 
 
 The next day, just as the evening was beginning to draw in, 
 a post-chaise dashed through the village. It was the smartest 
 chaise to be had in Penrose, with a couple of postilions in rather 
 shabby jackets ; bitt it was a sight not often seen in Barsands, 
 and it brought the people out as if the Queen or Wombwell's 
 wild beasts had been passing through. After stopping at the 
 Lame Duck to inquire where Holdfast Cottage might be found, 
 and being told by a dozen people at once, the full-fleshed dark 
 haired man who had put his head out of the window to ask 
 said, " Drive on ! " authoritatively, and drew it back again, 
 smiling to himself while the carriage dashed on to the cottage, 
 followed by all the children of the place yelling their lo paeans 
 in west-country language and with seaside lungs. 
 
 Patricia was upstairs in a back room, and neither heard nor 
 saw the arrival ; but the servant came rushing in to summon 
 her, breathless and jubilant. 
 
 "Your aunt's master!" she said. " And as fine a looking 
 gentleman as ever you see 1 " she added excitedly ; quite glad 
 that her young mistress had such a showy piece of humanity for 
 her future protector.
 
 52 WHAT WOlTT.D YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 "Mr. Hamley here ! " cried Patricia, involuntarily catching 
 her breath. She felt the room go round and the floor slide 
 from her feet, as she afterwards told Miss Pritchard ; who put 
 her dynamics right for her. But she could not afford to lose 
 time in noting odd sensations ; so, standing up and clearing her 
 eyes, pressing back something at her heart as if with a strong 
 hand, without waiting to arrange herself, to put up her hair or 
 to put on a ribbon not having the ordinary woman's instinct 
 that way, though she had done it all for Gordon she ran 
 down stairs to the little parlour, for it could not be called a 
 drawing-room, tumbled, unkempt, disordered as she was. 
 
 Mr. Hamley was waiting for her; and, while waiting, he had 
 been examining with a critical eye the extraordinary collection 
 of rubbish and real curiosities intermixed, disposed by way of 
 ornamentation about the chimneypiece f,nd on the side table. 
 Magnificent bits of coral were flanked by paltry sixpenny 
 figures of lambs and dogs with broom-stick tails ; an exquis- 
 . itely-carved vase in jade-stone had for its pedestal a common 
 "seashore pebble worn flat enough for a stand ; the oleographs 
 distributed by certain weekly ^papers were pinned unframed 
 against the walls, but Patricia had hung them round with 
 wreaths of yellowing oak-leaves and fronds and tufts of sea- 
 weed, green and scarlet and duller purple ; which was an 
 arrangement that betokened taste if it also spoke of poverty. 
 Mr. Hamley, however, did not respect taste if allied with 
 poverty. What he liked was a good, heavy, handsome, gilded 
 frame about a fine strong-coloured oil-painting ; not your hand- 
 ful of withered leaves and slimy seaweeds festooned with pins 
 round a twopenny-halfpenny print given away by a weekly. 
 
 " Not worth a pound the lot ! " he was saying to himself as 
 Patricia opened the door and came in. 
 
 She saw a tall, largely-framed man with dark curled hair ; a 
 clean-shaven face save for a pair of thick whiskers that met in 
 a frill under his chin ; small, deeply-set eyes, bright, black, and 
 keen ; a large obtrusive kind of nose ; and heavy, clumsy, 
 cracked-looking lips that squared out when he spoke,,, and 
 showed a close row of sharp rodent shaped teeth and all his 
 upper gums when he smiled. He was a fine-built man, with an 
 unmistakable look of good living and prosperity about him. 
 In the smooth lines of his sleek figure, tending to stoutness,
 
 NOVJE VTTM. 63 
 
 bnt as yet only sleek ; in his showy attitudes and parabolic 
 gestures; in the measured accents of his level artificial voice; 
 in the glitter of the massive gold chain across his ample front, 
 the sparkle of the huge diamonds on his large hands ; from the 
 cleanly-drawn parting of his shining hair down to the tips of 
 his shining boots, and in the superb fineness and glossiness of 
 all his clothes, could be read the self-complacency of the man 
 and the success of his life. He was Mr. Hamley of Abbey 
 Holme ; and he liked people to know it. He was not ashamed 
 to add, the man who had begun life as an errand-boy on six- 
 pence a day; the son of a brewer's drayman, born in a hovel 
 and bred in a stable; but who by industry, good conduct, tact, 
 and natural ability, had risen to be the rich brewer of Milltown 
 and the husband of Admiral Sir Robert Kemball's daughter. 
 He was a self made man, and he gloried in his maker, and 
 asked the world to glorify him too. 
 
 He had early decided on his tactics, which were to stick to 
 the place where he had known hunger and had made a colossal 
 fortune, and to force society there to recognise and admit him. 
 The closed paradises of his past were the only ones the gates of 
 which he especially cared to open ; and he would rather be re- 
 ceived on an equality by the poorest Milltown gentleman whose 
 horse he had once been glad to hold for a few pence, than be 
 courted by people whom he had not known, and who had not 
 known him in his bare-footed days. Milltown was his world ; 
 and that world he had set himself to conquer. And he had 
 succeeded. 
 
 He put his face into the proper expression of sympathy as 
 Patricia entered ; but in spite of himself a look of surprise took 
 the precedence, and his forced sympathy dropped away like a 
 mask. He had not expected to see anything so beautiful ; and 
 he showed that he had not. Not that hers was the kind of 
 beauty he liked best ; certainly not. He liked very fair women ; 
 gliding, caressing, insinuating women ; women who were timid 
 and who screamed easily ; women he could protect and domi- 
 nate, and who confessed his masculine superiority even when 
 they put on pretty airs of social queenhood he giving up to 
 them this social queenhood in consideration of holding all the 
 other sceptres in a sheaf together ; women who were fond of 
 warmth aud good living, luxurious seats, fine clothes and spark-
 
 54 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 ling jewelery ; women he could buy with gifts and subdue 
 through their senses, as he could make cats purr by pleasant 
 treatment. He hated all enthusiasm in women, save maybe for 
 trivial amusements ; all decision of opinion ; all power of rea- 
 soning or show of learning ; and the doctrine of their rights 
 (which however he did not understand) was anathema marana- 
 tha. He easily forgave a little graceful deception, especially if 
 in his own favour. Indeed, he used to say that truth was in- 
 delicate in women not that he ever called them anything but 
 ladies and that nature meant them to fib as she meant canaries 
 to sing. Neither was he severe on their want of honour in love 
 affairs or money matters, providing they did not jilt nor cheat 
 him. He called them little " rascals," when they were found 
 out ; but if they were pretty he laughed as at a good joke. He 
 had an idea too that they should take very short steps pretty 
 pit-a-pat useless kind of steps in fact, a Chinese woman's walk 
 modified ; and that they should carry their heads bent down- 
 wards, looking up from under their eyebrows shyly. And he 
 liked trim, well-buckled figures where the art of the stay-maker 
 and the milliner was apparent ; and the only kind of appearance 
 that fascinated him was that called stylish. 
 
 Patricia fulfilled none of these personal requirements. She 
 bore her head straight and .her shoulders square, and looked 
 out frem her large, well-opened eyes held quite level. She 
 walked with a swift, free step, and took what he mentally 
 noted as strides. She was not especially neat ; rather the re- 
 verse ; and her manners were singularly fearless, and \vith an 
 air of independence and unconsciousness that set her at odds 
 with her aunt's husband at first sight. Her hair was in -loose 
 masses that showed the shine and varied auburn tints and 
 broad rich wave upon it, such as artists would have loved ; but as 
 it was not smooth and silky like Dora's blonde and elaborate 
 chignon, nor crimped and curled like Mrs. Hamley's faded tresses, 
 to Mr. Hamley's eyes it looked undressed. As to her figure, 
 to be sure she was as upright as a dart, yet as supple as a 
 willow wand; all her lines were long and slender, and she 
 was exquisitely proportioned; but sire evidently wore no stays, 
 her dress was of poor material and badly made, she was neithei 
 trim nor well-buckled, and, in fact, she was not finished off any 
 where. That was the word she was not finished off ; still in
 
 VOVM VITA * 55 
 
 the rough ; good material but having no value, no more than 
 an uncut diamond or a block of brute marble -or a pocketful of 
 hops thought Mr. Hamley, before it had seen the malt. 
 
 All this would come; Mrs. Hamley would know how to do 
 it, and Dora's example would complete the process. Mean- 
 while he had to condole, not criticise ; to forget that the pretty 
 girl before him had neither stays nor style, that her hair was 
 undressed and her whole person unfinished, in his efforts to 
 make himself agreeable, and to impress on her untutored mind 
 that her aunt's husband was by no means a common sort of 
 man, and that she might hold herself fortunate in falling into 
 such good hands. 
 
 "My dear!" he exclaimed, with that kind of enunciation 
 which inakes all the leading words- end in h, "I cannot express 
 how truly grieved Mrs. Hamley and myself are at your bereave- 
 ment. Such a sudden termination ! with no time for prepara 
 tion !" 
 
 " He was prepared," said, Patricia hastily. 
 
 Mr. Hamley knew veiy little of religion, experimentally or 
 intellectually. Nevertheless he had a few catch-words, and the 
 probable lost condition of a soul suddenly called away was one 
 of his strongholds. 
 
 He smiled with a kind of bland sorrow. "I devoutly hope 
 so," he said, his voice showing that his hope had not taken on 
 itself a very lively assurance. 
 
 " He was good. No more is wanted than that ! " said Pa- 
 tricia, looking him straight between the eyes. 
 
 He hated to be looked at straight between the eyes, espe- 
 cially by women. He thought, too, she was defiant when she 
 looked at him so fearlessly and spoke up so warmly. She was 
 not : she was only in earnest. 
 
 " The Bible tells us more, I think," he said a little tartly. 
 
 This first introductory interview had not begun on velvet. 
 
 " Oh, do riot speak as if you doubted !" she said in real pain. 
 "There never was a better man than Uncle Robert ! I ought 
 to know who so well ? " she added, her voice breaking. 
 
 "Ah ! well ! we will converse no more about that aspect of 
 the case," said Mr. Hamley with his soothing manner, taking 
 her hand in his ; and his was large and fleshy and moist. " But 
 you must resign yourself, my dear young lady, and remember
 
 66 " WHAT WOULD YOTT DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 that n> amount of tears not if you cried those fine eyes of yours 
 in of yoin Ix-ad. will bring a dead man back to life again. We 
 must Ke reasonable even in our mourning. Don't you agree to 
 this, ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Patricia, controlling herself without much effort. 
 Something seemed to pass over her that made it almost sacri- 
 lege tn show more of her heart to this man. " And yet," she 
 added with perhaps a natural Piovenient of opposition, "it 
 seems strange to talk of reason at such a time." 
 
 ' Reason always is strange to ladies," said Mr. Hamley. 
 " La lies feel ; they do not reason." 
 
 The girl looked at him in frank amazement. Truly his words 
 were plain English enough; hut the meaning of them] For 
 ;dl the essential purposes of language he was speaking to her in 
 a foreign tongue ; and her face betrayed her peiplexity. He 
 caught her look and it pleased him. It seemed to confess that 
 he could teach her something, and Mr. Hamley liked to hold 
 forth. 
 
 "But you will be reasonable, my dear," he continued in that 
 strange mixture of fine words and familiar, not. to say vulgar, 
 colloquialisms which made up his style. " I make bold to as- 
 sure myself of this. What you have to do now is to reflect on 
 your position and to make the best of it. 1 hope you will not 
 find it such a bad job in the end as it seems in the commence- 
 ment. That is, 1 hope you will find Abbey Holme not so very 
 unpleasant, all thing considered, and that you will be able to 
 make your life there to your liking." He said this with a smile 
 and a little bow, as if he had been talking of a cup of tea. 
 
 " Thank you very much," answered Patricia, looking into 
 his face. " 1 hope rather 1 shall be what you and my aunt will 
 like." 
 
 " No doubt, my dear, after a training in our harness. When 
 Mrs. Hamley has put her touch on you, and dear Dora has 
 shown you what a real lady should be, I make no kind of doubt 
 we shall be satisfied with you. Your aunt must take you in 
 hand, and I bet that before long you will be turned out the 
 real article too." 
 
 " Yes," said Patricia vaguely. 
 
 " We must get the angles down/' said Mj. Hamley, rubbing 
 bis bauds.
 
 VITM. 57 
 
 " Yes," she answered in the same vague way, wondering what 
 the man meant. 
 
 "Mrs Hamley is a disciplinarian, my dear; a tight hand, as 
 you'll find ; a good soul though, and a real lady ; but," plucking 
 at her loose sleeve and ill-cut bodice, " she'll not stand thus kind 
 of thing long ! Mrs. Hamley likes what the captain would have 
 called ship-shape, brailed up; don't you understand? Never 
 mind now ; you will come right in time, and meanwhile we 
 must do our business. And the first bit of business to attend 
 to, if you'll excuse me, is the fortification of the inner man. 
 Can your servant cook me a chop 1 I am a plain mas v myself, 
 and a well-cooked, juicy chop, witli a nicely-done potato, steamed 
 not boiled, satisfies all my wants." 
 
 " I am afraid we have not such a thing as a chop in the 
 house," said Patricia in distress : " we have only a bit of cold 
 mutton." 
 
 Mr. Hamley's face darkened. 
 
 " What part ? saddle ?" he asked. 
 
 " No ; 1 have never seen a saddle of mutton in my life," she 
 answered innocently. " It is a bit of the breast, and I am afraid 
 not very nice. We have not a' great choice here." 
 
 " But you knew that I was coming ? " he said. 
 
 He was gravely displeased. A man of Mr. Hamley's stamp 
 thinks much of fatted calves, both for honour and toothsome- 
 ness ; and a cold breast of mutton, with no special preparation 
 for his arrival, was a sin greater than half a dozen falsehoods 
 would have been. 
 
 M I daresay I can get something at Mrs. Jose's '' then said 
 Patricia, her face brightening at the thought ; but Mr. Hamley 
 stopped her as she was about to rush out of the room tumultu- 
 ously. 
 
 Don't give yourself quite so much trouble, my dear," he said 
 with a certain ill-concealed irony. " I will, go to the inn, and 
 you can enjoy your own mutton in peace. I daresay you would 
 rather be alone at such a time ;" with a half sigh : " and, after 
 all, I came to help, not to make more work. Not a word ! 1 
 shall go to that house we pulled up at ; I presume they can toss 
 me up some little thing that will suffice ; and then 1 will return 
 to you and take off my coat to it." 
 
 Oft which he took his . hat and conveyed himself out of the
 
 68 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE? " 
 
 room. ITo other word would give an adequate idea of the showy 
 dignity and ostentation with which he walked across the shabby 
 little parlour, which indeed he seemed to fill, and stooped his 
 head in the doorway, though there was no necessity for him to 
 do so he could have passed through well enough. And when 
 he had gone Patricia sat down and took a long breath, feeling 
 as if a weight had been taken off her breast, as when we fight 
 off that shadowy hand at night which is throttling us in our 
 sleep. 
 
 This then was her aunt's husband, the uncle who was to be 
 her friend and guide and guardian in place of the dear dead 
 whom she had reverenced so simply and loved so truly ! It was 
 an instinct and not an act of reason that led her feet upstairs, 
 when she heard the garden gate shut as Mr. Hamley Swaggered 
 out. She went to her uncle dead, as she would have gone to him 
 living, for counsel and if need be reproof. And when Mr. 
 Hamley came again he found her with red eyes truly, but more 
 cheerful somehow than she was before. And he said in his 
 letter to his wife that evening^: " I am happy to state that my 
 coming has been of marked advantage to your niece, and that 
 she has already picked up wonderful." 
 
 Once installed master of the situation nothing could exceed 
 Mr. Hamley's energy and kindness. He took everything on 
 himself in a natural matter-of-fact way as if he had been born to 
 the work.. His business faculty came in -as almost another 
 sense, and reminded Patricia so often of what Gordon had said 
 about the fortune-telling of lawyers. But valuable though he 
 was, he extinguished her in the neatest manner possible. She 
 had not a word to say on any matter ; and if she ventured an 
 opinion, he told her that was his business, not hers, that two 
 could not be masters, and that she was to give herself no kind 
 of trouble, but leave all that to him he was there for that 
 purpose. For what else were they, great hairy men, born, but 
 to take care of the ladies 1 He wished her to sit down and 
 amuse herself; and he would do all the work if she would only 
 be quiet and enjoy herself. 
 
 What could she ansu er 1 She could not but feel grateful ; 
 he meant it kindly ; but still she wished that she might have 
 been employed too in these last arrangements of the old life 
 these last gatherings* of the dead rosea. Lavislfin his profea-
 
 TITM. 59 
 
 sions of consideration, irresistible in his high-handed assump- 
 tions, he swept heraside'out of the path altogether, and Patricia 
 suddenly found herself plunged from a life full to the brim of 
 activity and love into a void where were only echoes and reflec- 
 tions. 
 
 In one thing, however, she was resolute ; she would go to the 
 funeral. Mr. Hamley thought it indelicate in a lady even to 
 wish to go ; but she was firm ; and in the first real conflict of 
 wills between them his had to go down before hers. He owed 
 her a grudge for it, and never quite forgave her. For the matt.er 
 of her following however, all the village went, coastguards, 
 fisherfolks, the Misses Pritchard and all ; so that her absence 
 would have been remarked not to her advantage. This con- 
 course, poor as it was, gratified Mr. Hamley. It pleased him 
 to see that his brother-in-law had been popular ; arid it also 
 pleased him to have such a good opportunity for showing him- 
 self off. He was conscious of his height and breadth and glossy 
 black clothes, and general air of substance and prosperity : and 
 as no homage came amiss to him, it made him feel quite his own 
 man again when he saw the women whisper together as they 
 looked at him, and the men cast those appraising glances as he 
 passed which measured him and weighed him, and found him 
 satisfactory. He was the make-believe hero of the day ; and 
 though the real hero was the one they loved, he could afford 
 the rivalship on the principle of the dead lion and the live dog. 
 
 The Captain had* left no will. Such men as he never do leave 
 a will, except perhaps one they themselves write out on a sheet 
 of note-paper, without witnesses to the signature ; also partly 
 because such men seldom have anything to leave. Of a 
 surety the poor Captain had left neither will nor effects ; so that 
 all Aunt Hamley's husband had to do was to arrange the details 
 of the funeral, pay the undertaker's bill presented at the con- 
 clusion, see what small debts were owing in the village, and sell 
 off the furniture to meet them. 
 
 This was the hardest part to Patricia. In vain she besought 
 him not to have a sale, but to let her give the things away. 
 
 " Give them away ! " he said. " My dear young lady, you 
 must be dreaming ! Why give ? " 
 
 " I know the people, and they are all so poor," pleaded 
 Patricia.
 
 60 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO. I.OVE ? " 
 
 "If they are too poor to buy, then they will not spend their 
 money," Mr. Hamley said; "and the other way on. Don't 
 you trouble yourself about them. They can take care of them- 
 selve^ ; and you may be sure every one of them has an old 
 stocking somewhere up the chimney with a hoard in it that 
 would astonish you. Bless you ! I know the class as well aa 
 I know my alphabet ; always crying Peter Grievous, and put- 
 ting money in the bank, the rogues ! You leave them alone, 
 and turn your own pennies when you can." 
 
 " But it seems so disgraceful to sell to them," she said. 
 
 She had been brought up practically like a good democrat j 
 and she was a good democrat by nature as well as training ; 
 which did not hinder a fine flash of the true old spirit that was 
 once known as "Noblesse oblige." So disgraceful, for the 
 comparatively rich to make money by the poor ! so far the 
 better thing to give royally to those who needed, instead of 
 chaffering for the miserable pence they could not afford to spend. 
 
 When she said all this, Mr. Hamley put his hands into his 
 pockets and laughed aloud. He could not stop himself, he 
 said ; such an extraordinary idea ! quite a backwood's kind 
 of notion. To give away your property when you could make 
 it into money ! to care two straws whether people were richer 
 or poorer than yourself so long as you make your market of 
 them ! The dear young lady was fit to be carried about in a 
 show ! Lord ! it was lucky for her that he had come to save 
 her from herself ! And as for making presents to any of them, 
 the coastguards or the old women or any man-Jack alive, not 
 he, not a farthing ! They had made a pretty penny out of the 
 old Captain when he was alive, no fear! and now he, Mr. 
 Hamley, as the orphan's guardian with a flourish would 
 save her little inheritance in every way he could, and do the best 
 for her he was able under the circumstances. 
 
 So, in spite of all she could say, the sale was arranged and 
 took place ; and everything was sold, save one or two intrinsi- 
 cally valuable "curios" which Mr. Hamley selected as "agree- 
 able memorials for your aunt of her poor brother." 
 
 All told, it was not a weighty matter. When the last ac- 
 count was settled, and just as the fly was preparing to take 
 them away, Mr. Hamley handed Patricia the net balance 
 nineteen pounds odd as her sole independent fortune.
 
 NOVA VITA 61 
 
 " Keep it, my dear," he said, when Patricia, full of youthful 
 honour, also full of youthful distaste to its source, wanted him 
 to take that sum as part payment of her prospective expenses. 
 " Make it go as far as you can, but keep it. Remember it is 
 all of your own that you possess. When it is spent you will 
 have to come to me to replenish your purse. I wish to impress 
 this on your mind. I am well off I may indeed say very well 
 off but I do not encourage extravagance. I know what it is 
 to earn sixpence a day and live on it; but I climbed up, you 
 see, and got pretty well ahead by my "own exertions ; and I 
 always advise other people to do the same." 
 
 " Indeed, Mr. Hamley, I am willing and ready to do anything 
 that I can," said Patricia, with a sudden hesitancy that 
 explained everything. 
 
 " No doubt " he stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat arm- 
 holes. " But that is just where the hitch is what can you do ?" 
 
 She turned'pale. " Nothing ! " she said looking down. 
 
 " Of course not ! I knew that ; only you need riot have con- 
 fessed it. Such an education as yours, scrambling and rambling 
 about the country like a tinker's daughter, getting -wrecked 
 here and tossed like a bale of cotton there, and knowing no 
 better than to have a cold breast of mutton for a gentleman's 
 dinner after along journey how could you have learnt any- 
 thing] Why you have not learnt even your own trade of lady ! 
 But never mind. I confess I should not like to see dear Dora 
 obliged to work for her living ladies ought to be worked for," 
 he put this in gallantly, standing there on* his six feet one 
 and pondergus breadth of shoulders ; " and your aunt may have 
 the same feeling for you. If she has, Abbey Holme is large 
 enough for you, and," jingling the money in his pocket, " the 
 Hamley funds can bear your additional burden, I daresay. 
 Now here comes the fly. Are. all your things ready? Say 
 good-bye, my dear, to the old and make your courtesy to the 
 new. No ! no tears if you please. I can't abide a crying 
 lady it makes one damp ! " To himself he said, almost aloud 
 " Lord ! that the fool should cry to exchange this horrid hole 
 for Abbey Holme."
 
 62 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTEK VIL 
 
 THE HOME-COMINa. 
 
 tHE journey from Barsands to Milltown was a cross-coun- 
 try one ; consequently full of delays, and tedious. 
 There had not been much either in the scenery or the 
 circumstances to amuse Mr. Hamley or interest Patricia. 
 When he had pulled up both the windows, tucked him- 
 self and his charge well round in heavy railway rugs, bought 
 the day's papers for himself and a trashy novel for her, he had 
 done all that politeness and the circumstances of the case 
 demanded of him ; and Patricia had borne the feeling of 
 oppression and suffocation consequent on his care as the sacri- 
 fice of self due to him for gratitude. But not even gratitude 
 could make her read the book he gave her. Her education 
 had been lamentably neglected with regard to modern fiction ; 
 and, save Sir Walter Scott and one or two of Dickens's earlier 
 works, she had never read a novel in her life, and had no 
 desire to begin. They seemed such wretched make-believes 
 to her much as an opera seems to a young person of ordinary 
 common-sense perception and a keen idea of fitness, who sees 
 and hears for the first time the hero die in an aria and the 
 heroine go mad in a recitative. All she did, therefore, was to 
 look out of the window ; watching while she could ; feel- 
 ing, as every station with its well-known name was passed 
 and left behind, that she was lengthening her chain of sorrow, 
 cutting off so much from her life ; and when she could no longer 
 watch, dreaming. Meanwhile Mr. Hatnley slept, and when 
 he slept he snored. 
 
 It was a drear, dull day ; one of those late autumn days which 
 seem to have suddenly leapt into winter since yesterday. Here 
 and there a tree, bright with gold and brown, had kept its foli- 
 age in a loose and feathery way still about its branches but 
 for the most part only a few deep red or russet-purple leaves 
 fluttered in the chilly air, like the last good-byes of a friend.
 
 THE HOME-COMING. 63 
 
 Clumps of square-headed rag-wort, a few late hawkweeds, and 
 some shabby tufts of milfoil were the sole representatives of 
 the gracious flowers of spring and summer. The day was raw 
 and damp. Not a bird twittered in the hedges ; and the leaden 
 sky looked as if it would never shine again. All this dreary 
 dullness, all this melancholy of earth and sky, seemed' quite 
 natural to Patricia. She would have been surprised if the sun 
 had shone, and the birds had sung, and the earth had been 
 gay and sweet with flowers. It was not a conscious thought, 
 but it was there all the same the thought that nature was in 
 mourning as well as herself ; and that her uncle's death was 
 known to more than the world at Barsands. 
 
 It was evening when they reached the station which served 
 Milltown for its point of contact with the outer world. In old 
 days when railroads were considered vulgar by some and im- 
 moral by others, Milltown had resolutely refused to be polluted 
 by % iron and steam. The clergyman had preached on the dan- 
 gers to be dreaded by the influx of navvies ; speaking of them 
 poor honest fellows ! as if they had been brigands or bur- 
 glars; the ladies were afraid that their horses would be fright- 
 ened by the engine, and foresaw the most frightful catastro- 
 phes ; and the gentlemen objected to the " strange blood" 
 which the line would introduce among them. Social influence 
 always strong in such a place as Milltown had therefore 
 managed to secure intact the exclusiveness which had been one 
 of the characteristics of this little aristocratic south-coast queen 
 of the sea. A station nine miles off was quite near enough for 
 the conservative respectabilities which ruled in Milltown; and, 
 though some now rather regretted this exclusiveness they 
 were the people who did not keep carriages most gtood by 
 their colours, and thought they and their fathers had decided 
 well in the past. These were the people with carriages and 
 horses, who were able to leave home as often as they liked, and 
 get abroad all the variety that home denied them. To them 
 it was shocking to contemplate the invasion of their cared-for, 
 well-trimmed, garden-like valley by hordes of excursionists 
 from the neighbouring towns; and the idea of retired trades- 
 men, aping gentility, being enabled to rent houses, or maybe 
 buy land and build amongst their own sacred seats, was one 
 not to be borne for an instant. Whether by opening up mar-
 
 64 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 kets and thus causing a brisker trade a railway would do 
 the farmers and smaller shop-keepers good, was not an item in 
 their calculations. It would bring strange residents, London 
 visitors and cheap-trip excursionists; and the Milltown gentry 
 wanted none of them. 
 
 When the train deposited Patricia and her companion they 
 found the Hamley carriages and the Hamley servants waiting 
 for them. Their arrival caused that excitement which the 
 coming of the rich men of the neighbourhood always causes in 
 such places ; and the station-master and the two porters bustled 
 about and ran hither and thither to serve the owner of Abbey 
 Holme with alarcity and zeal. Flies round the honey-pot they 
 buzzed with expectant emphasis ; and to do him justice the 
 great man paid for their buzzing liberally. Though by no means 
 generous by nature, pride disposed Mr. Hamley to public acts of 
 ostentatious liberality; and he understood that a character 
 must be paid for as well as other things more material. He 
 was thus quoted by some as the freest-hearted gentleman 
 of the district ; while others with whom he had graver busi- 
 ness transactions, spoke of him between their teeth as well ! 
 one who would skin a flint and make broth of the remainder. 
 Besides, small as the triumph was, he was pleased that Patri- 
 cia should see the estimation in which he was held when at 
 home. He was aware that he had failed to impress her very 
 profoundly so far as he had gone yet, and he thought that 
 these evidences of his local dignity would do her good. 
 
 All she noticed however was, that the men seemed sickeningly 
 servile ; and she wished they had not bowed so low or said 
 "sir" so often. He, not knowing this, was wonderfully affable 
 to-day, with the affability of a superior person condescending to 
 his brethren of low estate ; and the honey ran over at all sides, 
 to the satisfaction of the limp-backed flies that gathered it. 
 
 Handed ostentatiously to the carriage, Patricia stepped in 
 with the wrong foot first; by which she entangled herself in 
 her dress and had to untwist herself before she sat down. The 
 result was not unlike the action of a dog turning round on the 
 hearth-rug while making his imaginary bed. 
 
 " We must have you instructed how to step into a carriage, 
 my dear," said Air. Hamley blandly, when they had fairly rolled 
 away.
 
 THE HOME-COMING. 65 
 
 "Yes!" she answered. "Is there a right and a wrong 
 way?" 
 
 *' Is there a right and a wrong way t" He gave a scornful 
 kind of snort. " Ask Dora," he added, in the tone of one who 
 propounds something that is indisputable. 
 
 "I suppose Dora understands all these little things per- 
 fectly 1 " Patricia said, by way of courteous question. 
 
 " Little ! Not so very little, let me tell you," Mr. Hamley 
 answered hastily. She was touching his gods and profaning 
 his sacred shrines. He had not been Mrs. Hamley's husband 
 for fifteen years not to have learnt the full value of the minor 
 graces. " These are things which all ladies should understand ; 
 and of which, if you'll excuse me for saying so, you are as ig- 
 norant as a cat. You will have to be learnt them without delay ; 
 and you will never progress if you commence by regarding them 
 as little." 
 
 " I call them little only in comparison with the really great 
 things. I daresay they are quite good and right in themselves, 
 only not so important as some others," said Patricia, with the 
 steady look which Mr. Hamley disliked so much, visible under 
 the carriage-lamp shining full upon them. " Uncle always used 
 to say that if we got the main things right, the rest would come 
 when they were wanted." 
 
 '' I do not exactly see how the main things as you call them 
 and I do not know what you mean either will assist you to 
 step into a carriage with the right foot foremost. And more 
 than this, I cannot allow you to argue with me," said Mr. Ham- 
 ley in a firm, heavy voice. " There is nothing more offensive 
 to my mind than an argufying lady. You will remember this 
 in future, I am sure." 
 
 " But is expressing an opinion arguing t" asked Patricia. 
 
 " There you are ! at it again ! My dear young lady you are 
 positively dreadful ! I say dreadful, and I mean it. What 
 will Mrs. Hamley say to you 1 or dear Dora, the gentlest of her 
 sex ? Dora never argues, never objects. When Dora hears 
 these pert remarks of yours she will be shocked ; I know she 
 will. A very little shocks both Dora and Mrs. Hamley." 
 
 *' I will try not to shock them," said Patricia, patient but as- 
 tounded. Truly life was having its new readings printed heavily 
 for her benefit
 
 g "WHAT AVOfLD YOr DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " You must not ; which is more than trying. And for one 
 thing you must really be less radical than you are now. You 
 are out-and-out the most independent radical for a lady I have 
 ever seen. Positively astonishing ! And wherever you .could 
 have picked it all up, and your uncle the son of a K.C.B. aud 
 the brother of such a woman as Mrs. Hamley, I don't know. 
 
 "But I am not a radical at all, Mr. Hamley," said Patricia, 
 opening her eyes and speaking very earnestly. " I understand 
 nothing about politics, and am neither radical nor tory scarcely 
 indeed know the difference between them !" 
 
 " And I say you are," repeated Mr. Hamley, who had used 
 the word in a provincial and not a political sense ; " so let us 
 have no more discussion. Your duty is to be humble-minded 
 and obedient ; to order yourself lowly and reverently to all 
 your pastors and masters and those who are put in authority 
 over you," he added, with a happy reminiscence of the catechism 
 as the sling and stone he thought would have most effect on 
 this odd young person. 
 
 Patricia was silent. She wondered why, when her dear 
 uncle's lessons had always awakened such a full response in her 
 conscience, such a fervent desire and resolve to live up to all he 
 said, and had seemed to lift her over every little moral difficulty 
 in which she might have been at the time, Mr. Hamlet's only 
 pained and irritated her. What he said was of course the right 
 thing so far as words went, but a certain something in her heart 
 seemed to rebel rather than to acquiesce. 
 
 " You do not agree with me } " then said Mr. Hamley %vith 
 an unpleasant smile. He had been watching her face with its 
 large eyes fixed on the darkening line of hedge and bank, and 
 her lips closed tighter than her lips were wont to close. " You 
 do not perceive the truth of what I say about humble-minded- 
 ness and obedience 1 " 
 
 " Yes I do," said Patricia, still looking out of the window. 
 
 " But you are annoyed that I have said it ? w 
 
 For a minute she was silent. Then she turned to him 
 frankly ; " No, I am not," she said, and put both her hands 
 into his. 
 
 "Very right," said Mr. Hamley with an indescribable as- 
 sumption of superiority. He felt he had conquered and had 
 driven in the thin edge of the wedga " But you need not put
 
 THE HOME COMING. 
 
 your hands into a gentleman's when you speak. Ladies do not 
 do such things in good society," he added, with a patronising 
 smile ; not unkindly, rather the contrary ; the smile of a man 
 who accepts his obligations and fulfils them at any cost, even 
 that of being cold and disagreeable in checking a youthful en- 
 thusiasm towards himself, which however pleasant was per- 
 haps dangerous. 
 
 No more was said after this ; and the carriage rattled on in 
 silence till at last it turned out of the main road into one 
 narrower and even smoother, flanked on each side by high 
 banks topped with hedges, which, dark as it was, Patricia saw 
 were closely trimmed and sheared. 
 
 And here Mr. Hamley said graciously, " We are close on 
 home now. Your home too, my dear, as well as mine, if you 
 are wise and will learn how to conduct yourself like a lady 
 should. And I hope you will find it so, till," laughing, " you 
 meet Mr. Right, and then I reckon it will be, ' Up Killick ! ' 
 and away in no time ! " 
 
 While he was saying this, Patricia understanding only his 
 words and not the sense of them, they were driving through 
 the lodge-gates with the woman who opened them cuit- 
 esying to the very ground ; then through the chestnut 
 avenue of the park, and so to the gates of the garden-lodge, with 
 another woman to open them also curtesying to the ground ; 
 up the shrubbery- drive, and finally to the broad sweep before 
 the hall door. 
 
 The instant they drove up the doors were flung open with a 
 clang, and two dogs, and what seemed to Patricia a crowd of 
 men in scarlet and buff, appeared in the brilliantly-lighted 
 hall. The small dog barked shrilly, and the servants all came 
 forward under the marshalship of a solemn-looking man in 
 black whom Patricia took to be a gentleman, and probably 
 Mr. Hamley's uncle, or a visitor : he was only the butler ; and 
 then Mr. Hamley got out of the carriage he would have called 
 it descended Irom the carriage and the servant offered his 
 arm to Patricia. The poor girl got out rather more awkwardly 
 than she had got in, knocking her hat against the roof, stum- 
 bling over her dress, and taking the man's proffered elbow 
 underhanded, as if it had been a rope. 
 
 Mr. Hamley turned and as a relief to his feelings kicked
 
 68 " WHAT won D you DO, LOVE ? 
 
 the big dog that was standing quite still, leisurely surveying 
 the new-comer. If she had blushed and looked ashamed ho 
 would not have minded so much ; but that " confounded cool- 
 ness of hers," as he called her innocent unconsciousness, an- 
 noyed him perhaps more than her awkwardness. However, 
 there was no help for it. He only hoped the men had not 
 noticed her ; but he made sure they had ; and for them to 
 know that Mrs. Hamley's niece had not been a carriage-lady 
 all her life was a bitter mortification to the former shoeless 
 little street-boy holding horses for coppers, and the present 
 master of Abbey Holme. 
 
 Concealing his annoyance in the best way he could, the 
 butler leading the way, Mr. Hamley took Patricia's hand upon 
 his arm and walked solemnly with her across the hall and 
 through half a dozen ante-rooms to the small drawing-room 
 where they always sat, and where he would present her to her 
 aunt. 
 
 The small drawing-room at Abbey Holme was about thirty 
 feet in length, and of proportionate width ; and to Patricia, 
 accustomed to a sitting-room just a third that size, it looked 
 interminable. It was heavily furnished, but feebly lighted, a 
 couple of silver reading-lamps, casting two little islands of 
 light on two little velvet tables drawn close to the hearth, 
 being the whole of the illumination. By one table sat Mrs. 
 Hamley, by the other Dora Drummond. 
 
 A tall, thin, fashionably-dressed woman, noticeably upright, 
 and with a small waist tightly belted ; wearing her own hair 
 not dyed, but restored as she was careful to tell her friends 
 her scanty puffs and braids, helped out by art, profusely 
 ornamented with white lace and shining black flowers, her 
 rustling black silk gown also glistening with beads and bugles, 
 and multitudinous jet ornaments clinking lightly as she moved 
 her head or hands ; a tall thin woman, with a look partly of 
 ill-health and partly of ill-temper on her pinched and sallow 
 face ; with cold light grey eyes and closely-drawn pale and 
 narrow lips a woman fully twenty years the senior of. her 
 sleek and prosperous husband rose slowly from her seat as the 
 pair came up to where she sat. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Hamley 1 " she said in a thin voice 
 to her husband, shaking hands with him coldly. The Hamley
 
 THE HOME-COMING. 69 
 
 marriage was not one of the caressing sort. " I am glad to see 
 you safe. And is this my niece, Patricia Kemball ] How do 
 you do, Patricia ? How tall you are ! You are like poor 
 Reginald, and like my poor mamma too, I see." 
 
 " How do you do, Aunt Hamley 1 I am very much obliged 
 to you for your kindness in taking me here," said Patricia, in 
 her loud clear voice ; a little subdued, perhaps, because she 
 was partly shy and partly moved, but louder and clearer and 
 fuller than the normal register heard at Abbey Holme. It 
 sounded like a silver trumpet, full, rich, sonorous, after Mrs. 
 Hamley's tinkling wires ; but it was louder than 1 Mrs. Hamley 
 liked, and sounded the note of discordance at the outset. She 
 and Dora Drummond looked at each other, and each under- 
 stood what the other thought. 
 
 " How do you do, Patricia ? " said Dora Drummond in the 
 sweetest flute-like notes. She had a dainty little lisp, especially 
 becoming a catch rather than a lisp and she spoke slowly 
 and softjy. 
 
 Patricia turned and looked at her. She saw a young woman 
 of about four and twenty, of middle height, by so means thin, 
 but of singular grace of line and movement ; she saw a fair 
 face with a small head round which coiled and twisted in- 
 numerable braids of golden hair as smooth and glossy as spun 
 glass; blue eyes with light lashes eyes that did not look straight 
 and steady like her own, but that had the most bewitching little 
 trick of shy observation, fleeting, half ashamed to be caught 
 observing, such glances as Mr. Hamley liked, and which he had 
 once confessed to Simpson the lawyer, when he was making his 
 will, " fetched him, as nothing of the kind had ever done in his 
 life before," but which others had been heard to say they 
 wished were franker and not so sly ; a small, moist, rosy 
 mouth ; a small, round, dimpled chin ; a waist that you could 
 span only eighteen inches ; and dimpled tiny hands, pink and 
 unpractical. This dainty little person was dressed in a pretty 
 costume of peach-blossom set about with black lace and ribbon 
 to mark her share in the family mourning a costume all frills 
 and lace and coquettish arrangements of bows and ends, as 
 beseemed her youth and beauty, and making her graceful figure 
 look more graceful still by contrast with the billowy puffinga 
 which concealed some lines to betray others to greater advan-
 
 70 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 tage. Altogether she was one of the loveliest creatures Patricia 
 had ever seen ; and yet the girl's first movement towards this 
 fairy was one of repulsion. Her second, when Dora looked at 
 her so kindly, spoke to her so softly, and pressed her hands 
 with such tender warmth, was one of gratitude; and with 
 gratitude and admiration together the rest was not difficult. 
 
 Especially graceful and . well-mannered, as was also Aunt 
 Hamley in her own severe way, both women struck the home- 
 bred girl as of a different type and mould from ordinary 
 humanity. Not even Miss Pritchard-had ever invented lessons 
 of deportment that came near to the lovely grace of Dora 
 Drummond, the ladylike self-possession of Aunt Hamley. 
 
 " Now I know, why dear uncle wanted me to have a lady 
 companion," she thought, and looked at Dora with a beaming 
 face that seemed to that young person "infinitely funny." 
 
 She was accustomed to be admired, but not by girls ; and the 
 naivet6 of Patricia's admiration amused her. But she accepted 
 it with a sweet and friendly smile, mentally determining to turn 
 it to good account, if she should ever want a help as olind as 
 Patricia's would be. 
 
 " She will not be my rival, and I will make her my slave," 
 Dora thought, as she looked up with the sweetest friendliness 
 into the clear eyes gazing down so honestly into hers ; and, 
 pressing the large hand that held her taper fingers quite en- 
 closed, suggested that Patricia must be cold, and apologized for 
 standing between her and the fire. Which she was not doing ; 
 but it sounded hospitable to say so. 
 
 On which Mrs. Hamley rang the bell for her maid, and 
 Patricia, under her guidance, was led through hall and passage 
 and corridor, till the way seemed as if it wonld never end. be- 
 fore she was finally ushered into the room assigned her ; where 
 the first thing she did was to draw back the curtains from the 
 window, open the window-shutters, then the window, point 
 with a look of dismay to the huge fire blazing in the grate, and 
 say piteously, "Oh, please take that away ; I never have a fire 
 in my bedroom ! " and altogether show the savage simplicity of 
 her up-bringing to her aunt's prim and genteel maid as clearly 
 as if she had given her a sketch of her whole life, and proved 
 mathematically that Uncle Robert had been " no gentleman," 
 and that she herself was not a whit more of a lady.
 
 THE HOME-COMING. 71 
 
 And while she was upstairs scandalising Bignold by her un- 
 ladylike simplicity of personal habits in the first place, and by 
 her unfashionably cut garments in the second, the three Asses- 
 sors down-stairs were passing judgment on her from first im- 
 pressions. 
 
 " She has a nice face," said Mrs. Hamley ; " but she is dread- 
 fully uncouth." 
 
 " Quite in the rough, Lady, as I told you," said Mr. Hamley, 
 shifting his feet noisily. 
 
 " She will look better when she is better dressed," suggested 
 Dora amiably. " She is untidy now, and looks tired and 
 tumbled. To-morrow perhaps she will be better." 
 
 " There you are out, Dora," said Mr. Hamley ; " she'll be no 
 better to your liking to-morrow than she is to-day. I tell you 
 what it is, Lady," turning to his wife, " you've got your hands 
 full with that young woman, and your work's cut out for you 
 and no mistake ! " . 
 
 " I shall be able to make her all I could wish. She is my 
 own niece," said Mrs. Hamley colniy ; and Mr. Hamley was too 
 well drilled not to be able to note signs with accuracy. 
 
 " No doubt no doubt 1 " he said, spreading out his large hands 
 to the fire. "At all events" with his grand manner; the 
 manner he put on when he wanted to impress women with the 
 consciousness of his bigness and manliness and strength and 
 magnanimity "at all events this is her home, poor young 
 lady, and we must do the best we can for her. What we've 
 done for Dora we'll do for her ; and I'll never grudge the out- 
 lay. Whether she'll turn out as good a job as Dora is another 
 matter ; " here he smiled on his fair cousin ; " but we'll try, 
 Lady, we'll try. Faint heart never won fair lady, and we can't 
 top the hills if we sit down at the foot." 
 
 "You speak as if she was a savage," said Mrs. Hamley 
 tartly. 
 
 " You might have made a worse guess, Lady 1 " replied the 
 brewer composedly.
 
 73 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 FENCED IN. 
 
 ILLTOWN was eminently a residential place. Visitors 
 were discouraged, and the enterprising or impecunious 
 householders who ventured to exhibit " Apartments " 
 in their windows were not well regarded by the gentry, who 
 eeme<i to regard such an announcement as a personal imperti- 
 nence, as well as a liberty, for which the householders deserved 
 reproof. To let lodgings to strangers was held to be a base sac- 
 rifice of Milltown respectability to filthy lucre ; and gentlefolks 
 with a good balance at their bankers are generally strict in their 
 estimate of the mill wherein their poorer brethren grind their 
 corn. 
 
 Being thus residential nothing was done to attract the out- 
 lying public. There was no parade, no evening band, no pier 
 for the display of pretty boots and neat ankles on windy days, 
 no Rooms, and next to no baths. The inhabitants thought it 
 indelicate to bathe ; so there were only two machines : one for 
 the ladies, painted blue and white, and one' for the gentlemen, 
 painted green and black ; and even these the proprietor said he 
 was working at a sacrifice and on the ground of public spirit. 
 
 Though a seaside place, the sea was only a passive adjunct 
 not an active part of Milltown existence, A land-locked placid 
 bay, shallow and barren, it was artistically valuable on account 
 of its colour, and the changing lights lying on its cliffs ; but 
 nearly worthless for fishing and very little used for boating. 
 Only one house in the place had a yacht in the basin within 
 the breakwater. This was the Water Lily, a pretty little toy 
 belonging to the Lowes ; young Sydney Lowe, with his father 
 the Colonel, generally contriving to have all they wished to 
 have, though by no means wealthy people ; indeed, being the 
 most out at elbows of all the Milltown gentry.' But the more 
 nearly insolvent a certain kind of man is the more he contrives 
 to ipend on hia pleasures. Colonel Lowe, of Cragfoot, was this
 
 FENCED IN. 73 
 
 kind of man, and his son Sydney was like him. Being thickly 
 inhabited by the gentry every rood of land had its exclusive 
 owner and its artificial as well as natural value. The very cliffs 
 were fenced off against trespassers ; perpetual attempts were 
 made to stop old-established rights of way, which sometimes 
 succeeded, if at others they failed when some man of more 
 public spirit than his neighbours was personally inconvenienced ; 
 and the open paths across the fields, which were inalienable, 
 were grudgingly marked off by lines of thorns, with fierce warn- 
 ings of prosecution should the narrow strip be departed from ; 
 while all the gates were padlocked and the stiles made unneces 
 sarily high and difficult. It was a jealous, " this is mine, and 
 you have no right here," kind of system that was not good for 
 the higher feeling of the people. 
 
 The country was noted for its garden-}ike neatness. Every 
 hedge and bank for miles round was trimmed and combed like 
 a croquet lawn. No wild flowers were allowed on the Mill- 
 town public waysides ; no trailing growths, rich and luxuriant, 
 to enchant an artist and distress the highway board and private 
 gardeners, twined and hung about the well-clipped hedges of 
 thorn and privet. If you wanted to study botany you must go 
 some five miles or so inland, where a certain stretch of unre- 
 claimed land gave the growths that flourish in peat and neg- 
 lect, as welias affording squatting ground to a few half-starved 
 miserable sinners whom the Milltovvn people regarded with a 
 mixture of fear and contempt, as if they were of another order 
 of beings altogether from themselves. The Milltown people 
 paid no reverence to nature in the rough, and at the best held 
 her as only brute material, without value till man had come 
 with his tools to pare her luxuriance and bring her into subjec- 
 tion: 
 
 If the face of the country was fenced and trimmed and curled, 
 till not a vestige of wild beauty or natural grace was left in 
 it, the society of Milltown was in harmony therewith. It would 
 have been hard to find a more rigidly respectable or more con- 
 ventionalised set of people anywhere, than were those who 
 ordered their lives in this pretty hypasthral prison by the " safe," 
 if untrue, gospel of repression and condemnation. They were 
 all retired admirals and colonels and landed gentry, who lived 
 there ; all emphatically gentlemen, with the Earl of Dovedale at
 
 74 "WHAT WOULD YOU IX), LOVE?" 
 
 the Quest as their patron social saint, when he came down. 
 And up to quite late years not even a millionaire, who had 
 made his millions in trade, would have heen admitted among 
 them. It was a place where the dominant social sentiment-was 
 caste. The gentlefolks were one thing and the commonalty 
 was another ; the one represented the sheep and the elect, and 
 the other the goats and the discarded. The gentry classed 
 these last all together in a lump ; and the idea that they in their 
 turn could he split into minor subdivisions, wherein the baker 
 and the boatman, the fanner and his hind, held different de- 
 grees, seemed to them as ridiculous as the wars of pigmies or 
 the caste distinctions of savages. But the commonalty followed 
 their leaders, and the example of class exclusiveness set in the 
 higher circles was faithfully copied through the lower. 
 
 Milltown was respectable ; as a rule intensely so. No one 
 got into debt publicly, or did wrong openly ; and whatever 
 sins might be committed were all out of sight and covered down. 
 The majority, too, went the right way in politics. No confessed 
 Republican had ever troubled the clear stream of Milltown Con- 
 servatism. The worst of the pestilent fellows who canvassed 
 for the wrong side, voted blue instead of yellow at the elections, 
 and stood up against the rector at board meetings and vestries, 
 were nothing worse than mild Whigs who would have been 
 shocked to have heard themselves classed with Odger and 
 Bradlaugh, or as sympathising with even the " real gentlemen " 
 who had associated their names with advanced oninions. But 
 even mild Whiggism was abhorrent to Milltown respectability, 
 and voted disreputable and low. A confessed Republican or 
 Freethinker would have been considered capable of picking 
 pockets or cutting throats, had he held up his head and testi- 
 fied in the market-place ; and " not regular in his attendance at 
 church," or " not sound," was the worst condemnation that 
 could be given in a society where " chapel people " was used as 
 a term of reproach, and where a gentleman would as soon have 
 put on an apron and sold figs as have gone inside the Wesleyan 
 or the Baptist place of worship. 
 
 The parish church where Mr. Borrodaile, the rector, preached 
 his weekly orthodox sermon on what may be called dogmas of 
 a second intention, not wholly moral nor yet wholly theological, 
 was a fine old building of the Early English style. The services
 
 FENCED IN. 75 
 
 were conducted in what they called " a proper and decent 
 manner." There was no ecclesiastical vagueness at Milltown ; 
 no tampering with the unclean thing in any way. Extreme 
 opinions were tabooed to which side soever they leaned, and 
 enthusiasm was regarded as both vulgar and silly. Ritualism, 
 Evangelicism. or nationalism, an attempt to attain superior 
 spiritual nobleness, or to carry out into actioh the Christian 
 precepts in their simplicity, or to make the services of the 
 church more gorgeous all these things would have been equally 
 despised had they been presented. Milltown prided itself on 
 being English English to the backbone ; and as England was 
 to its mind the Delos of the religious as well .as of the social and 
 political world, and as the Thirty-nine Articles were^iourish- 
 ment enough for the most hungry soul, any line of thought 
 which would have led it a hair's breadth away from ecclesias- 
 tical Christianity as decided by Act of Parliament would have 
 been considered a heresy a'nd a treason. 
 
 The inhabitants did their duty and the rector did his. They 
 went to church; heard what he had to say \\i h more or less 
 attention and more or 4ess personal profit; then went home to 
 what amount of earthly comfort their rents or wages provided, 
 and dismissed the subject of religion till the next Sunday, when 
 they took it up again with their best clothes and a superior 
 dinner. He prepared his smnon, wherein he either exhorted 
 the poor to contentment and honest industry, or lectured his 
 congregation on the sins and temptations to which those of low 
 estate are specially prone (he dropped the subject of the sins of 
 those in high places ) ; of else he said a few words ajiout elemen- 
 tary dogmas, which the more vigorous Wesleyan Minister 
 serving the little chapel by the water-side called milk for babes; 
 then he too went home to his well spread table, where he drank 
 his fine old crusted port and eat his Dartmoor mutton with a 
 good appetite and a tranquil soul, in nowise troubled with dis- 
 turbing applications or vitalising convictions. For the rest, he 
 was fairly active in his degree: he presided over the schools, 
 where he allowed no reading-book but the Bible ; was the head 
 of the Board of Guardians and not guilty of the sin of charity 
 in excess ; sat as a magistrate every Wednesday, like any other 
 gentleman, and mingled the precepts of the pulpit and the 
 judgment of the bench with admirable dialectical skill; gave
 
 76 "WHAT WOULD FOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 hospitable dinners and accepted invitations to the like ; when 
 a few uneasy spirits demanded and organised a workman's 
 reading-room or Mechanics' Institute, as it WMS called, he took 
 care to lead the movement he first tried to suppress, and to 
 have his hand on the rules so as to render the institution 
 " harmless ;" an,d on the whole got through life in a calm easy 
 kind of way, earning his twelve hundred a year without much 
 trouble ; and if but an indifferent shepherd for the lost lambs, 
 making a tolerably inoffensive one to those content to go quietly 
 in the beaten track, undisturbed by doubt, not troubled with 
 over zeal, and unstained by public sin. 
 
 Furthermore, there was the usual sprinkling of widows with 
 marriageable daughters ; of old bachelors who could and yet 
 would not; and of spinsters from whom hope, like chance, had 
 long since fled. Of these last were the two kinds familiar to 
 all who understand provincial life in England : the one strict 
 and severe, who ignored all individual rights as well as the 
 rights of human nature in favour of the conventional law, to 
 whom most things were shocking, and the worst interpretations 
 came easy ; and the other who could read French, had been to 
 London, had a slight tendency to plain speaking, tolerated 
 cigars and did not encourage scandal, and was considered lax 
 by mothers and strong-minded by men. Furthermore still, 
 and different from the rest of the Milltowu world, were Dr. 
 Fletcher and his sister Catherine ; of whom more when their 
 turn comes. 
 
 None of the questions agitating the jrorld outside this little 
 Sleepy Hollow of Philistinism, found a sympathetic echo here. 
 Woman's rights were considered immoral, unrighteous and inde- 
 licate; strikes, and the theory of the rights of labour, were 
 criminal and treasonable; the education of the poor was the 
 knell of England's prosperity ; and the democratic spirit abroad 
 boded the downfall of the empire and the ruin of society. But 
 where all else was evil, one place at least remained pure. Mill- 
 town held itself clear of the prevailing sins, and constituted 
 itself the Zoar of English social order and political righteous-" 
 ness. 
 
 The shopkeepers were the fitting pendants to the gentry. 
 They were of noticeably bland and respectful manners; did not 
 trouble themselves with public questions, which they left to ,
 
 FENCED IN. 77 
 
 those who understood them ; charged high, and preferred yearly 
 bills to ready money. But they did not, as the fishermen and 
 the farmers, think to please the rector by asking for weather 
 prayers according to their own immediate wants, nor speak 
 of rain and drought as the consequences of topographical ini- 
 quities. To sum up in a word ; all through, the gentlefolks 
 were the masters of the situation, and the " common people " of 
 all degrees were made to understand that they existed prima- 
 rily for the comfort of those gentlefolks, and only secondarily 
 for their own. 
 
 It was a bold thing for Mr. Hamley to decide on forcing his 
 way into such a custe society as this of Milltown. But Mr. 
 Hamley 's ideal masculine virtue was will, and he lived up to 
 his pattern. He put small faith in chance and less in Provi- 
 dence, and believed in no towers of strength of which a man 
 .does not make the bricks by his own exertions. He laughed 
 'at the idea of luck, and preached frequent after-dinner sehnons 
 "on the text that " conduct is fate." Unconsciously paraphras- 
 ' ing the axiom which tells each French soldier he carries a mar- 
 shal s baton in his knapsack, if he has but the wit to find it, he 
 vigorously maintained, in positive accents if his grammar was 
 shaky, that success is within the reach of all men, independent 
 even of the first start, and that it is merely a question of energy 
 and will whether a man wears broadcloth or fustian, and lives 
 in a palace or dies in a hovel. 
 
 "Look at me," he used to say, tapping his spread fingers on 
 his ample chest ,while his thumbs were hooked into his waist- 
 coat arniholes. " What qpade me 1 Energy and will. What 
 has ruined scores of other men ? Want of energy and will. 
 Set your teeth, sit square, and go at it as if the devil was be- 
 hind you. That is what I have done, gentlemen, and where 
 am I ? At Abbey Holme, from office-boy at Ledbury's on six : 
 pence a day ^id find yourself. And those who have not sat 
 square and gone^at it, but smouched and slouched and wanted 
 this help and-^hat lift I'd lift them, the lazy dogs ! are just 
 where they were when they commenced." 
 
 These sermons, practically self-laudations, were apt to run 
 into space in rather a formidable way ; and his hearers often 
 wished he was back at Ledbury's, that they might have the 
 privilege of telling him to " shift-up " or of " cuffing his head "
 
 78 "WHAT WOULD vor tx>, LOVE?" 
 
 if he went on. But a prosperous man never fails to find prac- 
 tical patience where he has won acceptance ; and the men who 
 stifled the most yawns were sure to cry " Hear, hear ! " the 
 oftenest, and to shake bands with him with most ostentatious 
 friendliness when he had finished. After all, Milltown was only 
 the world in little, and its clean-handed Pharisaism was never 
 BO clean as to damage its own interests. 
 
 Mr. Harnley, setting himself to conquer this caste-berklden 
 society, had succeeded. Step by step he had climbed the lad- 
 der dexterously and boldly now from an orifice- boy to a clerk, 
 now from a clerk to a junior partner, then to be that senior 
 partner himself, and finally to be sole possessor of the brewery 
 which had made the fortunes of all its sole possessors time out 
 of mind. And when he was firmly established there he made 
 an offer of marriage to Miss Kemball, the very poor and very 
 genteel daughter of Admiral Sir Robert Kemball, K.C.B., 
 whose relations with the upper classes would put the finishing 
 touch to his success. And Miss Kemball, being then past fifty 
 and wholly dependent on her brothers, who were very nearly 
 as poor as herself, while Jabez Hamley was a showy young 
 man worth a great many thousands, swallowed her disgust for 
 his low birth, for his inherent vulgarity, for his rodent teeth, 
 his bushy black whiskers and his indefinite syntax, and married 
 him ; with misgivings ; but with a determination never to let 
 the world see that she repented her decision. He, on his part, 
 determined the same. Thus the marriage had kept together 
 with a wonderful show of harmony, and had accomplished all 
 on either side for which both had so!4 themselves. Tims again, 
 the result sanctifying the event, it had become respectable in 
 the eyes of the Milltownians ; and as Mrs. Hamley was cer- 
 tainly a lady, and Mr. Hamley a man of irreproachable charac- 
 ter though he had sprung from nothing a man, too, of the 
 right political colour, and rich, why, society relaxed its exclu- 
 sive rule in his favour ; which however was not to be taken as 
 a precedent Gradually house after house opened to him ; and 
 the wealthy brewer sat as an equal at the table of the men who 
 had given him pence in bygone days and had sent him into the 
 yard to get a hunch of bread from the cook. 
 
 The only house to which he had not yet been invited was 
 the Quest ; but from information received lie had reason to be-
 
 lieve that he would not be passed over this season, and that 
 his humble suit ami service of many years would at last meet 
 with its reward. For Mr. Hamley had always been a far-see- 
 ing kind of man. He had early taken the measure of the 
 heaven into which he desired to be admitted, and had ordered 
 himself and his ways accordingly. Having set out in life de- 
 termined to conquer society, he had been scrupulously careful 
 never to offend it. No one could recall an offensive word from 
 him against his social superiors or the institutions of his coun- 
 try. He had always been a good Conservative and a staunch 
 upholder of the aristocracy. He professed a romantic attach 
 ment for the Queen and Royal-Family, and whenever he could 
 bring in " the throne and altar" with effect, he did. To have 
 done otherwise would have been suicidal, a fouling of his own 
 future nest which, one day, who knows ? might also harbour 
 eagles. 
 
 But no one had yet seen Mr. Hamley in power, or with the 
 neck of one of those gentlemen who had flung him coppers in 
 times past, ignored him in his earlier efforts, and only recognised 
 him now when he had bought them by his possessorship of 
 Abbeyjiloline, under his heel. When that day came, the man 
 whose neck was uftffer his heel might be pitied. 
 
 He was also strong on the subject of sex ; holding the doc- 
 trine of tne rougher rights of men, and the gentler privileges 
 of ladies ; ajjjd,, while denying anything like elemental equality, 
 conceding, asMias been said, all kinds of social superiority. 
 His fa^Mfite simile, wnich was evidently not original, was that 
 men were as the oak, born to brave the battle and the breeze ; 
 woman, the clinging ivy. This doctrine applied only to ladies ; 
 in the rougl, women of the people, servants, pea- 
 sants, and the like, he \tas simply what only one word can ex- 
 press brutal. 
 
 An old servant who had lived with him in his bachelor days, 
 once heard him bring out this favourite flourish of his about 
 the oak and the ivy. 
 
 " Ah, oak and ivy 's all very well when you've got friends at 
 your back to look after you," she said, setting her lips tight, 
 " but what I say is, it's the toad and the harrow when. you 
 haven't ; and it ain't pleasant for the toad. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley approved her husband's doctrines, if sometimes
 
 t> " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 his manner of setting them forth made her feel that to be even 
 mistress of Abbey Holme had its drawbacks. For her own 
 part she advocated domestic discipline, as well as upheld theo- 
 retical feminine submission. Her central creed was the plasti- 
 city of human nature when taken young and firmly handled ; 
 and absolute obedience to social ordinances stood in her mind 
 next in importance to obedience to the Ten Commandments. 
 She had no tolerance for the wild humours, the erratic notions, 
 the wayward fancies of youth. She liked all things to be in 
 order ; and minds and hearts with the rest. There was one 
 settled and unalterable way of right, to her thinking, and every 
 divergence therefrom was distinctly wrong. The doctrine of 
 venial faults revolted her ; and she refused to admit the plea 
 of extenuating circumstances, whatever the provocation. She 
 was one of those women who can look neither before nor after, 
 and for whom their own country, day, style of living, and 
 manner of thought, their own views, ways, habits, friends, and 
 associations are all focussed exactly right, and are impossible 
 to be bettered. She had an odd irrational kind of opposition 
 to people and things that were different from herself ; as if she 
 had been born absolute in taste and judgment, and what she 
 did not like was therefore deserving of condemnation. Thus, 
 she could nor tolerate foreigners nor dissenters nor free-think- 
 ers in any sense ; and she disliked even friends and backers 
 who went a hair's breadth beyond herself. If thev, did, steeped 
 in opposition as she was, she used to turn round and demolish 
 her former theory, leaving them dismayed and discomfited. 
 She wanted only the exact echo of her opinions, the most nicely 
 graduated reproduction ; and those who gave more gave too 
 much. She had a good intellect of its kind ; but she was too 
 positive in her assertions, and too inaccurate in her facts, to be 
 a pleasant conversationalist. She was unable to reason to a 
 point, and always got angry over an argument. Her religious 
 views were sharply defined and entirely unelastic, and she was 
 equally hostile to doubt as to enthusiasm. No inconvenient 
 spiritualism for her; still less the anguish of struggling souls 
 seeking fur a better way and a truer light. The world has all 
 it wants, she used to say ; and modern English society is the 
 final outcome of the Best. 
 She was by temperament grave, by temper fretful ; seldom
 
 FENCED IN. 81 
 
 laughed, often chided ; she could do generous things on a large 
 scale, but she was mean in small matters, and though not un- 
 kind, must be supreme. For though she talked of feminine 
 submission as much as Mr. Hamley talked of masculine au- 
 thority, and inculcated it on others, somehow she seemed to 
 exempt herself from the rank of womanly slaves, and was al- 
 ways tho mistress, absolute and autocratic. 
 
 This was quite well understood at Abbey Holme ; and Mr. 
 Hamley, though he might stick his thumbs into his armholes 
 and play tunes on his chest, never in her presence commanded 
 man nor maid, uttered a decided opinion of his own, nor dif- 
 fered from hers, nor indeed held his own flag aloft in any way. 
 She was always referred to humbly as " Lady," and he fol- 
 lowed in her wake deferentially. 
 
 In some things indeed she honestly possessed him. She had 
 had a better education than he, and made no difficulties on the 
 score of conjugal delicacy in showing him where he tripped 
 and how he had exposed his ignorance. And when a woman' 
 has sufficient strength of mind to do this very often, and al- 
 ways quietly, she is sure to end by subjugating her husband, 
 whatever his number of inches ; and, perhaps, the bigger the 
 man the more thorough his subjugation. Then she was invari- 
 ably self-possessed, and always in the attitude of a superior 
 being. She allowed no enthusiasm, no loud laughter, no noise, 
 no fun, no rudeness in her presence. Life with her must be 
 well-oiled in all its hinges, and regulated by the strictest rules 
 of common-sense. She went regularly to church twice on Sun 
 days ; not because she felt the need or the comfort of going to 
 church, but because it was the right thing to do as an example 
 to the common people, and what was owing to the rector as a 
 gentleman whose function it was to read the service and preach 
 for five-and-twenty minutes after. And she had morning and 
 evening prayers at home ; the latter punctually at ten ; because 
 it was respectable and might do the servants good, and cer- 
 tainly enabled her to see that they were all safe under the roof 
 and sober. But when she said in those prayers, which she 
 herself read, that she was a worm and a miserable sinner, she 
 said the words with no more inward conviction than if she had 
 confessed she was an elephant or a giraffe. They were words with 
 her, no more ; and she did not feel a wish to make them more, 
 F
 
 62 WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 Between these two, Dora Drummond, Mr. Hamley's young 
 cousin, had had but a compressed kind of existence during the 
 ten-years of her adoption. Masculine supremacy on the one 
 hand, and feminine discipline on the other, had taken all the 
 courage out of a nature never brave nor strong, and more 
 prone to yield than to withstand. Her sole object was to 
 avoid contention and secure peace ; and as she found sub- 
 mission easier than fighting for freedom, she slipped under 
 the yoke with perfect grace and obedience, and gave no more 
 trouble to the authorities at Abbey Holme than Patricia had 
 given at Barsands. But the difference of method by which 
 these two girls had been taught obedience was not inconsider- 
 able. Neither were the results. 
 
 This then was the kind of place into which Patricia came 
 from the freedom, the happiness, the practical democracy of 
 Barsands. Not a line of the old ruling remained to her. Even 
 the se, her old friend and playmate, was not the sea of her 
 love. Tamed down to a mere mill-pond, it seemed to have lost 
 all the life and meaning it had when it came lashing round the 
 cliffs and foaming over the Gridiron out on that wild Cornish 
 coast. And even such as it was ahe could not see it. Her win- 
 dows at Abbey Holme looked only on a steep bank of trimmed 
 and patterned flower-beds surmounted by the wall which hid 
 the offices. Now, in the late autumn time, when there were no 
 flowers to fill them, the beds were ribboned with coloured 
 stones ; which Patricia admired about as much as she admired 
 earrings, rouge, or face -powder. 
 
 If the place was inharmonious, the life at Abbey Holme was 
 even more so. Into that sternly -fashioned method of existence, 
 so still and so subdued, her breezy vigour came with a kind of 
 tempestuous force that frightened Dora, horrified Aunt Ham- 
 ley, and disgusted Aunt Hamley's husband. Voice, step, man- 
 ner, gesture, everything carried with it the impression of a 
 whirlwind to these quiet, well-regulated people ; and Mrs. 
 Hamley often said, with her lips drawn close, that she looked 
 after her when she left the room, expecting to see her leave 
 sticks and straws behind her. She was so noisy ! so unsubdued ! 
 lamented the poor old lady who would have been glad to have 
 loved her dead brother's child if she could have brought her 
 down to the proper point of discipline. She seemed as if lie
 
 FENCED IN. 83 
 
 should have been a boy, not a girl, she was so distressingly 
 strong and healthy, so large altogether ! And how obtuse ! It 
 was impossible to make her understand anything unless it was 
 put into the plainest language; and as for a hint, you might as 
 well expect a blind man to see you beckon to him as Patricia 
 to receive a hint. .How different from dear Dora's marvellous 
 delicacy of perception, and that tact which was almost like 
 another sense ! 
 
 Mrs. Hamley had some reason for this last lamentation, for 
 Patricia was indeed impervious to all the lessons conveyed by 
 the way of dignified carriage and silent reproof. When Aunt 
 Hamley answered her loud and frankly-worded questions in a 
 voice so low and level that the girl's quick senses could hardly 
 catch the words answered her vaguely, without looking at her, 
 never if possible giving her the information she asked, saying, 
 " I do not know," when the thing was part of her very exist- 
 ence, and speaking with a deep sigh and an oppressive polite- 
 ness Patricia used to think that perhaps poor Aunt had a 
 headache; poor Aunt often seemed to have headaches; and she 
 used to look at her so compassionately that Mrs. Hamley some- 
 times rebuked her for her pertinacity, and told her sharply 
 that it was ill-bred to stare. 
 
 When the girl wished to surround her with those little at- 
 tentions which some girls like to show their elders, and which 
 certain women hate to receive unasked when she carried 
 sacred pillows as if they had been kittens by the middle under 
 her arm sacred pillows from sacred sofas, which dear Dora 
 would not have deranged for worlds and wanted to stuff them 
 into Aunt's easy chair where they did not lit, and only threw 
 her too far forward and made her uncomfortable ; when she 
 plunged about for foo.tstb'ols, and denuded corners of their 
 rightful ornaments, and made a commotion for kindness, when 
 all that Mrs. Hamley asked was peace and quietness ; the poor, 
 starched, self-centred lady thought she should have gone dis- 
 tracted. She could not bear it ; nor did she attempt to conceal 
 that her niece's zeal without discretion made her headache 
 worse than ever. 
 
 She used to call dear Dora to undo in her quiet, gliding, 
 soothing way what Patricia had done with such enthusiastic 
 goodwill and tumultuous philanthropy. And then Patricia
 
 84 " WHAT WOULD YOU IX), LOVE ? " 
 
 used to feel snubbed in spite of her determination to see only 
 the best side of everything, and to be satisfied with her fate 
 whatever it was. She used to wonder vaguely what it all 
 meant, and how it was she so evidently failed to please when 
 she tried so hard. After which she would redouble her efforts 
 by the very fact of her failure ; continuing in the vicious circle 
 that never knew a break for better things. ' If her aunt had 
 only spoken to her straightly and kindly, the whole thing 
 would have been put right. But she wanted her to divine 
 what she would not explain ; and then was annoyed at her 
 denseness of perception. 
 
 Perhaps the person most to be pitied at this time was Dora. 
 She knew exactly where the hitch was, but she had not suffi- 
 cient generosity or truth either to warn Patricia or to defend 
 her. She was of the order of false prophets who prophesy 
 smooth things, and cry peace when there is no peace. She was 
 of those who are all things to all men, and always adopted the 
 colours of her company. She played echo in private to Mrs. 
 Hamley's complainings and agreed with her that Patricia was a 
 dreadful infliction, and the most badly brought-up young person 
 of her degree to be found within the four seas. But she was 
 careful not to go a line beyond her pattern ; else, if she had, 
 Mrs. Hamley would have been down on her for injustice, and 
 would have taken Patricia's part with vigour if acridity. 
 
 To Patricia, when alone, she was sweet and flattering as if to 
 atone for the burden of snubbing she had to bear ; but in pub- 
 lic, before the Hamleys, she was quite well-bred but not even 
 familiar, still less affectionate ; which sometimes amazed Patri- 
 cia, and seemed to make her whole life a thaumatrope where 
 things jumped about and changed places, she could not tell how 
 or why. For the matter of that however, she had fallen in 
 love, girl-like, with Mr. Hamley':; pretffy, graceful, well-man- 
 nered young cousin ; and love with Patricia meant the patience 
 as well as the steadfastness of loyalty. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Hamley looked on and chuckled. It was a 
 triumph to him, and he enjoyed it. That the blood-cousin of 
 Ledbury's office-boy should be such an undoubted success, and 
 the grand-daughter of Admiral Sir Robert Kemball, K.C. B., 
 such an undeniable failure, tickled him between the ribs of his 
 vanity deliciously. He took no open part in the small femi-
 
 FENCED IN. 85 
 
 nine warfare going on in the drawing-room, further than by 
 almost ignoring Patricia altogether ; for which he received 
 more than one sharp rebuke from Mrs. HamJey in private, and 
 a cold demand whether he did not think her niece deserved a 
 little more courtesy at his hands ? But he knew too well the 
 shaky character of the ground he had to traverse daily to act 
 on the spirit of this rebuke. If he had befriended Patricia in 
 the smallest degree, he would have been called to order on the 
 charge of affording comfort and support to a rebel ; and, of the 
 two, he thought the attitude of non intervention the safer. 
 
 *
 
 86 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DORA DEMONSTRATES. 
 
 ATRICIA had been about a month at Abbey Holme, and 
 things had not mended. She still filled the domestic 
 atmosphere with sticks and straws, and still made poor 
 Aunt's headaches greatly worse by her endeavours to make them 
 better ; fighting bravely the while against the material and 
 moral inharmoniousness of her life, and refusing to confess to 
 herself how unutterably lonely and misplaced she was. She 
 had never greater need than now of all her courage and all her 
 cheerfulness. Overheated rooms ; no personal liberty ; no fresh 
 air ; no exercise for she did not call driving in a close car- 
 riage, with only one window open a couple of inches, either 
 fresh air or exercise ; the staple occupation of the day needle- 
 work enlivened by novel -reading aloud and the stories such 
 trash ! thought unimaginative Patricia, who had not matricu- 
 lated in the college of light literature, and who cared for 
 nothing that was not true ; cards in the evening be"zique, or 
 three-handed whist and she did not know a king from an ace, 
 and could not learn the simplest rules ; food a world too rich 
 and too frequent for a girl brought up as she had been on the 
 plainest fare, and who, naturally unsensual, had been taught 
 asceticism over and above a girl whose appetite for bread and- 
 butter, at its highest point, was never satisfied at a table which 
 gave everything but simplicity, cold water, and reasonable 
 " rounds" : all these things together were as much as her strong 
 health could bear without breakitng up under the change. Add 
 to material circumstances so uncongenial, a life of moral repres- 
 sion, of lovelessness, and the sentiment of being always in dis- 
 grace, and it is easy to understand that if Patricia was not an 
 acquisition, for her own part, to the new world which had re- 
 ceived her, this new world was not of the kind to give her 
 happiness or to bring out the best that was in her. 
 Cue day, after she had been making more than her usual 
 
 I
 
 DORA DEMONSTRATES. 87 
 
 amount of whirlwind in the drawing room, and had been snub- 
 bed with even more than Aunt Hamley's usual amount of cold 
 acerbity, she went up-stairs to her own room to overcome a 
 certain miserable sensation of loneliness and mistake which 
 threatened to overcome her. 
 
 When she had gone Mrs. Hamley laid her work and her 
 hands into her lap with a gesture of angry despair. Dora looked 
 at her, and laid her work down too with a look of sympathetic 
 annoyance. 
 
 " Dora," said Mrs. Hamley severely, " I had hoped that you 
 would have helped me in this affliction, this trial, as I may call 
 it. For though she is my own niece, and I should wish to love 
 her and do my duty by her, she is an affliction all the same, 
 wretched child ! I have been disappointed in you, Dora. You 
 have shown less than your usual tact, and not the amiability 
 I might hae expected from you." 
 
 " I am sorry that I have failed in any way, dear," said Dora 
 sweetly. " What can I do to help you ? I will do anything I 
 can, as you know." 
 
 She spoke with her slight lisp and put on her prettiest air of 
 feminine subjection ; and Mrs. Hamley telt a little relief in 
 remonstrating severely with so unresisting a creature. It 
 soothed her, on the principle of passing it on. 
 
 " Why do you ask me what you are to do?" she answered 
 irritably. "Does not your own common-sense tell you? have 
 you no conscience to dictate your duty? You ought to talk to 
 her, Dora, and tell her not to be so noisy and officious, not to 
 speak till she is spoken to, and not to take so much on herself. 
 It will come easier from you than from me, and perhaps you 
 v. ill have more influence than I should have." 
 
 " I will tell her, of course, if you like, dear," said Dora, des- 
 perately troubled in spite of her suave manner. She did not 
 want to wound Patricia any more than to offend Mrs. Hamley. 
 For if it was difficult for her to refuse a request, or to stand up for 
 her own rights, it was still more difficult to voluntarily offend. 
 Face-to-face aggression was not in Dora Drummond's way, and 
 she would have rather Mrs. Hamley had deprived her of every 
 fcind of enjoyment for a week than have bidden her do this thing. 
 
 " Yes, it will come better from you," said Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 " YOU horrid old coward 1 " thought dear Dora, with a timid,
 
 88 -WHAT wouin yon no, LOVE?" 
 
 plaintive little smile that meant the sweetest, most complying 
 submission. 
 
 "You are girls together, and can make her understand her 
 position here and her duties better than I," continued the lady. 
 "Take her out for a walk to-day. You can talk better when 
 you are walking than driving. You have not been out for a 
 walk, too, for a long while, and it will do you good : you are 
 looking quite pale for want of exercise, Dora ; you sit far too 
 much in the house and then you can talk to her. But don't 
 go beyond the town, and don't let her think that I have told you 
 to speak to her. I want it to come as if naturally from yourself ; 
 as indeed it would have done if you had had as much common- 
 sense as I always gave you credit for." 
 
 " Very well, dear, I will go and I will do my best," said Dora 
 with graceful obedience ; very quiet in action but a little flushed, 
 her eyes eager beneath their long, light, silky lashes as she put 
 away her embroidery, deliberately, noiselessly, neatly, as she 
 did all things. 
 
 She kissed Mrs. Hamley on her forehead, and saw that her 
 ready obedience had dispersed the little cloud and reinstated 
 her in her old place of prime favourite } then went to her own 
 room, where she first wrote a short note very rapidly, and when 
 this was finished ran lightly along the thickly-carpeted corridor 
 to Patricia's room. She found her also writing to Gordon 
 Frere ; not saying that she was unhappy, but unconsciously 
 showing that she was so by the very pains she took to conceal it. 
 
 " Busy, dear 1" said Dora, putting in her gracious head as if 
 timidly asking; permission through the half-opened door. 
 
 " Oh, no, not if you want me ! " cried Patricia, attentive, up- 
 right, alive at all points as usual. " Come in do come in ! " 
 
 "Thanks. I came to ask you if you would go for a walk 
 with nve," said Dora, gliding forward and carefully shutting the 
 door after her. 
 
 " Yes, indeed, that I will," Patricia answered with unneces- 
 sary alacrity. " I am longing for a walk ! It seems a year 
 sinc^ I had a breath of fresh air." 
 
 "Good gracious ! what do you call this ?" said Dora, shiver- 
 im? as she pointed to the open window. " Sitting with the 
 widow open, and no fire even, just before Christmas! I won- 
 dwr it does not kill you 1 "
 
 DORA DEMONSTRATES. 89 
 
 " No, it is the only thing that keeps me alive, I think. But 
 I need not torture you, dear," said Patricia, shutting down the 
 window as she spoke ; and as she shut it with good will she did it 
 somewhat noisily. " If you only knew, Dora, how I long some- 
 times for the great strong wind of Barsands !" she went on to say. 
 " I feel as if I should like to sit on the top of an iceberg in a 
 gale of wind after I have been down in the drawing-room for a 
 few hours. How you and -Aunt Hamley can bear the stifling 
 heat and want of fresh air of your lives is more surprising to 
 me than my open windows can be to you." 
 
 " Then you are not happy here ] " said Dora, going nearer 
 to her and laying her hand on her shoulder. 
 
 " Don't think me ungrateful indeed, I am not that ! " an- 
 swered Patricia hastily ; " but I do miss the boating and fresh 
 air and freedom of the old life ! This seems to me like being 
 in a hot-house prison in comparison." She drew a long breath, 
 and looked out on the beds of coloured stone that rose up close 
 against her window, surmounted by the grey stone wall which 
 shut out all view of the country beyond ; her eyes full of infi- 
 nite yearning, and the brave, cheerful face saddened. 
 
 " We have been use'd to such a different life from yours," 
 said Dora soothingly. " It must be strange to you." 
 
 " Yes, it is," said Patricia simply, and sighing. 
 
 " I should like to make you happy," continued Mr. Hamley's 
 cousin, her lips quivering slightly. She was skating round the 
 central subject, and amiable coward as she was, she did not like it. 
 
 " If I could be always alone with you I should be happy," 
 said Patricia. " I daresay it is my own fault that I do not get 
 on so well with my aunt and Mr. Hamley as I ought. They 
 don't seem to understand what I mean sometimes, and perhaps 
 I do not understand them ; but with you it is different when 
 we are alone," she added by an after-thought; " then I am quite 
 happy ! " 
 
 Dora kissed her with her butterfly kind of kiss. " You dear 
 little thing, you know I like you, don't you ?" she said to the 
 tall girl who stood a couple of inches or more above her, and . 
 whose strong hand was like a man's compared with her own 
 useless little compress of rose-leaves. 
 
 " I hope so," answered Patricia, looking at her fondly. 
 
 " Hope 1 " remonstrated Dora.
 
 90 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " Sometimes I think you do, and sometimes I think yon do 
 not," said Patricia candidly. " At all events" frankly, warmly 
 " I love you Dora, and would do anything in the world I 
 could for you ; and that you know." 
 
 Dora gave a graceful little deprecatory shrug. ' But there 
 is nothing in me to like," she said sweetly, glancing at herself 
 in the glass and putting up her hand to smooth back her glossy 
 hair. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Patricia, who took everything literally. " How 
 can you say so, Dora ! Why, you must know what a darling 
 you are ! " 
 
 Dora cast up her blue eyes shyly. This love-making between 
 girls seemed to her odd beyond measure ; but she was glad of 
 it, as it made her task so much the easier. 
 
 " Do you really think so ] That is because you are so nice 
 and good yourself,"' she said. 
 
 " No ; it is because you are so nice and good," flung back 
 Patricia as antistrophe. 
 
 " You dear thing ! " breathed Dora. "If you think so, really 
 and truly, and do not merely flatter me, you must let me be your 
 guide and mentor here." She was looking at Patricia steadily 
 enough for her, but lisping more than usual. " You see, dear, 
 I am worlds older than you, a,nd I can tell you some things, 
 perhaps, you do not know." 
 
 " Every kind of thing," said Patricia. 
 
 "No, not quite that, but some things. For instance, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Hamley are the dearest people in the world, and I 
 am immensely fond of them as indeed I ought to be, for they 
 have done everything for me but they are just a little particu- 
 lar and peculiar. I can quite see where you will rub against 
 their angles, you dear thing, and get into trouble, if you do not 
 take care. I know them so well, the dears ! and you do not, 
 you see." 
 
 " But I only want to please them," said Patricia, opening her 
 eyes. " I try all day long to please my aipt. It is my duty, 
 you know," she added gravely. 
 
 " Yes, I know that, dear," Dora said, looking down. " But," 
 raising her eyes suddenly as if a thought had just struck her, 
 " wanting is not enough we have to learn how ; and you must 
 learn how."
 
 DORA .DEMONSTRATES. 91 
 
 " Tell me -where T fail ; I will learn anything from you," said 
 Patricia in her loud, clear, open voice. 
 
 " That is very nice of you ; so let me give you your first 
 lesson," lisped Dora. "Do not speak so loud; Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hamley do not like it. ^They have a hoicor of all noise. Don't 
 you notice how softly every one speaks here, and how silently 
 every one moves about, and how quiet the whole house is 1 " 
 
 " Yes, and I thought I spoke softly too. T am sure I do 
 ever so much more than I used at Barsands ; for dearest uncle 
 was a little deaf, and I had to raise my voice there. But here 
 I thought I spoke as soft as possible !" 
 
 Dora gave a little smile. It was a faint, evanescent little 
 smile, but it was eloquent. 
 
 " Do you really mean to say, Dora, that I speak too loud 1 " 
 
 " Rather," said Dora in the tones that conveyed the sense ot 
 " very much." 
 
 " I feel stronger and bigger than you and Aunt Hamley, cer- 
 tainly," Patricia went on in a reflective kind of way. " Am I 
 too strong and big for you 1 " 
 
 " A little," repeated Dora. 
 
 " I did not feel so at Barsands, but somehow I feel different 
 altogether here," said Patricia sorrowfully. 
 
 At that moment she felt as if she was all wrong everywhere. 
 Hitherto so unconscious, never thinking of herself, scarcely 
 knowing whether she was tall or short, dark or fair, she sud- 
 denly awakened to the perception of a vulgar, ungainly, un- 
 lovable personality of which she had been wholly ignorant. It 
 was not so much wounded vanity that she felt, as sorrow that 
 she was so disagreeable to others ; and how horrible she must 
 be to Dora ! Tears stood in her eyes, but even Dora could see 
 that they were something deeper and purer than tears of mere 
 petty girlish vexation. 
 
 " But now that I have told you, dear, you will try to im- 
 prove, will you not]" Dora asked . coaxingly, sorry to see her 
 humiliation but glad of her sensitiveness. 
 
 " Yes, I will try. I am sorry I am so big and loud," said 
 Patricia humbly. 
 
 " Yes, it is a pity," said Dora in a matter-of-fact way. " And 
 now that we are on the subject, let me give you a word of 
 advice about Mrs. Hamley. Dear thing, she is just what
 
 92 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 shall I say ? the least bit in the world fidgety ; and you must 
 not fidget her if you want to please her." 
 
 " But do I ? " asked Patricia, in the same surprised way as 
 that in which she had asked if her voice was loud. 
 
 " Dreadfully," said Dora. . 
 
 "Dora? how?" 
 
 " By fussing about her; bringing her cushions and footstools, 
 and wanting her to have tea, and all that kind of thing." 
 
 " But if she has a headache ? It seems so unkind to leave 
 her to herself and do nothing !" urged Patricia. 
 
 " I think you will find that the wisest plan though," said 
 Dora dryly. " I know her better than you do, and my advice 
 to you is not to notice her headaches, and never to ask her if 
 you shall bring anything or do anything for her till she tells 
 you. You never see me fuss about her as you do." 
 
 " No, but then I am her niece," said Patricia naively. 
 
 Dora shot a glance at her from under her lashes that was not 
 quite so dovelike as her usual glances. 
 
 " And I have lived with her all these years," she said quietly, 
 "and am like her own child. Which do you think has the 
 most right to take things on herself, you or I ? And if I do 
 not hang about her, and worry her with requests to do this for 
 her, or jump up to fetch that without asking her if I may, and 
 without her telling me that I am to do so, need you, do you 
 think ? " 
 
 " No ; I see you are right," said Patricia. 
 
 " You do not mind my saying all this to you, dear ? it is only 
 for your own good," then said Dora with a little sigh. Her 
 corvfo was accomplished, and she was glad it had been so easy 
 glad, too, that Patricia had been so obtuse in some directions 
 if so amiably impressible in others. 
 
 "Mind 1 I am very much obliged to you !" cried the poor 
 girl. " I only wish I was like you, Dora, and then I should be 
 all right. No, I do not," she added with sudden reflection. 
 " I am better as I am for my own life ; for if I had been like 
 you when the Mermaid went to pieces we should have all been 
 drowned. You would never have held on ; and you would have 
 fainted when you were hauJed up ; and then there would not 
 have been time to have saved dear uncle and Gordon. Oh, 
 Dora I it was awful to look down and see that tremendous aurf,
 
 DORA DEMONSTRATES 93 
 
 and the poor little Mermaid just like a live thing beaten to 
 death, and dear uncle and Gordon on board her, looking as if 
 they must go to the bottom at every wave. I shall never forget 
 that moment ; and I dream of it so often. Ah, that was real ! " 
 
 And all these petty crosses and distresses and tempers and 
 un fitnesses, they were not real, her heart said. They were fac- 
 titious, rootless ; and as she looked back the truth of the past 
 overshadowed the small and wearying falsehood of the present ; 
 and she forgot the ugly self just revealed to her, and the loud 
 voice and the officious activities of her misplaced sense of 
 duty; and even the importance of Aunt Harnley's headaches 
 was diminished in her vivid recollection of the living love of 
 Barsands, and the desperate peril of that awful hour. 
 
 " Well, don't think of it any more just now," said Dora 
 briskly. She was disinclined by temperament to things sad 
 or horrible. " The best of the day is going and we must 
 have our walk." ^ 
 
 " Very well," said Patricia, shaking back her hair, and 
 brushing her hand over her eyes as if to free them from some 
 picture that would remain in them. " I shall be ready in a 
 minute." 
 
 " And I not for ten," lisped Dora, laughing. " But then I 
 take pains with myself, and am more particular than you how 
 I put on my things." 
 
 This was meant as another lesson ; for the girl's want of 
 personal trimness annoyed Aunt Harnley almost as much as 
 her overplus of attention. But hints were Lost on Patricia, and 
 her toilet was performed to-day in the old rapid way of yester- 
 day and as it would be to morrow Dora thought disdainfully, 
 unless she was fairly forced to pay more regard to herself. 
 What an uncouth, clumsy, horrid way of bringing up a girl ! 
 she thought again, scanning here an end adrift and there a tie 
 askew. Captain Kemball could not have been a nice man, and 
 Dora questioned if he had been a good one ; for was not per- 
 sonal attractiveness the main part of the religion of life in her 
 estimation as also in Aunt Hamley's 1 and was not a woman's 
 indifference to appearance worse than even her indifference to 
 virtue 1 
 
 The walk was a pleasant one, albeit neither eventful nor 
 exciting. It was simply a walk through the garden and the
 
 94 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 park and down the lane fenced in by two high, trim, closely- 
 sheared banks, and so on to the main road, which had a side 
 walk like a gentleman's garden-path, gas-lamps, telegraph 
 wires, and more shear -work visible. But it gave Patricia a 
 sense of relative freedom to be outside Abbey Holme gates 
 without a footman behind her, as had been insisted on the only 
 time when she had been beyond the grounds alone and on 
 foot since her arrival. 
 
 Her aunt wanted to break her of this love of rambling 
 among other undesirable propensities. She did not choose to 
 do it by denial, so she adopted the plan of nullifying the plea- 
 sure. And it had answered. A footman at her heels was even 
 worse tban home-keeping, and Patricia had never repeated her 
 request for a long walk by herself ; consequently the little ex 
 pedition to-day was a glimpse of better things that inspirited 
 her. And Dora, having fulfilled her disagreeable task, and 
 said her say successfully, was sweeter than ever, as if to make 
 up for reproofs in which Patricia saw only the truest friendliness. 
 So they walked and talked and laughed at least Patricia 
 laughed and Dora smiled till they came to the High Street of 
 Milltown, whither they were bound. 
 
 Patricia was neither observant nor suspicious. Had she been 
 either to even a moderate extent, she would have seen Dora's 
 fair face flush gradually a deeper and deeper, if prettier, rose- 
 pink as they approached Milltown ; she would have seen her blue 
 eyes look furtively from side to side, as if expecting to see some 
 one beside the day-labourers and petty shop-keepers, who lounged 
 up the roadway, or stood in their shirt-sleeves by their doors ; 
 she would have seen her slide her hand into her pocket, where 
 her fingers played nervously with the little note she had written 
 in such haste before leaving home, ready to drop it into the 
 
 post as they returned, unless And seeing all this, she 
 
 would probably have connected therewith the handsome young 
 man who came suddenly out on them from the Bank as they 
 were passing that establishment, and greeted Dora with a 
 strange look of eagerness and familiarity. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Lowe 1" said Dora, her face dimpled 
 into the most enchanting smile as she put her hand in his. 
 When their hands unclasped, Mr. Sydney Lowe's held the note. 
 " Miss Kemball," she added, indicating Patricia.
 
 DORA DEMONSTRATES. 95 
 
 The young man gave the new arrival a sharp, bold stare that 
 comprehensive, analytical kind of survey which women resent 
 as an impertinence and which is one, and is meant to be one. 
 Then, as if he had seen nothing in her worthy his attention, he 
 turned again to Dora with the ^ame eager and familiar look as 
 before, and began talking to her rapidly in French. As they 
 were going up the street, he walked with them ; and because 
 the side-walk was too narrow for the three abreast, Patricia 
 went on alone before and the two kept behind, still talking. 
 And even when they had executed Mrs. Hamley's weighty 
 commissions of matching a skein of wool at one shop, buying a 
 yard of ribbon at another, ordering a tin of preserved lobster 
 at the grocer's, and getting an order for thirteen and four- 
 pence from the post-office, even then this young, handsome 
 man with the bold black eyes, thin nose and loose lips, kept 
 close to Dora's side, always with the same unmistakable expres- 
 sion oi imperiousness and familiarity on his face, and always 
 talking to her in French. 
 
 After having walked with them till they came within sight 
 of the Abbey Holme gates, he finally took his leave. But his 
 last words were many and apparently difficult to say. He and 
 Dora stood together in the road, face to face, so long in the 
 bitter December twilight that even Patricia was chilled ; and 
 when they parted Dora's eyes were moist with tears and the 
 young man's dark with anger and impatience. But they finally 
 said good-bye for the last time and the two girls walked in 
 silence up the lane. 
 
 Then said Dora in her softest jmd most caressing voice, glanc- 
 ing sideways at Patricia, not looking at her openly : " Patricia 
 dear, if Mrs. Hamley asks if we met any one, you need not say 
 Mr. Lowe walked with us. Of course I shall say that we saw 
 him if she asks me ; but you need not tell her more. 
 
 Patricia turned her large grey eyes full on the fair face with 
 its sweet look trying so hard to appear unconscious beside her, 
 and succeeding marvellously well. 
 
 " Why not 1 she asked in a tone of surprise. " What harm 
 was there fn it ? " 
 
 "No harm at all," Dora answered. "But Mrs. Hamley, 
 though the dearest darling in the world, is a little particular, and 
 perhaps the might not like it."
 
 96 . " WHAT WOULD YOU tX), LOVE ? " 
 
 " Then we ought not to have done it," said Patricia gravely. 
 
 " I should like to know how I could have helped it when he 
 would come ! " cried Dora pettishly. 
 
 And Patricia had an uneasy sense of something wrong, she 
 could not say exactly what. There was surely nothing to be 
 ashamed of in two girls meeting a young man and his turning 
 back and walking with them ! Gordon had done so to her a 
 hundred times and more ; and she had never felt she ought not 
 to tell her uncle, or that he would have disliked it when he 
 was told. But she thought to herself that if she had not 
 wished Gordon to turn back and walk with her she would have 
 made him understand so clearly. She would not have talked 
 to him so much, and then complained that he would come. But 
 Dora was so amiable, she could not give pain, she thought 
 again, half angry with herself that she had felt even this passing 
 sense of wrong. 
 
 Patricia, however, was not put to the test. Her aunt asked her 
 no questions ; and when she had gone upstairs, and Mrs. Hamley 
 reproached Dora fretfully for being so late, Dora answered 
 with the tenderest little air of patience and contrition united : 
 
 " Yes, I know we are very late, dear ; but Patricia wanted so 
 much to see the town I could not refuse to show her every- 
 thing I could think of." 
 
 " That girl is always wanting something she should not 1 " 
 said Mrs. Hamley irritably. 
 
 " It is better when people are accustomed to things a little 
 before they are quite grown up," Dora put in sensibly. 
 
 " Oh, I hate your blase'es girls who know everything," said 
 Mrs. Hamley; and Dora answered "Yes, so do I," with un- 
 ruffled serenity. 
 
 So Mrs. Hamley never knew anything about Sydney Lowe 
 and his eager and familiar looks, his long and rapid conversa- 
 tion in French, those difficult farewells, and Dora's troubled 
 eyes. There was evidently a secret connected with this young 
 man, and a secret that gave Dora some concern. For she cried 
 that night when she went to bed just a little ; she had too 
 much respect for her eyes to cry much ; and once figging her 
 pretty head impatiently on the pillow, said half aloud : " How 
 I wish I had never seen him ! and oh ! how I wish I had re- 
 fused and never done it I "
 
 OVB Xiili WINE AND VVALNUig. 9? 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OVER THE WINE AND WALNUTS. 
 
 N almost every country place there is at least one young 
 man who has, sometimes vaguely, sometimes manifestly 
 
 * why, what the world calls a bad character. Perhaps no 
 definite charge can be brought against him, but none the less 
 ill-re' mte lias crept like a mildew over his name. Respectable 
 people are cool to him ; careful mothers keep their daughters 
 out of his way ; prudent fathers warn their sons against too 
 close intimacy with him ; and he is the acknowledged black 
 sheep of the community, tolerated only because of his family 
 and the name he bears. 
 
 Mr. Sidney Lowe was of this kind to Milltown. No one 
 knew exactly what he had done that was more disgraceful than 
 the ordinary silly scrapes -of youth; and it may be presumed 
 that he had neither robbed a church nor committed a murder. 
 He was the son of Colonel Lowe, of Cragfoot, who had mar- 
 ried Lady Anne Graham's daughter, an heiress and a person- 
 age ; and the Lowes had always been among the first people \\ 
 this little heaven of exclusiveness. Nevertheless, no one about 
 Milltown cared to be much with him, and those who knew him 
 best liked him least. 
 
 Yet he was handsome and clever too clever by half, they 
 said in the town, where he had been known, man and boy, 
 these five and twenty years, and never any good known of him 
 in the time ! And as for his handsomeness, there were those 
 who professed not to see so very much in him when all's said 
 and done, and without any reference to the old proverb which 
 makes handsome is that handsome does. But there were others 
 who said that he was well to look at if bad to do with a fine 
 young man, if a scamp. It was the young men who, for the 
 most part, held his good looks cheap, and the women who 
 rated them high. 
 
 He was one of the light-weight men, about five feet nine in 
 G
 
 98 "WHAT WOULD YOU >O, LOVE?" 
 
 height, supple, active, well proportioned ; with good points, 
 such as small hands and feet, broad shoulders, narrow hips, 
 and a waist that would have matched a French officer's. He 
 had a general air of smartness and dressiness about him, wore 
 light gloves, perfect boots, and clothes of noticeable newness ; 
 and he always buttoned his coats tightly about him when they 
 were coats with waists and skirts, as they generally were, by 
 which he showed off his points and magnified himself in the 
 eyes of the Milltown womanhood. But with all this he looked 
 like a gentleman and not like a snob. In features he was 
 sharply cut and darkly coloured. He had a profusion of black 
 hair that shone like silk and curled in multitudinous little rings 
 over his head ; a broad, low forehead, olive-tinted ; long, arched 
 brows of the pencilled kind above black eyes that never looked 
 straight at men, though, to make amends, they had the habit 
 of staring women out of countenance. His mouth was rather 
 wide, thin in the lips, and curved in the lines; his chin was 
 sharply pointed ; his face smooth-shaven, excepting for his well- 
 waxed moustaches \ and there was a great width between his 
 ears. 
 
 All this was very much like other people, and bore nothing 
 on the surface to account for the odd kind of disesteem which 
 hung about his name. Grant that he was idle, as indeed every 
 one must allow, yet he had no need to work. When his father 
 died he would have Cragfoot and his mother's fortune, and 
 come in for everything. Why should he toil through the best 
 years of his life, heaping pound on pound, and wearing away 
 his youth like a nobody instead of enjoying it like a gentleman ? 
 As he was the only one to ask this question, he was the only 
 one to answer it ; and the answer came, as might be expected, 
 in Mr. Sydney Lowe's using his youth according to his plea- 
 sure sowing many bushels of those disastrous oats which make 
 no bread for a man's future. His father had but little influence 
 over him, and. what he had went the wrong way. A tyrant 
 over his wife, he was a slave to his son ; and though he some- 
 times affected to adopt a bullyiug tone, when his liver was out 
 of order or he had lost an unusually large sum on the turf, 
 Sydney for the most part; carne off master in any collision that 
 might take place between them. 
 
 Colonel Lowe was a proud man with a high temper and a
 
 OVER THE WINE AND WALNUTS. 99 
 
 weak will ; selfish in his nature if spendthrift in his habits, 
 and unable to rise above his desires. Though it would mani- 
 festly have been the proper thing for Sydney to have gone to 
 school, if only to complete the gentleman's part of his education, 
 his father had kept him close to his side ever since he left the 
 nursery, because the boy's liveliness amused him and he wanted 
 a companion. He had only a taciturn and ailing wife to whom 
 to speak when Sydney was away, and he had long out-lived his 
 pleasure in that association. So he educated his son at home, 
 and prevented his making a career for himself, that he might 
 fill the place of filial jester at Cragfoot, that he might boat and 
 hunt and shoot, and play billiards with him when desired ; that 
 is, be his plaything indoors and his playfellow abroad. 
 
 As time went on ugly rumours, as has been said, began to 
 gather round the young man's name. Young, idle, fond of 
 pleasure, and loosely held, were they to be wondered at, with 
 all the weight of Milltown respectability to keep him straight J 
 Kind friends gave the Colonel hints as to what was said and 
 done ; but the Colonel turned a deaf ear to them all. Young 
 men would be young men, he said, and he would rather his son 
 was a natural, high spirited young fellow who did kick over the 
 traces at times, provided he kicked as a gentleman should, than 
 be one of those mealy-mouthed Joseph Surfaces who are as bad 
 as their brothers, but are not found out because they are more 
 cunning and hypocritical. Whatever then he knew of Sydney's 
 husbandry in the matter of those wild oats with which he was 
 credited he kept to himself; and the lad had never been cor- 
 rected of bad habits nor educated to nobler things from the 
 time when, as a little fellow, he killed his pet rabbit because it 
 would not learn to beg like- a dog, and then tried to hide 
 what he had done by , stealing one of Tommy Garth's in its 
 stead. 
 
 Of one thing only was Colonel Lowe determined; Sydney 
 should make a good marriage. No one knew so well as himself 
 the necessity for this ; for no one knew so well as himself how 
 much of his wife's fortune had gone into the pockets of the 
 bookmakers at Doncaster and Newmarket, and what a mere 
 shell Cragfoot was ; and in his own mind he had fixed on ol<k 
 Lady Mauley's daughter, Julia Manley, the heiress of Water- 
 field, with five thousand a year in her own right, and the grand
 
 100 " WHAT WOULD YOt T DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 niece of a duke. To be sure, poor Julia was no beauty. She 
 was a tall, angular, sandy-coloured young woman, with weak 
 eyes and freckles, very good, considered clever, and decidedly 
 silly; but five thousand a year to a young man mainly occupied 
 in sowing wild oats on his own account, and whose father has 
 been a godsend to the bookmakers, will gild even weak eyea 
 and freckles ; and as Colonel Lowe used to say, it really does 
 not signify whom you marry ! After a couple of years one 
 woman is just like another woman ; but the five thousand a 
 year remains. 
 
 On the evening of the day when Sydney had met the young 
 ladies of Abbey Holme, and had talked so much French to dear 
 Dora, 'Colonel Lowe and his son sat by the fire after dinner, 
 sipping their claret with the velvet on and cracking their wal- 
 nuts as usual 
 
 " Who was that tall young person with the Hamley girl to- 
 day ?" asked the Colonel suddenly. 
 
 Sydney's dark eyes went down. 
 
 " That niece of Mrs. Hamley's," he answered. 
 
 " That niece of Mrs. Hamley's ? what niece ? " 
 
 " I dou't know exactly. A brother's child, I believe," said 
 Sydney, with indifference. 
 
 "Which brother? There were two, Robert and Reginald," 
 the Colonel said. 
 
 " I am sure I don't know. The old fellows were before my 
 time. You must know more about them than I possibly can ! " 
 answered Sydney, concentrating all his energies on peeling his 
 nut without a break. 
 
 The truth was, both father and son knew perfectly well who 
 Patricia was. It was simply their mode of fencing. 
 
 "That Hamley girl has some good points," said the Colonel, 
 with a kind of contemptuous admission, as if he had been speak- 
 ing of a dog or a cow ; for he too, notoriously gallant to ladies, 
 was by no means respectful to women. Sydney still looked down 
 intent on his task, and this time made no answer. " She wants 
 style, of course," his father went on to say. " It is a good pro- 
 verb, if a coarse one, that you cannot make a silk purse out of a 
 sow's ear ; and the Hamley grain is not silk. Blood will out, 
 my boy, whether it is blue or brown ; and that Hamley girl, 
 if a pretty thing of her kind, is of a low kind all the same."
 
 OVER THE WINE AND WALNUTS. 101 
 
 " She is only distantly connected with Mr. Hamley," said 
 Sydney. 
 
 He, too, hated the ear which was not silk ; but he ignored it 
 in Dora. 
 
 " Lucky for her. I confess I should not feel very desirous of 
 being connected with a man who once held my horse for two- 
 pence, though he is now the owner of Abbey Holme worse 
 luck for Milltown I Still you know, Syd, she is a parvenue, 
 make the best of it you will. I own, not so bad for a parvenue, 
 and might be made something of if well handled. I doubt, 
 though, if she could ever be really refined rubbed up beyond 
 the outside." 
 
 " She is well bred enough," said Sydney, seeing that his father 
 waited as if for an answer. 
 
 " Is she 1 I know so little of her I She is long in getting a 
 husband for a pretty girl. She ought to be looking about her 
 now, I should say five and twenty if a day ! " 
 
 " No ; only just of age," said Sydney hastily. 
 
 The Colonel raised his eyebrows. " You are deep in a lady's 
 confidence, Syd, if you know her age ! " he said, with a satirical 
 laugh. 
 
 " I happened to know this by chance," answered Sydn'ey with 
 a sulky look. 
 
 " And I remember when she came to Milltown ten years ago 
 and she was fifteen then, I'll swear. Will you swear to your 
 figures, Syd ? Are you sure you have not been hoodwinked by 
 a year or two ? " 
 
 The young man laughed uneasily. " Well, really I have not 
 made Miss Drummond's exact age a profound study," he said 
 half insolently. " Nor do I offer one, two, three, or four and 
 twenty as a profession of faith. I said what I thought ; but, 
 faith ! I may be wrong ; and it is of no great consequence either 
 way." 
 
 The Colonel looked at him, a smile not wholly of pleasure on 
 his face. " Good," he said ; " I don't want you to get too intimate 
 with the Abbey Holme people at any time. They are all very 
 well to be on civil terms with. That old shoeblack understands 
 wine, and his wife gives decent dinners ; besides, she is a gen- 
 tlewoman if a fallen one. But we don't want them as friends, 
 you know, Syd you and I we are a flight too high for that."
 
 102 " WHAT \VOTTLD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " Tt is difficult to keep on very formal terms with people one 
 meets so constantly in such a small society as this," said Sydney, 
 throwing a fly. 
 
 His father rose to it, but in the wrong way. 
 
 * People one meets so constantly 1" he repeated with a sur- 
 prised intonation. " My dear boy, you must be dreaming. 
 Where, in the name of fortune, do we meet the Hamleys so 
 constantly 1 Why, they are just beginning to be noticed in the 
 place, and are yet only barely tolerated. You cannot call half- 
 a-dozen dinners in the year meeting constantly I And the old 
 shoeblack has not got beyond that and that's too far ! " 
 
 " No, certainly ; half-a-dozen dinners in the year do not make 
 a great intimacy, as you say," returned Sydney, finishing his 
 wine and lounging up from the table as one profoundly unin- 
 terested, not to say wearied of the subject. " Shall you be long, 
 dad 1 " he asked. "I am off to smoke." 
 
 " Go, if you like ; I'll follow," the Colonel answered ; and 
 Sydney went, yawning ostentatiously. 
 
 When he had closed the door, his father said to himself, as 
 he poured out another glass of claret; " I don't like his manner. 
 I'd lay my life there is something in the wind there. How he 
 looked when I spoke of her! But he fenced cleverly, the young 
 dog too cleverly. I wish he had been franker, and so had 
 given me a better opening. I'd swear I heard him call her cherie 
 when they passed by the Slack Lion, and did not see me in the 
 passage ; and his manner said as much as her face. Hamley's 
 cousin for my son ? No, not if she brought a million in her 
 skirt ! Hard up as I am I'll live and die as I was born ; and my 
 son shall not fall below me with my consent ! " 
 
 lie sat as if pondering ft>r a few minutes ; then he added, 
 still holding solitary counsel : " I will have them here, and then I 
 can judge for myself. After all, if he likes the girl and the old 
 ruffian gives her a good dowry ? But it will not be equal to 
 Julia Manley's. Only, if Syd has set his mind on her, and I have 
 no good excuse, I know him well enough ; he'll marry her in the 
 teeth of everything, and then there will be the devil to pay ! " 
 
 On which he drank yet another glass of claret ; then crossed 
 the hall and went into the drawing-room. 
 
 Mrs. Lowe was lying on the sofa, comfortably packed up and 
 half asleep.
 
 OVER THE WINE AND WALNUTS. 103 
 
 " My dear ! " said her husband in a high key. 
 
 u Yes, Colonel ! " she answered with a start. 
 
 " I do believe you were asleep again, Matilda ! " he said 
 tartly. 
 
 " Asleep ! What nonsense ! when you know I never sleep 1 " 
 was her reply made peevishly. 
 
 It was an old battle-ground between them, and the weapons 
 were never suffered to grow rusty by disuse. 
 
 " I think we will have a dinner party, Matilda," said the 
 Colonel, stirring the fire. 
 
 " A dinner-party 1 " she echoed. 
 
 " Did I not speak plainly, my dear ? I said a dinner-party ; 
 and I meant a dinner-party," returned the Colonel ; the accom- 
 paniment of falling coals lending a curiously warlike clang to 
 his words. 
 
 " Yes, Colonel, certainly. Who are they to be ?" said Mrs. 
 Lowe, with that air of frightened submission which always 
 irritated her husband. It is only fair to her to say that an air 
 of anything else would have irritated him just as much. 
 
 " Let me see. Suppose we say the Rector and Mrs. Borro- 
 daile, Fletcher and his sister, the Collinsons, Dr. Wickham, and 
 the Hamleys. There's a new girl there ; Mrs. Hamley's niece 
 Reginald's daughter I imagine she must be the Captain 
 never married. We'll have her out, and see what she is like." 
 
 Mrs. Lowe repeated the names. " That makes eleven," she 
 said. 
 
 " Yes ; fourteen with ourselves. Seven of a sort," said 
 Colonel Lowe. " Nobody likely to take anybody else by the 
 throat, and two pretty girls as the enliveners among you old 
 women. So perhaps you will write the notes at -once, my 
 dear ; and John can take them round. This day fortnight 
 January 3rd unless you are too sleepy." 
 
 " How fond you are of saying disagreeable things ? " said 
 poor Mrs. Lowe in her ill-used tone, as she slowly unpacked 
 herself from her comfortable nest of shawls and pillows and 
 went shivering and tumbled to her davenport. 
 
 But she dared not remonstrate. Colonel Lowe was not the 
 man to sleep on a project ; and when he began to stir the whole 
 house must be up and doing. It was always taking time by the 
 forelock with him and striking while the iron was hot ; and
 
 104 "WHAT WOULD VOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 his thoughts and plans were full grown Minervas, matured at 
 their birth and never needing nursing. So the notes were 
 written and tn*e servant sent out with them on the instant ; for 
 all that it was a damp, dark, unpleasant night in December, 
 and to-morrow would have done just as well. But to men like 
 Colonel Lowe servants are only animated machines who have 
 to do as they are commanded, and who are not allowed the 
 effeminacy of taking cold in bad weather or feeling fatigue 
 after hard work. If he had brought nothing else with him out 
 of the army he had brought the habit of command ; and there 
 was not a living creature about Cragfoot who did not recognise 
 the master's hand when he raised it save Sydney ; and even 
 with him there were conditions and barriers he could not pass ; 
 if few, yet immovable. And one of these was he must marry 
 money or he must accept disinheritance.
 
 DILEMMAS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 invitation to Cragfoot came to Abbey Holme just as 
 Dora and Mr. Hamley were settling to their evening 
 bezique. Mrs. Hamley "was not playing to-night. She 
 was deep in a quarterly article on the latest book of scandalous 
 chronicles, where all the highly spiced bits were extracted 
 fenced about by an editorial padding of reprehension ; by 
 which means was accomplished that feat, so dear to English 
 respectability, of enjoying impropriety under the pretext of 
 condemnation. 
 
 " An invitation to Cragfoot ! " said Mrs. Hamley, with a 
 perceptible sneer. " How strangely even people who should be 
 well-bred forget themselves ! ' As if Patricia or myself could 
 possibly go out in our first mourning ! For you are specially 
 aske'd too, Patricia, though they have not called on you yet. 
 Odd manners for Lady Graham's daughter, to say the least of it !" 
 
 " I do not want people to call on me, and I do not want to 
 go out to dinner," said Patricia hastily. 
 
 " Don't be silly," returned Mrs. Hamley sharply. " And 
 don't be affected. Of course you will have to go out like any 
 other person when your first mourning is over. I hate these 
 pretences of being unlike other people ; and you are far too 
 fond, Patricia, of posing yourself as something special and 
 peculiar, and, I suppose, something better than any one else." 
 
 " I did not mean it as a pretence or affectation," said 
 Patricia. 
 
 " Yes, you did ; and do not contradict," snapped her aunt. 
 " And I would make you go now, only it would be absurd in 
 your deep crape. And she ought to have remembered this, 
 silly little woman ? That eternal catarrh of hers seems to have 
 really softened her brain." 
 
 Fortunately for Dora the name of Sydney Lowe's mother 
 waa not mentioned.
 
 106 "WHAT WOFLT) YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " What is all the row about, Lady 1 " asked Mr. Hamley in 
 his rolling, unctuous voice, with his terminal h's and odd mix- 
 ture of pomposity and vulgarity. 
 
 She looked at him with cold annoyance ; when she was dis- 
 pleased, no one was right and Mr. Hamley more often wrong 
 than another. Then after a pause she told him an invitation 
 on the third to Cragfoot, for all of them ; adding " Of course 
 we cannot accept," 
 
 " No ? " he said, dealing his cards leisurely, but dealing 
 three instead of two. " Cannot Dora and I go as your repre- 
 sentatives 1 unworthy ones, I admit but just to carry the flag 
 for Abbey Holme, and show the neighbours we are alive ? " 
 
 " If you like to make a marked division in the house, yes," 
 said Mrs. Hamley coldly. 
 
 " Not to annoy you, Lady," said Mr. Hamley, throwing 
 away his bzique knave. 
 
 " No, not for worlds," echoed Dora, who had been warned 
 by a touch from her partner's foot that she was to " follow his 
 lead," and " back him up." 
 
 " I really do not care a snuff-about it. It was only for the 
 credit of the house," said Mr. Hamley. ' Royal marriage; 
 Dora, forty." 
 
 " And I am sure I do not, dear," said Dora, looking at Mrs. 
 Hamley sweetly. " It is awfully cold too, turning out at 
 night to drive a full mile ! " shrugging her shoulders with a 
 shiver. 
 
 " To drive a full mile ! " echoed Mrs. Hamley crossly ; none 
 of these well-bred people had learnt the little politeness of not 
 repeating foregone phrases. " And what of that ? When we 
 were girls we thought nothing of walking to Cragfoot in Lady 
 Graham's time. I don't know what the girls of the present 
 day are coming to with their indolence and inability to exert 
 themselves. And you are as bad, Dora, as any of them." 
 
 Patricia looked and listened with her big eyes wide open, 
 and her astonishment at this new view of her aunt's visible on 
 her face. Remembering the frequent lectures which her own 
 unladylike vigour had drawn down on her head, how her 
 strength and hardihood had been counted to her as sins, she 
 wondered where the right line Avas drawn and what was the 
 exact amount of energy allowed before it became vulgarity, and
 
 DILEMMAS. 107 
 
 where ladylike delicacy ended and reprehensible self-indulgence 
 began. 
 
 " But Dora is too delicate to walk out at night ! " she said 
 in eager apology. " She would catch cold with the night air. 
 Why ! she does not go out enough in the daytime even ! " 
 
 " My dear niece," said Mrs. Hamley in her most freezing 
 tones, and with her most elaborate politeness, " oblige me by 
 not interfering in matters which do not concern you. Miss 
 Drummond and I can settle the business between us without 
 your assistance. Now, Dora, if you will give me a moment's 
 attention that is, if you can abstract yourself from your 
 ridiculous game perhaps you will have the kindness to say 
 whether you wish to go to this dinner or not 1 " 
 
 Again Mr. Hamley tone' ied her foot. 
 
 " I wish to do just as you and Mr. Hamley like, dear," said 
 Dora cheerfully. 
 
 " That is no answer ; yes or no, if you please." 
 
 " If Mr. Hamley likes to go" she hesitated with an appeal- 
 ing look. Mr.. Hamley still making signs under the table, kept 
 his eyes on his cards, taking no part in the discussion. 
 
 " Mr. Hamley can answer for himself," said his wife, com- 
 pressing her lips. " We will come to Mr. Hamley by-and by. 
 I have only to deal with you at this present moment. Do you 
 wish to go to Onigfoot to dine on this day fortnight, or do you 
 not 1 Quick, if you please- ; the messenger is waiting." 
 
 " If you were going, dear, I should like it," stammered Dora. 
 
 " But I am not going," said Mrs. Hamley ; and paused for 
 a decision. 
 
 " I think I would like it, then," said Dora with her eyes 
 down, knowing too well that the authorities whom she made 
 it the business of her life to conciliate equally were in opposi- 
 tion, and that she must offend one whic'h way soever she took. 
 In general, like a wise girl who knows where the staying power 
 as well as the real influence lies, she sided with the wife ; but 
 the temptation in this case was more than she could resist ; 
 and an evening spent at Sydney's home, with the opportunity 
 of making herself charming to his father and mother, was 
 worth a few days of Mrs. Hamley's ice-bound manner, in her 
 rapid esthnate of values. Besides, there was Mr. Hamley's 
 heavy foot under the table, and she knew what that meant too.
 
 108 " WIT AT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " You shall have your wish," said Mrs. Haroley stiffly. J< I 
 have no desire to impose my sad mourning on you or Mr. Ham- 
 ley. The sympathy which is not given freely from the heart is 
 of no value in my eyes ; and I am glad you have decided as you 
 have done with such unmistakable candour. Truth is always 
 valuable, even if unflattering." 
 
 Dora reddened, but said nothing. Mr. Hamley went on 
 quietly with his game, but took care to score in silence, not 
 calling out his declarations. They knew their world and what 
 was their best wisdom. 
 
 But Patricia, who was only honest and who knew nothing 
 but what she saw, cried out in real pain : " Oh, aunt, you 
 misjudge her ! Dora does care for you ; does sympathise with 
 you ! She said herself to me that she felt like the daughter of 
 you both ! " 
 
 Mr. Hamley's eyes gleamed viciously at this, now at Dora, 
 now at Patricia. Dora looked inexplicably confused. Mrs. 
 Hamley took no notice. She merely half shut her eyes, which 
 made them look something like a cat's, and after much unne- 
 cessary trial of pens and paper wrote a long and elaborately- 
 worded note of explanation and regret for her own part and for 
 that of her niece, for the necessity they were under, owing to 
 their recent bereavement, of declining, but ending with the plea- 
 sure which Mr. Hamley and Miss Drummohd had in accepting 
 Colonel and Mrs. Lowe's polite invitation for Thursday, the 3rd 
 of January. This she folded, directed, sealed Mrs. Hamley 
 did not patronise stamped and gummed envelopes ; and on the 
 instant Patricia, who had been watching her, rang the bell un- 
 bidden. 
 
 " My dear," said Mrs. Hamley, still with her eyes half shut, 
 showing just a line of cold glitter between the lids, " may 1 ask 
 you never to do that again ] I allow no one to ring the bell 
 in my presence uninvited." 
 
 "I beg your pardon, aunt ; but I thought it would save time," 
 said Patricia. " It was getting so late for the poor messenger, 
 whoever he is." 
 
 And you are this messenger's care-taker 1 1 thank you for 
 your lesson in humanity, though I was not aware I needed it. 
 I have generally had the character of extreme consideration 
 for others ; but it seems we older people know nothing, and
 
 DILEMMAS. 10$ 
 
 you young ones have exclusive possession of the wisdom and 
 virtue of the world." 
 
 Patricia rose and went over to her. She put her young, sup- 
 ple arras about the angular and well-girt body of her aunt, and 
 laid her fresh face against the withered cheek efflorescent with 
 its Bloom of Ninon. 
 
 " Dear aunt," she said tenderly,' " have patience with me ! I 
 want only to please you, and do what is right ; but I know that 
 I blunder more often than I succeed. I have been brought up 
 so differently from your ways that I cannot help offending you. 
 But indeed I do not want to vex you. You believe that, do 
 you not, my dear ? " 
 
 Her grey eyes were full f honest pleading and tender wishes 
 as they looked with pathetic yearning into the hard face that 
 turned itself away from her caress. 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Mrs. Hamley irritably. She hated anything 
 like a scene; and to have her moods noticed, save by tacit sub- 
 mission to the course they indicated, was an offwice she found 
 it hard to forgive. " I daresay you will improve in time, child ; 
 but I must confess you are very trying now ; and my poor bro- 
 ther lamentably failed in his duty to you. There, that will 
 do ! Don't you see you are crushing my fichu ? And, good 
 gracious, Patricia, what a mess you have made of my cap ! " 
 
 On which she pushed her away angrily ; and Patricia felt 
 herself in deeper disgrace than before. 
 
 When they went to bed that night, Dora stole quietly into 
 Patricia's room. She found her sitting half undressed, by the 
 uncurtained window, looking at the starry sky so much of it, 
 at least, as she could see between the top of the wall and the 
 roof of her window. She was not crying, as another girl might, 
 but just wearying her heart out to know what it all meant. 
 She felt in a maze to which she had not the clue, and where 
 every path was wrong, every trial abortive. She could under- 
 stand nothing ; neither why she had offended her aunt because 
 she had spoken the truth, defended Dora, and thought for the 
 poor messenger all of which were simple duties ; nor did she 
 know why there should have been such a bitter under current 
 about such a simple thing as a dinner-party ; nor why Dora 
 dear Dora, whom she so much loved was so reluctant to say 
 what she wished. And then why she had been told to hold her
 
 110 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO. LOVE ? " 
 
 tongue about the young man they had met to-day ? And who 
 was he 1 As only " Cragfoot " had been mentioned downstairs 
 when this mysterious dinner was discussed, and as Patricia 
 had not .the smallest idea who lived there, the name had told 
 her nothing. Had she heard of Colonel or Mrs. Lowe, the 
 chances are she would havemade some kind of exclamation which 
 would have caused a considerable draft on Dora's inventive 
 faculties and have necessitated a profuse coinage of her cur- 
 rent change white lies. As it was, it was all a mystery ; 
 and Patricia's whole nature abhorred mysteries. 
 
 This initiation of hers into a certain phase of life, unhappily 
 only too common, was as painful as physical suffering; and the 
 confusion it was beginning to create in her mind was working 
 infinite sorrow, and might in time who knows? work as 
 infinite mischief. For the most honest nature in the world, 
 the most pure and crystalline, if humble, loving, and loyal, may 
 be warped to doubt by the very virtues that are its charm. Pa- 
 tricia knew what she had been taught in the early days of her 
 life, and her lessons and their teacher were dear ; but how could 
 she maintain her honesty, her candour, her sincerity, in a 
 household where these qualities were not only unpopular but 
 condemned as sins? a household, too, so far superior to herself 
 in training and wisdom. Was she really the only one right and 
 all the rest wrong? Or w;-s there another virtue beside those 
 which she had been taught, and which must at times be su- 
 preme the virtue of seeing wrong-doing without remonstance, 
 consenting with sinners, and sliding down the incline with her 
 superiors? Humility or truth ? Obedience or sincerity ? She 
 knew what she would have said at Barsands, and what her 
 uncle, would have taught her there ; but things which were 
 clear then were confused now, and she seemed to know less as 
 she learnt more. 
 
 Sitting there, with her rich brown hair falling over her bare 
 shoulders, and her eyes fixed on the'stars with a childish yearn- 
 ing for her uncle's spirit entangled somewhere among them to 
 come down to her this night and tell her what she ought to do, 
 she heard her door softly opened, and Dora, in a dainty wrap- 
 per of blue and white and lace and ribbon, supplemented with 
 an ermine cape for she knew the temperature of Patricia's 
 fireless room came gliding in. Her hair too was about her
 
 Ill 
 
 neck, very picturesque and pretty. But what a small amount 
 it took to build up that magnificent structure of braided coils ! 
 thought Patricia. Her own great heavy masses which were 
 three times as thick and loug as Dora's could not be made to 
 do half the work. 
 
 Coming up to her in her graceful, gliding way, Dora said 
 softly : 
 
 "Dear thing, I want to "help you." 
 
 Patricia's arms were round her in a moment, and the light of 
 her love brjghtened her eyes to their old radiance. 
 
 " You are my good angel," she said enthusiastically. " I do 
 not think I could go on living here without you, Dora !" 
 
 " But you really must let me teach you how to live here 
 peaceably and happily, with me or without me," said Dora ; 
 and then began her lisping lecture on the propriety of abso- 
 lute silence and submission to all Mrs. Hamley's words and 
 ways. There was no good in opposing her, she said. Mrs. 
 Hamley, dear tiling, was mistress, and would always be mis- 
 tress to the end of her life ; and not one of them, from Mr. 
 JtJamley downward, dare contradict her or hold their own 
 against her. 
 
 "Remember," she gave as her last exordium, "never defend 
 yourself or any one else, however unjust she may be. It is only 
 a mood, and will pass if you do not notice it ; for she is really 
 a kind-hearted woman at bottom, though such a difficult tem- 
 per to deal with. Never take anything on yourself without her 
 express permission, if it is only the pulling down of a blind, or 
 the suggesting more coals on the fire. You may very likely be 
 scolded for not pulling down the blind if the sun comes into 
 the room, and for not putting more coals on the fire if it goes 
 out or gets too low, but if you are you must just take it quietly, 
 and pretend that you were to blame. If you do things x>f your 
 own accord, you are sure to catch it ; and it only fidgets her to 
 see any one move without her permission. So, why do it t If 
 she says black is white, good gracious, say it is white too ! 
 What does it signify ? If you say no, it is black, you make her 
 angry and have a row ; and where is the good of that ? In fact, 
 you must just efface yourself, dear ; and whatever you think 
 say nothing, but make your mind apparently the shadow u* 
 hers."
 
 112 " WHAT WOULD YOT T DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " Dora ! " cried Patricia with unfeigned horror. " Such a 
 life as that 1 I would not lead it if 1 had to die ! I will do all I 
 can to study and please my aunt it is my duty but I will not 
 listen to her injustice when she is unjust without protesting : 
 and I will never say what is not true for her pleasure." 
 
 " Then you will never get on at Abbey Holme," said Dora, 
 
 " No I hope I never shall, if this is the only way in which I 
 can," answered Patricia stoutly. The doctrine of sham and un- 
 truth, brought nakedly before her, broke through the cobweb 
 meshes of her doubts and set her soul clear and free,. "I would 
 rather that my aunt disliked me even more Ehan she does, than 
 that I should despise myself." 
 
 " Why can't you leave yourself alone ? " asked Dora, uncon- 
 sciously touching one of the deepest problems of spiritual life. 
 " Do what you ought to do what it is only wise to do and 
 never mind whether it makes you despise yourself or not. We 
 have to live for others, not for ourselves." 
 
 " And we have to live to God and Truth before all," said Pa- 
 tricia, looking up. 
 
 The fair face heroically suppressed a smile. Patricia was so 
 funny ! She might be a Methodist parson talking like that j 
 and to another girl too ! No kudos even to be got by it ! 
 
 " Well, you must do as you think best, of course ; say all you 
 think and make Mrs. Hamley very angry, and yourself most 
 horribly uncomfortable ; but I hope you will not quarrel with 
 me dear, because I am a cowardly little thing and care only to 
 keep peace," Dora said coaxingly. 
 
 "I Dora? In the first place, I never quarrel with any ona 
 I don't think I ever had a quarrel in my life, not even with 
 Miss Pritchard, whom I did not like ; and least of all could I 
 with you ! Dear, clever, gentle, good Dora ! I think you are 
 an angel ! Why, I offended my aunt to night because I could 
 not bear to hear her so unjust to you you, of all people ! " 
 
 " Which you need not have done," said Dora a little coolly. 
 " I am used to that kind of thing from her and do not mind it. 
 Hard words break no bones," she said lightly ; " and your little 
 brush made it only all the worse for me." 
 
 " What an unlucky girl I am ! " sighed Patricia. 
 
 "No, you are not a bit unlucky, but you are very self-willed/' 
 said Dora, with an admirable appearance of not knowing that
 
 DILEMMAS. 113 
 
 she was saying anything that would offend the most susceptible. 
 
 "No! no I don't call me that, Dora ! I am only trying to 
 live as 1 have been taught," cried Patricia, really pained. 
 
 " You may call it what you like ; I call it self-will. When 
 you are advised again and again, as I have advised you, how to 
 conduct yourself here for everybody's peace, and you will make 
 yourself and every one else miserable by going your own way, 
 what is that but self-will, I should like to know 1 At all events, 
 if you determine to follow out your high and mighty line of 
 conscience and righteousness," with a little grimace, " you must 
 expect to suffer. Martyrdom may not be pleasant, but it is 
 what you go in for; BO you musi accept it patiently, remember 
 that ! " 
 
 " I try to be patient in every way," said Patricia, looking at 
 her with an agitated face. 
 
 " Yes, it is all very well for you to say that you try to be 
 this, and try to be that, but it is we who suffer," said Dora, 
 shrugging her shoulders. " You make us all Mr. Hamley, 
 poor dear Mrs. Hamley, and poor dear me too as wretched as 
 yourself, simply because you will not have a little common-sense 
 and less egotism. But now I shall say no more. I have said 
 all I want to say, and all you are to remember ; but please, 
 dear," passing the tips of her fingers playfully down the girl's 
 upturned face as she stood beside her preparing to go, while 
 Patricia still sat by the window listening to her, " do remember 
 it. And now, good night." She stooped her pretty little fresh 
 face and kissed her affectionately. '* You old goosie I " she said, 
 as Patricia gave her a great hug and called her a darling ; and 
 laughing, glided to the door. " Oh ! " she then said quite in- 
 differently, just as her hand was on the lock, turning back and 
 speaking, in the tone of a person who has been struck by a sud- 
 den thought; "if a note comes for you to-morrow morning, 
 dear, will you give it unopened to me 1 " 
 
 " A note for me to be given to you t " said Patricia, in her 
 wll-known tone of frank amazement. 
 
 Dora's fair face flushed with annoyance. 
 
 " She is positively maddening ! " she said to herself. 
 "Please, dear," aloud, quite tranquilly. 
 
 " But why should it come to me, and not to you direct," 
 asked Patricia, looking at her with her bewildered look. 
 H
 
 114 "WHAT WOULD YOU T)O LOVE?" 
 
 Dora glided back to her old place by the uncurtained win- 
 dow. 
 
 " Now don't ask me any questions, there's a dear," she said 
 caressingly. " It is just my little secret, and of no consequence 
 to any one but myself. You will get me into dreadf'ultrouble 
 if you do not help me ; that is all I can tell you ; and you will 
 *do no one any harm if you do. But you will help me, will you 
 not, darling? " She laid her small hand on the girl's shoulder, 
 and looked down into the noble, troubled face pleadingly. 
 
 " I do nut mind, of 'Course, giving you a note that does not 
 belong to me though it may be addressed to me," said Patricia, 
 distressed, disturbed, uncertain. "But if Mr. Hamley or my 
 aunt sees it, and asks who is my correspondent, what am I to 
 say? You see I have no letters ; and there is no one to write 
 to me excepting Gordon ; and I cannot hear from him yet for 
 two mouths or more. So they will be sure to ask ; and then 
 what can I say ? " 
 
 " Say 1 Anything ! That it is from Miss Biggs, the dress- 
 maker." 
 
 " I cannot do that," Patricia answered gravely. " I have 
 never told a falsehood in my life, and even for you, Dora, much 
 as I love you and much as I would do for you, I cannot begin 
 now 1 " 
 
 " And how do you expect to get through the world, if you 
 will not help a friend with a harmless little white lie like this?" 
 said Dora, indignantly. "And you, who make so much fuss about 
 your loving people so much, and your loyalty to them ! It is 
 perfect nonsense, Patricia, setting yourself up as so much better 
 than any one else, and pretending that you are too good to do 
 the things we all have to do ! " 
 
 " Don't be angry, Dora," said Patricia humbly. " There are 
 very few things that I feel sure of now fewer, a great deal, 
 than I did three months ago ! but this I do know, that it is 
 mean and cowardly to tell falsehoods for any purpose whatever. 
 Even if I ought to hold my tongue, as you say I should, and let 
 people think I agree with them when I do not, I am sure I 
 ought not to say what is not true." 
 
 " Then you will betray me ? for the note will come ! " said 
 Dora, very pale. 
 
 " No, I will not betray you, Dora. I could not do that at
 
 DILEMMAS. 115 
 
 any cost. But neither will I tell a falsehood to screen you, if 
 there is anything you do not want known." 
 
 " Well, leave it to me, you tiresome girl ! " said Dora after a 
 moment's pause, and speaking more ill-temperedly than Patricia 
 had imagined sheycould speak. "I shall know better than to 
 trust to your friendship for me another time ; but as I did trust 
 you this time you must not tell of me, and I will do the best I 
 can.. You have promised you will not betray me ? " earnestly. 
 
 " I will not," the girl answered, as if she had been taking an 
 oath. 
 
 " Then I will trust to my own brains for the rest,? laughed 
 Dora ; her good-humour returned with the scheme that had 
 occurred to her, and, nodding to Patricia gaily, she slid out of 
 the room and nearly ran against Bignold as she was leaving 
 Mrs. Hamley for the night. If she had, that virtuous female 
 would have told of her next day, and Aunt Hamley would have 
 administered a lecture on collusion which would have had more 
 words in it than meaning. 
 
 This night it was, when, safely locked in her own room, 
 Dora indemnified herself for the suppressions and vexations of 
 the day by crying a little when she got to bed, and saying half 
 aloud, shaken with fear and repentance, " How I wish I had 
 refused and never done it ! It was too bad of him to make 
 me, when he knew what was at stake 1 "
 
 11 ( U WHAT worr.n vor DO, LOVE?' 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND. 
 
 a 
 
 f r me > one * y u Lady; none for you, Dora; 
 and one for you, Patricia;" said Mr. Hamley, dealing 
 out the letters like cards the next morning at break- 
 fast. 
 
 Patricia crimsoned with undisguised embarrassment as sh( 
 received a letter written in a strange hand a man's hand 
 with the Icsal postscript on the cover. She said nothing, but 
 quietly laid it beside her plate and began to eat her breakfast. 
 
 Her aunt looked at her sharply. It seemed strange to her, 
 first, that Patricia should have a letter at all ; next, that she 
 should be so indifferent about reading it as not to open it, as 
 any one else would have done ; or if not indifferent, then so 
 much the reverse as not to be able to look at it before other 
 people. Who could be her correspondent ? There was some- 
 thing here defying and mysterious; and Mrs. Hamley never for- 
 gave either independence or mystery. People of arbitrary wills, 
 and with a disposition to herd souls like sheep, seldom do. 
 
 This is one of the reasons why she liked dear Dora so much. 
 She used to say, when speaking of that young person as she 
 often did, and giving a reason for the faith that was in her, that 
 dear Dora had not had a secret from her since she came under 
 her. roof ; and had never been ashamed to give her the most 
 minute and circumstantial account of every event in her inno- 
 cent life. It was as good as being on the spot herself, Mrs. 
 Hamley said, when Dora had been away for a day or two and 
 came iiome with her budget. When she went to London last 
 October, for instance, and stayed there for a week with the 
 Borrodailes Mrs. Hamley not being able to accompany her, 
 owing to what she called a chilblain and her doctor gout her 
 sprightly reminiscences were really amusement enough for 
 weeks. She had kept a diary, dear child, on purpose to please 
 them ; and the care she had taken to put down everything she
 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND. 117 
 
 had seen and every place she had visited was beyond praise 
 both for its cleverness and frankness. There was not an hour 
 of her time that she could not account for; and how delightful 
 it was to have to do with a person so thoroughly candid arid 
 trustworthy I She had no secrets indeed ! except, Mrs. Ham- 
 ley might have added, when she herself wished to conceal any- 
 thing from her husband ; and then how clever and discreet and 
 full of nice helpful tact the girl was ! And so said Mr. Ham ley 
 on his own side when he had it in hand to hoodwink the Lady, 
 and dear Dora was his confederate. But as they never came to 
 the comparison of notes they never found that the tact each 
 thought consecrated to him or her only was common to both, 
 and so went on accepting as special and private a quality which 
 was serviceable for more purposes than their own. 
 
 If, however, this strange noisy girl was going to add to her 
 natural misdemeanours the acquired sin of making mysteries 
 and having secrets, Mrs. Hamley felt that her cup would then 
 indeed be too full ; and that this would be just the one drop of 
 overflowing bitterness which she could not and would not 
 accept. 
 
 " Are you not going to read your letter, Patricia 1 " sha 
 asked tartly. 
 
 " No, not yet, aunt," replied Patricia, not looking up. 
 
 " Who is your correspondent, pray 1 " 
 
 " I do not know, aunt." 
 
 You do not know I A young lady, my niece, receive 
 letter and not know from whom, and not open it to pee ? What 
 an extraordinary thing . not quite according to my ideas of 
 the natural action of well-bred girls," said Mrs. Hamley, very 
 slowly, very deliberately. 
 
 " I dare say it's from the dressmaker," said Dora, coming to 
 the rescue in her sweet peace-making way. " Give it to me 
 Patricia, if you are afraid to open it dear." 
 
 Patricia, not looking up from her plate, flung the letter 
 across the table with a shy and awkward jerk, while Dora 
 gazed at her with a reassuring smile and candid eyes. The 
 one looked guilty and ashamed, the other showed a fine, snow- 
 white, well-ventilated conscience which had no dark corners to 
 hide. 
 
 " Yes, it is," she said, as she opened the note down in her
 
 118 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 lap and showed a printed circular as the contents. " ' Miss 
 Biggs lias the honour to announce to her kind patrons, the No- 
 bility and Gentry of Milltown,' &c. &c. I thought 1 knew the 
 Biggs style of doing business," laughed the girl, with a pretty 
 triumph at the difficulty being so happily ended. " Did I not 
 tell you, Patricia, that you would be sure to have a notice, all 
 to yourself, as soon as our local Madame Elise found you out ?" 
 she added. 
 
 " What an incomprehensible girl you are, Patricia ! and what 
 mountains you contrive to make out of molehills ! " said Mrs. 
 Hamley with displeasure ; Mr. Hamley adding, as the mascu- 
 line view of the subject ; " My dear young lady, never throw 
 away your powder and shot on trifles. When you have any- 
 thing that you wish to conceal from Mrs. Hamley and myself, 
 conceal it if you can ; but for goodness gracious sake don't 
 begin a game of ' I spy I ' with nothing to run for ! " 
 
 " I was not playing any game and I had nothing to conceal," 
 said Patricia, a little nettled, and looking straight up at Mr. 
 Hamley. 
 
 She had borne her aunt's rebuke in silence, but when her 
 aunt's husband took her in hand she found humility and the 
 acceptance of undeserved blame difficult. 
 
 " Whew ! " said that gentleman with a prolonged whistle j 
 " but we can show fight then when we get our blood up, can we V 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Hamley ! " broke in Dora, her fair face dimpled 
 into the loveliest little labyrinth of smiles, " I wish you would 
 tell us that delicious story of yours that fight between the 
 Irish carmen ! " 
 
 Mr. Hamley laughed noisily. This fight between two Dub- 
 lin carmen, which took place on the Quay when he once went 
 over on business to what he always called Paddy-land men of 
 Mr. Hamley's stamp are sure to be ethnologically insolent 
 was his favourite battle-horse ; and to be asked to repeat it was 
 always pleasant to him, and never fatiguing. So, stretching 
 out his legs, he began with more than usual gesture and em- 
 phasis ; and the incident of the letter passed without further 
 comment. But it shook the Hamley trust in Patricia's honesty, 
 and inclined them to doubt her gravely, and to debate whether 
 her apparent straightforwardness was not rather the artf'ulest 
 kind of sham.
 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND. 119 
 
 "Now then, Miss Prue, what was there to make snch a fuss 
 about ? " laughed Dora when she and Patricia were alone in the 
 drawing-room. " You ridiculous old simpleton ! " very prettily, 
 quite in the manner of a caress. 
 
 "I don't know," said Patricia. " I don't understand what it 
 all meant, nOr why I might not have opened the letter at .table 
 before everybody without a word being said. It was only to 
 please you, Dora, and because you told me not, that 1 did not." 
 
 * You dear old thing, said Dora, " it was just a little joke ! 
 I wanted to see if you could be depended on, that was all if 
 you were really as loyal to your word as I believed you to 
 be." 
 
 " I think you might have been sure of that," replied Patricia 
 with a certain reproachful sorrow in her face. " I would trust 
 you, Dora, without testing you." 
 
 " Well, don't look as if you were going to cry ! Mrs. Ham- 
 ley-will be asking what is the matter, and then there will be 
 more complications;" said Dora, shrugging her shoulders. 
 
 And Patricia was as much startled as if a cold wind had sud- 
 denly blown over her, by the cool, half-annoyed and, half-in- 
 different tone in which the girl spoke. It did strike her as 
 being just a little bit ungrateful after she had been going 
 through such a disagreeable experience for her sake. 
 
 "Dr. Fletcher," said the servant opening the door. 
 
 People call early in country places, and though it was not 
 yet quite noon there was nothing in the hour to cause a re- 
 mark, so far as Milltown habits went ; but Dora shrugged her 
 shoulders again ; this time petulantly. Dr. Fletcher was evi- 
 dently not one of her favourites. 
 
 A tall, lean, angular man with iron-grey hair and leathery 
 lanthorn jaws came with a kind of lazy awkwardness into the 
 room. His eyes were large and bright, but meditative rather 
 than observant ; his face was grave, even sorrowful, like the 
 face of a man who has thought much on the miseries and per- 
 plexities of life ; but his smile was sweet, more sweet than 
 joyous, and a wo ndetfnl' grace of patience and kindness rested 
 on him. He looked older than his age and he was evidently 
 in delicate health ; which was perhaps another reason why his 
 face had that unmistakable look of a man to whom life is tragi- 
 cally real, not a mere summer day's holiday, and who has takep
 
 1 20 " "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 it to heart to live manfully according to that reality and to 
 leave the summer pastimes to the children. 
 
 He was a man of private moans, but by no means wealthy. 
 When old Mr. Fletcher died he left just enough for his son and 
 daughter to live on, without the need of sordid economy on the 
 one side or the possibility of self-indulgent extravagance on the 
 other. And on his death Dr. Fletcher retired from the pro- 
 fession which had always been irksome to him in its practical 
 and business aspect, and came back to the old home at Mill- 
 town where he could study without interruption. He was one 
 of the quiet men who think and are still, not one of the active 
 sort who go out into the world to fight and cry aloud. His 
 life was mainly an endeavour to disentangle some of the many 
 problems which perplex society, and to create for himself some 
 kind of intelligible hypothesis in the midst of so much that is 
 dark and undetermined. And to do this, he went for his light 
 to science. 
 
 Of course he was considered fatally unsound in Milltown. 
 The most independent thinker that respectable community had 
 ever had, he was naturally styled Atheist by people who 
 thought religion consisted in denying the right of private judg- 
 ment or individual interpretation. Men said, with a kind of 
 shudder, that he believed neither in God nor Devil but to 
 disbelieve in the latter was the worse crime of the two ; he was 
 known to deny eternity of punishment which was an awful 
 questioning of God's mercy ; and his scientific pursuits were 
 subjects of sorrre scorn, much reprehension, and the profound- 
 est disbelief in their truth or value. And those who knew 
 least about them despised them most, and flouted him with the 
 challenge to explain how or why a tree grew, and to recompose 
 into life the elements he pretended to weigh and measure and 
 tabulate in death. 
 
 His want of ambition, too, was disapproved of and held to be 
 a shameful wrapping up of talents ; and every one agreed that 
 with his abilities he ought to do something indeed ought to 
 have done something long ago. They considered he had done 
 nothing yet, because fame had not beaten her tomtom before 
 him. The quiet rendering of a noble lite seemed to be worse 
 than nothing to the children of an age which reverences chiefly 
 blare and tinsel For his own part, when he was told that be
 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND. 121 
 
 ought to do something and make a fortune, he answered that 
 he thought that those who had enough should he contented; 
 and he held it ignoble in the well-endowed to still further crowd 
 the glutted labour-market, lessening the wages of the workers 
 by necessity by just so much as they earned for their superflui- 
 ties. This might be bad political economy he used to add with 
 a smile. Some of his friends said it was ; but it was human 
 justice all the lame ; and, for the rest, political economy must 
 go. He deprecated the race for wealth, the greed of gain, 
 characteristic of the present day. He deprecated the tumult 
 and excitement and clamour of our social life, the luxury and 
 the sensuality of our homes ; and what he deprecated in others 
 that he refused for himself. But Milltown did not endorse his 
 doctrines. Indifferent to fear, to pleasure, to ambition, merely 
 a calm, wise, just thinker, who appraised things at their real 
 value, and was content to accept certain theorems as unprov- 
 able the well-fed lives and uninquiring minds of k that little 
 paradise of conservative respectability had no s'ympathy with 
 such an iconoclast and blasphemer of its gods ! The old pro- 
 verb was verified ; the prophet had no honour among his 
 townsfolk, and the most charitable interpretation of a. life that 
 dared to be real and a mind that dared to be ignorant was, 
 that Henry Fletcher was mad. And many added, his sister 
 Catherine with him. 
 
 Dr. Fletcher seldom called anywhere, but perhaps less fre- 
 quently at Abbey Holme than even other places. Dora Drum- 
 mond's pretty manners pleased him, certainly, for he had a 
 benign kind of pleasure in contemplating children and young 
 people and all other things fresh and beautiful ; but he did not 
 feel at one with Mr. Hamley. Not because he was a self-made 
 man his sympathies would have naturally gone that way 
 but because he was a vulgar and ostentatious man, one whom 
 he mistrusted and took to be a mask, of which the reality was 
 very different from the appearance. Also, he could never over- 
 come a certain repugnance ior Mrs. Hamley. That a woman 
 of her pretensions to ultra-refinement. of character, whose birth 
 and breeding were her strong points, and who spared no sister 
 in he sorrow, no brother in his weakness, could have sold her- 
 self to a man of Mr. Hamley 's stamp for money and a settle- 
 ment, was so far out of his ideas of womanly dignity and
 
 122 "WHAT WOFLD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 purity, not to speak of that other virtue of his for which the 
 world said he was mad the virtue of sincerity of life that in 
 spite of his long acquaintance with her and her family, he could 
 never feel for her cordially, nor look on her as other than self- 
 degraded. And yet he pitied her. He thought the need which 
 had forced her into such a marriage must have been indeed a 
 crushing one ! And in pitying her he tried to forget his repug- 
 nance, aiul perhaps went up to call as if in silent atonement 
 for the personal distaste of which he had been conscious for 
 both her and her husband. 
 
 Dr. Fletcher had been from home of late and had only just 
 returned ; by which it came about that although Patricia had 
 been at Abbey Holme for some time now, he had neither seen 
 nor even heard of her. He looked at her curiously as he came 
 in, but in, Mrs. Hamley's absence Dora did not dare to take on 
 herself the responsibility of an introduction. If Mrs. Hamley's life 
 was made up of small things, was not dear Dora's success due to 
 her clever comprehension thereof 1 ? But though not introduced, 
 Dr. Fletcher took a liking to the new girl. There was that 
 kind of fearlessness which is born of innocence and unsuspi- 
 ciousuess in Patricia's eyes and bearing that interested him, 
 even through her silence. She looked a new specimen for 
 Milltown ; and he liked new specimens. Then she was 
 beautiful ; and beauty, even to leathery skin and iron-grey 
 hair, is interesting. And the mental trouble of her late state 
 had given her a yet greater charm than of old. If something 
 of her former exuberant radiance had gone out of her, more of 
 depth had taken its place ; and the abounding vitality which 
 had given her happiness such infinite enrichment gave now her 
 sadder phase as much pathos. 
 
 Then the two girls made a pretty picture and harmonised by 
 the very force of contrast. The one was dressed in a simple 
 gown of some soft black material, hanging in straight, deep 
 folds, the severity of which was relieved round the throat and 
 wrists by a line of transparent white ; the other was in the 
 daintiest and most coquettish grey that had nothing of mourn- 
 ing but its newness. The one was richly coloured yet in a low 
 key, her dark brown hair, brightened with gold, framing her 
 creamy skin heavily, gorgeously, her figure generously designed, 
 but as yet showing only the long unfulfilled forms of youth ;
 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND. 123 
 
 and the other was fair, dainty, all pink and white, and blue and 
 gold, and every tint clear if slightly crude, every line rounded, 
 every form fully moulded. They made indeed a pretty picture ; 
 and Dr. Fletcher looked at them with his quiet eyes approv- 
 ingly. In character, too, that superficial kind of character 
 which lies on the outside, how different they were ! Patricia, 
 <i woman nobly planned by nature, left pretty much to nature 
 to complete ; and Dora, the careful creation of art and educa- 
 tion, pretty,. graceful, well-bred, good-natured, but not real : 
 Patricia looking as if she was capable of being a heroine in 
 more directions than one, from a Joan of Arc to a Saint 
 Theresa and onwards to a hospital nurse or a poor man's loyal 
 helpmate ; and Dora fit only for the soft things of life, a draw- 
 ing-room lady from head to heel, to whom it would be martyr- 
 dom to be without a maid for four-and-twenty hours, and 
 whose sole endeavour in life was to avoid unpleasantness, get 
 her own private gathering of pleasures, and outwit the Nemesis 
 belonging. 
 
 All this Dr Fletcher took in in a fragmentary, hazy sort of 
 way, and then, after a few words to Dora, he turned to the 
 silent girl who was doing nothing less feminine than working 
 square stitches on coarse canvas as badly as a child would 
 have worked them, and said, apropos of nothing :' " You are a 
 stranger here 1 " 
 
 It was rather a self-evident proposition, but it served for an 
 opening as well as anything else. 
 
 " Yes," answered Patricia, looking up with her big bright 
 eyes ; " I came here about six weeks ago." 
 
 " Do you make a long stay 1 " , 
 
 " For ever, I believe," said Patricia a little mournfully and 
 looked at Dora. 
 
 Dora was looking down, occupied with a difficult stitch in 
 her modern point. Dora's stitches were often difficult when 
 she wished neither to see nor to show. 
 
 " Ah ? who are you then ? " asked Dr. Fletcher, as if he 
 was asking the most matter-of-fact question and not commit- 
 ting any offence against good manners. 
 
 Miss Kemball is Mrs. Hamley's niece," said Dora, glancing 
 uneasily at the door. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said again ; then after a moment's reflection, he
 
 124 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 asked, in his slow meditative way. Are you Robert's daughter ? " 
 
 "No, that was my dear uncle. He was like my father and 
 I loved him like one, but my real father's name was Reginald. 
 I don't recollect him though," said Patricia tenderly. 
 
 " No, I suppose not. You must have been a very little 
 child when he died. I remember him quite well, poor Regin- 
 ald ! " said Dr. Fletcher. 
 
 " You remember my father t " she cried eagerly, bending for- 
 ward to look into his face." 
 
 " Quite well. We were lads together here at home, then at 
 the same school, and afterwards together at college. He. was 
 the youngest of the family, you know, and Robert was the 
 oldest. Robert roust have been eighteen or twenty years older 
 than Reginald. We always called him the Captain, even in 
 the days when he was only a lieutenant. Has not your aunt 
 introduced you to your old family friends 1 Milltown is your 
 native place." 
 
 " I remember now all about you ; and you have a relation, a 
 lawyer in London ! " cried Patricia in a breathless kind of way ; 
 as the scene, when Gordon was telling her uncle in the porch 
 about his journey, and the good fellow, the lawyer, he had met 
 in town, came like a photograph before her mind. The sunshine ; 
 the blue, bright freshened sea ; the white sails of the passing 
 ships ; the crimson leaves of the Virginia creeper round her 
 window from the midst of which she leaned, looking at the 
 fair-faced youth standing in the sunlight talking to the kind 
 and generous guardian of her past life all so full of colour, of 
 careless joy, of fearlessness and freedom ! Dr. Fletcher became 
 at once something nearer and more special than anyone else. 
 He. had a secret link with that happy past which no one else 
 had, and of which no one else knew. 
 
 " I am glad to know you," she said with a passionate ring 
 in her voice. 
 
 All in a flush and a tremor she rose from her seat and went 
 over to him, offering both her hands. Was he not her dear 
 dead uncle's friend ? And had not bis relative, whoever he 
 might be, been good to Gordon ? 
 
 Dr. Fletcher took her hands as she offered them. He was 
 not a demonstrative man, and he bad a wholesome horror o' 
 ordinary young ecstasies ; but Patricia's excitement seemed of
 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND. 125 
 
 a different kind, and if it embarrassed him it did not revolt 
 him. Not that he knew what to do with her hands when he 
 had them, and he wished she had not held them out to him ; 
 but he pressed them in a nice comfortable way and looked 
 into her face kindly ; and that was reception enough for Patri- 
 cia. 
 
 He was holding her thus, she standing before him bending 
 down her face looking into his, and he just saying, " You must 
 come and see my sister Catherine, child," when the door opened 
 and Mrs. Hamley entered. She had that habit of coming into 
 a room when she was least wanted. 
 
 " I see there is no need of an introduction between you and 
 my niece, Dr. Fletcher," said the lady of Abbey Holme in a 
 cold voice. 
 
 Before she had married Mr. Hamley, by-the-by, he had been 
 Henry and she Rosanna ; as is the way with people in the 
 country who have been brought up in the same place. 
 
 " Miss Kemball and I have fraternized over the past," said 
 Dr. Fletcher. " She did not know that I had been her father's 
 chum, and the Captain's too in a minor degree." 
 
 " And, in return, she seems inclined to accept you as her 
 uncle, faute de mieux" Mrs. Hamley made answer with a sarcas- 
 tic smile. 
 
 Oh, amu. you do not know what it is to meet gome one who 
 knows something about one in a strange place ! " said Patricia 
 impulsively. 
 
 " No doubt, my dear," Mrs. Hamley answered drily. " Of 
 course I know nothing of you or your family." 
 
 "But I heard uncle speak of Dr. Fletcher only the day 
 
 before" she hesitated " the wreck," she added, after a 
 
 pause. 
 
 " My poor brother must hare been singularly reticent if Dr. 
 Fletcher is the only one of his numerous Milltown friends of 
 whom he spoke to you. He knew every one there was to 
 know, and naturally every one knew him," said Aunt Hamley 
 with the same dry tone and unpleasant smile. 
 
 " Still, it is something to hear those one loves spoken of with 
 love," cried Patricia fervently. 
 
 " The inference is neither flattering nor just," returned Aunt 
 Hamley with a formal movement of her head. " Now we will
 
 126 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 drop the discussion, if you please. It is one in which Dr. 
 Fletcher can scarcely feel an interest, and of which I hope he 
 will. not accept the. interpretation you have endeavoured to 
 insinuate." 
 
 She waved back the answer that rose to the girl's lips with 
 the manner which, when she put it on, no one had yet been 
 found able to withstand. It was her slave-chain with which she 
 compelled her husband ; the grand air which had always carried 
 Milltown, and which, more than anything else, had maintained 
 that queer shadowy thing called position both when, as a pen- 
 niless lady she had been as it were a lioness with her claws cut, 
 and now, when the wife of a moneyed nobody she was a lioness 
 with her claws well grown, though she was yoked to a very 
 low-bred and clay-carrying cart-horse. In the former case she 
 had never, as she said, forgotten herself nor suffered any one 
 else to forget her : in the latter, she insisted that Milltown 
 should accept the axiom which tells how the greater includes 
 .the less. Given the lioness and the cart-horse in the same yoke, 
 and the regality of the one shall overshadow and merge into it- 
 self the clay-carrying of the other. So .far she was both wise 
 and brave, and her grand air merited the reward it gained. 
 
 Her 'grand air, however, was not very formidable to Dr. 
 Fletcher. He knew his old friend, Rosanna Kemball, pretty 
 well after half a century's intimate acquaintance ; and, for his 
 own part, doubted her zoology.; So, undisturbed and undis- 
 mayed, he talked as much to Patricia as -he did to Mrs. Hatnley 
 herself, and made her tell him all about her past life and her 
 uncle, Barsands and the Mermaid, till the girl was quite rapt 
 away at last, and for a few moments was oblivious of everything 
 but her memories. 
 
 "Dear old Barsands!" she said, throwing back her head; 
 and one thick twist of hair came loose aud fell down her back. 
 " Oh, life was good then ! " she cried. 
 
 Her face lighted up as she spoke with a sudden effulgence of 
 passion and beauty that gave it a totally different character 
 from the ordinary expression it wore. Even her aunt was 
 startled, and Dr. Fletcher looked at her with half a smile and 
 half a sigh. 
 
 " You must come and see my sister Catherine," he said again ; 
 and touched her arm.
 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND 127 
 
 She started, and looked at him as if he had awakened her ; 
 passed her hand over her forehead, and drew a deep breath ; was 
 conscious of the straying length of hair, of her aunt's cold eyes, 
 of the heavy, gorgeous drawing-roora, of all her loss and all her 
 change. The brightness, the rapture, the effulgence passed; 
 she was only one of the inmates of Abbey Holme ; and Mrs. 
 Hamley disapproved of dreamers. 
 
 " I shall be very glad," she said in her frank way, after a 
 "pause. " When shall I come ? " 
 
 Mrs. Hamley's thin lips crisped and Dora's pursed in sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 " Are you quite sure, Dr. Fletcher, that your sister will care 
 to be troubled with so young a companion ? " she said coldly. 
 
 " You know Catharine ! " he answered. "Your niece what 
 is your name, child ? Patricia ? Patricia," he continued, turn- 
 ing back to Mrs. Hamley, " is just the kind of thing she will 
 like. You know of old we have no nonsense at the Hollies. 
 When can you come, do you say ? " to Patricia. " When she 
 comes home. That will be in about a week's time ; and then I 
 expect you two will make great friends." 
 
 " It will not be my fault if we do not," said Patricia 
 simply. And Dr. Fletcher stroked his beard, and said " No," 
 gravely. 
 
 When he had gone the trouble began. Aunt Hamley was 
 put out, and life was difficult when the mistress of Abbey 
 Holme was cross. She first scolded Patricia for her " abomin- 
 able forwardness ; " and Patricia unwisely defended herself, and 
 assured her, with quite superfluous energy, that she never 
 dreamt of being forward, and was only glad to see Dr. Fletcher 
 because he spoke so kindly of dear uncle and poor papa. And 
 then Mrs. Hamley turned against Dora, and told her very 
 coldly and with a great parade of politeness, that she had no 
 business to introduce any one in her absence. How did she 
 know what her wishes were with respect to Patricia's becoming 
 acquainted with the Fletchers ? They were old acquaintances, 
 certainly ; but they were very odd people, and Patricia was 
 quite eccentric enough as things were, she scarcely needed being 
 made more so by outside influence. A great deal, too, was said 
 of Dr. Fletcher's peculiar opinions ; and though she had never 
 sounded him herself, having no patience with him, she knew
 
 128 " WHAT WOULD TOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 that he held crotchets in theology of itself a most undesirable 
 thing. 
 
 The doubts of striving souls struggling for light amid the 
 darkness had no kind of sympathy from Aunt Hamley ! And 
 when she came to this part of her subject she went off into a 
 long disquisition on the folly and impiety of thinking for one- 
 self on religion, or indeed on any matter whatsoever settled for 
 one by authority. 
 
 " As if any one could understand a thing we were never meant 
 to understand ! " she said contemptuously. " Such presump- 
 tion ! Just like Henry Fletcher, though ! " 
 
 On which she blamed Dora again ; and drawing a vivid pic- 
 ture of Patricia's subsequent infidelity and lost condition, made 
 her a present of it as her work and the result of this morning's 
 introduction. But drawing it as she did, with her broadest 
 colours and most comprehensive manner, she pleased herself so 
 much that she forgot she was angry. It was a clever, artistic 
 sketch, and the composition of it soothed her. 
 
 And when she had ended, dear Dora raised her eyes and said 
 very meekly, " I know all you say is quite true, dear, but what 
 could I do 1 He said he knew Patricia was a Kemball because 
 she was so like you, and he asked to be introduced." 
 
 " In that case you could scarcely have refused," said Mrs. 
 Hamley, who, with her eyes full of that brilliant face she had 
 just seen, felt the flattery pleasant. 
 
 " Dr. Fletcher seems to have taken quite a fancy to Patricia ; 
 perhaps it is a rtchauffi of the very friendly feeling he seems to 
 have had for you," laughed Dora significantly. 
 
 " Nonsense, child ! " said Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 But she smiled. She was old enough to be Dr. Fletcher's 
 mother what of that \ Was she not Mr. Harnley's wife, and 
 was not Mr. Hamley born in the same year as Henry Fletcher? 
 Old enough for maternity or not, the multiplicity of her lovers 
 was one of Mrs. Hamley's weak points. No man had ever 
 spoken to her with any appearance of interest in the conversa- 
 tion but he had been marked in her diary as "another victim." 
 According to her the main fact of her own unwritten history 
 was that every marriageable gentleman in Milltown had some 
 time or other in his life yearned to make her his own ; and 
 though she could not always add that he had expressly said so,
 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND. 12i) 
 
 she was never at a loss to account for his silence the signs by 
 which the poor fellow had betrayed his broken-hearted condi- 
 tion having told her more than his enforced reticence had been 
 able to conceal. In truth she has been a handsome girl in her 
 day, tall and showy, insatiably vain and as insatiably ambitious. 
 In truth too, one honest young fellow whom she had led on and 
 then denied had really blown out his brains for love of her ; 
 and the sacrifice had so far touched her own that she had ever 
 since then considered herself irresistible and fatal. 
 
 " No ! no nonsense at all, dear," returned Dora. " Why! how 
 can you say so ? " with remonstrance. " Why else has Dr. 
 Fletcher never married ? All Milltown knows that ! " 
 
 " Dora, you stupid child, I will not have you talk such rub- 
 bish! " said Aunt Hamley laughing; then turning to Patricia 
 she said kindly : " I dare say, dear, it did a little upset you to 
 see an old family friend. That was perhaps natural, as you 
 have been nowhere yet in the neighbourhood. But you must 
 indeed learn to suppress your feelings, child, and be more like 
 other people, else I don't know where we shall be ! " good- 
 naturedly. " So now take what I have said in good part, and 
 remember / am your best friend the truest you have in the 
 world, in every sense. Though I know my duty to you tod well 
 to spoil you." 
 
 Patricia went over to her and kissed her; and dear Dora, 
 who knew that she hated to be kissed and loved to be praised, 
 said in her most caressing way : 
 
 " Friend ! You are the friend of everyone, you darling I What 
 should we all do without you, I wonder ? " 
 
 " Badly," said Mrs. Hamley, and sighed. 
 
 For the moment she was, to her own mind, a kind of Mary- 
 mother-martyr, bearing on her hands the sorrows and incapa- 
 cities of the whole neighbourhood. 
 
 " Dora ! I did not hear Dr. Fletcher ask to be introduced to 
 me ; on the contrary he asked straight out who I was ; and I did 
 not hear him say I was like Aunt Hamley," said Patricia in a 
 tone of surprise when Aunt Hamley had left them alone 
 again. 
 
 She had advanced so far in worldly knowledge as to keep 
 these interrogations for her tete~b-tetes with Dora ; of itself some- 
 thing.
 
 130 " WHAT WOULD VOtT DO. LOVE ? " 
 
 rt Nor did I," answered Dora coolly. 
 
 " Oh, Dora ! " 
 
 " Oh, Dora ! and what then, you dear little prude ? Now 
 Patricia be reasonable ! " said Dora, changing from banter to 
 earnestness. " Have some common-sense, child, or you will 
 make your life here simply intolerable ! What possible harm 
 was there in saying what I did to Mrs. Hamley ? She would 
 have gone on scolding till now, making herself and everyone 
 else ill and miserable, unless I had turned her thoughts by my 
 master-stroke. To say that the stupid old man thought you 
 like her, pleased her ; of course she understood the compliment ; 
 and 1 dare say. you are like what she was, for she must have 
 been very beautiful in her time " that scored one for Patricia in 
 her own mind ; bub Patricia was too stupid to see the compli- 
 ment implied " and to say that he asked to be introduced to 
 you took the load off my head. He wanted it if he did not 
 ask for it, so what harm did I do ? " 
 
 " What is not the truth is always harm," said Patricia. 
 
 " Bah, my dear ! you will have to unlearn that nonsense before 
 you have done with Abbey Holme, that is all I can tell you 1 
 We have to get through the world in the best way we can ; and 
 if a white lie that hurts no one helps us to keep peace and avoid 
 pain, it is lawful," said Dora with a dash of scorn. 
 
 " No, Dora, it is not ! " replied Patricia, earnestly. 
 
 u Don't be silly," she answered. " If you had been brought 
 up between Mr. and Mrs. Hamley as I have been, you would 
 have learnt the same lessons that I have. I would tell any 
 story in the world, perjure myself anyhow, to prevent scolding 
 and quarrelling. And so you would have done ; and so you 
 will do before you are many months older ! " 
 
 " Never, Dora ! Rather than condescend to a life of false- 
 hood I would leave, no matter what I did ! " cried Patricia. " 1 
 would beg my bread first." 
 
 "And I like mine baked for me with plenty of butter," 
 laughed Dora. Then suddenly changing her voice she said, 
 rather loudly, " I like home-made bread, don't you ? " She had 
 heaid Mrs. Hamley's footstep injthe hall, and knew that they 
 would linger just a moment by the door before she opened it ; 
 and they had home-macle bread at Abbey Holme. 
 
 Nothing further happened till the day of the Cragfoot din-
 
 HER FATHER'S FRIEND. 131 
 
 ner, beyond the troubles between Patricia and her aunt which 
 would break out in spite of Dora's care. For, as if to make up 
 for her loose morality by personal kindness, she had constituted 
 herself Patricia's guardian angel at all points. She had 
 patience with her inept fingers and tried in vain to teach her 
 tatting ; she worked a point-lace butterfly for her hair, with the 
 Venetian stitches put in in black ; she made her head ache by 
 dressing her hair in a responsible-looking chignon ; laboured 
 over bfczique, in which the former steerswoman of the Mermaid 
 was simply hopeles* ; defended her against herself : and some- 
 how brought out her most glaring misdemeanours against the 
 Hamley laws as shining virtues of intention, or at the worst, 
 the venial mistakes of ignorance ; she wound herself more and 
 more round the girl's heart that heart which only asked leave 
 to love ! till Patricia fairly worshipped her, and would have 
 gladly died to save her an hour's pain ; she became more and 
 more the peace-maker of the house, faultless in tact, in temper, 
 in kindness, in quickness, faulty only in sincerity and truth. 
 On the whole, the last fortnight had been a happy one. Dora 
 had been delightful ; equal to every emergency ; at the head of 
 every occasion. Patricia, guided by her, was beginning to un- 
 derstand the virtue of leaving things alone, and especially the 
 necessity of leaving her aunt alone when she had a headache. 
 Mrs. Hamley, being less irritated had been less irritable than 
 usual; and Mr. Hamley too, had helped to keep her in good 
 case by his blandest and most flattering attentions. 
 
 For his own part he had been radiant: sleeker, more 
 shining, more abundantly prosperous than ever. He had 
 once or twice even spoken genially to Patricia, and he had not 
 spoken so much, before folk, to Dora. It was all that dinner- 
 party in prospect at Cragfoot ! Life had narrowed itself very 
 much in that monotonous house when an ordinary dinner-party 
 half a mile off, was an event to be chronicled by changed tem- 
 pers and higher spirits. It might be so to Dora well enough. 
 She was young ; Sydney Lowe was handsome, and a note, had 
 passed between them. , But why should Mr. Hamley be so 
 pleasantly moved t His chains must be heavy if, to hare four 
 hours away from the Lady and alone with dear Dora, was a 
 chance lor so much inner rejoicing. However, so it was ; and 
 to the good of Colonel Lowe's account must be carried the
 
 132 "WHAT \VOL'!YT> VOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 fortnight's spell ot comparative brightness that had ruled the 
 household of Abbey Holme. His account did not always show 
 so much to the good ; nor good indeed of any kind in the home 
 that owned him for its master, and where poor, frightened, 
 nervous and catarrhal Mrs. Lowe called him husband.
 
 CANIS IN PKffiSEPL 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 CANIS IN PJLESEPI. 
 
 . LOWE had not ceased for a full fortnight daily to 
 express her astonishment at her husband's sudden pro- 
 posal, first to have a dinner-party at all when they did 
 not owe one and when money was so difficult to get out of the 
 Colonel, and then to ask the Hamleys whom he so much dis- 
 liked. Why should ne have asked them of all people in the 
 world when, from the first, he had opposed the rich brewer's 
 reception as an equal among them, had been the last to ask 
 him, and had never called Mrs. Hamley anything since her 
 marriage but " old hag," " mercenary jade," and the like ? 
 He himself had married Lady Anna Graham's daughter for 
 money ; but let that pass. Few of us carry pocket-mirrors in 
 our conscience ; and Colonel Lowe was not one of the few. 
 What he might have done counted for so much ; but what 
 Mrs. Hamley had done was a different matter. 
 
 Sidney was even more astonished than his mother at this 
 proposed dinner-party. Crafty, therefore suspicious, and 
 clear-sighted as a rute, this time he was off the track. Hope, 
 so natural to the young, his belief in his power over his father, 
 and the passion of his love, all helped to confuse him. For he 
 did love Dora in his own way ; and if his own way was but a 
 poor kind of thing, still it was the best he knew. He scarcely 
 knew how to take this proposed dinner-party. Was it a trap 
 or a chance ? inimical or providential t Did his father suspect 
 something, and so resolve to see on what terms the young peo- 
 ple stood together, for their future discomfiture t or had he 
 by a generous impulse wished to give them a chance, and him- 
 self the opportunity of measuring Dora Drummond's fitness to 
 become the future Mrs. Lowe of Cragfoot ? 
 
 Sydney passed a good deal of his time debating these alterna- 
 tives ; and as if by mutual consent the Hamley name had not 
 once been mentioned between him and his father since that
 
 134 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 little tentative brush of theirs over the wine and walnuts. His 
 mother, however, many times bemoaned her hard fate to him 
 in having to receive Mr. Hamley at all, and specially at an un- 
 necessary dinner ; and he had condoled with her sympatheti- 
 cally, and confessed it was an kifliction, but it would be all over 
 this day month and be forgotten as if it had never been, and 
 she was not to bother herself, everything would go right ; with 
 other of the consolatory speeches he sometimes emplo3 r ed in 
 those rare moments when he played at being an affectionate son 
 to his maternal parent. But, as she remembered afterwards, 
 he had ever said something kind of the Abbey Holme family. 
 Even while he agreed with her that Mr Hamley was a wretch 
 for whom hanging would be too good, he had managed to 
 make his abuse vague and his encomiums precise. She had riot 
 noticed it at the time, being so much taken up with her dishes 
 and her chills, the entrees she could not get, and her eternal 
 cold that would not go ; but she remembered it in the days 
 when the past was read by the light of the future. 
 
 When the .day arrived, and they were settling the order of 
 precedence and the necessary arrangements of pairing off, &c., 
 Colonel Lowe, smiling pleasantly to his son, said, " And you 
 shall have the pretty heiress, Syd ? For I suppose she will be 
 the old ruffian's heiress ? " 
 
 '* I should think no doubt of that," answered Sydney, briskly. 
 
 " And I dare say he will cut up well when the devil claims 
 his own?" continued the Colonel who used more bad language 
 than any other man in Milltown. If he was minded to do his 
 son a kindness too, he was also minded that some of the worth 
 of it should be taken out in annoyance. 
 
 " It looks like it. I do not suppose there is anything flashy 
 about his means," Sydney answered innocently. 
 
 " ' It looks like it ! ' you don't know what he is worth ? You 
 mean to say, Syd my boy, that you do not know more of your 
 Abbey Holme friends than ' suppose,' and ' looks like ? ' " cried 
 the Colonel with aggravating astonishment. 
 
 "II nol Why should I inquire into Mr. Hamley'b affairs 1 " 
 said Sydney, shifting uneasily under his father's eyes. 
 
 "Well! that is being disinterested and confi^in^, and all 
 the other Arcadian virtues in a heap !" cried the Colonel with 
 along breath something between a whistle and an ejaculation.
 
 CANIS IN PRjESEPL 135 
 
 Sidney flushed and tossed back his hair, but he did not take 
 jp the glove. 
 
 " This new girl may come in for her share," put in Mrs. 
 Lowe following the main text, but in happy ignorance of all 
 that was to be read between the lines. " She is a Kemball ; 
 and the Kemball's are a good family." 
 
 " That shows how capable you are of giving an opinion on 
 such matters t " sneered the Colonel. " How can you talk such 
 nonsense, Matilda t The old shoeblack holds the money, and you 
 may be very sure he will not slice his estate to make his wife's 
 niece equal with his own. He will go in for founding a family, 
 and making little Miss Twoshoes his heiress, with the proviso 
 to keep the illustrious name of Hamley for all future genera- 
 tions. Those fellows of mud and money always do go in' for 
 founding a family, poor misguided wretches 1 " 
 
 Still Sydney did not answer. That discretion which' is the 
 better part of valour was in the ascendant to-day, and Sydney 
 would have borne much rather than have given his father an 
 excuse for a quarrel. The Colonel knew this, and pricked him 
 with his verbal assegais accordingly. 
 
 " It is lucky for her that little Twoshoes is tolerably 
 looking," he went onto say. " She is not bad style, all thii v 
 considered." Sydney shot a glance at the handsome, contemp- 
 tuous face, that meant a remembrancer, but failed ; and the 
 Colonel went on in the same oifensive tone. " If she had been 
 a healthy young woman, with the good tough brown hide and 
 milkmaid's paws of her degree, she would have lowered her 
 chances by as many points as she would have gained in whole- 
 someness. Being scrofulous, she has therefore the superficial 
 refinement of the scrofulous a high price to pay." 
 
 <: Scrofulous ! how can you say such a thing ! " flamed Syd- 
 ney, caught on a tender point. " Her health is perfect and 
 her blood is as pure as my own." 
 
 Colonel Lowe's eyes twinkled, and he smiled beneath his 
 moustache. " Hit ! " he said to himself ; then aloud, " Bah ! 
 those pink and white, blue-eyed golden-headed things are 
 always scrofulous, and Miss Drummond cannot escape the in- 
 evitable. She is paying the penalty of a half-starved ancestry, 
 and the vitiated air of centuries of hovels, while you, dear boy, 
 have always been a gentleman when you were your great-grand-
 
 136 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 father, and his great-grandfather to boot. The flesh -an d-blood 
 theory is all very \vell for hustings claptrap, but don't talk to 
 me of your natural equality and one man being as good as 
 another, or any of your cursed Radical rubbish ; a gentleman's 
 a gentleman, and a snob's a snob, and God Almighty himself 
 can't make them different ! " 
 
 " Do not lose your temper with me, dad. I am not a 
 Radical, nor am I going in for the flesh-and-blood theory," said 
 Sydney ; while Mrs. Lowe remonstrated humbly in a horrified 
 whisper, '* Colonel ! before the boy, too !" 
 
 " No, I don't say you are. Egad you'd be no son of mine if 
 you did ! " said the Colonel. " But it vexes me to hear you 
 couple yourself any how with such a beggar's brood as that 
 Abbey Holme man's ! A ruffian I have switched in the streets, 
 as many times as there are days in the year, and now he is , 
 dining like an equal at my own table, and I hear- my son say 
 ' we,' as if speaking of one of his own blood ! It galls me Syd, 
 though he does happen to have a pot of money, and could buy 
 us Lowes from garret to basement ; arid though she is a pretty 
 girl, she is not one for you to look at. A Lowe should have 
 more pride ! " 
 
 " Bother pride when a pretty girl is concerned ! " said Sydney 
 with a forced laugh. " A Lowe has always had toleiably keen 
 eyes for that ! and I never heard of one among us who asked 
 whether the petticoat was of silk or stuff that covered a clean 
 pair of ankles !" 
 
 " My boy ! " said Mrs. Lowe, tears starting into her poor 
 pale eyes. 
 
 She would have been in her right place as a placid old maid 
 given to small economies and smaller charities ; or as a by no 
 means broken-hearted widow with a quiet girl who would have 
 taken all the house-keeping trouble off her hands, and given 
 her no anxiety about her morals or manners ; but as the wife 
 of one gentlemanlike rou6 and the mother of another, her lot 
 was exceptionally hard. Small wonder at her persistent vili- 
 fication of the marriage state, and the morbid horror she al- 
 ways expressed at the responsibility of giving life 1 
 
 " Beg pardon, mater, if I have offended you," said Sydney, 
 following up his cue of filial amiability. ' I ought to have re- 
 membered that you were there. Be a Iwttwi boy for the
 
 CANIS IN PILESEPL 137 
 
 future ; and now I'll go and puff out my iniquities in a weed." 
 
 On which he beat a retreat, aud drew himself rather hastily 
 out of fire. 
 
 " You are a clever dog. but you don't blind me, Master Syd, 
 nor get over ire either, if I can find a way out of this cursed 
 hole on any other side ! " said his father under his breath, by 
 way of parting shot. " Now, Matilda," viciously, " I advise 
 you to go and put yourself under the hands of that old fumbler 
 of yours. She takes an hour to make you the most of a scare- 
 crow of any woman in Milltown, and you have not much more 
 before you." 
 
 " You do say the most disagreeable things, Colonel ! " cried 
 poor Mrs. Lowe, hurrying aimlessly about the room. 
 
 Her husband's sarcasms acted on her nervous system like 
 wind on a heap of chaff, and her thoughts, never remarkable 
 for clearness nor precision, became utterly chaotic when he 
 took it into his head to gibe and taunt ; which was the reason 
 why he did so. 
 
 Having thus set his son's blood on fire and turned his wife's 
 brains upside down, Colonel Lowe went off on his own side to 
 the library, where he took a sheet of paper and read over an 
 elaborate calculation between a long row of figures on the one 
 side, and a very small item, taken from his banker's book, on 
 the other. It was evidently an unpleasant process, for he 
 frowned over it heavily, bit his cleanly-trimmed, filbert-shaped 
 nails as if to gain inspiration, and several times he swore. This 
 was an accomplishment in which the gallant Colonel, whose 
 pride was in his inherited gentlehood, was notoriously proficient. 
 
 " Money I must have ; but that cursed mud ! " he said, evi- 
 dently with no kind of misgiving that the mud itself might 
 have other views of direction; evidently with but the one 
 difficulty, that of stooping his proud head with a good grace 
 and picking up the riches lying at his feet. 
 
 This was not exactly the estimate in which Mr. Hamley held 
 his fair young cousin, nor the future for which he had secretly 
 destined her ; not exactly the estimate in which she held her- 
 self as she stood before the pier glass in her room, radiant in 
 the Avhite silk and pearl ornaments with which she hoped to 
 charm Sydney Lowe's father and mother, aud win their hearls 
 to favour.
 
 138 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 Evidently tlie task these young people had set before them- 
 selves was of supreme difficulty. On the one hand stood the 
 pride of the gentleman, on the other, the pride of money ; and 
 neither seemed likely to give way. Colonel Lowe thought no 
 girl too good for Syd ; Mr. Hamley thought no man good 
 enough for Dora. Colonel Lowe had decided that his son 
 should redeem the tottering fortunes of his house ; Mr. Ham- 
 bly had determined that his cousin should marry no one whose 
 alliance was not of so splendid a kind as to compensate him 
 for her loss. Each held the other infinitely beneath him ; and 
 when birth said " mud," money answered "beggary." 
 
 If there had been only the Colonel to soften, things might 
 have had a better outlook. Needs must when the day of need 
 comes ; but what was the influence that could move Mr. Ham- 
 ley 1 Dora knew of none. Wherefore it was, that believing 
 the Lowe finances to be as flourishing as they looked, and im- 
 agining that the Colonel's consent was the only thing to make 
 the affair a brilliant success, caring nothing for Mr. Hamley 
 though much for what she got out of Abbey Holme, she had 
 done what she had done. Had she known that Cragfoot was 
 mortgaged from kitchen to garret ; that Sydney had not six- 
 pence because his father had not a shilling; and that her dower 
 was part of the speculation, even with her lover well, matters 
 would have been different, that is all ! 
 
 There was nothing very noticeable about the dinner-party. 
 It was much like any other where the host does not hold his 
 guests as first-class, and therefore permits himself to be conde- 
 scending to some and unduly familiar to others. For even 
 gentlemen allow themselves these pranks sometimes. Not the 
 best kind, granted ; but the gentlemen whose consecration has 
 come from circumstance only, not by nature ; men, may be the 
 sons of a long line of well-endowed, who have places, and that 
 shadowy substance called a stake ; men who have been at 
 public schools with Oxford or Sandhurst to follow ; who know 
 how to come into a room with grace and to meet a social dif- 
 ficulty with tact ; who speak with a pure pronunciation and 
 accurate grammar ; read French and the classics, Balzac, Hor- 
 ace, and the like with ease ; who ride well to bounds ; shoot 
 right and left flying; play billiards, and fence, and do all that 
 gentlemen should do ; but men whose inordinate pride of race,
 
 CANIS IN PRJSEPL 139 
 
 pride of caste, and pride of person, have stifled the real hu- 
 manity in them, and who, in idealising selfishness have degraded 
 nobleness. These are the men who, because they are Gentle- 
 men of England, think themselves patented kings of all other 
 races and all lower conditions. Kings ? If tyranny to the 
 weak, insolence to the inferior, contempt for all differences, if 
 this constitutes kingship, then was Colonel Lowe of Cragfoot a 
 royal man pf a kind. Consequently adinner party which con- 
 sisted of a rich parvenu and his plebeian, if pretty, relation ; the 
 rector, respectable and a gentleman, but possessing only a scant- 
 ling of brains according to the estimate of a clever reprobrate 
 whose predilections were for "life ; " the medical man who, as 
 a " professional," was of small account ; two common place 
 mediocrities like the Collinsons : and two queer, enthusiastic. 
 Radicals, free thinkers, woman's rights people, and who knows 
 what absurdities besides, like Dr. Fletcher and his sister, was 
 not a dinner-party tor which he put on his best breeding nor 
 brought out his best wine. 
 
 Nobody however cared much about the Colonel, nor his 
 nicer shades of manner. Country friends have that kind of 
 indifference for each other which is born of perfect familiarity ; 
 and it a man is known to have a " nasty way with him " on 
 occasions, when those occasions arise and his peculiarity is 
 made evident, nothing more is said than that he " showed him- 
 self off," or Miis fit was on him," or "he was nastier than 
 usual last evening." Of the two from Abbey Holme, Dora was 
 happy because she looked pretty and knew that she shone out 
 like a star" in the midst of the faded elders, not excepting even 
 Miss Fletcher, noble of look and of true queenliness of bearing 
 as she was but then she was past forty, and did not know 
 how to dress ; and Mr. Hamley was happy because Dora was 
 there and Mrs. Hamley was not. The Burrodailes were glad 
 to spend an evening out of their own house. They were of 
 the jovial order of pavson!ou<J in a mitigated way, and thought 
 life was given as much for enjoyment as for work; and Dr. 
 Fletcher and his sister took their part patiently in what they 
 considered a personal sacrifice to the claims of a long acquaint- 
 ance, and which had promised more pleasure than it had ful- 
 filled in the disappointed expectation of meeting Reginald 
 Kemball's daughter.
 
 140 "WHAT WOFLT) YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 Only the Colonel's own family understood the run of the un- 
 dercurrent of which the company at large saw nothing but the 
 surface. They knew that his humour was insolent in its very 
 jocularity, and that the more familiar his manner the more 
 contemptuous his feeling. And the knowledge was enough to 
 make Mrs. Lowe's naturally cold and nervous manners more 
 than usually uncomfortable, giving her the appearance of being 
 personally offended with all her guests save Mr. Borrodaile, to 
 whom she addressed herself almost exclusively because he was 
 long-winded and perorated, and liked to talk better than to 
 listen. As for Sydney, knowing that every word and look was 
 watched, he became so much on his guard towards Dora that 
 he piqued her for a moment into evident displeasure. And 
 this betrayed a greater amount of intimacy than even the dimples 
 and the blush which broke out suddenly over her face when 
 the young man took her hand under the table, and squeezed it 
 with more fervour than Mr. Hamley would have quite liked, 
 had he known. 
 
 All of which the Colonel saw and noted, and made his future 
 game thereon. 
 
 After the ladies had retired and the gentlemen had drawn 
 close, Colonel Lowe, who had been taking his wine freely, 
 turning to Mr. Hamley who had been taking his freely too, 
 said with a laugh that might have meant anything, from honest 
 admiration to the profoundest insolence : 
 
 " That girl of yours grows prettier every day, Hamley." 
 
 Mr. Hamley's eyes glistened. He threw back on^lappel of 
 his coat, and smiled the proprietor's smile of proud humility 
 which deprecates while it accepts. 
 
 " She's well enough ; she'd pass in a crowd," he said, waving 
 his large hand with its big diamond flashing in the light; " but 
 she's better than pretty, Colonel she's good." 
 
 " Good ! " echoed Colonel Lowe ; " who cares about women 
 heing good 1 All we want is, tHat they should be pretty and 
 love us when we ask them. No woman is good who is worth 
 her salt such salt as it is ! " 
 
 " I must beg to differ with you," said Mr. Hamley senten- 
 tiously. " I think ladies should be very good to enable them 
 to encounter their little temptations and bear their little 
 crosses ; ladies, when they are weak, do a great deal of harm."
 
 CANLS IN PR^ESEH. Ul 
 
 " There I meet you," said Colonel Lowe with a laugh : 
 " women, when they are weak and brainless, are I grant you 
 the deuce and all ; but your niece is not that, I talce it." 
 
 " She is not my niece ; Miss Drummond is only my cousin," 
 said Mr. Hamley. " I cannot think why you should all say 
 she is my niece ! From the commences ent it has always been 
 your niece here and your niece there, cunfound it ! in spite of 
 all I could say to the contrary." 
 
 " So 1 your cousin is she ? Mrs. Hamley is trustful," said 
 the Colonel dryly. 
 
 " Miss Drummond is as valuable to Mrs. Hamley as to my- 
 self ; she is Mrs* Hamley'sjngbt hand and mine too," said Mr. 
 Hamley in a distinct voice. " Mrs. Hamley enjoys but poor 
 health, as perhaps you know, and Miss Drummond is quite the 
 angel of the house, if 1 may say so without ,oli'euce to Mr. 
 Borrodaile." 
 
 "Ah! that is very -nice," said Colonel Lowe. "Quite the 
 right sort of thing for an adopted daughter." 
 
 Mr. Hamley frowned; but he drank a glass o.f wine, and 
 therefore made no answer. 
 
 " Still," continued the Colonel in a meditative kind of way, 
 " the more valuable she is to you now, the more you will miss 
 her when she leaves you." 
 
 " I was not aware that Miss Drummond entertained the in- 
 tention of leaving us," said Mr. Hamley stiffly. 
 
 " No ? Why, you cannot expect to keep a pretty creature 
 like that always by her mother's side, can you 1 " laughed 
 Colonel Lowe. " You will be losing her some day when Prince 
 Prettyman make his appearance." 
 
 Mr. Hamley's face flushed ; Sydney's turned pale. 
 
 " I don't know anything about Prince Prettyman," he said ; 
 "but what I do know is, that I have never yet laid eyes on the 
 man I would choose to give her to. Fact is, I care nothing 
 about her marrying. She has no call to marry while Abbey 
 Holme has a roof to its rooms and a fire in its kitchen. Who 
 would be as good to her as we are 1 who would treat her as so 
 much the lady 1 She is happier now than she would be else- 
 where, and there's time enough before her." He spoke warmly, 
 wiping his upper lip more than once ; and the Colonel looked 
 at him curiously, as if trying to read the man's inner thought.
 
 142 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " Yes, that is all very well as a matter of sentiment, I dare 
 say," he said ; " but you surely don't intend to prevent her 
 marrying if a suitable occasion offers ! a gentleman of good 
 blood, say " 
 
 " Good blood ! good'fiddlesticks ! " interrupted Mr. Hamley 
 coarsely. " Good blood makes as bad a job of life as bad blood 
 does, and sometimes a precious sight worse. I would refuse 
 the highest lord in the land if I did not think him good enough 
 for her." 
 
 " I should have thought a lord, not quite the highest in the 
 land, might have been considered Miss Drummoud's e^ual," 
 said Colonel Lowe smoothly. . 
 
 " Look here, Colonel, I'm a self-made man, I am," said Mr. 
 Hamley, moving his chair sideways to the table and thrusting 
 out his legs ; " and I'm used to price things by value and not 
 by name. Lord or no lord, I know Miss Drummond's figure, 
 and I tell you he'll have to weigh pretty heavy who d come up 
 to it and get my yes." 
 
 " But if you did like the man and the match 1 " pressed the 
 Colonel. " You would then, I suppose, make the running 
 smooth for the young people ? you would not send her to her 
 husband empty-handed ? " 
 
 Mr. Hamley took it all in at a glance. He sat upright in his 
 chair planted his feet firmly, flung back both lappels this time, 
 and looked at Colonel Lowe steadily with another steady look 
 at Sydney ; handsome faces both of them, each in its own way, 
 but botli bad the one reckless and the other shifty. Then he 
 sai-1 in a slow, ponderous voice as if he was giving judgment on 
 the bench : " I desire it should be distinctly understood - -dis- ' 
 tincfely understood that I would not give Miss Drummond 
 a brass farthing if she married. What I shall do for her if 
 she remains single, and continues to act as she has done to- 
 waids Mrs. Hamley and myself, is another matter. But the 
 , man who wants to be her husband will have to wait for my 
 death if he wants to step into my shoes ; and then I don't say 
 they'll fit. Not during my life will he touch my money, 
 married or single." 
 
 "That's explicit," said Colonel Lowe with a sneer. 
 
 " Yes, that's explicit if you choose to call it so," echoed Mr. 
 Burnley. "I'll have no fortune-hunters nibbling around me, 
 Oolonel ; you may take your oath of that."
 
 CAN1S IN ?RSEtt. US 
 
 He said this in such a loud voice that it broke into the con- 
 versation which Dr. Wickhara was holding wijth Henry Fletcher 
 respecting one James Garth, a yeoman in difficulties whose 
 land Mr. Hamley was wanting. 
 
 "Who talks of fortune-hunters?" said Dr. Fletcher lazily. 
 " Are there any in Milltown t " 
 
 " Perhaps you are one yourself, and can answer your own 
 question," said Colonel Lowe. "Who knows? you may be 
 Hamley's standing bete noire, Fletcher. We all know you 
 admire Miss Drummond." 
 
 " She is very pretty, and one likes the young creatures one has 
 seen grow up," said Dr. Fletcher. 
 
 " Now Fletcher, for heaven's sake don't you interfere ! I hate 
 to hear the ladies of one's own neighbourhood discussed in 
 public as if they were so many servant-girls-," cried Sydney 
 fiercely. " It is such vilely bad form, I cannot understand how 
 any gentleman can allow it ! " 
 
 " I agree with you. It is bad taste, and not my way gener- 
 ally," answered Dr. Fletcher in the manner of an apology. 
 
 "I am much indebted to Mr. Sydney Lowe for his considera- 
 tion," sneered Mr. Hamley. " But some affairs are best dis- 
 cussed in public when the time is ripe, that there may be no 
 doubt remaining in the neighbourhood. And that Miss Drum- 
 mond will have no fortune if she marries during M.rs. Hamley's 
 life-time, with Mrs. Hamley needing of her daily, cannot be 
 known too far and wide." 
 
 " Let us trust that the fowls of the air, not to say the beasts 
 of tiie field, will carry the secret to all whom it may concern. 
 Fletcher, Wickham, both of you do you hear ? you are not 
 to make love to Miss Drummond. She is la fie defendue of 
 Abbey Holme, and Mr. Hamley's motto is ' canis in prjesepi.' " 
 
 Colonel Lowe said this in a loud voice, with perfect breeding 
 as to accent, inflection, gesture ; but his smile and his eyes were 
 not pleasant to look at, and Dr. Wickham, bending his head, 
 said in a half-whisper to Henry Fletcher, " Mephistopheles, by 
 Jove ! " 
 
 Sydney was white with rage. He lool^d first at his father 
 and then at Mr. Hamley, and seemed only with the strongest 
 effort to prevent an outburst. No higher motive of restraint 
 than "at his own table" prevented him. Still, we may be
 
 t44 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 thankful for any curbs at mad moments ; and that Sydney 
 Lowe was prevented from striking his father and flying at the 
 throat of his guest by a mere consideration of conventional 
 politeness was so much to the good of general morality. When 
 we cannot have gold we must be content with brass ; and paste 
 answers 'the same purpose as diamonds, except for analysis. 
 
 " I don't know what you mean with your foreign tongues," 
 said the rich brewer tossing off his wine and smacking his lips 
 after it. " I never had much schooling in my days ; and all I 
 know about mottoes is that, when I married Mrs. Hamley and 
 set up my carriage and a livery, I took for mine ' Victrix for- 
 tunse sapientia,' which they tell me means ' Wisdom conquers 
 fortune.' And so I say, and so " with a roll of aggressive 
 self-satisfaction in his voice and manner "I have always 
 found it." 
 
 " It is a motto that holds good for two," said Sydney in- 
 solently. 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt," returned Mr. Hamley, sticking his 
 thumb into his arm-hole as was his favourite gesture, and play- 
 ing noisily with his fingers on his chest, while with his elbow 
 on the table and leaning back in his chair he helped himself 
 again to wine. "But when you can catch a weasel asleep, 
 Mr. Sydney, you have done the trick hey 1 When Greeks 
 meet then comes the tug of war. Doesn't somebody say that ? 
 I believe it's in a book." 
 
 " Very true," said Colonel Lowe gravely ; " but we are not 
 Greeks at Milltown," with a sly look to his son. " Gentlemen " 
 looking round the table " you seem to be taking no wine. 
 No ! shall we th^n join the ladies 1 " 
 
 " And apologise to Miss Drummond for having committed 
 the unpardonable offence of making her the subject of our dis- 
 cussions," said Sydney with a dark look. 
 
 " Right," echoed Dr. Fletcher. 
 
 " Save your breath to cool your porridge, gentlemen," said 
 Mr. Hamley with undisguised insolence. " Miss Drummond 
 has need of no man's protection where / am ! " 
 
 " Von should have fulfilled your functions better just now," 
 sneered Sydney ; and Mr. Hamley, not to be outdone, turned 
 his head just as he was leaving the room, and said, " Pass that 
 on to the Colonel," as he swaggered through the hall.
 
 CANIS IN PRjESEPI. 146 
 
 In the drawing-room, because lie was a little flushed with 
 wine and a great- deal excited by wrath, Sydney paid Dora the 
 most marked attention, and seemed disposed to set everything 
 at defiance his father, Mr. Hamley, the opinion of the world, 
 and possibilities. It was by no means his best policy ; but he 
 was too angry to be politic. Besides, he had by nature a large 
 share of that kind of feminine unreasonableness which cares 
 mure for the indulgence of its momentary spite than the fur- 
 therance of its views by self-control ; and if he could strike to- 
 day he did not look forward to being struck in return to-morrow. 
 And because Colonel Lowe, too, was given up for the time to one 
 of his haunting demons, and because he wanted to annoy Mr. 
 Hamley and to punish him for his insolence in daring to hold 
 his own against a gentleman's desire, he paid Dora as much at- 
 tention in his way as did his son ; and both together bewildered 
 and somewhat disturbed that young lady, though they enchanted 
 her too. Or rather, they would have enchanted her had she 
 been left in peace. But Mr. Hamley had no intention of leav- 
 ing her in peace. He drew a chair close to hers, and no 
 stratagems nor inducements could tempt him to leave it. He 
 mounted guard over her by his looks ; a black and savage 
 guard ; and though he took no active hostile part against the 
 compliments and pretty speeches which Sydney and his father 
 showered like fireworks over her, yet he let them see plainly 
 enough that they were not to his liking, and made her under- 
 stand that what she accepted now she would have to pay for 
 afterwards. 
 
 He spoke to her himself frequently, interrupting the two 
 men rudely, with a fierce and familiar manner of ownership 
 that nearly maddened Sydney a manner, too, strangely at 
 variance with the artificial and lumbering formalities of his 
 usual company habits. 
 
 Dora, who had not the mot d'enigme, was at a loss to under- 
 stand its true meaning. She did her best to steer clear with 
 her usual clever temporizing ; but she failed. For every smile 
 and blush and pretty acceptance of gallant words from father 
 or son Mr. Hamley spoke to her savagely ; for every deprecat- 
 ing look to him and sweet-voiced endeavour to join him into 
 the talk, Colonel Lowe laughed disagreeably, or Sydney pressed 
 her foot beneath the chair with a savage pressure which it was 
 J
 
 146 " WHAT WOULD YOUJDO, LOVE ? " 
 
 wonderful Mr. TIamley did not see. Still, all this turmoil 
 excited her vanity, and pleased it. To see herselt the battle- 
 ground, as it were, of these three men, was charming to her; 
 and she felt quite like a little Queen of Beauty sitting on the 
 dais and watching the tilters in the field below. She had never 
 come out so prominently before ; and the other ladies of the 
 party looked on, and either wondered what it betokened, or re- 
 sented the fuss being made with her, according to their own 
 pretensions and private moods. As for poor Mrs. Lowe the 
 whole thing was a mystery from beginning to end ; and she 
 had but one intelligible thought connected with it, that the 
 Colonel was more than ordinarily disagreeable, and that she 
 wished he would not lead Syd into mischief.
 
 PAYING THE iiiLL, 147 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PAYING THE BILL. 
 
 T last the evening which, seemed interminable to more 
 than one, for the dinner had not been a success, came 
 to an end, and the guests melted away as they do, 
 whether they melt by degrees or with a rush. " Sic 
 transit " was Dora's plaintive sentiment as she wrapped her- 
 self in her ermines and managed to make hersejf look even 
 prettier than ever, though she put her unspoken lament into 
 more homely language. Now, too, that the excitement was 
 over, she was beginning to fear the consequences. It was the 
 bad quarter of an hour when the bill was to be presented. To 
 be sure, Mr. Hamley had always been good and kind to her, 
 but that was because she had always been meek and obedient 
 to him. She was a wise little girl in her generation, and knew 
 that more than half the love given to us is because we please, 
 not because we are worthy. And she was perfectly aware of 
 the fact that her tenure at Abbey Holme, even now at this 
 day, depended solely on the amount of use and pleasure of 
 which she coult.l be to her employers. For were they not her 
 employers? she used to ask herself with cynical disdain of the 
 sham she made it her life's business to practise. There were 
 times when even she, Dora Drummond, took the truth in her 
 hand and confessed it. 
 
 She knew now the task lying before her ; and thrusting back 
 into her heart all her gratified pride, and all the sweeter hope 
 which this strange evening had aroused in her, bent to her yoke 
 with easy grace habitual to her, and prepared to quench the 
 fire and still the storm. 
 
 For her initial apology she looked up into her cousin's face 
 
 and smiled tenderly as innocent of all offence, so soon as they 
 
 were shut up in the carriage alone. He met her flattering little 
 
 look with a close mouth and hard eyes. . He was grim and 
 
 angry.
 
 148 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " I hope you enjoyed your evening ? " he said abruptly, 
 after they had been silent for some time. 
 
 " Yes, I did," she answered pleasantly. " Did you ?" 
 
 "Not at all." He spoke with savage decision. "I never 
 enjoyed myself less." 
 
 "1 am so sorry, dear!" said Dora sympathetically. She 
 seldom called Mr. Hamlcy dear, and only when they were alone. 
 She had her reasons for keeping on distant personal terms with 
 him, and it was a sign that she had to put out all her strength 
 when her address became affectionate. 
 
 "Humph ! you did not look like being sorry for anything, I 
 think," said Mr. Hamley, frowning. 
 
 " I did not see you were uncomfortable, else I should have 
 been 'very unhappy," she answered. 
 
 " No ! you saw nothing but that puppy young Lowe, and his 
 beast of a father," thundered Mr. Hamley. "Because they 
 made, a fuss with you 1 suppose you got your head turned. 
 But don't mistake them or me, Dora. I told them down stairs, 
 as plain as a pikestaff, that I would not give you a brass far- 
 thing if you married not a brass farthing ! And so I flung 
 their dirty fortune-bunting manoeuvres down their throats, and 
 I wish it had choked them. And 1 drunk their wine when I 
 said it. If / have taken you up and made a lady of you, that 
 says nothing for nobody else ; and by the Lord, if they count 
 on that, they will find they have reckoned without their host." 
 
 " I don't suppose they have counted on anything connected 
 with poor little me at all," said Dora quietly, sliding her hand 
 into his. " You are vexing yourself for nothing, dear. No 
 one wants to marry me with fortune or without, such a silly 
 little thing as I am." 
 
 " And if they did, Dora, what then ? Would you go 1 " he 
 asked, his manner still savage if a shade less brutal. 
 
 She laughed lightly. " Not unless you wanted to get rid of 
 me." she answered, looking up at him prettily. 
 
 "Will you promise to wait till then?" said Mr., Hamley, 
 seizing her arm with a rude gripe. "Promise me that, Dora, 
 and I'll defy them all, and the devil at their head !" 
 
 " Yes," Dora answered, raising her eyes with that shy yet 
 candid look which .she knew always scored honours in her 
 favour.
 
 
 PAYING THE BILL. 149 
 
 " Then you will never go," said Mr. Hamley in a softer tone. 
 
 " I am very happy as I am," lisped dear Dora, choking 
 back her tears and pressing his hand caressingly with her little 
 rosebud-like fingers, while saying to herself : " Oh, how I loathe 
 you how Jewish you were struck dead to-night !" when he, 
 taking up his grand manner lordly, patronizing, condescend- 
 ing, yet notr unkindly as if afraid to commit himself to further 
 sentiment, answered majestically, " You ought to be. I have 
 done my best to treat you as the lady, and if you weren't 
 happy with all I've done for you*, you'd be more ungrateful than 
 I'd like to think ! " 
 
 " And I am not ungrateful," returned Dora. 
 
 " I don't believe you are ; ajid we'll prove it some day to 
 those two hounds yonder," said Mr. Hamley, as they drove up 
 to the door, where he assisted her to dismount, as his phrase- 
 ology went, and, offering his arm, walked with her in state to 
 the drawing-room. 
 
 " How late you are !" was Mrs. Hamley's greeting, mad'e sourly. 
 
 " How pretty you look, Dora ! like Catskins in the fairy 
 tale ! " was Patricia's. 
 
 She and her aunt were in the dimly-lighted drawing-room, 
 both silent and both weary. If the evening had been long to 
 the guests at Cragfoot, it had been longer to the ill-assorted 
 inmates of Abbey Holme. Patricia had done her best to make 
 things go smoothly, by which, of course, it came about that she 
 had made them all go roughly. She had loyally set out by 
 trying to please her aunt ; which was the sure way to displease 
 her ; especially when she was inclined to find her path in life 
 more than usually crooked, as it was to night, because Dora 
 and Mr. Hamley had left her to herself and her niece ; and 
 Mrs. Hamley had felt bound to improve the occasion, and give 
 unpleasant if useful lessons on humility and obedience, which 
 had pained the poor girl, who could not see where they applied 
 to her, nor therefore why they were bestowed. So that at last^ 
 after several abortive efforts on Patricia's part to find the clue 
 that could guide her out of the maze of mistakes in which she 
 was wandering, there had settled down between them a dull, 
 sad silence which Mrs. Hamley resented as an additional offence, 
 yet would not break on her own side nor allow Patricia to break 
 on hers.
 
 150 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO^LOVE ? " 
 
 Tlie fact was, the mistress of Abbey Holme wanted to be 
 amused in her own way and as dear Dora would have amused 
 her. The woman who would not suffer that the best of the 
 men and women she knew should hold doubts where she had 
 certainties, or walk to the right when she chose the left, was 
 not likely to submit to the independent action of a girl like 
 Patricia ; even though that independent action was for her 
 benefit. Why did 'she ask her if she would play backgammon, 
 and not wait until she herself had proposed it? It was not 
 her place to propose backgammon or anything else. What she 
 ought to have done was, to hold herself in readiness to play if 
 she was invited, and then, when duly bidden, to bring the 
 board from the what-not where it stood, set it square on the 
 little velvet table, arrange the lamp to the proper focus, and do 
 all this quietly, without strewing sticks and straws about the 
 room. And if she was snubbed for clumsiness or noise, as it 
 was alniost impossible she should not have been, she ought not 
 to have taken any notice save by silence and increased docility. 
 " She was such an unmanageable young person," Aunt Hamley 
 had been thinking all the evening with cumulative bitterness. 
 
 No wonder, then, that she said sourly when her husband and 
 Dora came in : " How late you are ! " her tone and mannei 
 telling the sense of injury under which she was labouring. 
 
 " Why, yes, we are late," said Dora, looking at the clock on 
 the chimney-piece, which had stopped, and speaking with her 
 deprecating, soothing smile. 
 
 " You must have been singularly well amused," sneered Mrs. 
 Hamley. 
 
 " Quite the other way, Lady, Ve have been particularly badly 
 entertained," said Mr. Hamley. 
 
 " You would have done better to have taken my advice and 
 have stopped at home," she replied with a grim laugh. It 
 comforted her to think that they bad been bored as well as 
 Jierself. " We have had the most stupid evening, Patricia and 
 I have we not, Patricia ] " 
 
 " Rather," said Patricia frankly. " We have not got on very 
 well together." 
 
 " There, I told you so," cried Mrs. Hamley with a look that 
 would have made Dora quake had it been, given, to her. " You 
 are candour itself, my dear ! "
 
 PAYING THE BILL. 151 
 
 " Oh ! it is always better to tell the truth," said unsuspecting 
 Patricia. 
 
 Dora gave her one glance, and Mrs. Hamley another. Mr. 
 Hamley rubbed his hands softly and smiled. 
 
 " I cannot say I am sorry for you," continued Mrs. Hamley, 
 turning to Dora. " You see all you have got for your greedi- 
 ness for pleasure, you two, is to have spent a stupid evening 
 yourselves and to have given me a worse." 
 
 " But you know you always prophesy rightly, dear," said 
 Dora, sitting down by the fire and close to Mrs. Hamley, with 
 the look of one who has something to say. 
 
 She was longing to go up-stairs to be alone that she might 
 think over it all, and try to understand her position; but she 
 knew what was expected of her, as well as she knew the terms 
 of her holding ; and has it not been said that she was wise in 
 her generation ? 
 
 " That's right, Dora ; I am moped to death. Now tell me 
 all about it," said Mrs. Hamley a little briskly. 
 
 " She'll not have much to tell," growled Mr. Hamley between 
 his teeth. 
 
 " Well, I'll do what I can," Dora answered with her pleasant 
 facile sweetness ; and then began an account of the dinner, and 
 Mrs. Lowe's cold, and Mrs. Borrodaile's hideous crimson gown, 
 and Miss Fletcher's familiar manners to the lady's maid, and 
 Dr. Fie teller's absence of mind and how he had taken salt for 
 sugar and mustard with his mutton, and Dr. Wickham's round 
 i-yes, and Mr. Collinson's dyed moustache, and what this one 
 said and that one did ; till the grim visages waxed smooth and 
 jocund, and more than once the two wrathful authorities fairly 
 laughed. 
 
 In the midst of it all Patricia took her candle and bade them 
 abruptly good night. She was pale and looked distressed. 
 She could not bear to listen to Dora's ridicule. To have just 
 accepted hospitality, and then to come home and laugh at 
 those who had given it to wear one face at Cragfoot and 
 another at Abbey Holme Patricia's honest soul rebelled at 
 the hypocrisy there, the ingratitude here. And so, unwilling 
 to blame arid equally unwilling to be false to her own sense 01 
 right, she took the (as it seemed to her) cowardly pirt of flight 
 rather than of protest ; and, escaping to the solitiu e f her o-.va
 
 152 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 room, gave her aunt an opportunity of being Shahrazad in her 
 turn, and of telling them of all that " odd girl's" misdemean- 
 ours ; whereat the three condemned and condoled in concert. 
 
 Safe in" the solitude of her own room, Patricia wearied herself 
 again, as so often before, with her one standing difficulty. Be- 
 tween the two opposing duties of testifying according to the 
 truth that was in her, or silence in the presence of her superiors 
 whom her testifying only annoyed and did not reform, which 
 was she to follow 1 Ah ! others beside Patricia Kemball have 
 ere now stood at the cross roads, and not known which way 
 to take when virtues were divergent and duties incompatible ! 
 If we could all have our infallible direction ever plain before us 
 we would all do what is right ; for it. is by ignorance, not wil- 
 fulness, that we mostly fail ; and even when we have gone into 
 the deepest waters, and are at our worst, we have drifted into 
 the breakers by mischance rather than made intentional ship- 
 wreck. 
 
 But this was a step as yet beyond Patricia. To her, life was 
 still in the stage of the absolutes, and a thing was right or 
 wrong clearly, crudely without softening shade or modifying 
 circumstance. She knew nothing of those delicate little dove- 
 tails by which vice can be fitted into the mosaic-work of virtues, 
 and proved by reasoners and economists to be the very thing 
 that was wanted ; nothing of the pigeon's neck quality of cir- 
 cumstance through which lies are made more beautiful than 
 truth, and to bow the knee to Baal a holier deed than to con- 
 fess for Israel. 
 
 So she sat and wearied herself, while Dora, with her white 
 satin boots shining on the crimson fire-stool, and her white silk 
 dress shining on the crimson firelight, played with her pearls, 
 and racked her brains and invention as she lounged in the prie- 
 dieu down-stairs ; amusing Mr. and Mrs. Hamley with her 
 playful sarcasms and dramatic cleverness, until she brought 
 them both from gloom to cheerfulness, not to say radiance. 
 By which she prevented an attack of ill-temper that would 
 have been felt in the remotest recesses of the house and by the 
 humblest member of the household for many days, and thus 
 contributed just so much to the general stock of morality and 
 happiness. 
 
 After this the went up-stairs, and only Alice Garth, her
 
 PAYING THE BILL. 153 
 
 maid, saw how she collapsed as soon as the door was sh'ut 
 between her and the house to which she acted. 
 
 " I tell you I did right ? " was her defence and answer when 
 Patricia expostulated with her the next day. " I did no one 
 any harm, and I stopped a week's misery to everybody ; and 
 what is that but good work, I should like to know ? " 
 
 " Not good work if you hurt your own soul," said Patricia. 
 
 " Soul ! hurt my own soul 1 what nonsense," Dora cried 
 scornfully. " My opinion is, Patricia, that nothing is so selfish, 
 nothing so cruel, as that thing you choose to call sincerity. I 
 am sure if I was always thinking of my dirty little soul as you 
 are of yours, I should go mad certainly I should never expect 
 to do a decently civil, not to talk of politic, thing again. Don't 
 talk to me of truth and honesty ! I am sick of the very words. 
 Talk rather of selfishness and cowardice and obstinancy ; con- 
 fess these when you refuse to help in setting things straight or 
 keeping them smooth, and then I will believe you." 
 
 " I do not think I am selfish for trying to be true to my own 
 sense of right, or cowardly for refusing to tell falsehoods," said 
 Patricia. 
 
 But Dora said, " You are, Patricia," so decidedly and so 
 crossly that the girl gave up the point : shaking her head in 
 deprecation, but keeping silence, not caring to justify herself 
 afresh in Dora's present belligerent mood. 
 
 To uphold the right and to be condemned therefore, while 
 those who do no wrong are rewarded, was a sorrow and perplexity 
 not peculiar to Patricia's experience. Has life ever given anght 
 else but condemnation to those who maintain a standard of 
 truth and inner nobleness higher than the popular measure in 
 use about them ? Aristides has riot been the only man ostracised 
 simply because he was just; nor Socrates the only sage who 
 has had to be effaced because he taught a virtue greater than 
 his time. Patricia in her small way was simply repeating the 
 experience of such as these ; and there are many living 
 Patricias at this moment learning the same hard lesson by 
 heart, and bearing the same heavy burden on their hands.
 
 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 DEMETER. 
 
 tHERE is a time in the history of most of us, while young, 
 when the mind takes a sudden awakening and we enter 
 into a new order of thought. We cannot always say 
 how or why this has come about ; but sometimes we do know 
 the precise moment when our eyes first opened to the higher 
 truths, and can state how it was that the current of our inner 
 life was changed. We can single out the one from whom we 
 received the ineffaceable impress, and give the pattern of the 
 altar from which we took the living fire that kindled our own. 
 Up to that moment we had been waiting or wandering ; after 
 then we knew where our Mecca stood, and set our faces toward 
 it. 
 
 Such a moment was coming for Patricia. While her uncle 
 lived she had had no need of extra direction. She had led, s 
 has been said more than once before, that healthy and un- 
 reflecting kind of existence wherein youth grows strongest and 
 loveliest, but wherein is no conscious mental development 
 because no spiritual struggle. She had never known the doubt 
 of conflicting duties, nor suffered the anguish of moral uncer- 
 tainty; the law under which she had lived had been simple 
 and absolutt.', and no subtle Advocatus Diaboli, skilled in com- 
 pound ethics, had held a brief at Barsands. 
 
 But now at Abbey Holme everything was changed, and her 
 moral standards were fluctuating with the rest. The old and 
 the new had come into collision, and her soul was yearning for 
 an authority outside itself which should settle her difficulties 
 and help her to fashion her life anew ; an authority that should 
 show her how to order herself in accord with her present con- 
 ditions, and yet live nobly after the teaching of her uncle. 
 
 If her mind was out of tune, "her outward existence was no 
 more harmonious with her real self. Her personal freedom 
 denied threw her time on her hands ; and, though she was top
 
 DBMETER. 155 
 
 stt-^g-minded to allow herself to mope, and too healthy to fall 
 ill even at the unwonted seclusion, the unnatural inaction of 
 hei rife, both spirits and health were sorely tried. The time 
 thu flung on her hands hung there so heavily ! She could not 
 filter it, hour by hour, in the essentially mindless and frivolous 
 work which filled up Dora's and Mrs. Hamley's days so plea- 
 santly if less than profitably. Indeed her fingers, rough and 
 hard even yet with the ropes and tar of the Mermaid, could not 
 conquer those mysterious ins and outs of shuttles and needles 
 which occupied them as gravely as if the results were of real 
 importance. And she neither admired nor coveted those 
 results when attained. Neither was she an artist by education, 
 whatever she might be by nature. She had no available know- 
 ledge of music ; and the utmost she could do in the way of 
 what Mr. Hamley called performing on the piano, was to 
 scramble over a simple accompaniment while she sang her 
 ballad songs in her sweet and fresh young voice, as untrained 
 as a Swiss peasant's. Her drawings were a mere school-girl's 
 carefully measured copies of prints and the like, of no technical 
 worth whatsoever, and even favouritism, which was not accorded 
 to her, could not have found them beautiful. And thus it came 
 to pass that Mrs. Hamley had some show of reason in her fre- 
 quent rebukes administered for idleness to Patricia, who had 
 so lately been the very embodiment of activity. And when she 
 complained that this uncomfortable niece of hers was always 
 either doing what she ought not, or. doing nothing at all, she 
 was justified by the outsides of things if scarcely by inner 
 realities. 
 
 However, as Patricia had sense enough to see that she was 
 very far below the right mark, taking Dora as her standard, 
 she wished to raise herself up to that mark ; and, as she had 
 brains, she desired to use them. She wanted to learn some- 
 thing ; she was very vague as to what; now that she had time. 
 She wanted to make herself as charming and cultured as Dora 
 that pretty piece of stamped pewter polished to look like 
 sterling silver ; that Hamley model of feminine perfection, held 
 up to her at all times and in all ways as the one to copy and to 
 endeavour to approach as near as might be. So she began to 
 read with th. floundering deeultoriness of the eager and the 
 untaught ; and Mrs. Hamley found more fault than before.
 
 156 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 To be sure, Mosheim's " Ecclesiastical History," for example, 
 \vbich was one of the tough pieces of literature the girl under- 
 took of her own motion, was not exactly' the best beginning 
 she could have made. It was creditable, but, as Aunt Hamley 
 said, she might have started with something less ponderous 
 and more serviceable for general conversation ; something that- 
 won Id help her to bear her part in society rather more effec- 
 tively than at present Tennyson, now, or Longfellow, or even 
 Fronde or Macaulay, or anything whatsoever that other people 
 knew or were likely to talk of; but Mosheim's *' Ecclesiastical 
 History " who ever heard of a girl in her teens attacking such 
 a monstrous bit of literature as that! " It was scarcely femi- 
 nine," said Mrs. Hamley severely ; and she was not quite sure 
 that it was altogether proper. 
 
 Poor, uneasy, cross- cornered soul ! it was not given to her to 
 applaud any one's independent action ; least of all Patricia's ; 
 and if one stanza chanced to be cut off her Ballad of Burdens 
 another was immediately added, so that the tale of them never 
 lessened. 
 
 . Had Patricia gone to her for help and advice in her new 
 pursuits, everything would have been smooth. She would 
 have accepted her confession of ignorance and request for in- 
 struction as so much tribute to her own superior attainments ; 
 for Mrs. Hamley prided herself on her knowledge and her 
 mind ; she would have been very careful with her, very pe- 
 dantic, very hard to please, very thorough ; but she would 
 have been gratified. She would have put her to the elements 
 like a little child probably have given her a page of spelling 
 and a sum in simple addition ; but she would have liked the 
 child's docility for Patricia was docile though also independ- 
 ent ; her love of managing would have been gratified ; and she 
 would have seen some of the best points of the girl's character, 
 while some of the worst of her own would have been appeased. 
 A real affection might have sprung up between them over 
 Murray and Hume ; and "Auntie, what is the meaning of 
 this 1 " " Auntie, please explain this to me," would have 
 been a continually recurring homage paid to her superiority 
 which would have soothed and flattered her 
 
 But she had checked Patricia too often to make it possible 
 for such a proposition to come from her. Lacking the power
 
 DEMETER. 157 
 
 of insight into petty humours, taking all things seriously, and 
 too honest for tact or management, the girl "had accepted her 
 aunt's moods as permanent dispositions, and had taken to 
 heart the need of effacing herself, as Dora had said. Not in 
 Dora's way of self-effacement, only to make herself the better 
 mirror, the exacter shadow, but by absolute withdrawal from 
 sight and sound ; so that day by day saw her more in her own 
 room up-stairs. and more silent when with the family. And 
 both these habits annoyed Mrs. Hamley " beyond expression." 
 As she said bitterly to Dora half-a-dozen times a day, that girl 
 would kill her before she had done with her ! 
 
 To which Dora always answered dutifully : " Dear ! I am 
 so sorry for you ! She is trying ! " 
 
 Thus Patricia began her task of self-education unguided j 
 and, as may be imagined, she did not make much headway, 
 but stumbled about among the " hard books " of the library 
 chiefly dry old history very much as the men stumbled about 
 the tombs at the foot of the Delectable Mountains. 
 
 One day she was in the grounds by herself. It was about a 
 week after the Lowe's dinner party, and Dora was at home. 
 She had caught a little cold on that famous night, and Mr. 
 Hamley had insisted on her keeping the house. Pe did not 
 wish to see her in the enjoyment of bad health all her life, he 
 had said ; and the sooner she commenced to take care of her- 
 self the sooner she would be recovered. 
 
 So dear Dora had nothing for it but to smile sweetly and say 
 she would do as he liked, all the while knowing that nothing 
 Avas the matter with her, that Sydney was expecting to hear 
 from her, and that a letter from him was in her pocket waiting 
 a safe Mercury. Presently, while Patricia was standing on a 
 little eminence in the avenue, facing the strong north-west 
 wind with a kind of rapturous delight, as if it was an old friend 
 with whom was connected the glad life of the dear past, Dr. 
 and Miss Fletcher passed through the lodge-gates, she coming 
 expressly to see the new girl of whom, her brother had reported 
 BO pleasantly. 
 
 In person they made a decided contrast, and yet they were 
 alike, with that kind of family likeness which depends more 
 on harmony of expression than on similarity of feature or 
 colour. He was tall, angular, serious, lean; with grizzled
 
 158 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 hair and leathery-brown cheeks ; a man who looked as if ne 
 might have been* a monk in one set of circumstances, or an 
 Arab chief in another. She was tall, too, but stout, smiling, 
 rather short-breathed, and of a generous kind of beauty that 
 had almost an Italian expression in it. For though she was 
 past forty, she was handsome even now, and was of the kind 
 to be handsome to the end. People wondered how it was that 
 Catherine Fletcher had never married ; but mothers wondered 
 more how it was that not having married she should under- 
 stand children and young people as she did, and have such an 
 accurate sense of their needs. They said she was like a mother 
 herself, and asked each other, with amazement, how had she 
 come by it 1 For there is no error more popular than the be- 
 lief that motherhood of itself gives natural insight, save that 
 other that the maternal instinct is universal. 
 
 Miss Fletcher was one of those women who are consecrated 
 by nature to marriage and maternity ; and yet her spinsterhood 
 was a greater gain to the world than her marriage would have 
 been. Had she been a wife she would have made one man 
 happy, and she would have been the wise and loving mother 
 of probably many children. But she would have concentrated 
 within the four walls of home the energy and intelligence which 
 now found their larger service in humanity. As it was she 
 was the helper of all who needed; a kind of modern Demeter, 
 with her hands full of gifts and her lap full of babies, offering 
 the grace of her womanhood and the power'of her love to the 
 poor and the weak, the lonely and the loveless ; a democrat 
 because noble, and pitiful because strong. Her whole being 
 was penetrated through and through with sympathy. Not 
 sympathy of that vague and graceful kind which speaks ten- 
 derly of suffering, even sheds tears when it hears of woes and 
 wants, then passes on to its own individual happiness undis- 
 turbed ; but sympathy which includes active help at the cost 
 of personal sacrifice, sympathy which means patience with 
 folly, patience with ignorance, with prejudice, with selfish- 
 ness, with .impatience even the hardest effort of all ! sym- 
 pathy which cares for the real good ot the person concerned, 
 and not for self-expression; and so gets less credit than if it 
 contented itself with talking sweetly of Christian charity, 
 weeping for hypothetical woes, growing indignant at the in?
 
 DEMETER. 159 
 
 justice of society and sorrowful at the misfortunes of men ; and 
 in the end saving itself all further trouble by a clever delega- 
 tion of work and a small money subscription. 
 
 " Good morning, Miss Kemball ; my sister has come to see 
 you," said Dr. Fletcher, shaking hands with Patricia ; and 
 " Good morning, I am glad to see you," added Miss Irletcher 
 with her kindly smile and warm grasp. 
 
 Patricia's face brightened. The fresh wind had given her 
 back her strong free look, and the young have instincts of 
 strange accuracy. The same expression came into her eyes as 
 used to be there in old days, when her uncle spoke to her. 
 Something in the voice, the hand-press, the face of her new 
 acquaintance struck a chord that vibrated to her heart ; and a 
 light seemed to have suddenly burst forth that turned the grey 
 day into gold. 
 
 Her ready responsiveness made the elder woman smile. She 
 liked this bright, tall, handsome girl with her frank eyes and 
 unconventional address. She was human and not spoilt, she 
 thought. Her brother had prepared her for a " candid, un- 
 tutored kind of young person, very transparent and unaffected, 
 but apparently as wild as a hawk ;" but she had not expected 
 to see anything so beautiful in person or so innocently affec- 
 tionate in manner. She had moreover her own reasons lying 
 in the far past for a natural readiness to like the daughter of 
 Reginald Kemball ; and as they walked up the avenue toge- 
 ther, she improvised an invitation for the two girls for that 
 day, wishing to see more of Patricia than she could see in a 
 visit, and thinking that, as her life at Abbey Holme could not 
 possibly be congenial to her, perhaps she might be of use and 
 help to make it pleasanter. 
 
 " Perhaps she might be of use." 
 
 This was the law by which Catherine Fletcher lived. This 
 queenly kind of woman, this Demeter of modern life, held her- 
 self as just the servant of her race, no more, and found in that 
 servauthood her happiness and her honour. 
 
 " Yes, 1 shall be very glad indeed," said Patricia, " if," with 
 a certain hesitancy, " Aunt will let me go. I do .not think 
 Dora can come ; she has a cold, poor girl ; so," very sorrowfully, 
 far more sorrowfully than the occasion seemed to warrant, 
 " perhaps Aunt will not let me go alone."
 
 1 60 " WHAT WOULD YOtJ DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 Miss Fletcher looked at her kindly. She felt all the tyranny 
 and want of liberty included in this probable prohibition to a 
 girl of Patricia's independent look and bearing. And. Miss 
 Fletcher disliked tyranny. That was why she had never liked 
 Mrs. Hamley. Much older than herself, she had always re- 
 membered her as a tyrant ; and she knew that age and pros- 
 perity had not widened her borders. 
 
 " I hope she will let you go with me," she said. 
 
 " I hope so too," Patricia answered gravely. " I should like 
 to go with you." 
 
 " We will manage it then ; don't be afraid," said Mias 
 Fletcher. 
 
 And Patricia found trust in this pleasant-visaged, soft- voiced 
 woman come marvellously easy. She felt as if she had known 
 her a long time ago, and was only taking up an old love not 
 beginning a new one. She kept wondering to herself "of 
 whom she reminded her;" but she could give no answer, sim- 
 ply because she reminded her of no one, she only wakened up 
 again a former cherished feeling. 
 
 " You are very kind Catherine, I am sure," said Mrs. Ham- 
 ley stiffly, when Miss Fletcher proffered her request to take the 
 two girls back to the Hollies, " I am afraid I must say no ; 
 thank you. Miss Drummond is not well enough to leave the 
 house Dora my dear, had you not better move over here to 
 the other side of the fireplace ] you are just in a line with the 
 door where you are. There is nothing so bad as a draught." 
 
 And Dora, who was already stifling under the shawls and 
 flannels in which Mrs. Hamley had wrapped her, and who had 
 only the most insignificant little head cold imaginable, pulled 
 her. Shetland shav^l daintily-over her chest, and carried herself 
 and her workbox into the draughtless corner ; making herself 
 supremely uncomfortable with the gentle grace and submissive 
 tact that characterised her. 
 
 " I am very sorry for poor Dora, but your niece 1 she has no 
 cold, cannot she come 1" said Miss Fletcher. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley turned to Patricia. Luckily for herself she 
 was looking down. Had she raised her eyes and appealed with 
 them, as she might easily have done, her aunt would naturally, 
 not with intentional ill-nature, but by the mere cross-cornered . 
 law of her being, have found some good reason why not ; but
 
 DEMETER. 161 
 
 as she kept her tell-tale looks to herself, partly for the relief of 
 getting rid of her, and partly because she thought she ought to 
 find pleasure in the society of two elderly people of grave pur- 
 suits, albeit tainted with strange heresies though probably 
 she would be bored to death, when she would appreciate home 
 the more Mrs. Hamley said yes ; and Patricia's sudden flush 
 was so vivid that it set Miss Fletcher wondering why. 
 
 She was either very dull at Abbey Holme as she had imagined, 
 and so hailed any diversion with exaggerated pleasure, or sadly 
 too excitable, she thought. In either case Catherine Fletcher 
 was glad she had asked her if the former to make her happy 
 for an hour or two, if the latter to give her counsel. For being 
 both maternal and direct, she had more love than respect for 
 young people, and treated them all with a certain aftectionate 
 familiarity with which they were seldom offended, even when 
 it included unwelcome counsel and may be rebuke. 
 
 " Shall you pass Martin's ?" asked Dora, with her lisp rather 
 strongly marked. Martin was the draper whom all right- 
 minded MilltoAvnians patronized. 
 
 " Certainly if we can do anything for you. It will not take 
 us five minutes out of our way," Miss Fletcher answered. 
 
 " I am so much obliged to you. I do want some ribbon very 
 much !" said Dora. " I will not trouble you, dear Miss Fletcher ; 
 Patricia will do it for me ; won't you, dear ?" 
 
 " Of course, with real pleasure ; if I can serve you, anything, 
 darling ! " was Patricia's hearty answer, all the louder and 
 heartier because she was glad to go with the Fletchers. 
 
 " What a dreadful fuss she makes about everything ; and 
 how she emphasizes the most trifling action!" thought Mrs. 
 Ham ley .. "As if there was any necessity for making a profes- 
 sion of faith about a yard of ribbon answering Dora as if she 
 was her lover ! " 
 
 '.' Will you come up-stairs with me, and I will give you the 
 pattern ! " asked Dora. 
 
 " My dear, throw the shawl over your head, and cover your 
 mouth. I don't like yur running about the passages," said 
 Mrs. Hamley. And Dora, with a shy glance of gratitude, 
 smiled as she said, " The house is very warm, dear/' and 
 obeyed. 
 
 The girls left the room ; and when they were well out of 
 E
 
 1(52 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ?" 
 
 hearing Dora, flinging the shawl off her had, said with a quick 
 little sob 
 
 " How absurd it is of them to keep me mewed up in the 
 house like this ! There is nothing the matter Avith me ; and I 
 wish I was going with you ! I am sick to death of this dull draw- 
 ing-room, and that detestable lace-work and eternal b6zique ! " 
 
 To Mr. and Mrs. -Hamley themselves she said that evening 
 when they were playing he scoring a sequence, Mrs. Hamley 
 holding double bezique, and she herself left to the excitement 
 of three queens she could neither marry nor join to a fourth 
 "How much I enjoy our dear little evening*, ! They are so 
 quiet and pleasant ; and I am so fond of bezique ! " 
 
 Then said Patricia, " Why don't you say you are not ill, 
 Dora, if you are not ? I would not be kept in the house like 
 this if I were you. Youliave only got to tell the truth, and say 
 you are all right." 
 
 "You know nothing about it, Patricia," Dora answered irri- 
 tably. " When Mr. and Mrs. Hamley say you are ill, you are 
 ill; and nothing but a doctor from London would convince them 
 that you are well. And perhaps he would not. As if I did 
 not know them !" 
 
 " Then Dora if you choose to give way to them like this, you 
 should not complain. There is no good in rowing one way and 
 looking another," said Patricia gravely. 
 
 "Don't talk nonsense !" returned Dora crossly. I know how 
 I ought to act, and I don't want your advice." 
 
 "I did not mean to vex you, dear," said Patricia lovingly. I 
 only do not like to see you annoyed ; and oh, Dora ! I cannot 
 bear to see you so dreadfully afraid of Aunt and Mr. Hamley !" 
 
 '' Better be afraid than bullied," said Dora, a little sulkily. 
 " One must be one or the other here. I take the former, arid 
 you prefer the latter ; and I don't envy you any more than you 
 envy me. So we need not talk any more about it." 
 
 After Dora had found a bit of ribbon for which she desired 
 a match and, considering that she wanted it so much, it was 
 odd what a long time it took to turn up she put her hand 
 into her pocket, and, looking at herself in the glass to see if the 
 powder showed too much about her eyebrows, said quite care- 
 lessly ; " Martin's is close to the post-office ; will you post this 
 letter for me, dear ? "
 
 DEMETER. 163 
 
 " Has the post-bag gone? asked Patricia suspecting nothing, 
 but astonished ; for the bag never went till six o'clock and it 
 was only three now. 
 
 " I suppose not ; but I don't wish it to go in the bag," Dora 
 answered, still brushing off the superfluous powder. 
 
 "No ? Why not?" was her quick word; and then she 
 stopped and looked at Dora distressed. 
 
 "Because I do not want any one to see it," Dora answered. 
 "Now Patricia," turning round from the glass, "do not ask 
 questions. You are my friend, and I trust you. Put that let- 
 ter in the post for me. Do not look at the envelope, and do 
 not let any one see it. See how I rely on you ! " she added 
 with a good imitation of pathos, as she held the girl's hand, 
 into which she had slipped the letter, and looked up with her 
 pretty blue eyes, tenderly, beseechingly. 
 
 ".I would do anything in the world for you, Dora you 
 know I would," said poor Patricia with the old conflict in her 
 heart. " But oh, my dear, my dear, how I hate all this ma- 
 noeuvring and secrecy ! Oh, Dora, how I wish you had not a 
 secret in the world !" 
 
 " Some day I will tell you what I have, and then you will 
 pity me," sai<l Dora plaintively. " Now I cannot ; yet you must 
 help m^ blindly." 
 
 "Jt breaks rny heart," began Patricia. 
 
 "It need not do that," interrupted Dora with the faintest 
 little sarcasm in her voice ; " that would be a pity ; for the 
 posting of a letter for a friend without telling any one about it 
 is scarcely worth the fracture of such a heart as yours. Now 
 don't be a goose, darling," she said, changing her manner to a 
 caressing banter that was infinitely becoming, and which was 
 one of her weapons of conquest over Patricia. " There is noth- 
 ing so dreadful in posting a letter, and it is only the tremend- 
 ous " she was going to say tyranny, but, having recovered from 
 her momentary attack of discontented candour, she stopped 
 herself and substituted " care which Mr. and Mrs. Hamley, 
 dear people, think it right to take of me that obliges me to do 
 things secretly." 
 
 "But I would not be obliged, Dora," said indicia return- 
 ing to her old charge. " I would either obty iiem loyally or 
 defy them openly. I would riot condescend, if 1 were you, to
 
 164 
 
 WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 all this underhand work. I would have more courage, more 
 self-respect ! " 
 
 " All very well, Miss Patricia, but we shall see you with your 
 little plots and plans before we have done with you." 
 
 " Never, Dora ! never while I live ! " 
 
 Dora smiled. " And your letter from Miss Biggs 1 " 
 
 " Ah ! that is cruel, Dora ! " She turned away. 
 
 " Well, it does sound ungrateful, does it not ? But all I meant 
 to show, dear, was that if I had secrets for one reason you could 
 be brought to have them for another. Say that it was to please 
 me and not to get any good for yourself, still it was a secret all 
 the same ; was it not 1" 
 
 " Yes ; and I must have no more," said Patricia. 
 
 " Oh ! that is not at all the right view to take," laughed 
 Dora. " You have to put this letter in the post for me." 
 
 No, Dora." She laid it on the table with the directed side 
 underneath. 
 
 "Yes, Patricia, if I ask you," said Dora in the most caressing, 
 the most enchanting way. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Now look here, Patricia," said Dora, speaking in a quiet 
 argumentative way, not usual to her. " I just want to show 
 you a little of yourself to yourself. When.1 first asked you to do 
 this for me, you hesitated ; when I pressed you, you consented ; 
 when I hurt your pride, you refused. I like consistency, I must 
 say!" 
 
 " It was not because you hurt my pride, Dora." 
 
 Dora shrugged her shoulders. " Prove it then !" 
 
 " No ; it is because I hate having to do with secrets. They 
 degrade one's very soul. " 
 
 " Yes, that is just what I say; your own soul, always your own 
 miserable little soul, and youj poor friend's soul and body both 
 may go to destruction for what you care ! You say you love 
 me, and I have tried my very best to make your life here happy, 
 and to stand between you and Mrs. Haraley; and yet you are 
 not brave or unselfish enough to do such a little thing for me as 
 post a letter without proclaiming it on the housetop I" She 
 turned away petulantly and began to cry. 
 
 The strong heart went do .'ii- before her tears. 
 
 "Don't cry, Dora," said Patricia taking her in her arms.
 
 DEMETBR. 165 
 
 "Don't cry, darling, I will do what you asked me I will do 
 anything you ask me ! " 
 
 " Post that letter for me ? " sobbed Dora with her back 
 turned. 
 
 " Yes dear ; post that letter for you." 
 
 " And not let the Fletchers see it ? " 
 
 " No ; I will put it in myself." 
 
 " You are a darling," said Dora, drying her eyes with des- 
 patch. " I thought you could not be such a cruel, cold-hearted 
 thing as to make me so unhappy." 
 
 " I cannot make you unhappy, Dora," said Patricia fervently j 
 " I love you too much." 
 
 Dora stood up on tiptoe and kissed her ; but the kiss did not 
 altogether sooth the poor girl. The glory seemed to have gone 
 out of her day somehow, and the cold grey, characteristic of 
 Abbey Holme, to have come back again. Had she been asked 
 she would have rather given up the Fletchers altogether than 
 have undertaken this surreptitious posting ; which after all was 
 only a symbol. But things had to go on now as they had begun, 
 and she must carry her sorrowful heart and changed grace to as 
 good a conclusion as might be. So the girls went back into the 
 drawing-room, and Mrs. Hamley scolded them for the long time 
 they had been up-stairs. 
 
 When the trio prepared to set out, the lady of Abbey Holme 
 wished them all a stiff farewell, arranging to send for Patricia 
 at half-past nine precisely ; and Mrs. Hamley's fractions 
 meant fixed quantities, not floating margins of elastic dimen- 
 sions. 
 
 " I shall expect you home at a quarter to ten," she said with 
 a severe glance at the clock, as if administering the oath of 
 witness. " You must be ready when the carriage calls for you, 
 Patricia, and do not keep the horses waiting this cold weather. 
 It is quite cruel to take them out in sueh nights ! " as if per- 
 sonally injured. 
 
 "Shall I walk home, Aunt?" suggested Patricia, ever ready 
 with her remedy. 
 
 " Don't be silly," was the rejoinder. 
 
 " And do not forget my commission, please," said Dora with 
 her coaxing smile. 
 
 " No dear," said Patricia with embarrassment
 
 166 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 And Miss Fletcher, who had the faculty of observation, caught 
 the difference in her tone as well as in her face, and remem- 
 bered it. 
 
 When they got to the town, Patricia first matched Dora's 
 ribbon with a maddening exactness as to width and shade 
 though the little lady wanted no ribbon at all, save as an excuse 
 and then saying, "I must go to the post-office, please," put 
 her hand into her pocket and looked disturbed, 
 
 " Have you a letter to post ? Give it to Henry ; he will do 
 it for you," said Miss Fletcher. 
 
 "Yes, give it to me," said Dr. Fletcher. 
 
 " Thank you. I must post it myself," answered Patricia, her 
 disturbance deepening. 
 
 " I am safe, I assure you. I will not drop it," he laughed 
 holding out his hand. 
 
 " Thank you very much, but I promised to do it myself," she 
 answered eagerly ; and then she crimsoned with the sudden 
 consciousness that in her very honesty she had committed an 
 indiscretion, and for the sake of more effectual hiding had be- 
 trayed more than she ought. 
 
 All of which Miss Fletcher noted with those quiet brown 
 eyes of hers which had the trick of seeing everything without 
 seeming to notice anything ; casting up- one of those sums in 
 moral arithmetic by which she deduced meanings from actions 
 the product generally coming right. She drew the conclu- 
 sion now that Patricia was being used somehow by Dora ; and 
 in the course of the walk she spoke with earnestness of the 
 moral deterioration sure to result from manoeuvring and secrecy, 
 and the obligation laid on us not to mix ourselves up in matters 
 where we can do no good and might get harm. 
 
 " But if we can do good ? " asked Patricia earnestly. 
 
 " Then the question would resolve itself into one of ' compa- 
 rative values,' " said Miss Fletcher. " But it would be only 
 some most important good for others that could reconcile me 
 to any line of action which was not essentially candid and 
 straightforward." 
 
 ^Patricia sighed. Then she looked into her new friend's face, 
 her own kindling : 
 
 " It does me good to hear you speak," she said, sliding her 
 hand under her arm. " It is like dear uncle speaking through
 
 DEMETER. 167 
 
 your voice. May I come to you when I am in doubt what is 
 the right thing to do ? " 
 
 " Surely, dear child ! * said Catherine warmly. " I can un- 
 derstand that, with all sincerity of liking and respect for your 
 aunt, you do not find it possible always to ask her advice on all 
 subjects." 
 
 " No, I do not," she answered. " She is so different from 
 dearest uncle, and I feel so out of place somehow among them. 
 I cannot tell at times what I ought to do, and I have no one to 
 advise me." 
 
 " Make me your mother confessor, and perhaps I can help 
 you," said Catherine, pressing her hand kindly against her warm, 
 comfortable side , and Patricia thought to herself, " If I had 
 known my own mother I should have felt for her as I feel for 
 Miss Fletcher." 
 
 " I want you to look on this as a kind of outside home, and 
 on us as your unregistered relations," said Catherine. " We 
 have known your family so long that you do not come to us as 
 a stranger, and both Henry and myself are prepared to take 
 you to our hearts. Do you hear 1 You are to come to us in 
 your troubles, and give us your confidence and love. We will 
 help you with our advice, child ; and love always does good 
 both to those who give and those who receive." 
 
 She said this just as they reached the Hollies' gate. It was 
 a good omen for the disturbed young soul needing enlighten- 
 ment and the living warmth of friendly direction as it did. 
 
 I
 
 1 G8 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOYE ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XVL 
 
 BY PRINCIPLE. 
 
 tHE Fletchers were people with principles and ideas of 
 which they did not enly talk, but by which they lived. 
 It was not enough for them to eat, drink, and be deco- 
 rously merry ; to pay their tithes and taxes as gentlefolks 
 should ; to keep to the broad way of elemental morality ; to do 
 little acts of charity out of their accumulated balance, by which 
 they sacrificed nothing they desired to possess, but, under the 
 idea that they had, counting off all their possible purchases as 
 so many offerings cast into the treasury of the Lord ; but they 
 were people who have taken to themselves the great law of 
 duty, and who had set out to live up to their ideal. 
 
 They went to first principles and did not give much weight 
 to expediency. They did not believe that because things are 
 they must therefore be upheld, and they were not afraid of the 
 right even if iconoclastic and subversive. To be sure they knew 
 that it is always troublesome, and at times personally damaging, 
 to maintain the right of God in the face of the wrong of society ; 
 but they thought life meant ever trouble in some shape or other, 
 esapcially in the difficulties which beset endeavour, and they 
 deferred their lotus-eating to another sphere. 
 
 The great facts cherished by them were, the honour due to 
 humanity irrespective ef social condition, and the duty of the 
 strong to help the weak. Hence their own lives were organised 
 on a plan of almost patriarchal simplicity of manners and habits, 
 and they dedicated more than the prescribed tenth to their 
 poorer brethren. They were laughed at of course, and some- 
 times more than laughed at ; Milltown was not the kind of 
 place where they were likely to find sympathisers ; but they 
 took their own way as tranquilly and steadfastly as if society 
 had ciovvned them with roses not thorns, and right for right's 
 sake was a law good enough for them by which to live. 
 
 Yet they were very different each from the other, for all
 
 BY PRINCIPLE. 169 
 
 their sympathy and harmony of views and circumstance. 
 Woman-like, she had the more arbitrary singlenegs of logic in 
 her feelings, and carried out her views to the ultimate where 
 he discerned an opposing law. She had move passion in her 
 love for those she admired ; but then she brought the same 
 warmth of nature into her dislikes. He, a man without 
 much weakness of soul or flesh, was therefore possessed of a 
 certain philosophical pity for frailty of all kinds which never 
 grew to anger save when the question of wrong-doing was one 
 of oppression ; and then he was implacable. But as a rule he 
 took things more quietly than she did ; striving to get to the 
 roots of a man's action, searching lor the physiological causes, 
 the influencing circumstances, where others, and she too at 
 times, condemned only tlje fact. This made him -eminently 
 just. Not the justice which means legality, retributive punish- 
 ment, and the like ; but the ability to see all round a question, 
 and to decide on it according to its root-work arid surroundings. 
 Thus no one could count on him as a partisan irrespective of 
 justice ; by which it came about that he had the knack of offend- 
 ing all sides in turn because he would not be unfair to any. 
 The popular verdict on this brother .and sister was, that he 
 was the more mischievous of the two, and she the more 
 foolish. 
 
 They were both hard students and knew many things out- 
 side the ordinary grooves of education. The one luxury they 
 allowed themselves in their simply-appointed home was the 
 luxury of boks and scientific appliances. They had a first- 
 class microscope and a first-class telescope, which last they had 
 fitted up in a rude but efficient observatory that excited more 
 ridicule than admiration by its cunning contrivances of little 
 cost. The subject too, met with as little sympathy as the 
 method by which it was followed. People said with a sneer 
 they supposed the learned doctor was devising a new system of 
 astronomy which was to upset the Newtonian ; and because he 
 busied himself with certain biological experiments, which in- 
 cluded boiled flasks, infused hay, and a cloud of moving crea- 
 tures as the result, they asked him if the old axiom ex nihilo 
 nihil fit was all a mistake, and was dead matter God ? 
 
 All these studies were taken to be a kind of flying in the face 
 of Providence ; and when, tempted by the desire to let a little
 
 1 70 " WHAT WOULD TOT? DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 light in upon those Brains which seemed to him to cherish 
 their darkness too fondly, he suffered himself to mention any 
 facts bearing on the great scientific questions of the day, the 
 after-summary was invariably set in the one unchanging key 
 the doctor was an infidel, and his conversation was absolutely 
 impious. Add to this, essentially " radical " political doctrines, 
 of which the Milltown translation was that he and his sister 
 were " known to be socialists, red republicans of the deepest 
 dye, wanting an equal division of property, and desirous of 
 pulling down king, lords, and commons to the one muddy 
 level of unwashed ruffianism," and it may be imagined that for 
 people who valued truth they had sometimes rather a hard 
 time of it. 
 
 Strange to say, with all this they were not entirely approved 
 of by the class they upheld, and not'personally unpopular with 
 the class they offended. The peasantry and little people in 
 country places like to feel the gentry far above them. They 
 do not care to be caught up into the empyrean of an equal 
 humanity, but enjoy, the poetry of their self-abasement in the 
 belief that their superiors are indeed their betters. They 
 think that those who treat them with respect lower themselves 
 to their own level, and would rather their gods came about them, 
 awful and effulgent, earning their lightning in their hands 
 and their crowns above their brows, than as simple men and 
 women benign and unarmed. They liked the good things 
 which came to them from the Demeter of the Hollies ; and the 
 women ; wnen in personal trouble of sickness, sorrow or dire 
 necessity, turned instinctivly to her as possessed of all know- 
 ledge and all healing power ; but in daily matters they would 
 rather not have been made to sit in her presence ; they were 
 bothered by her advice as to the management of their children ; 
 her recipes for cooking puzzled them ; and the way in which 
 she opened ^indows and doors in cases of fever and the like 
 seemod to them barbarous and downright heathenish, as well 
 as murderous. 
 
 So too, her insisting on cleanliness and fresh air in her 
 tenants more than compensated for the low rent at which Miss 
 Fletcher's cottages were let ; and their undeniable superiority 
 in wholesomeness was paid for, they thought, by the greater ex- 
 teot of surface there was to keep clean, and the fidfads, called
 
 BY PRINCIPLE. 171 
 
 improvements,, which were not wanted and seldom properly 
 managed. 
 
 All of which she and her brother knew well enough. But 
 when twitted with the old simile of the pearls and the swine 
 by those who held to class degradation as the righteous ordering 
 of society, and who thought that class ignorance is and should be 
 irremovable in the lower forthegreaterconvenienceof thehigher, 
 they used to answer quietly : " The less such things as we 
 have giown to consider the first necessities of decent living are 
 appreciated by our poorer brothers, the more pressing our duty 
 of educating them up to that point of appreciation." 
 
 But the doctrine did not take. 
 
 The Fletchers got the lash on all sides. If a man was too 
 poor to send his children to school and they paid for him, as 
 they were sure to do, his neighbours, just able with hard pinch- 
 ing to pay for theirs, railed at the cunning which knew how to 
 get the length of grand folks' feet for the one part, and at the 
 simpleness which let that length be got at for the other ; while 
 the Milltown gentry, who to a man disliked the scheme of 
 educating the poor, denounced " those Fletcher fools " as play- 
 ing the very mischief with class usefulness and parental respon- 
 sibility. If, they said, a man brings children into the world 
 for whom he cannot provide, he must suffer for it through them ; 
 and to assist him by assisting his little ones was to go against 
 the laws of God himself. 
 
 When winter came, and with it supplies of food and clothes 
 and firing from the Hollies as surely as the frost and snow, 
 those whose alpha of political economy was that the weaker 
 must go to the wall in the press, and suffer that the strong may 
 be made glad, and whose omega was the sin of charity, de- 
 clared that the place was becoming revolutionary by his wicked- 
 ness and pauperized by her folly, and that soon every gentle- 
 man would have to make himself a beggar that the beggars 
 might be gentlemen. When they bought up small tenements 
 and lowered the rents, such men as Colonel Lowe, whose 
 tumble-down hovels stood at a rack-rent, said they ought to be 
 prosecuted for interfering with market values ; and when they 
 lent money to small landowners, to prevent the necessity of 
 selling their little farms and fields, Mr. Hamley, who had the 
 land-hunger on him, had been heard to say with an oath that
 
 172 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 this tampering with the natural flow of capital and land ought 
 to be made as actionable as the lowered rents, and that some 
 day " Yon hound Fletcher would find himself in the wrong 
 box, and the Lord make it hot for him ! " 
 
 No Milltown lady would take a servant from the Hollies. 
 To be sure there were not many opportunities, for the place 
 was good and sometimes the maids were wise. But sometimes 
 they were not, and preferred change for the sake of change to 
 the loving home they had found under Miss Fletcher. And 
 then their chances in Milltown were but slender. The ladies 
 said they were spoilt by ever-indulgence, and were' good for 
 nothing after they had passed through Miss Fletcher's hands. 
 Even the labourers who worked for them at odd times had dif- 
 ficulty in finding jobs on the off-days ; employers disliking the 
 contrast between the wages given at the Hollies and those pre- 
 cribefl by the labour-market, and resenting the surplusage -as a 
 wrong done to themselves who did not choose to give so much. 
 This too was counted to the Fletchers for unrighteousness ; and 
 because they were the friends of the poor they were held to be 
 the enemies of the rich, and condemned as undermining the 
 rights of capital in proportion as they recognised the rights of 
 labour. ' 
 
 But haunted by that odd resolve of theirs to do the absolute 
 right as between man and man, seeing everywhere Humanity 
 and nowhere social arrangements, they cared for none of the 
 hard names wherewith they were assailed. When society was 
 unjust, they stepped in with their reconciling measures, and 
 they found their reward in the worth of the things they did, 
 not in the euphony of the verdict with which the world re- 
 ceived them. They lived neither for praise nor for thanks, but 
 for humanity and the right ; but they had to bear their cross 
 in return, this being just the line to which society is ever most 
 fiercely inimical. 
 
 These then, were Patricia Kemball's new friends, and the as 
 yet unknown sphere of thought and feeling into which she was 
 to be introduced. 
 
 When the door Avas opened and they went in, the girl was 
 struck by the house as different from anything she had ever 
 seen before. Her old home at Barsands had been bare and 
 rugged, scrupulously clean, but as plain as the old Holdfast it-
 
 BY PRINCIPLE 173 
 
 self. Abbey Holme was rich with gold and crimson, elaborate 
 ornamentation, large tracts of mirror, huge vases of modern 
 French porcelain, pa'pier-mache chairs and tables, and a great 
 deal of bright steel, cut glass, and showy pictures. It was filled 
 with size and glitter rather than beauty a house of first-class 
 upholstery, resplendent in its way, but that way one wherein 
 both art and harmony were made subservient to expense ; and 
 it was singularly unhomelike, and though monotonous destitute 
 of all which gives the sensation of comfort or rest. The Hollies 
 was simple, but strangely quaint and beautiful; for beauty was 
 part of the Fletchers' religion of life : only it was beauty that 
 did not with them necessarily include costliness. The materials 
 were everywhere inexpensive, but the colours were pure and 
 harmonious. The ornaments were few but of good design and 
 workmanship ; books made up much of the wall furniture ; and 
 though it was winter, flowers and growing plants were in pots 
 and hanging baskets about the windows. There was evidently 
 a central idea in the arrangements of the various rooms and 
 passages. Incongruous things were not massed together with- 
 out regard to epoch, style, intention, as is the rule with most 
 houses ; but each thing seemed to fall naturally in the place 
 where it was put, and if aught had been removed the rest would 
 have been imperfect. And yet, with all this artistic exactness 
 of arrangement, the house had the free possibilities of home- 
 liness and comfort. The tables were for use not show ; and 
 with rooms not half the size of those at Abbey Holme there 
 was more than double the space available. 
 
 The effect of the whole was old-fashioned and un-English. 
 This last was due partly to the wooden structural chimney- 
 pieces, built up with shelves and pigeon-holes for bits of old 
 china, where the looking-glass belonging was set deep in the 
 shadow, lightening what else would have been a dark space, but 
 not obtrusive as a universal reflector ; partly to the tiled, square 
 fire-places, and the bold Italian dogs ; to the waxed oaken 
 floors, and squares of carpet and loose rugs in place of the con- 
 ventional Brussels ; to a large amount of dark simply-carved 
 wood in one room, and of plain deal, squared, and painted by 
 Miss Fletcher's own hand, in another; to lines of quaint blue 
 pottery ; and a general background of flat grey, variously tinted 
 and patterned, against which the bits of rich colour and gold
 
 174 "WHAT WOTTLT) YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 oame out with gorgeous yet subdued strength. It was a house 
 of so much evident plan and design that a guiding principle of 
 life seemed the fitting ethical outcome. 
 
 The manners too, at the Hollies were as different from the 
 ordinary manners of society as all the rest. When the maid 
 opened the door no man was kept save for the garden work 
 and to do the rougher jobs of the house Miss Fletcher smiled 
 to her a friendly greeting, and the girl looked back one as 
 friendly. She was a pretty young person and nicely dressed, 
 without the " flag," and lady-like because happy and refined ; 
 and she gave the impression of having supplemented her ser- 
 vanthood with a fine kind, of human affectionateness, and of 
 having added relf-respect to her code of duty. But she was a 
 girl whom no one in Milltown save Catherine Fletcher would 
 have taken into service at all ; a mother and no wife, and 
 drifting fust into ruin when the bountiful Deineter caught her 
 up in her strong hands and cherished her back to happiness 
 and virtue. 
 
 " My dear," said Miss Fletcher kindly, " when you lay tho 
 table will you set a place for Miss Keraball ? " 
 
 The girl looked at the young visitor pleasantly. Her man- 
 ner meant a welcome. 
 
 " Yes ma'am," she said, and helped her off with her goloshes, 
 as her daughter might; not servilely, but with friendliness. 
 
 "Thank you, my dear," said Miss Fletcher; and the girl, 
 gathering up the things, smiled again and said 
 
 " I hope you have taken no cold this blustering day. Shall 
 I bring you a otip of tea ? and the young lady ? " 
 
 " Well, do so, Mary Anne ; it will be refreshing," was the 
 answer. 
 
 " If you will take your things off now it will be ready for 
 you when you come down," said Mary Anne ; "and there is a 
 good fire for you in the drawing-room." 
 
 " Thanks," said Miss Fletcher, " we will." 
 
 Particia stared. In her old life she had been kind enough to 
 the servants at the cottage, but she had always been the mis- 
 tress in her own way. She had, perhaps, imbibed a certain 
 sense of discipline from the captain, and she had thought it her 
 duty to keep them up to the mark, and to see that they did not 
 waste, iior gad about, nor slight their work, nor fail iu daily
 
 BY PRINCIPLE. 1?5 
 
 godliness of service. For even Patricia had her share, if com- 
 paratively a small one, of the hardness characteristic of virtuous 
 youth. At Abbey Holme the servants were spoken to as if 
 they were intelligent dogs who could understand what was 
 said to them, but of whose sensibilities or self-respect no one 
 need take account ; or, if as men, then men eternally in dis- 
 grace, with the master and mistress resentful and displeased. 
 Mr. Hamley's manners, always dictatorial, were at times bru- 
 tal ; Mrs. Hamley's were glacial, as if she had been quite 
 recently annoyed ; and no one asked, but all commanded ser- 
 vice, for which they never returned thanks. But Catherine 
 Fletcher smiled at her maid and spoke kindly, and said "My 
 dear" as to a young girl of her own rank ; giving her order in 
 the form of a request ; seemingly too secure of her dignity to 
 be afraid of lowering it by the practical confession of human 
 equality. She saw Patricia's look of astonishment, and as they 
 went into her dressing-room, she said laughing, " You were 
 surprised at my calling Mary Anne, 'my dear?'" 
 
 " Yes," said Patricia, frankly. " I have never heard a mis- 
 tress call her servant ' dear ' before, and it sounded odd. But 
 I like it," she added. 
 
 " Do you ? It is ono of my ways, as the people here say; and 
 I always see when it startles." 
 
 " But do not the servants take advantage of it, and become 
 impertinent ? " asked Patricia." * 
 
 " Sometimes ; not often. And if they do, what then? " 
 
 Patricia looked straight into Miss Fletcher's face. 
 
 " You turn them away, of course," she said. 
 
 " No, I do not ; I keep them, and try to teach them better," 
 answered the lady ; and this time Patricia turned her eyes to 
 the fire and looked perplexed. Keep a servant who had 
 been impertinent ! It was a strange doctrine, and it puzzled 
 her. 
 
 " Why should I not keep them and try to teach them 
 better ? " Miss Fletcher continued. " Think of the difference 
 between us. I am a middle-aged woman, old enough to be 
 their mother, with a better education than they have had; with 
 more experience, more thought ; and consequently I ought to 
 have more wisdom and self-control, which is part of wisdom. 
 Do you not think it would be a shame in me if I had not
 
 176 " WHAT WOULt) YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 patience with these young creatures, so much more ignorant 
 and undisciplined than myself ? " 
 
 " Yes, put that way, you are right," said Patricia ; " but" 
 she hesitated. 
 
 " But, you would say, they are servants born to obey and 
 take whaC they can get from their superiors ; and that this 
 kind of personal consideration is against the laws of society. I 
 grant it. But, on my side, I say that the way in which mis- 
 tresses, good women in their own spheres, allow themselves to 
 .treat their servants is one of the authorized sins of society ; so 
 you see, rny dear, between an authorized sin and my own con- 
 science I choose the latter. And I think I am right." 
 
 "But what should we do if servants were made equal to 
 ourselves ? " said Patricia ; " we should have to do our own 
 work." 
 
 " Which I do not regard as a terrible hardship, were it to be 
 even so," exclaimed Miss Fletcher ; " but it would not be as 
 you say. We should always have servants, that is, helpers ; 
 but we should have a higher class sisters, not slaves ; equals 
 whom we should be bound to treat with respect and considera- 
 tion, and who would do their duties from a higher stand-point 
 than that which they hold now. This habit of disrespect to- 
 wards servants, which we allow ourselves, does us as much 
 harm as it does them. The greatest curse of slavery lies with 
 the owners, not the ownedJ' 
 
 " I wish I was like you, said Patricia impulsively. 
 
 " I hope you will be far better," answered her new friend, 
 patting her shoulder kindly. " But come downstairs ; I must 
 not make you as sad a democrat as I am myself," she added 
 with a pleasant abruptness ; " so let us go down. If we stay 
 much longer Mary Anne's tea will be cold, and she will find that 
 she has given her labour in vain ; always a disheartening thing 
 for a worker." 
 
 The conversation during the evening drifted, not without in- 
 tention, on Patricia's Hie at Abbey Holme. As there was 
 nothing t'j be ashamed of in it there was nothing to conceal. 
 Not that the girl entered into details. The great sorrow of her 
 life, how to reconcile humility and truth, and^that other grief, 
 how to reconcile love with disapprobation, she left unnoted. 
 Her friendship was too new yet ibr full confidence. But the
 
 BY PRINCIPLE. 177 
 
 Fletchers felt instinctively how sad it all was for her, and how 
 difficult to remedy. In this house of emphatic rule and sup- 
 pression here was a young creature entirely without guidance, 
 and in all the dangers attendant on spiritual loneliness. Her 
 energies, cramped on the one side, were wasted on the other j 
 her thoughts, becoming active and importunate, were without 
 a centre or an object ; her self-education was necessarily frag- 
 mentary and incomplete, and there was no one to help her 
 spiritually, intellectually, or morally. If only they might be of 
 use to her this fme-natured, noble girl, so lost and lonesome 
 now ! Yet how could they help her ? They knew Mrs. Ham- 
 ley's jealousy too well to hope that she would give Patricia 
 into any one's hands ; while they, specially tainted in her 
 sight with various moral heresies, of which that same servant- 
 question was not the least, were less likely to win her than 
 any other. 
 
 Still, if they might have her with them often, they knew 
 they could do much for her. They could teach her how to 
 think as well as what to learn ; they couLl open to her the 
 marvels of science and the treasures of literature ; they could 
 take her to nature for her joy and to humanity for her duties. 
 Knowledge and love, knowledge and good work, knowledge 
 and hving out of herself for the benefit of others ; yes, the Flet- 
 chers knew clearly enough that they could help Reginald Kern- 
 ball's daughter, and place her in the light if they were allowed. 
 And it pained them both to feel that perhaps this bright, young, 
 ardent soul would be atrophied in the sandy desert of conven- 
 tional inaction, or stifled in the vapour-bath of luxury and the 
 world, while they who might have led it up to greatness and 
 delight were forbidden. 
 
 However, they made the effort. In a few days after this 
 Miss Fletcher wrote up to Mrs. Hamley asking her permission 
 to read German with Patricia. It would be a pleasure to her, 
 and would he4p the girl who was anxious to learn the language ; 
 with pleasant little personal words that were not without their 
 due value. And Mrs. Hamley, because she was angry and dis- 
 contented with her niece, consented ; with the feeling of aban- 
 doning Patricia to her own devices, casting her off and cutting 
 her out of the inheritance of love. So Patricia began to read 
 German with Catherine Fletcher, and to have " half-hours with 
 L
 
 178 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 the microscope " with the doctor. And when the lessons were 
 done she went with her new friend into the cottages of the 
 poor, where she saw life as.it is without gloss or varaish, and as 
 she had seen it at Barsands. 
 
 This bold strong contact with reality did her good. It 
 strengthened her for the better carrying of her own cross to see 
 the pathetic patience with which the poor hear theirs ; and in 
 thinking much of them she forgot to weary herself in trying to 
 find out the cause of her aunt's tempers and her own shortcom- 
 ^i!trs. But when Mrs. Hamley found that her niece ** went about 
 with Catherine Fletcher," as she phrased it, she interposed and 
 forbade " anything of the kind." Patricia would be bringing 
 home some horrid disease, she said, or something almost worse 
 than disease. She would not have her made " as common " as 
 Catherine Fletcher ; she, Patricia, was quite enough inclined 
 as it was to be vulgar and democratic, and everything else un- 
 desirable. If she went down to the Hollies though why she 
 should go at all was a mystery unaccountable to plain people 
 she must promise not to go into any cottage whatsoever. Such 
 absurdity ! What good could she do 1 and what did she want 
 with dirty children and coarse women 1 She was far better 
 at home among ladies and gentlemen. And so on ; these being 
 the texts on wliich Mrs. Hamley preached her sermons of repro- 
 bation whenever her niece visited her father's old friend's. 
 
 By degrees, however, she broke up the girl's pleasant inter- 
 course with the Hollies. The German lessons went the way of 
 the cottage-visiting, and though the Fletchers often asked for 
 her, permission to accept their invitations became daily scarcer, 
 and when granted, drew down on her deeper displeasure. 
 
 Still Patricia had their counsel when she needed it. She was 
 to do the right thing ; there was never any doubt on that score. 
 She was to be patient and to avoid all causes of offence ; but 
 when the choice between right and wrong, truth and fair seem- 
 ing, shameful obedience or noble dissent, came before her, she 
 was to hold by the higher law ; and if she had to suffer because 
 of her choice well ! she must suffer, and bear her sorrow 
 bravely. 
 
 By principle. There was no tampering with that precept 
 with them. But then it was not always the best thing, they 
 said, to speak all that is in one's mind at all times. The gold
 
 BY PRINCIPLE. 179 
 
 of silence has its value ; and youth must learn to bear much 
 that is unpleasant with shut lips, patience, and forbearance to 
 oppose. They too counselled self-suppression as Dora had done, 
 but from another stand-point. What was expediency with her 
 was heroism with them ; and under their direction Patricia, 
 though not changing a hair's breadth in her own truth and 
 honesty, learnt so much of the wisdom of silence and the gene- 
 rosity of non-condemnation, as to become noticeably less prone 
 to testify, and with fewer angularities of virtue. 
 
 Mrs. Harnley said she had grown indifferent and nnaffec- 
 tionate ; a state, however, she preferred to her former uncomfort- 
 able activity, though preference did not include approbation. 
 But in truth Patricia was unable to please her aunt. She was 
 out of harmony with the central point of the girl's character, 
 and no method of life or action radiating therefrom seemed to 
 be beautiful or fitting.
 
 1 80 " ^HAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? ' 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 LONG FIELD FARM. 
 
 fHE country about Milltown had been originally noted for 
 its large number of small holdings, in the days when the 
 backbone of English manliness and liberty was supposed 
 to exist in her yeomanry and peasant proprietors. In those 
 days small farmers had possessed the greater part of the land ; 
 the abbey lands which had been assigned by Henry the Eighth, 
 at the dissolution of the monasteries, to the Lord Bareacres of 
 the period, having been gradually disposed of by the descend- 
 ants of that famous nobleman, field by field and farm by farm, 
 till the greater part had, as has been said, been parcelled out 
 into small tenements. The nucleus, however, had been 
 always held together, for the final purpose of coming into the 
 possession of Jabez iiamley, Ledbury's successful office-boy. 
 
 The progress of events had gradually changed the land-hold- 
 ing character ot Milltown, and a new order of gentlemen owners 
 had dispossessed the old. The change began about ninety years 
 ago, after the great continental wars had enriched certain 
 army contractors, and when the pagoda-tree was a shrub still 
 worth shaking in India; and it had gone on ever since, till now 
 only one or two of the original peasant proprietors rauiained in 
 possession. And these clung tenaciously to their holaings, and 
 resisted all the temptation of long prices and money down which 
 the rich men of the place, and notably Mr. Hamley, offered to 
 get them out 
 
 No one indeed offered such advantageous terms for fancy-bits 
 as did the owner of Abbey Holme. His land-hunger was the 
 fever of a devouring greed, and never sated. It was a grief to 
 him when a rood of ground was bought by any one but himself, 
 and he held himself personally aggrieved for the lose. But he 
 never confessed that he had been balked, and you could only 
 judge of his mortification by the way in which he depreciated 
 the value of the farm he had missed, and hia loud asseverations
 
 LONG FIELD FARM. 181 
 
 that the concluding purchaser had given thrice its proper value, 
 and that he would not have had it for half that sum. His 
 schemes were always active. He had corners full fifteen miles 
 off; wedges that he had' inserted in his neighbours' estates with 
 the hope of driving them home to his own park gates ; and bit 
 by bit he was creeping round the local map, colouring it so 
 frequently with the Hamley crimson till now the very Quest 
 itself had not such a large tract surrounding it as Abbey 
 Holme. The brewer against the earl ; and the brewer had the 
 best of it. 
 
 Perhaps even a greater grief than the occasional loss of a field 
 or a spinney he desired to add to his estate, was the fact that 
 he had no children to cfcry on his. name and inherit his pro- 
 perty. Man-like, the idea of founding a family was sweet to 
 him ; and now that he had obtained and won other things he 
 wanted, his wishes went all the more strongly in this direction. 
 Sometimes he reflected for his comfort that he was only forty- 
 five years of age all told ; that Mrs. Hamley was twenty years 
 his senior ; and that Providence was often merciful, and 
 removed to a better world elderly women who had begun to 
 get nuisances in this. What ulterior objects he might have, 
 should fate be kind enough to kill Mrs. Hamley, he never told 
 to living soul. It was enough for him that he pondered on them 
 in secret, and limed the twig for those birds in the bush of the 
 future, which he had arranged with himself to catch. Mrs. 
 Hamley had done the work for which he had bought her ; she 
 had placed him among the gentry of the place, and taught him 
 the alphabet of good manners. And having done this, now, like 
 one who has fulfilled her life's mission, she was free to depart 
 to her own place so soon as it should seem good to her, leaving 
 the ground open to another. 
 
 Meanwhile, the land-hunger must be fed; field added to field, 
 farm to farm, and every corner of wood and meadow bought as 
 eagerly as if each crooked elm had been a sapling oak, and all 
 the worthless alders hereditary yews. Wherever he appeared 
 competition was useless, because his final offer was sure to be 
 in excess of the market value. This made it good for the sel- 
 ler; if, on the other hand, the temptation of a fancy price 
 induced men to sell who might have held on ; and thus made 
 homeless wanderers, and sometimes ruined speculators, of those
 
 182 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 who might have continued in the old path of self-respecting 
 independence and English propiietorship. 
 
 Also, if he was so far a benefactor to the world at large in 
 that he was a good agricultural chemist and farmed high, to 
 the small world near at hand he was by no means a blessing. 
 He was a hard landlord, heart and hand, and if he gave employ- 
 ment he added sorrow to the wages. He beat men down at 
 every point, and took advantage of all collateral depressions in 
 the labour market. He grudged his labourers all but the bare 
 life, and thought comfort, pleasure, education, refinement for 
 " common people," not only foolish but positively wicked. He 
 denied with his whole force the doctrine that the poor had 
 rights. They were simply to him the pabulum, the footstools, 
 the hands and energies of the rich, and capital was superior to 
 humanity. Rights ? No ! " What is mine is my own," was 
 a i'avourite aphorism of his and he acted on it. 
 
 One of the objects of his ambition his ambition never extend- 
 ing beyond worldly things 1 had been to own a deer-park. 
 There had been one at Abbey Holme long ago when the jolly 
 old monks had preached repentance and poverty to^he godless 
 laity, but had taken care to pad their own crosses with silk 
 and wool, and to live' on the fat of the land while they eulogised 
 the lean. And Mr. Hamley had determined that he would 
 restore it. To do this he had dismantled a hamlet which 
 had grown up on the old site of the deer-forest, evicting the 
 cottagers with no more pity or scruple than if they had been so 
 many rats which he had smoked out of their holes. His en- 
 forced exodus cost the lives of a few infants and aged folks. 
 What did that signify 1 The poor are too numerous as it is : a 
 little thinning is an advantage. He was famous too, for pulling 
 down the cottages on his estate ; making his labourers walk to 
 iheir work sometimes five or six miles out and the like dis- 
 cance in. Buildings, he said, were only so many drains on 
 capital ; and' as his highest idea of a man's life was the profita- 
 ble employment of capital, duty to those under him had no 
 place in his creed and formed no part of his practice. For duty 
 is generally an expensive luxury ; and Mr. Hamley did not 
 care for expensive luxuries which make no show, soothe no 
 sense, and bring no renown. 
 
 In all these circumstances then, it cannot be wondered at if
 
 LONG FIELD FARM. 183 
 
 Mr. Hatnley, buying above market value every acre there was 
 to sell, evicting his labourers like vermin, farming high but 
 paying low, should be at once the most influential and the most 
 unpopular man to be found in the district. He was even more 
 disliked than Colonel Lowe ; who, if he let his tenants live like 
 beasts in hovels that were not fit for beasts, and that stood at 
 comparatively enormous rents, had a kind of excuse in that he 
 was not over well off on the one hand, and on the other, that he 
 was agentleman and had thus an inherited right to treat the poor 
 like beasts. It is a way some gentlemen have. But when it came 
 to a man popularly supposed to possess millions a man who, 
 as a ragged, barefooted lad, had known what it was to want a 
 dinner more often than to have one, who had been thrashed for 
 stealing turnips as the stopgaps of his emptiness, Knd who had 
 been fed by some of the very men, or their fathers, whom he 
 now turned adrift when it came to such as he grinding the 
 faces of the poor to the earth, was it to be wondered at if he 
 was hated 1 And to do the Milltown labourers justice, they did 
 hate him. 
 
 There was a certain farm at the north end of the Abbey 
 Holme estate that had long been Mr. Hamley's Naboth's vine- 
 yard. It stood . right in amongst his property, and was the 
 thorn in his chaplet of roses, the poison in his cup of sweets. 
 Long Field aggrieved him. It Avas a standing injury to the 
 symmetry of his ring-fence, an enduring scoff at the wholeness 
 of his ownership ; and he coveted it. It never occurred to him 
 that James Garth had inherited that land from his father and 
 forbears ever since King Henry's time, and that it was he, Mr. 
 Hamley, who had come in as the remover of old-time fences 
 by his golden spade, not James Garth and his title-deeds that 
 stood as the obstruction. When men are annoyed by circum- 
 stances they do not care to consider whether they have volun- 
 tarily put themselves in the way of those circumstances or not; 
 but speak as if they had been hemmed round by them without 
 their own assistance. In this case it was simply Ote-toi que je 
 m'y mets ; and the refusal was accounted both an insolence and 
 a wrong. 
 
 Things had not gone well with James Garth. His father 
 had been a hard liver in his time, too fond of the hounds and 
 . too free with the bottle to succeed in his life's business, which
 
 184 "WHAT \VOT. T T,r> YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 was to clean and crop his farm. Consequently the business he 
 neglected failed to do well by him. When he died he left a 
 handful of debts which came like a shower of hail about his 
 son's ears, and which had crippled his energies to pay off. For 
 James was a man with an immense amount of family pride. Not 
 pride of that flashy kind which thinks no one good enough for it, 
 but pride that cares to keep the family name unstained and the 
 family honour bright ; pride that is only another form of self- 
 respect, incapable of meanness and to which treachery is as im- 
 possible. 
 
 But beside this characteristic, James Garth had also more 
 than the average share of hope. He was sanguine by tempera- 
 ment, and always believed the better thing ; and so had borne 
 his heavy burdens with a gallant courage, a simple faith in Pro- 
 vidence and the turn of the lane, that gave an almost heroic 
 flavour to his constancy. The two things which were as his 
 very life's blood to him were, to redeem his father's debts and 
 keep a good name. But just in proportion to his hope, his 
 energy, his pride, while things were well with him, would be 
 the collapse if it came. 
 
 The struggle was an arduous one. He had a good wife and 
 a large family ; a wife who had wrought her i 1 ly's work loyally, 
 made the best of everything, wasted nothing, borne him a 
 child every two years as regularly as the birds brought forth 
 their young in spring time, and given the children good health, 
 good food, and a bright example. These young ones would be 
 all of use by-and-bye, but most of them were mere infants and 
 children yet ; and only one or two had got forward on their 
 own account. James, the eldest, of course stayed with his 
 father, so did Robert, the next lad ; but Alice, the eldest 
 daughter, had gone out to service, and was now acting as lady's 
 maid to Miss Drummond. 
 
 This had been a little hard at the first to Garth, owing to 
 special circumstances connected with Mr. Hamley ; else he 
 would not have minded. His pride was not of that sort. He 
 was only a peasant proprietor at the best, and he aimed at 
 nothing higher. He scarcely saw the need. He did not care 
 to bring up his children on strawberries and cream like fine 
 ladies, he said, but would rather let them take the rough of the 
 world as well as the smooth ; and he thought it no shame that
 
 LONG FIELD FARM. 185 
 
 Alice should take suit and service in a stranger's house, for all 
 that the title-deeds of his farm, lying "in the old black chest, 
 were dated 1540. But it had cost him a struggle to let her go 
 to Jahez Hamley's.; though in the end common sense had con- 
 quered prejudice. 
 
 Besides this large family and his father's debts, James Garth 
 had made a bad speculation. A man came down from London 
 and persuaded him that he had ironstone on his land, and that 
 he had only to set about with a pickaxe and a few charges of 
 gunpowder to make as much money as the owner of Abbey 
 Holme had made out of his brewing vats. So he set to work 
 and tore his land into holes here, and piled it into hummncks 
 there, and lost his money and his time for the better part of 
 six months. And when all was doue he found that he had 
 been fooled, and that he had spent his strength in slinging 
 another millstone round his neck in addition to those made 
 out of his father's debts, his round dozen of children to feed 
 and clothe, and his want of capital to enable him to keep pace 
 with modern improvements ; whereby he was ever at a disad- 
 vantage. For naturally the more a man puts into his land the 
 more he gpts out of it. A year or two of bad harvests had also 
 made their mark ; and the turn in the long lane in which poor 
 Garth so courageously believed seemed farther off than ever. 
 
 There was no doubt about it. Set in the midst of Mr. 
 Hamley's well-cleaned, steam-cultivated, lordly acres, Long 
 Field had a ragged poverty-stricken look that destroyed the 
 harmony of the landscape ; and its dandelions and thistles 
 were an abomination. Nothing disguised, nothing extenuated, 
 it was a rough bit of country, and by no means farmed up to 
 its capabilities ; but it was the man's own, and his all. And 
 Mr. Hamley had no philanthropic desire of adding to the 
 world's wealth in getting possession of it if he could. It was 
 merely that it stood in the midst of his own estate, and he 
 wanted his ring-fence to be symmetrical ; besides having that 
 land-hunger on him, exaggerated to voracity, which nothing 
 short of inability to buy more would ever satisfy. 
 
 The creditors whom Garth had been obliged to make on his 
 own account were now pressing on him. It had been a glad 
 day for the poor fellow when he had cleared his lather's repu- 
 tation ; and no Chinaman ever burnt incense before the tomb
 
 186 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 of his ancestors with more hearty satisfaction to his conscience 
 than that which James Garth felt when he received the last 
 receipt in full of all demands on the outstanding accounts, and 
 brushed the last remains of dishonour from the old free-liver's 
 memory. But he had done this only at the cost of new lia- 
 bilities contracted on his own hand ; and with these and the 
 losses occasioned by short crops and the man who had talked 
 of ironstone and prophesied millions, things never looked 
 worse for him. Take it how he might, there was a sore pinch 
 before him, and he saw no way out of it save by borrowing on 
 the security of the land, which had enough to do to support 
 him and his without drawbacks. 
 
 All of which Mr. Hamley knew like the alphabet. Was not 
 Alice Dora Drummond's maid I and were the tears so often 
 HI her eyes for nothing 1 Besides, land-hunger is like any 
 other instinct, keen in scenting its food and absolute in its need 
 of satisfaction ; and Mr. Hamley's knowledge of the fields and 
 farms that would fall to the first bidder, and which he had 
 only to ride over to the house-door to secure, and of those 
 which must eventually come into the market and were to be 
 had for patient waiting, was almost like an added sense, it was 
 so acute and unerring. 
 
 " Well, wife, I shall have to do it at last ! " said James, look- 
 ing up from a dirty piece of paper that had done service tor a 
 letter, and which his eldest son had just brought up from the 
 town. It was a letter from Cooper the wheelwright, who had 
 just lent him three hundred pounds, and now wanted it back 
 again without deluy. And there were Jones and Martin and 
 Grace, all of whom had lent him money to go on with, and all 
 of whom would begin to clamour like birds in a nest, and to 
 press their claims in a body if Cooper got paid and they were 
 left out. 
 
 " What is it, James, my man 1 " asked his wife. The two were 
 sitting in the kitchen at noonday while the boys were gather- 
 ing in to dinner. Mrs. Garth, with one child at her foot in the 
 cradle and another at her knee, was knitting a coarse blue 
 stocking, while her husband smoked his pipe in the chimney- 
 corner and the pot bubbled and hissed over the fire. It was a 
 cold raw day, and the light and warmth of the kitchen were 
 pleasant.
 
 LONG FIELD FARM. 187 
 
 " What will you have to do ? "she repeated. 
 
 " Lay a mortgage on the laud," said James, his eyes turned 
 to the sanded floor, as if he could see his difficulties collected 
 there. 
 
 "Aye ? that sounds a bit awful," said Mrs. Garth. 
 
 " As bad as may be," her husband answered. " It seems 
 just like a break ; the beginning of an upset root and branch," 
 
 " Why, James ! that's not like you to look at the black side 
 end foremost, and cry out before you are hurt ! " said Mrs. 
 Garth cheerily. 
 
 " Nay, it ain't," he answered back ; " but somehow I am 
 more down at this than I have ever been before. It seems as 
 if it would never end, and I feel as if the place was slipping 
 out of my hand somehow." 
 
 He sighed, and he seldom sighed, as he looked round with a 
 kind of friendly fondness on all the things he knew so well and 
 that were so full of old associations. His mother's samplers 
 and his grandmother's, worked in silk with peacocks and 
 quaint pyramidal trees, and "Anne Fletcher" signed to one 
 in cross-barrea letters, and " Alice Jones" to the other ; things 
 that he had always regarded as the highest efforts of creative 
 genius in their way, sublime in industry and purely useless in 
 intent; he would be sorry to part with them now, and sud- 
 denly they took a value in his eyes they had never had before. 
 Then there was the old china teapot, and some blue Delft 
 plates that had been brought over by his uncle who had been a 
 seafaring man, and had visited fojjei^a parts ; and the sea-shells 
 on the mantlepiece in among the flat candlesticks and teacaddy, 
 with one delicate vase of Venetian glass with a twisted thread 
 run through its stem, filled with small cowries, that had an al- 
 most superstitious value in the family eyes. There was the old 
 Dutch clock that ticked as it had ticked when he was a boy, 
 with the cuckoo that came out of the little door when the hours 
 struck, and chirped them as loud and natural as the real thing. 
 How he had wondered at that cuckoo when he was a little lad ! 
 and how he liked to see his mother draw up the weights 
 with a noise that made his flesh tingle with a pleasant sense of 
 awesome fear, just the same as his own little ones felt now as 
 they peeped behind their mother's skirts when she drew up 
 the chains, and they saw the big old pendulum swing from side
 
 188 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 to side as if it had life and a voice. The carved high-backed 
 oaken chairs, and the old carved bureau for which once a gen- 
 tleman staying at Abbey Holme offered him twenty pounds 
 he almost wished now that he had lost the chest and taken the 
 money ; the sanded floor where he and his brotheis had bored 
 holes, and the father had called them worms ; the deep chim- 
 ney-place with a settle at each side, where the pot was hanging 
 with the dinner of potato-stew seething over the peat fire ; the 
 rack where the guns and whips hung; the shelves among the 
 rafters where the wife kept her stores out of the reach of small 
 marauding hands : all these thousand trifles which make up 
 home seemed to come before him with more vitality, more 
 rooting power than they had ever had before, and to render 
 the possibilities of his position more bitter. 
 
 Just then came riding up Mr. Hamley of Abbey Holme. He 
 had been to his plantation ahead, and he thought he would look 
 in at Long Field on his way back. He had seen Cooper the 
 wheelwright yesterday, and had told him carelessly, as a matter 
 of common knowledge, that Garth was insolvent out and out ; 
 and that his creditors would not get sixpence in the pound if 
 they did not look sharp. Farming at a loss was not a good 
 groundwork for the liquidation of outstanding debts, he had 
 said ; and for his own part he was glad he had none of his 
 money lying among the Long Field weeds, for he should as 
 soon expect to shovel up last year's snow as to see a penny of 
 it back again if it had once got into James Garth's hands. 
 
 He had had no qualms of conscience in saying all this. 
 Garth would be forced to sell, he argued for the good of the 
 Abbey Holme estate and it was ridiculous his holding on. 
 Anything therefore that would hasten that necessity was so far 
 to the right side of the general account, if to the wrong of poor 
 Garth's, individually. 
 
 " But the world is made up of the individuals who succeed 
 and those who fail," said Mr. Hamley, flinging back his coat ; 
 " and every man has the power to choose which he will be. I 
 chose the first, and James Garth has selected the second ; con- 
 sequently, I have purchased Abbey Holme and he will have to 
 sell Long Field." 
 
 This was an epigrammatic way of putting matters that pleased 
 him ; and Cooper thought that a man who spoke so sharp
 
 LONG FIELD FARM. 189 
 
 must have a judgment to match ; as poor Garth found out to- 
 day when he came in from mending a few fenc.es to his dinner 
 of potato-stew, and to exchange a loving word with his wife 
 and children. 
 
 Mr. Hamley rode up to the farm-house door, and his man in 
 his smart groom's livery took his horse as he dismounted. 
 
 " Well, James," he said, stooping as he came through the 
 doorway ; which he need not have done. 
 
 He was very spruce in his dark blue overcoat with its broad 
 velvet collar ; very clean about his close-shaven chin ; very 
 sleek and prosperous, and well got up from head to heel ; and 
 not in any way like the lad who had many a time held old 
 Garth's horse for a penny, and more than once been fed at the 
 farm as you would feed a tramp or a stray dog. 
 
 " My man," said Mr. Hamley, " you should keep your land 
 cleaner. Yon fields of yours are not fit for pigs. What with 
 stones and weeds, they are fairly a disgrace, and that's a fact." 
 
 " I see nothing amiss with them," replied James a trifle 
 surlily. 
 
 He was nettled at the rich man's superior manner. It al- 
 ways did nettle him. 
 
 " You want more capital," said Mr. Hamley pompously, but 
 with the carelessness of one to whom capital is plentiful ; speak- 
 ing as if he had said that Garth wanted more chaff, more straw, 
 more sand. 
 
 " That's sooner said nor done," said James, his Saxon face 
 aflame. 
 
 He was a fair, ruddy man of forty-two or so ; in his prime ; 
 genial, openbrowed, frank; a good-tempered fellow, but' quick 
 too ; a man whose blood was not sluggish, yet more passionate 
 thati rancorous ; but a man wanting mental fibre of a kind, and 
 to be overcome by an adverse fate. 
 
 " I was hearing at the town that Cooper was coming on you," 
 continued Mr. Hamley. 
 
 " Ay ? that is strange now," said Garth. 
 
 " It will be a heavy pull to pay him off," said Mr. Hamley. 
 
 " Ay," he repeated ; " you are about right there." 
 
 " I wonder you don't sell the place for what it will fetch," 
 said Mr. Hamley. " It's worsening year by year, and you'll go 
 under with it."
 
 190 '-WHAT v.x'LD vr.f- no, LOVE:-" 
 
 "I'll not sell, and I'll stick to the land," said James slowly. 
 
 " Well, you are your own man, and can do as you please ; 
 but I'd give you a tidy price for it if you liked to sell," Mr. 
 Hamley said with a familiar tone and a broader accent than 
 that which Mrs. Hamley had taught him to use. We're old 
 acquaintances now, Garth, and 1 remember when your father 
 was a man above my height. You'd rather see the laud in my 
 hands, I imagine, than in a stranger's; and I'd do justice by it 
 and you." 
 
 " I'll hold on," said James. 
 
 "You will? Hold on to what? A bunch of weeds and a 
 bed of thistles ! What's the good of holding on to land you 
 can't farm, man 1 I'd sell it if I was you, and could get my 
 price." 
 
 " No, you wouldn't sell if you was me, if even you could get 
 your price," retorled James. " What your father had left you, 
 you'd like to leave to your son as I do, and as every English- 
 man would, if he could. I'd liefer have a rood of English land 
 than a dozen acres in a foreign country," said James. 
 
 " Stuff ! you carry your country on your back," said Mr. 
 Hamley. " A man's country is where he can buy the best coat 
 and get the best dinner. Country ! what signifies country, 
 when they can speak the language like yourself? The Ameri- 
 cans are English," he added with ethnological generosity ; " and 
 America's the place where a handy man like you would make 
 his fortune." 
 
 "Mr. Hamley," said James Garth suddenly, "you've made 
 your offer, and you've had your answer. Ill not sell till the 
 bailies take me, and I'll not cry caught till the game's lost. 
 Now, wife, if you'll turn out the pot perhaps Mr. Hamley '11 
 take a bit of dinner with us. It would not be the first, I 
 reckon, he's had at Long Field, by many." 
 
 " Thank you ; no. I shall partake of lunch at home," said 
 Mr. Hamley, with a sudden return to his finer manner, and an 
 angry flash in his small dark eyes. " I think you're foolish, 
 James, but we have good authority for not meddling with a 
 man's folly ; and so I leave you to yours. Good day. Good 
 day, Mrs. Gartk" 
 
 " Good day, sir," said Mis. Garfcli, with a curtsey. * And 
 how's Alice coming on ? "
 
 LONG FIELD FARM. 191 
 
 " Oh, very fair, I fancy," answered Mr. Hamley condescend- 
 ingly. " She's young yet, but she'll improve ; and I don't hear 
 Miss Drummond complain." 
 
 "I'm glad she suits," said the mother respectfully, as so 
 much useful capital of which her daughter might have the in- 
 terest. " My duty, sir, to your lady and Miss Drummond." 
 
 " Good day, Mr. Hamley," said James curtly. " Now, wife, 
 the dinner." 
 
 " Curse the fellow's insolence ! " muttered the rich man as 
 he rode off. 
 
 James Garth repeated the same words as he sat down to his 
 dinner with a heavy heart and a hot head, and the most pas- 
 sionate desire to break Jabez Hamley's. 
 
 And yet what had Hamley done ? Literally a kindness, ac- 
 cording to his way of putting it. He had offered a thousand 
 pounds clear gain over and above the market value of a piece 
 of badly farmed land that is, he would have made a clean gift 
 of the same to induce an insolvent landowner to sell what he 
 could not keep. Garth, perversely perhaps, took it that his 
 father's former charity-lad had traded on his necessities, and 
 offered him a bribe to let go his cherished patrimony. It was 
 common sense and feeling the logic of wealth dealing with 
 poverty according to material values and outside human emo- 
 tions, and the passionate anguish of a luckless man rebelling 
 against facts and logic, and asking only help and sympathy.
 
 Ida 
 
 WHAT WOULD vor DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 LATE FOR LUNCHEON. 
 
 Cbi 
 
 pTLNSTEAD of turning in 
 Jlf he passed them on his i 
 
 at the Abbey Holme gates when 
 way from Long Field, Mr. Hamley 
 did violence to. the domestic institution of luncheon, and 
 cantered off to Milltown. He thought it best to take time by the 
 forelock, and to have the first word with Mr. Simpson, the local 
 lawyer, before Garth could put in his oar. So, grievously har- 
 assing that unfortunate gentleman by his untimely visit, dis- 
 turbing him at his dinner, much to Mrs. Simpson's disgust, 
 spoiling his food and deranging his digestion, he opened at 
 once on his business. 
 
 He had no need to manage appearances with Mr. Simpson. 
 He had long ago bought him, body and soul, and hold him in 
 his hand able to crush him at a moment's notice. The lawyer 
 had nothing for it, then, bub a flexible back-bone ana a plastic 
 conscience ; and to keep on good terms with his master and 
 creditor, let what would stand in his path or be trampled out 
 of it, was the only way open to him. Milltown, by-the-by, 
 wondered that Mr. Hamley, who did everything in such a gran- 
 diose manner, and who never touched clay when he could 
 handle gold, should employ Simpson at all. A low-class, 
 second-rate man as he was, it was odd that the eminently res- 
 pectable, self-made master of Abbey Holme should stand by 
 him rather than by Mr. Perkins, who was at the head of his pro- 
 fession in these parts, and was a really honourable and worthy 
 gentleman. But Mr. Hamley gave it as his reason that Simp- 
 son had once been kind to him in the days when he needed a 
 friend ; " and I never forget a kindness and never forsake a 
 friend," said Mr. Hamley of Abbey Holme, airing his gratitude 
 ostentatiously. 
 
 " Simpson," said Mr. Hamley abruptly, as the lawyer, a sandy- 
 haired, red-eyed, furtive kind of person, came sideways into
 
 LATE FOB LUNCHEON. 193 
 
 the room, " you'll be hearing from James Garth, of Long Field, 
 one of these fine days." 
 
 " Yes, sir, so I anticipate," said Mr. Simpson. " By all ac- 
 counts, he's in a bad way, is James." 
 
 " Couldn't be worse," said Mr. Haniley. Then, after a pause ; 
 " There's Cooper pressing him for money, and the fool refuses 
 to sell." 
 
 " Cooper pressing him for money and he refuses to sell ; 
 what a fool indeed, as you say, sir ! " echoed Mr. Simpson. 
 
 " I have just offered him two thousand for his farm, and he 
 says no," continued Mr. Hamley, in an injured tone. 
 
 " Two thousand, and he says no ; he doesn't see his own in- 
 terest ," repeated Simpson. 
 
 That's what I told him not half an hour ago; but Lord ! you 
 might as well speak to a stone wall as to him ! He's blind and 
 deaf and stupid, that's what he is ; and he can't see his bread 
 when it's stuck under his nose buttered-side uppermost. He's 
 the most of a pig's-head I've ever come across, and he'll have to 
 suffer for his folly. Such men always do." 
 
 " No doubt, sir, no doubt. As you say, such men always do. 
 
 I'm sorry for him, but if he will cut his own throat why " 
 
 The lawyer spread out his hands, and shrugged his shoulders, 
 intimating that he abandoned James Garth to that interesting 
 operation, and washed his hands of all responsibility in the 
 matter of sharpening the razors. 
 
 " Sorry for him ! " said Mr. Hamley fiercely ; " how can you 
 be such a fool as to say that, Simpson ? Sorry for a born jackass 
 who won't take advice, and pocket a cool thousand when it's 
 given him !" 
 
 " Well, not exactly sorry perhaps, but one would rather see 
 him wiser," apologized the lawyer, bowing. 
 
 Mr. Hamley frowned. " I don't do much myself in the way 
 of soft soap and sawder," he said insolently ; " I leave that to 
 you, Simpson. And as for wishing him anyways different to 
 what he is, you might as well wish a mole was a hawk and that 
 geese didn't cackle." 
 
 The lawyer laughed and smoothed his hair. " He ! he! he! 
 
 you'll excuse me, Mr. Hamley, but you are so very funny, sir ! " 
 
 he said. " As I always say, if you want to hear what I call a 
 
 regular out-and-out good thing, there's no one that conies near 
 
 M
 
 194 "WHAT WOCLD \vr DO. T.OVE?" 
 
 Mr. Hamley of Abbey Holme. That's the genuine article and 
 no mistake ! " 
 
 " Well, I always was accounted a droll dog," answered Mr. 
 Hamley with a self-satisfied smile, stretching out his legs and 
 running his fingers through his bushy black whiskers. " Many's 
 the time I've kept them all in a roar down at Ledbury's when 
 I was junior and hadn't what one may call so much to keep up 
 as now. I was king of my company, that's what I was, and 
 could cut a joke or sing a song with the best of them." 
 
 " That's what all Milltown says, sir ! " cried Mr. Simpson 
 enthusiastically. 
 
 " And Milltown has made worse guesses in its day and been 
 further off the bull's-eye than here," said Mr. Hamley. Whereat 
 they both laughed. This was one of the great man's witti- 
 cisms : a fair specimen of the kind of thing which made him 
 king of his company. " But I did not come here to crack jokes \ 
 I came to talk business," he said, breaking off suddenly. 
 
 " And business be it," returned Mr. Simpson, grave on the 
 instant, and assuming his professional manner like a mask. 
 
 " Garth will come here for a mortgage," said Mr. Hamley, 
 checking off his first proposition on his finger. 
 
 " Just so." 
 
 " You must find the money." This was the second, marked 
 off in the same way. 
 
 Mr. Simpson made two strokes on his blotting-pad. 
 
 " And you must lend it on your own hand, and give him rope. 
 Give him twelve hundred if he wants it, at five per cent. That 
 will be a tidy lot ; and when he has it, he's hooked." 
 
 " He is," said Mr. Simpson. 
 
 tf And then one of the eyesores of the neighbourhood will 
 be abolished," said Mr. Hamley, taking up his grand manner ; 
 " and Long Field will be farmed as it ought to be." 
 
 " Which will be a public benefaction, Mr. Hamley," said the 
 lawyer. 
 
 " I think so too, Simpson, I think so too," he answered pom- 
 pously. " I think I may say I have deserved well of Milltown 
 for the good I have done the land. It was weeds and rubbish, 
 most of it, when I found it a set of beggarly bankrupts, that's 
 what they were and I have made it, as one might say, a 
 miling garden."
 
 LATE FOR LUNCHEON. 195 
 
 " You have, sir ; and a beautiful simile it is." 
 
 " And yet that pig-headed brute would not sell !" said Mr. 
 Hamley with his injured tone. 
 
 " Incredible ! " returned the lawyer ; " most extraordinary ! " 
 
 " You may well say that," said Mr. Hamley, " Meantime 
 see to the note of hand when Garth calls, and give him rope." 
 
 " I will, sir ; rope enough to hang him," said Mr. Simpson 
 with an unpleasant laugh. 
 
 Mr. Hamley frowned, as he had frowned before; this time 
 from a benevolent motive. " I don't like such harsh expres- 
 sions, Simpson," he said sternly. " They are unchristian, and 
 not the thing." 
 
 " I am sorry I offended, sir," Mr. Simpson answered with a 
 contrite look " But one is apt to let one's feelings run away 
 with one, even in office hours ; and a man who's no frietid to 
 one who has been, as I may say, the making of me and mine 
 why I can't be very soft on him, you see, sir." 
 
 " Yes, all that is proper enough," Mr. Hamley answered ; 
 " but don't let your zeal get ahead of your discretion, that's 
 all." 
 
 And the lawyer answered, " No, sir, I will not," humbly. 
 
 What good these two men proposed to themselves by this 
 little transparent farce, it would have been difficult for either 
 to have explained ; but it was the kind of thing they kept up 
 together and each assumed that he deceived the other. 
 
 " By-the-by, Simpson, hovr about the last quarter's interest 
 from Cragfoot 1 " asked Mr. Hamley suddenly. " Paid yet 1" 
 
 "No, sir. Money's bad to get from the Colonel; grows 
 tighter quarter by quarter." 
 
 " Overdue how long ! " 
 
 " A week and two days." 
 
 " Give him a full fortnight, and then w Mr. Hamley in- 
 dulged in a little pantomime expressive of turning a screw. 
 
 " I understand, sir," said Mr. Simpson, with another hiero- 
 gtyphic on the blotting-pad. " A fortnight's grace, and then 
 the screw t " 
 
 " Just so ; not too hard at first, you know. Gently does it, 
 but fast hold all the same. You understand." 
 
 " All right, sir ; I kuovr." 
 
 " Well then, I think I have no more to say ; so good morn
 
 196 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO. LOVE?" 
 
 ing to you," said Mr. llamley, flinging a condescending nod to 
 his tool, who bowed as low as if the master of Abbey Holme, 
 Ledbury's successful office-boy, was the Dalai- Lama in person, 
 and he one of his chosen worshippers. Then, mounting his 
 showy bay, Mr. Hamley cantered up the street, followed by his 
 smart groom also on a showy bay, luncheon waiting for him at 
 home as he knew. 
 
 " Why whatever has kept you all this long time. Mr. S. ! ' 
 was Mrs. Simpson's querulous ejaculation rather than question, 
 as her husband went into the dingy little back parlour where 
 his cold chop and flat beer awaited him. 
 
 "That beast Hamley!" was his reply. "I wish the devil 
 would wring his neck for him ! " 
 
 " Law, Simpson, how you do talk ! " said his wife. " But I 
 don't wonder at your being in a wax ; it is rousing to be want- 
 ing one's dinner and it a-spoiling on the hob." 
 
 " It's more rousing to have to do that beast's dirty work," 
 said Mr. Simpson, fencing with his conscience in that curious 
 way in which slaves and cowards compound for the evil they 
 commit by throwing the shame of responsibility on the man 
 who has bought them, and is now driving them to iniquity. 
 
 " Well, he saved us when we wanted a good turn," said Mrs. 
 Simpson, with a wife's natural, contradiction and aggravating 
 gratitude for the benefits which gall her husband. " And it's 
 only natural he should be wanting his money's worth somehow. 
 If you did n't 'want him on your hands, you should have been 
 careful to keep him off them." 
 
 " Don't be a fool, woman, and hold your mag on things you 
 don't understand," said Mr. Simpson coarsely. 
 
 Whereat Mrs. Simpson tossed her head and said, " Well I'm 
 sure ! " in a pet in which she continued to the end of the day ; 
 though it was uncomfortable, because she wanted to tell her 
 lord some Militown gossip she had just heard how that those 
 heathenish Fletchers were getting as thick as thieves with Miss 
 Kemball up there at the Abbey, and Miss Biggs did say she 
 expected soon to have an order, and she supposed they would 
 do it handsome. 
 
 Wiien James Garth went down that night to Mr. Simpson's 
 he found everything as smooth as velvet. The lawyer happened 
 to have just twelve hundred pounds of his own to which he
 
 LATE FOR LUNCHEON. 197 
 
 was as welcome as the flowers of May ; and he would draw out 
 the note of hand as he stood there. This would pay oft all his 
 creditors at one stroke, and give him a tidy little sum to put into 
 the land for better crops next harvest-time. Twelve hundred 
 pounds ! It would set him square he hoped, both now and in 
 the future ; and he might take his own time to pay it off. 
 
 No, he would not put that into the bond, he said, when Garth, 
 with a peasant's natural acuteness where land is concerned, 
 wanted it expressly stated under stamp and seal, that the money 
 should not be called in before such a date, and then not until 
 due notice had been given. There must be some kind of trust 
 between man and man ; and besides, it was not professional. 
 All he could do, or would, was to lend the money at five per 
 cent., and to promise verbally, that unless unforeseen accidents 
 should arise which he did not contemplate, but for which he 
 would not hold himself responsible should 'they come he would 
 not call it in while the interest was paid regularly, and the 
 I. 0. U. looked safe. 
 
 And as need was pressing, and this was the best he could do, 
 James Garth took the loan on these conditions ; and manfully 
 set himself to overlay a certain uneasy sense of insecurity with 
 the rose-coloured hopefulness of his buoyant temper. 
 
 As Mr. Hamley was riding smartly homewards, he said to 
 himself again and again what a remarkably easy thing it was 
 to be successful, and how pleasant life was to the man who 
 knew how to make hay while the sun shone, and to take time 
 and Mr. Simpson by the forelock! He had no sympathy with 
 all those white-livered dyspeptic fellows who go about the 
 world shoes down at heel and coats out at elbows, unsuccess- 
 ful and unhappy. Look at him, how he managed ! Why, men 
 were so many puppets in his hand, and he was .the master who 
 pulled the strings and made them dance to his tunes. There 
 was Colonel Lowe now; he thought himself master of Cragfoot, 
 did he 1 Ah, he little knew that he was no better than a dog 
 in a kennel, and might be turned out at any moment ! He 
 swaggered and gave himself airs, did he 1 Well, let him swag- 
 ger. If he came too near a certain forbidden subject, he would 
 simply have to learn his master before the week was out, that 
 was all. If he behaved himself decently, and that cub of his 
 married money, well, he might drag on a little longer in Crag-
 
 198 " vrn.AT worLn TOT' no LOVE ? " 
 
 foot if he liked. It all depended on his, the secret owner's 
 mood, and what he wanted to do with the place himself. What 
 a glow of satisfaction that thought of power gave him ! Per- 
 haps he didn't know but perhaps, if Patricia married to his 
 liking, he might give her the Colonel's house as her portion. 
 It would not be unpleasant to his pride to have the world say 
 how generously he had dowered his wife's niece ; and it would 
 not be unpleasant to revenge himself on the Colonel for certain 
 well-remembered insolences of bygone times, when the smart 
 young owner of Cragfoot had cracked his whip over the ragged 
 lad loitering at Ledbury's door, and treated him as he would be 
 treated in his turn one of these fine days, if there was justice 
 on earth or in heaven ! 
 
 Whenever Mr. Hamley spoke openly to men of his former 
 life, he spoke of it with the courageous confession of a wise and 
 brave man. Whenever he thought of it, lie lost his inner self- 
 mastery. Those who had befriended him and those who had 
 insulted him, were equally in his Index of the future, and 
 equally to be punished. Colonel Lowe was of the latter ; James 
 Garth of the former ; and both had to bear the weight of his 
 hand now that this hand had power. He had them. He had 
 got both the big fish and the little one in his net, and he felt as 
 a good man feels who has fulfilled his life's highest intention. 
 It was odd how he had coveted that Long Field Farm! The want 
 of it had soured all the sweets of his other possessions ; but 
 now he drew a deep breath as he mounted the hill whence he 
 could see Abbey Holme lying fair and stately amid its magnifi- 
 cent oaks and beeches, and his eyes wandered far over his own 
 estate with the smoking chimney of Long Field to be soon 
 added to the rest. 
 
 But as he drew nearer to his own home, the image of what 
 was waiting for him there became more and more distinct, and 
 the effect sobering in proportion. He pictured to himself the 
 expression on Mrs. Hamley's face : he knew it so well ! and 
 the form of the punishment waiting for him became photogra- 
 phically distinct. He knew her way ; it was stereotyped. She 
 would remain immovable in the drawing-room after luncheon 
 was announced ; her ladylike work of many colours folded up 
 and laid aside ; her pale eyes fixed on the clock ; waiting with 
 crisped lips and voiceless forbearance until the truant should
 
 LATE FOR LUNCHEON. "199 
 
 make his appearance. Over and over again lie had besought 
 her to give him just five minutes' law when he happened to be 
 late ; which was seldom ; and then to lunch without him. And 
 over and over again his wife had assured him, with the, tart 
 submission of a deferential code grafted on to an aggressive 
 character, which was her way, that she should never dream of 
 failing so far in her duty to him. If he chose to forget what 
 was due to her, she used to say with the severe patience, the 
 antagonistic humility under which he had so often writhed, 
 she was not justified in following his example. He was the 
 master if she was the lady ; and the master must be attended 
 to first of all things. It might not be good manners to keep her 
 waiting; but husbands did not always trouble themselves about 
 manners in their own homes. 
 
 He knew by heart the air with which she would take his 
 arm the instant he went in, and walk solemnly t6 the dining- 
 room, compressed and grim if her mood was confessedly war- 
 like, or pathetically patient if she was in the humour to stab 
 through wool ; as sometimes happened in her more subtle days. 
 He knew how they would sit down in funereal silence to their 
 sumptuous meal, with all the made dishes cold and they could 
 BO easily have been kept hot ! he thought with a prophetic 
 pang ; for Mr. Hamley liked good living with the servants, 
 who had been kept hanging about in expectant state, cross 
 and hungry, and civilly showing the worst side of everything, 
 as servants can, all in the way of duty and their lawful service. 
 He knew how the disturbed arrangements of the afternoon 
 would be flung at him in a disordered heap, and the whole day 
 with some subsequent ones thrown out of gear, all for that 
 lost half-hour. He already heard the meekly-injured tone in 
 which she would refuse everything offered to her : " I cannot 
 eat that, John, It is spoilt with waiting ;" the elaborate sym- 
 pathy with which she would apologize to Dora and Patricia for 
 the uncomfortable state of the table ; and, without a word of 
 direct reproach, how she would heap burning coals on his 
 recreant head, accepting his excuses with a frosty smile and a 
 stiff inclination of her well-abtired body, her eyes saying as 
 plainly as words, " I know that you are telling falsehoods, but 
 you are the master and I am the slave, and I must set an ex- 
 ample of wifely submission to the girls." For unpunctuality at
 
 200 "WHAT "WOULD TOP DO, LOVE?" 
 
 meals was one of the cardinal vices at Abbey Holme, where it 
 was held as an undoubted article of faith that life had been 
 given to man for the careful codification of conventionalities, 
 and not that conventionalities had been created for the better 
 regulation of life. 
 
 Visions such as these, with dear Dora's pretty face and dove- 
 like eyes as his sunshine in the cloudy sky, her tacit but elo- 
 quent amiability, desirous to please both and careful to hurt 
 neither, flanked by glimpses of Patricia's directer endeavours 
 to show him that she at least was sorry for his discomfiture ; 
 which only made her aunt angry with her and more disagreeable 
 to himself " the girl has a good heart, but she is deuced up- 
 setting in a house, and as vulgar as you please ! " was his 
 unspoken commentary on her honest sympathy held the man's 
 pride a trifle low in the direction of home, to balance the 
 hunter's joy in having trapped his game so securely that when- 
 ever he chose to snap the lid he would hold his prize in his 
 hand, to deal with as seemed good to him. 
 
 And this last thought brought him to the Abbey Holme 
 door with Mrs. Hainley waiting on the other side of it.
 
 PAY1.NG VISITS. 201 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 PAYING VISITS. 
 
 RS. HAMLEY was a regal k5nd of woman in her way, 
 and like other royalties had a profound objection to 
 ail derangement of plans. She had appointed the 
 carriage to be at the door at a certain moment, and her calcu- 
 lations founded thereon had been made with the exactness of a 
 Chinese puzzle. As it was, everything was displaced. And 
 this was an unpardonable offence. The days were short, and 
 the visits which she had arranged to pay suddenly became of 
 paramount importance ; after having been delayed for weeks 
 innocuously, entailing no end of social misdemeanours now by 
 being carried over into another day. There is no need to say 
 that for the last hour life at Abbey Holme had not been joy- 
 ous, and that the burden of human miseries had been heavy. 
 
 " Very sorry, Lady," said Mr. Hamley, coming out from his 
 dressing flushed and flustered. Mrs. Hamley would not have 
 sat down with him had he not been dressed as he called it, 
 " to the nines," but she, " as a gentleman." 
 
 " Your arm, Mr. Hamley," was the lady's curt response. 
 
 " I have been detained by business of the most important 
 kind, else I would not have delayed you." he continued, still 
 flustered, and louder than usual, more parabolic too than 
 usual in consequence. 
 
 " Shall we sit down while you explain your affairs, Mr. 
 Hamley, or shall we go into luncheon, which has been waiting 
 a full hour 1 " said Mrs. Hamley, withdrawing her hand from 
 his own and looking at him sternly. 
 
 Mr. Hamley laughed uneasily as he picked up the lean long 
 fingers and laid them on his coat sleeve ; glanced at dear Dora 
 locking discreetly another way, and at Patricia looking in 
 pained reprobation at her aunt ; and then walked off in silence 
 to the dining-room, conscious that the time for propitiation had 
 not arrived. And as they went, Patricia behind-backs took up
 
 202 "WHAT WOt'LD YOU DO. I.OVE?" 
 
 dear Dora bodily by the waist, and carried her for a few steps 
 with dreadfully rude ease, as her form of protest against the 
 dead dulness of the last hour and the sourness of the present 
 moment. Had Mrs. Hamley looked round things, would not 
 have been harmonious for Patricia for the next day or two. 
 
 Her iniquity, however, passed off without detection ; and as 
 Dora did not laugh or scream, being too angry with the girl 
 for the one part and too frightened of her sure share of *\irs. 
 Hamley's wrath should they be discovered for the other, and 
 as, moreover, deep indignation at Mr. Hamley's domestic sin 
 of unpunctuality had exercised so many of Mrs. Hamley's 
 faculties as to leave her none for suspicion, she noted nothing 
 of the little flutter that went on in the hall as that incorrigible 
 niece of hers affronted the genus loci once again as so many 
 times before, and scared the lares and penates as a kitten might 
 scare a cage full of white mice. 
 
 After an uncomfortable meal during which the carriage came 
 round an additional log to the fire of Mrs. Hamley's anger 
 they all set off to pafy visits. This, too, was one of Mrs. Ham- 
 ley's regal ways. She liked to do things in a certain cumbrous 
 state, and to be attended when she went out. It was a rare 
 mark of social familiarity when she went with Dora alone to 
 any house. As a rule she exacted Mr. Hamley's company as 
 the marital Goldstick whose duty it was -to accompany her; 
 and Patricia was now also part of her personal court. 
 
 To-day she especially desired to have all things decently and 
 with more than ordinary pomp and propriety. She was going 
 to Cragfoot and the Rectory ; and more, she was going for the 
 first time to the Quest where the flag was flying the family 
 having come down. And Lord Merrian was a personable 
 young man who might who knows t thought Mrs. Hamley 
 with a critical look at the two young ladies who sat, discreet 
 and demure, facing her. 
 
 They were pretty girls, each in her own way ; and she would 
 not grudge the prize to one for the sake of the other. F< >r if 
 Dora won it well, dear Dora was her own creation, as well as 
 her personal favourite, and she could say with pride : " Look 
 at the result of my training ! a coronet as the reward of learn- 
 ing lady-like deportment and self -suppression at my hands ' " 
 And if Patricia won it Patricia was of her own blood, and she
 
 PAYING VISITS. 203 
 
 could glorify herself in " My niece, Lady Merrian," or, please 
 heaven to take the dear Earl from a sinful world to glory, 
 " My niece, Lady Dovedale." Stronger brains than Mrs. Ham- 
 ley's have woven as solid-looking romances out of as slight 
 materials, and have been quite as sure of success if only other 
 people had not fingered the threads and broken in upon the 
 pattern. 
 
 By way of parenthesis, it may be observed here that, because 
 Mrs. Hamley elected to be accompanied by her husband when 
 she was out doing her royalties, she was by no means blind to 
 his deficiencies in the art of manner and the science of good 
 breeding. Indeed, no one saw so clearly as she did when and 
 where he failed ; no one knew so well the thinness of the 
 veneer with which she had laboured so hard to conceal the in- 
 herent coarseness of the original material. But Mrs. Hamley 
 was a clever social reasoner. She knew that courage and con- 
 stancy are the only methods by which a conventional misde 
 meanour can be rendered respectable; and that when you have 
 made an unfitting marriage say, the only thing to do is to carry 
 your conjugal flag bravely to the front, and appear profoundly 
 ignorant of rents and rags. To try to merge her marriage in 
 her own personality was a mistake Mrs. Hamley was far too 
 acute to commit. Sl) had sold herself for a consideration, and 
 she had so much more honour than usually belongs to women 
 who marry for money, that she loyally performed her part, and 
 never flinched from the obligations it entailed. Her husband 
 was a coarse, showy snob ; she knew that well enough, and she 
 knew the world knew it ; but the unwritten convention be- 
 tween them had been her social countenance and wifely loyalty 
 in return for his money and conjugal respect ; and the bond 
 had been faithfully kept. All the world believed that she did 
 really love her black haired, florid, big-fisted Plutus, who was 
 not a gentleman for all his acres ; and that he in his turn loved 
 his faded, elderly, ultra-refined wife : and the belief counted as 
 a medal of gold and a chain of silver in their honour. If they 
 had quarrelled in public, or in any way allowed men to see that 
 they confessed to a mistake, they would have been cut. As it 
 was, union gave strength, and the success of the marriage com- 
 manded respect. 
 
 Consequently, when Mrs. Hamley went in state to-day to the
 
 204 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 Quest, which represented Windsor Castle to the Milltown 
 world, she went with this marital Goldstick of hers by her side. 
 And though it was a trial that took all her force to bear with 
 dignity, it was one which she was conscious had certain solid 
 favourable issues not to be despised, and which must therefore 
 be borne bravely. 
 
 The first place at which the handsome ponderous carriage 
 stopped was Oagfoot. They found Mrs. Lowe at home, plain- 
 tive and taciturn as ever ; tumbled as to her attire ; dishevelled 
 about the head ; wrapped in a rhubarb-coloured shawl, and af- 
 flicted with her eternal catarrh ; taking mournful views of life 
 generally, and specially of all that pertained to that particular 
 day. She was a weak-spirited lady at all times, like some 
 middle-aged Niobe, the spiritual mother of tears and the heiress 
 of undesignated woe. 
 
 Miserable always, Mrs. Lowe would have been hard put to 
 it had she been obliged to crystallize her sorrows into a definite 
 shape. Everything afflicted her ; from the decadence of P'ng- 
 land to the flighty manners of the maids ; from the horrible 
 atmosphere of Milltown of Milltown specially, more horrible 
 there than anywhere else in England to the high edge round 
 one neighbour's garden and the low wall round another's. She 
 hated the country and she loved London. Once when, for his own 
 purposes, the Colonel had let Cragfoot for a year and had lived in 
 London, she had wept all the day and bemoaned herself all 
 the night for hatred of Bland ford Square and desire to be again 
 at Cragfoot. When Sydney was born she refused to be com- 
 forted because he was a boy and not a girl ; had he been a girl 
 she would have held herself accursed in that nature had denied 
 her a man-child. Whatever was was wrong with poor Mrs. Lowe, 
 the root and heart of whose misfortune was her husband, 
 grafted on to a chronic disturbance of her digestion, and en- 
 ergies reduced thereby to zero. 
 
 While they were sitting with her, Patricia wondering why 
 she was so melancholy yet pitying her so much and Dora with 
 her smiles, her downcast eyes and air of lovely amiability, doing 
 all she knew to charm Sydney's mother ; and not succeeding 
 Mrs. Lowe being sharper than she looked the door opened, 
 and the Colonel and his son walked in. 
 
 The former was debonair, handsome, haggard, insolent as
 
 PAYING VISITS. 205 
 
 usual ; the gentleman's insolence, united with a perfect manner, 
 a pure accent, and a charming voice : the latter pale, with that 
 look of evil resolution about his thin lips and the fire in his 
 dark eyes which those who knew had learnt to dread. He had 
 mach up his mind what to do, and he came prepared to act out 
 his resolve. 
 
 Scarcely greeting the rest of the company, he made his way- 
 straight to Dora sitting on the ottoman, throwing flies ot fasci- 
 nation for Mrs. Lowe, and shook hands with her in a familiar, 
 half-tender, half-defying manner, which went like an electric 
 shock through the room. Mrs. Hamley saw it and Mr. Ham- 
 ley saw it ; the Lowes saw it ; .arid even Patricia's unsuspicious 
 nature was enlightened with the rest. Each made his or 
 her comment on what she or he saw, and all looked at Dora, to 
 see how she would bear herself, and whether she would repel 
 or encourage such an audacious advance. 
 
 She blushed for her first reply, and her eyes dropped for 
 her second. She was frightened, not pleased ; and wished that 
 Sydney had not shown his hand so clearly, nor drawn her into 
 the fray. She would have infinitely preferred that he should 
 have gone into the battle alone for there was a battle to be 
 fought, and a hard one and have only called her in to share 
 the victory when he had won it. But the ordeal had to be 
 passed ; and it behoved her to be careful of her way among the 
 ploughshares. One false step^ and the whole thing would be 
 over for her ! And the first step she made was to answer the 
 young man's daring address with her own dexterous power of 
 conciliation ; not angering him by her coldness nor the others 
 by her warmth, but just accepting quietly what she could not 
 disclaim, and making herself a party to no policy but the policy 
 of peace. She was set between opposing fires, and she dodged 
 gracefully. 
 
 " What a clever little baggage !" said the Colonel to himself as 
 he read her with an accuracy of observation to be got only from 
 a certain class of men who have studied in a certain school of 
 women. " For all her softness that girl has the go of the devil 
 in her ! And this thing what is she like 1 " 
 
 He turned his handsome, haggard face to the fresh and inno- 
 cent one framed in its loose waves of brown hair watching
 
 208 " WHAT WOULD y ou DO, LOVE ? - 
 
 Dora anxiously ; and from that moment the two girls were 
 stereotyped in his mind as Brinvilliers and Joan of Arc. 
 
 The Cragfoot drawing-room opened into a conservatory. 
 
 " Have you seen our ferns ? " Sydney asked abruptly, speak- 
 ing to Dora without prefex or annex. 
 
 " No," answered Dora, with the sweetest air of modest un- 
 consciousness. 
 
 This was another ploughshare dexterously avoided by the 
 clever little feet, which understood wary walking. 
 
 " Come with me ; I want to show you my maidenhair," said 
 Sydney, looking full at the sunny little fringe meandering ten- 
 dril-like about her temples. 
 
 The anonymity of his address was not lost on his hearers ; 
 and Mr. Hamley's face was a study that had its lessons for 
 those who cared to read. 
 
 " We have a great beauty at home," said Dora simply. 
 
 Sydney laughed, " I know that," he sajd, still looking at her 
 feathery curls ; " but I will back mine against any other person's 
 Come and see it." 
 
 He stood up and offered her his hand, and for politeness she 
 could not refuse her own. 
 
 With a well-managed look of appeal to Mrs. Hamley, taking 
 in Mrs. Hamley's husband by the way, she laid her dainty little 
 close-gloved hand in his as she slowly rose from her seat. He 
 drew it within his arm, and carried her off to the conservatory ; 
 speaking to her in a low voice and bending his face near to hers, 
 as they walked across the room in this rather unusual fashion 
 of. going for two young people in an ordinary drawing-room 
 filled with ordinary gentlemen and ladies. It was all done, 
 however, more defiantly than tenderly a challenge rather than 
 a caress. 
 
 " Oh, do be careful, Syd 1 " said Dora in a frightened 
 wliisper over the maidenhair. 
 
 " No, Dora, I will not. I am going to bring things to a 
 head," said Sydney. " I swear this shall not go on any longer. 
 It shall be one thing or the other." 
 
 He spoke fiercely, like a flame of fire translated into words. 
 
 " It is one thing already, dear," said Dora with one of her 
 most enchanting looks.
 
 LAYING Visits. 207 
 
 " If you look like that you will drive me wild ! You know 
 I cannot stand those eyes of yours, Dora ! " cried Sydney. 
 
 " You silly boy ! " lisped Dora, casting down her eyes and 
 looking up from under her brows with the prettiest, most co- 
 quettish modesty. " I will not look at you at all then ! Will 
 that be right ? " 
 
 " No, Dody ; I should go mad then," said Sydney, with his 
 hand on hers. 
 
 " Poor thing ! you are in a bad way ! " she laughed. " Why, 
 what will please you ? " 
 
 " Not your ridicule, Dora 1 " he answered savagely. 
 
 He had a tindery kind of temper, whereon sparks were never 
 wanting ; the irritable temper of a selfish man who holds that 
 the world and all within it were created for his pleasure, and 
 who refuses to take his share of any of the disagreeables that 
 may be afloat. 
 
 " Play is not ridicule, dear," said Dora gently. " You ought 
 to know by now, Syd, that I would do nothing in the world to 
 vex you." 
 
 But though she spoke with such delicious patience, in her 
 own mind surged up the same contemptuous feeling that she 
 had for Mr. and Mrs. Hamley when she obeyed, soothed, and 
 tricked them. To her, inwardly so strong, outwardly so yield- 
 ing, the men and women whom she managed were little better 
 than children whom she deceived for their own good, while 
 allowing them to consider themselves supreme. 
 
 "And nothing to please me," Sydney answered, his face 
 darkening. " Temporize, temporize, wait, do nothing ; that is 
 your policy, Dora, and 1 am sick of it ! " 
 
 " You will ruin us both if you do not follow it," said Dora 
 earnestly. " Cannot you see, Syd, that we must have your 
 father's consent before we can make a move? What would 
 become of us if he refused as well as Mr. Hamley? I know 
 that Mr. Hamley will refuse ; but if Colonel Lowe consents we 
 are independent." 
 
 " And why the devil should Mr. Hamley refuse 1 " cried Syd- 
 ney in a rage. 
 
 Dora looked meek. " I am sure I don't know, she said ; 
 " unless he does not like parting with his money." 
 
 " Well, Dora, whatever happens I have made up my mind.
 
 208 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 I will speak to my father to-night and to Mr. Hamley to- 
 morrow." 
 
 "Not to Mr. Hamley unless your father consents," she 
 pleaded. " We shall be no nearer if you do only farther off 
 than before." 
 
 "Then what do you propose, Dora?" asked Sydney inso- 
 lently. 
 
 " Patience, dear," said Dora, raising her pretty eyes. " Pa- 
 tience and enough to eat ; not impatience and starvation." 
 
 "If you two young people have concluded with examining 
 the flowers we will proceed," said Mr. Hamley behind them. 
 
 He spoke in his finest accent and with his deepest voice ; and 
 Dora started as if a salvo of artillery had thundered over her 
 head. They had not heard him come. He had taken good 
 care they should not. 
 
 " We have quite done," she said, looking at him shyly. 
 " Mr. Lowe was only showing me his ferns. Is it not a beauty, 
 Mr. Hamley?" she continued, passing her fingers across a mis- 
 erable little specimen which even Mr. Hamley, who knew 
 nothing about flowers or ferns, could see was not worth the pot 
 in which it grew. 
 
 " If that is what you have been admiring I can't say much 
 for your taste. It seems to me a heap of time wasted in look- 
 ing at them weeds !" he said coarsely, passion. warring against 
 grammar, and grammar getting the worst of it ; as it always 
 did when he was excited. 
 
 " You cannot wonder at any one's forgetting how time goes 
 in Miss Drumraond's presence," said Sydney, gallantly as to 
 manner, insolently as to intention, so far as Mr. Hamley was 
 concerned. 
 
 Though it was a matter of vital importance to him as things 
 stood to keep fair with Mr. Hamley, even to make him his 
 friend if possible, he would not control himself to courtesy 
 when the fit took him to be aggressive. And as the fit was on 
 him now he indulged it. He hated Mr. Hamley, and he did 
 not care to conceal it. He hated him partly because of his bad 
 manners and his large means, but chiefly because Dora Drum- 
 mond lived in his house and he had power over her. 
 
 "Excuse me," said the master of Abbey Holme and Mr. 
 Simpson's invisible client Joues, who had lent the money for
 
 PAYING VISITS. 209 
 
 which Cragfoot was mortgaged; "but if there is one thing 
 more than another I think no gentleman should do, it is pass- 
 ing compliments on ladies when they are under another gen- 
 tleman's protection." 
 
 " I was not aware that Miss Drummond was under any gen- 
 tleman's protection more than my own at this moment," said- 
 Sydney, looking at him straight in the eyes. 
 
 " Then I do," said Mr. Hamley, taking Dora's hand and pull- 
 ing it roughly through his arm. "/am this young lady's pro- 
 tector, sir, and I wish the world to know as much." 
 
 "Miss Drummond must decide for herself," said Sydney, 
 tossing up his curly he'ad with an insolent laugh, " Which is 
 it, Dora ? " 
 
 " ' Which is it ' what ? " cried Mr. Hamley with a fierce 
 scowl. " Can I believe my ears 1 " 
 
 " That is just what Midas said," sneered Sydney. 
 
 Mr. Hamley let fall a thundering oath. " Is it come to this 
 ' Dora,' to you t " he said furiously. " Let me know what it 
 all means, or by " 
 
 " I am sure Mr. Lowe will apologize for his mistake ; for he 
 is not in the habit of calling me Dora ; " said Dora, hurriedly 
 interrupting the objurgation on its path. " I do not think you 
 meant to offend either Mr. Hamley or myself, Mr. Lowe," she 
 continued in her peace-making way, looking at Sydney and 
 smiling at Mr. Hamley, whose arm she pressed tenderly and 
 daintily. But she was treading heavily on the younger man's 
 foot all the while ; and Sydney understood pantomime. 
 
 " I certainly did not mean to offend you, Miss Drummond," 
 he said half sullenly, half familiarly. 
 
 " Nor, Mr. Hamley," put in Dora. And there was another 
 grind of the small high-heeled boot. " Mr. Hamley has been 
 like my father all my life, and I owe him the love and obedience 
 of a daughter." She looked prettily into his coarse, flushed 
 face. 
 
 " Daughter be hanged 1 " said Mr. Hamley. " I hate rub- 
 bish, Dora, and you know it ! " 
 
 " You surely do not mean to say that you regard Miss 
 Drummoud in any other light but that of a daughter ! " flashed 
 out Sydney. 
 
 " Mr. Lowe, sir, take my advice," said Mr. Hamley, measur- 
 
 N
 
 210 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 ing him with his eyes from head to foot, and mentally wring- 
 ing his neck as he would have wrung any young cockerell's 
 in his farm-yard : " take stock of your own goods and chat- 
 tels, and leave another man's alone." 
 
 Sydney's face and eyes flamed. " I suppose you know the 
 only interpretation to that? " he said. " As Miss Drummond 
 is not your wife, if she is your 'chattel ' " 
 
 " What she is to me has nothing to do with you," interrupt- 
 ed Mr. Hamley. " Keep to your own side of the way, Mr. 
 Lowe, and I'll keep to mine. There'll be mischief between 
 us else, and I flatter myself I am a trifle the heavier metal ! " 
 
 An imploring look from Dora checked the angry reply that 
 rose to Sydney's lips. She liked it well enough that the two 
 men should hate each other, and be held back from flying at 
 each othei''s throats only by the force of conventionality, for 
 her sake. She was of the order of woman to whom, though 
 not personally cruel quite the reverse men fighting for her 
 smiles was supreme honour and enjoyment. What they suf- 
 fered in the conflict troubled her no more than it troubles the 
 lioness \vho crouches, licking her lips and purring, waiting for 
 the bleeding victor, whether it is the blrxk lion or the tawny 
 that lies dead under the forest trees. But too much was involv- 
 ed at this moment in the keeping of peace to allow her to pos- 
 turise as a prize for which men did well to contend ; so literal- 
 ly as well as morally she brought pressure to bear on Sydney, 
 and being the wiser and the stronger, she conquered. He 
 ground his teeth together, but he kept the torrent of words 
 within them; and making that peculiar grimace which goes 
 by the name of a " sardonic grin," he turned to Dora, and 
 said aloud in French, ".Ce soir, cherie?" as compensation. 
 
 "What's that?" cried Mr. Hamley angrily, "Who's 
 a-talking foreign tongues here ? " 
 
 Sydney laughed unpleasantly. His laugh was naturally 
 unpleasant. 
 
 "French," said Dora with her tender smile. " Soit!" 
 with a look at Sydney ; " it only means * so be it.' " - 
 
 "I think itdeucedly ungentlemanly to talk your foreign lin- 
 go in society," Mr. Hamley answered, frowning. "Nowadays 
 gentlemen do rum things, and where you'd look for manners 
 most you find least. Now, Dora, come! We can't be here
 
 PAYING VISITS. 211 
 
 all day, and it's my belief we've been here too long already." 
 
 " Stit," repeated Sydney, taking the hint. 
 
 Spreading out both his hands, with two fingers bent inward, 
 he made a meaningless pull at his coat. 
 
 Dora's hat needed adjusting. She put up her hand and 
 pushed in a hair-pin with her fore-finger. And the engagement 
 stood for one o'clock that night ; a meeting between them 
 where and how ? 
 
 Then they all took their leave ; and when they were gone 
 the Colonel said, but not unkindly ; " Syd, my boy, come with 
 me to the library. We must have some serious talk, you 
 and L"
 
 212 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 OHAPTfilt XX' 
 
 EXPLANATIONS. 
 
 HUT the door and sit down ; and now tell me what 
 does all this mean ] " began the Colonel. 
 
 " What does all what mean, sir? " answered Sydney 
 evasively. 
 
 " Don't fence with me, Syd. We both understand each 
 other so far. But what I do not understand is, your ultimate 
 meaning what you wish and what you intend." 
 
 " You are speaking in riddles this afternoon. If you will 
 come to the point, I will meet you," said Sydney. 
 
 His father smiled. " You would have made a first-rate diplo- 
 matist," he said. 
 
 n I wish to heaven you had put me into the service, or done 
 anything for me but keep me knocking about at home 1 " cried 
 Sydney impatiently. 
 
 " You are ungrateful," was the Colo'nel's cool response. 
 " Your idleness is your own doing, not mine. If parents are 
 to be blamed for all the wrongheadedness of their sons, their 
 score will be a pretty heavy one in these days of liberty and 
 equality." 
 
 " Who cares for what a boy wishes ! " said Sydney. ' Boys 
 know neither their own minds nor their best interests. Of 
 what use are fathers and mothers but to guide their decisions ? 
 You should not have listened to me, sir ! " 
 
 " Perhaps not," said Colonel Lowe, playing with a paper- 
 knife carelessly. " But if I should not, you are not the person 
 to tell me of it." 
 
 "And if not I, who then pray?" answered Sydney. "I 
 suppose it is more my affair than any other person's if my 
 whole life is ruined that you may have had a plaything ? " 
 
 " Drop that, sir ? " cried the Colonel, turning round on him 
 with suddeji fierceness. " You ought to know by now what I 
 can bear and what I will not, even from you. However, I
 
 EXPLANATIONS. 213 
 
 have brought you here to reason, not to wrangle," he continued 
 more quietly ; " and wrangling is caddish. Tell me, what are 
 you proposing to yourself with respect to Miss Drummond]" 
 
 " I don't know that I am proposing anything to myself with 
 respect to Miss Drtimmond," answered Sydney sulkily. 
 
 " Then you are making a fool of her ? All right I dare say, 
 if a trifle cruel. She is probably worth nothing better at the 
 hands of a gentleman parvenues seldom are." 
 
 " Par venue or not, she is worth more than all your Ladies and 
 Honourables put together. Any man might be proud of Miss 
 Drummond !" flashed out Sydney, falling headlong into the trap. 
 
 " All right on the other side," said the Colonel. " And you 
 are not making a fool of her 1" 
 
 " I am not," answered his son. 
 
 " In which case you are meditating an offer f " 
 
 * I did not say so," he replied. 
 
 " Perhaps have already made it ? " 
 
 " Neither did I say that," said Sydney. 
 
 " I am glad of your disclaimers, my dear boy. As things are 
 with us, any intentions of an honourable kind with respect 
 to Miss Drummond would be decidedly mal a propos. For the 
 rest, she must take care of herself." 
 
 " My dear father," said Sydney with an impertinent smile, 
 " perhaps we shall come to a better understanding together if 
 you will stick to facts and take nothing for granted. It is only 
 women who jump to conclusions from insufficient premises." 
 
 " Thanks' for the lesson in dialectics," said the Colonel. 
 " Facts then it shall be : and I will begin with one I would 
 willingly have spared you. I, and you in consequence, are 
 both ruined." 
 
 The craven spirit of the man went down. He turned as 
 white as Dora might have done, and his very lips were pale. 
 
 " Ruined ! you are surely joking, sir! " he gasped. 
 
 " I wish I was," said the Colonel quietly. 
 
 " But what am I to do 1 " cried Sydney. Then, by the grace 
 of an after-thought he added ; " what are we all to do ? " 
 
 " What you have to do is to marry money, by which we shall 
 all profit," said the father. 
 
 " All very well to say marry money," said Sydney looking at 
 his nails, " That is sooner said than done,"
 
 21 4 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 "Not at all : it is waiting for you. Julia Manley would jump 
 at you. This I know for a fact ; and she has money enough in 
 all conscience five thousand a year." 
 
 " A woman like a camel ! with, sandy hair and freckles ! " 
 said Sydney in a tone of disgust. 
 
 " Golden hair, my boy, and beauty spots with five thousand 
 a year to gild them." 
 
 " Not to me, sir. She is hideous, and if she was Miss Kil- 
 mansegg herself she would be hideous all the same." 
 
 "Oh! after 'a year's marriage all women are pretty much 
 alike," said his father : " excepting indeed that the odds are in 
 favour of the plain ones. They wear the best and want less 
 looking after in all ways. Five thousand a year will make 
 Julia Manley's camel's face prettier than Dora Drummond's 
 wax-doll beauty, with not five-pence to give it consistency. 
 You will see. A nice house and plenty of cash and she will 
 be quite handsome in your eyes before your heir is born. And 
 good temper and habit will do the rest." 
 
 " All very well I dare say, if one entered into the thing 
 quite free ; but I had better confess it now I am in love with 
 Dora Drummond," said Sydney with a burst. 
 
 " Of not the slightest consequence', my dear fellow. Many a 
 man before yourself has loved one woman by inclination and 
 married another by necessity. I have not the faintest objec- 
 tion to your loving Hamley's pretty little girl, but I bar the 
 banns. " Unless," he shrugged his shoulders and cut a sheet of 
 paper carelessly, " you are prepared to turn into the world on 
 your own account, without a halfpenny from me, present or to 
 come." 
 
 " But why is Miss Drummond to be tabooed of all women ?" 
 said Sydney. " She is pretty, lady-like, well-bred, and- 1 am 
 fond of her ; why is she to be thrust out into the cold ? " 
 
 " She is not tabooed ; it is only her want of money that won't 
 fit. Let Hamley give her only two thousand a year, and I say 
 amen with all my heart. You see I rate her, as woman with 
 woman, worth three thousand a year more than Julia Manley ; 
 which is ranking her high. But if, as I suspect, it. is your 
 pretty Dora and an empty purse, I say no, unless you have 
 resources of which I know nothing." 
 
 " At least let me try," said Sydney dejectedly.
 
 EXPLANATIONS. 215 
 
 " Like Bruce's spider ? By all means. And if you fail ?* 
 
 The young man was silent. 
 
 " Well ! if you fail, what then, Syd ? " his father repeated. 
 
 " I am sure I don't know," he answered sullenly. 
 
 " No 1 I do. Your decision will rest then between two al- 
 ternatives marrying Julia Manley, or hopeless and irremedi- 
 able ruin." 
 
 " I suppose Cragfoot will stand where it does ? " said Sydney. 
 
 " Probably ; but not for us. It is mortgaged up to the hilt. 
 I tell you Syd," he continued earnestly, " we are ruined ; and I 
 see no way out of the wood save by Julia Manley." 
 
 " At least, I will try old Hamley first," said Sydney, sudden- 
 ly changing colour. 
 
 " By all means. You won't succeed. It's my belief he has 
 his own reason for keeping that girl single." 
 
 " What the deuce do you mean, sir ?" cried Sydney irritably. 
 " If I thought that I would break his head." 
 
 " You had better keep your hands clean," said Colonel Lowe. 
 " Perhaps he is looking out for a title, and means to sell her 
 only whenjie has made his market. There's Merrian. The 
 old shoeblack may be ambitious of getting his name in Debrett ; 
 or he may be looking forward to Mrs. Hamley's death. She 
 is tough, but he's twenty years her junior if a day." 
 
 " Don't say that, father ; it maddens me ! " cried Sydney 
 passionately. " I swear to you, if I believed that he had de- 
 signs on Dora in the future, I would take her away to-night ! " 
 
 " Don't be a fool, Syd," returned his father. " Take the girl 
 away to what 1 absolute beggary ! You would find no home 
 here, and you have no income in your hands or your head. Let 
 us understand one another. It is time. I have been an in- 
 dulgent father to you, but everything has its limits. Mine is, 
 your marrying a penniless parvenue. If you were to do so, I 
 swear, in my turn, that you might starve before my eyes before 
 I would give you a crust ; and if I came into millions not one 
 sixpence would be left to you. You know, Syd, I am never 
 violent, but I am determined. And now you have it." 
 
 ' Your words are hard, sir," said Sydney, looking down. 
 
 With much bluster he had but little of the tenacity of a real 
 fighter in him. A tyrant over subordinates, he was a coward 
 vhen a resolute will opposed him ; and his father, who, to do
 
 216 "WHAT WOTTT.n YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 him justice, hated the task, knew he could bully him into sub- 
 mission whenever he chose to assume a certain tone which meant 
 he was riot to be trifled with. 
 
 " If my words are hard my deeds will be harder," said Colo- 
 nel Lowe. 
 
 " Still I have yet pei mission to do my best with that brute 1" 
 said Sydney after a pause ; during which, handsome though he 
 was, he had a curious kind of likeness to a rat in a trap. 
 
 " By all means. And when you have done you best, come to 
 me and tell me the result." 
 
 A And if Mr. Hamley refuses ? father, I do love her ! " 
 
 u I shall be sorry for you. But he will refuse ; and then you 
 must marry Julia Manley." 
 
 " If he consents so far as to give very little down, and to 
 make only a provisional settlement you will not oppose me 
 then 1 " 
 
 The Colonel smiled, and yet half sadly. He thought his son 
 would have shown more pluck, more determination, than this 
 pitiful trying here and there for a way of escape. He was sorry 
 for him, but he was contemptuous too. 
 
 " I will say amen to any scheme you can propose, my dear 
 fellow, that will give you a gentleman's income and pay fifty 
 thousand pounds over and aibove your immediate wants," he 
 said. " Get even a thousand a year with your pretty 
 Dora, and I will not refuse my consent ; which is being liberal. 
 
 " I will go to Abbey Holme to-morrow," said Sydney ; but 
 he did not speak confidently, and his father knew that his 
 hopes were as few as his own. 
 
 " All right," he answered. " Now let us go and have a game 
 at billiards. Ah ! if you could do everything as well as your 
 favourite hazard, you would not have far to go for your fortune." 
 
 " It is a pity you did not teach me something more profitable 
 while there was time," retorted Sydney, as they lighted their 
 cigars and strolled smoking towards the billiard-room. 
 
 While this conversation had been going on at Cragfoot, the 
 Hamley carriage, bearing its four silent occupants, bad been 
 rolling rapidly to the Quest. It was by no means a comfortable 
 drive. Things never are comfortable when Fear sits on one 
 side and Nemesis on the other. 
 
 At the Quest they found the Countess and Lord Merrian
 
 EXPLANATIONS. 217 
 
 both at home. The Earl was out with his agent looking over 
 the land. They saw him afterwards in the road ; a stout-legged 
 ruddy-faced man, in a bulky shooting-jacket and leathern gai- 
 ters, looking like a well-to-do grazier rather than a man of 
 fashion or an hereditary legislator consecrated by birth to pat- 
 riotism and the public service. He was too well known by 
 sight to the others for them to wonder at his unaristocratic 
 look ; but Patricia was immensely astonished at his common- 
 place appearance. She had an idea that Lords and Ladies 
 were of a different material from the rest of the world; and 
 that nature herself had delivered them visibly from the bondage 
 of mediocrity and endowed them with their superior creden- 
 tials. 
 
 But if the Earl was homely the Countess was superb the 
 typical countess of splendid attire, magnificent beauty, queenly 
 manners, and looking about thirty when she was fifteen years 
 older. Lord Merrian too, was delightful. He was a tall, 
 poetic-looking, handsome young man ; well-mannered, superbly 
 got-up, a trifle affected, but both clever and ambitious ; at this 
 moment going through a temporary phase of intellectual rather 
 than practical conscientiousness, by which he did honestly 
 desire to know the truth and live up to the better thing, with- 
 out having the moral thoroughness which would enable him to 
 do either. He was an imaginative person, who took impres- 
 sions for convictions and fancies for proofs ; not of strong 
 character, and apt to be unduly influenced by his surroundings ; 
 which gave him an undeserved appearance of insincerity. He 
 professed to take mournful views of life and to be penetrated 
 with a sense of the general hollowness of things. A mild 
 sceptic on his own account, and with no definite creed on any 
 side, he deplored the absence of faith in the masses ; a Con- 
 servative, holding to the righteousness of a privileged class, he 
 deplored their degradation ; rich at least absolutely, if rela- 
 tively poor for a peer's son titled, courted, and a social darling 
 of the most cherished kind, he yearned for a crusade, he said, 
 where men would go out to fight for some great stirring cause, 
 flinging off the deadening fetters of society and the silken cor- 
 dage of our modern luxury. 
 
 It was pretty and pathetic to hear him talk thus, lowering 
 bis soft voice and raising his handsome eyes in between the rare
 
 2] 8 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 Steinberger and the 'twenty-seven port ; his smooth young face 
 arranged with care, his costly button-hole bouquet shedding 
 sweet scents with every breath, the ball at his foot, and in his 
 hand every good gift by which humanity can be blessed and 
 life made happy. Women praised him for his earnestness, and 
 called him " a sweet fellow " and a " most charming young man 
 with such nice feeling " and " such good sentiments ; " men 
 laughed at him for his affectation and called him a humbug and 
 a sop. But he was not a humbug. He was theoretically in 
 earnest ; only practically he had not enough force to defy the 
 world, deny himself, and act out his higher faith in the face of 
 the society he affected to decry. His was not the stuff of which 
 martyrs are made ; afnd while he looked towards Pisgah car- 
 ried daily sacrifice to Mammon. But it soothed his conscience 
 that he should talk ; and he did not feel saddened by the 
 hiatus between his word and his deed. 
 
 His manner of being and his style of conversation pleased the 
 Abbey Holme girls. Naturally he devoted himself to them 
 during the visit, the three sitting in a recess a little apart from 
 the rest Lord Merrian holding forth. He was fon<l of draw- 
 ing-room declamation, a.nd especially fond of declaiming in a 
 corner with a few pretty women as his audience. To Dora he 
 was of course delightful. Was he not a young lord, well-look- 
 ing and gallant ? and did not his handsome eyes rest on her 
 with a kind of approving admiration that showed his cultivated 
 taste 1 To Patricia, still in the age of candid credulity, he was a 
 nineteenth century Saint John. His second-hand Emersonian 
 turns of thought and modes of expression struck a chord in her 
 own heart that vibrated with a passionate echo. Her face 
 lighted up as Lord Merrian spoke of the valuelessness of the 
 individual and the grandeur of truth, of the need for self- 
 sacrifice and the sorrows of humanity. She felt inclined to 
 hold out her hand to him and call him brother. Had she been 
 a man she would have proposed a league between them on the 
 spot, by which they would have bound themselves like knights 
 of old to resist the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to devote 
 themselves to the good of humanity and the glory of God. 
 Being a woman, all she could do was to raise her large eyes, 
 dilated, dark, and tender, to his face, and to assent to his views 
 with an outflow of enthusiasm that partly stirred and partly
 
 EXPLANATIONS. 219 
 
 amused him. He thought what a grand creature she was ; 
 just the kind of woman to lead a man to the ultimate heights, 
 and make him a hero or a saint, according to his bent and 
 the development of his muscles. A little untutored perhaps ; 
 but top-lovely not to be forgiven this or any other flaw there 
 might be in her crown of perfection. He was charmed with 
 her. She was so fresh, he said to his mother afterwards ; so 
 deliciou&ly quaint and simple ; a girl who reminded him of an 
 early Christian martyr, or of Hypathia, or Vittoria Colonna; and 
 he too added what Colonel Lowe had said or Joan of Arc. 
 
 Of Dora he formed another estimate, but one as true in its 
 own way. A clever, self- con trolled woman, he said, leading an 
 artificial life and wearing a mask, not a face ; a woman to fence 
 with, to play with, to be wary of; one of the felidse soft, 
 silky, stealthy, creeping but trustworthy ] true ? real 1 
 Scarcely ! 
 
 Lord Merrian had not come to the mature age of three-and- 
 twenty without learning a few facts of human life, and the 
 Doras of the world of women were not unfamiliar with him. 
 
 Patricia on the contrary was a new study ; and the young 
 man's curiosity was roused, as Dr. Fletcher's had been before 
 him. He mentally determined that he would see this noble 
 creature again before long, that he would make himself a hero 
 in her eyes, and rouse her enthusiasm as he felt it could be 
 roused. After that he was conscious of nothing ; save perhaps 
 a vague idea that Mr. Hamley was popularly supposed to pos- 
 sess millions, and that Patricia Kemball was his wife's niece. 
 
 On the whole the visit was a success. The Countess was 
 gracious in bearing and gorgeously arrayed ; and Lord Merrian 
 was pronounced a most distinguished-looking young man by 
 Mrs. Hamley, and not so far amiss by Mr. Hamley. Mrs. 
 Hamley felt when they left that she had made a decided step 
 upwards, and had planted herself at last in the same hemis- 
 phere as her desires. She was convinced that they would be 
 asked to the Quest this year ; and when that was done, the 
 last huis clos would be thrown down ; the last stronghold of 
 exclusiveness would have surrendered. 
 
 As they drove home she was quite gay, almost playful ; and 
 even Patricia came in for a share in the wintry sun of her 
 smiles. Both she and Mr. Hamley had seen that Lord Mer-
 
 220 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO. LOVE?" 
 
 rian had paid her just that extra amount of attention which 
 implies preference, and for the moment she was in the ascendant, 
 and had " the hands" usually accorded to Dora. 
 
 For the moment, indeed, the two girls seemed to have 
 changed places. Grim to Dora, Mr. Hamley was quite familiar 
 and jocular with Patricia. He " chaffed " her about her con- 
 quest, and called her " my lady " all the way home, till the girl's 
 burning indignation nearly choked her. He rolled his eyes 
 and wagged his head and smacked his lips as he said, " Oh ! / 
 saw, Miss Slyboots, what game you were after ! " OF " Well, my 
 Lady Merrian, and when are we to order the bride-cake, eh 1 " 
 or " When a certain young lady's queening it at the Quest, 1 
 suppose she'll be too grand for you and me, Lady," and so on, 
 with never a softening line in his face in answer to dear Dora's 
 shy eyes and tender smiles and pretty lisp, and all those subtle, 
 secret caresses of hers which generally had the power of putting 
 him into a good humour when he was cross, and of making life 
 very sweet and pleasant to him. . 
 
 To-day he was impervious. Her tenderest looks fell on him 
 like dew on granite, and softened him no more than the dew 
 would have softened the granite. He had not got over the 
 scene at Cragfoot, and he had to have it out with her, as he 
 said to himself, before he forgave her. Besides, though Lord 
 Merrian had paid Patricia the most attention, to outsiders he 
 had looked at Dora admiringly ; and Mr. Hamley was well up 
 in the science of secret preference, and by what methods it 
 could be shown. Just before they came to Abbey Holme he 
 took occasion to say, speaking of .Lord Merrian, " Yes ; I'm no 
 tuft hunter, I believe" he was, though he did not acknowledge 
 it ; " but I could not help observing the difference between this 
 youngman and that young hound, Lowe. I have lived pretty 
 long among gentlefolks, but hang me if ever I saw one as im- 
 pudent as that jackanapes was to-day. However, you could 
 permit him to address you as he did, Dora, is more than I can 
 make out. It is that that gets over me. To call you ' Dora ' 
 before my very face ! I should like to have wrung his neck 
 for him ! " 
 
 " It was very rude, very extraordinary ! " murmured Dora 
 meekly. " I could not make it out ; he never did so before." 
 
 " And I'll take pretty good care he never does so again," said
 
 EXPLANATIONS. 221 
 
 Mr. Famley. ** I'll Dora him if he, tries it on again, he may 
 take his oath of that ! " 
 
 " I am sure I do not know what possessed him to-day. He 
 must have been out of his mind ! " said Dora with a dis- 
 tressed face. 
 
 " He was drunk," said Mr. Hamley, coarsely. 
 
 And Dora turned her head out of the window, saying between 
 her teeth " Wretch !" quite naturally. 
 
 " I thought he was rather free," put in Mrs. Hamley, looking 
 kindly at her favourite. " But I don't see how Dora could have 
 helped it. I don't think you encouraged him, my dear 1 " 
 
 " Oh, no, indeed I did not, dear ! " said Dora pleadingly. 
 " I was as much astonished at it as you could have been. I 
 never encouraged Mr. Lowe, never ! " 
 
 Patricia put her hand over her eyes. Her burning indignation 
 at Mr. Hamley's ungainly playfulness to herself suddenly died 
 out, and she became chilled, as if the air had grown colder than 
 before, when she heard Dora's deliberate untruth. ' She knew 
 that Sidney Lowe had been encouraged ; did she not remem- 
 ber that walk, and all those long, half-whispered and wholly 
 unintelligible conversations together 1 She wondered how Dora 
 could have the courage the bad courage to say such a thing 
 so unblushingly before her. 
 
 " I saw how much annoyed you were," continued Dora, turn- 
 ing her eyes meekly on her master ;" " and I would have given 
 worlds to have stopped him. But I could not ! and I was so 
 dreadfully distressed I " It was getting dark now. Leaning 
 forward to impress her grief more closely on Mr. Hamley, Dora 
 slid her soft, caressing little hand into his ; and Mr. Hamley, 
 squeezing it forgave her. 
 
 " I think you were hard on Dora to-day," said Mrs. Hamley, 
 as she and her husband sat before the fire in her dressing-room, 
 waiting for the dressing-bell to ring. "It is only what we 
 must expect ; she is a pretty girl, and young men will pay her 
 attention, of course. That young Mr. Lowe I have often 
 thought he admired her ; and though Lord Merrian paid Patri- 
 cia the most attention, still he looked very often at Dora, and 
 he might have talked more to my niece as a blind. Young 
 people will be young people ; and though I do not encourage 
 flirting, or anything undesirable, we must expect that the girl 
 will be sought after ! "
 
 222 " WHAT WOULD votr no, LOVE ? " 
 
 "I don't want young men about Miss Drummond," answered 
 Mr. Hamley stiffly. " I have brought her up at great expense 
 to be one of ourselves, and I do not relish the idea of having 
 spent all that money for another man's advantage. We are get- 
 ting old people, my dear," when Mr. Hamley wanted to please 
 his wife he used to bracket himself with her, and deny his com- 
 parative youth in favour of her age " an<l being old people, 01 
 on the way, Dora is useful to us. She makes a little life in the 
 house, and she is nice in her ways, and so on." 
 
 " Good gracious, Mr. Hamley, we have Patricia ! " said Mrs. 
 Hamley sharply. " She is younger than Dora." 
 
 " And not half so entertaining," said Mr. Hamley. " Your 
 niece may be a good sort of young person ; I do not deny that , 
 but she is horrid heavy on hand all the same. She can't do 
 the things Dora can. I call her a wretched performer on the 
 piano, and she has no manner as Dora has." 
 
 " She has not had Dora's advantages of course," said Mrs. 
 Hamley. " No girl brought up as poor Patricia has been can 
 possibly be equal to one cared for and educated by a lady, like 
 Dora. For wliat she has gone through I consider her remark- 
 able ; and at all events she is a Kemb;ill, which counts for some- 
 thing." 
 
 " She ought to be able to count something to the good," 
 Mr. Hamley answered. " But make, the best of it you can, you 
 cannot make her a patch on Dora." 
 
 " I hate such vulgar expressions !" said Mrs. Hamley crossly. 
 
 " Well, it isn't quite the thing perhaps," apologized her hus- 
 band ; " but I mean to say you know what I am at." 
 
 " To go back to our starting point, you say you don't wish 
 Dora to marry 1 " asked Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 She had her idea, and she was resolved to ventilate it before 
 dinner. 
 
 " Certainly not. I can leave her comfortable," said the 
 brewer decidedly. 
 
 " But I suppose you would not refuse a good offer ; say such, 
 an offer as Lord Merrian for the girl ? " Mrs. Hamley asked this 
 loftily lords were becoming her everyday acquaintance now. 
 
 " Wouldn't I just 1 all the same ae if he was that black- 
 guard young Lowe yonder, or the stable-boy ! " Mr. Handoy 
 answered, a little more roughly than was usual with him when 
 " conversing " with his wife. " Lord or no lord, I'll
 
 EXPLANATIONS. 223 
 
 of them here poking after the girl. I've paid for her bringing 
 up, and I consider I have the right to keep what I've paid for. 
 I've heard speak of pelicans, but I don't feel inclined to copy 
 'em." 
 
 *' It is rather a novel way of looking at the matter, and I 
 must say a sordid one," said Mrs. Hamley. " I cannot think 
 with you that in adopting a child you are buying a slave." 
 
 "Don't you ?" he answered coolly. "I'm sorry we cannot put 
 our horses' heads together in the matter. But whether we do 
 or we don't, I must be leader here, Lady ; and if I leave you 
 full possession of your own to do as you like with, you have 
 no cause of complaint. If you are so anxious to get the young 
 ladies a husband with a handle to his name get him for Miss 
 Kemball. I'll give her as handsome a turn-out and make as 
 good a settlement on her if she marries to please me and 
 you as any girl need have. And I'm sure I can't say fair- 
 er for a young person as is no relation to me, and that I 
 don't especially admire." 
 
 " You are the oddest compound of generosity and tyranny- 
 Mr. Hamley, I ever saw! " said his wife, half pettishly, half 
 pleasantly ; for they had their little conjugal flirtations togeth, 
 er when they were alone. At first for policy ; but as time had 
 gone on, and Mrs. Hamley had followed the law of habit, 
 she had become both more oblivious to her husband's defects 
 and more tolerant of those she still saw, as well as person- 
 ally more affectionate to him. His strength and vigour 
 seemed to stay her own failing powers, and she leant on him 
 more than she had done in the beginning; while he was 
 daily more conscious of the twenty years' gap between 
 them, if daily more careful to conceal that consciousness and 
 go through his appointed task creditably. 
 
 "Ah my dear," he answered,*his thick lips parted into what 
 he meant to be a fascinating smile, and his small" keen eyes 
 turned with such softness as he could command on his aged 
 wife, " I would do more for you than take your niece into my 
 house, and treat her like my own. What I did for my 
 cousin's child I can surely do for your brother's daughter; for 
 though I am but a rough diamond, Lady, I never forget 
 who you are and what I owe you. You have chipped me out 
 of the rough as I may say, and I don't begrudge my thanks."
 
 224 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " You are very good," said his wife softly, and stroked his 
 thick hand almost tenderly with her long bony fingers. 
 
 Poor soul, she meant it well, though she did make his flesh 
 creep ! 
 
 " There ! I think I have settled the old lady's hash for a bit," 
 was his unspoken thought as, the dressing-bell ringing, he 
 stooped over her gallantly and kissed her powdered flaccid cheek. 
 Then he went into his own r>m and stood before the glass, 
 fingering his bushy whiskers complacently. 
 
 And standing there, large, florid, black-haired, showy, he 
 smiled approvingly at the thing he saw. 
 
 " A fine figure of a man when all's said and done 1 " he said 
 to himself! " I don't know a finer 1"
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE POSTERN GATB. 
 
 tHIS conversation, wherein he had been able to lay down 
 the law and set his foot on the budding head of the 
 young scorpion the thought was his own restored 
 Mr. Hamley to his wonted self-satisfaction. Perhaps that sur- 
 vey in the glass had something to do with it. The evening 
 therefore passed oft with an amount of cheerfulness not usual in 
 the evenings at Abbey Holme. The three played their beloved 
 bezique, and the good humour of the trio did not suffer by any 
 of the accidents of the game. Patricia was " out," of course ; 
 but she was not snubbed as usual. Indeed Aunt Hamley made 
 room for her to come and sit by her, and tried, as so often be- 
 fore, to teach her the mysteries of royal and common marriage, 
 single and double bezique, sequences and tens and aces. And 
 Patricia for very gratitude gave her mind to it, and did her 
 best to understand it, but could not get beyond the length of 
 thinking it all an incomprehensible muddle, and nothing in it 
 w.ien you got to the end of it. Still she was happy in feeling 
 In favour ; happy in thinking that a man in Lord Merrian's posi- 
 tion, with his wealth and power, could hold such grand views and 
 be so entirely noble-minded ; happy in the remembrance of 
 some poor people for whom she had given Catherine Fletcher 
 a contribution out of her small store the other day, and to whom 
 this timely help had been of infinite service ; happy in having 
 seen by a Times telegram that Gordon's ship, the Arrow, had 
 got safely to her first station, and that she might therefore be 
 soon expecting a letter; and in the general amiability of the 
 time even Mr. Harnley thought her really a very nice-looking 
 young person, and not so bad a girl after all. 
 
 As tor dear Dura, she was so sweet and pretty, so animated 
 
 yet so gentle, with such a lovely flush on her round, pink 
 
 cheeks, and " so darling " altogether, he wondered how he could 
 
 have been such a bear to her to-day. And yet when he remern- 
 
 o
 
 226 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOV -. 
 
 bered Sydney Lowe, and that odd-looking scene in the conserva- 
 tory, he did not find his bearishness so very remarkable. Of one 
 thing, however, he was quite sure whatever that young jack- 
 anapes might feel, dear Dora thought nothing of him, and she 
 would not, even if she was asked, leave Abbey Holme : and 
 Mrs. Hamley 
 
 Abbey Holme was a large house, thickly carpeted through- 
 out, and with well-oiled locks and hinges. Doors and windows 
 were all heavily bolted and barred, but neither bolt nor bar 
 made more noise than the piston of a steam-engine, and every- 
 thing worked with a silent precision that was part of the Ham- 
 ley luxury of living. Only one door was not barred with extra 
 bolts. This was a low-arched, oaken door, studded and banded 
 with iron in a fantastic mediaeval foshion that looked formid- 
 able and was of no use ; a kind of make-believe postern-gate, 
 opening on to the side shrubbery and for show only, for it was 
 never used. Indeed the key had been extracted from Mr. 
 Hamley's private drawer for nearly three years now ; but he 
 had not missed it. Such a mere symbol as it was he had for- 
 gotten it had ever been. 
 
 But there was one person in the house to whom that key was 
 no mere symbol, but a thing of very positive use. Nearly three 
 years ago Dora had purloined it, and thus, had held her free- 
 dom of nights, if not of days, in her own hands. And for the 
 last year she had used her freedom in company with Mr. Syd- 
 ney Lowe. 
 
 Once a week or so, when the Abbey Holme household was 
 asleep, a little figure muffled up in a waterproof, hooded and 
 veiled, used to open the third door on the corridor and steal 
 down the broad staircase, with no more noise of swinging hinge 
 or falling feet than if a ghost had been abroad ; used to glide 
 across the hall, every step counted till the nailed and banded 
 door was reached ; used to feel with small pink hands for the 
 keyhole, putting in the key and shooting the lock with about 
 as much sound as the scratching and the falling of a pin would 
 have made ; used to draw the key ; stand for a moment on the 
 top step ; and then on a cry which only her ear could have dis- 
 tinguished from the hoot of an owl, used to steal round the 
 angle into the dark walk where Sydney Lowe was waiting fo*
 
 THE POSTERN GATE. 227 
 
 her. This had gone on as was said for over a year now, and 
 no human being had the smallest suspicion of the truth. 
 
 To be sure, Alice Garbh, Dora's maid, used sometimes to 
 wonder how her young mistress's waterproof had got so wet 
 when she was not out all yesterday ; but she had no theory 
 to explain the wonder, and contented herself with thinking it 
 queer and talking it over in the housekeeper's room Twice, 
 when she had spoken of it, some of the servants had set them- 
 selves to watch the young lady's door; but as each time it was 
 on the night after she had gone out when she was naturally 
 safe at home they had lost half a night's rest for nothing ; 
 and the mystery remained unsolved. If they had waited 
 for a week or so, and had been as persevering as they were 
 anxious, they might have been rewarded. 
 
 To-night it all happened just as usual. Exactly at one o'clock 
 Dora turned the handle of her door, and came out into the cor- 
 ridor. She was dressed in her dark grey cloak, with her hood 
 over her head and a thick veil over her face. Brown woollen 
 socks were drawn over her boots, and she had sacrificed high 
 heels to the exigences of the expedition. The moon shone 
 brightly ; and she was always a little nervous in the moonlight. 
 Indeed she was disturbed altogether to-night; strangely so for 
 her, generally so cool, so collected, and with no more nervous 
 fancies than she had inconvenient passions. She felt as if a 
 crisis was at hand ; and she dreaded lest it should turn the 
 wrong way and bring her ruin, not relief. 
 
 Besides, she was getting tired of her part. More because of 
 the dead weariness of her life than because she loved him with 
 that intensity f passion which defies all law and conquers all 
 obstacles, and more as her expression of revolt against the tyran- 
 nous domination to which she outwardly submitted so grace- 
 fully than as a matter of deliberate choice, she had entered into 
 these secret relations with Sydney Lowe. And now when she 
 was irrevocably caught she was beginning to long for freedom. 
 Lord Merrian had looked at her admiringly to-day ; and to be 
 Lady Merrian, and later the Countess of Dovedale, was as a 
 fool's bauble that jingled its bells merrily in her ears. To be Mrs. 
 Sydney Lowe by consent of the authorities had once seemed 
 to her by no means a disagreeable outlook ; uut she was getting 
 weary of the uncertainty of that consent, *ud the first excite-
 
 228 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE? " 
 
 ment of her adventure had passed. And again, in spite of all 
 that had happened, she did not so very madly love the Man; 
 she could have lived without him, had she tried, she thought! 
 His admiration had flattered, and his own love for her in the 
 fiery insistence had excited and carried her away. She had 
 been dull and oppressed; always playing apart and always 
 humbling herself in, submission; so she had oiled the bolts 
 and hinges of the postern-gate, and had used the key to more 
 purpose of 'late than when she had merely played at being 
 adventurous and secretly free in the beginning. 
 
 At the first it had been simply running half-a-dozen steps 
 into the shrubbery and back again, feeling awfully wicked, im- 
 measurably brave, and desperately frightened ; grateful too 
 thatnobigblackman had come outof the darkness, andcaught 
 her by the heels as she scampered up the steps panting and 
 trembling; and congratulating herself on her safety when she 
 had crept up into her own room again, and felt herself the mis- 
 tress of the whole sleeping household. These had been her 
 first experiences in the way of midnight sorties. Then she had 
 ventured a little farther, and once right into the road over the 
 stile the vulnerable point in the park where, as ill-luck 
 would have it, she had met a real adventure in the person of 
 Sydney Lowe, himself out at that hour for no good : a meeting 
 to be henceforth continued by appointment, and on to the posi- 
 tion in which affairs stood at present. And they stood awk- 
 wardly enough ; could scarcely be worse, all things considered 
 Colonel Lowe's ruin, and Mr. Hamley's determination not to 
 give dear Dora a farthing if she married against his wish, and 
 Sydney Lowe being of all men the one most decidedly against 
 his wish. 
 
 " Dora ! I have been waiting for you more than an hour," 
 said Sydney, more peevishly than tenderly, as she glided across 
 the walk and ran into his arms. 
 
 " Poor dear boy ! I am so sorry ! But I said one quite 
 plainly, you know. I could not be sure of myself before," said 
 Dora prettily. 
 
 Not even to Sydney Lowe did she ever show temper or her 
 real self. The concealment of her real feelings under a false 
 mask of amiability had come to be a kind of second nature with 
 her, and she liked the sentiment of strength aud of au inner 
 unknown and unshared life that it gave her.
 
 THE POSTERN GATE. 229 
 
 " But I wanted so much to see you, darling ! I suppose that 
 made me impatient," he said. 
 
 "Well, and now that you have me, what ?" asked Dora. 
 
 " Dora, I and my father have had a jaw," Sydney began. 
 
 " You horrid boy a what ? " said Dora. 
 
 " Oh, never mind grammar, Dody ! let me say what I have 
 to say in my own way !" cried Sydney. "My father has been 
 talking to me, and it is all over with us ! " 
 
 " What do you mean, Syd ? has he found out 1 " Dora cried, 
 clinging to him in terror. 
 
 " Quite the contrary ; he has no idea of the real state of the 
 case, though I have told him something ; but the game's up all 
 the same. The governor has done something, I don't know 
 what, but the upshot of it is he is ruined and we have not 
 sixpence between us." 
 
 " Sydney ! " The pretty little head went down on to his 
 shoulder, and Dora, whom this prospect of impecuniosity ap- 
 palled, began to cry. 
 
 " Don't cry, darling ! " he said soothingly. " What's done 
 cannot be undone, and things may come right after all !" 
 
 " How can they come right ] " she sobbed. 
 
 " I don't see exactly ; perhaps old Hamley will corue down 
 handsomely. I am going to ask him to-morrow. That made 
 me so anxious to see you to-night." 
 
 " Oh Sydney, you must not ask him ! " she pleaded. "Things 
 are bad enough as they are ; this will only make them ten times 
 worse." 
 
 " But why should it make them worse, Dora ? I must ask 
 him some day. We' cannot go on as we are. I swear it makes 
 me almost mad ! and we cannot live without money." 
 
 " And do you think he will !give us a farthing ? Not if we 
 starved. Married or unmarried he will not help us with six- 
 pence. I know Mr. Hamley i " said Dora lifting her head 
 the moonlight shining on her tears and speaking with a bitter- 
 ness rare in her. 
 
 "That is just what my father said I might do if I brought 
 you without money," Sydney returned. " If old Hamley comes 
 down as he ought he will receive you with open arms. He has 
 taken quite a liking for you, Dora and who indeed could help 
 i^, my beauty 1 but he cannot give us what he has not got ;
 
 230 "WHAT WOULD VOtJ DO, LOVE?" 
 
 and he has not got enough to go on with for himself, still less 
 to set me up. The thing now is to get old Hamley to do it." 
 " Get him to set us up ! ask that stone, and you are just as 
 likely to move it as Mr. Hamley," said Dora. " He does not 
 want me to marry at all ! " 
 
 " And why not ? " said Sydney passionately, unclasping her 
 hands from his shoulders and standing as if in another mo- 
 ment he would fling her from him. 
 
 He was not a brave man, but he would have fought for a 
 woman like a tiger or with one like a savage ; and he was 
 jealous. 
 
 " I don't know," lisped Dora. " How can I tell 1 I am useful 
 to him at home, I suppose, and he does not want to part with 
 me ; still less with his money." 
 
 " If I thought it was anything else I would break every bone 
 in his body ! " flared out Sydney. 
 
 " What a silly boy you are, Syd ! " said Dora. " Cannot a 
 person be fond of one without being in love ? Why, Mr. 
 Hamley is old enough to be my father ! " 
 
 "And his wife to be your grandmother," returned Sydney. 
 " Poor, dear, yes ; quite that," laughed Dora. 
 " Which is just the reason. It is you, Dora, who are silly." 
 " You are complimentary," she pouted. . . 
 " And you are unkind," he returned. 
 
 " If you have brought me out into the cold, such a frosty 
 night as it is too, only to quarrel with me, I shall go in again," 
 said Dora, suddenly and strangely cross. 
 
 He stared at her. This was a new revelation to him. His 
 " little bit of swansdown," as he used to call her, cross ! his 
 soft sleek purring felis femina suddenly ceasing to purr and 
 showing her claws ! It was the beginning of a new order of 
 things and one that Sydney Lowe was not disposed to accept. 
 
 " Perhaps you had better," he answered coolly. " And per- 
 haps I had better not come to Mr. Hamley to-morrow.'' 
 
 " How cruel you are, Sydney ! " she cried. " After having 
 got me into such a dreadful scrape talking like that ! and 
 when you ought to do everything in the world to get me out of 
 it again as far as you can. It is too bad of you ! " 
 
 " But you said it was of no use, Dora." His tone was still 
 that of an offended person.
 
 THE POSTERN GATE. 231 
 
 " And if I did, does that say you are not to try 1 We cannot 
 be worse off than we are 1 " she answered. 
 
 " Oh yes, we might," said Sydney significantly. 
 
 And Dora laughing, said : " Yes, a great deal worse, if it all 
 came out, and we were forced to take up our position and keep 
 to it. But Sydney," she continued, " what shall we do if Mr. 
 Hamley will not give his consent, which means money ? " 
 
 " Take French leave, Dody." 
 
 "I think we have done that already," she said demurely. 
 
 " Well, I am sure I cannot tell. We must go on like this, I 
 suppose," Sydney said, biting his nails according to his habit. 
 
 " It is dreadful, dear, is it not 1 " said Dora ; " but indeed I 
 see nothing else for it. We cannot live on love and kisses, 
 Syd ; we must have a house to shelter us, and clothes to wear, 
 and food to eat, and these are only to be had for money. And 
 we cannot earn money we must have it given to us somehow." 
 
 " Then I will come -to-morrow," said Sydney, taking her in 
 his arms again as the last remains of their little tiff vanished. 
 
 " And be very sweet and nice," answered Dora. " You are 
 a dear boy, but you were like a bear to-day just a bear," 
 pulling his curly locks playfully. 
 
 " I cannot help it, Dora. That man maddens me with his 
 vulgarity. He is such a cad, and so insolently familiar to you ! 
 I feel as if I could thrust my fist down his throat when he calls 
 you ' Dora ' and speaks as if you belonged to him conceited 
 jackass ! " 
 
 " Yes, I know all that ; but he has the key of the position, 
 dear, and there is no good to be got by making him angry. 
 Our policy is to please him," was her sagacious reply. 
 
 "Little wisehead ! when you are always with me I shall be 
 a paragon of perfection." 
 
 Sydney said this with that curious mixture of banter and 
 affection which belongs to a vain man in love when the woman 
 he loves schools him. He did not like it, but he liked her, and 
 so made the two fit in the best way he could. 
 
 She chose to take him simpliciter. 
 
 * " Yes," she said, with her hands on his shoulders ; " when 
 you have me with you always, you will be different from what 
 you are now." 
 
 " What the what in the name of fortune do you mean 1 " 
 cried Sydney.
 
 232 " WHAT WOULD YO TT T)0, T OVE ? " 
 
 " Just whnt I say, dear. Betting and drinking and smoking, 
 and oh I a world of other things and swearing with them 
 all these will have to be given up when I am at Cragfoot." 
 
 " Do you want your husband to be a muff 1 " he asked. 
 
 " Not the least in the world only a gentleman," replied 
 Dora. 
 
 " I must either quarrel with you or kiss you for that piece of 
 impertinence," he said. 
 
 " Are you in doubt which 1 " asked Dora, lifting her eyes 
 shyly and lisping. 
 
 When Dora stole back to the house she was conscious of 
 something unusual. Lights were flashing up-stairs, and a sub- 
 dued hum of voices told that the trim household was up and 
 about, and that an event must have taken place in her absence. 
 If it should be that she had been missed ! Quick as thought 
 she drew off her socks and stole across the hall to the library, 
 the door of which she opened, then came running up the stairs 
 rubbing her eyes like one just awakened. She saw no one, 
 however, until she came to her own room, where Patricia pale 
 and tall as an avenging angel, met her at the door. 
 
 " Oh, my goodness ! what is the matter 1 " cried Dora. 
 
 "Aunt Hamley has been taken ill and has been asking for 
 you. Why Dora, where have you been ?" 
 
 " I went into the library to read a little bit of German I 
 wanted to translate, and fell asleep. I am so cold feel me," 
 Dora answered, putting her benumbed hands into Patricia's. 
 
 " But how is that ? I went into the library I went into all 
 the rooms for you," she answered. " We could not find you 
 anywhere ; and, Dora, I saw something that I know now was 
 you cross the shrubbery path, and that horrid Mr. Lowe was 
 with you. Oh, I am so sorry to say this to you," she con- 
 tinued, as Dora started and trembled and looked as if she was 
 going to faint; "you know how much I love you ! Dora, I 
 would rather have done a wrong thing myself than that you 
 should ! I would rather have died than have seen this ! but 
 I cannot live in falsehood, and what I know you must know 
 that I know." 
 
 The tears gushed into her eyes and her lips quivered, 
 ^or just a moment Dora reflected ; then she took her deter- 
 
 Vtion.
 
 THE POSTERN GATE. 233 
 
 "Don't cry," she said. " Things look bad, but they are not 
 BO bad as they seem. You did see me with Sydney, but there 
 is no harm in it I am married to him." 
 
 " Married; Dora ! oh, it cannot be true !" said Patricia, put- 
 ting up her hands. 
 
 The thought seemed indelicate, monstrous, almost criminal, 
 sacrilegious. A married woman was a very different thing from 
 a girl playfellow, even if she was seven years older than her- 
 self. A married woman was a person infinitely older, infinitely 
 experienced, set in a different sphere, with thoughts and views 
 and knowledge quite apart from all girlhood a person to ap- 
 proach with respect ; to wonder at while her wedding-ring was 
 yet bright and fresh ; perhaps to pity ; perhaps to envy ; maybe 
 to regard as a traitress to the order of maidenhood ; maybe as 
 the fortunate chosen into a more beautiful existence certainly 
 not to treat with the foolish familiarity allowed to one of her 
 own kind, and with which she had treated Dora. She drew 
 back, shocked, chilled, terrified, revolted. She had loved Dora 
 so much, and now to find herself so fearfully deceived ! 
 
 "Don't be shocked, dear," said Dora, creeping up to her 
 caressingly. " It was very wrong and silly, I dare say ; but 
 he made me do it when I was in London last autumn." 
 
 "No, Dora, no 'me can mnke you commit a crime," said Pa- 
 tricia, her head and eyes still averted. 
 
 " A secret marriage is not a crime, dear. Sydney is my hus- 
 band," said Dora, humbly if emphatically. 
 
 " The marriage may not be, but the secrecy is. I ca^ 
 think how you can live with such a thing on your mind,' 
 tricia answered, still turned away. 
 
 " It is horrible, but what can I do ? There it is, and i / 
 not get out of it ; and the worst is, his father is ruinen^ ' 
 Mr. Hamley, I know, will neither give me his consent < 
 fraction. Colonel Lowe would like me well enough K 
 daughter-in-law if there was any money on either side ; but, as 
 Sydney says, we have not sixpence between us." 
 
 " But, Dora, this must come to an end now ; you must de- 
 cide on something. What are you going to do ? " cried Patricia, 
 suddenly looking at her. 
 
 The girl shrugged her sb/^ 1 J " What can we do ? " 
 said,
 
 234 '' WHAT WOULD VOIT DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " Tell Mr. and Mrs. Hatnley ; and if you don't * 
 
 "You will? No, Patricia, you will not," she said, putting 
 her arms round her and looking up into her face. " I know 
 your good heart too well for that. You would not ruin me 
 you are not my enemy, darling. I can trust you, and you 
 would never be treacherous to me or take advantage of having 
 found out my secret." 
 
 Tears gathered into Patricia's eyes, and fell slowly down her 
 face. 
 
 "Would you?" said Dora, with a tender, suppliant, loving 
 air ; her arms still round the girl's waist, clinging closer and 
 closer. 
 
 Patricia did not answer. She made a faint and ineffectual 
 show of unclasping those beseeching arms. 
 
 " Patricia 1 " the soft voice pleaded again ; " will you betray 
 me ? If you do, you send me out to simple beggary ; and I 
 have always been your friend here." 
 
 Still Patricia did not answer. She had covered her face now 
 and was sobbing. 
 
 " Patricia ! " almost in a whisper " Patricia, dear, will you 
 betray me t If you think you ought you must- but I shall be 
 ruined." 
 
 A step, or rather the rustle of a dress, was heard in the lobby. 
 
 " Speak, darling tell me ! " 
 
 "No, no; I will not betray you !" said Patricia, turning to 
 her, sobbing as if her heart would break. She carried the 
 sacrifice of her truth to her love, and accounted herself accursed 
 that her friend might be saved. 
 
 A light knock came to the door. 
 
 " Mrs. Hamley is wanting you, Miss Drummond," said Big- 
 nold the maid. 
 
 " Good gracious, Bignold ! what is the matter ? " said dear 
 Dora through the closed door, tearing down her chignon and 
 flinging a shawl about her to look as if she had just scrambled 
 out of bed. 
 
 " Spasms, miss. Your aunt is very bad," said Bignold ; and 
 then Dora opened the door "and slid out as if just awakened. 
 
 " It was only to say you need not be alarmed; and do not 
 wake up Patricia," said Mrs. Hamley, feebly. 
 
 " No dear, I will not," Dora answered, kissing her forehead.
 
 THE POSTERN GATE. 235 
 
 " It is qmte enough that I am unhappy. How sorry I am to 
 see you suffer like this ! " 
 
 Mrs. Hamley smiled ; she meant it tenderly, but the effect 
 was ghastly and Mr. Hamley, on the other side of the bed, 
 thought it so. 
 
 " Dear, sweet child ! " she said fondly. " What a comfort 
 you are to me, love ! Ah ! if only Patricia, poor girl, was 
 more like you ! " 
 
 " She will improve," said dear Dora, generously. " She 
 means well, and she is fond of you, dear." 
 
 "I hope so," answered Mrs. Hamley. "I have done my 
 duty by her, but she is unsatisfactory." 
 
 It was a little tragedy in its way. The love and confidence 
 and blessing the blessing of Isaac to Jacob bestowed on one 
 whose whole life was a cheat, amiable and full of nice tact, but 
 a cheat all the same ; the reprobation given to the other whose 
 faults Avere those of truth and loyalty, of conscience, love, and 
 integrity. It was a tragedy in good sooth, but a common one. 
 
 Then Dora was dismissed and tbanked for her prompt 
 attention ; and though Mrs. Hamley had herself desired that 
 Patricia should not be disturbed, she had a sore feeling against 
 her all the same, and thought she should have divined that 
 something was wrong and have awakened of her own accord. 
 
 " It is so vulgar and heartless to sleep so soundly ! " she said, 
 peevishly, to Mr. Hamley ; and Mr. . Hamley, starting from 
 sweet slumber and checking an incipient snore, replied, " Yes, 
 it is. my dear ; but she is horrid vulgar, you know, when you've 
 reckoned her up, top and tail ! " 
 
 On which Mrs. Hamley rebuked him for disrespect and 
 maintained that her niece was perfectly well-bred if not always 
 satisfactory.
 
 230 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO. LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 WHAT THE DAY BROUGHT FORTH. 
 
 G~ 
 
 tT is not the people who do wrong that are unhappy ; it is 
 the people who have to see the wrong done and are unable 
 to prevent it. Between Dora and Patricia, the one had a 
 conscience void of offence, the other was as miserable" as she 
 felt guilty. No secret had ever come into her life before, and 
 she dicl not know what to do now that she had one. It was a 
 terrible secret too ; not a mere childish peccadillo of no great 
 consequence to keep or to tell ; but a secret that involved a 
 daily deception of the worst kind, and perhaps a crime : who 
 knows t 
 
 Poor Patricia ! What with her love for Dora and her sense of 
 duty to her aunt, her loyalty to her friend and her faithfulness 
 to her guardian, the young girl's natural excitement at so 
 unusual an event and the modest maiden's shame at such a 
 revelation, the overwhelming consciousness of the fact which 
 made her feel as if she should be obliged to call aloud to the 
 passers-by, " Dora is married ! " on the one hand, and as if 
 every one must know it without being told on the other, her 
 life just now was illimitably wretched. 
 
 Dora, on her side, justified herself. She was sorry for what 
 she had done ; bub she regretted, not repented. She thought 
 ehe had been precipitate ; with Lord Merrian at the Quest ; and 
 worse than precipitate now that- Colonel Lowe was ruined and 
 his consent or denial went for nothing. Bub though she saw 
 no way out of the coil in which she was entangled, she was 
 resolved not to make matters worse by an injudicious confes- 
 sion. She was glad that Patricia knew ; she could make her 
 useful, very useful ; but she was quite determined that come 
 what might no one else should know, unless Sydney came into 
 the possession of enough to live on " nicely." She had but 
 slender hopes that way. Still, even in these days, ravens do 
 sometimes fly from out the darkness, and one might alight u&
 
 WHAT THE DAY BROUGHT FORTH. 237 
 
 Syd. Miracles have been wrought before now and might again, 
 but until such a one had been worked in her favour, she was 
 resolved to remain the dove in the ark of Abbey Holme, and to 
 enjoy the warmth and the wine, the soft carpets and the dainty 
 attire, rather than go with her young husband into love and 
 penury. 
 
 Penury was by no means to trje taste of pretty Dora Drummond, 
 To her way of thinking love in a cotton gown, with only cold 
 mutton for dinner, was far more frightful than hate in velvet 
 and contempt with diamonds in the hair. She would rather 
 have the velvet and the diamonds than the love and the 
 cold mutton; and Abbey Holme, with its subservience of habit 
 and suppression of will and the luxury and well-being that 
 had become her second nature included was to be preferred 
 to Sydney Lowe ruined. She liked Sydney's love well 
 enough, and she liked the excitement of their stolen meet- 
 ings ; they gave her a sweet sense of secret power and freedom 
 that compensated for many disagreeables ; but she would 
 rather renounce the whole thing, tleny her marriage now 
 and for ever and become a second Lady Audley or Aurora 
 Floyd, than keep to her bargain if it was for worse and not for 
 better. And she believed that Sydney dreaded poverty 
 even with love at its back, just as much as she did herself; 
 and that if occasion offered she could make him amenable to 
 reason, and induce him to renounce and deny in concert. 
 
 Meanwhile, she slept like a child and woke like a rose, and 
 took care of her eyes and complexion as other people take care 
 of their consciences and their love. 
 
 She came down to breakfast the next day sweet, fresh, deli- 
 cate, dainty, and exactly punctual as ever. She inquired ten- 
 derly of Mrs. Hamley how she was, when she came in just the 
 prescribed three minutes after her ; inquired tenderly and de- 
 votedly, as if no graver care, no heavier weight oppressed her 
 than the condition of an elderly woman's digestion. For Mrs. 
 Hamley being of the grim order had struggled manfully with 
 the remains of her last night's indisposition, and had straight- 
 ened herself courageously for her daily duties, appearing at the 
 head of the table, upright, lady-like, well-dressed, well-powdered, 
 and with all her addenda and succodanea as accurately adjusted 
 as ever, even to the hair restorer " which was not a dye," but
 
 238 u WHAT WOULD YOU t)O, LOVE ? " 
 
 which nevertheless made grey hair brown at odd moments, and 
 hung a veil before the hour-glass of Time so that its spent sand 
 should not be seen. 
 
 Presently Patricia came in. She had kept awake half the 
 night, now listening to hear if her aunt was astir and needing 
 help how it all reminded her of her dear uncle ! now fret- 
 ting about Dora, and making her head ache between fear and 
 pity, dread and horror ; and thus had fallen asleep only when 
 far into the morning the " mouth of the morning," as the old 
 Gaelic has it. Consequently she had been roused with difficulty, 
 and had dressed herself hurriedly; with the inevitable result. 
 
 She came in when prayers were over; and this was her first 
 offence. For Mrs. Haanley held by family prayers. They were 
 respectable and might do the servants good, and they made 
 the proper kind of roll-call whereby she might be sure of her 
 domestic forces ; and she was implacable when anyone was 
 missing. And when Patricia did come in she looked tumbled 
 and disturbed ; her hair was not sufficiently smooth, her brooch 
 was awry, she had forgotten her cuffs, and she had no bov, to 
 her band. And all these misdemeanors together filled up the 
 measure till it overflowed. 
 
 " Are you better, aunty dear 1 " she said eagerly from the 
 door,> so soon as she had opened it. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley did not like people to speak to her from a dis- 
 tance, nor for the matter of that too near. Her heaving was 
 just in that woolly stage when there is special need of distinct- 
 ness ; but it was an unpardonable offence to let the need be seen. 
 
 " Will you have the kindness not to speak to me at that dis- 
 tance, and not to talk so fast ? " said Aunt Hamley stiffly. 
 
 Patricia went up to her. "Are you better this morning, 
 dear ? " she asked again in her loud, clear voice. 
 
 " Good gracious, child ! you are enough to deafen one ! " said 
 Mrs. Hamley peevishly, putting her hands over her ears. 
 " Yes, I am, I am obliged to you. Though I am sure I do not 
 know why you should ask," she added with an offended kind 
 of sneer. " You were not very much interested in my condi- 
 tion last night. I might have died, for anything you knew or 
 cared. Sleeping through all that noise like a tired milkmaid 1 
 The place might be carried away, and you would not hear I " 
 
 " But I did hear and was not asleep," said Patricia.
 
 WHAT THE DAY BROtTGHT FORTH. 539 
 
 " And if you knew that I was so ill why did you not have 
 the grace to come and see me ? " asked Mrs. Hamley sharply. 
 
 " Bignold would not let me go into your room," she said. 
 
 "And Bignold was quite right," returned Mrs. Hamley with 
 illogical severity. " But you might have gone to Dora. Dora 
 came to me ; and you might at least have sent your love and 
 duty by her, and asked to know if you could be of any use." 
 
 " Dora " began Patricia ; when Dora raised her sweet 
 
 eyes, and said to Patricia 
 
 " I did not like to disturb you, dear ; though I felt sure you 
 would want to know if you were awake. But I thought it a 
 pity to make you anxious for nothing, as you could not help. 
 I hops I did no wrong. If I did, you must forgive me ; bat I 
 acted for the best. So you see," gracefully to Mrs. Hamley, 
 and with a generous impulse shining through her timidity 
 " if any one is to blame it is I ; but I acted for the best." 
 
 " You always do, my love," said Mrs. Hamley kindly, and 
 Mr. Hamley wagged his head approvingly. 
 
 Patricia flushed till the tears were forced into her eyes. Her 
 position was becoming unbearable. More as a relief to her 
 own feelings than because she thought she would be welcome, 
 she put her arms around her aunt, and said affectionately 
 
 " You must not think m unfeeling, dear, because I was kept 
 out. If you only knew, aunty, how sorry I was, and how glad 
 I am to see you in your old place to-day !" 
 
 "There ! that will do, my dear !" said Aunt Hamley throw- 
 ing her off by a sudden twist. '" You are late enough as it is. 
 Go and sit down, and eat your breakfast like a lady. I hate 
 such disorderly ways ! " 
 
 She could never resist the temptation of snubbing Patricia. 
 She had that odd self -contradictory feeling for her which made 
 her impatient that she was not this and that which she was not, 
 and more impatient still when she did as she had desired. If 
 the girl left her alone, she neglected her ; if she paid her atteiv 
 tion, she fussed her; whatever she did was wrong, and she was 
 all that she ought not to be. Her image was reflected ia a 
 crooked mirror where not a line was straight nor a form beauti- 
 ful. 
 
 So Patricia went to her place ; passing by Dora, whom she 
 kissed with a new sensation and bashfully, as if she had beeD
 
 240 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 kissing Sydney Lowe by implication ; and then to Mr. Hamley, 
 with her frank eyes a little clouded, and her head generally 
 borne so straight, a little drooped because of that mystery she 
 had penetrated. 
 
 Mr. Hamley rose pompously, shook hands with her noisily, 
 and asked her to have everything on the table in a hurried 
 heaped-up way, as if they were Israelites at the Passover, eating 
 with their loins girded for a journey and in haste. It was his 
 way of rebuke ; and effectual. All these were but small things 
 taken separately, and if they came only on occasions, but all at 
 once, and continually occurring, they were enough to sadden a 
 young girl of even as much cheerful courage as Patricia. So the 
 morning was melancholy for her ; and what with the burden of 
 her secret and the sore of her snubbing she was wretched 
 enough, and found herself more than once wondering when 
 Gordon Frere would be at home again, that her life might take 
 back its old brightness and freedom and love : more than once 
 wishing that, until this time came, she might be allowed to 
 find a home with her friends at the Hollies. If only this might 
 be, how happy she would be then, when now she was so miser- 
 able! 
 
 Just after luncheon Mr. Sydney Lowe called. He asked for 
 Mr. Hamley, and by his own desire was shown into the library 
 where the master sat surrounded by gorgeously-bound books he 
 never read, and could not have understood if he had ; gorge- 
 ously-bound books interspersed with lengths of lettered dummies 
 cleverly made by the carpenter, and quite as valuable to Mr. 
 Hamley as the realities. Indeed, being more ingenious, they 
 were more valuable. 
 
 The interview was not long. Sydney asked permission to 
 address Miss Drummond ; and Mr. Hamley replied cheerfully, 
 with all his heart, if he could satisfy him about ways and 
 means. His present income ? his future expectations ? prosaic 
 things no doubt, but even a young gentleman in love must 
 remember that a butcher would demand payment once a year 
 at least, and it was as well to be provided with the means be- 
 forehand. 
 
 To all this Sydney was charmingly reasonable. He was quite 
 prepared to answer Mr. Hamley's questions, and he believed 
 satisi'actorily. He mentioned Cragfoot with a flourish ; re-
 
 WHAT THE DAY BROUGHT FORTH. 241 
 
 minded Mr. Hamley that he was his father's heir and only 
 child, and that his mother's jointure would come to him at her 
 death. His mother, Mr. Hamley might be aware, was Lady 
 Aune Graham's daughter, and his father's name spoke for 
 itself. 
 
 " It all sounds quite first-rate," said Mr. Hamley; " but" 
 slowly, as if he was only reflecting ; for he could Siford to be 
 gracious to-day " I happen to know that Cragfoot is mort- 
 gaged up to the chimney-pots, and that your mother's inalien- 
 able jointure is two hundred a year, allowed by your father. 
 Where the sixty thousand pounds she brought loose in her 
 pocket has gone is more than I can tell; you had better ask 
 your father; and if he tells you, pass the information on. It 
 may be useful. I am afraid Mr. Lowe, sir, if you cannot show 
 a better invoice than this, it will be no go for you." 
 
 Sydney set his teeth. The two men had grappled, but they 
 were still making a feint of courtesy. 
 
 " I know that my father is in a little temporary embarrass- 
 ment which he will soon overcome," said Sydney. 
 
 " When he has overcome it, I shall be happy to treat with 
 you fvgain," answered Mr. Hamley, politely. " Until then under- 
 stand, that I take it on myself as a duty not to allow any 
 engagement between you and Miss Drutnmond. Miss Drum- 
 mond has been brought up quite the lady, and if ever she 
 marries, she must marry where she will be kept the lady still." 
 
 " I hope, Mr. Hamley, you do not think she would forfeit her 
 position as a gentlewoman in marrying me 1" said Sydney with 
 a flash of the old vicious passion. 
 
 " Oh, dear me, no! not at all, sir. Still, you have not means 
 enough to keep her in what I call the lap of luxury, as she is 
 now. And I would not bestow her hand on any one who could 
 not put down pound for pound with me." 
 
 " Are the lady's own inclinations to go for nothing ? " said 
 Sydney warmly. 
 
 " They may go for everything, Mr. Lowe. I have no legal 
 right over Miss Drumraond. If she likes she can walk out of 
 this house arm-in-arm with you or my groom, and marry to- 
 >\v if it pleases her. But if she does, she and her husband 
 will never see a farthing of my money ; and I think I know her 
 too well to be afraid of her."
 
 242 .. " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " If you call that being good to a girl you profess to love like 
 a daughter, I do not ! " said Sydney angrily. 
 
 Mr. Hamley raised his eyes, and looked at him steadily. 
 
 " I didn't know that my being bad or good to the girl was 
 part of the business between us," he said. " And what's more, 
 I don't care a snuff whether you think me one or t'other. The 
 business is, What money have you got to marry on 1 and it's 
 my say Not enough." 
 
 " And I say I have, if you will give a sufficient income to the 
 girl yom have adopted as your daughter." 
 
 Mr. Hamley burst into a loud harsh laugh. 
 
 " Now that we've cracked the nut we've come to the kernel," 
 he said. " Teach your grandmother ! Not a halfpenny, Mr. 
 Lowe ! If you have her, you must take her in her shift ; unless 
 you can give her the silk gown to cover her. I tell you again, 
 I'll' lay down pound for pound with you, and no man can say 
 fairer ; but I'll not give her without an equivalent." 
 
 " The love of a gentleman counts for something," said Sydney 
 disdainfully. 
 
 Mr. Hamley laughed even more disdainfully. 
 
 " Not on my ship," he said. " I'm a self-made man myself, 
 and know what's what pretty well by now. I'd rather Miss 
 Drummond married a man as could keep her as she ought to 
 be kept, than a man as called himself a gentleman, and hadn't 
 a blessed penny to play chuck-farthing with ! " 
 
 " You speak as if I was a beggar, Mr. Hamley ! " said Sydney, 
 angrily. 
 
 " Do It" he answered with supreme coolness. " The remedy 
 is in your own hands if I do. Show me Cragfoot without a 
 mortgage on it, and a good thirty thousand to the back of it, 
 and then I'll gay my service to you. But," he added, suddenly 
 changing from coolness to insolence, " I'm not a going to give 
 my money to Bet you and your father on your legs again, with 
 Miss Drummond forsooth as the decoy duck. Feather your 
 own nest by your honest industry, as I have feathered mine, 
 and then you can ask a gentleman for a lady's hand like a 
 gentleman yourself, and not like a sneak and a swindler. No 
 sir, not if I know it ! " he cried, as Sydney caught up a heavy 
 ebony ruler, and Mr. Hamley seized his arms just in time. 
 
 " You infernal blackguard ! " exclaimed Sydney struggling in 
 his grasp and hitting out savagely.
 
 WHAT THE DAY BROUGHT FORTH. 243 
 
 Mr. Hamley held him off with one hand, and rang the bell 
 violently with the other. The servant came at the instant from 
 the hall. 
 
 " Show Mr. Lowe the door, John," said the master of the 
 house, releasing him. " And if he ventures to show his face 
 in here again set the dogs at him. There ! " he said, rubbing 
 his hands as Sydney, with a horrible imprecation, was ushered 
 out ot the room, " that's the best day's work I ever did in my 
 life ! I have paid off old scores with interest, and I feel twice 
 the man I did for it. He have Dora ? No, not if he licked 
 my foot for her, and I broke the whole boiling of them as I 
 willl"
 
 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER XXIIL 
 
 CONSENTING WITH SINNERS. 
 
 IVING himself time to cool down a little, for he was 
 flushed and rudely excited, into the drawing-room pre- 
 sently walked Mr. Hamley, with a high-handed master- 
 ful air, even more self-assertive and swaggering than usual. He 
 found the ladies in their accustomed places and occupied in 
 their accustomed work ; that is, Mrs. Hamley was at one side 
 of the fire knitting a coloured couvre-pied, Dora was at the 
 other doing dainty modern point, each with her own special 
 little velvet table by her side, and Patricia was in the bay of 
 the window, at the remotest point, reading, or rather seeming 
 to read, but in reality thinking of what she knew. The master 
 surveyed his feminine belongings graciously. He felt grand 
 and Eastern as he looked at them. 
 
 " I have had a visit, ladies, that will interest you like one of 
 Mr. Mudie's green things there," he began. . 
 
 They all looked up ; dear Dora smiled in her gentle way. 
 
 " A love story," he continued. 
 
 He was doling out his news by bits ; it was too precious to 
 give entire and all at once. 
 
 "Indeed ! " 
 
 This was Dora's exclamation ; she was the only one who 
 spoke. 
 
 " Indeed 1 Yes, it is indeed, I think. I have been well 
 amazed, I can tell you. A young man has just been here ask- 
 ing permission to pay his addresses to one of you two young 
 ladies. There now, the cat's out." 
 
 " But to which of us ? " asked Dora, gaily. 
 
 "Well, which ? Guess." 
 " Patricia," laughed Dora ; " she is the youngest." 
 
 Her words made the girl start as if she had been touched by 
 a hot iron. It was partly sacrilege, and partly an insulfc. 
 
 " What a shame ! " she said, hotly.
 
 CONSENTING WITH SINNERS. 245 
 
 " Calm yourself, my dear ; so, so ! be calm, I beg ! '* said 
 Mr. Hamley, in an aggravating stable kind of voice. " Don't 
 get so excited about nothing. It was not you ; it was Miss 
 Drummond." 
 
 " Me ! " cried Dora, arching her eyebrows. " What an 
 idea!" 
 
 " So I said, but I treated him as civil as if he had been a 
 prince ; that I did ! I asked him his means, as one gentleman 
 to another, and he said, ' Cragfoot.' Now you know him." 
 
 " Sydney Lowe 1 " said Dora, as if she had been guessing a 
 riddle. 
 
 " You might have made a worse shot," answered Mr. Hamley. 
 
 " And Cragfoot is a lovely place, and Mr. Lowe comes of a 
 good family," said Mrs. Hamley, crossly. 
 
 She had not the slightest desire that Dora should marry 
 Sydney, but she did Hot like the whole thing to be regulated 
 without her voice making itself heard in the councils. 
 
 "I grant you, Lady," Mr. Hamley answered, pompously. 
 " Of the young man himself I will say nothing ; he is not my 
 mark exactly ; but Cragfoot would not be bad even for a young 
 lady out of Abbey Holme, if it was Cragfoot, and not as one 
 may say a mere shell with a name tacked to it. I have reason 
 to know that it is mortgaged body and bones, and that the 
 colonel is neither more nor less than a bankrupt. What he and 
 that precious son of his have would not keep Miss Drummond 
 in shoe-leather. Was I wrong, then, to refuse him her hand ] " 
 
 "How can you ask such a silly question?" said Mrs. Ham- 
 ley tartly. " How could the child marry a young man without 
 any money to live on ? It was an insult to ask for her." 
 
 " Was I wrong, Dora 1 " he continued, turning "to Dora and 
 watching her narrowly. 
 
 " Certainly not," she said steadily. " As dear Mrs. Haiuley 
 says, I cannot live on nothing." 
 
 " Is this your only reason ? " he asked again. 
 
 " Why, yes," she answered lightly. 
 
 " You would not have liked it if he could have laid down a 
 clean bill? You are not what is called 'in love' with him 1 !" 
 
 Patricia's heart stood still. By her face it- would have seemed 
 as if her own love, not Dora's, rested on .the answer.
 
 246 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO. LOVE " " 
 
 Dora raised her eyes. " In love with him t No ! " she said, 
 with the faintest little movement of her round shoulders. 
 
 "And at those times when he has tried to make himself 
 agreeable to you, you have held him off ? " again asked Mr. 
 Hamley, still searching her face. 
 
 " Yes, indeed I have," Dora answered, her sweet face the 
 very ideal of frankness if also of tender modesty. " I have 
 never encouraged him ; he knows that." 
 
 Patricia gave a shuddering kind of gasp and dashed from 
 the room like a storm passing through it. This was consenting 
 with sinners indeed ; and she staggered under the burden of her 
 cross. Her whole nature revolted at the false position in which 
 she stood, and the sin to which she was so unwillingly a party. 
 She felt that she must get out of the house, shake off the in- 
 fluence of this strange, cold, lying life, else she should suffocate 
 and die. She ran up-stairs and locked herself in her own room, 
 and bathed her face in cold water to get rid of a kind of cob- 
 web that seemed to have come before her eyes,. Her pulses 
 were beating tumultuously, but she was trembling as if in an 
 ague-fit. Heat and cold, poverty and hunger, she could have 
 borne, and cheerfully ; but this continual presence of evil to 
 which she must give a tacit consent, this awful confusion of 
 thoughts and feelings, this terrible uncertainty of duties, this 
 love without honour, this pity without sympathy that she felt 
 for Dora, nearly maddened her. She was like one carried away 
 in a torrent where was no help and no hope. 
 
 She flung herself on her knees and laid out her sorrows in 
 passionate prayer ; but no angel came down to tell her what 
 she ought to do, and though her prayer carried the blessing of 
 present soothing with it, it brought no solution of her difficul- 
 ties. 
 
 Flushed, yet still with this ague-like trembling en her, she 
 dressed herself for a walk and went back into the drawing-room. 
 She wanted to get out of the house, first of all things, and she 
 wanted to go down to the Hollies. If she could find peace any- 
 where, it would be there. 
 
 " I am so feverish, dear aunt ; do let me go out for a little 
 while ? " she pleaded in answer to Mrs. Hamley's look of as- 
 tonished rebuke. 
 Dora rose from her seat and went up to her caressingly.
 
 CONSENTING WITH SINNERS. - 247 
 
 Patricia trembled more tlun ever, and turned a\vay he ' head. 
 Acting, which was as easy as breathing to the one, which was 
 indeed a pleasant pastime, was agony to the other ; and having 
 to control herself at this moment was an added pain she felt 
 Dora might have spared her. 
 
 " You are not looking well, dear," said Dora kindly. " How 
 I wish I was as strong as you and able to face the cold as you 
 do ! I would go with you." In a whisper she said plead- 
 ingly, "Do not think harshly of me, dear! " 
 
 '' Please may I go, aunt 1 " said Patricia, not answering Dora, 
 not returning the pressure of her hand she whose frank love 
 had hitherto leapt so gladly to meet the faintest sign of tender- 
 ness her friend had ever shown ; but her own heart only knew 
 how hard it was to steel herself against that pleading voice, how 
 desperate the pain to have to judge harshly where she loved so 
 warmly ! 
 
 Mrs. Hamley was vexed by her request. She disliked being 
 made a fuss with when she was ill, but she liked to be the cen- 
 tral consideration of the house to have her little court stand- 
 ing at respectful attention, waiting on Providence and her hu- 
 mour, watching for time and her pleasure. It seemed to her 
 the most heartless, the most shameless thing that could have 
 happened ; but she said, " Certainly, Patricia, you can go," 
 coldly, with the feeling of a martyr generously sacrificing her 
 rights for another's pleasure. 
 
 " I will be back before dark," said Patricia. 
 
 "May I ask where you are going? or am I presuming too 
 much on my position as your guardian and the mistress of the 
 house 1 " said Mrs. Hamley with cold formality. 
 
 " I want to go down to the Hollies," answered Patricia. "I 
 want to see Miss Fletcher." 
 
 " May I suggest, Patricia; that this continual going to the 
 Hollies is rather odd and not very delicate 1 " said Mrs. Ham- 
 ley, still in the same cold and formal manner. 
 
 " How not delicate ? " asked Patricia. " Miss Fletcher wishes 
 me to go. I do not force myself on her." 
 
 Mrs. Hamley glanced up at her contemptuously ; she was 
 about to say "Dr. Fletcher is an unmarried man 1" but when 
 she saw the child-like face that looked down with frank inquiry 
 into hers, the better part of her womanhood -prevailed over tfre
 
 248 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 worse and she conquered her spite for the sake of her involun- 
 tary reverence. Undoubtedly Patricia was a fool, she thought ; 
 but she was an innocent one, and it was not for her to enlighten 
 her. 
 
 " Go, if you like," she said crossly. " What you and Ca- 
 therine Fletcher can find to say to each other is more than I 
 can make out. You are the dullest companion possible at 
 home. I suppose, like many other people, you. reserve your 
 liveliness for strangers and give your home only your ill tem- 
 per." 
 
 At that moment the door-bell rang, and Lord Merrian and 
 Dr. Fletcher were announced. They had met at the lodge- 
 gate, the one riding, the other walking, and so had come up 
 the drive together. As if by magic Mrs. Hamley's sour face 
 changed its expression and became placid and well-bred. She 
 could have dispensed with the doctor; but the coming of the 
 young lord so soon after their own call gratified her immensely. 
 It must have done so to have made her so suddenly amiable. 
 
 " I hope you do not consider me intrusive," said Lord Mer- 
 rian with his fine smile and gracious manner ; " but I fancy 
 this belongs to one of you ladies, and as I was riding past I 
 undertook to deliver it for my mother ; else," smiling again 
 and what a pleasant smile it was " I should scarcely have 
 ventured on such an invasion." 
 
 It was a mere nothing that he gave to Mrs. Ifamley, wrap 
 ped up in a little tissue paper parcel a rather tumbled crape 
 bow, one of the mysteries of Patricia's dress that, as she phrased 
 it, had gone adrift in the drawing-room at the Quest. It was 
 not an unusual thing for Patricia's ornamental trimmings to 
 go adrift, and Mrs. Hamley often found it necessary to lecture 
 her on the righteousness of needle and thread, and the value 
 of that stitch in time which saves nine. This time, however, 
 she condoned the offence for the sake of the visit it had occa- 
 sioned, and handed it over to her niece witk a smile that was 
 more friendly and compassionate than usual. 
 
 Patricia blushed, of course, when she received her truant 
 property, and looked very pretty, even through all her trouble 
 of mind ; but she was not disposed to take any share in the 
 conversation to-day, or to profit by Lord Merrian 's viait in any 
 way, so drew a little apart aud sat down on a sofa standing
 
 CONSENTING WITH SINNERS. 249 
 
 diagonally like a barricade between the table and the window, 
 by which Dora was left mistress of the situation ; and as Lord 
 Merrian could not have indulged in any of the heroics of yes- 
 terday, with.so many critical ears to listen to him, he contented 
 himself with the small talk of ordinary society, which suited 
 " the fair girl " better, and showed her to advantage. 
 
 In the midst of an animated monologue on the music of the 
 future, of which neither he nor his audience knew more than 
 that its high priest was Richard Wagner and that it was exces- 
 sively odd, Henry Fletcher went over to Patricia in his sloping, 
 lazy way, and subsided on the sofa by her. 
 
 " Are you going out or coming in 1 " he asked, glancing a.t 
 her hat and jacket. 
 
 "Going out," said Patricia. Then in a hurried unhappy 
 voice she added : " I so much wish to see your sister to-day ; I 
 have just asked Aunt Hamley if I can go, and she says I may. 
 May I go with you ? " 
 
 His thin, brown, leathery face lighted up, and he looked 
 quite young because so glad. . 
 
 " Certainly," he said ; " we shall be delighted. My sister 
 was speaking of you this morning and saying that she wanted 
 to see you again. Indeed I called now with a message from 
 her, hoping to induce you to come." 
 
 " How good you are ! " said Patricia, lifting her eyes grate- 
 fully to his. " I will tell aunty, then ; and as she said I might 
 go, whenever you like I am ready." 
 
 " Perhaps I had better give her my sister's message," he 
 answered smiling. " Mrs. Hamley is particular, and she may 
 think I ought to do my business selon Us convenances. What 
 an old father she thinks me ! just an umbrella !" he thought 
 to himself with half a sigh. " And yet she is right ; I am only 
 an old father to her." 
 
 The request, made with that quiet taking-it-for-granted 
 which so often gets what it asks, was successful, thbugh Mrs. 
 Hamley was not over well pleased with Dr. Fletcher or his 
 object. She was indeed anything but pleased that her niece 
 should leave at all during Lord Merrian's visit, and more espe- 
 cially was she annoyed that she should leave in company with 
 Dr. Fletcher. But the Fletchers were people who had a pecu- 
 liar [power over Mrs. Hamley ; she was always finding fault
 
 250 " AVH AT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 with them behind-backs, but to their faces she did not resist 
 them. She considered the one the son of perdition and the 
 other the daughter of folly ; nevertheless, strong in her own 
 righteousness and wisdom as she was, she let them have their 
 will of her when they chose to ask it, and while she affected 
 to contemn did really respect them too much to gainsay them. 
 As now, when she would rather have kept her niece to look 
 beautiful in the eyes of the future Earl of Dovedale, but felt 
 herself constrained to let her depart with Henry Fletcher 
 because he had begged for her in the name of her sister, and 
 had come up to carry her off. 
 
 So Patricia went with her friend, leaving Lord Merrian 
 secretly disgusted and sore with the feeling of having been 
 " sold ; " but still discussing the music of the future, and the 
 respective merits of Wagner and Verdi, as if he really enjoyed 
 the conversation. He might have done so had not his interest 
 been forestalled ; for Dora was putting out all her little coquet- 
 ries and fascinations with supreme indifference to the fact that 
 another man called her wife, and that how much soever she 
 might make Lord Merrian admire her, he could not advance 
 her fortunes one jot nor abate by a line the difficulties of her 
 present position. Wise as Dora was, and far-seeing, she had 
 not always the best kind of wisdom ; and because she was deft 
 in undoing knots she was not always sufficiently careful to keep 
 her runnings clear. Like many clever people she enjoyed a 
 complication wherein her talents could be exercised ; and got 
 herself into danger for the pleasure of getting out of it again. 
 
 " How I like being with you and Miss Fletcher ! " said 
 Patricia, drawing a long breath as she and Dr. Fletcher walked 
 briskly down the avenue, and her load seemed already lessen- 
 ing from the mere contact with one whom she respected and 
 who was true. 
 
 " Do you ?" he answered, looking down at her kindly. 
 " That's right ! And we like to have you. Though this is 
 more natural than that you should care to spend your time 
 with two such elderly fogies as ourselves." 
 
 " Don't say that, Dr. Fletcher ! Besides, if you are old, you 
 remind me of my dear Barsauds home more than any one else 
 does," said Patricia simply. " Though you are so unlike him, 
 I feel somehow when with you the same as I used to feel with
 
 CONSENTING WITH SINNERS. 251 
 
 my uncle. Only I had no Miss Fletcher then," she added a 
 little sorrowfully. " I wish I had had." 
 
 Dr. Fletcher turned his eyes on her. She was looking up at 
 him frankly, affectionately, as she used to look at her uncle 
 when he spoke to her. In a minor degree truly, less tenderly, 
 less demonstratively, but in the same spirit. 
 He smiled. 
 
 " I take that as the highest compliment you can pay me," he 
 said. 
 
 Then he turned away and the smile faded from his face. 
 Miss Fletcher was glad to see her pet, and half surprised that 
 leave had been given her to come. Knowing Mrs. Harnley she 
 was very sure it was a " tight pattern " for poor Patricia from 
 first to last. She pitied her with her whole heart, and often said 
 to her brother how much she wished they could take her away 
 bodily, and bring her to the Hollies for life. Perhaps her say- 
 ing this so o'ften had made him think of ways and means. But 
 the one which seemed most natural was just the way which was 
 most impracticable ; and as yet the woman's loving wish to 
 protect, guide, and bless the girl, had no issue in any plan on 
 which it was possible to act. To-day she was even more than 
 usually tender to the poor child. She saw at once that the 
 young soul was ill at ease, and that something had gone wrong ; 
 and Catherine Fletcher was not a woman of that kind of 
 motherliness which cares only for the body. She knew in her 
 own person what sorrows and difficulties lie in the heart and 
 mind, in the affections and in the thoughts ; and the strong and 
 generous hands which cared to give good gifts to the poor cared 
 also to bring consolation to the sad and surety to the doubtful. 
 Presently Patricia began to talk about the perplexities of 
 life, and the need she at all events she would speak for no 
 one else had of superior direction ; how she envied the Roman 
 Catholics in being able to go to a man learned in righteousness 
 and spiritually wise who could tell them what to do and dis- 
 entangle their contradictory duties so that they became clear 
 and simple. 
 
 " And if you had a director, what would you say to him, 
 dear?" asked Miss Fletcher, who saw that her words had a 
 personal meaning. 
 
 "Oh, many things," she answered. " But I do not want fco
 
 252 " VfTIAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 talk of myself. I only want to know what ought to be done, 
 whether by me or by any one else." 
 
 " Give me an instance." 
 
 " Well, -this," said innocent Patricia, feeling quite diplomatic, 
 and sailing as near to the wind in the matter of honesty as was 
 possible for any right-minded person. " If you knew of any- 
 thing wrong going on in the house where you were, would you 
 think it your duty to tell what you knew to the head of the 
 house ? " 
 
 " That depends, my dear, on two things ; one, if my keeping 
 fiilence involved my being mixed up in anything unworthy, the 
 other if keeping silence did harm to others. If the first, I should 
 think I owed it to my own self-respect to keep my hands clean, 
 and if I could do that only by public protest, I would make it." 
 
 " But I am not mixed up in it, except by knowing it and 
 keeping it secret consenting by silence," interrupted Patricia. 
 
 " You see, dear, as I do not know the circumstances, I can- 
 not answer you very satisfactorily," returned Miss Fletcher. 
 " This is not saying that you are to confide in me. If the secret, 
 whatever it is, is not your own you must not tell it even to me : / 
 but none the more can I give you a clear answer." 
 
 " No one can answer difficult moral problems or vague hypo- 
 theses," said Dr. Fletcher, in his calm way. ' " What I should 
 say, is this. If you have personally nothing to do with the 
 circumstances to which you are alluding, leave it alone, unless 
 it is injuring others, and then I think you are bound to tell it. 
 As a rule we are not obliged to be detectives or informants ; 
 though most young people who care for truth and justice 
 think they are consecrated to this task before all others. But 
 there is a world of difference between action and negation, 
 sharing and silence." 
 
 " Yes, I see ; but it is so dreadfulto know that things are going 
 wrong and people being deceived every day, and under one's 
 own eyes ! " said Patricia. " When one hears things said that 
 are not true, it makes one feel as if one told stories oneself by 
 not crying out that they are untrue." 
 
 " If what you know hurts your uncle and aunt, you ought to 
 tell them," said Miss Fletcher. " If it implicates you, you ought 
 to tell them also. But if it does not hurt them, and is only a 
 wrong done by some one to his own conscience, his own sense
 
 CONSENTING WITH SINNERS. 253 
 
 of right, leave it. Don't you see ? You h&.* either been told 
 in confidence or you have found* it out by chance. If the for- 
 mer, you are bound to secrecy ; if the latter, you need not con- 
 stitute yourself the police of morality. Are you any clearer 
 now 1 " 
 
 " Just a little," said Patricia with a heavy sigh. " At all 
 events I will not speak, at least not yet." 
 
 Neither Dr. Fletcher nor his sister took Patricia's perplexi- 
 ties to mean more than a discovery of some of those domestic 
 peccadilloes which are inevitable in a household as tightly held 
 as Mrs. Hamley's ; human nature rebelling against undue bond- 
 age, and rebellion having the trick of expressing itself in ugly 
 forms and crooked ways. They were a little afraid of her fear- 
 lessness and strong sense of right ; and thought it better to curb 
 rather than to spur her on. In fact they took her fears to be 
 probably exaggerated ; and as they did not want to see her 
 become meddlesome or officious in her quest after the noble life 
 they put her off with an anodyne rather than a solvent. But 
 if they soothed her, all the same they heartened her ; and she 
 went back to her prison with a braver will, setting herself to 
 bear the burden of Dora's sin with as much courage and equa- 
 nimity as she could command, and hoping for both relief and 
 solution in times not too distant. 
 
 "The zeal of the young is so apt to outrun discretion," said 
 Dr. Fletcher, when she had left. " But what a noble nature it 
 isl" 
 
 " Yes, rarely so ! " his sister answered. " It is what Mon- 
 talembert called a true ' bath of life,' to be with Patricia Kern- 
 ball. She is the most perfect creature of the natural kind I 
 have ever seen. She reminds me of the old classic nymph, or 
 of the ideal savage princess, clothed but not converted to our 
 odd conventionalities of life." 
 
 Dr. Fletcher smiled and said yes, but made no further 
 remark ; and then Catherine looked for a moment at the pic- 
 ture of a young knight after Albert Diirer hanging on the wall, 
 and her soft brown eyes became dreamy and mournful as she 
 looked. It was an old print picked up at a broker's in London, 
 which had reminded her of Reginald Kemball ; and for that 
 reason had been hung where she could always see it. For 
 there had been certain love passages between Catherine and
 
 254 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 Keginald in olden times ; love passages interrupted in the bad 
 old way of jealousy and misunderstanding when Colonel Lowe, 
 then a dashing young officer with laurels freshly gathered in 
 the Crimean trenches, had come down to set the world of Mill- 
 town womanhood in flame, and to devote himself to Catherine 
 Fletcher in especial. Reginald, self-doubting, jealous, sore, 
 poor, had taken Captain Lowe's attentions as Catherine's ac- 
 ceptance. No distinct understanding had been come to between 
 the unsuccessful artist and the squire's daughter ; and from the 
 time when Captain Lowe's fancy had turned that way, he took 
 care that none should be possible. He appropriated Catherine 
 in that quietly determined manner in which some men contrive 
 to dominate women and public opinion ; and Milltown put its 
 wisest heads together and settled everything to its satisfaction. 
 Some of them even knew the price of the bridal gown and veil, 
 and where they were bought ; and a few scented wedding-cake 
 in a, certain clock-case which came from London. There was 
 nothing more positive than that Captain Lowe and Catherine 
 Fletcher were to make a match of it ; and while all the world 
 waited for the wedding, Keginald Kemball went off to London, 
 and in a fit of despair married Patricia's mother a pretty and 
 affectionate little girl who was badly treated at home, and who 
 fell in love with the handsome artist at sight. 
 
 But Captain Lowe did not marry Catherine Fletcher. He 
 was deeply in debt, and Miss Graham, Lady Anne's daughter 
 and heiress, had a dower that would not only cover his defici- 
 encies but set him well before the world for life. So he mar- 
 ried where he did not love, and only " for money ;" as his poor 
 wife found out when too late. And he had no scruple in prov- 
 ing to her that what she had found out was correct. He 
 always used to say that the only woman he ever really loved 
 was Catherine Fletcher j and he passed a great part of his time 
 in bewailing the untowardness of circumstances which had pre- 
 vented his marrying her. When he had done anything speci- 
 ally bad, he used to excuse his sin to himself by saying that he 
 would have been a different man with her. He would never 
 have got into his present bad habits of drink, debt, and the 
 race-course ; but he would have gone out in his profession, and 
 by this time would have been a General. He would have made 
 a name ; and he would have deserved what he had made. All
 
 CONSENTING WITH SINNERS. 25 
 
 the potentialities for good which poor, weak Matilda Graham 
 had had power to render abortive, according to him, would 
 have bloomed and blossomed into the stateliest growth, the 
 goodliest fruit, had Catherine Fletcher taken him in hand. 
 
 With only a germ of a conscience, with no sense of justice, 
 and with the moral coward's need of self-justification and a 
 scapegoat, Colonel Lowe laid the burden of his sins, which 
 were heavy, on the shoulders of the woman whose life he had 
 ruined. It is the way of the world ; a habit belonging by na- 
 ture to the average on of Adam with whom Eve is always the 
 teterrima causa, and the woman who did tempt him. Catherine 
 Fletcher, however, would not have married Colonel Lowe had 
 he asked her ; so his unfortunate wife carried more blame than 
 she deserved on this side as well as on others : and the Colonel's 
 bewailirigs were as baseless as those of & qMld who runs after 
 a rainbow and fails to catch ik
 
 256 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?' 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 
 <*i 
 
 5ft T was not to be expected that the Lowes would let such an 
 j][' insult as that which Mr. Hamley had just offered to the 
 heir of the house pass without some kind of notice ; though 
 Sydney, wisely enough, made the least, not the most of it. 
 But the question was, what could be done '? It was a disagree- 
 able position as things were, but how could it be bettered ? As 
 Colonel Lowe said, sagely enough, the ruffian would not fight 
 if he was called out ; and there was no case for a summons 
 scarcely one for a thrashing. A man's house is his castle, and 
 if he chooses to be king on his own door-step, and to shut the 
 door in the face of intruders, there is no One to gainsay him, 
 and the law upholds his right of expulsion. The case was cer- 
 tainly difficult ; and Colonel Lowe confessed that he could not 
 see his way clearly. 
 
 On the one hand he felt, as he had always felt, that he had 
 condescended too low in receiving Mr. Hamley as a guest on . 
 an equal footing. A man who had worked his way up from 
 sixpence a day and been lashed in the street for a bare-footed 
 beggar, even if he had ultimately come to the possession of 
 Abbey Holme, was not like a man born in the purple and 
 wrapped in its golden fringes from the beginning. Yet, on the 
 other hand, Mr. Hamley was rich, and Crag Toot was mortgaged 
 up to the chimney-pots ; and from information received the 
 Colonel had reason to believe that the master of Abbey Holme 
 knew more about that mortgage than any one else, save him- 
 self and the lawyer. Then, Sydney was evidently deeply 
 attached to that pretty piece of waxwork, Dora Drummond ; 
 and, such being the case, there seemed to be no way of making 
 him take kindly to the idea of Julia Manley, even with her 
 five thousand a-year to gild her freckles and beautify her 
 homely camel face. It was odd how tenacious and unselfish 
 tha boy was ! thought the father, wondering. He did not believe
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 
 
 257 
 
 that he could have been so hard hit, and so disinterested. 
 Though he was sorry for it, and quite capable of being immov- 
 ably severe and furiously angry if Syd still went on persisting 
 in his folly, all the same he could not help honouring him in 
 his own heart he who had always thought his boy selfish, 
 forced now to rate his power of disinterested love as superior 
 to the charms of competency for life ! 
 
 Yet none of these thoughts answered the one grave question : 
 What was to be done? The gentleman's blue blood boiled, 
 but the embarrassed man's necessities froze it back to calm- 
 ness ; the father's natural wish to see his son happy plucked 
 him by the skirts, but the aristocrat's disdain of mud, however 
 thickly mixed with gold, held him by the sleeve ; while over 
 all flamed the fiery man's angry passion and instinctive desire 
 to lay hands on his foe. 
 
 In the midst of his perplexity the Colonel bethought himself 
 of Henry Fletcher, and went off to consult " the wisest man in 
 the parish." He went just as it was getting dark, at about 
 five o'clock, while Patricia was there taking counsel for herself. 
 But when the two men were seated in the library the keen 
 mobile face of the one contrasting so strongly with the thought- 
 ful serenity of the other what could the one say that the 
 other did not know ? The idea of Mr. Hamley fighting a duel 
 with Sydney Lowe was as absurd as that of his playing Harle- 
 quin in a pantomime. If a challenge was sent he would simply 
 refer the thing to the gentlemen on the bench, his brother 
 magistrates, stating how it came about that the young man was 
 thirsting for his blood because, not being able to make proper 
 provision for his adopted daughter, he had therefore declined 
 his proposal of marriage. And the bench would applaud him, 
 and gravely censure Mr. Sydney Lowe, with public ridicule to 
 follow. No ; that was not to be thought of for a moment. 
 
 To be sure, he might have told him more delicately. Dr. 
 Fletcher allowed that ; but " what can you expect from a snob 
 like that ? a beggar on horseback a self-mad^ cur ! " said the 
 Colonel disdainfully ; with a moral lunge at his friend and 
 host, who at this moment stood in some sort answerable for 
 Mr. Hamley's insolence. For was he not a " confounded Rad," 
 and thought snobs as good as gentlemen 1 And are not all 
 who uphold the rights of the poor, and who preach the fra- 
 Q
 
 258 " WH^T WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 ternity of men, answerable for the sins and shortcomings ol 
 their plebeian brethren I 
 
 Dr. Fletcher was accustomed to these moral lunges, and never 
 cared to oppose or to return them. He passed them quietly by, 
 and went on to the second head of the subject under consider- 
 ation ; the love-affair between the young people, of which the 
 Colonel had just made pathetic use, appearing as the tendei 
 father, the sympathetic witness, with a very creditable display 
 of the softer emotions. 
 
 " Well, as for the love affair," said Mr. Fletcher, " that oi 
 course rested in the hands of the young people themselves. They 
 were of age, and might manage that as they chose. If theii 
 love was as strong as Colonel Lowe had said, could not some- 
 thing be done to set them up in hope, if not in present means t 
 "Was it so utterly impossible for Sydney to do anything where- 
 by he might gain an honest living t In fact, would not a sin- 
 cere love for a portionless girl give an incentive to exertion, 
 such as nothing else could supply 1 Might it not prove to be 
 one of those blessings in disguise which sometimes come into 
 men's lives, like angels unawares t Sydney Lowe might do 
 worse, perhaps, than engage himself to Dora with the deter- 
 mination to make a home for her, and discover the means of 
 supporting her by his own manful work." 
 
 " Good heavens, Henry, don't talk of such a thing ! " inter- 
 rupted the Colonel angrily sympathy with young love scat- 
 tered to the winds. " Marry Miss Drummond ! that would 
 be the crowning misfortune the most infernal mischief of the 
 whole lot!" 
 
 Take it all round, then, and from above and below, Mr. 
 Ham ley was master of the situation. He always was mastei 
 of the situation, whatever it might be. For what else had he 
 cultivated his will as he had done ? for what else lived through 
 those early years in toil and penury, preparing the ground foi 
 his present greatness, if he could not stand four-square now, 
 dominating circumstances t 
 
 The Colonel felt, he said, " like a race-horse haltered by a 
 boor ; " and he backed up the simile by a quantity of bad lan- 
 guage that affected the matter at issue about as much as the 
 snorts of the race-horse would have affected the haltering by 
 the boor. But as oaths and imprecations do not clear a man's
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 259 
 
 brain, Henry Fletcher brought him back to the subject in 
 hand, and discussed it afresh ; till they both came to the con- 
 clusion nothing was to be done. 
 
 " And I might have saved myself the trouble of asking your 
 advice ! " said the Colonel ill-temperedly. 
 
 " Unless talking a thing over makes it clearer," said Dr. 
 Fletcher. " I think, too, it is always satisfactory to know 
 that another mind sees things in the same light as one's self ; 
 fur two people, and one an unimpassioned spectator, will scarcely 
 be blinded or warped in concert." 
 
 " It 'is not much of blinding or warping, if by that you mean 
 friendly partisanship, that any one will get from you, Henry," 
 said Colonel Lowe pettishly. 
 
 And Dr. Fletcher thought, not for the first time, that, what- 
 ever men may say, women are not, after all, the exclusive pos- 
 sessors of the folly lying in undisciplined tempers. 
 
 There being nothing, then, to be said on the subject beyond 
 the three words " Leave it alone," the two men went into the 
 drawing-room, where Colonel Lowe drew a chair close to Miss 
 Fletcher, and began to talk to her in a low voice', being in that 
 mood which makes a man long for a sympathetic auditor a 
 creature with soft eyes and expansive faith to whom he can 
 tell the fact of his grievance while keeping back the form of the 
 truth. 
 
 He always went for sympathy to Catherine when things went 
 wrong. True, he had behaved ill to her ; he liked to believe 
 that. He liked to believe that he had nearly broken her heart, 
 and that it was because of him she had never married ; but 
 that did not trouble his conscience or make him shy of seeking 
 her sympathy when he thought he wanted it. She was his 
 sanctuary, the refuge to which he fled when he was unlucky on 
 the turf, or more than usually discontented with his unhappy 
 wife ; or, indeed, when he was only idle, and wanted amuse- 
 ment. And as all women nourish a certain tenderness for the 
 man who has once been in love with them, she gave him the 
 sweet pity for which he came, and generally did really soothe 
 him. He was always " poor Charles " to her ; and she held it 
 as an article of faith that he had thrown himself away on Miss 
 Graham, and might have done better had his wife been a woman 
 of more character. She was wrong there. Men of Colonel
 
 260 . "WHAT WOULD VOTJ DO, LOVE?" 
 
 Lowe's stamp are impatient of superior women as their wives. 
 Slaves suit them better, seeing that they must be tyrants, not 
 only masters. Better keep such men as friends only, not take 
 them as husbands. Friendship with a dash of sentiment in it 
 gets the wine of life, where marriage soon comes to the lees ; 
 and had poor Charles and dear Catherine married they would 
 have been as miserable in their own way as were now the 
 Colonel and that frightened tormented Matilda of his. 
 
 While Colonel Lowe sat by Catherine and played at senti- 
 ment and melancholy, but thinking all the same, " Poor dear 
 Kate, how stout she grows ! " and while Demeter took him 
 into her honest loving heart and pitied him vaguely, Dr. Fletcher 
 was talking to Patricia on that sentence of St. Paul : " For I 
 could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my 
 brethren." 
 
 "I think," he said, "if we cared more about others and less 
 about ourselves more to do that which is good for our neigh- 
 bours and less merely to save our own souls it would be better 
 for the world and a higher state generally of spiritual life. The 
 great art of righteous living is to live for others and the ad- 
 . vancement of the truth, rather than for our own individual 
 moral culture. Herein I stand against Goethe and with Paul." 
 
 He said this with intention. He had an idea that Patricia 
 was in danger of drifting into a state of -rigid selfhood and 
 moral hardness, virtuous enough, but not the highest virtue ; 
 and he wished to save her from the danger. He missed his 
 way. Her danger was in excess of sacrifice, and the fire he laid 
 the altar kindled more than was needed. 
 
 " Yes," she said warmly, " I will remember that." 
 
 But as she spoke, she turned a troubled face to Colonel Lowe j 
 and Dr. Fletcher, though he had not the key to the riddle, 
 noted her look. Was it possible, he thought after a while, still 
 watching the troubled face, that her perplexities were con- 
 nected with this love-affair between Sydney and Miss Drum- 
 mond 1 Had she been entangled in the meshes ? dragged into 
 complicity ? The -more he thought and the keener he noted, 
 the more he seemed to see light ; but he resolved to keep his 
 suspicions to himself, and not to share them even with his sister. 
 Was it possible, too, that this love affair had gone farther than 
 was known I He had no idea how far, and his mind stopped
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 261 
 
 short of real evil. He imagined nothing worse than a secret 
 understanding between the two young people ; but a secret un- 
 derstanding of which Patricia had been made free, and of which 
 her honesty felt the burden grievous. 
 
 He was sorry if she had been implicated in this matter, and 
 he wished he could help her to clear her feet from the snare 
 into which she had run. But what could he do ? Just as he 
 was powerless in counsel with the Colonel, so was he unable to 
 be of use to Patricia. He could not ask her to confide in him ; 
 and she would not have done so had he asked her. It was one 
 of those miserable passes in life when sorrow is unavoidable 
 and help is not to be had ; when the soul must walk through 
 its own dangers unaided and those who could make the way 
 smooth must stand by inactive. 
 
 Presently the maid came in with the information that the 
 Abbey Holme servants had come for Miss Kemball. The 
 lengthening February days were still too short to allow her to 
 return alone ; for the twilight had come by now; so Mrs. Ham- 
 ley sent one of the footmen and her own maid to bring her 
 back, not choosing to let Patricia be seen alone with a man 
 even in plush and with a powdered head, and thinking Bignold, 
 unaccompanied, insufficient protection for a walk of twenty 
 minutes in a place where everybody knew everybody else, 
 where fustian doffed its cap and said " Good night" to broad- 
 cloth as if class homage was the eleventh commandment, and 
 where all the grandees were of the Lord's anointed to. the little 
 people. The whole country round Milltown was as safe as the 
 Abbey Holme drawing-room ; but Mrs. Hamley sent a man 
 and a maid, meaning a rebuke, and to show her niece how trou- 
 blesome and upsetting she was. 
 
 To-night, however, she was trebly protected, for as the Co- 
 lonel's way home lay in the same direction Cragfoot standing 
 on the London Koad, past Abbey Holme and as he was walk- 
 ing he insisted on going with her. His quarrel was with Mr. 
 Hamley, not with Mrs. Hamley's handsome niece; and he en- 
 joyed the idea how angry it would make the old ruffian to 
 know that he had so little regard for him as to deny him the 
 triumph of annoyance, and that he was so profoundly indif- 
 ferent to anything this other could say or do as to be able to 
 treat one of the family with his customary condescension.
 
 262 "WHAT WOTTT/D YOU T)0, LOVE?" 
 
 So Patricia walked off with her companion, followed by her 
 two guardians, whereof the one was grim and the other impu- 
 dent, devoutly wishing herself back in the wilds of Barsands 
 where were neither gentlemen nor powdered footmen, and 
 where she could come and go as she listed with no one to pro- 
 tect her and no one from whom to be protected. She would 
 not have minded so much, she thought, if Dr. Fletcher had 
 been with them ; but it was a terrible trial to be thrown sud- 
 denly alone into the hands of Colonel Lowe, knowing what she 
 knew, and instinctively dreading him as she did. 
 
 The Colonel got little good out of her companionship. Her 
 frank face was clouded; her loud, clear, argentine voice sub- 
 dued ; he could talk of nothing that interested her, of nothing 
 that could pull her, as it were, out of the enchanted wood of 
 her thoughts ; and " Dora is married to your son" was so 
 entirely the one dominant phrase which her mind kept on re- 
 peating to her, that she was in terror lest she should unwit- 
 tingly say it aloud. What he asked of her she answered ; but 
 shyly, awkwardly, like an underbred school-girl. He threw 
 her countless balls of conversation and she did not pick up one. 
 Certainly, she was the most stupid, the most uninteresting 
 young woman he had ever met with, he thought ; and talking 
 to her was simply a waste of good material. He lapsed into 
 silence, and she was too grateful for the respite to disturb it ; 
 when, turning round on her, he said with an affected little 
 laugh : 
 
 " Have you heard anything, Miss Kemball, of this silly 
 affair between my boy and Miss Drummond 1 " 
 
 Patricia felt as if he had struck her somewhere about the 
 heart. 
 
 " Yes," she said in a low voice. 
 
 " What do you know ? " 
 
 What was she to answer ? Truth certainly ; but was the 
 whole truth part of her duty ? Her uncle's last words, " Never 
 betray a friend," flashed into her .mind. Come what would, 
 she would not betray Dora. 
 
 " That Mr. Lowe came to Mr. Hamley to-day about Dora," 
 she answered, after a pause. 
 
 " Mr. Hamley told you that f " 
 
 "Yea."
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 263 
 
 " With comments ? " 
 
 " I do not understand you," said innocent Patricia. 
 
 " No 1 " The Colonel smiled with a bland, superior kind ot 
 smile. " Did he make any remark tell you anything but the 
 mere fact that my boy had asked him for Miss Drummuud's 
 hand!" 
 
 " He said he had not money enough to marry on," said 
 Patricia. 
 
 " And Miss Drummond assented V 
 
 Another pause, during which the downcast face took on 
 itself all colours and all expressions. 
 
 " Miss Drummond assented 1 " repeated the ColoneL 
 
 " Yes," said Patricia. 
 
 " She allowed that my boy had not enough to marry on 1 " 
 
 " Yes," she said again. 
 
 "Did she acquiesce quietly, or did she cry or ravel" 
 laughed Colonel Lowe, as if it was a farce he was rehearsing. 
 
 " Acquiesced quietly," said Patricia, but in so low a voice he 
 had to bend his ear to her lips ; and even then he made her 
 repeat the words more distinctly. 
 
 " And she made no scene, you say t " 
 
 He went over the ground again like the Christy- Minstrels. 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Did not cry t" 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Took it quietly t" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Quite agreed with Mr. Hamley that the thing was absurd 1 
 not to be thought of 1 insane ? " 
 
 " I don't know that she said all that," said Patricia, looking 
 up. 
 
 " Still, she did. agree with him ?" persisted her tormenter. 
 
 " She said they could not live on nothing," said Patricia. 
 
 " And she is prepared to give him up 1 " 
 
 Patricia was silent. 
 
 " Why not answer me, dear Miss Kemball ? The question is 
 surely not so difficult. Is she or is she not prepared to give up 
 my boy 1 " 
 
 " I do not know," said Patricia. Then with the courage-of 
 desperation she cried, " It is scarcely fair to cross-question me
 
 264 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 in this manner, Colonel Lowe. I have nothing to do with the 
 affair, and do not want to have anything to say to it." 
 
 " Your resolution comes rather late in the day, my dear 
 Miss Kemball," replied the Colonel maliciously. <; You have 
 given me all the information I required, and,*' laughing, " I 
 must say that you have made the most surpassing witness. 
 Transparency is an inestimable quality. Good evening, and 
 ten thousand thanks. You have made my way so dear to me 1 
 I doubt though," laughing attain, " if your friend Dora, as you 
 call her, will be so much obliged to you as I am." 
 
 Lifting his hat, the Colonel turned sharply away, leaving 
 Patricia with the feeling of having betrayed her trust and done 
 her friend some mysterious mischief she who would have done 
 anything in the world but dishonour to have served her. 
 
 There was no time to speak to Dora before dinner, for in 
 truth Dora avoided her. She knew that she would some day 
 have to " fight it out" over those little answers of hers to Mr. 
 Hamley, but she was not in the mood now. She wanted her 
 faculty of invention and all her brains for a graver purpose 
 than convincing a stupid girl, as she mentally culled her friend, 
 that deceit was virtuous and lying a better thing than truth. 
 So the dinner came, and Patricia had been able to give no hint. 
 
 " What an extraordinary companion you chose for your 
 walk home ! " said Mrs. Hamley, when the servants had left 
 the room after dinner. Bignold had enlightened her as to the 
 young lady's nefarious proceedings. 
 
 " I did not choose him ; he chose me," said Patricia. 
 
 " And you had no power of rejection 1 " returned Aunt 
 Hamley. " Pardon me, that is the privilege of all ladies, and 
 one that can always be exerted. When it is not used, it is pre- 
 sumably "because it is not desired." 
 
 " If you mean, aunt, that I wanted Colonel Lowe to walk 
 with me, I did not," said Patricia hastily. " I do not like him 
 well enough." 
 
 Her aunt put on her smile of frosted graciousness ; Dora 
 looked up with a rapid glance of anger and astonishment ; Mr. 
 Hamley's colour deepened, and he turned his keen eyes on his 
 wife's niece viciously. 
 
 " So ! " he said ; " you tramp about the country with that 
 blackguard bankrupt, do you ? Upon my word, young lady,
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 265 
 
 
 
 your tastes are not remarkably refined for an admiral's grand- 
 daughter." 
 
 " I do not know what you mean," said Patricia, lifting her 
 head defiantly. " I meet Colonel Lowe at the house of friends 
 and I go with you yourselves to his own house. I do not see 
 that I am unrefined, or anything else that is bad, for speaking to 
 him civilly and walking on the same side of the way with him." 
 
 " Don't be impertinent, Patricia," said Mrs. Hamley. " Your 
 uncle has a right to remonstrate with you. And in the present 
 condition of affairs between the two houses I must say I think 
 your conduct both unfeeling and indelicate." 
 
 " Aunt, how could I possibly help it 1 " cried Patricia with 
 warmth. " How could I, a mere girl as I am, be impertinent 
 to a man of Colonel Lowe's age ! He said he would walk 
 home with me when I got up to go ; what could I say to pre- 
 vent him ? " 
 
 " I wish you were always so considerate to the superior 
 claims of age and understanding," said Mrs. Hamley. " As I 
 said before, Patricia, you are one of those who carry their vir- 
 tues abroad and wear only their faults at home." 
 
 " Was Lowe at Fletcher's ? " asked Mr. Hamley. 
 
 So soon as he got on the trail of facts he left the badgering 
 of the girl to a future occasion. 
 
 " Yes, he called while I was there," said Patricia. 
 
 She was almost grateful for the diversion. 
 
 " Did he say anything about to-day's pretty kettle of fish 1 " 
 
 " Not there, that I heard," she answered, 
 
 " Not there ; then he did elsewhere 1 " 
 
 "Only to me." 
 
 " Oh ! ' only to me,' did he ? And what might he hare said 
 'only to me'?" asked Mr. Hamley with a mixture of mockery 
 and banter. 
 
 " Not much," answered Patricia. 
 
 It was the most diplomatic answer she had ever given. But 
 it did not succeed. Mr. Hamley rose from his seat, large, 
 parabolic, majestic. He walked over to Patricia, took her 
 wrists in one hand, and turned up her face by the chin with 
 the other. 
 
 " Look me in the face, young lady," he said in a deep voice ; 
 " no subterfuges I'm not the man for them. What did this
 
 J(J6 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 bankrupt, this beggar, say to you to-day t Answer straight, 
 or" 
 
 " Leave the girl alone, Mr. Hamley, you frighten her," said 
 Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 "No, aunt" answered Patricia proudly, "he does not frighten 
 me. I have done nothing to be ashamed of. Let go my hands, 
 Mr. Hamley. While you hold them I will not open my lips." 
 
 He unclosed his thick fingers. 
 
 " Now tell your tale," he said. 
 
 " I have none," said Patricia, looking at her aunt, not at 
 Mr. Hamley. " Colonel Lowe asked me if we had been told of 
 his son'g call to-day, and I said yes, we had. Then he asked if 
 Dora cried, and I said no" (" You vile wretch ! " said Dora 
 under her breath, looking at her with a sweet little smile) 
 " and if the acquiesced in the decision, and I aid yes." 
 
 " You are the most detestable animal I know ! I will repay 
 you for this," said Dora, in petto again. 
 
 "-You spoke like a- sensible girl," said Mr. Hamley aloud. 
 
 " Then you might have spared yourself the trouble of coming 
 over to me, and me the indignity of your touch, Mr. Hamley," 
 cried Patricia, with a sudden burst of angry contempt that was 
 like anything in the world but herself, as she started to her 
 feet, wiping her hands and wrists as if from the soil of his 
 grasp. 
 
 " You should not have provoked him," was Mrs. Hamley's 
 reply to her ; but to her husband she said, " You ought not to 
 have touched her, Mr. Hamley. She was not a thief who was 
 going to run away." 
 
 And she spoke as tartly to the one as to the other. 
 
 But Patricia did not hear her. For the first time in her life 
 she was madly passionate, for the first time felt insulted and 
 outraged. As she stood there Hushed and rigid, her head 
 thrown back, her nostrils dilated, her eyes large and fixed, and 
 her bosom heaving, she became suddenly a new person among 
 them all. Hitherto she had been just an innocent, amiable, 
 clumsy, and guileless child whom they had bullied, and ridiculed 
 at their pleasure whom, indeed, they had found it rather amus- 
 ing to bully, she was so sorry, so surprised, so candid and 
 responsive ! Now she was a woman whose self respect was 
 fairly roused an antagonist prepared to defend herself.
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 267 
 
 Mr. Hamley saw he had gone too far. 
 " Friends, my dear ? " he said offering his hand. 
 Patricia folded hers within' each other, and kept a scornful 
 silence. 
 
 " Don't b.e silly, child 1 " cried Aunt Hamley crossly. " I 
 declare this violence of yours, these vulgar noisy scenes, will 
 make me quite ill. Shake hands I say ? " 
 
 " I cannot ! " flashed out Patricia. " I have not forgiven 
 you, Mr. Hamley, and I cannot pretend that I have." 
 
 " Do you know what I would do with you if you were my 
 niece ? " asked Mr. Hamley quite gravely. 
 
 The girl made no answer at first. Seeing thai, one was waited 
 for, she said, still in the same excited, passionate voice : " I do 
 not know, and I do not care ; and thank heaven I am not your 
 niece I " 
 
 Mrs. Hamley looked aghast, and Dora's face mirrored hers. 
 But Mr. Hamley burst into a coarse laugh. 
 
 " Bravo, my dear ! " he cried. " Splendid. What a per- 
 former you would have made ! Well, thank heaven too on 
 my side, as I may say, that you are not my niece ! I'd as lief 
 have a tiger cub ! But if you were, I'd kiss you well, and see 
 if you would not forgive me then ] " 
 
 He made a step forward as if to put his threat into execu- 
 tion, when Patricia caught up a knife. It was only a silver 
 dessert-knife ; but she did not know that. 
 
 " If you touch me I will stab you ! " she said. And she 
 looked what she said. 
 
 The scene was never forgotten. . From that hour it became 
 a Hamley tradition that Patricia only wanted opportunity to 
 develop into a. murderess, and that her temper was simply 
 fiendish. But strange to say Mr. Hamley seemed both to like 
 and respect her more than he had ever done before ; and many 
 times privately expressed his opinion that the girl had some- 
 thing in her if it could only be properly brought out. And he 
 was the man to do it. 
 
 The next morning, however, the night having brought good 
 counsel, Patricia went up to him at breakfa'st, and held out her 
 hand. Very pretty she looked with that frank penitence on 
 her fine face, and her eyes a little moist with shame and the 
 effort she was making.
 
 268 "WHAT WOFTLD VOC DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " I am very sorry, Mr. Hamley," she said, " that I was so 
 cross last night ; and I hope you will forgive me." 
 
 " Oh, don't mention it I beg," answered Mr. Hamley with 
 magnanimous acceptance. "We all get put out at tim.es. 
 Even I myself am not always up to what I call high-water mark. 
 But you certainly did take me a little aback, a-wanting to stab 
 me with a dessert-knife ! " He laughed noisily, and struck out 
 his limbs as his manner was. 
 
 " I thought it was steel," said Patricia simply. 
 
 Then she turned to Aunt Hamley. 
 
 " And I ought to ask you to forgive me too, dear aunty," she 
 said tenderly ; " I had no right to make such a scene before 
 you." 
 
 " No, you had not, Patricia," returned her aunt. " A young 
 lady, my niece, talking of stabbing her uncle indeed ! What 
 is the world coming to, I wonder, when such horrors as this 
 are tolerated ? " 
 
 Patricia looked down. She did really look very sorry for 
 her sin, and her child-like confession touched Mrs. Hamley 's 
 heart. It was the kind of thing she liked ; a moral bending of 
 the stiff young neck, and putting it under her own feet, that 
 just suited her. 
 
 " Well, my dear, now that you are sorry, -we may as well say 
 forget and forgive hey, Lady ? " said Mr. Hamley, who did not 
 want for a certain coarse good-nature, especially towards women. 
 " Come, give me a kiss, and make up." 
 
 " I will make up, but I will not kiss you," said Patricia 
 gravely. 
 
 " Absurd ! why should you not kiss your uncle ? " cried Mrs. 
 Hamley, who yet was angry with her husband for asking thi 
 grace, and who would not have been more pleased had Patricia 
 obeyed than she was now when she refused. 
 
 " I have never kissed any man but my own dear uncle," said 
 Patricia, her voice sad and low; "and," lifting her eyes, "Gor- 
 don." 
 
 " Gordon ! Who is Gordon 1 " cried Aunt Hamley. 
 
 " Gordon Frere my Gordon," she answered. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Aunt Hamley wearily, " more complications 1 
 Here is a love-affair now ! Go to your place, child, do, and 
 don't keep the breakfast waiting any longer 1 How I wish you
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 269 
 
 were as sensible as Dora there. It is a positive relief to look 
 at her, so quiet and amiable and well-bred as she is ! You will 
 be the death of me before I have done with you, and then I 
 suppose you will be satisfied." 
 
 This was the first time Aunt Hamley had heard of Gordon, 
 and she took care not to enquire more. If she should ever have 
 favourable views for her niece, it would be the better policy to 
 know nothing inimical to them ; and she dreaded rather than 
 courted information and confession on the subject of an unde- 
 sirable young man for he must be that if Patricia had picked 
 him up of her own motion at that awful Barsaiids 1
 
 27Q "WHAT WOULD VOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 A MYSTERY. 
 
 tHE next meeting between the two young lovers was a 
 stormy one. Dora had written to Sydney to tell him 
 how she had wept when Mr. Hamley told her what had 
 happened; how she had besought him to be more merciful; 
 how she had expressed her determination to be faithful unto 
 death : and Colonel Lowe took back Patricia's version, which 
 somehow sounded like truth, and carried with it conviction. 
 
 So that when the next meeting came there was but little love 
 to cheer them in the darkness of their circumstances and the 
 blackness of the night. Sydney made Dora responsible for 
 Mr. Hamley's insolence, and she made him responsible for Lis 
 own failure. He reproached her with her double dealing play- 
 ing into the hands of the enemy, according to the account given 
 by Patricia ; she tossed her small head disdainfully, asked him 
 how he could be so dense as not to see that this was a blind to 
 be adopted merely in public 1 and assured him, with the half 
 reluctance of virtue wrongfully accused and too proud to vin- 
 dicate itself, that she had really wept and besought as she had 
 said, but in private and to Mr. Hamley alone. 
 
 " Du you think I would have made a scene ? " she asked with 
 a fine irony ; " that would not be quite like me ! " 
 
 But Sydney was not satisfied ; and they walked in the cold 
 dark shrubbery, and quarrelled without ceasing ; and when it 
 began to rain, they went into the shelter of the conservatory 
 and quarrelled there. They were like creatures caught in a net, 
 both the one and the other ; and the thing they had called love, 
 which had brought them there, had suddenly turned bitter in 
 their mouths and heavy on their hands. Sydney had but one 
 cry, " Money I must have money ! " and Dora but one answer, 
 " I cannot help you." 
 
 Then Sydney flung Miss Manley and her five thousand per 
 annum in Dora's face, and claimed her gratitude for the sacri-
 
 A MYsTfiRf. . 271 
 
 fice ; and Dora brandished the potentiality of my Lady Merrian 
 in his, were she free to encourage those who only asked leave 
 to seek. But when she said this Sydney became furious, and 
 vowed he would take her away in the sight of all men carry 
 her to a garret in London and slow starvation, rather thau have 
 any one else trenching upon his rights, and paying attei lion to 
 the woman who was his property. 
 
 And when he said this he frightened her, and made i\er cry ; 
 the threat of confessing their marriage being, of all the misfor- 
 tunes possible to be encountered, the one most formidable to 
 her, the most terrible. Things were bad enough as they were, 
 with that compelling service at St. Pancras last October and 
 Lord Merrian riding over to Abbey Holme to discuss the Music 
 of the future and look admiringly into her eyes ! Things were 
 bad enough indeed, with the leisurely repenting closing up so 
 sternly on the hasty marriage. All that could be done, how- 
 ever, to mitigate the disaster into which they had plunged 
 themselves was to maintain silence and secrecy ; to keep their 
 own counsel absolutely unshared ; and to trust to chance and 
 time for their better direction. 
 
 Dora did not tell Sydney that Patricia had found out their 
 secret. She reserved this for an occasion when it might be of 
 use to her. She knew as well as any one the value of a stone 
 in the sleeve, and she was an adept in the art of keeping hers 
 unsuspected and always handy. 
 
 So they quarrelled and made up again ; talked and pouted, 
 and then kissed each other ; and Dora now cried and now lisped, 
 and sometimes drove Sydney frantic with her seductions, and 
 sometimes just as frantic the other way with her provocations. 
 But before the young man left, the main object of his visit had 
 been accomplished ; Dora had gone back to the house, had look, 
 ed into Mrs. Hamley's work-table drawer where she knew tne 
 lady had placed a rouleau often new bright sovereigns received 
 from Mr. Hainley that morning, and of which drawer she had 
 a key that would fit ; had come out again, and had put that 
 rouleau into Sydney's hands, half laughing and half crying. 
 The cleverness of the trick amused her, but she resented the 
 screw under the pressure of which she had made herself a thief. 
 
 " There will be an awful row when this is found out ! " she 
 said to Sydney. " I cannot think how it will be got over."
 
 272 "WHAT woT'T.n Yor no. 
 
 " Oh, you are so clever, you can devise something," he an- 
 swered. 
 
 " I don't see why I should devise anything ! " she said. " Mrs. 
 Hamley will not suspect me, why can't I leave it alone 1 " 
 
 " I leave the ways and means to you," laugfied Sydney ; " only 
 don't risk your own dear little neck ! " 
 
 " Much you would care if I did ! " she said petulantly. 
 
 " Oh, yes I should, Body 1 Little fool, as if I did not love 
 you," he answered tenderly. 
 
 But- Dora was in no humour to be coaxed. She drew her- 
 self away from his arms, saying : " Don't, Sydney ! I don't 
 like it ! " as if she was quite unused to his methods, and found 
 his love-making reprehensible as well as strange. 
 
 " You cross little thing, I'll be hanged if I ever come to see 
 you again ! " said Sydney rudely. 
 
 " And I am sure I wish you would not. I don't see much 
 pleasure in coming out such weather as this to be quarrelled 
 with ! " was Dora's snappish answer. 
 
 And with the word she hurried away and ran back into the 
 house ; and Sydney nearly got them both into trouble by the 
 loud voice with which he called " Dora ! " and which struck 
 upon Mr. Hamley's ear just as he awakened. 
 
 As he heard nothing more, though he sat up in bed to listen, 
 he concluded that a dream had played the usual trick of dreams 
 with him, and turned himself round with a smile on- his sleepy 
 face. 
 
 " Little beauty, my life would be a blank without her ! " he 
 said, just as Dora crept up the last flight of stairs, and stole 
 along the carpeted passage to her own room ; revolving in 
 her mind how she should act to-morrow when Mrs. Hamley 
 came 'to the knowledge of her loss whether to prepare the 
 way for suspicion or let things take their course without in- 
 termeddling. By the time she was undressed she had ma- 
 tured her plans, and to-morrow would see them executed. 
 
 The next day Alice Garth was in the drawing room with the 
 two girls, settling some work for her young mistress. M rs. 
 Hamley had gone into the housekeeper's room to arrange the 
 day's commissariat ; for she was her own head housekeeper, 
 with cook to help rather than to rule ; and her work table 
 drawer was standing about a quarter of an inch open.
 
 A MYSTERY. 273 
 
 " Patricia, dear, will you just open that drawer and give me 
 skein of blue silk I believe you will find there 1 " said iJura. 
 " I am sure Mrs. Hamley will let me have it." 
 
 " You are sure she will not mind my touching her things ?" 
 asked Patricia half reluctant. Her fear of her Aunt Hamley 
 was deepening to quite a wholesome extent; and in her state 
 of earnest desire not to offend again, since her outbreak over 
 the silver dessert-knife, she was learning a tact almost as nice 
 as Dora's own. 
 
 " Oh, certain ! " lisped Dora. " Of course not, else I would 
 not have asked you," laughing ; *' it is just in front, I know." 
 Patricia opened the drawer and removed one or two things 
 discreetly. 
 
 " I see no skein of blue silk, Dora," she said. 
 " You dear little blind eyes ! " laughed Dora, whose fair 
 face was rather flushed this warm spring-like day. " Here, 
 Alice, do you go and help Miss Kemball to find it." 
 
 Alice flung her work over her arm and went to the drawer ; 
 lifting a few things also discreetly, but perhaps a little more 
 with the tips of her fingers than Patricia ; but neither could 
 she see the skein of blue silk ; and then Dora said good-humour- 
 edly she was such a pleasant young lady to serve 
 
 " Never mind, then. I must say you are one as blind as the 
 other, but it does uot signify ; and perhaps Mrs. Hamley has 
 taken it away." 
 
 So the subject like the search dropped, and presently Dora 
 found the skein in her own work-box, and laughed lightly at 
 the incident. 
 
 Then Alice left the room with her patterns and her instruc- 
 tions, and Mrs. Hamley returned from the offices, her duties as 
 the chatelaine ended for the day so soon as she should have 
 paid cook's bill, for which she had the money ready packed. 
 
 She opened herwork-table drawer and looked in, specially 
 moving a black and gold needle-case which Dora had made for 
 her years ago ; the child's first piece of well-conducted fancy- 
 work, and for which she had the maternal fondness that hallows 
 the early work of children. She looked twice, thrice, and all 
 about the drawer ; then she muttered, " How extraordinary ! " 
 and looked out into the room as if considering. 
 
 Dora watched her furtively without seeming to do go.
 
 2?4 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 Patricia, to whom the drawer and the skein of blue silk and 
 the black and gold needle-case had no more significance than 
 so many unnumbered dominoes, had her head in the French 
 grammar ; covering the lines with her hand, which she brought 
 down a step gradually as she repeated in a whisper to herself, 
 " Je souffre, tu souffres, il souffre," and so on. Mrs. Hamley, 
 still with her look of deep consideration, of searching back in 
 her memory and general bewilderment of mind, left the room 
 silently, but after a time came in again and once more turned 
 over the things in her drawer. 
 
 " How extraordinary ! " she murmured again, and looked 
 with a kind of perplexed ill-temper at both the girls. 
 
 The two tranquil faces she scanned so curiously told her no- 
 thing. Dora, with a pretty little smile of loving recognition 
 on her small fresh lips, looked up from her work as guileless as 
 the dove that was her favourite emblem. Patricia was staring 
 vacantly at the ceiling, repeating with praiseworthy diligence: 
 " Je souffrirai," and " nous souffrirons." 
 
 What had either to do with the mysterious displacement or 
 loss out of the little work-table drawer ? What could either 
 have to do with it 1 ? Mean and irritating in small things, Mrs. 
 Hamley had a certain dignity of action on large occasions. Her 
 temper was more in fault than her heart ; and though she did 
 not scruple to make her house-mates unhappy, she would not 
 willingly have wronged them. It seemed to her an insult she 
 could not possibly offer to ask either, such good girls as both 
 were, if they knew in any way of her loss. How could they ? 
 She remembered now that only Dora was in the drawing-room 
 yesterday when she put the roll away ; what then could Patri- 
 cia possibly know of it t Besides, was not the one as absolutely 
 clear as the other t 
 
 She was perplexed and distressed, and on Patricia's going 
 out of the room to get a dictionary, she looked at Dora wist- 
 fully Dora, her dear child, her consoler in all her little afflic- 
 tions and Dora went over to her at once, and kneeling by 
 her, said prettily : 
 
 "You look disturbed, dear. Have you lost anything? or 
 heard any bad news ? " 
 
 " The most wonderful thing has happened, Dora ! I cannot
 
 A MYSTERY. 275 
 
 make it out ! " answered Mrs. Hamley. " I put a roll of gold 
 in here yesterday, and now it has gone." 
 
 "Gone? Oh ! how strange. Why, how can it have gone?" 
 said Dora, putting the tips of her fingers into the drawer as if 
 they were magnets, and the missing sovereigns stray filings. 
 " You surely must have overlooked it, dear." 
 
 "No, I have not. I have moved everything searched 
 thoroughly," she answered. 
 
 " I never heard of anything so odd. What can have become 
 of it ? " said Dora, moving thimbles and reels to make sure 
 that the roll of gold had not lost itself in the shadow. " Do 
 you think it can have got behind the drawer ? Let me take it 
 out and look. No ! " she. cried, as she peered carefully into 
 the hollow, " there is nothing there. How very odd ! " 
 
 " Who can have taken it ? " said Mrs. Hamley. " No one 
 ever goes to my drawer, and it is always kept locked ; and we 
 have no one in the house that I could possibly suspect. To be 
 sure there's the new kitchen-maid, but she could not know of 
 it." 
 
 " No, no one could know of it," said Dora, reflectively. Then 
 suddenly, as if the remembrance of an unimportant event which 
 might have important issues had just struck her, she told Mrs. 
 Hamley how Patricia and Alice Garth had looked in for a 
 skein of blue silk which Alice wanted for her work, and which 
 she thought was there. They did not touch the things, she 
 went on to say with a fine earnestness of advocacy that pleased 
 Mrs. Hamley. They did no harm ; she was sure of that ; and 
 they could not have interfered with the roll at all. It might 
 by some strange chance have caught in their fringes or sleeves ; 
 but then it would have fallen on the carpet, and she and they 
 must have heard it. It was not there too, as she found by 
 moving the chairs and footstools, sofas and tables, to the 
 remotest corner of the room. She was indefatigable in her 
 exertion^ aud Mrs. Hamley thought how good and sympathetic 
 she was. 
 
 " Well, I don't suppose either of them took it on purpose 
 stole it, in fact," said Mrs. Hamley sharply. But she said in 
 her own heart, " How I wish Patricia had not left the room as 
 she did ! " 
 
 " No, I suppose not," said Dora quietly. !' Of all three,
 
 276 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 Patricia, Alice, or myself, I should as soon suspect one as the 
 other." 
 
 " But in any case I will not allow my things to he touched," 
 Mrs. Hamley said with temper. She was getting cross now, 
 and Dora's diligence in search was losing its effect. "You 
 ought to have prevented them, Dora ; you know how particu- 
 lar I am, and how much I dislike to have my things interfered 
 with and pulled about." 
 
 "Yes, dear; I know I was wrong; I should have stopped 
 them," said Dora. " But I assure you they did nothing more 
 than just look into the drawer." 
 
 " We will say no more about it," said Mrs. Hamley, with a 
 sudden greyness on her face. " It is one of those mysteries I 
 do not like to think of, and that no thinking can make clear. 
 Tell me though, who went to the drawer first ? " 
 
 Patricia." 
 
 " And then Alice Garth ? " 
 
 Yes, then Alice." 
 
 " What can that girl be about?" said Mrs. Hamley irritably. 
 
 " Who, dear'? " asked Dora. 
 
 " Patricia ; where is she ? " 
 
 " She went out of the room for a book, I dare say. She was 
 learning a French verb, I know." 
 
 "I wish she would come back !" said Mrs. Hamley, and 
 fretfully re-arranged the work-table drawer. 
 
 " Shall I go and call her ? " suggested Dora. 
 
 But Mrs. Hamley said "No," and re-arranged the things 
 with redoubled energy. Suddenly she said : " Go to the maids' 
 room, Dora, and ask Alice if she has found anything in her 
 sleeves or hanging about her anywhere. Do not tell her what 
 I have lost, but just ask her." 
 
 " Yes, dear," said obedient Dora, gliding swiftly and noise- 
 lessly from the room. 
 
 While she had gone, Patricia came back, holding on by a 
 huge French dictionary which she was carrying in the old 
 cushion and kitten fashion, under her arm. 
 
 " Where have you been, child ? " asked Mrs. Hamley very 
 sharply. 
 
 " In the library, aunt, looking for this," said Patricia, startled 
 at her tone.
 
 A MYSTERY. 277 
 
 " What a time you have been ! Come to the fire getting 
 cold in this way ! " 
 
 " I am not cold at all, aunt, thank you. There was a large 
 fire in the library," she answered pleasantly. 
 
 " Come here, I say ! " reiterated Aunt Hamley in an authori- 
 tative manner. 
 
 And Patricia, wondering, went. 
 
 " Not cold, your hands are like ice ! " said Aunt Hamley, 
 touching her as she passed ; " and, good gracious, child, what 
 do you keep in your pocket ? " she added. " It bulges out like 
 a schoolboy's. What have you in it 1 stones or nuts and apples, 
 or what ? " 
 
 " Something of everything," laughed Patricia colouring. 
 " Let me see," said Aunt Hamley in a low voice, trembling. 
 " Dear aunt, yes, if you like. I have no secrets," said the 
 girl, tumbling out into her aunt's lap a heterogeneous collection 
 of the most extraordinary odds and ends a girl could possibly 
 get together ; string, wax, a foot-rule that folded in three, a 
 screw, a few white pebbles which Gordon had given to her as 
 possible agate or white cornelian, a huge buckhorn-handled 
 knife of the kind called in the north jackylegs, or joctelegs, 
 two pocket-handkerchiefs, and a pair of garden-gloves. No 
 wonder her pocket bulged ! 
 
 For the unwomanliness of the collection, and its disorderly 
 character, Patricia got a severe lecture; but Aunt Hamley 
 found not a trace of what she sought. It was horrible to have 
 had even this momentary suspicion, but what could she do 1 
 She was confronted with the undeniable fact that her ten sove- 
 reigns had been abstracted and that no one had been near the 
 place where they were save Patricia and a steady, good, modest 
 girl, the daughter of a yeoman farming his own land, who was 
 almost as far above suspicion as her niece. If she had allowed 
 her mind to wander into the depths for a moment, who could 
 blame her ? A rouleau of gold cannot go out of a drawer with- 
 out hands, and the police always say : " Look for the thief 
 where you least suspect." 
 
 So she reflected and tried to soothe her conscience for having 
 dreamed of suspecting her nieee only to fall on to the other horn 
 of the dilemma, when at night she told the whole circumstance 
 to her husband, and asked him what he thought.
 
 278 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 u Alice Garth," he said. " Make your mind easy, Lady, that 
 young woman is the thief. I am not a magistrate for nothing, 
 and I know the whole r.at hole of them pretty well by now. 
 Keep your eyes open, Lady, and I'll wager my best that you'll 
 find her out before long. She's no good, that girl ; and my 
 word is ' Troop. ' " 
 
 " You might express your word with a little more refine- 
 ment, Mr. Hamley," said his wife primly ; " your counsel is 
 always valuable, but I cannot say I always admire the. manner 
 in which you give it." 
 
 " Matter goes before manner," said Mr. Hamley sentontionsly; 
 " and them as has a rough diamond need not be ashamed of it 
 because it ain't polished. A diamond's a diamond, rough or 
 Bmooth ; that is what I say, and I think I am not so far out." 
 
 " You might attend a little more to my instructions, I think," 
 said Mrs. Hamley. " ' Them as has' ' ain't' how often I have 
 told you of these errors 1 " 
 
 " Beg pardon, Lady ; won't do it again till next time," Mr. 
 Hamley answered jocularly. "He is a bad boy, I daresay; 
 but he isn't bad to his missis." 
 
 Mrs. Hamley made no reply. She was weary and distressed; 
 glad to have no shadow of case against her niece, but sorry that 
 Alice Garth should have presumably failed so fearfully ; per- 
 plexed what to do between want of proof and strong suspicion. 
 She held the crime in horror, and wished to banish the crimi- 
 nal forthwith, but she was haunted by the dread of accusing 
 the innocent ; and yet, if not Alice, who aould it have been ? 
 
 Mr. Hamley, however, cut the matter very short. He was 
 not sorry to make James Garth eat dirt in the face of the con- 
 gregation ; and to dismiss his daughter without a character and 
 at a moment's notice was as good a means to this end as any 
 that occurred to him. The next morning then, he summoned 
 Alice into the awful sanctuary of his library, and without a 
 word of reproach or explanation, handed her her wages, salary, 
 and board wages, calculated to a fraction, for the next month, 
 and told her to pack up her boxes and be off before the clock 
 struck twelve. 
 
 She was a pretty, fair-haired, delicate girl, with large light- 
 grey eyes and large pupils ; a nervous girl, with a spirit proud 
 of her honesty, proud of her fair fame, and a lady in her degree.
 
 A MYSTERY. 279 
 
 She was warmly attached to her goed-natured young mistress, 
 and passionately fond of her father ; a girl as pure in mind, as 
 refined in feeling, and as incapable of low vice as if she had been 
 a duke's daughter ; and this sudden dismissal struck her at all 
 points. What would her father say ? What would the world 
 think ? 
 
 Quivering with nervous pain, she asked in a suffocated voice: 
 " What is this for, sir 1 " her poor hands clasped in each other 
 and her sensitive face blanched and drawn. 
 
 Mr. Hamley waved his hand. He did not look up. ^FTe 
 did not like to give pain to women, especially pretty young 
 women, so he did not care to look at the pitiful face which 
 he knew was looking^so beseechingly into his. Had she 
 been a lady indeed, he could not have done it; but a 
 maid-servant that was different. Mr. Hamley was not the 
 man to fly in the face of Providence and blaspheme caste ; 
 and it was scarcely necessary for the master of Abbey Holme 
 to trouble himself about the sorrows or the wrongs of a yeo- 
 man's daughter, his paid and hired servant. Still he did not 
 care to look at her. 
 
 " I make no remark," he said ; " I say nothing. We may 
 have suddenly resolved to alter our establishment ; a thousand 
 things may have happened. The upshot that concerns you is 
 here is your money and you must go." 
 
 It was beating against a stone wall to stay then and try to 
 soften Mr. Hamley ; he had set his face like a flint, and had he 
 been Khadamanthus in person he could not have been more im- 
 penetrable, more immovable. 
 
 One eager gaze into the coarse fixed face convinced her. 
 Gathering up her pride through all her sick despair,' without a 
 word she turned away with a dazed expression like one sud- 
 denly brought from darkness to the light, and went out stag- 
 gering.. Patricia was crossing the hall as she came out of the 
 study, holding on by the wall and creeping round, almost un- 
 able to drag herself along. 
 
 "Alice! what is the matter]" she cried, laying her hand on 
 the girl's arm. 
 
 Alice looked as if she did not understand her ; and Patricia 
 seeing that something was gravely wrong, and frightened at her 
 face, took her upstairs into her own room, more than half carry-
 
 280 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 ing her, and placed her in the easy-chair she herself so much 
 despised ; then she bathed her face and made her drink some 
 water, and by degrees got the story from her. 
 
 Story indeed there was none ; simply the bare uncompromis- 
 ing fact of a sudden dismissal without cause of complaint or 
 reason assigned. 
 
 " It is an infamy ! " cried Patricia warmly. " Mr. Hamley 
 is a monster ! But you must not mind, dear Alice, good Alice ! 
 You will find friends, and he will never have a blessing ! 
 Here ! " she said, as a sudden thought struck her ; " take a 
 note to Miss Fletcher and see what she says. Whatever she 
 says will be right," she added, with the relieved look of one 
 who has found a way of escape in a <Hfficulty, and a sure guide 
 in danger. 
 
 She sat down and wrote a rapid little note to her friend, 
 begging her to see Alice Garth and to talk to her and comfort 
 her ; saying that she was, a good girl and had no faults, and 
 ought not to have been sent away. After which she emptied 
 her purse into the lap of tSe disgraced maid, who hated to take 
 her money for many reasons, but was fain for the greater good 
 there is sometimes in compliance than in self-assertion ; and 
 for her farewell she put her arms round her neck and kissed 
 her as she might have kissed a sister ; which opened the founts 
 and sent poor Alice into a fit of crying that culminated in 
 hysterics, and taxed both Patricia's skill and patience. 
 
 If Aunt Hamley had only known that her niece had kissed 
 a servant ! Of a truth Miss Fletcher's democratic example was 
 bearing fruit 1 
 
 Bt^t Mr. Hamley had his own trial to bear after this sudden 
 assumption of domestic power. Mrs. Hamley, who never al- 
 lowed interference in her kingdom, made his life a burden to 
 him for days and weeks. Bignold, her maid, who had to work 
 double tides dear Dora being utterly incapable of dressing 
 herself, and Patricia with the best will in the world not being 
 sufficiently deft to help in her turn made her mistress's life a 
 burden to her; and all Dora's tact and self-control, and natural 
 good nature were taxed to the utmost to keep the tiring-woman 
 tolerably civil or efficient. It was a hard time for them all, the 
 innocent as well as the guilty ; but Mr. Hamley took care not 
 to show he felt the ground-swell that he had raised, and, io
 
 A MYSTERY. 281 
 
 his malicious glee at having wounded James Garth through his 
 daughter, bore with the Lady's pin-pricks like a stoic. They 
 were cheap at the price, he thought. Perhaps if he had known 
 that Catherine Fletcher had taken Alice into her service out of 
 hand, not letting her go home even for an hour, but adopting 
 her then and there without enquiry as to why she was dis- 
 missed, and without the formality of asking for her character, 
 he would not have thought his daily annoyances so cheap. 
 There would be a breeze, as he phrased it, when he came to 
 know it. 
 
 Not that Miss Fletcher much regarded the chance or the 
 reality of a breeze, when the question was one of kindness or 
 conscience. She believed in Alice whom she had known from 
 childhood; and when the girl told her with tears that she was 
 entirely ignorant of any cause whatever why she should have 
 been dismissed, that she had done nothing, said nothing, been 
 just as she always was, and that the whole affair was a mystery 
 from beginning to end, that no shadow of reason had been as- 
 signed, and no complaint of anything wrong in the house which 
 might have been fastened on her made public, Catherine ac- 
 cepted her statement implicitly. 
 
 "Take off your bonnet," she said, " and stay here. You 
 have come at the right time. I am wanting a cook, for Jane is 
 to be married soon is only waiting indeed, till I am settled 
 with her successor. You cannot cook, you say 1 Never mind ! 
 I will teach you. Lady's maid or parlour-maid or whatever 
 you may be, Alice, you are a woman first of all, and therefore 
 ought to know how to cook," she added smiling. "A woman 
 who cannot cook is like a man who cannot handle a tool ; a 
 helpless creature with only half her faculties. There is noth- 
 ing like being able to do everything ; so now, my dear, you are 
 engaged here as cook, and you can go Tiome this evening and 
 tell your mother of the change."
 
 282 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 BIDDEN TO THE QUEST. 
 
 ILLTOWN society, such as it was, always profited by 
 the advent of the family at the Quest " the Dove- 
 dales," as certain of the upper people called them, with 
 a fine assumption of elemental equality, and a public announce- 
 ment that they considered themselves of the same flesh and 
 blood as even an earl and countess ; or " my lord and lady," 
 as others styled them, with a reverential abasement of the inner 
 man, and a humble confession that a nobleman has different 
 physiological constituents from plain John Smith, and that in 
 all the qualities which make up womankind my lady the coun- 
 tess is not the same kind of creature as Joan the drudge. Well, 
 the Dovedales being human and not silly, were neighbourly 
 people in their way, and placed a good deal of their religion in 
 the exact performance of their social duties. Hence they stir- 
 red up the society about Milltown and the adjacent parts, and 
 gave oecumenical entertainments to which all the visitable 
 people were generously invited. 
 
 This did not prevent their being the proudest people on the 
 face of the earth for their own parts. But their very pride 
 enabled them to condescend with that perfection of art which 
 conceals itself ; and as no amount of condescension could raise 
 others or lower themselves to the same level, they were always 
 gracious because never afraid. 
 
 They cave weekly dinner-parties, and had their sets rigidly 
 arranged. And among others they had one set of which the 
 Lowes and the Fletchers formed part, and in which this year, 
 for the first time, the Hamleys were invited. This was the 
 most democratic thing the Dovedales had ever done ; but even 
 they felt themselves compelled to float with the-incoming plu- 
 tocratic tide, and pay their homage to wealth when they met 
 it. And as Mr. Hamley had the reputation of being even 
 richer than he was furiously rich, some one said and as Mrs.
 
 BIDDEN TO THE QUEST. 283 
 
 Harhley at all events was a gentlewoman by birth, the demo- 
 cracy involved in the invitation was reduced to a minimum, 
 and what was left was exalted into a virtue by that sacred 
 shibboleth, " the obligations of our position." Wishing, how- 
 ever to get as much pleasure out of their virtue as might be, 
 they formally asked the two pretty girls as well as the elders, 
 and took care to have their particular Milltown set on a day 
 when only a few nobodies were staying at the Quest ; who 
 nevertheless were nobodies with names and places, and thus 
 made a show for the dazzling of the natives. Generally the 
 fine ladies staying there, not being bound to condescension by 
 any exigencies of local position, took no active part in these 
 democratic feasts of sacrifice. They looked critically at the 
 women, whom they invariably pronounced bad style ; and 
 though they might have been friendly enough over the vol-au- 
 vent and the chartreuse with the gentlemen belonging, kept 
 aloof in the drawing-room when they had to remember their 
 dignity and what was owing to themselves. But this is the 
 way with women. They will flirt to shamelessness with Dick, 
 but they will not know Mrs. Dick. " The men might pass, 
 but it is those badly-dressed women who are so dreadful ! " 
 they say among themselves when discussing their social in- 
 feriors. And they are right, according to the register of their 
 standards. 
 
 It was the fine gentlemen who did all the work \ who over- 
 looked the immorality of an exaggerated pattern or a last year's 
 mode, and brought down their finery to the lower level, like so 
 many Apollos among the goatherds, or Crishnas consorting 
 with the Gopias. Still there was fun, if of a mild kind, to be 
 had out of certain of the provincial Sampsons ; and it was antici- 
 pated to-day that Mr. Hamley would be a rich mine. For all 
 the outside varnish with which his wife had so diligently 
 sought to overlay him these fifteen years, the stuff beneath was 
 as coarse as ever ; and the varnish had the habit of not sticking, 
 but of coming off in bursts and showing the original grain as 
 clearly as if it had never been brushed on at all. The owner 
 of Abbey Holme was notorious in his own way ; but gilding 
 goes farther than varnish in these days, and even the Dove- 
 dales condoned the coarseness of the grain for the sake of the 
 gilt.
 
 284 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 It was not a pleasant surprise to either when the Lowes and 
 the Hamleys met in the drawing-room of the Quest. Hitherto 
 Colonel Lowe had regarded this as the one inviolable temple 
 which the old shoeblack of Abbey Holme would never be per- 
 mitted to penetrate. If he, as one of the leading men of the 
 district, had felt bound to recognise him, as a superior being 
 might recognise the inferior, that was a different thing from 
 being classed with him as equals together by one who was 
 superior to both bracketed as social equivalents, and fit com- 
 panions in the same harness. He felt the invitation of his 
 enemy as an insult to himself, and hoped some blessed chance 
 might occur which would give him the opportunity of putting 
 a spoke in the wheel of the Hamley car of triumph, and bring- 
 ing him to the ditch and the dust. 
 
 On his side Mr. Hamley would rather that Colonel Lowe 
 had only heard of his invitation, not been there to witness his 
 acceptance. Not that he cared much about him ; but, all 
 things considered, it was awkward, and we do not go out to 
 dine with earls and countesses to be annoyed. If we are to 
 have a helping of gingerbread, in mercy's name let us have our 
 share of gilt undefaced ! Nevertheless Mr. Hamley bore him- 
 self with commendable propriety ; and when he came up the 
 long drawing-room with his wife on his arm, and the two pretty 
 girls at his heels, and made his parabolic bows, the coolness 
 with which he ignored the Colonel and his son would have 
 done credit to the most veteran diplomatist. 
 
 Perhaps the young people suffered the most. Some weeks 
 had elapsed now since Mr. Hamley had given his ultimatum so 
 distinctly to Sydney, and husband and wife had kept apart since 
 Dora's last secret issue with Mrs. Hamley's roll of ten bright 
 shining sovereigns in her pocket. Twice had Sydney thrown 
 gravel up to the window, and hooted with such artistic perfec- 
 tion as to madden the neighbouring owls; but Dora never 
 " showed." She was getting frightened since Mr. Hamley's 
 seizure and Patricia's discoveiy. She was getting frightened, 
 too, of Sydney himself, now that he had begun to press her for 
 money ; so she did the best she could to keep him quiet and in 
 good humour by writing pretty little notes which she smuggled 
 into the post somehow, generally only after she had intrigued 
 and manoeuvred to an extent that might have saved a kingdom.
 
 BIDDEN TO THE QUEST. 285 
 
 And above all, she and Patricia- had seen Lord Merrian some 
 three or four times ; and she had taken to herself the several 
 accidents which had brought them together, and had spent 
 much time in brooding on possibilities, could the past be un- 
 done or safely denied. 
 
 The meeting, then, was by no means pleasant for any one ; 
 and it took all the tact and good breeding of the belligerents 
 not to show that Cragfoot and Abbey Holme had " cut," and 
 that the Quest was less a nest where doves were cooing than a 
 field where dogs would fight if they dared. 
 
 It would be useless to give an Homeric catalogue of the guests, 
 or to designate their places. It is enough to say that Mr. 
 Hamley was in the second place of honour by the Countess ; 
 and that Sydney had been told off to Patricia, but had on the 
 other side of him Miss Manley with her indefinite hair, her 
 weak eyes, her freckles, and her camel's lip, her long waist, 
 thin shoulders, and five thousand a year. Immediately oppo- 
 site, Lord Merrian, between Mrs. Lowe and Dora, <||presented 
 youth between duty and inclination ; but he was too well-bred 
 not to give the chief honours to the elder lady who belonged 
 to him by right ; in which he showed himself a better gentle- 
 man than Sydney Lowe, who turned his shoulder to Patricia 
 persistently and left her to Dr. Fletcher while he devoted 
 himself to Miss Manley. He and Dora were having a silent 
 duel across the table, whereby Lord Merrian and Miss Manley 
 benefited. 
 
 Never had Dora looked so pretty or behaved with such a 
 perfect imitation of real breeding. She was the belle of the 
 table, not even excepting the gracious Countess, a woman of 
 the mature siren type, who in last season's dresses, magnificent 
 if no longer fresh, looked at forty-five no more than thirty, and 
 who might well have passed for the daughter of her husband 
 and the elder sister of her son. To be sure her maid and the 
 morning saw what the world did not ; but Tongs was a discreet 
 young woman whose sympathies were with pearl-powder, and 
 the Bond Street bills were never published. 
 
 As for Patricia, hers was beauty of a kind which does not 
 harmonise so well with the state and glitter of a fashionable 
 dinner-table as with heathy moors and whitening seas. She 
 was a nymph, not a belle ; and was more at home in the wild
 
 286 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 free country than in an assemblage of jewelled dowagers whose 
 estimate of social fitness is about as sharp as the bridge over 
 which Mohammedan souls walk to Paradise Gehenna yawning 
 below. Set in the midst of the gorgeous array that surrounded 
 her, she shone conspicuous by the simplicity of her manner and 
 her dress, which last however was neither meagre nor ungrace- 
 ful. The Countess was in a millinery marvel of blue and gold ; 
 one of Worth's masterpieces in decadence, deftly caulked and 
 repaired. Dora was in white silk she looked best in white 
 cut very low on her shoulders, with lovely little outbursts of pale 
 pink in unexpected places, suggestive of a blush rose a maiden 
 blush the white petals of which close round yet just reveal its 
 tender, flushing heart. She wore a single row of large pearls 
 round her throat, and a few blush roses peeped out coquettishly 
 from among the gold of her shining hair. At Colonel Lowe's 
 her costume had suggested bridal ; here, by Lord Mercian's 
 side, it emblemised wooing. The rest of the ladies were in the 
 various shades of mauve and silver grey, pink, blue, maize and 
 peacock-green, usual to age and complexion ; M'hile Patricia was 
 in a thin black material made high to her throat, where it was 
 ruffled with white. No scoldings and no coaxings could induce 
 her to hang herself about with chains, submit to have her ears 
 pierced, pile up her head with false hair or.underlying tow, or be- 
 dizen herself in any of the ways fashionable at this time. All 
 she could be induced to do was to allow a white camelia to be 
 pinned into her rich brown hair, and to wear another on her 
 bosom. For the rest, her dress had been made by the redoubt- 
 able Biggs according to Mrs. Hamley's instructions. Hence it 
 included all the due mysteries of frills and puffs with which 
 modern millinery assails art. For these things she did not 
 care. So long as she might discard ornaments and trear her 
 gowns up to her throat, she let them manage the rest as they 
 would ; and even Aunt Hamlej had to be content with a com- 
 promise. 
 
 Perhaps the girl's instinct was right after all, thought Mrs. 
 Hamley ; for she certainly looked very distinguished, even at 
 the Quest, and a different stamp of girl from the rest. There 
 really was something wonderfully noble about her, sbje thought 
 again, watching her from the extreme end of the' table, half in 
 admiration of her appearance, half in fear of her behaviour.
 
 BIDDEN TO THE QUEST. 287 
 
 She might have spared herself her pangs, for Patricia was 
 not sufficiently at ease to -be spontaneous, so sat with a kind of 
 North American Indian's stillness and dignity of bearing which 
 to the superficial seemed the perfection of good breeding, but to 
 the observant showed her unaccustomedness to the full as much 
 as the soubrette's flush and flutter would have done. She was 
 troubled in more ways than one. She did notiike to sit by 
 Sydney Lowe, knowing all she knew ; and she did not like to 
 see Dora look at Lord Merrian as she did. She had certain 
 absurd notions about the sacredness of marriage which this kind 
 of transferred fascination did not suit ; and she felt as if she was 
 responsible for all she knew, and knowing, condemned. Then 
 she had an uneasy consciousness that certain mysteries, of which 
 she was ignorant, were connected with the arbitrary choice of 
 spoon or fork ; and that she was not so well up in the accidence 
 of the dinner-table as might have been. To be sure, she had 
 been well-drilled at Abbey Holme ; but to a girl accustomed to 
 eat hunches of bread and meat standing on the deck of a yacht, 
 with the tiller-ropes in her hand, the nice minutias of a perfectly- 
 arranged dinner-table are troublesome to learn and difficult to 
 practise. 
 
 For one part of her present discomfort however, she had but 
 little reason. Sydney, as has been said, turned his shoulder to 
 her from the beginning of the meal to the end ; and Miss Man 
 ley's pale dun face lighted up under his darker fires as it had sel- 
 dom lighted before. She took quite cheerful views of things for 
 the whole two hours the dinner lasted. In general she was of a 
 desponding turn, and thought life had but little to recommend 
 it to a wealthy, young, unmarried woman, morbidly conscious 
 of her own plainness, haunted by a dread of sharks, deficient in 
 haematine, and longing for love but fearing lovers. To be taken 
 possession of by some good, kind Christian soul, who would ad- 
 minister her fortune favourably, treat her personally with chiv- 
 alrous devotion, take interest in her mild pursuits, and walk 
 with her through life hand in hand a man to whom a little bad 
 art, a little desultory reading, and a little imperfect botany, were 
 quite sufficient recreations that was the sum of her ambition, 
 the highest point to which her visions reached. She had not 
 found such a one yet, and Sydney Lowe had not quite the out- 
 side look of her ideal ; nevertheless, he drew her magnetically,
 
 288 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 and she expanded under his attentions like a crumpled, half- 
 dead insect reviving under the sun. 
 
 But the person who was decidedly the happiest of the whole 
 assembly this day was Mr. Hamley. To be invited to the Quest 
 had been for years one of the secret points of his not too elevated 
 ambition. He remembered, as if it was only yesterday, when 
 he stood among the obsequious throng crowding the gates at 
 the home-coming of the young earl and his bride. He was out 
 of the barefooted stage then, six and twenty years ago, but he 
 was still only a clerk in the concern whereof he was so soon to 
 be sole manager and the prosperous proprietor. And he remem- 
 bered, as he sat there with my lady's gorgeous blue and gold 
 every now and then rustling against his knees, how this house 
 had been to him like a Paradise, where, could he be once ad- 
 mitted on terms of equality, he should be satisfied. It would 
 be his version of the Nunc Dimittis, and he would ask nothing 
 more from fate or fortune. Indeed, neither fate nor fortune 
 could give him anything more. Let them but grant him this 
 one crowning grace, and he would feel that he had drained the 
 golden cup to the last luscious drop, and left no flower in the 
 Elysian Fields unplucked. So he was satisfied in the present 
 as well as in the past ; unctuously, fully satisfied ; as he would 
 himself have said, replete with happiness. He knew too, that 
 his being here was disagreeable to the Cragfoot people, over 
 whom it gave him a prospective advantage when the fitting 
 time should come ; which would not be long now. He had a 
 bill against Colonel Lowe ; it had been running for many a 
 year ; but he thought he saw daylight and the payment of his 
 pound of flesh ; and he was pleased, now that the first awkward- 
 ness had worn off under the influence of the wine and his pleas- 
 ure at being seated near the Countess a higher place than the 
 Colonel had ! that they had met as equals at the Quest before 
 he had to give his enemy that lesson he had been waiting so 
 long to deliver. The possession too, of a ladylike, if aged wife, 
 and of " the prettiest girls out " as his maiden satellites, was 
 not without its value. Taken all round, his lot was a grand one 
 this night ; and he had courted Fortune with good effect. 
 
 Mr. Hamley was a self-made man who had a good deal to 
 say about native worth and all the rest of it ; but he believed 
 in a lord all the same ; and he loved him. As he sat by Lady
 
 BIDDEN TO THE QUEST. 289 
 
 Dovedale and flourished his large hands, with their large dia- 
 mond rings sparkling and flashing in the light, expanded his 
 broad chest with his elaborately-embroidered shirt front, used 
 his finest words, and showed his long white teeth, he was alto- 
 gether radiant and contented, supple and subjugated. Had 
 my lady asked him to commit any baseness in the world not 
 penal, he would have wiped his lips and done it. All the same 
 he was trying to impress her with the sense of his own worth 
 as a man and his solidity as a money-bag to edge his big 
 shoulder under the delicate fringe of her feathers, that he might 
 force her to recognise his claims to equality. 
 
 His version of the family to those of his friends who were 
 not admitted to the heaven of the Quest, was, that lords and 
 ladies were just like other men and women when you came to 
 know them. And he said it in the tone of a discoverer. A deal 
 of nonsense was talked about the aristocracy, he said, by them 
 as had never conversed with a live lord. Those as had got be- 
 hind the scenes knew better, and he for one could say there 
 was no difference between them and other people when you 
 came to know them. Take the Dovedales, now ; my lord was 
 as free and hearty as his own brother not a bit of nonsense 
 about him, and with his head screwed on the right way ; and 
 my lady was not only a splendid creature to look at, but as 
 affable and simple as a child. He could do anything with her 
 just the kind of woman he could manage, like he didn't 
 know what, and twist round his little finger. He mentioned 
 " young Merrian " with approbation, though he did not quite 
 like his manner to young ladies. Still, the lad meant well, he 
 dared say, and at the worst he was but young yet and would 
 improve. 
 
 In spite, however., of his own exceeding glory, he was not 
 over well pleased at the young lord's evident admiration of dear 
 Dora. Why could he not tackle Patricia 1 he thought, as he 
 every now and then came down from his heights and watched 
 them across the flowers and lights. If Patricia now could 
 catch Merrian, he would say grace over that meal j but Dora, 
 no, he could not part with Dora ! She was his one ewe lamb, 
 and not even for the right of calling across the street, "Hi 
 there ! Merrian my boy, how are you all 1 " could he give her 
 up. 
 
 i
 
 290 '-"WHAT WOT'LD YOU BO, LOVE?" 
 
 Had he watched a little more keenly he would have seen that, 
 though Lord Merrian flirted with Dora, he was watching 
 Patricia Patricia talking to Dr. Fletcher with something of 
 her natural animation as the dinner was drawing to a close, 
 and therefore the difficulties of manipulation were lessening, 
 while Sydney's persistent neglect reduced him to the rank of a 
 circumstance only. 
 
 Lord Merrian cared nothing for pretty Dora Drummond, but 
 Patricia had touched him deeply. She was the first woman 
 who had appealed to his nobler aspirations, his higher being 
 who had stirred his soul rather than his blood, captivated his 
 conscience and imagination rather than his vanity or his senses. 
 
 He had seen the girl many times, by that lucky kind of in 
 tentional accident which befriends young people on the look- 
 out, and though always more demonstrative to Dora, had given 
 his mind most to Patricia. And the more he studied her the 
 more she fascinated him. Nevertheless, he played with Dora ; 
 and Dora did not see through the feint. As for Patricia, she 
 understood no more of the meaning there was in the young lord's 
 eyes and tones than she understood the meaning of Hebrew. 
 She talked with him freely, and accepted him in a fraternal kind 
 of way that was delicious in its innocent unconsciousness ; but 
 the world cannot judge of what it does not see, and Mr. Ham- 
 ley judged only like the world. 
 
 Three conversations, each having an esoteric meaning deeper 
 than their words, were going on at the table at the same mo- 
 ment. Of the one, Lord Merrian, speaking quietly, took the 
 lead. 
 
 " Do you and your cousin ever ride, Miss Drummond ? I 
 have only seen you driving." 
 
 "Sometimes ; not very often ; not this winter at all, since 
 Patricia came ; but I used to ride with Mr. Hamley." 
 
 "Walk?" 
 
 " Occasionally." 
 
 " Are you a good walker 1 n 
 
 She laughed. " No." 
 
 "Is your cousin ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, magnificent 1 She can walk as far as a man. She 
 is immensely strong."
 
 BIDDEN TO THE QUEST, 591 
 
 " What a splendid place for botanizing the Long Field Lane 
 is ! " said Lord Merrian innocently. 
 
 " Yes ; but there are no flowers out yet," answered Dora, 
 just as innocently. 
 
 " Do you think not 1 I am going to look for some to-mor- 
 row," he returned in the same simply indifferent way. "Are 
 you fond of botany ? " 
 
 " Passionately," said Dora, who called all hawkvveeds little 
 dandelions, and who did not know that dead nettles do not 
 sting. 
 
 " You had better join forces with me to-morrow, you and 
 your cousin," said Lord Merrian. " We may find some good 
 specimens." 
 
 She smiled with the sweetest, most ingenuous little smile in 
 the world. No one could have suspected that it ratified an 
 assignation. 
 
 " That would be very nice," she said. 
 
 " Agreed 1 " aeked Lord Merrian. 
 
 " If you like,' answered Dora. 
 
 Opposite, Sydney, with his shoulders well turned to Patricia, 
 had brought his conversation with Miss Manley on to the 
 theme of marriage. He was angry with Dora for her looks 
 and lispings to Lord Merrian, and he had a kind of fierce de- 
 sire " to pay her out." 
 
 " I should not like to marry any one with money," he said 
 to Miss Manley, a shade of melancholy on his handsome vicious 
 face. 
 
 " No 1 " she answered, playing nervously with her bread. 
 
 At this moment she wished that she had not five thousand 
 a-year, but that it stood in Sydney Lowe's name he looking 
 at her as he looked now. 
 
 "No, indeed ! I should like the woman I married to be sure 
 of my disinterestedness. If I loved one with money I should 
 like her to put my affection to some stirring test to drop her 
 glove into the lion's den " 
 
 "Oh! like De Lorge ?" interrupted Miss Manley with ani- 
 mation. She was a sentimental young person, and fond of 
 poetry and romance. 
 
 " Yes, like De Lorge," said Sydney, casting his intellectual
 
 292 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 bread on the waters without the faintest idea where it was 
 floating. 
 
 " But perhaps she might believe in you without such a test." 
 
 Miss Mauley spoke hesitatingly. It seemed almost too bold 
 a thing to say, with her heart beating as it did against her 
 gaunt ribs, and her pale-dun cheeks flushed not becomingly. 
 
 " That could be only one who knew me well," said Sydney. 
 
 Miss Manley was silent ; but Dora read her poor, plain face 
 with tolerable accuracy, just as she herself said "If you like," 
 to Lord Merrian. 
 
 At the upper end of the table Mr. Hamley was discussing 
 politics with the Countess. 
 
 " Yes," she said, arranging her lace tucker with graceful art ; 
 " Merrian will stand for the borough at the next election. I 
 do not anticipate failure ; do you, Mr. Hamley 1" 
 
 Mr. Hamley fidgeted. It had been his secret intention to 
 contest the borough himself at the next election ; but how 
 could he say this to her ladyship at her ow$ table, when she 
 had honoured him too, as she had done ? 
 
 " Me, my lady 1 anticipate failure ! by no manner of means. . 
 I should think his lordship safe to succeed," he said with over- 
 acted heartinesss. 
 
 " He comes in on the right side," said the Countess ; " at 
 least," she continued with her sweetest smile, and she had a 
 very sweet smile, " I trust you will say so, Mr. Hamley. A 
 Liberal-Conservative, he is prepared to accept all good reforms, 
 but resist mere innovations which would only do harm ; and 
 he will keep down with a strong hand noisy agitators who 
 have no one's good at heart save their own." 
 
 These were safe platitudes. They defined nothing and 
 bound no man's conscience ; but the Countess said them with 
 unction, and as if they were a programme of the exactest 
 character. 
 
 " Bravo, my lady ! we must have you up at the hustings. 
 You would take the conceit out of us men if you were to make 
 a speech to the people just as you spoke to me now ! " cried 
 Mr. Hamley, overflowing at every pore with oily approbation. 
 
 " You flatter me,'' the lady said, smiling ; " and I am glad to 
 find you on our side. An intelligent person like yourself is a 
 host at au election, and such a gain to the right cause 1 "
 
 BIDDEN TO THE QUEST. 293 
 
 " I will do my best to secure Lord Mercian's election," said 
 Mr. Hamley proudly. "And I think I have a little influence 
 in my native town. A self-made man as I am, my lady, you 
 see I understand both sides. I know the poor because I re- 
 member them when I was one of them ; and I know the rich, 
 seeing that I have become what I call a rich man myself. I 
 shall consider it a honour to work for your ladyship's son, and 
 we'll carry him in among us, no fear." 
 
 " That is very nice of you," the Countess answered. " Do 
 you know, Mr. Hamley, I had heard that you were such a dread- 
 ful Radical I was almost afraid of you ? I thought that proba- 
 bly you would not come to the Quest at all, if we asked you ; 
 and you know we poor sinful aristocrats cannot help being born 
 with titles." 
 
 " Heaven forbid you should help it if you could ! " exclaimed 
 Mr. Hamley. " And who could have told your ladyship such an 
 infamous lie as that I was a Radical 1 I assure your ladyship I 
 yield to no man in my love for the respected institutions of our 
 venerated country, and I would not see one of them destroyed ; 
 least of all the institution which the Earl and Countess of Dove- 
 dale adorn." 
 
 " Neatly said," was his own unspoken comment. 
 
 "I am sure now, you never could have been a horrid Radical; 
 why you are quite a courtier ! " said the Countess graciously. 
 
 Mr. Hamley laughed and spread out,his feet under the itable 
 and his hands above it. 
 
 " Try me when the election comes on," he said, tossing off his 
 wine. 
 
 "I thought he would have been more difficult," was the 
 lady's comment to her husband when the dinner-party was 
 broken up. " But he was too easy. He is a dreadful creature ; 
 no bait is too transparent for him, no flattery can be too 
 coarse." 
 
 " He is a beast," was the Earl's vigorous reply. 
 
 Nevertheless these aristocratic personages did not disdain the 
 promised assistance of the beast, and thought his hand, how- 
 ever coarse and unclean, as good as any other for a political leg- 
 up to their son. 
 
 Ou his side Mr. Hamley swelled with satisfaction. He had 
 been singled out by my lady for special honour and distinction,
 
 294 
 
 WHAT worm vor no, LOVE?' 
 
 and the carriage seemed hardly large enough to contain his 
 jubilant pride. All during the ride home it was one incessant 
 round of what my lady had said, and what he had said, and how 
 she looked, and how he had tried to impress her by his looks 
 back, and what he had eaten, and the beauty of the " set out " 
 but the wine was "inferior to his own, he thought, and the 
 cheese was not ripe enough. 
 
 " We'll show them how to do it, Lady, when we have them 
 out at Abbey Holme," he said to his wife, rubbing his hands. 
 "I'm a self-made man, earned sixpence a day once upon a time 
 and lived on it ; but I'll give my lord a glass of wine lie can't 
 match for all the cobwebs in the Quest cellars." 
 
 He was quite frisky in his lumbering elephantine way, and 
 complimented his ladies enthusiastically all round. He was 
 gracious beyond measure to Patricia, to whom he said pater- 
 nally : "But you should have talked more to my young lord 
 than you did, my dear, mewiug yourself up with those old 
 Fletcher birds ! I do not approve of boldfaced jigs in young 
 ladies ; but Lord Merrian deserves a little nice attention." 
 
 He did not add that he had taken occasion to inform Lord 
 Merrian, when the ladies had withdrawn, that he intended to 
 dower his wife's niece handsomely if she married to his liking ; 
 but that he had only left his own cousin provided by will ; 
 which he thought was doing the thing as it should be done 
 the correct card outside and in!
 
 THOROUOE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVH. 
 
 THOROUGH. 
 
 "HAT a lovely afternoon ! " 
 
 It was Dora who spoke, standing by the drawing^ 
 room window after luncheon ; her enthusiastic ad- 
 miration directed to a grey sky with flying lead-coloured clouds, 
 and fitful gleams of a watery, greenish-yellow sunlight. 
 
 " A lovely day ? my dear, you are surely dreaming ! " said 
 Mrs. Hamley. " It is as cold as Christmas, and looks as stormy 
 as November." 
 
 " But it is a nice fresh day for a walk," said Dora. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley stared at the girl, who in general was content 
 to sit close " into the fire " through the winter ; and who, when 
 she went out, went out only in a close carriage, well wrapped 
 in wadded silks and dainty furs, with a hot bottle for her feet 
 and a wolf-skin for her knees, and who even then shivered and 
 said : " How cold it is ! " 
 
 " Has Patricia infected you with her]Jodd liking for snow- 
 storms and east winds ? " she asked. 
 
 " Perhaps she has ! " laughed Dora. " Evil communications, 
 you know, dear. But I cannot tell why, I have quite a longing 
 for a walk this afternoon. I heard you tell Jones you did not 
 want the carriage, else I should not have asked you. But if 
 you are not going out, and have nothing for me to do at home, 
 may we take a walk to-day ? " 
 
 u Yes, certainly, if you like, my dear," said Mrs. Hamley. 
 Yesterday's dinner at the Quest had sweetened her temper 
 divinely. " Does Patricia want to go 1 " 
 
 " Yes, that is why I have asked you," said Dora, without 
 blushing. 
 
 She and Patricia had not spoken of it. 
 
 " Well, have a nice little walk then not too far ; and come 
 home blooming," said Mrs. Hamley : " my blush-rose and my 
 I am sure I don't know what to call Patricia my hollyhock^ 
 J think, she is so tall and straight 1 "
 
 296 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " You clever dear ! " said Dora. " I never knew any one so 
 clever as you are. You are so bright and original." 
 
 Mrs. Hamley looked pleased. 
 
 " There was nothing very clever in that, pussy," she said. 
 
 " Oh yes there was ! " cried Dora. 
 
 " Ah. that's because you love me, you see, and are prejudiced 
 in my favour," said Mrs. Ilamley. 
 
 And Dora assented, and said yes, that was true for the one 
 part, but not for all ; and love or no love, she was clever and 
 original, and a darling all the same. 
 
 " Am I not good to get you this nice walk, you cross old 
 pet 1 " asked Dora, clasping her hands round the arm of Patricia 
 whom she dug out of the dark depths of the library. 
 
 " Yes, very good, Dora," said Patricia, gravely. 
 
 * ' Yes, very good, Dora,' " laughed Mr. Hamley's fair-haired 
 cousin, mimicking and exaggerating the girl's rather sorrowful 
 voice. ( " Why, where have all your smiles gone of late ? You 
 are as grave as a judge, and as cross oh ! as cross as the cats, 
 as my Irish nurse used to say." 
 
 "lam not cross, Dora." 
 
 " Yes, you are ; you are so cross you do not know how to 
 look like a Christian, not to talk of behaving like one ! Well, 
 never mind ! Let us go and get our things on now, and we 
 will talk as we go. I say, miss," she added, turning her 
 gracious head half over her shoulder, " you are quarrelling with 
 your best friend, and very ungrateful to her too, when you go 
 on like this to me ! There is no one in the house who cares so 
 much for you as I do, or who tries so hard to make your life 
 pleasant and to smooth down your thousand and one difficul- 
 ties. I am always getting into little troubles for your sake : 
 and for my reward you sulk with me as if I was a monster." 
 
 " I don't, Dora ! " cried Patricia earnestly. 
 
 Dora made a little grimace. Had Patricia been a man it 
 would have been a challenge for a kiss. As it was it only 
 made the girl take hold of her by her two shoulders, and look 
 down into her face sorrowfully and lovingly, while she said ; 
 " Oh, Dora, you might be an angel if you chose ! " 
 
 " And I am, I suppose, a " she coughed " instead ! " 
 
 Patricia smiled, and then she laughed. 
 
 " Perhaps an angel with one black feather 1 " she said j and
 
 THOROUGH. 297 
 
 Dora gave her a playful push ; whereat they both ran upstairs 
 to dress, convinced that life was very good, and that a country 
 walk on this grey March day was the most charming thing the 
 world could give. 
 
 Long Field Lane was not far from Abbey Holme; about a 
 mile perhaps ; which, though a mere " step-over " to Patricia, 
 was an expedition for Dora. Moreover, the one dressed in 
 simple single garments which allowed her to keep cool or get 
 warm as she liked ; the other in multifarious devices of fur and 
 eiderdown, quilting and wadding, which, though making a 
 pretty picture, were hindering. As the time was at hand when 
 Lord Merrian said he should be botanizing about the bare 
 hedges, Dora was anxious to make way ; yet by no means 
 anxious to keep her tryst heated or disordered. For the mat- 
 ter of that she never looked either, even when on rare occasions 
 she felt her golden feathers ruffled, and her various artistic ar- 
 rangements out of gear. And to-day the pretty pink flush on 
 her cheeks, induced by the wind and the walk, only made her 
 the lovelier. Patricia too looked beautiful. She was still sor- 
 rowful that was the set character of her face now ; but the 
 little playful brush with Dora had brightened her into glad- 
 ness ; though still and ever the secret unhappiness of her soul 
 broke through the temporary sunshine ; and hers was a face, 
 noble always, to which sorrow gives even a nobler expression. 
 
 As they turned out of the main road into the lane they saw 
 at a little distance the tall, well set-up figure of Lord Merrian 
 coming leisurely along, not botanizing. 
 
 " Dora, there is Lord Merrian how odd ! " said Patricia, 
 suspecting nothing. 
 
 " So there is ! " lisped Dora. " How odd, indeed, as you 
 say." 
 
 But Lord Merrian, who was not naturally ruse, for all he 
 made Dora Drummond his stalking-horse from behind which 
 to observe Patricia, showed so little surprise at seeing them, met 
 them indeed with such an expectant if more than gratified air, 
 that even Patricia was struck by it. Why did he seem as if he 
 knew they were coming t as if he had been waiting for them ? 
 That Dora should have made an assignation never occurred to 
 her. She would have thought such an underhand manoeuvre 
 bad even with Sydney, and knowing all she knew j but for
 
 298 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LO\ T E ? " 
 
 Dora to plot and arrange to meet Lord Merrian t Dora ! 
 Had she suspected this she would probably have abjured her 
 society for ever, and have made herself miserable ; between 
 hating the sin of the friend she loved, and lamenting her ab- 
 sence, torturing herself far more than the cause or the person 
 merited. As it was, she simply wondered at that quiet air of 
 expectancy in the young lord, and thought that perhaps he had 
 seen them in some miraculous manner from a distance, and so 
 knew that he should meet them. 
 
 " You were, right, Miss Drummond ; there are no flowers," 
 he said, after the fir&t greetings. 
 
 " I thought none were out yet," she answered. 
 
 " Only two," said Lord Merriau. 
 
 And Dora laughed, while Patricia looked up and down the 
 hedge and into Lord Merrian's hands to see which two he 
 meant. 
 
 That inquiring look delighted him. Dora caught it too, and 
 thought " how dense " and took honour to herself for her 
 superior quickness ; but Lord Merrian translated it " how- 
 innocent ; how perfect in its sweet unconsciousness ; " and 
 " how knowing ; how far too clever ! " 
 
 Nevertheless he smiled at Dora, a little too familiarly per- 
 haps for perfect breeding ; and then he looked at Patricia, and 
 .spoke to her with a certain respect and homage of tone and 
 manner very noticeable in its difference. 
 
 Dora would rather have had the familiarity. She did not 
 runderstand the other, and called it coolness ; but she thought 
 Lord Merrian full of friendliness and admiration to herself, and 
 she was glad that she had showed so well. She scarcely knew 
 what she was proposing to herself in all this. She knew that 
 she could not marry if even she was asked ; but it pleased her 
 to sail in troubled waters, managing her little craft with such 
 consummate grace and skill that no one should suspect her seas 
 were not halcyon. She had always been an adept at untying 
 knots, and her mechanical aptitude emblemised her mental 
 cleverness. 
 
 After a while the ball seemed to pass somehow from Dora's 
 hand to-day. In the most natural manner possible Lord Mer- 
 rian brought the talk round from conventional inanities to 
 Deeper things from literary small talk to moral principles,
 
 THOROUGH. 299 
 
 from newspaper politics to historic meanings. And here Dora 
 was distanced. All she knew of life was its material well-be- 
 ing, its dainty food, its soft attire, the position you held in 
 your society, the dinners you gave, the carriages you kopt. 
 She thought it was as well to keep out of doing wrong if you 
 could, and if you could not, then to be careful not to be found 
 out. She liked peace, and she supposed truth the right thing 
 to cultivate when possible. But as it was not possible for the 
 majority, she thought the art of telling lies with coolness and 
 cleverness the most important of all to learn betimes. She 
 blamed those who made the lies necessary, not those who did 
 not dare to tell the truth ; and when she had come to this, and 
 going to church on Sundays, and speaking softly to her in- 
 feriors, and laying herself out for the perpetual propitiation of 
 the authorities, she had her code complete, and held that those 
 who wanted more were inconveniently earnest or stupidly 
 intense. 
 
 But where Dora was lost Patricia found herself. Also the 
 thoroughness which Lord Merrian lacked she supplied. Lord 
 Merrian was a man with thoughts higher and nobler than his 
 life. He yearned for the millennium, and was dissatisfied with 
 the present worship of false gods ; but he was not one who 
 would go forward to chain the devil, though he faintly cheered 
 on those who did ; and while he vilified the ritual, he never- 
 theless carried his daily sacrifices to Mammon with the rest, 
 contenting himself with lamentation that the world was so bad, 
 and that so few were found to make it better. All this was 
 very fine to listen to, but very unsatisfactory to the man's own 
 conscience and to the more earnest of his friends. He felt the 
 weakness of his position, and wished it were otherwise ; but the 
 world had him fast in its golden fetters, and he was not strong 
 enough to break them at least not alone. 
 
 Patricia's nature was fashioned on a different plan. With 
 her to believe and to be were identical. She could not lament 
 a wrong and give in to it. The tongue to speak and the hand 
 to do must be in harmony ; and no golden fetters that the 
 world could forge would be found strong enough to bind her 
 back from the upward path, however difficult, if once her face 
 was set that way arid she knew it as her duty. So that when 
 Lord Merrian, speaking especially to her, began some of his
 
 300 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 well-expressed and well-worn jeremiads on the injustice of 
 society and the sorrows of the poor, Patricia turned to him with 
 her strong practical impulse. 
 
 " But Lord Merrian," she said, her hright eyes lifted to his 
 face, "you have power to prevent all this misery and injustice 
 on your own estates. If you like you can make your tenants 
 prosperous and happy ; it all depends on your own will, and 
 how you choose to employ your money ; is it not so 1 But 
 you will, when you come to reign at the Quest ; will you not ? " 
 
 " Ah, that is just the difficulty ! One person can do so 
 little," he said. " And besides, we must not interfere with the 
 natural self-adjustment of the labour market," he added, adopt- 
 ing the current phraseology to excuse the half-heartedness 
 whence it takes its rise. " Say that my father, or I, or both, 
 agreed to lower the rents, give higher wages and better dwell- 
 ings than our neighbours than indeed we find regulated by 
 the condition of supply and demand we should be doing an 
 injustice to those of our brother landowners who would not, 
 or let us say could not, do the same as ourselves, and we should 
 be opening a door to all sorts of encroachments from our 
 tenants." 
 
 " I cannot see the first, and I do not believe the last," 
 returned Patricia. " If you choose to do what is right, that 
 cannot be wrong to any others. They may not like it because 
 of the contrast ; but surely that does not signify ! And I can- 
 not believe that the poor would ask for what they ought not to 
 have, because they had given to them what they ought." 
 
 " I know all this sounds the right thing in theory, and it is 
 what one's own heart dictates ; but the difficulty is in reducing 
 one's aspirations to practice," said Lord Merrian. 
 
 " No, not so far as your own tenants are concerned," said un- 
 compromising Patricia. " Look at Miss Fletcher's houses ! 
 There you see it put into practice ; and what a pleasure it is to 
 go and see the people there ! " 
 
 " But do you hear what the other Milltown landowners say 
 of the Fletchers 1 " asked Lord Merrian. 
 
 Patricia looked up. " No ; and I should not care whatever 
 I heard," she answered calmly. " Do we not know that the 
 world always speaks against those who do the real right ? We 
 know for ourselves, at least I do, how good the Fletchers are
 
 THOROUGH. 301 
 
 they are like angels and what can it matter what others 
 say 1" 
 
 " You are an able advocate, Miss Kemball," Lord Merrian 
 answered. 
 
 He did not know whether he was quite pleased to hear her 
 praise of the Fletchers ; but as she looked very beautiful when 
 she spoke, and her eyes were honest and tender with her 
 thoughts, and looked into him as if he was the cause and not 
 merely the object, he made the best of her enthusiasm, and 
 accepted it transferred. 
 
 " Am I ? " A smile broke over her face. " I should think I 
 was, if I could make any impression on you, Lord Merrian." 
 
 " You have," he said in a lowered tone ; " a very deep im- 
 pression." 
 
 " And your tenants will benefit? You will do as the 
 Fletchers have done, and make them happy by better treat- 
 ment than your neighbours give ? You will, Lord Merrian 1 " 
 
 " Ah ! " he said, and he sighed as he spoke ; and sighed 
 sincerely, believing in the phantoms that he conjured up for 
 himself ; " If only I could ! You do not know how we are 
 fettered ! Bailiffs and stewards, and leases and conditions, and 
 above all, that self-adjustment of the labour market with which 
 it is more than doubtful whether we ought to tamper one's 
 will is so strong, but one's power so weak ! " 
 
 Patricia shook her head. 
 
 " No," she said earnestly. " No one's power is small it is 
 the will to use it that is wanting. Men in your position, Lord 
 Merrian, can surely do as they like. No good can be done 
 without trying now can it 1 and does not trying always cost 
 trouble? and doing what is right when the world does what is 
 wrong why ! it must be hard and painful ! But if one will 
 not, and another will not, how can reforms come ? " 
 
 " Yet it is not always possible, even with pain and trouble, 
 to do the right which one would," he answered. 
 
 She looked at him, and tears seemed near her eyes. 
 
 " Do you know what you remind me of ? " she asked. 
 
 " No ; what ? " he answered, looking down into her face. 
 
 " That young man in the Bible who went away sorrowful 
 because he had large possessions," said Patricia. 
 
 There was a pause. Her words had struck a little rudely on
 
 302 WHAT WOULD VOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 the secret sore of her companion's Conscience, and he winced 
 under them. 
 
 " Perhaps you are right," he said at length, and it cost him 
 an effort to accept the blow so magnanimously ; " but I think 
 I know how my halting will could be strengthened." He said 
 this almost as if to himself. " But am I really such a half-hearted, 
 halting sinner in your eyes, Miss Kemball ? " he asked appeal} 
 ingly. 
 
 " I was wrong perhaps to say what I did," stammered 
 Patricia. 
 
 Truth was all very well, but even truth need not be offensive, 
 And had she not been a trifle priggish ? 
 
 " I must say, dear, I think you are very bold," put in Dora, 
 who had sauntered a little way ahead, knowing that her dark 
 blue dress and chinchilla trimmings made a pretty bit for the 
 foreground, and that the wind had blown a tiny lock of gold 
 as a point of colour against the grey fur. She had been listen- 
 ing to this dull talk between the two, and wondering greatly in' 
 her own mind at Lord Merrian's odd choice of subject and 
 Patricia's unabashed speech. 
 
 " No, you are quite right," Lord Merrian said ingenuously. 
 " We may not like it, but a true, brave word (Joes every one 
 good. The precious balms, you know," smiling to Patricia. 
 
 " You are very good to take me so kindly," she said, looking 
 down. 
 
 " That, however, is not answering my question ; do you 
 think me so halting and half-hearted as you seemed to say ] " 
 
 She did not like being pressed, but she was too brave 
 to deny the truth when put to it. 
 
 " I think you have less* determination to do the right thing 
 than you have clearness in seeing the wrong," she answered. 
 
 " Which comes to the same thing," said Lord Merrian. 
 
 She blushed. 
 
 " I suppose so," she replied. " But indeed I ought not to 
 speak as I do ; " she then said, with an eager, apologetic tone. 
 "I sometimes feel as if I did know something of right and wrong, 
 and then again as if I was the merest child, ignorant of every- 
 thing." 
 
 " Not of everything," he said, in a soft voice. " Do you 
 never think you have a mission yourself f "
 
 THOROUGH. 3u3 
 
 " I ? a mission ? no, indeed !" she cried. * On the contrary, 
 I feel a mere useless encumberer of the ground, an excrescence 
 belonging to no one, and of no use anywhere." 
 
 Lord Merrian flushed like a girl. In general his pale, 
 finely-formed face showed but few changes of colour or expres- 
 sion. It was always a slightly sad face ; statuesque, and cast 
 in a tragic mould of the first degree ; and he cultivated still- 
 ness ; but now it became rudely coloured, while every part of 
 it seemed to speak. 
 
 " You will find your mission some day perhaps," he said in 
 a low voice. " The mission of strengthening a weak will and 
 making a half-hearted life a whole one. Found any flowera 
 yet, Miss Drummond 1 " 
 
 " No," said Dora, turning round with a pretty smile. " Have 
 you ? " 
 
 By this time they had wandered as far as the gate leading 
 into the farm enclosure. A stout lady in black was standing 
 by the furze stack talking to Mrs. Garth. 
 
 " Oh, there is Miss Fletcher ! " cried Patricia. 
 
 Without thinking of what she was doing if she had thought 
 perhaps she would have done it all the same she started off 
 running. 
 
 " My own dear ? " she said, putting her arms round the 
 kind, broad, handsome woman. " How glad I am to see you ! " 
 
 " Why, where have you come from, child ? " said Miss 
 Fletcher laughing. 
 
 " Lord Merrian and Dora," answered Patricia, looking 
 backwasds. 
 
 Lord Merrian and Dora, yes ; but some one else too ; for 
 riding down the lane, examining again, as so often before, the 
 fields which were so soon to be his own, Mr. Hamley suddenly 
 appeared on the scene and joined the two just as they were 
 passing through the gate. 
 
 " Heyday ! " he said jocularly ; but he was not quite pleased 
 at what he saw ; " are the skies a-going to fall ? Miss Drum- 
 mond out on her ten toes so far from home, and you too, my 
 lord morning, my lord padding the hoof ? Have you got 
 any of the carriages hereabouts, Dora ! " 
 
 " No," said Dora, with a graceful little greeting by which 
 she managed to convey to Mr. Hamley her exceeding pleasure
 
 304 " ^HAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 at this chance meeting, and yet not cast in her lot with him 
 visibly to Lord Merrian, who, she was aware, detested him. 
 " We came out for a walk, Patricia and I, and met Lord Mer- 
 rian in the lane." 
 
 " I am sure it is very good of his lordship to escort two such 
 troublesome young ladies," said Mr. Hamley, still jocular. 
 " Did you find them very bad to manage, my lord? I'll go 
 bail you did for one ! but this little mouse, she gives no 
 trouble to any one. That is why she is so useful at home, and 
 why we are never going to part with her, hey Dora 1 " 
 
 " I have found both charming," Lord Merrian answered, 
 coldly. 
 
 " Ah I and there's Miss Fletcher I see talking to Goody 
 Garth. Why, all Milltown has made its comether at Long 
 Field 1 I'll ride in and pay my compliments. Coming, my 
 lord ? after your lordship." 
 
 Mr. Hamley would have done better to Lave stayed outside 
 the farm gate, for Mrs. Garth was just then in a burning state 
 of indignation against him and his, which Catherine Fletcher 
 was doing her best to soothe. She had known of her daughter's 
 going suddenly from Abbey Holme to the Hollies, but not 
 until last evening of the reason why the exchange had been 
 made. She had thought the ladies and Alice had cooked it up 
 among them, she said, partly to oblige . Miss Fletcher, and 
 partly because she supposed Alice had been bitten with a sudden 
 mania for the spit and the stewpan ; and it was only last even- 
 ing that she had got the whole story out of the girl, founded 
 on her unsuspicious question : " Well Alice, and when did you 
 see the old lady and Miss Drummond last t " 
 
 She was furious ; as perhaps was only natural A mother 
 who had brought up her daughter in the way of honesty and 
 virtue, and whose temper was as hot as her pride was strong, 
 was not likely to accept very quietly a method of dismissal 
 which of itself was as damaging as any accusation. Indeed, 
 more damaging ; inasmuch as it was an intangible injury one 
 that could not be met, and consequently one for which there 
 was no redress and against it no protection. She talked of 
 taking the law of Mr. Hamley ; of suing him for libel and 
 damages ; of making him prove his words ; arid all tin- rest of 
 it. She talked passionately, unreasonably, wildly, like an angry
 
 THOROUGH. 305 
 
 woman and an insulted mother ; and Miss Fletcher's wiser 
 words at first fell unheeded. She was burning with too fierce 
 a fire of wrath to be able to receive them. By degrees how- 
 ever, the clearer brain took the customary power over the 
 excited one, and Mrs. Garth's passion began to moderate. She 
 was quite calm now, discussing her barn-door stock by the 
 furze stack, when Patricia .ran in, and immediately after Dora 
 Drummond and the young lord, followed by Mr. Hamley on 
 his prancing bay. 
 
 And then the old fire burst forth again, and the outraged 
 maternal instinct woke up to renewed fury. There was a 
 stormy scene. Mrs. Garth lost her temper, avd said a few 
 hard truths crudely ; Mr. Hamley kept his dignity. The one 
 demanded to know the reason why her daughter had been 
 dismissed so summarily ; the other refused to tell her. 
 
 " I have the right to know ! " said Mrs. Garth. 
 
 " And I have the right to refuse," replied Mr. Hamley. 
 
 " Is there no law for the poor against the rich no justice in 
 heaven or earth ? " cried the mother, flinging up her hands 
 passionately. 
 
 Catherine Fletcher touched her on the shoulder. 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Garth," she said kindly, " you have no such 
 heavy cause of complaint on the whole ! Be reasonable. Your 
 daughter passed at once from Abbey Holme to our house, and 
 I do not think any one would consider that a degradation. She 
 has not suffered, and will not, if you do not yourself noise the 
 story abroad. Then indeed she will." 
 
 "Oh! passed to you, did she?" said Mr. Hamley. "I 
 never heard of that. Pray, does Mrs. Hamley know 1 " 
 
 " Not that I am aware of," said Catherine quietly. 
 
 " You engaged her without a character 1 " 
 
 " Surely ! 1 knew her too well to need one." 
 
 "Peculiar conduct!" sneered Mr. Hamley. "Consistent 
 with your school, I suppose?" 
 
 " With the school of justice, and doing as I would be dona 
 by, Mr. Hamley ? I hope so," was her answer. 
 
 " I appeal to you two young ladies to you Miss Drummond 
 had you any complaint against my girl 1 " cried Mrs. Garth 
 excitedly. 
 
 Dora lifted up her blue eye* 
 T
 
 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " I know nothing about it," she said quietly. 
 
 "Yet she was your maid, miss!" 
 
 " But Mr. and Mrs. Hamley are the master and mistress," 
 said dear Dora with the sweetest little air of loving submission 
 imaginable. " It is not my place to inquire into the reason of 
 anything they choose to do ; still less to object. They sent 
 Alice away, and as they did not tell me why, it would have 
 been very unbecoming in me to ask." 
 
 "That is right," said Mr. Hamley approvingly. " If all 
 ladies were as amenable as Miss Drummond, things would 
 progress a vast sight better than they do now." 
 
 " Did you know nothing, miss 1 " Mrs. Garth continued, 
 speaking to Patricia. 
 
 "No, nothing," she answered with girlish tenderness. "I 
 only saw Alice in trouble, and I told her to go down to the 
 Hollies." 
 
 " You told her, did you ? " repeated Mr. Hamley fiercely* 
 Then he looked at Lord Merrian and checked himself. " You 
 did right, my dear," he said with an effort. He thought it 
 would never do to humiliate his wife's niece in the sight of the 
 future Earl of Dovedale ; " but you should have consulted 
 your aunt before you took such a step. Good impulses, I make 
 no doubt ; but guod impulses have to be ridden with the curb, 
 not given their head, what say you, my lord ? " 
 
 "I do not understand what all this discussion is about," 
 Lord Merrian replied, and looked at Patricia. 
 
 " I will tell you when we go away," said Dora confidentially, 
 as if she was speaking to her chinchilla muff. " And do let us 
 go, Lord Merrian! this rnad woman is dreadful!" 
 
 Doubtless she was. A farm-house Constance, with her cotton 
 gown bearing the stain of poverty, the soil of service, is of no 
 interest to refined folk who yet would probably weep quite 
 genuine tears at the sorrows of a stage Constance simulating 
 royal grief cleverly. Royal grief is a respectable kind of passion, 
 and royal madness has its especial power of pathos ; but a rude 
 and homely woman of. the people pouring out her sorrows and 
 her wrongs in unclassic English refined folk see no pathoa 
 there, and only think "how dreadful !" 
 
 " I am in a maze," said Lord Merrian ; " pray enlighten, 
 me." And he and Dora moved towards the gate.
 
 THOROUGH. 307 
 
 Then the disintegration of the close-set group began. Mr. 
 Hamley rode after Dora, not caring to let her linger alone with 
 my lord, saying as his parting shot : " I am sorry to see you 
 in such a taking Mrs. Garth, at what was a duty a disagreeable 
 but meritorious duty on my part." Miss Fletcher shaking 
 hands and giving a few last words of comfort; and Patricia 
 shaking hands too, and adding her fresh young sympathy to 
 her friend's. 
 
 " Don't grieve so much, dear Mrs. Garth," she said kirxlly. 
 " No one thinks a word about Alice to her disfavour no one 
 can ; and she is better off where she is ! " 
 
 Which Mrs Garth in her own heart knew to be true. 
 
 Lord Merrian watched Patricia's leave-taking with the 
 farmer's wife. He felt a certjfin odd distaste mingled ^ith 
 admiration for her friendly action. 
 
 " She is gloriously thorough," he said to himself ; "bu f I 
 wonder if I should like it in my wife ! Surely things car be 
 carried too far, and we ought to draw the line somewb ^re. 
 Ladies and common women are not equals!" 
 
 When they reached home Patricia had more to bear f~om 
 her aunt than Mr. Hamley's mild expostulation at *.he 
 farm. She was really as angry as Mrs. Garth had been ; hut 
 she expressed herself in better English, and she did *u>t 
 gesticulate so much. 
 
 " That girl is always doing something to irritate and up-et 
 me !" she said to Dora peevishly. "Just now, when I was so 
 well and cheerful, to be annoyed like this ! " 
 
 And Dora purred a soothing assent ; by no means seeking to 
 defend or justify Patricia, by which she would have merely 
 made Mrs. Hamley angrier than before, to the inclusion of b rt r- 
 self in the roll-call of the disgraced ; but when the fitting 
 moment came she led the conversation on to Lord Merrian ; 
 telling Mrs. Hamley of the attention he had paid Patricia fo- 
 day ; and how she was sure he liked her ; and, with a snv'e 
 dimpling her fair face and her blue eyes watching keenJ-r, 
 what a delightful thing it would be if he really did take a fan^y 
 to her and make her Lady Merrian ! 
 
 The ruse succeeded ; but only partially ; for even whiS 
 Dora spoke Mrs. Hamley caught herself wondering why 
 Patricia had shown such friendliness for Alice, who was n<H
 
 308 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOV E ? " 
 
 her maid i Why indeed ? Had she compunctions 1 It seemed 
 like it ; and the thought shook the poor lady, heart and brain. 
 She went on to reflect however, that, whether Alice was innocent 
 or not, Catherine Fletcher had acted with an unpardonable 
 want of ladylike feeling in taking a servant discharged by her 
 without a character ; and " I will tell her of it," said Mrs. 
 Hamloy, stiffening her back to the brunt. She was of the 
 nature of those who must have a scapegoat when things go 
 wrong ; and it not being quite politic, with the Quest in view, 
 to snub Patricia over much, she turned against Catherine 
 Fletcher, who could bear it. 
 
 So far Dora dealt kindly by her friend, and stood between 
 her and her aunt's displeasure. She was an artful little woman 
 and abominably untruthful ; but she was kind-hearted, and 
 always ready to scheme and manoeuvre to save Patricia as well 
 as herself ; provided she did not burn her own fingers in the 
 fire, or suffer in any way by her advocacy.
 
 PASSING IT ON 809 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIIL 
 
 PASSING IT ON. 
 
 tHE wolves were pressing round Cragfoot, and Sydney's 
 more expensive enjoyments were fain to be flung one 
 after the other as successive sacrifices wherewith to stave 
 off their worst attacks. When debts of honour losses on the 
 turf and the like swallowed up all the available cash, and 
 money was wanting for interest and house-bills, it was only to 
 be expected that the younger man should have to share in the 
 general discomfort, and be asked to contribute his tale of sur- 
 renders with the rest. But this was just what he would not do. 
 He was one of those men to whom happiness consists in personal 
 pleasure, and without money he saw no good in living. 
 
 Life at this time was thorny for Sydney Lowe. He was as 
 passionately in love with DoYa as he could be with any one ; 
 but he was most of all in love with himself. And of the two 
 he found it harder to give up his own pleasure than her. Since 
 things had taken their present untoward turn he bitterly 
 repented his rash step, and longed, as the weak and wilful do, 
 to be able to unravel what he had so thoughtlessly knit up, to 
 destroy what he had so firmly built. It was to no good, how- 
 ever, that he fumed and fretted. Dora was his wife by the 
 laws of both Church and State ; and neither his father's ruin 
 nor Mr. Hamley's close-fistedness could alter that fact, undo 
 that tie. 
 
 And now, to make matters worse, there had sprung up a 
 certain coolness between himself and his wife which robbed 
 him of all the good of his folly. It made his heart beat with an 
 odd exultant pride when he reflected that this pretty creature, 
 the pride of Mr. Hamley's life, watched and guarded and 
 desired and coveted at all points, had laughed with him at the 
 close defence-work set about her, and that he had carried her 
 oft' out of their hands and from under their very eyes. But 
 over this exultant pride of late had come a kind of ponscioua-
 
 310 
 
 ness that something was amiss, that Dora was not as she had 
 been. 
 
 There had been no meeting between them since the dinner 
 party at the Quest, and already the lengthening days had 
 brightened into spring. There were no means of communicat- 
 ing with her against her will ; and he could not make their 
 relations public, even for the gain of making them open and 
 continuous, at the cost of ruin ; ^which would be the price he 
 should have to pay. She was growing mysterious too ; hint- 
 ing at better arrangements if they had never met at St. 
 Pancras, and writing melancholy little notes, which distracted 
 him on more accounts than one, and set him thinking of many 
 things. ' He had not the slightest suspicion that she was 
 alluding to herself in these potential better arrangements, had 
 they never repeated those fatal words behind the caryatides. 
 He was too young to be doubtful of his own ability to keep 
 the woman he had won ; that kind of mistrust comes only with 
 experience ; and though jealous he had no self-diffidence. No, 
 she meant for him, not for herself; of that he was quite sure ; 
 and, judging of her feeling by his own knowledge, she meant 
 Julia Mauley. 
 
 Julia Manley! Bad as the exchange would be, woman for 
 flroman, bow heartily he wished, now that his father's impecu- 
 niosity was pressing personally on him, that he could make it ' 
 how sorrowfully he was obliged to 'confess that, as Colonel 
 Lowe had said, money does indeed make the homeliest visage 
 beautiful, while the want of it leaves Venus herself undesirable ! 
 
 Still, with all these drawbacks, he wanted to see Dora again. 
 He yearned for the old fascination of her words and ways and 
 looks, and wandered about the Abbey Holme grounds at mid- 
 night, to the imminent risk of being taking for a burglar by the 
 gardeners when they went to look after their stoves, or for a 
 poacher by the keepers watching the preserves. 
 
 But more than for the pleasure of looking into her pretty 
 eyes and hearing her sweet voice, being coaxed while scolded 
 and petted while rebuked, he longed to see her for a graver 
 reason. He had been scheming something in that busy brain 
 of liis, and he had decided that Dora should help him. So it 
 came about that she too, wishing to keep him in good humour, 
 fearing laat he might divine her thoughts respecting Lord Mer-
 
 PASSING IT ON. 311 
 
 rian, met him as usual one night in the garden ; and heard his 
 scheme. 
 
 They were sitting in the little summer-house where they had 
 so often sat before, he holding her in his arms lovingly while 
 he whispered his grand idea into her ear. Apparently it was 
 one that distressed her greatly ; for she shrunk and cried, and 
 said she could not and she would not, and now tried indignant 
 refusal, now pathetic appeal, and now coaxing persuasion, to 
 make him alter his determination of implicating her. 
 
 Sydney was immovable. To all her beseechings he answered 
 only in the one strain : " You are so clever, you will not be 
 found out ; and even if you are you will not be punished. 
 Hold your tongue and do as I tell you, and no harm can come 
 to you." 
 
 " You are the most cruel wretch I ever saw," at last said 
 Dora with energy ; " and I hate you ! " 
 
 Sydney took her by the wrists, twisted her round, and looked 
 into her face. 
 
 "If I thought that I would throw everything to the winds 
 to morrow ! " he cried fiercely. " You are my wife, and your 
 place is with me ; and if I have to commit a crime, I would 
 rather kill you than bo put in prison for bigamy ! " 
 
 " You will be put in prison for forgery, which is worse," said 
 Dora. 
 
 " If you betray me, yes," he answered, looking down into 
 her face intently. " If you do betray me however, remember 
 you will go to prison too as an accomplice, and have the plea- 
 sant name of a forger's wife pinned to your back for life." 
 
 " Sydney, I believe you are a fiend," said Dora passionately. 
 " You frighten me sometimes, I declare you do, with your vio- 
 lence and wickedness." 
 
 " Come Dody, this is nonsense," said Sydney, suddenly 
 changing his rough manner to one of caressing softness. " Our 
 lives are one now, and we have to stand or fall together. Money 
 I must have and mean to have ; and you can get it for me, 
 and shall get it for me, else you will repent it," he added, the 
 fierce old intonation ringing in his words ; for his moods were 
 as changeable as a sick child's, and he was not to be counted 
 on for stability in anything save self-indulgence. 
 
 " I perfectly dread the sound of your voice," Dora said pee-
 
 312 " WHAT WOULD TOD DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 vishly. " You are getting associated ii, my mind with every- 
 thing that is painful and horrid. At one time it was the joy 
 of my life, my only happiness, to meet you like this ; now we 
 never see each other but you quarrel with me, or ask me to do 
 something disgraceful for you. First I have to get you ten 
 pounds, and poor Alice is turned away on suspicion of having 
 taken it, and I am sure Patricia is suspected too ; and now I 
 have to get you money on a forged cheque 1 Where will you 
 end, Sydney ? " 
 
 " On the gallows perhaps," said Sydney lightly. 
 
 " There is many a true word spoken in jest ; and if you go 
 on like this you will end on the gallows," said Dora viciously. 
 
 There was no good to be had, however, in quarrelling. 
 Sydney was determined ; and he had more resolution of the 
 active kind than Dora. In a real contest between them she 
 would inevitably give way ; and before they parted she had 
 given way, accepting after a short pause of rapid consideration, 
 a piece of paper whereon was written an order to the local 
 banker to pay to bearer the sum of 100 signed "Jabez 
 Burnley." 
 
 " Mind Dora, gold ! " were Sydney's last words. " Gold 
 eannot be traced ; notes can." 
 
 The next day was a fine, bright spring day, but Mrs. Hamley 
 kept the house. She had not been well for these last few 
 weeks, and the spring seemed to find out her weak places. 
 She looked more pinched and worn than usual, and she was in 
 a depressed state generally. But she would not have a doctor, 
 and was annoyed if any one seemed to think she was failing. 
 She complained a good deal to Dora of her disappointment in 
 Patricia, and to Patricia herself had always a headache. Dora 
 was, of course, sympathetic and soothing, and agreed with her 
 in her low estimate of " poor Patricia," and said she was cer- 
 tainly an infliction ; but nevertheless she had always her little 
 word of kindness to add as the sweetener, and more than once 
 brought Mrs. Hamley into a favourable state of mind out oi 
 one cankered and unfavourable. 
 
 As Mrs. Hamley was not going to drive to-day, Dora pro- 
 posed to take Patricia in the pony -carriage which Mr. Hamley 
 had given to her on her last birthday ; a pretty little blue Vic- 
 toria, with two mouse-coloured ponies with blue and silver hare
 
 PASSING IT ON. 313 
 
 
 
 ness, and a pyramid of bells topped with blue tufts hung about 
 the neck-gear. 
 
 For their personal attendant they had the page boy, at Dora's 
 request. She told Mrs. Hamley she did not like to take one of 
 the men out of the house while she was in it it scarcely looked 
 respectful. " Dora has such nice feeling ! " said the lady, re- 
 lating the anecdote to her husband. And, having permission 
 to take Collins, she put a handful of apples into her beadwork 
 carriage-basket for him. She wanted to talk to Patricia, and 
 she knew that if the lad was eating apples at the back he could 
 not hear what was being said in low voices in the front. She 
 could scarcely have bribed a man so innocently ; so perhaps her 
 nice feelings, on which Mrs. Hamley had expatiated, would 
 have left a rather different residuum had they been analysed. 
 
 To the boy of course the condescension, kindness, thought- 
 fulness of the gift were immeasurable ; and from that day for- 
 ward he was her devoted adherent who would have gone to the 
 stake for her had there been the need. If the true motive of 
 all ladies' smiles could be made known, how many loyal knights 
 would be left ? 
 
 As they got into the little pony-carriage, with the butler and 
 footmen at the door, and Mrs. Hamley looking at them from 
 the side-window of the ante-room, it was almost like a royal 
 departure ; and when they drove off down the avenue even the 
 dull old butler thought they made a pretty turn out for 
 young ladies not of the real aristocracy and Mrs. Hamley was 
 quite proud of them. Both the girls looked back and waved 
 their hands to her as they drove away ; but it was Dpra who 
 waved hers first. Simply because the other did not know that 
 her aunt was there. But the little incident made the lady 
 sigh, and wish that her niece had been as satisfactory as her 
 husband's cousin. 
 
 Then they drove through the gates and into the road, and 
 presently Dora, turning round, said graciously to the boy ; 
 " Here, Collins, here are some apples for you. I like to please 
 children, and Collins is really only a child ! " she added apolo- 
 getically to Patricia, who needed no apology for an action to 
 her mind full of grace and sweetest womanliness. 
 
 It was but a little action ; bu it set the measure in the girl's 
 mind, and disposed her to more than her usual admiration for
 
 314 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 her graceful, fascinating friend the model ever held before her 
 as the supreme excellence to resemble which she ought to de- 
 vote all her energies. 
 
 Presently Dora, looking into her face, said tenderly : " I 
 don't think you are quite well dear, are you ? " 
 
 " Yes, quite ! " answered Patricia ; " what makes you think 
 I am not ? " 
 
 " You are so much more depressed than you used to be. 
 You seem to be so unhappy ! " 
 
 " So I am," said Patricia, tears coming up into her eyes. " I 
 am more unhappy than at one time I thought it was possible 
 for me to be. When I was quite young 1 felt as if I could not 
 be unhappy, as if I must conquer circumstances ! " 
 
 " But what is there to make you so unhappy 1 " asked Dora. 
 
 " Knowing what I do, how can I be anything else 1 " she 
 answered. 
 
 " About me ? " 
 
 " Why, yes." 
 
 "Why should you let that disturb you so much 1 " said Dora 
 quietly. " You do not suffer by it if I am in a scrape." 
 
 " Is that your idea of life, Dora ? Do you think one does 
 not suffer when a person one loves is in trouble ] " asked Patri- 
 cia quickly. " It is worse than if it was oneself." 
 
 Dora made her favourite little grimace. . " I don't think so ! " 
 she said. " And it is all very well for a person who is not im- 
 plicated to say so, but we who have to bear the reality know 
 how light the mere sympathetic reflection is ! " 
 
 " Ah, Dora, it is not light ! " Patricia cried, a world of pathos 
 in her voice. 
 
 " I think it is," persisted the other. " Look here now, Pa- 
 tricia. You say you love me, and feel for me, and all that, 
 and make yourself miserable on my account ; but just see what 
 you do you make things ten times worse for me by fretting 
 and looking as if you were always sulky, or so miserable no 
 one knows what to do with you. I have to be brave and 
 cheerful, I who really suffer : and you who have nothing to do 
 with it, have given way, I must say, both childishly and sel- 
 fishly." 
 
 " I do not want to be either. Dora ; but indeed, the know- 
 ledge that you are living in all this deception has nearly brokeij 
 my heart," said Patricia as humbly as earnestly.
 
 PASSING IT ON. 315 
 
 " Patricia, be reasonable ;" remonstrated Dora. "What earthly 
 good do you get by breaking your heart, as you call it, except 
 spoiling your complexion and making everybody talk and sus- 
 pect something 1 Grant that I have been wrong, foolish, stupid 
 anything you like, what is done cannot be undone ; and my 
 only wisdom now is to make the best of it." 
 
 " Making the best of it would be to tell," said Patricia. 
 
 " Well, let us see what that would do for me," said Dora, 
 quite calmly. " I should, first of all, be turned out of the 
 house ; the Hamley's would not give me sixpence, perhaps not my 
 clothes ; Sydney would be discarded by his father, who is more- 
 over ruined ; he would have no money, as he knows nothing 
 by way of a profession by which to earn a loaf of bread. Now, 
 what could we do ? " 
 
 " You would not starve, Dora ; you can teach. If I were -in 
 your place, I would do anything rather than live in falsehood." 
 
 " I cannot teach ; I have never taught ; I have no connec- 
 tion ; and pupils do not come for the mere saying you are ready 
 to have them." 
 
 " But other people get on by their own exertions ; why not 
 you 1 " said Patricia. 
 
 " I should hate teaching, for I hate children," said Dora. 
 
 " Dora, don't ! " cried Patricia, who loved them. 
 
 " Well, dear, I will tell stories and make up a face as girls 
 do, if you like that better, and say that I adore the dear little 
 wretches," said Dora coolly. " I thought you liked truth." 
 
 " So I do ; but I like the truth to be good and beautiful," 
 Patricia answered. 
 
 " Ah,, you see I am neither moral nor sentimental, Patricia ! 
 I know nothing of beautiful truth or ugly truth. I know- 
 only of an inconvenient discovery, ana the wisdom of keeping 
 one's own counsel." 
 
 " Well, we are different ! " sighed Patricia. " I could not 
 act as you are acting now to save my life. And I feel that I 
 am sinning against my own conscience to consent to it, even as 
 I do." 
 
 Dora smiled to herself. She thought the sin against her 
 conscience and her consent to evil doing would be greater be- 
 fore this drive was over. 
 
 " Your conscience ! " she said, flicking her ponies with an
 
 316 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 off-hand air. " I have always noticed that when people waat 
 to do anything particularly bad, like betrayal or selfishness, 
 they talk of their conscience. I don't pretend to be very truth- 
 ful or very conscientious, or very anything that is grand ; but 
 I think I would stand by a friend, such as I am and have been from 
 the first to you ask Mrs. Hamley if I am or not ! to the very 
 death. And if I knew of her being In such a dreadful scrape 
 as I am, I would not talk of my conscience, or doubt whether 
 I ought to betray her or not, but I would help her to the very 
 utmost of my power." 
 
 " You know I would not betray you, Dora, and you know 
 that I cannot help you," said Patricia. 
 
 " I am by no means sure of the first, and you can do the 
 last," Dora answered. " You can help me very much even 
 to-day if you chose." 
 
 Patricia shrunk back. 
 
 I? no! "she said. 
 
 " Oh, don't be alarmed," laughed Dora, with a certain mock- 
 ery in her manner. " I am not going to ask you to hurt that 
 precious conscience of yours ! I only want a cheque changed, 
 that is all" 
 
 " I will do that, of course, Dora. But why cannot you do 
 it yourself? " 
 
 " You inquisitive little puss ! " she laughed. " Well, I will 
 tell you why. I have some money in the bank, and I want to 
 draw it out for poor Syd. He is so dreadfully hard up, poor 
 boy, and I want to help him. You know he is my husband, 
 Patricia, and it is my duty," with a sorrowfully subdued and 
 loyal air. 
 
 " And you do not want the Hamleys to know that you have 
 taken it out ? " 
 
 " Of course not not for worlds. I should be ruined indeed 
 if they knew. Syd will put it back again some day, and it will 
 never be found out if you take the cheque. Of course it 
 would if I did." 
 
 The mysteries of banking were by no means clear to Pa- 
 tricia ; and she accepted Dora's reasoning. 
 
 "I am sorry you have to give the rnuney," she said. 
 
 " But it is my duty, is it not ? " said Dora sweetly. 
 
 Patricia hesitated for a moment. 
 
 "Yes," she then said ; "it i$."
 
 PASSING IT ON. 317 
 
 Dora gave a great sigh of relief; then she smiled pleasantly. 
 
 " I must say this, Patricia, you are a most good-natured girl," 
 she said looking into her face prettily. " I am going to turn 
 down the London road now, and we will pass through Mill- 
 town on our way home. I will stop at Martin's ; I want some 
 muslin ; and you can walk into the bank and get the cheque 
 changed. It's for a hundred pounds, and you must bring it all 
 in gold." 
 
 " Very well," said Patricia. 
 
 " And you will be sure, dear, not to tell 1 n 
 
 " The Hamleys ? Of course not." 
 
 " Not if they ask you ? Suppose they get any suspicion of 
 it, you will never betray me ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," was Patricia's answer. 
 
 " You swear ] " with strange earnestness. 
 
 " Yes. I swear." 
 
 " Join hands on it ! " said Dora. 
 
 And Patricia took the little well-gloved hand in hers and 
 pressed it. 
 
 " Y6u may trust me, dear," she said. " When I promise, I 
 hope I always perform." 
 
 After this the conversation turned, and Dora seemed as if 
 she could not show enough tenderness and sweetness to her 
 friend. She was everything that was most charming playful, 
 grave, affectionate, earnest ; full of the freshest sympathy for 
 . Patricia's troubles with her aunt, and eager to point out where and 
 how she could mend her position ; she spoke respectfully of the 
 Fletchers, with whom there had been a break on account of 
 Alice Garth, much to Patricia's pain ; with a matronly apprecia- 
 tion of Lord Merrian ; tenderly of the poor ; with wonder and 
 regret at the whole mystery of Alice Garth. There was not 
 the slightest fibre in the swansdown nature of her that curled 
 the wrong way, and the remainder of the drive was simply 
 what she intended it to be, enchantment. She was a Circe in 
 her way ; and blinded if she did not brutalize her lovers. 
 
 But to do her justice, all the time she felt the deepest hatred 
 for Sydney, who was forcing her to this sorry part, and a kind 
 of reverential pity for the credulous affection of the girl on 
 whose loyalty she was trading ; while disagreeable gushes of 
 self-accusation forced themselves in between her shallower
 
 318 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 thoughts like bitter waters welling up through surface pools. 
 But self- accusation was not much in her line, and as a rule she 
 was more inclined to throw the blame of her own wrong-doing 
 on others than accept it for herself. 
 
 At last they reached Milltown, and Dora drew up at 
 Martin's. Collins jumped out to the pomes' heads. 
 
 "Will you go now, dear?" Dora said to Patricia, put- 
 ting a folded piece of paper into her hand. 
 
 " Yes ; what am 1 to do 1 " 
 
 "Just hand that across the counter as it is. You need not 
 open it. The man will say, ' How will you have it ? ' and you 
 will answer, ' Gold.' Don't be persuaded into notes. It must 
 be gold." 
 
 " Very well," said Patricia and went off on her errand. 
 
 In due time she returned. She had a small canvas bag in 
 her hand, containing a hundred sovereigns, bright and fresh. 
 Never was a felony committed with so much ease, so little 
 doubt, so little delay. Sydney had reason to be proud of his 
 wife's ability, and Dora of her own power. Poor Patricia was 
 the sacrifice on to whom they bound the burden of the sin ; a 
 burden she bore so innocently, with such simple unconsciousness 
 of its true meaning, such a faithful desire only to do what was 
 right and kind and loving. But so it ever is in this strange 
 life of ours. We are punished more for our virtues than our 
 vices ; and those of us who succeed best in 'their generation are 
 for the most part those who sin beyond the average, but with 
 more than the average craft and cleverness. 
 
 The next month passed like wedding-bells. Everybody was 
 in good humour, consequently every one was delightful. Syd- 
 ney, freed from his immediate embarrassments and set afloat 
 for a time, was again dear Dora's devoted lover, and their rela- 
 tions were of the most harmonious kind ; for she too, disillu- 
 sioned as to the possibility of the great prize had things been 
 different, thought Sydney Lowe better than no one, and made 
 herself happy in her consciousness of power and a secret. 
 
 Lord Merrian came frequently to Abbey Holme ; but he let 
 it be seen he came for Patricia, and no one could doubt that he 
 was " paying her attention. ); Apparently Lord and Lady 
 Dovedale were not averse to their son's choice, for the two 
 girls were as often at the Quest as Lord Merrian was at Abbey
 
 PASSING IT ON. 319 
 
 Holme ; and the countess took especial notice of Miss Kemball, 
 and sought to train and draw her out in every possible direc- 
 tion. She was not the girl she would have chosen ; but she 
 knew her son, and knowing him adopted the silken and not 
 the driving rein, taking care never to oppose him when she 
 wished to guide If Patricia Kemball was richly dowered she 
 would put up with her unformed habits for a while, trusting 
 to her own future power of perfect modelling. So she culti- 
 vated Lord Merrian's Joan of Arc assiduously, and by the look 
 of things she was pleased at the result of her studies. On her 
 side, though Patricia never liked the countess as she liked Miss 
 Fletcher, and never got to feel really at home with her, she 
 was too affectionate and responsive not to open her heart when 
 so graciously entreated ; and as she suspected nothing beyond 
 what she saw, and showed that she did not, she was at least 
 unconscious, if not always unembarrassed. 
 
 The Hamleys watched this growing affair with intense satis- 
 faction. As Lady Merrian, Patricia's greatest faults would 
 become shining virtues, and every defect would be a splendid 
 jewel. Her aunt would feel then that she had been bountifully 
 repaid for all her care, her endeavours, her annoyances, her 
 headaches ; and Mr. Hamley would bow down to her as one of 
 the divinities by whom he had been borne upward. He 
 was prepared to give her a really magnificent portion ; one 
 quite up to the mark set by the earl and countess ; and he 
 would never grudge the outlay, he said. It would be money 
 well laid out, he felt, and he did not care how soon he had 
 to write the cheque. 
 
 So the sunny days of May came in with hope and serenity 
 all round ; save perhaps to Patricia herself. She did not feel 
 so joyous as the rest, and she missed the Fletchers. For them, 
 they looked on a little sadly ; but they did not discuss the pre- 
 sent state of affairs even between themselves. All that Henry 
 Fletcher said when he had seen the young people together was : 
 " I question if our Patricia will be perfectly happy in that 
 sphere ; and I doubt if Lord Merrian is strong or true enough 
 *br her 1"
 
 320 "WHAT WOULt) YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTEH XXIX. 
 
 THE ORDEAL. 
 
 E. HAMLEY'S making-up day with the bank came 
 round, and his books and cheques were sent up to 
 Abbey Holme as usual. He sat in his private study; 
 not the larger library where Patricia used to go for big books 
 and brain-bewilderment, and where he was wont to receive his 
 more special visitors when he wished to impress them as a man 
 of culture as well as of substance ; but in the smaller " Growl- 
 ery," as he used to call it, which the upholsterer and the 
 gilder had made as fine and shining as a newly-minted sovereign. 
 He himself, clad in his gorgeous Oriental morning gown, clean, 
 perfumed, his hair well oiled, his whiskers curled and lustrous, 
 every point of him prosperous and every line of him magnifi- 
 cent, was a fit inmate of that gorgeous, glittering, florid little 
 room. As he sat in his big arm-chair and balanced his counter- 
 foils and his cheques, his payings-in and his drawings-out with 
 method and satisfaction, he looked the type, of vulgar affluence, 
 of sensual, social contentment. There did not seem to be a 
 crook in his lot anywhere ; not one invading fly to disturb the 
 sweetness of his fat and fragrant ointment. 
 
 Cheque by cheque, and voucher by voucher, scrip and warrant, 
 dividend and rent, all was exact and all satisfactory ; when 
 suddenly he gave a surprised snort and jumped with an un- 
 dignified kind of bound in his chair. A cheque which was 
 none of his, but which was signed with such a perfect imitation 
 of his handwriting that he could scarcely disbelieve its evidence, 
 came out from among the rest, and for a moment staggered 
 him. " Pay self or bearer one hundred pounds ;" signed Jabea 
 Hamley, and dated about three weeks ago. He might look at 
 it till his eyes ached, he could make no more nor less of it than 
 a cheque with his name to it, and a hundred pounds written off 
 his balance. It was a forgery, but so neatly done that he had 
 to be quite sure of his unvarying exactness not to be forced to 
 accept it as his own. ,
 
 THE ORDEAL. 321 
 
 After examining it all round, balancing his figures again and 
 again, hunting through and through his books and papers with 
 no better result than at first, he wrote a hurried note to Mr. 
 Wells, the bank manager, and sent off a man on horseback to 
 Milltown at hot speed ; which note had the effect of bringing 
 up that gentleman, also at hot speed, with a scared and troubled 
 face. 
 
 " Here's a mystery somewheres, Wells," said Mr. Hamley, 
 flicking the cheque with his forefinger. " Here's a bit of paper 
 that I never put pen to that I'll swear ! " 
 
 " Surely, sir, surely ! " said Mr. Wells in- a deprecating tone. 
 
 He thought the prosperous brewer a little out in his objection. 
 
 * I suppose 1 may be allowed to recognise my own hand- 
 writing ! " said Mr. Hamley haughtily. 
 
 " Certainly, sir; but when a member of your family presents 
 a cheque signed or apparently signed, let us say, for argument's 
 sake by yourself, aud asks for it specially in gold, one is not 
 likely to suspect any mistake ; especially with such a signa- 
 ture," Mr. Wells replied ; " I happened to be in the bank at 
 the time, and I remember the circumstance perfectly well." 
 
 He took up several of the cheques, one after the other, and 
 compared them with the one which Mr. Hamley disowned. Not 
 the cleverest expert could have told the difference between this 
 and those acknowledged. The method of filling in was precisely 
 the same, and the " Jabez Hamley " was fac-simile. Like 
 many men of his kind, Mr. Hamley had never been able to 
 conquer satisfactorily the mysteries of caligraphy. He spoke 
 pompously, but he wrote meanly ; an uneducated, rude sort of 
 hand, both pinched and illegible. His signature, however, was 
 his strong point. With infinite pains he had elaborated a 
 special cipher which he considered inimitable. The way in 
 which the H joined on to the z was to his mind a marvel of 
 ingenuity ; but because it was so ingenious it was also the 
 easiest thing in the world to copy. One "Jabez Hamley" 
 was just like another "Jabez Hamley;" and the flourish at 
 the end, with the loops intersected at precisely the same point, 
 and the three spots in the middle, was always done as exactly 
 as if it had been lithographed. It was a~ signature no more 
 difficult to imitate than so much print, and so far was charao
 
 322 " WHAT WOULD YOU DC), LOVE?" 
 
 teristic of the ordinary knave, inasmuch as it imagined itself 
 inscrutable and was patent. 
 
 " Which member of my family ? " asked Mr. Hamley in a 
 tone of surprise. " Oblige me with the name." 
 
 " One of your young ladies," said Mr. Wells. " And I do 
 not know her name." 
 
 Mr. Hamley's florid face grew several shades paler. For a 
 moment lie did not answer. Was he on the track of a mystery ? 
 beginning with that roll of ten sovereigns, had it gone on to 
 this daring deed of iniquity ? 
 
 As Dora was out of the question, was it possible that 
 Patricia Kemball, with all her directness and apparent honesty, 
 was in reality only a thief ? a forger ? and if so, why t and 
 under whose instruction ? " She was far too big a fool," he 
 said to himself, " to do this thing alone. Who, then, was her 
 confederate ? Who egged her on ? Who backed her up V 
 
 Mr. Hamley was not a cruel man, save to his early patrons 
 or fore-time tyrants, and he was truly sorry for Patricia, sup- 
 posing it to be she ; for his wife, too ; but he was a magistrate 
 as well as a host and a husband, and he had his duty to society 
 to perform like a man and a citizen. And he had also his duty 
 to perform to Dora. He thought of all this rapidly. He must 
 have it made quite clear to Mr. Wells that the member of his 
 family, the young lady of whom he spoke, was not his cousin, 
 Dora Drummond. It was bad enough as it was, whoever it 
 might be. Had it been indeed the other] Even to Mr. 
 Hamley, prosperous, affluent, well oiled, and trimly brushed, 
 life would have lost its savour had Dora Drummond proved a 
 failure. No, he must have no suspicion rest on her pure head. 
 It was a sad alternative, truly ; and he pitied that misguided 
 young person, Patricia, profoundly, supposing she was to be 
 convicted ; but justice compelled him. 
 
 He rang the bell. 
 
 " My compliments to the two young ladies, and beg them to 
 step this way," said Mr. Hamley to the servant. 
 
 In a few moments the girls appeared, both looking as was 
 their wont, save that Dora was just a little paler than usual. 
 Graceful, self-possessed, and yet not in the least assertive, she 
 came in with her pretty bending action and sweet amiability 
 of face, followed by Patricia, tall and upright, with her large
 
 TflE ORDEAt*. 323 
 
 inquiring eyes and child-like unconsciousness, looking half- 
 amused and half-amazed as to what Mr Hamley could possibly 
 want with them. 
 
 " Be seated, young ladies," said Mr. Hamley, waving his 
 hand magisterially. 
 
 The girls, greatly wondering, sat down at least, Patricia , 
 wondered and Dora feigned that she did. In reality she knew 
 the whole thing by heart, and was aware that Patricia's ordeal, 
 and in consequence her own fate, were both at hand. One 
 glance at the bank manager, at the open cheque-book, and the 
 cancelled cheques at tJiat cheque lying uppermost, more than 
 all told her the name of the mystery, and why they had been 
 summoned. But she took her chair peacefully, and sat with 
 meek attention on her face, waiting.* 
 
 "Which young lady ?" said Mr. Hamley, not without a secret 
 hope that there had been a mistake, and that the person who 
 presented the cheque might be found to have been only a 
 servant in her holiday clothes ; and, of course, the ruin of only 
 a servant was but a trivial affair. 
 
 " That one," answered Mr. Wells, pointing to Patricia. 
 
 Patricia looked frankly into his face ; Dora by a side glance 
 seeing what she did, turned her pretty head also, and looked up 
 like Patricia at the manager. 
 
 " You are sure 1 " demanded Mr. Hamley ; and, in spite of 
 himself, his voice trembled. 
 
 He did not like Patricia over-well ; but to find her guilty OA 
 forgery was rather different from finding her too full of energy, 
 more direct than he considered lady-like, and not half as pliant 
 as she should be. 
 
 " Ask the young lady herself," said Mr. Wells. 
 
 " Did you perform this action, Miss Kemball ? " asked Mr. 
 Hamley. 
 
 He called her by her surname purposely, that Dora's might 
 be held clear. 
 
 " Perform what ? " asked Patricia. 
 
 At that moment the door opened and Mrs. Hamley came in. 
 She had no idea of a conclave in which she had not her place ; 
 and where the girls were she felt she had a right to be also. 
 
 " Come, this is too strong ! Did you present this cheque to 
 the bank on the third 1 " said Mr. Hamley.
 
 324 "WHAT wori.n von DO, LOVE?" 
 
 "I took a cheque to the bank, certainly ; but I forget if it 
 was on the third?" Said Patricia; "and I do net know if it 
 was that one or not." 
 
 " Then you did not do this yourself? " Mr. Hamley demanded. 
 
 "Do what ? I do not understand," she answered. 
 
 " I will be explicit. Did you or did you not sign a cheque 
 with my name a cheque for one hundred pounds, made pay- 
 able to self or bearer, signed Jabez Hamley in imitation of my 
 usual signature ? that is, did you, or did you not commit this 
 forgery ? " 
 
 Patricia started to her feet. 
 
 " Commit a forgery 1 No. Are you mad, Mr. Hamley !" 
 she cried. 
 
 " Are you ? " he answered significantly. 
 
 She turned towards her aunt, and holding out one hand 
 cried, " Aunt ! " Her voice and attitude meant, " Protect me 
 from this man's insults ! " 
 
 Mrs. Hamley came forward and laid her hand on the girl's 
 shoulder. 
 
 " The child is incapable of such an action," she said. 
 
 Patricia threw up her head with its old free gesture and 
 kissed the long, lean hand fervently. 
 
 " Thank you aunty," she said, and looked at Dora. 
 
 Dora was looking down, and keeping silence. 
 
 "So I think, Lady," said Mr. Hamley, with riot ungenerous 
 promptness ; " your niece does not possess enough knowledge 
 of business to enable her to have played this trick ; but she 
 may be the tool of some one else, and I believe she is. I want 
 to get to the bottom of this, and to know whose hands she is 
 in. The person who gave her that cheque must have known 
 it was a forgery." 
 
 Slowly the truth began to dawn upon Patricia. 
 
 "You say that cheque is a forgery?" she asked, turning her 
 eyes down to the table and speaking to Mr. Hamley without 
 looking at him. 
 
 " It is so ; a forgery," he answered. 
 
 " And any one but myself would have understood this ? " 
 
 " Any one," said Mr. Hamley, emphatically. " I should say 
 that no one well out of the egg-shell but Miss Kemball would 
 not have discovered that fact."
 
 THE ORDEAL. 820 
 
 Again she looked at Dora. Her face had a kind of agony in 
 it, but it was firm too. Dora was gazing tenderly at Mrs. Ham- 
 ley, her soft voice murmuring sympathetically, " Poor dear, 
 how I pity you ! " 
 
 " But you presented this cheque 1 " continued Mr. Hamley, 
 after a short pause. " So much you acknowledge t " 
 
 Patricia's eyes went back from Dora to the table. 
 
 " Yes I gave that cheque, or one like it ; what I gave I never 
 saw," she said. 
 
 " You got the money for it, however ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I got a hundred pounds in gold for it." She spoke 
 slowly and distinctly. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley withdrew her hand. 
 
 " You say you did not see the cheque t " continued Mr. 
 Hamley in the manner of a cross-examination. 
 
 " No ; it was folded up when I had it, and I gave it to the 
 man folded." 
 
 " And you received your hundred pounds in gold !* 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What has become of that sum of money 1 a considerable 
 sum of money for a young lady to lift 1 " 
 
 " I cannot say." 
 
 " Did you make use of it ? " 
 
 " No ! " she said indignantly. " Do you think it was for my- 
 self?" 
 
 " Then who had it? who benefited by it?" 
 
 " I will not tell you, Mr. Hamley," she answered. 
 
 Dora wiped her short upper lip daintily with her embroidered 
 handkerchief, and drew a little sobbing kind of breath. 
 
 " Did you hand over the money to the person who gave you 
 the cheque ?" 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 " And you had no idea of its being a forgery ?" asked Mr. 
 Wells. 
 
 " A forgery ! I ? No, indeed ; quite the contrary," said 
 Patricia, with energy. " It was given me by a person who 
 said the money was their own ;" with intentional bad grammar : 
 her own would have betrayed Dora, his would have been a 
 falsehood.
 
 326 "WHAT WOITLD YOU DO. LOVE?" 
 
 " But how came you to be asked to do such a thing ? Good 
 heavens ! who could have asked you 1 " cried Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 " That 1 shall not tell," answered the girl. " I promised to 
 keep the secret, and I shall not break my word." 
 
 " I think." said Mr. Hamley with unpleasant but yet kindly 
 pomposity, "if I could convince you, my dear young lady, of 
 the injury this piece of paper has done me, you would consider' 
 it your duty to deliver up to me the name of the delinquent." 
 
 " I am very sorry, Mr. Hamley," Patricia said, not in any 
 manner defiantly, humbly indeed and sorrowfully, yet quite 
 steadily ; " but I promised that I would not." 
 
 " And, if failing your confession which I have the right to 
 demand, I assume that you are cleverer than your words that 
 you have concocted this story to account for the forgery and 
 that you yourself have forged my name, trusting to my respect 
 for my wife, your aunt, not to prosecute you what then 1 " 
 asked the master of Abbey Holme loftily. 
 
 " I shall have to bear the burden," said Patricia in a low 
 voice. " I did not know that I was doing wrong or being 
 mixed up in anything disgraceful. Still, as I promised, I must 
 keep my word whatever happens to me." 
 
 " It all seems to me like a dream ! " said Mrs. Hamley. " A 
 forged cheque presented by Patricia, and she owning to it, with 
 some wild story of its having been given . to her by some one, 
 and she promising not to tell. It is like a nightmare ! " 
 The poor lady put her hand to her forehead. " Can you under- 
 stand it, Dora ? " 
 
 u No, dear," said Dora softly.' 
 
 " You cannot guess at anything to help us ? " 
 
 There was a tone of anguish in the thin voice that was infi- 
 nitely tragical. 
 
 " No, dear," again answered Dora. 
 
 " Let us refer back and see what you were engaged in that 
 day," said Sir. Hamley, turning over the pages of a diary. 
 " Where were you Miss Kemball, may I ask, on the third of 
 last month 1 " 
 
 " Driving with Dora," answered Patricia. 
 
 All eyes turned on Dora, who met the glances innocently ; 
 then turned her face towards Patricia, as if listening like the 
 rest to a story she did not understand.
 
 THE ORDEAL. 327 
 
 " Driving with Dora," repeated Mr. Hamley. " Good, to 
 commence with. Driving with Dora ! where 1 " 
 
 " To Green Lanes first, and then to Milltown," answered 
 Patricia. 
 
 " And at Milltown what may have occurred, pray ? " 
 
 " I left Dora at Martin's, and went on to the Bank for the 
 money," said Patricia quite steadily. 
 
 " Dora ! do help in this horrible mystery ! " said Mrs. Ham- 
 My angrily. 
 
 Dora raised her eyes and looked at Patricia. 
 
 " I cannot," she said, " All I know is that Patricia left me 
 at Martin's, and went up the street by herself. When I asked 
 her where she had been, she sai'd to the Bank to change a 
 cheque. Of course I made no further inquiries. I could have 
 no kind of idea that any thing was wrong in the affair, and to 
 say the truth I never gave it another thought till this moment." 
 
 During this speech Patricia stood like a statue. 
 
 She neither moved nor spoke, neither looked nor sighed. 
 She might have been struck to stone for the absolute rigidity 
 of her face and bearing. The whole thing suddenly became 
 clear to her, and she understood for the first time the real na- 
 ture of the girl she had loved and pitied and put before her as 
 a model to be imitated if at such a humble distance, yet 
 always loyally. 
 
 " But you said you did not know anything about it," said 
 Mrs. Hamley irritably to Dora. 
 
 " Nor do I, dear. I know no more than I have said," she 
 answered deprecatingly. 
 
 " You should have told us that Patricia went to the Bank," 
 said Mrs. Hamley. " A girl of her age and ignorance should 
 not be suffered to do such things unknown." 
 
 " Perhaps I ought I know I ought." said Dora coming 
 close to Mrs. Hamley and speaking with caressing humility; 
 " but I thought nothing of the fact at the time, and never 
 once remembered it since. Believe me, dear, the whole thing 
 is as dark to me as to you. I knew and suspected nothing ! " 
 
 As Dora came nearer to Mrs. Hamley, Patricia drew away. 
 She felt it as an infinite dishonour to seem to canvass for her 
 aunt's good favour while Dora, that false friend, was by her side. 
 She was not willing to put herself in any kind of competition
 
 328 '-WHAT WOITLD vor no, LOVE?" 
 
 t 
 
 with her ; rather, with the passionate self-immolation of the 
 young, she felt, let them suspect her of a crime and praise 
 Dora for her truth and goodness ; the consciousness of her in- 
 nocence was enough for her, let what would else afflict her ! 
 
 " Well ! I do not see that I can do more in this affair," then 
 said Mr. Hamley turning to Mr. Wells. " You will please to 
 forget this household scene, this little domestic drama as I call 
 it ; and observe, Wells ! I accept the cheque. There is a 
 mystery about it ; but hang me if I can find it out ! and I am 
 not a going to prosecute Mrs. Hamley's niece to get hold of it. 
 Keep a close tongue in your head of what you have seen if you 
 please, and now, good morning." 
 
 So Mr. Wells bowed himself out, and went from the presence 
 of the great man burdened with a secret of bigger dimensions 
 than he had ever had before. 
 
 And when he had gone Patricia's worst time began. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley, whose family pride and natural sense of wo- 
 manly justice were no longer called into action by the presence 
 of a stranger, took her in hand, and dealt with her as severely 
 as she had hitherto been lenient. She seemed to forget that she 
 had just now claimed for her innocence against her husband, 
 and turning round on her, told her that she had disgraced her- 
 self, her father's name, and her uncle's memory ; in any circum- 
 stance, and put it as mildly as she would, she was still a 
 disgrace to the family and a shame to herself. It was her 
 duty to tell. If she had riot really done this thing herself, and 
 had been t as she pretended, the dupe of some one else older 
 and more designing, it was still her duty to tell. In keeping 
 it secret she was making herself a party to the fraud, and was 
 in point of fact as bad as the person, whoever it might be, who 
 initiated the crime. 
 
 Mr. Hamley followed on his wife's track by talking largely 
 of his " ward's" if she would allow him to give her this appel- 
 lation at all events his " guest's" duty to the state as a citizen ; 
 of the obedience due by all citizens to the law whereof he was 
 an unworthy dispenser ; and of the consideration due to 
 himself personally, as her host and the husband of her aunt. 
 
 To all of which Patricia listened respectfully enough ; her 
 dilated eyes filling now and then with tears which never over- 
 flowed the lids, wondering when her lecture was to be over ;
 
 THE ORDEAL. 329 
 
 wondering at Dora's infamy and shame in suffering her to bear 
 all this without coming forward to defend and exonerate her ; 
 but, while her intelligence was broad enough to take it all in 
 from their point of view, and to see herself as they must see 
 her, clinging to her own higher sense of truth and loyalty, and 
 preferring to bear all rather than betray her trust. Since Dora 
 had spoken as she had done, disclaiming while seeming to ex- 
 plain so far as she could the mystery she herself had created, 
 Patricia had not once looked at her, nor had Dora looked at her ; 
 so far the latter knew the grace of shame ; atid she gave but 
 one unvarying answer to all their threats, their entreaties 
 to tell " I cannot," or " I must not." 
 
 Then said Aunt Hamley in a rage, 
 
 " I tell you what it is, Patricia you did it yourself. It is 
 absurd to think that a girl of your age could have been made 
 such a mere catspaw as you pretend. You knew what you were 
 about, well enough. You forged your uncle's name, or you knew 
 that your accomplice had done so. You stole that ten pounds 
 of mine in the beginning ; and now you have gone on in your 
 wickedness till you have done this awful thing." 
 
 " Aunt, don't ! don't ! " cried Patricia covering her face. 
 Then holding out her hands beseechingly, " Say you don't believe 
 this, aunt ! Say it, aunt dear aunt ! for my uncle's sake, for 
 my father's sake ! " 
 
 " Confess, Patricia ! If you are in earnest, confess ! " said 
 Aunt Hamley's harsh metallic voice. 
 
 " I cannot! T must not, aunt ! Oh, believe in me ! indeed I 
 am innocent I Dora ! tell them I am innocent ! " 
 
 " How can I tell them that ? " said Dora with sincere regret 
 yes, her regret was sincere enough ; but she spoke with mean- 
 ing all the same, to recall Patricia to herself and the remembrance 
 of her promise. " I believe that you are innocent ; in my own 
 mind I feel sure ; but how can I tell them positively 1 " 
 
 " Oh, it is hard ! " murmured Patricia, as with a heavy sob 
 she turned away to the window, where she stood looking 
 vacantly at the sunshine lying on the grass and budding trees, 
 thinking how green everything looked, and what a lovely day 
 it was out of doors, and oh ! if she could only escape into the 
 freedom and peace of nature once more ! 
 
 They left her to her own meditations for a moment, and then
 
 330 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE? " 
 
 Mr. Hamley went up to her and took her by the hands in a 
 friendly way enough. 
 
 " Better-minded, young lady ? will you inform us now, and 
 confess all you know about it 1 " he said. 
 
 She looked into his face pathetically. 
 
 " I must not ! " she sobbed, and hid her face on his shoulder. 
 
 " Dear ! dear ! " said Mr. Hamley, whom the action concili- 
 ated, patting her head. " I would give that hundred pounds 
 twice over that this had never happened ! Poor young lady ! 
 How came you to' be such a fool, my dear ? I am sorry for 
 you, by George I am ! but you are too big a fol to live ; you 
 positively are ! " 
 
 And then he put her away. He did not like to pet her 
 before his wife, and when she had been such a wicked girl too ; 
 nor to let Dora feel, as he phrased it, " as if her nose was put 
 out of joint." So he lifted up the miserable face and dropped 
 the poor nervous hands ; but he sighed and was very sorry, and 
 somewhat ashamed. 
 
 " Go to your room, Patricia," then said Mrs. Hamley severely. 
 " Let me never see your face again till you have confessed, either 
 that you have committed this sin yourself, or who is your ac- 
 complice. Go, I say. Dora, leave her alone ; she is not fit for 
 you to touch." 
 
 For Dora, weeping real tears, frightened and remorseful, but 
 not brave enough to own to the truth, had made as if she would 
 have gone nearer to her, caressingly 
 
 Patricia shrank from her visibly. 
 
 " Yes, leave me alone," she said in an altered voice. 
 
 Her aunt and Mr. Hamley took the change of manner and 
 accent to mean so far a confession of guilt in that she felt the 
 stainless purity of Dora as her punishment ; and it thrilled the 
 poor lady like an electric shock. But Dora, flushing to her 
 temples, drew back her eyes bent on the ground. She made 
 a beautiful picture at the moment of innocence blushing yet 
 pitiful for guilt ; while Patricia was that guilt, conscious of its 
 own enormity and respecting innocence. So it seemed to the 
 two looking on ; and not an angel from heaven could just then 
 have shown them the reverse of the shield. 
 
 "Good-bye, aunt; you have misjudged me. I am innocent 
 of all knowledge, all offence in this/' said Patricia, preparing to 
 leave the room.
 
 THE ORDEAL. 331 
 
 " Leave me silently," said Aunt Hamley, rising and waving 
 her away. " Do not dare to come into my presence again till 
 you are invited ; and consider yourself regarded as a thief do" 
 you hear the word ? as a thief, Patricia, till you have confessed 
 and made restitution." 
 
 Without another word Patricia went ; and when she had 
 gone Mrs. Hamley's courage of anger gave way, and she fell 
 fainting into a chair. 
 
 " That cursed girl ! she will be the death of her aunt ! n said 
 Mr. Hamley savagely. 
 
 Providence might take the old lady in an orderly manner as 
 soon as it liked, but he did not want her to die in a sudden 
 muddled-up way like this. When she went he hoped to have 
 all things done respectably 'and with befitting state a doctor 
 in daily attendance and a physician for special consultation ; a 
 nurse sent from the best training school in London, and daily 
 inquiries at the house by all the neighbourhood ; Mrs. Hamley's 
 health the talk of the place, the topic of the hour. To go off 
 in, a fit of rage because her niece had forged his name to a 
 cheque was by no means the kind of exit he had at heart for 
 his aged lady- wife ; wherefore he said again " That cursed girl !" 
 and Dora was too much scared to put in a word of conciliation. 
 Then he looked at Dora and almost whispered, his voice was so 
 soft : " Oh, you best and dearest ! what should we do without 
 you!' 
 
 " Dear thing !" was Dora's oft-repeated formula as she leant 
 over Mrs. Hamley crying. 
 
 " Don't cry, Dora," said Mr. Hamley ; but he himself was 
 moved. He had felt deeply the whole affair, and hated the 
 part he felt compelled to play ; but he was curiously torn 
 between anger and pity, and scarcely seemed to know his own 
 mind somehow. " She is not worth one of those pretty tears of 
 yours ; you are too good to pity her, and yet heaven forgive 
 me for my weakness ! I am sorry for her too;" he continued, 
 turning away his head. " She is a fine young woman, if a trifle 
 rough ; and I cannot think how she came to do such a dirty 
 trick, or who could have put her up to it." 
 
 " It is all a mystery, and we might as well give it up it will 
 never be found out," lisped Dora sobbing, as Bignold came 
 hurrying in to attend her fainting mistress.
 
 332 '' WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 UNDER HOME ARREST. 
 
 tHIS then was where her love for Dora, and her loyalty to 
 her promise, had landed Patricia into actual if inno- 
 cent complicity with a crime ; and with the accusation 
 of having committed that crime herself fully justified by appear- 
 ances. As she sat in her own room, mournfully trying to 
 understand something of the position in which she found her- 
 self, but only more* and more bewildered by the contra- 
 dictions of life and teaching, the old question forced itself 
 once more before her : what was right 1 She had lived but a 
 few years in this world as yet, and of these few, but a little while 
 in an artificial state of society, yet she had seen enough to know 
 that society and elementary morality are at war together, and 
 that conventional virtue is not the virtue of the law, nor the 
 prophets, nor yet of Christ. She had been taught to revere 
 truth, loyalty, and uprightness; and she found herself dis- 
 graced for her adherence to her old lessons. She saw how 
 Dora had made her place soft and warm by suppleness, untruth, 
 disloyalty ; how she was loved and praised through the very 
 sins which she herself had been always taught to hate and shun ; 
 how her faults had prospered with her, and how by them she 
 had made herself happy and been the cause of happiness to 
 others. ' She knew quite well that for her own part she had 
 disturbed the quiet ordering of the Hamleys' home ever since 
 she had come into it ; and that her very faithfulness to hei 
 sense of right had been a sin and an annoyance. 
 
 What then was true, what was right, in this strange world 
 of ours ? Christian practice 1 surely not ! at least in the esti- 
 mation of Christian professors. Truth and sincerity ? truth 
 and sincerity had alienated her aunt's affection from her from 
 the first, and had finished by landing her here. Constancy, 
 courage, magnanimity, whatever virtue she had learnt in early 
 youth from her uncle whatever had stood foremost in a good
 
 UNDER HOME ARREST. 333 
 
 man's simple code she had proved to be all wrong in practice ; 
 and if Dora was right and if Aunt Hamley was right, wise living 
 for men and women means the practical denial of all the right- 
 eous lessons taught the young. And why then, she thought 
 perplexedly, are people taught when young things which 
 the world will not let them practise, when grown up ? and 
 which if they do practise, they get themselves and others 
 into trouble, and are blamed all round for folly or for fault ? 
 
 The day wore on with a scarcely conscious passing of time. 
 The girl had not moved from the place where she had firsfc sat 
 down. All her old life passed like a series of pictures before 
 her, and her uncle's words came back as the pages of a closed 
 book which she was reading again. She seemed to almost see 
 him as he had looked and smiled when he lived. She seemed 
 to hear his voice calling to her so cheerily, " Hj there, my love !" 
 with the wind off the sea blowing through his silver hair and 
 freshening the ruddy tinge on his kind face. And Gordon too 
 how vividly he stood out from the mists of distance in his 
 young man's strength and wholesome beauty, his love, his 
 faithfulness, his courage, his high sense of honour, and his ready 
 submission to the better law of discipline ! How she loved him ! 
 how she felt to stretch out her hand to him now in her affliction, 
 as if she could have called his spirit to her by the very force of 
 her yearning, the very need of her love ! True, for all these 
 months she had had no word from him ; but she did not doubt 
 him. Her letter had miscarried, or his had missed its way. 
 She longed with a child's longing for home and mother to hear 
 from him, to make sure that he lived : that he loved her if he 
 lived she had no need of 'outward assurance. She knew that ; 
 but oh ! if she could but hear from him, hold his letter in her 
 hands, and read the words his hand had traced, how com- 
 forted she would be ! Yet nothing of her longing sprang from 
 or was mixed with doubt or fear. It was only the yearning of 
 love strengthened by loneliness and sorrow. 
 
 Amidst all the grief and dismay, the mental perplexity of her 
 state, Patricia had however a strange feeling of freedom. Her 
 body was in prison but her soul felt free. She was as if 
 restored .to herself and the past. Banished from the life of Abbey 
 Holme, she had gone back to the old days at Barsands ; yet 
 had gone back with a difference. She was no longer the Patricia
 
 ' WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE? " 
 
 who had lived like bird in bower, merry, unsuspecting, fearless, 
 and ignorant. She had tasted of the bitter fruit of knowledge 
 since those young days of hers, and no one who has once done 
 that can re-inhabit the old self. Nevertheless she was free ; 
 and gradually, as has been said, her mind warped away from 
 the tangled speculations of her first mood to the loved images, 
 the sweet remembrances of her uncle and Gordon, and her child- 
 hood's happy life by the dear old rugged Cornish coast. 
 
 So time passed and the hours crept on, but no one came to 
 disturb her. She did not herself know how the day was pass- 
 ing till the evening began to fall ; and then, as she had had no 
 food, she began to get hungry. Hitherto the kind of trance in 
 which she had been had stopped all physical consciousness. 
 Now, however, she came back to herself and reality, to find 
 herself not at Barsands with her uncle and Gordon, but sitting 
 by the window of her own room at Abbey Holme, with her 
 arms and hands numbed by being so long clasped in each other 
 as they rested on the window-sill, and her neck and iorehead 
 stiff from the long lying of her head on them to find herself, 
 not the loved of old and young, but deserted and in disgrace, a 
 prisoner on parole and a presumed forger. 
 
 Aunt Hamley it was who had ordained this penance of the 
 senses. She thought it might have a salutary effect on the 
 proud, rebellious spirit ; and she calculated on her girlish fear 
 when Patricia should find herself deserted by the whoie family, 
 and left as if she was no longer one of them. Perhaps that 
 would bring her to her right mind, she thought, and induce her 
 to confess. Had any one suggested to the properly-intentioned 
 lady that she was simply torturing her niece, she Vould have 
 denied the accusation indignantly. Torture meant the thumb- 
 screw or the bootikins, the rack or the wheel, not merely trying 
 to break down the spirit of a naughty girl by fasting and deser- 
 tion. 
 
 On his side Mr. Hamley would have sent her food, and would 
 have even added a generous glass of wine to help her to bear 
 her disagreeable position better. There was a certain hospitable 
 openhandedness about the man which would have prevented 
 his adding hunger to his punishment of a delinquent, especially 
 if a pretty girl ; but Mrs. Hamley was a woman, and small 
 indignities come easier by nature to a woman than to a man
 
 HOME AfeREST. 335 
 
 <. 
 
 adding pin-pricks to sabre-cut not being out of the feminine line, 
 speaking by majorities. 
 
 Patricia, wakened up to herself and her sense of discomfort, 
 nevertheless stayed loyally where she was. True ; she was cold . 
 and hungry. She had no light, no food ; but if she had been 
 left to starve, she would have starved rather than have dis- 
 obeyed her aunt's command and ventured into the forbidden 
 quarter of the house. So the hours passed and the evening 
 stole on into night. The stars came out and the moon rose up. 
 She knew that by the reflection on the blank white wall which 
 was her sole window prospect. Then she heard the softly-fall- 
 ing bolts and bars ; the sharp double bell summoning the ser- 
 vants to prayers " and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
 them that trespass against us," one of the clauses ; with perhaps 
 St. Paul's chapter on charity for the reading, or the story of 
 Ananias and Sapphira. After which she heard the rustling of 
 her aunt's rich black silk sweeping majestically through the 
 passage and past her own disgraced door, and Mr. Hamley's 
 lordly step striding after it'. And by this she knew that the 
 Abbey Holme household had gone to bed, and that she should 
 see none of them for this night the servants had evidently 
 been told not to go to her room and that Dora too had gone 
 to rest peacefully like the'others ; Dora, quiet, amiable, sympa- 
 thetic, a little mournful perhaps to suit the sombre mood of the 
 moment, but making the life and charm of the evening as usual, 
 blessing and blessed, and secretly rejoicing in her escape from a 
 disagreeable position ab the price of her friend's ruin and on the 
 calculation of her devotion. 
 
 And at this thought it seemed to Patricia as if she should die 
 of shame and heartbreak. It seemed to her so infinitely shock- 
 ing that Dora should have done this wicked thing. The one 
 she had so tenderly loved, had worshipped with all her girlish 
 power of admiration as excelling in womanly loveliness and 
 grace, to have proved herself this treacherous Delilah ! Had 
 it been an accident, a chance thing the real issues of which had 
 been unknown to Dora as to herself, she would have borne the 
 burden of it better ; but it was the plot, the premeditated 
 cruelty and treachery that seemed to her so frightful, so incon- 
 ceivably hideous ! It was not for herself she was breaking her 
 heart ; it was for the destruction of her ideal, the death of her 
 love.
 
 336 "WHAT WOULD vor ro, T.OVE?" 
 
 After all this was the tragedy, not her own disaster. Time 
 would repair that ; and even if it did not she was innocent, 
 and no appearances could alter that blessed tact. But time 
 would not restore what had fallen into dust to-day. The gra- 
 ' ciousness, the love, the beauty, and all that grew out of these 
 in her own heart all had gone into ruin together ! No wonder 
 she felt as if her heart would break. It was a wreck more 
 pitiful than the wreck of the Mermaid a death as real as and 
 almost more sad than the death of her uncle ! 
 
 Presently the door of her room softly opened and Dora came 
 stealing in. She had coaxed Bignold to bring up some food 
 for the poor prisoner; which the maid, knowing only that 
 Patricia was in disgrace and thinking it " an awful shame that 
 she should be left to starve like this," was glad enough to do. 
 So Dora stole into her room wrapped as usual in her soft 
 luxurious furs and cashmeres, with her golden hair loose on her 
 shoulders, and her small hands holding a tray laden with good 
 things ; a very fair enchanting picture, but one which had no 
 more fascination for Patricia. 
 
 Patricia shook back her falling hair, cleared her dreamy eyes, 
 and rose to her feet. She felt more humiliated to be visited 
 thus by Dora as her good angel than at any other circumstance 
 of this dreadful day. 
 
 " Oh, dear, dear child ! how sorry I am for you and for 
 everything ! How cold you must be, and how hungry ! " began 
 Dora, setting down the tray and gliding up to Patricia who 
 was standing by the dressing-table. " See dear, I have brought 
 you something to eat : why, you must be half-starved ! " 
 
 " I will not eat it," said Patricia, turning aside her head 
 and putting off Dora's hands which she had clasped round her 
 arm. 
 
 " Not eat, Patricia ! why not t You have had nothing all 
 day ! Are you going to starve yourself to death ? " 
 
 " I am my aunt's prisoner ; I will not eat, nor go out of my 
 room till she allows me to do so," said Patricia. " And, Dora, 
 I do not want you to come and see me," she added. " You 
 come secretly, against aunt's wishes; and I have done with 
 secrets now, once and for all." 
 
 " You are cruel ! " said Dora beginning to ciy. 
 
 They were not sham tears she was really very sorry for the
 
 UNDER HOME ARREST. 337 
 
 pass to which things had come ; but what could she do ? 
 Patricia would not be killed ; after a little while she would be 
 taken into favour again as much favour as she could ever 
 receive at Abbey Holme and all would be forgotten and for- 
 given. And she, Dora, would do her best to put her well be- 
 fore the authorities, and to give a fine-sounding name to her 
 delinquency. But if she were to tell the truth, what would be 
 the result ? Simply ruin ! Wise little Dora reflected that 
 Patricia's temporary discomfort was to be preferred to her own 
 everlasting destruction ; and if the girl would only be amenable 
 to reason, and like any other sensible creature, hr; term of trial 
 would be shortened and its bitterness sweetened ; and she 
 might who knows 1 come out as a heroine when all was over. 
 
 But Patricia was not like any other sensible creature. She 
 had her own Spartan code which was quite opposed to Dora's 
 favourite worldly wisdom, and she chose to stand by it, hard 
 as it was, rather than be guided into her former friend's softer 
 ways. 
 
 " I am not cruel, Dora ; but I understand you now I never 
 did before to-day," she answered ; and by the dim light of the 
 little chamber- lamp that Dora had brought in she looked almost 
 heroic in her power and sorrow, her steadfastness and her stern- 
 ness like a maid of another race and time. 
 
 "You are doing me injustice," said Dora, feebly fencing with 
 her rebuke. 
 
 " Can II" asked Patricia. " After you have led me into 
 a crime by my love for you, by my sympathy with your diffi- 
 culties, ?,nd by your own falsehood, Dora led me into a crime 
 and left me to such disgrace as this can I be unjust to youl 
 What can I think of you 1 and what may I not call you ! " 
 
 " Hush, Patricia ! you frighten me ! " said Dora cowering. 
 
 " Let your own conscience frighten you, not me ; if only it 
 could frighten you into doing the right ! " said Patricia. 
 " How can you live in such a state as you must be in 1 That 
 is the wonder to me ! " 
 
 " You are mad, Patricia ! how can I act differently t " cried 
 Dora. " Do you want me to be ruined 1 " 
 
 " No, I want you to be saved to save yourself out of this 
 sea of deception into which you have got. You are being ship- 
 wrecked in it, Dora, for time and eternity ! "
 
 338 " WHAT WOULt) YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " I dare not tell ! " she said ; and then the coward fear that 
 always possessed her came uppermost, and she gasped out 
 .piteously ; ''Are you going to betray uie, Patricia 1 You had 
 better kill me!" 
 
 Patricia looked at her with a steadfast, sorrowful, and yet 
 half-scornful pity. 
 
 " Can you ask me 1 " she said. " Do you not know me 
 better than that, Dora ? If I were left here to die by inches 
 you need not be afraid of me." 
 
 Dora flung herself against her bosom, and threw her arms 
 round her. " You are so good and brave ! " she said, sobbing 
 passionately. 
 
 But Patricia put her away with resolute quiet strength. 
 
 " Don't, Dora ! I cannot bear it ! I would rather you did 
 not thank me, please ; it is too shocking to me," she said in 
 broken sentences. 
 
 She could bear her own humiliation better than Dora's her 
 own wound better than her former friend's craven cowardice. 
 
 " Oh, how you hate me ! " said Dora half pettishly, half 
 pathetically. 
 
 Patricia did not answer. She felt the falseness of this 
 attempt at softening her, and let it pass. The two girls had 
 changed places. It was the adorer who was now the judge, 
 the adored who besought. 
 
 " Now, Dora, go ; I do not want to see any one, to have any- 
 thing done for me till my aunt orders it," said Patricia. " I 
 tell you I have washed my hands of all secrets for ever ; and if 
 you come in to see me again, though you do it in kindness, I 
 shall tell my aunt. What I know I will keep sacred to the last, 
 but nothing more nothing new." 
 
 " I believe you are mad ! "- said Dora, rather angrily for all 
 her gratitude and shame and late emotion. 
 
 It was a new experience to her to be repulsed, and she did 
 not like it. 
 
 " Yes, I am beginning to think that truth and loyalty are 
 looked on as little better than madness by you all here," said 
 Patricia ; " but it is a madness I choose rather than the con- 
 trary. So good night : thank you for your good intentions ; 
 but I will have nothing." 
 
 " And I am to carry this ridiculous tray back again ; and it
 
 tTNDER HOiTE ARREST. 339 
 
 is so heavy, and hurts my hands ! " said Dora with a helpless 
 look. 
 
 " I am sorry I cannot carry it for you, Dora it is heavy for 
 your little hands," said Patricia sympathetically and in her na- 
 tural voice ani manner. 
 
 " I can get round her in time ! " thought Dora smiling to 
 herself. 
 
 But she calculated on insufficient data. That something 
 which when it once breaks is irreparable, had snapped in 
 Patricia's heart ; and her love had died, and was buried in the 
 same grave as her belief and her respect. 
 
 So Dora, making a sorrowful face, took back her burden ot 
 good food ; leaving her door ajar to catch Bignold on her exit 
 from her mistress, to tell her to try her power with Patricia 
 and make her eat something. 
 
 But Bignold failed as entirely as herself ; though the maid 
 did what the friend had not done made the prisoner cry like 
 a child. She was brave and strong and steadfast, but she was 
 only a girl yet ; only nineteen ; and the day had tired her 
 terribly ; and most of all Dora and this last scone had shaken 
 her very soul. And then she was desperately hungry, poor 
 child ; and feeling a little faint and sick for want of food. But 
 she held to her word "Not until aunt allows it ; " and Bignold 
 determined to face her mistress's displeasure to-morrow, should 
 this cruelty continue another twelve hours, and tell her how 
 she had herself tried to induce Miss Kemball to eat some- 
 thing, and how, though she was half-hungered and owned to it, 
 she would have nothing till her dear aunt sent it. 
 
 " And if that doesn't touch the old witch nothing will 1 " 
 thought Bignold indignantly, 
 
 For though Patricia was no great favourite with her she 
 was too little " the lady " according to the definition of the 
 lady's-maid to be thoroughly liked yet she was a nice spoken 
 young person in her way, and at all events a woman. 
 
 Bignold had her humanities lying like diamonds in quartz 
 among her professional crotchets; and just now she thought 
 her mistress the bigger sinner of the two, whatever Miss Kem- 
 ball's offence had been. To treat a poor motherless creature in 
 this way Bignold held it heathenish ; and scoffed at the family 
 prayers as possessing any power of good for hearts or livei.
 
 340 "WHAT WOt T LT> YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " Better act like a Christian and leave the prayers and the 
 Bible alone, than bother them all, night and morning, as the 
 old lady did, and behave worse than a heathen the day through," 
 said Bignold to the housekeeper. 
 
 She was an impenitent kind of person ; one ot those who 
 respect good morals but make no account of spirituality. She 
 despised the religion which is made up of strictness in the 
 matter of pious observances, flanked by an unlimited accom- 
 paniment of bad temper and uncharitable feeling ; and often 
 used to say that she would rather folks did what was right, 
 though they had no " gifts," than talked beautiful and did 
 what was wrong.
 
 THE OFFER OF FORGiVJUSESS. 341 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE OFFER OF FORGIVENESS. 
 
 NO WING nothing of the pitiful little domestic drama, 
 as Mr. Hamley called it, which had just been enacted 
 at Abbey Holme and which was even now going on, 
 Lord Merrian rode up to the house as usual one day during the 
 term of Patricia's home arrest lengthening now into three 
 weeks. He had been absent from home for nearly a fortnight ; 
 on a visit to some friends of his own conventional rank and 
 standing ; where he had seen among other charming people a 
 bevy of pretty girls of suitable degree Ladies Maud and 
 Victoria, Ethel and Ada, girls of good style, well-bred, aristo- 
 cratic, and of finished training. 
 
 But somehow he had not enjoyed himself as of old. At one 
 time he would have been supremely happy in these circum- 
 stances. They would have just suited him. He would have 
 talked his fluent Young England radicalism, while conscious in 
 every fibre of his exalted position, his honourable title, his 
 glittering prospects, as also of the paternal earls and dukes of 
 his fair audience ; and he would have lamented the sorrows of 
 the poor and the inequality of society with a pathetic intona- 
 tion in his sweet voice, while wearing the best fitting coat 
 Poole could turn out, and with the most exquisite little bouquet 
 of choice exotics in his button-hole to be had from the stove- 
 houses. He would have spoken eloquently of the need for 
 some grand crusade against the half-heartedness of the age, and 
 how he longed to see some stirring protest made against our 
 habits of demoralizing luxury, our damning love of pleasure, 
 with our poorer brethren helpless and degraded at our gates ; 
 and then he would have gone to the opera and given his guinea 
 for his stall as a young nobleman should, and may be, he 
 would have calculated his distance to a nicety, and taken his 
 hansom cab the " long mile" which means no extra fare. 
 All this" was of the nature of the man j a nature of kindly
 
 342 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 thoughts and a lack of earnest resolves; with good intellectual 
 abilities apt to exhale themselves in words, and the fatal mis- 
 take of accepting emotional thought for purposeful endeavour. 
 
 And the young ladies the better gifted among them at 
 least would have listened to him sympathetically: and some 
 of them, to whom his fine eyes and distinguished air counted 
 for virtues, would have thought him a consecrated leader of 
 men and one of the future saviours of society. They would 
 not have foreseen him as he would become in a tew years' 
 time, a contented, easy-going father of a family, who had sown 
 his wild oats betimes and those wild oats of principles only, 
 not vices ; a portly, good-natured kind of man, thinking the 
 world a jolly kind of place after all for one who had kept his 
 digestion in order and his banker's book well in hand ; and as 
 firmly convinced as Mr. Hamley himself, that those were suc- 
 cessful who ought to win, and that when men fail it is because 
 they have not the stuff in them to succeed ; an hereditary 
 legislator who would look back to his enthusiasm for freedom 
 as a craze honourable to bis heart but young, very young ; and 
 who when the time fame for radical reforms in Parliament 
 would shelter hiinseh behind constitutional policy and the 
 difficulties of statesmanship, for the one part when the rights 
 of labour were urged by those who laboured on his own land, 
 would put forward his steward and his agent, for the other ; 
 who would be ever and always the Spenlow of good intentions 
 who would, but for that ubiquitous and immovable Jorkins 
 who would not. Alas ! that so many bright flames should burn 
 down into such fat darkness as this I that prosperity should 
 prove such a benumbing Circe, and that maturity should so often 
 drop the heroic pararble of youth ! 
 
 As it was however, this visit of his, though he was sur- 
 rounded by nice girls of his own caste and made much of as 
 the future Earl of Dovedale, did not please Lord Merrian. He 
 found himself incessantly comparing his pretty but colourless 
 audience with the girl whose enthusiasm stirred his own so 
 powerfully, whose sense of truth and wholeness of nature 
 seemed made to be the spur of his weaker and more lagging 
 soul. He had got into the habit of thinking of Patricia as his 
 Egeria. He once spoke of her to Lady Maud as his Egeria ; 
 and when Lady Maud asked " Who is Egeria 1 " he laughed
 
 THE OFFER OF FORGIVENESS. 343 
 
 and said, " Was ? a nymph ; " and would give no farther ex- 
 planation. 
 
 He was really and honestly in love with her ; and it was 
 with the best part of him that he loved her. He felt that 
 clearly enough ] and as he had at last won the consent of his 
 father, arid of his mother the countess too, after a longer strug- 
 gle should Mr. Hamley give the dower for which they stipul- 
 ated he had only to be quite sure of himself to take the final 
 plunge. 
 
 This visit to the Duke of Burton fixed his convictions. He 
 was in love with Patricia Kemball ; no one else delighted him, 
 no one else appealed to him as did she. He would make her 
 the offer of his hand and his life, and he did not anticipate that 
 he should be refused. But before speaking to her he would ad- 
 dress himself to Mrs. Hamley. LordMerrian was a gentleman 
 emphatically, from head to heel ; and moreover he Wcis so sure 
 of his game he could afford to deliberate and to do 'things in 
 good style. 
 
 It was then with more than the intention of paving an ordi- 
 nary morning call that he rode up to Abbey Holme to-day ; and 
 with more than ordinary exultation that he saw himself once 
 more in the gorgeous crimson and gold drawing-room of the 
 prosperous owner. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley and Miss Drummond were alone. Lord Mer- 
 rian's eyes looked round in vain for his Egeria : only the tall, 
 thin, pinched, but perfectly lady-like figure of Mrs. Hamley and 
 the gracious presence of pretty Dora met him ; but the clear 
 eyes and noble bearing of the woman he loved were not to be 
 seen. 
 
 He spoke a few words to Mrs. Hamley, and she was conscious 
 at the first glance, the first sound of his voice, that something 
 more than usual animated him .to-day, and that his visit was 
 not merely one of ceremony. He looked half-embarrassed and 
 half-important ; and there was a wistful expression about his 
 eyes that seemed to presage confession and emotion. He was 
 almost tendoi 1 in his manner to her : had not she too something 
 of his darling to glorify her '? and he seemed to forget that 
 Dora Drummond was a young woman, and a pretty one, to 
 whom he had once paid marked attention, in the general family 
 benevolence with which he classed her as part of Patricia, as he 
 had classed Mrs. Hamley.
 
 344 
 
 WHAT WOULD VOI T DO, LOVE?" 
 
 Was it really true that the grand coup for which she would 
 have given a handful of her best remaining days was on the 
 point of accomplishment ? thought Mrs. Hamley. Should she 
 live to see her niece Lady Merrian, future Countess of Dovedale, 
 and the mistress of the Quest ? How trivial this last little mis- 
 demeanor of hers had suddenly become ! A child's credulous 
 complicity: a child's mistaken loyalty! She had been pun- 
 ished as a child, but she should be forgiven as a woman. My 
 Lady Merrian might do worse things than present a forged 
 cheque and refuse to tell for whom, and yet be forgiven ! 
 
 Presently Lord Merrian asked for Miss Kemball, with a deli- 
 cate but delicious lingering on the name that was like the 
 softest music to the ears of Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 Her pale and peevish face looked up with almost a light on 
 it as she answered : " I am sorry to say the dear girl is not very 
 well, and keeping her room at present." 
 
 " Nothing serious ? " asked Lord Merriau anxiously. 
 
 " No, nothing serious, thank God ! only a cold. Girls," 
 with a ghastly smile, " are always taking cold." 
 
 " I hope it is nothing worse," said Lord Merrian uneasily. 
 " She is too precious to all of us to be suffered to fall ill," he 
 added. 
 
 " You are very kind, Lord Merrian," Mrs. Hamley answered 
 with a little inclination of her head ; ami Dora, knowing that 
 her best policy now was self-effacement, quietly left the room ; 
 and in so doing took credit to herself on Patricia's side, and 
 held herself to have all but atoned for the misdeed which had 
 borne such terrible fruit. 
 
 And when she had gone Lord Merrian opened his case, and 
 formally proposed for Patricia Kemball's hand through her 
 guardian and next of kin, Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 To which Mrs. Hamley, carefully concealing her exultation, 
 gave her assent with a certain womanly dignity that struck the 
 young lover as " excellent form," and promised to convey the 
 news to Patricia, who would doubtless be well enough to see him 
 personally to-morrow, when he proposed that he should call 
 again. It was ail done with good breeding and good taste ; and 
 Mrs. Hamley 's share in the transaction showed the fact that the 
 brewer's wife was by no means objectionable, if the brewer him- 
 self was. Lord Merrian called himself a Liberal, bub he was
 
 THE OFFER OF FORGIVENESS. 345 
 
 glad that Patricia his Patricia had her aunt's blood and not 
 her aunt's husband's in her veins, and that she, not he, would 
 be his relative by marriage. 
 
 The momentous visit then passed off with brilliant but sub- 
 dued success, and Lord Merrian rode home satisfied if disap- 
 pointed. Like all weak-willed men, he felt happy now that he 
 had irrevocably committed himself, now that hi? will had, as it 
 were, the support of external circumstances ; but he was des- 
 perately sorry he had not seen Patricia. He longed to see her 
 great grey eyes look into his with their candid love, half frank 
 half shy, and to hear her earnest innocent confession, " Yes, I 
 love you." He had been so much occupied with making up his 
 own mind he never reflected that perhaps he might have missed 
 his way that perhaps she had only the sister's love for him 
 which would neither satisfy him nor impel her. It had been 
 his own difficulties with which he had struggled his difficul- 
 ties of self-certainty and diversity of social position ; but he 
 never doubted that his path with her would be smooth enough 
 when he had absolutely defined it and made sure of his own in- 
 tentions. Handsome young English noblemen scarcely look for 
 obstacles when they condescend to woriien of an inferior grade. 
 The redundancy of which we hear so much would alone be suf- 
 ficient to give them confidence ; and where the old, the unper- 
 senable, and the mediocre can choose very much as they like, 
 the young, the well-looking, and the highly-placed may surely 
 think themselves secure. Add to this, the respect for rank in- 
 grained in the English character and so ingrained as to be 
 accounted a virtue, and Lord Merrian may stand acquitted of 
 all charge of foppishness if he believed in his success, and took 
 counsel of his love rather than of doubt. 
 
 So he rode home disappointed but happy ; and while lament- 
 ing the trial of his patience, and that long delay of twenty-four 
 hours before he might hear the dear assurance his whole soul 
 was desiring, he was all aglow with the anticipation of his de- 
 light when he should have secured it. How tenderly he would 
 love her when he should have gained her, he thought ! What 
 a life of happiness, of mental help, they would have together ! 
 It would be no sickly honeymoon of vulgar endearments ; it 
 should be a life worthy of a man and woman who had higher 
 objects than those of sensuous pleasure of a man and woman
 
 346 " WITAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 who would give the world an example of noble living and of 
 moral thoroughness. She should be his Egeria and she would 
 make of him her Numa prophet, king, and leader of men ! 
 Sweet thoughts ; bright vision's : and the reality that stood 
 like the angel in the way, with drawn sword barring the gates 
 of that fair Eden ! 
 
 Just now the reality was being transacted with a distinctness 
 that left no margin for mistakes ; and in a manner who could 
 have foreseen 1 thought Mr. Hamley, watching Patricia curiously 
 as a kind of luzus natures, if indeed she was not one of those 
 only too common whom science and the world call mad. 
 
 After Lord Merrian's visit \vas brought to an end, Mrs. Ham- 
 ley sent for Mr. Hamley and dear Bora; to both of whom she 
 detailed what had passed : namely, that Lord Merrian had 
 made a formal proposal for Patricia's hand, and that she had 
 granted him permission to ask the girl herself to-morrow. 
 
 " I did right, Mr. Hamley 1 " she then asked with unwonted 
 meekness. 
 
 It pleased her at this supreme moment of success to affect 
 womanly submission and wifely inferiority ; it gave a zest to her 
 triumph and was the pleasant burden of her golden crown. 
 
 " Yes ; you did right, Lady," was Mr Hamley's reply, made 
 pompously but with condescension. 
 
 He had caught her lead and followed it. 
 
 " And now, I presume, this poor misguided child may be 
 forgiven ? " said Mrs. Hamley. " She has been punished suffi- 
 ciently for her offence ; not too severely, considering its mag- 
 nitude, but sufficiently. What do you say Mr. Hamley ? " 
 
 " Certainly Lady, certainly ; let her be forgiven," said Mr. 
 Hamley. " It would hardly do to keep my Lady Merrian con- 
 fined to her own room like a naughty child. My Lady Mer- 
 rian ! " he added, rolling the words like a delicate morsel under 
 his tongue, " My wife's niece, my Lady Merrian the future 
 Countess of Dovedale. 
 
 How he blessed Providence and the old admiral's wiry con- 
 gtitution that Mrs. Hamley had been graciously pleased to live 
 until now ! Once let this marriage be celebrated, and the poor 
 conjugal moth, having then indeed completed her mission, might 
 fold her wings and leave her work for the kindly hatching of 
 time and good chances.
 
 THE OFFER OF FORGIVENESS. 347 
 
 " Go to her, Dora," said Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 And Dora obedient, rose. 
 
 " We must not forget our Dora though, in our pleasure at 
 this great success, this proudest moment of our lives, as I call 
 it," said Mr. Hamley looking at his cousin with a strange 
 expression on his face. " She is always our first, hey Lady ? " 
 
 " Come here, child," said Mrs. Hamley ; and poor Dora, with 
 tears ot jealous disappointment in her eyes they looked beau- 
 tirul, and like tears of sympathy knelt down by her cousin's 
 wife 
 
 Mrs. Hamley put her arms round her bended neck and drew 
 her pretty head to her bosom. She smoothed the golden hair, . 
 and her lean hand lingered lovingly on the fair round face, 
 while she gazed at her with maternal tenderness. Then she 
 kissed her with what was for her a passionate affection. 
 
 " I am glad of this good fortune for Patricia," she said in a 
 moved voice. " It is very natural ; she is my own flesh and 
 blood, my brother's child, and she has no one in the world to 
 look to but myself ; and I may not last long ; but she can never 
 be to me what you are, my little girl never take the daughter's 
 place that you have filled from the beginning. God bless you, 
 rny Dora ! the light of my life, and dearer to me than even my 
 own ! No, we can never forget our Dora even on this or any 
 other day ot triumph. And please God, we shall see such a 
 day some time for her." 
 
 " Amen," said Mr. Hamley ; with the unspoken proviso, " I, 
 but not you." 
 
 Patricia had now been nearly three weeks under home arrest, 
 and for all this time had seen no one but the housemaid who 
 came to arrange her room. Dora had not appeared again ; and 
 as Mrs. Hamley had ordered a scanty kind of breakfast to be 
 taken to her the next morning, Bignold's advocacy had not 
 been needed ; so, wisely enough, the maid had forborne to in- 
 termeddle in a matter where help was not needed, and whence 
 she would be sure to bring away but burnt fingers for her pains. 
 The solitude and confinement, the insufficient food, and the sor- 
 rowful thoughts that had possessed her for all this time, had 
 told on Patricia's appearance; and there would be small ditfi 
 culty in convincing Lord Merrian to-morrow that she had been, 
 and indeed was still ilL Looking at ker through the lustre of
 
 348 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 her coming honours Mrs. Hamley was shocked and startled to 
 see how ill ; and more than all she was startled to see how un- 
 utterably sad she looked. Was this indeed Patricia, that bright, 
 spontaneous, fearless girl who had come into their quiet life 
 like a whirlwind ; whose very grief for her beloved uncle had 
 been unable to subdue her young energies, and whose breezy 
 activities had reduced the subdued, staid household to general 
 despair? Not that there was anything drooping or craven 
 about her even noAv. Her head was carried as straight, her 
 slender figure was as upright, as before ; but all colour had 
 faded from her hollow cheeks ; her eyes were pathetically large 
 and lustrous, and there were dark rings round them that made 
 Mrs. Hamley's heart ache. Her hands too, which had once 
 been so large and strong, were fine now and slender ; and the 
 black dress, which had been cut for the best advantage of her 
 figure, hung in loose folds and creases about her waist and 
 shoulders. 
 
 A pang of self-reproach seized Mrs. Hamley. Had she over- 
 stepped her duty ? Had she done really what she ought by this 
 unprotected girl ? Could she meet her brothers as a faithial 
 sister should, and pointing back beyond the grave to the charge 
 that had been assigned her, claim from them, and God, appro- 
 bation of her work 7 Still, it would not do to give in. The 
 curse of spiritual pride clung like a weed round the woman's 
 soul. No, ifc would not do to give in, or to confess by word, 
 deed, or look, that she had been wrong or over hasty. 
 
 Not rising from her chair, she held out her hand as Patricia, 
 following Dora, came silently but steadily forward. Patricia 
 went up to her and put her hand in hers. Something in her 
 throat choked her voice so that she could not speak, and even 
 Mrs. Hamley found it difficult to say : " Good morning, Patricia." 
 
 " Good morning, young lady. I hope I see you in the enjoy- 
 ment of good health, though I cannot say you look it," was 
 Mr. Hamley's salutation, made with many flourishes of his hands 
 and some plunges of his well-developed limbs. 
 
 But he meant it good-naturedly, and so Patricia took it. It. 
 made a little diversion too, and a healthy one. Sentient ana' 
 Mr. Hamley did not go together quite harmoniously. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Hamley," she said naturally ; and 
 looked at her aunt, including her.
 
 THE OFFER OF FORGIVENESS. 349 
 
 " Take a chair, Patricia, and sit down quietly," said Mrs. 
 Hamley. " I have sent for you to have some grave talk with 
 you." 
 
 Patricia took a chair and sat down. 
 
 How large the room looked, she thought, and how bright and 
 full of gold and colour ! The mirrors and the gilding and the 
 upholsterer's magnificence all through quite oppressed her. She 
 would have preferred a fisherman!s hut or the poorest den of a 
 cottage at this moment to all this showy glitter. Since her 
 banishment up-stairs the present had become dark to her, and 
 she had lived so much in her memories that Barsands and the 
 cottage had become almost more real to her than Abbey Holme ; 
 and this grandeur and excess quite pained and dazzled her eye- 
 sight. Nevertheless, she sat down quietly, and looked at her 
 aunt, forcing her attention which was loose and a little wan- 
 dering. 
 
 " I have had a most unhappy week, Patricia," began Aunt 
 Hamley clearing her throat. " I may say indeed that we have 
 all had a most unhappy week ; and I suppose yours has not 
 been much better ? " 
 
 " No, I have been very very miserable," said Patricia simply. 
 
 " Are you prepared to do what you ought to have done at 
 the first ? " asked Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 " Do you mean tell for whom I took the cheque, aunt 1 " said 
 Patricia after a pause, during which she seemed to be searching 
 back in her memory. " No ! " shaking her head. 
 
 Her aunt frowned. 
 
 " Come now, Lady," said Mr. Hamley, seeing that she had 
 begun on the wrong tack, " shall we not let bygones be by- 
 gones, and no more said about it ? Let us suppose that your 
 niece has some reason for her obstinacy. It will do us no 
 harm if we suppose that she has some good reason some what 
 I call valid excuse ; and, believing this, let us shake hands all 
 round. There are times and seasons for everything ; and the 
 time of forgiveness has come now. Am I right 1 " 
 
 " You are kind, Mr. Hamley ; you always are," said his wife. 
 "vWell, Patricia, we will do as your uncle has suggested offer 
 you our forgiveness." 
 
 " Thank you, aunt ; thank you, Mr. Hamley," said Patrick 
 lifting her eyes.
 
 350 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 She did not smile. She took their grace with a certain 
 serious simplicity that was grand in its own way. Even at 
 this moment, when she should have been penetrated with the 
 sinner's contrite gratitude, she bore herself as an innocent 
 person, and expressed, neither pleasure nor shame, neither 
 gratitude nor contriiion. 
 
 " I confess," said Mrs. Hamley a little tartly, " that I am 
 mainly induced to do this through a matter that has occurred 
 to-day." 
 
 Patricia gave a quick glance at Dora. Had the truth come 
 out 1 No ; dear Dora was bending over her modern point with 
 her usual placid amiability. Whatever it was that had hap- 
 pened, it surely had not touched her ; and Patricia, checking a 
 sigh, turned back to gaze at her aunt again. 
 
 " Lord Merrian has been here," said Aunt Hamley ; and 
 then she stopped and watched her niece. 
 
 " Yes aunt," said Patricia unconcernedly. 
 
 She liked Lord Merrian very well, but she was too far down 
 in the depths at this moment to be lifted out of them by the 
 simple intimation of his having called. 
 
 " And he has done you the honour," said Mrs. Hamley 
 slowly, " of demanding your hand from me." 
 
 " Demanding my hand 1 " repeated Patricia, who at the first 
 moment did not catch, the drift 01 the phrase. " Does that 
 mean," she then said suddenly, "that he wants to marry 
 mel" 
 
 Mrs. Hamley was a little disconcerted at this abrupt method 
 of inquiry ; but Mr. Hamley, disposed to see in a favourable 
 light all pertaining to the young person by whom he was to be 
 related to the family of the Dovedales, rubbed his hands and 
 tkought this simplicity delicious. It was so like Patricia ; and 
 o far better than humbugging about the bush to go straight 
 ahead and hit the right nail home t 
 
 " Yes, it means that Lord Merrian wishes to marry you,* 1 
 said Mr. Hamley firmly. 
 
 " But I do not wish to marry him," said Patricia quite 
 quietly. " I like Lord Merrian very much indeed, but I do 
 not want to marry him." 
 
 Mrs. Hamley raised herself up in her chair and looked at her 
 niece. She looked at her curiously, as if she was something
 
 THE OFFER OF FORGIVENESS. 351 
 
 odd and wild and strange; and also as if she doubted her 
 senses somehow. Mr. Haraley's jocund sinile .became a trifle 
 fixed and ghastly ; and Dora laid aside her work, and looked 
 at Mrs. Hamley with sympathetic astonishment. 
 
 " You do not want to marry Lord Merrian 1 " slowly repeated 
 Mrs. Hamley. 
 
 "No aunt," said Patricia. 
 
 By the faces before her she saw that she had again committed 
 one of her usual sins ; but, though she was sorry, this was a 
 matter in which she must rouse herself and be firm. Like the 
 forged cheque, it was an affair of life and death, and involved 
 her loyalty to others as well as her truth to herself. 
 
 " Not want to marry Lord Merrian t " repeated Mr. Hamley 
 after his wife. 
 
 " No," said Patricia in a low voice, but distinctly. 
 
 "And why this extraordinary disinclination, may I askl" 
 said Mrs. Hamley with a polite smile. 
 
 " Because I do not love him, I suppose," replied Patricia 
 colouring. " I like him very much, very much indeed ; but I 
 do not love him so as to wish to marry him and," turning 
 pale, " I do love Gordon." 
 
 " This is the second time I have heard that person's name," 
 said Mrs. Hamley, still speaking with that dangerous smooth- 
 ness, that deadly politeness which to those who knew her best 
 was the most formidable weapon of her rather large armoury. 
 " May I be permitted to know who this Mr. Gordon is 1 " 
 
 " Gordon Frere," answered Patricia. 
 
 " And who and what is Mr. Gordon Frere, pray t " 
 
 " Third lieutenant on board the Arrow,' 1 answered Patricia. 
 
 The name and style were as proud to her mind as those of 
 Viscount Merrian, son of the Earl of Dovedale at the Quest. 
 
 " And are you engaged to this very promising young gentle- 
 man, this third lieutenant on board the Arrow / M Asked Mrs. 
 Hamley. 
 
 " Yes, aunt. Dear uncle, the last night, just before he died, 
 engaged us. But we were always fond of each other ever 
 since I can remember," she added. 
 
 " Now Patricia, this childish folly must come to an end," said 
 Aunt Hamley, suddenly changing her tone to one of severe de- 
 termination. " I am your guardian and I absolutely refuse
 
 352 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 my consent. I forbid the whole thing. You are not engaged 
 to Gordon Frere. Do you understand 1 I have forbidden it ; 
 and I have the legal as well as the moral right to do so. You 
 are no more engaged to him than you are to to whom shall I 
 say ? Mr. Sydney Lowe ; and I command you to accept Lord 
 Merrian." 
 
 " I am very sorry, aunt, to be always offending you," said 
 Patricia humbly but firmly ; " but it is not my fault if I am. 
 As for saying I arn not engaged to Gordon, you might as well 
 say that I am not alive. While I am alive I must love him, 
 and only him ; and I could no more be false to him, and 
 marry Lord Merrian, than I could betray any other trust or 
 break any other promise." This she added in a lower voice. 
 
 " You hear her, Mr. Hamley ! " cried the poor lady, turning 
 with an appealing gesture to her husband. 
 
 " I hear her certainly, and I see her," said Mr. Hamley ; 
 " and, hang me, if I can make her out. Is she mad, Lady ? 
 Have you anything " he rapped his forehead " in your fam- 
 ily?" 
 
 " Why do you call me mad ? " said Patricia speaking earnest- 
 ly. " Is keeping my promise being mad ] Is refusing to marry 
 one man when I am engaged to another madness 1 I think I 
 should be worse than mad if I acted differently I should be 
 bad." 
 
 " And how am I to convey this insult to his lordship ? " 
 asked Mrs. Hamley. " How with what face can I tell him 
 that a ridiculous little school-girl like yourself has had the au- 
 dacity to refuse such a hiagnificent proposal ? " 
 
 " Lord Merrian would be the first to understand me, and to 
 say that I was right," said Patricia warmly. " Do you think 
 that he, good and clever and noble-hearted as he is, would want 
 a girl to marry him who loved another man, and had promised 
 to be that other man's wife ? " 
 
 " Why need you tell him anything ? " said Mr. Hamley. 
 " Take my advice, my dear young lady," he went on with his 
 soothing voice, " keep your own counsel and we will help you. 
 Do nothing but wipe your mouth and say, ' I will my lord,' 
 and so bring all your troubles, and ours for you, to a happy 
 conclusion." 
 
 " No, Mr. Hamley ; you mean well, but I cannot do that,"
 
 THE OFFER OF FORGIVENESS. 353 
 
 said Patricia. " If I ever see Lord Mercian I shall tell him the 
 exact truth ; and I know that he will not blame me." 
 
 " And after that what do you propose to yourself 1 " asked 
 Mrs. Haraley smoothly. 
 
 Patricia looked at her aunt. 
 
 " I do not know," she said. " I must leave that to you. It 
 you like I will leave the house, or I will live as you are making 
 me live now, or I can go back to Barsands dear oldBarsands ! 
 and live there. I don't care what becomes ot me," she said 
 with a heavy sigh, " till Gordon comes home. And then " a 
 light came into her face as she lifted it up and raised her eyes 
 "it will be all over, and I shall be in the sunlight again !" 
 
 " Now my young lady, hear me," said Mr. Hamley rising, 
 planting his legs wide apart, and with his thumbs in his arm- 
 holes preparing himself for an address. " Whatever happens 
 things cannot continue as they are ; they are too cursedly un- 
 comfortable. I don't like to feel that Abbey Holme is turned 
 into a jail, and that a fine young woman like yourself is mewed 
 up in her bedroom like a state prisoner. But neither can I 
 have a forger, or at least the associate of a forger, set at loose 
 as one may say in my establishment. So you see where you 
 are in a cleft stick, unless you get out of it by my lord's help. 
 Marry him, and you shall have the best turn-out that has evei 
 been seen in the county, and I'll give you as handsome a fortune 
 as if you were my own child. There'll be something left for a 
 rainy day and this little one here, after that ! I can't say fairer 
 than this. But, by George ! if you refuse my lord, you may go 
 hang yourself ! I'll not turn you out of my house you are 
 my wife's niece and the admiral's grand-daughter ; but you'll 
 understand that you stay here only on sufferance, as a kind of 
 genteel pauper, a stray dog fed from charity on scraps, a thing 
 too mean and paltry to be kicked out. There, I have said my 
 say, and I'll not say I've made it too hard." 
 
 " Go to your room again, Patricia," said Mrs. Hamley se- 
 verely. " Think of what your uncle has said. He is master 
 here and I cannot act beyond or against his wishes. Put it 
 clearly before you : Lord Merrian and honour, Lord Merrian 
 and happiness, or this immodest infatuation for I call it noth- 
 ing else and disgrace. As Lady Merrian all will be forgotten 
 and forgiven; as Patricia Kemball, with this infamous young 
 W
 
 354 "WHAT WOULD votr DO, LOVE?" 
 
 man in the distance, you are the companion of a forger and 
 banished from my heart and esteem for ever. Now go ; think 
 of what we have said, and pray God to turn your stubborn 
 heart, and soften your wilful wicked temper." 
 
 "Dear aunt," said Patricia rising, " I am sorry to distress 
 you so much, but I am fixed in this. If you kill me for it I 
 cannot say to Lord Merrian that I will marry him ; and I 
 would rather be killed than prove false to Gordon." 
 
 " Go ; leave the room this instant. I will not have Dora's 
 ears polluted with such immodesty ! " cried Aunt Hamley 
 angrily. 
 
 And Patricia once more went back to her prison, feeling that 
 surely now the measure of her sufferings was complete. 
 
 " Could any one have believed it ! " cried Mr. Hamley when 
 she had closed the door and gone. " I tell you Lady she is 
 mad." 
 
 " No more mad than yourself Mr. Hamley," said his wife 
 snappishly. " She is simply wicked and wrong-headed. But 
 how to tell Lord Merrian when he calls to-morrow I do not 
 know ! What shall I say ? What can I do ? " She rocked 
 herself backwards and forwards in her chair moaning. 
 
 " Do not see him at all, dear," said Dora's soft voice. " Let 
 Patricia see him herself." 
 
 She did not often make a suggestion, -but this was so obvious 
 she could not refrain. 
 
 " True ; that is it," said Mrs. Hamley. " You are right 
 dear ; always right ! Yes, she shall have it to do herself ; but 
 oh, I feel that I could just lie down and die for despair ! " 
 
 "Hard-mouthed young jade !" muttered Mr. Hamley. "To 
 refuse Lord Merrian ! positively to disdain to be made Coun- 
 tess of Dovedale ! A mad-house is the only place for her ; 
 and if I had my will she should go there. Maybe she'd find 
 her senses then ! To decline to be made Countess of Dove- 
 dale ! Was there ever such a maniac 1 And all for a third 
 lieutenant in the navy I Good Lord, the world is turning 
 upside down I n
 
 THE AIR CAS1LE. -"* 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIL 
 
 THE AIR CASTLE. 
 
 tHE next day was a warm and tender May-day ; a day full 
 of hope and sweet presages of a lovely future j a day in 
 joyous accord with the gladness and the love that filled 
 the young maa's heart as he rode quickly between the blooming 
 hedge rows, and thought how good a thing it was to live, to 
 love, to be young, and to be loved. No shadow of mistrust 
 dimmed the brilliant sunshine \ no little cloud no bigger than a 
 man's band foretold the coming storm. As he rode through 
 the lanes humming to himself snatches of FElisir and Cenerentola 
 in a very exuberance of joy, handsome, loving, sure, he looked 
 as if he had conquered once for all doubt and sorrow, those old 
 enemies of man. and had come into the Eden where he would 
 be. 
 
 The birds sang greetings from the trees as he passed, and the 
 skylark overhead poured down its shower of melody like an 
 epithalamium to his honour ; the meadows, bright with sun 
 and brilliant with flowers, seemed like a royal carpet for his 
 lover's feet ; and the crimson twigs of the maple and the haw- 
 thorn looked as if they ran with blood that blushed like her 
 fair face. There was no loving simile, no tender conceit that 
 did not flow like music through Lord Mercian's brain as he urged 
 his horse onward, while his thoughts went like messengers 
 before him. His imagination coloured all he saw, attuned all 
 he heard ; so that earth and heaven seemed to have come 
 together in his soul, making both one world in which only love 
 and happiness existed and where Patricia Kemball was the 
 queen. 
 
 It was the hour and the man ; the supreme moment which 
 comes to us all when we have conquered. 
 
 So he rode through the lanes and park and avenue, always 
 humming his snatches of song, now passionate and now 
 jubilant, till lie drew bridle at the door of Abbey Holme. And 
 then he was ushered obsequiously into the drawing-room.
 
 356 ' "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 It was untenanted. Neither Mrs. Hamley nor Miss Drum- 
 mond occupied each her accustomed place, and there was no 
 Patricia to meet him with her glad shame and bashful love. 
 It chilled him to see himself face to face with emptiness in the 
 place of welcome. His nerves were so highly strung they vi- 
 brated to every influence, and this cold unresponsive room 
 struck the first note of discord. 
 
 Presently the door opened and she came in. He went 
 hurriedly forward to meet her, but stopped half-way, and his 
 smile and the sunlight faded out of his lace. There was some- 
 thing about her he could not fathom. True, he had heard she 
 was ill, and she looked what he had heard ; but there was mor& 
 than this. There was a depth of sorrow, of strangeness even 
 in her face and manner, that seemed like the beginning of a 
 tragedy, the announcement of a mystery. The strangeness waa 
 due partly to the long duration of her home arrest ; so that 
 leaving her room, and being free to walk across the hall and 
 through the passages, had almost a bewildering effect on her, 
 making her scarcely know where she was and whether in her 
 old circumstance of union with the family or in her new con- 
 dition of isolation. Moreover, she was sorry for what she had 
 to say. 
 
 It was no blushing bride, yearning if trembling, who came 
 up to her expectant lover prepared to accept as much blessed- 
 ness as she bestowed ; no happy maiden rejoicing in her love 
 and glad that the term of doubt was past, it lull of sweetest 
 tremors at the unknown certainty for which it was exchanged ; 
 but a pale, sad girl in some deep trouble come to give the death 
 blow to his hopes and his joy. No ; it was no bride who came 
 up to him as he stood shocked and chilled midway between the 
 table and the door, with one hand grasping nervously the back 
 of a chair, the other half held out and half withdrawn. 
 
 At the first glance of her large eyes raised to him with such 
 steadfast mournfulness, Lord Merrian read his answer before he 
 made his request. He knew his doom, though he would not 
 acknowledge it to himself ; but went through the formula pre- 
 scribed, and tempted Providence in the old wild way. 
 
 He spoke to her ; but how differently from the manner in 
 which he had anticipated as he rode along the lanes and 
 pictured her shy face with its unspoken confession, which would
 
 THE AIR CASTLE. 357 
 
 make his words so few but so eloquent ! Now lie had some- 
 thing of the feeling with which a man leads a forlorn hope 
 a feeling of desperate determination and more resolve than 
 belief when he told her how much he loved her, and how 
 ardently he desired that she should be his wife. 
 
 She listened to him with downcast air, tender, sorrowful, but 
 not responsive. And when he had finished and had asked her 
 for the one word which would be the confirmation of his 
 flickering hope, she put her hand into his with a frank kind- 
 ness that was not love, and said, looking into his face : 
 
 " Dear Lord Merriau, I am very, very sorry, but I cannot 
 marry you." 
 
 It had taken Lord Merrian some little time and thought to 
 be quite sure he loved Patricia Kemball well enough to wish 
 to make her his wife. He had many doubts and a severe 
 struggle, not only with his parents but also with the more con- 
 ventional part of himself ; but now he felt as if he had deter- 
 mined on this from the first, that she had known it from the 
 first, that she had encouraged him, and that consequently her 
 refusal was cruel and undeserved. And he felt too, that he 
 must break down that refusal at any cost. The prize he had 
 doubted whether he should or should not reach out his hand 
 to take when it stood as he thought within his reach now 
 that it was denied suddenly became the one thing in his world 
 which he would devote his life to gain. It is the way with 
 men in almost all things ; but chiefly their way with women, 
 as the wiser among these last know, and act on. 
 
 " I cannot take that answer," he pleaded ; " I will not be- 
 lieve that you mean it." 
 
 His handsome face looked with a heart-broken kind of 
 appeal into hers, and her own heart ached to see it. But what 
 could she do ? There could be no paltering with trtfth, no 
 irresolution. She was going to make him as unhappy as she 
 herself was. She was sorry ; heaven knew how sorry ! but she 
 could not help it. She must be firm, for his own sake as well 
 as tor Gordon's. 
 
 For a moment she did not speak ; and then Lord Merrian 
 poured out on her a flood of passionate beseeching and more 
 dangerous pleading. He told her how, if she married him, 
 ehe would help him to be his best self; how she would bring
 
 358 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO. LOVE?" 
 
 out all his highest nature ;- how she would strengthen his hands 
 for good, and give meaning and life to his resolves. With her 
 by his side he would live as a man with an ideal should live ; 
 and the world would be all the richer and cleaner for the 
 example their lives would afford it an example rooted in her 
 and her only due to her and her only. He besought her to 
 reflect on the power of good which she was putting from her ; 
 she, whose enthusiasm was for good ; whose heart went out to 
 humanity, and whose whole soul was tilled with the desire to 
 make men happier and better. Married to her he would devote 
 himself to the sacred cause of humanity and progress : without 
 her he would be wrecked a purposeless drifting wreck of all 
 that makes man noblest. Had this no compelling influence 
 with her ? 
 
 He said all this and more ; with scarcely conscious craft 
 taking the line of argument that he thought would have most 
 weight with her ; lover-like wanting her on any terms so that 
 he might but have her, and trusting to himself to make those 
 'terms all that would best content him in the future. 
 
 His words for a moment dazzled her. To be of this great 
 value in life seemed to her such an infinite good ! It would be 
 bought by her personal sacrifice ; she neither desired to be 
 Lord Merrian's wife nor the possessor of a title. She loved 
 Gordon, and she was a democrat by nature who could never be 
 at home among the aristocracy; but to do good to be the 
 motive force which impelled a man of Lord Merrian's future 
 place and influence to turn his energies into the right direction 
 it was a temptation just tor a moment, the sophistries natural 
 to enthusiastic youth coming into her mind like voices bidding 
 her to accept this offer as her sacrifice of self carried to the 
 gain of the world. 
 
 And then she thought of Gordon ; of that last day, and their 
 long life-love ; and she felt that to hold fast by simple integrity 
 was better than to be led away by any false reasoning on the 
 value of sacrifice or the greater gain of complex virtues. 
 
 Looking once more into her friend's face, she said : " I can- 
 not indeed, dear Lord Merrian ! How can I when I am 
 engaged 1 " 
 
 There is no circumstance in life in which a man shows of 
 what stuff he is made so much as when he is in love ; none 

 
 THE AIR CASTLE. 859 
 
 wherein the difference between a gentleman and a boor is more 
 distinctly proved. That chivalrous obedience to his lady's 
 will, however painful to himself, which marks the gentleman, is 
 just the quality wanting in the boor. The one waits on her 
 desire, the other enforces his own ; the one sues, as for a grace 
 granted by crowned weakness, what the other compels by the 
 force of brute strength.. Patricia had judged her friend rightly. 
 He loved her ; more than ever at this moment when he felt 
 that with her was gone all the light of his life, all the hope and 
 glory of his youth; but he would have scorned'to have pressed 
 now for what she so courageously denied. He was a gentle- 
 man : and he respected the rights of his rival. Perhaps too a 
 feeling of wounded pride helped to stiffen his shoulders to bear 
 their burden with the quiet dignity of a true man. He, Lord 
 Merrian, knowing his full value, knew that socially he was far 
 ahead of a nameless third lieutenant in the navy without family 
 or money. Man for man too he did not fear any comparison 
 that could be made between him and any one else. He knew 
 how he stood there ; with what good gifts nature had endowed 
 him when she sent him into the world a nineteenth-century 
 Antinous ; so that even on this lower personal ground he was 
 aware that he stood too high for any possible humiliation. 
 
 " I have no more to say," he said after a long pause, during 
 which he had stood holding her hand in his ; " you have been 
 frank and true, like yourself. I cannot, even for my own 
 happiness, urge you to act against your feelings or your prin- 
 ciples. If it was only a case of waiting I would wait for you 
 as long as Jacob waited for Kachel ! I would wait years on 
 years till you took pity on me and said come 1 Is there no 
 hope of this ? " 
 
 He bent down and looked into her face. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " While Gordon lives I could love no one else," she answered 
 simply and gravely"; " and if he died I think I should die too ! 
 He is all that is left to me now of my only real life ; for this 
 life is not mine, and not real." 
 
 " You seal my lips," said Lord Merrian turning away ; " and 
 you have broken my heart ! " 
 
 She stood up by him and laid her hands on his arm. 
 
 '* No ! no ! " she said ; " you will find some one,of your own
 
 ggg ""WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 class who will be better fitted for you than I am : and we shall 
 always be friends. Shall we not 1 brother and sister to- 
 gether I " 
 
 He smiled in the sorrowful way in which men do smile when 
 they are offered this pale comfort of fraternity where they had 
 looked for the warmth of a life-long love. 
 
 " Yes," he said in a broken voice ; " we will be friends 
 always." 
 
 Her hands lay heavily on his arm. He unclasped them 
 gently ; kissed them as if he was standing by a death-bed and 
 this was the last leave-taking ; and then murmuring some in- 
 distinct words that sounded something between a farewell and 
 a blessing, he left the room hastily ; and soon after Patricia 
 heard the sound of his horse's feet thundering down the 
 drive. 
 
 She did not know eractly how the next few moments passed. 
 She remembered nothing but an aching at her heart arid a sense 
 of confusion in her brain. She scarcely knew where she was, 
 nor what had happened, nor what was to come, but sat with 
 her eyes fixed on the carpet, not thinking, only feeling. 
 
 44 Have you seen his lordship 1 " 
 
 It was Mr. Hamley who said this, as he and Mrs. Hamley 
 stood before her. They bad come into the room in the noise- 
 less way characteristic of Abbey Holme, and she had not heard 
 them till the unctuous voice of her aunt's husband broke the 
 silence and her reverie together. 
 
 She looked up and pushed back the hair from her forehead. 
 She had a bewildered and startled expression that seemed al- 
 most to justify Mr. Hamley's supposition of latent madness. 
 
 " What did you say 1 " she asked, looking from one to the 
 other. 
 
 "Have you seen his lordship Lord Merrian," repeated Mr. 
 Hamley, pronouncing the words very distinctly as when one 
 speaks to a foreigner or a deaf person, a child or an idiot. 
 
 " Yes," said Patricia fetching a deep breath. 
 
 " And what have you told him 1 " asked her aunt. 
 
 In spite of herself the poor lady trembled. There was just 
 a glimmer of hope left alight. 
 
 " I told him that I could not marry him because I was 
 engaged, and loved some one else," said Patricia.
 
 THE AIR CASTLE. 361 
 
 "And lie accepted this excuse ?" said Mrs. Hamley in that 
 dangerously smooth voice of hers. She had better have spoken 
 roughly, so far as Patricia was concerned. 
 
 " He thought of course that I was right, and went away," 
 Patricia answered. * " We are friends," she added anxiously, as 
 if to reassure them ; " we shall always be friends." 
 
 Husband and wife looked at each other. Mr. Hamley beat 
 l^e devil's tattoo on his chest, and softly whistled a few notes 
 of the " Ten Little Niggers." Mrs. Hamley's bitterness of dis- 
 appointment exhaled itself in a few angry tears, which she 
 concealed in the best way she could, under cover of a sudden 
 cold. 
 
 " Well Patricia," then began Mrs. Hamley, " you are so far 
 your own mistress as to be allowed the liberty of rejection. I 
 cannot force you to marry Lord Merrian, or any one else, how 
 much so ever I should like to do so, foreseeing your future, 
 and judging for your good. But if you choose to decline 
 such a chance, you must. All I can say is, that I wash 
 my hands of you now and for ever. I do not know what 
 your uncle's designs for you may be. He is a kind man, 
 but a just one too ; whatever he proposes, to that I shall assent. 
 If he says that you are to be turned out into the streets to 
 starve, you must go. I cannot plead for you. And if he says 
 that you are to live here as you are living now, in solitary con- 
 finement till you are twenty-one, you must do it. He is the 
 master, and you yourself have tied my hands." 
 
 Mr. Hamley came forward. 
 
 " I said last night if I remember correctly," he began orator- 
 ically, " that I would neither turn you out of my house nor 
 prosecute you for the crime which you have been guilty of as 
 principal or accessory ; nor yet maintain you a^prisoner in your 
 own room. You are my wife's niece, the grand-daughter of an 
 admiral and a K.C.B., and though about the biggest fool for a 
 young lady with all her senses that I have ever met with, still 
 a young lady as I feel bound by family circumstances to look 
 after so far. You are free to remain here as long as you like. 
 I do not grudge you your diet ; it won't break me ; no more 
 will an occasional new gown or bonnet when absolutely required; 
 but, like your aunt, I have done with you. I take no more in- 
 terest in you I don't care a hang what you do or what be-
 
 362 
 
 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 comes of you, so long as you don't disgrace this house. You 
 are as free as a bird for me ; for I would as soon give myselt 
 the trouble of poking after the sparrows in the hedge, and see- 
 ing what they were a-doing of in the mornings, as give myseli 
 the trouble of regarding you. You are wiped off the slate 
 done with. And now you know where you are ; so make the 
 most of what is left you, for it's precious little I tell you ! " 
 
 " I scarcely understand what you both mean or how I am 
 meant to live here," said Patricia, looking vaguely from face to 
 face of the two stern judges who stood before her and con- 
 demned her. " Do you ever mean to speak to me, aunt ] am I 
 a prisoner ? or what 1 " 
 
 " You are free, Patricia," replied Mrs. Hamley. " What you 
 have desired you now possess. You will live with us apparently 
 as usual. Mr. Hamley is not one to wish our private affairs to 
 be made public property, nor do I desire to create a scandal. 
 The world shall see no difference." 
 
 " Only I shall know it 1 " she asked. 
 
 " Only you shall know it," repeated her aunt grimly. " You 
 will not be punished, and you shall have enough to eat, and be 
 occasionally seen out with us to keep up appearances. But you 
 will understand that all my love for you has gone, all my care; 
 and that, as your uncle says, you are as free as a bird in the air 
 because of no more consequence. You have an asylum here, 
 not a home. You will soon know the difference, and be better 
 able to estimate the worth of what, in your wicked folly, you 
 have thrown away." 
 
 " But I cannot live like this ! " cried Patricia a little wildly. 
 
 Aunt Hamley smiled and spread out her hands. 
 
 " It has been your own doing ! " she said. 
 
 " Aunt ! dear! what would you have me do? marry Lord 
 Merrian while I am engaged to Gordon ? Could you counsel 
 any girl to so base a thing ! " she cried, with something of her 
 old energetic sense of right, something of her old directness 
 and abhorrence of crooked dealings breaking out through the 
 maze and the deadness, the strange confusion and oppression 
 of her present state. 
 
 " We will not go over the old ground again, if you please," 
 said Mrs. Hamley frostily. " We discussed that last night. A 
 theme becomes tiresome when continually repeated."
 
 THE AIR CASTLE. 363 
 
 Patricia put her hand up to her head, and the fire burnt itseli 
 out of her eyes and brain. 
 
 " I seem to be in some horrible dream," she said wearily. 
 " My whole life has been a dream since that night ! " 
 
 She sat down on the sofa with a heavy dazed look, but neither 
 Mr. nor Mrs. Hamley was in the mood for pity. Nothing short 
 of the absolute agony of death would have softened them at 
 this moment. They were too sorry for themselves to be able to 
 be sorry for her. 
 
 " If you are not well, Patricia, you had better go up-stairs," 
 said Mrs. Hamley coldly. " The drawing-room is not the place 
 for a girl's hysterics." 
 
 "Uncle !" cried Patricia holding out her hands and looking up. 
 
 It was to the dead she called ; but Mr. Hamley took it to 
 himself, albeit she never called him uncle, and always made an 
 internal protest when.her aunt so spoke of him. 
 
 " Poor young woman ; we must not drive her too hard, hey 
 Lady ? " he said, taking both her burning hands in his. 
 
 He was a man with his soft places ; women found them out 
 though he was a good husband. Pleased vanity and a pretty 
 woman together found those places very soft. 
 
 " Come come, rouse up ! " he said, patting her hands ; " we 
 can't have you go on like this, you know ! You have disap- 
 pointed and injured us, but you shan't come to harm. Look 
 about you and pull yourself together ; this kind of thing won't 
 do, you know. Water, Lady ! get some water ! By George, 
 she is going to faint ! " 
 
 " Don't make a fuss with her, Mr. Hamley," said his wife ; 
 " it is the worst thing in the world for hysterics. Lay her 
 down and open the window. She is just a little overcome ; and 
 no wonder ; but there is not much the matter with her. Girls 
 are always fainting when things go wrong with them." 
 
 But Patricia did not faint, or, as people call it, " go off." 
 She was only benumbed and overwrought ; and after a few 
 deep sighs and bewildered movements, she came to herself again, 
 and painfully staggered to her feet. 
 
 " There ! sit where you are till you are fit to walk straight 
 instead of staggering about as if you had I don't know what," 
 said Mrs. Hamley peevishly ; " and here are my salts. How 
 silly you are to go on like this, Patricia ! " 
 
 " Now you know a little of what we feel," said Mr. Hamley
 
 og^ "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 with a rather hazy idea of sequential reasoning, as he sat down 
 bv her on the sofa and fanned her with his wife's large 
 French fan, telling her all the while how wicked she had been, 
 and how bitterly he had been disappointed in her, and how she 
 had cut her own throat and no one could help her now the deed 
 was done ; [with more to the same purpose ; Patricia hearing 
 his voice as a far off kind of mill stream which sounded but did 
 not convey much meaning. But though he lectured and talked 
 big words big words and bad grammar he did not speak un- 
 kindly. That pathetic cry of " Uncle " had touched him ; and 
 he was disposed to regard this recalcitrant sinner with some- 
 thing like human kindness ; which to him seemed extraordi- 
 nary generosity. 
 
 For the matter of that, however, both Mr. and Mrs Hamley 
 felt that they were wonderfully generous all things considered, 
 and that they were doing their duty with heroic magnanimity to- 
 wards one in no way worthy; more than their duty indeed, 
 and far beyond what could possibly have been expected of them. 
 So they were, judging by their own lights and from their own 
 stand-point. To forgive so far as not to prosecute her for a 
 forgery in which she had been confessedly an accessory, as Mr. 
 Ham ley said, and then to forgive, so far as not to banish her 
 from the house, the severest social disappointment she could 
 have inflicted on them in both these acts they were generous ; 
 and they glowed with the conscious satisfaction of the virtuous 
 as they reflected on their good deeds. 
 
 What an outsider might have said was another matter. 
 Could rough old mother Jose, or even prim Miss Pritchard or 
 any one of the simple fisher-folk who had known Patricia in her 
 Barsands days have seen her now, her health and mind breaking 
 down under the iron despotism of her aunt's rule that unlov- 
 ing, cold, and contradictoiy rule which allowed no freedom, no 
 expansion, no power of growth to youth or character what 
 would they have said ? Something very difierent Irom Mr. and 
 Mrs. Hamley's concluding talk that night, when he threw out 
 as a fine fly to which she was expected to rise ; " I think, Lady, 
 no one after to-day can say I ana a hard man or an unjust one ? " 
 and she had answered ; " No, Mr. Hamley, you have been 
 more patient than I dared to anticipate. We have both acted 
 as Christians, I hope ; which must be our consolation and 
 support 1 "
 
 ADDED TO THE ESTATE. 365 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIIL 
 
 ADDED TO THE ESTATE. 
 
 EVER had life been so prosperous with James Garth. 
 That twelve hundred pounds had surely carried a bles- 
 sing with it ! It had fructified in his hands so that it 
 had done him the good of twice its amount, and had mended 
 the grievous rent which ill-luck and an evil inheritance had 
 made in his affairs as if the stitches would never give way, and 
 all was as good as new. It was a pleasure to see him with his 
 honest face beaming with satisfaction, and his step as light as 
 his heart, when he set out on his day's work ; and how he held 
 his head high and seemed to congratulate himself on his state 
 as one that could not be bettere.d, as he passed from field to 
 fence and from yard to fold. And yet how sad it was to those 
 who knew that his prosperity had no more root than a cut 
 flower blooming in a vase, and that he was virtually Mr. Ham- 
 ley's serf, held on during the great man's pleasure, to watch his 
 exultant satisfaction and childlike forgetfulness that nothing 
 of all this was really his own since the day when he had ac- 
 cepted Simpson's loan. 
 
 Still he had used the money well ; and for a rootless thing 
 it all looked clean and rigorous. Not a penny had been 
 wasted. He had paid up all his creditors, save the most dan- 
 gerous, the man who had consolidated his debts into this one 
 huge millstone ; replenished his small farm stock which had 
 dwindled into a mere nothing, worse than none at all ; set up 
 his children in boots and his wife in crockery and house gear ; 
 got one or two loads of " strengthening " for the land, and 
 hired labour for a bit of fence work here and a yard or two of 
 drainage there. Yes, he had used the money well, and had 
 made every pound of it pay. But he had used it. And of the 
 loan not more was left than thirty pounds to meet the first 
 half year's interest. But be' calculated on a tidy little sum for 
 the small croft of hay that would be ready for cutting in an- 
 other three weeks or so, and the crops looked well so far.
 
 -gg " WEtA? WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?'' 
 
 To be sure every now and then flashes of an odd kind of 
 doubt came into his mind ; but a doubt perfectly unreasonable, 
 and, as he would try to convince himself, ungrateful as well. 
 But he could not quite get rid of it. The fact was he had 
 never really liked Mr. Simpson ; though he was the poor man's 
 lawyer thereabouts ; a man who took up land and legacy cases, 
 and suits for lapsed rights on speculation and the terms of no 
 gain no pay, but if success then half the amount fought for and 
 obtained. It was a bold way of doing business that sometimes 
 succeeded when the law of the case was too strong to be set 
 aside by technicalities, but that as often failed ; the longest 
 purse making the best fight of it in the law courts as elsewhere, 
 and, whatever may be said about justice being no respecter of 
 persons, the peasant rarely getting the better of the gentleman. 
 In spite however of this professional class-philanthropy, and in 
 spite of his unconditional loan which had such a look of oft- 
 handed generosity with it, Mr. Simpson was, as has been said, 
 no favourite with James Garth ; and he looked anxiously to 
 the time when he should beable to pay off his debt and be a 
 free man once more. He recognised the lawyer's trust and 
 kindness and all that, he said ; but he preferred to be his own 
 man and to owe nobody anything. 
 
 As he sat in the kitchen one evening painfully making cal- 
 culations and adding up sums on dirty scraps of paper, for 
 head-work was not much in James Garth's line, he made it 
 clear to himself that, with such and such 'a profit on the hay 
 and the barley and the handful of wheat in the angle, the patch 
 of roots, the calf, and the litter of thirteen born that very day 
 as fine young pigs as could be seen in a day's walk ; thirteen ; 
 not one missing or moiled, and of which Mrs. Garth, like a 
 true farmer's wife, was as proud as if they had been her own 
 children and about as anxious that they should be done well 
 by with all this in hand, he made it clear to himself that he 
 should be able to pay off" so much of the loan by the back-end 
 of the year. It was a fair-looking calculation, as comforting as 
 Alnaschar's, and as real. For though the figures stood well, 
 
 nd proved like a sum-book, yet granting them true as they 
 tood, at the best nothing had been allowed for a bad season 
 *and spoilt crops, and the margin, say for sickness or extra ex- 
 penditure of aay kind not tabulated, was merely x, no more.
 
 367 
 
 It was just the kind of bright-looking bubble which hope and a 
 sanguine temperament fashion between them, the momentary 
 will o' the wisp which fortune in her crueller moods flings out 
 to mislead men before she destroys them. 
 
 This was emphatically true of James Garth and his prosperous 
 future ; for while he was sitting at home, putting down his 
 rows of exact but obedient figures and beguiling the evening 
 with pleasant but fallacious Q. E. D'S., Mr. Hamley's last words 
 were ringing in Mr. Simpson's ear ; " Call in the loan at once. 
 No humbug, no delay. Down on the nail it went and down 
 on the nail it must come back. Send up a man to-night ; 
 twenty-four hours ; not a minute more ; and d'ye hear 1 sharp's 
 the word." 
 
 The blow fell hard and heavy. It came unexpectedly and it 
 came cruelly. When everything looked so well, everything 
 promised so fair, it was hard to have the whole fabric shattered 
 for a rich man's greed the possibility of success that was so 
 probable destroyed for a stronger man's selfish will ! Perhaps 
 it was extrinsically better that the acres owned by James 
 Garth should be taken by Mr. Hamley who would farm them 
 more completely than that other could. But it was a life's 
 ruin all the same j and some one once said that the life was 
 more than meat and the body than raiment. But these are 
 old-fashioned words, which the world has gone a long way past 
 in this nineteenth century of ours ! 
 
 Still, economically right as it might be, the thing seemed a 
 pity all the same. Even the clerk who brought the notice was 
 sorry for the errand on which he had come. The place looked 
 so clean and bright as he came in out of the soft May evening 
 twilight ! There were such pleasant evidences of homely 
 sufficiency in rack and shelf and dresser ; in the cheerful little 
 handful of fire crackling on the hearth for the boiling of the 
 supper pot hanging from the chimney crook ; in the tidy 
 clothes of man ami wife, and the contented faces of both as 
 they turned their eyes to the door when it opened and bade 
 the visitor step in and come to the light and the fire. 
 
 The man, Simpson's clerk, was the son of a peasant himself. 
 He knew the signs, and he felt for one of his own kind ; as 
 was but natural. Moreover he hated Mr. Hamley whom he 
 feared, and had no more love for Mr. Simpson whom he de-
 
 368 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? ' 
 
 pised. He would rather it had fallen to any one else, he said, 
 to do this thing ; but he was hired for Simpson's work ; and 
 subordinates cannot afford to keep either feelings or a con- 
 science. The great food question is king over all others, and 
 poverty makes its victims of soul as ruthlessly as Jaganath of 
 bodies. 
 
 There were no loud words, no swearing, no exclamation even 
 when James Garth opened the letter and read the notice. He 
 took it with absolute calmness. It might have been a mere cir- 
 cular telling him the upset market price of beasts, or a notice 
 of a sale to be held to-morrow in Milltown, for the quietness 
 with which he received it. He only flushed a fiery red for a 
 moment, the veins in his neck and forehead suddenly starting 
 like cords ; and then he paled to a dead white which left his 
 face like that of a corpse, as the whole thing suddenly revealed 
 itself. He had walked straight into the snare that had been 
 laid for him, and there was no way of escape, look where he 
 would. The twelve hundred pounds required of him before 
 twenty-four hours were come and gone, and Mr. Simpson con- 
 fessing that the money was not his own but Mr. Hamley's, and 
 that all entreaties for time would be just so much labour lost 
 why the thing was self-evident ! He had been entrapped ; and 
 Simpson had simply been Jabez Hamley's tool and decoy. 
 
 It was neatly done. Cruelty of the worst kind always is 
 neat. Mr. Hamley had never done anything with nicer pre- 
 cision or more heartless inhumanity. He had marked his game, 
 covered him, and now had him safe ; as safe as if Long Field 
 Farm was already mapped out on the estate plan of Abbey 
 Holme, and the old title-deeds of the Garths locked up in the 
 fireproof safe let into the walls of the " Growlery." Yes, it was 
 neatly done. No one could have shown more patience in stalk- 
 ing his prey, thought Mr. Hamley rubbing his hands ; and now 
 he. had the reward of patience. A grand quality ! To know 
 when to hold and when to strike is not half the meaning of 
 success to be found herein ? 
 
 t While he thus congratulated himself on his method and held 
 himself to have deserved well of men and the science of agri- 
 culture, as practised in the country round about Milltown, 
 James Garth sat in the house which was substantially no longer 
 his own, conning that text which had been assigned to him out
 
 ADDED TO THE ESTATE. 369 
 
 of the popular lesson of the day the weaker man must lose, 
 and Might is Right. 
 
 " It is not only that I want the land for personal purposes 
 I could have disappointed myself easy enough if that had been 
 all," said Mr. Hamley to Mr. JBorrodaile, getting the first word 
 with the rector, knowing there would be more tfords than one 
 on the transaction when it became known, a x nd anxious to 
 make himself appear a public benefactor in his private dealings ; 
 " though I don't deny it will fit in very well with the rest no 
 gentleman likes to have a bit here and a bit there among his 
 own that ain't his own ; but when it comes to n bit of weed- 
 ground, as this Long Field is, why it's a disgrace to the neigh- 
 bourhood, and a nuisance too, to every gentleman as desires to 
 keep his land in good condition. Thistles and dandelions 
 that's about the size of it. And who wants to have his fields 
 stocked with them, I should like to know ? Not for as many 
 James Garths ! " 
 
 To which the rector said no, certainly not ; no man spends 
 his money on guano and top-dressing, to have his careless neigh- 
 bours ruin his labours ; and if James Garth could not farm the 
 land properly it had better pass into the hands of one who 
 could and would. 
 
 Unfortunately it happened that at this moment both Dr. and 
 Miss Fletcher were from home, else may be James, knowing 
 how good they were-to their poorer brothers, might have gone 
 down to them with his row of figures and his story. But they 
 were away in London ; and time was too short for letters to 
 pass between. Had not Mr. Hamley foreseen all this, and had 
 he not waited until " yon hound Fletcher " was clear off the 
 premises for a few days ? A child of the generation as he was 
 he would have scorned to have- committed the blunder of leaving 
 the back door open. No ; he had James safe in the toils, and 
 in Dr. Fletcher's absence there was neither man nor mouse in 
 Milltown* who could gnaw the cords asunder. So the fiat wmt 
 forth, and Long Field Farm was sold to Mr. Hamley, standing 
 crops, house, stock, land ; and Garth had a full hundred more 
 than if any other man had bought the lot. Mr. Hamley 
 wanted to have it said that he had done the thing handsomely. 
 And he did it handsomely too, according to -his code; leaving 
 the dispossessed farmer with a clear hundred in hand, when all 
 X
 
 370 WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 expenses were paid and the whole thing ruled straight between 
 them. 
 
 Garth was strongly urged by his friends to go abroad with 
 this sum, and try his fortune in Australia or America. He let 
 men talk ; and either did not answer at all, or, when their 
 words roused him, bade them shut up with an oath, and a 
 savage look not like his old self. But then he was not like 
 his old self any how. He might have been another person 
 altogether. The James Garth m^n had known these five and 
 forty years and more, active, industrious, .hopeful, cheerful, had 
 died and left the mere shell ad his representative. He did 
 nothing, would do nothing ; and while food was set before 
 him, and he had a place where he could creep like a dog to 
 sleep in when he came home, he neither cared nor knew what 
 was behind; The present and the future were alike swallowed 
 up in the vanished past, and he lived only iu regret and remem- 
 brance. 
 
 His sorrow had broken him down, and had turned him, if 
 not to absolute madness, yet to something tkat was very near 
 it. .People looked after him and shook their heads when they 
 njet him ; and little children, who had always loved him, 
 shrank from him in fear. Unshaven and neglected, and though 
 his clothes were whole yet leaving on you the impression ot 
 rags and sordid misery, he wandered about the Long Field 
 lanes, never speaking even to his oldest friends beyond a 
 hurried good day ; or may be it was only, a sullen nod that he 
 flung with a slouchiag air and a downcast, side-long glance. 
 Never resting, never working ; muttering to himself ; some- 
 times to be heard laughing wildly and sometimes with his face 
 buried in his crossed arms weeping just as wildly ; or standing 
 by one of the Long -Field gates ' looking with burning eyes 
 and blackened lips on to the land that the master of Abbey 
 Holme was breaking up into harmony with his own and he a 
 trespasser on the ground where he and his forefathers had been 
 owners ; not drinking, but having so much the look' of it in his 
 unsteady gait and confused air that even his friends held he 
 must " get it on the quiet," and all thought he was never better 
 than half sober at the best ; this was how lie lived and looked 
 from the hour when Simpson's clerk brought up that notice, 
 and he knew that he had been tricked and sold.
 
 ADDED TO THE ESTATE. 371 
 
 But there was nothing bad about him, poor fellow ! neither 
 was he mad ; no more at least than any other heart-broken 
 creature is mad. The world called him so for want of a finer 
 distinction, and it answered Mr. Hamley's purpose to set the 
 report well afloat. It prevented too much sympathy for his 
 victim. We do not feel real sympathy for mad folks. We are 
 theoretically sorry for them and express ourselves shocked ; and 
 if we can bring it out clearly why they have gone mad, and 
 make a well-rounded domestic history of cause and effect, we 
 are satisfied. All the same, we keep away from them ; and our 
 precious balms would be of the kind to break their heads if we 
 administered them. At the best too, we think it deplorably 
 weak that they should have lost their wits for sorrow. When 
 half Milltown said James Garth had gone out of his mind 
 because he had lost his land, the other half, which listened, 
 thought that he was showing a contumacious and undisciplined 
 spirit which deserved less pity than reprobation. Man is born 
 to sorrow, and he should take his inheritance patiently. Be- 
 sides, it must be so very unpleasant for poor Mr. Hamley, they 
 said. He had put money on the estate, and of course he had a 
 right to have either his loan or his land. He had behaved 
 nobly to the poor fellow ; and see what an improvement it 
 would be to all that bit of the road when the farmhoue and 
 its pigsties and the dirty old sheds were all taken down and 
 carted away, and those ill-kept fields in as good order as a 
 garden ! So far from blaming him they thought he had done 
 both well and wisely ; and they were only sorry for him that 
 his good work had wrought such havoc with that half-witted 
 fellow. For he could never have been worth much if his mind 
 had given way at the first little trial like this ; and it was not 
 a nice thing for poor Mr. Hamley to feel that he had been the 
 cause of such an awful upset. 
 
 Mr. Hamley represented society, success, and the law. To 
 a law-abiding people legality is a tremendous backstay, and 
 sanity and success are so much more pleasant to contemplate 
 than insanity and ruin ! Besides, take it how you will, it was 
 better for the world at large that Long Field should be owned 
 by a capitalist who could farm it up to its capabilities, rather 
 than bv a peasant proprietor who, doing the best by it he could, 
 grew more weeds than worts and took less off thau he put in.
 
 372 
 
 "WHAT WOULD VOC7 DO, LOVE?" 
 
 All this good economic reasoning, however, did not mend 
 matters for poor James Garth. But what did it signify? 
 Between the more symmetrical rounding of a rich man's pro- 
 perty, and a peasant's holding on to the land of his fathers, 
 who would hesitate which is the better thing to see ? And if 
 the dispossessed break their hearts or lose their heads for griet, 
 they but confess their own weakness thereby. The stronger 
 must take the crown of the causeway as his right, and the 
 weaker must go to the wall as his sorrow. The law of nature 
 has crystallised this fact ever since the first wolf eat the first 
 lamb ; and there are those who deny any difference between 
 men and wolves with lambs. 
 
 Mr. Hamley and James Garth represented the righteous 
 supremacy of strength, and the inevitable overthrow of weak- 
 ness, and only a few washy enthusiasts on the one hand, and 
 godless democrats on the other, would maunder about a law of 
 duty imperative on the rich and strong, or uphold the doctrine 
 of rights on the side of the poor and weak It was an insigni- 
 ficant little transaction save to the persons immediately in- 
 terested ; but it was a type ; and for the occasion Long Field 
 Farm was as a microcosm where the tremendous facts of the 
 universe were being transacted unhelped or unhindered by the 
 love or good conscience of men. 
 
 The Garths had moved into lodgings in Milltown. This of 
 itself was a change of no mean magnitude. The farmhouse 
 freedom and rough plenty that had made part of the rule of 
 life at Long Field, the ceaseless activity, the interest in work 
 never ending and always changing, the open-air life for man 
 and boy and child were all gone now exchanged for cramped 
 lodgings in a confined back street smelling of stale fish and 
 foul sewers, in the heart of a town. For though Milltown 
 was nothing but a large-sized village to those accustomed to 
 metropolitan centres, it was like a metropolis, a closely-packed 
 human ant-hill, for these poor folks, accustomed as they had 
 been to the breezy uplands and the unconfined air of moor and 
 meadow. 
 
 Mrs. Garth, good soul, battled with all these untoward 
 circumstances bravely. When women are brave they make a 
 divine fight of it, and when men give way the collapse is 
 generally complete. The wife, however, was so much better off
 
 ADDED TO THE ESTATE. 373 
 
 than her husband in that she had her children to think of, the 
 place to keep tidy and appearances to maintain. Her motheP* 
 hood and housewifery remained the same now as at the farm, 
 but his occupation was gone. And then again, though she had 
 loved the place well it had never been to her all that it was to 
 James. She was a woman of strong instincts and keen affec- 
 tions as well as of sound good sense, but she wanted just that 
 dash of sentiment which had expressed itself in him in the 
 pride of family proprietorship. If he would have put his 
 shoulder to the wheel and have gone out to one of the colonies* 
 with the money he had in hand, she would have been quite 
 as well pleased, had they prospered and the children kept 
 their health, as if they had kept Long Field. This does not 
 say that she did not grieve for the loss of the farm, or that she 
 failed in tenderness or sympathy, only that she had more 
 objects of interest left to her than \\e had, and less sentiment 
 to make her suffer. Still she did make the best fight of it 
 incomparably ; and when people saw the difference between 
 them they said she was doing her duty like a Christian, but as 
 for James, the -wreck he had made was disgraceful, and the 
 way he let things go by the board a shame. 
 
 All these things were remembered in the days to come 
 when a motive had to be found for a deed that thrilled society 
 at Milltovvn as it had never been thrilled before ; and a theory 
 had to be constructed that would fit the facts for the one part 
 and hold together for the other. It was then found how much 
 a man may damage himself by not taking his inheritance of 
 sorrow cheerfully, and what evil results may follow on not 
 acknowledging the divinity of that law of the strongest by 
 which the weaker is destroyed.
 
 "WHAT WOULD VOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE CLEFT STICK. 
 
 f~~ F Mr. Hamley had come down on James Garth, he was so 
 far impartial in his dealings with man and man as to come 
 ' down on Colonel Lowe as well. He had to make it evi- 
 dent to Milltown that he, Ledbury's office-boy, had bought up 
 one of the local aristoi, a " swell " who had married Lady Anne 
 Grahame's daughter ; and bought him up as easily as he had 
 covered a poor paltry peasant. Besides, he had that need of 
 action which comes after a disappointment; as;d, failing mar- 
 riage and Lord Merrian, turned to Cragfoot and revenge. So 
 it came that Colonel Lowe, being far behind-hand with his 
 quarterly interest, received a notice from Mr. Simpson all due 
 legal forms being complied with that his client who had lent 
 the money had given notice to foreclose. Unless then, he could 
 find some one else to take up the mortgage, his bad quarter of 
 an hour was at hand, and his turn at the Hamley grindstone 
 had come round. 
 
 Six months wherein to settle his affairs six months wherein 
 to find another capitalist who would lend sixty thousand 
 pounds on a decaying property, with the quarterly interest 
 always in arrears and getting yearly more difficult to find. It 
 was a bad look-out for the Colonel ; but to do him justice he 
 faced the gloomy prospect manfully, and gave way to no weak- 
 ness of hopeful gilding by which folks so often make bad ap- 
 pear good and present ruin look like future fortune. He only 
 cursed his evil stars, and that fatal luck of his which had land- 
 ed him in this hole. Had any of the thousand and one fortu- 
 nate probabilities come off which never do come off for the gain 
 of amateur gamblers, or any of the unfortunate accidents not 
 happened which always do happen to overwhelm those who are 
 tempted to their destruction on the Turf, the Colonel would 
 have stood to win ever so many hatfulls. But all his bets 
 turned the wrong way ; and instead of bringing himself home,
 
 THE CLEFT STICK. 375 
 
 as he had hoped, he had plunged heavily each time more 
 heavily than the last losing with a persistency of miscalcu- 
 lation that should have warned him had he been of the kind 
 to accept warnings, and that as it was looked like Nemesis. 
 The upshot of it however was, that he stood now on the very 
 verge of ruin, with only one chance left Sydney's marriage 
 with Julia Manley and her hundred thousand pounds. 
 
 If the boy would not marry her and he had not made a 
 move that way they were all done for ; but his father had 
 not kept him about him all his life not to know something of his 
 nature; not to know, above all, that poverty was just the thing 
 Syd would not accept, let what would be the means by which he 
 would creep out of the net, and that when the fix came he 
 would get money somehow, by any act of treachery or dishon- 
 our compatible with his position as a gentleman. He had no 
 fear of the result when affairs pressed seriously ; and the day 
 'after he received the notice he resolved to make a final appeal 
 to his son's good sense.and right feeling, and having done this 
 to abide the issue of which he had no doubt. Once convinced 
 that his only course, as a man and a gentleman, was to marry a 
 woman utterly distasteful to him in every sense but that of a 
 convenient banking account^ and the thing was done. To be 
 sure, he was hard to convince ; but then he was young ; and 
 young men are self-willed at times and the elder and wiser 
 must have patience. 
 
 Colonel Lowe had never himself shown to greater advantage 
 than he did to-day, when, for the second time, he went thoroughly 
 into his affairs with his son, and placed the whole condition of 
 things clearly before him. Nothing could exceed the delicacy 
 with which he stated the only chance of escape left them, unless 
 it was his manly frankness, his paternal tenderness. Sydney 
 was selfish, insolent, ill-tempered, weak had a thousand faults 
 for one virtue; but he did really love his father, and the diffi- 
 culties of his own position were increased by the desire he hon- 
 estly had to help the Colonel, and set him free from his em- 
 barrassments. Had he not been Dora's husband he would have 
 been Julia Manley s within the month ; but what could he do ? 
 H* was in a cleft stick, and there was only one move which 
 ee him. And that one move would Dora consent to 
 Before he compromised himself here he must be
 
 376 
 
 WHAT WOULD VOU DO, LOVE?." 
 
 sure there. He believed that she would release him ; for she 
 loved poverty no better than himself ; but until he was assured 
 he must fence off a promise, and fall back on his personal re- 
 luctance as his safest card to play. He thought he could com- 
 pel her; he felt convinced he could when he had once made up 
 his own mind, just as his father felt convinced about himself ; 
 but between love and doubt, that vacillating mind of his was not 
 made up as yet, but was tossed like a football now by his affec- 
 tion for his father, now by his hatred of poverty, now by 
 love for Dora, then by doubt of her acquiescence, and then by 
 his repugnance to the alternative. 
 
 " I loathe the woman ! " he said passionately. " Of all the 
 women I know Miss Manley is the most detestable in my 
 eyes." 
 
 " Poor Julia 1 " said his father. " She is no beauty I con- 
 fess ; but she is very amiable, and she has a hundred thousand 
 pounds at her disposal." 
 
 " It is frightful," said Sydney covering his face. " But I 
 will think of it. I can say no more if I can I will ; but the 
 sacrifice is maddening ! " 
 
 " I only ask you to think of it, my dear boy," replied the 
 Colonel gently. "I am so sure of your good sense that I have 
 no fear of your decision when you have once given your mind 
 to it. I do not think that you could bear to see the old place 
 sold and given over to that shoeblack, as it will be if we can- 
 not raise the money somehow. Nor do I 'think you will like 
 to begin life on your own account as a clerk in some office, 
 with not as many shillings a week as you have been accustomed 
 to have pounds. And yet I see no other chance for us." 
 
 "Why the deuce did you ever go on the Turf ? " cried Sydney 
 with a' sudden outburst of insolence. 
 
 His father shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Ah, yes," he answered tranquilly. "But if the favourite 
 had won ? " 
 
 " If ! " cried Sydney ; " a man ruins his family for an if ! " 
 
 " A little hard but smart, my boy," said the Colonel quietly. 
 "Of what consequence a few ill-tempered splutterings," he re- 
 flected philosophically, " if you can carry your point and get 
 the main thing ruled to your liking ? Syd might be as insolent 
 aa he chose poor boy, if he would marry Julia- Mauley at the
 
 THE CLEFT STICK. 877 
 
 end. It amused him, blew off the steam, and hurt no one else 
 just the play of the fish before he was landed; a thing for 
 which experienced anglers must be prepared." Sull the 
 Colonel did not like his insolence. He would not quarrel with 
 him for it, because it is impolitic to fall out with your tool ; but 
 he would stop it. So, rising, he laid his hand on the young 
 man's shoulder, saying kindly in his very best manner frank 
 yet dignified, paternal yet friendly 
 
 " Don.' t^ worry yourself now, dear boy Time is valuable of 
 course, but we are not going to be sold up to-night. Think it 
 over, and see what you can do. If you feel that Julia, poor 
 soul, is really impossible, well we must face our ruin like 
 men and gentlemen, but it you think you could marry her 
 with some reasonable prospect of happiness after and you 
 know my belief on the subject why then we are saved, and 
 old Hamley's trinmph is cut from under him. I confess I shall 
 be sorry if you decide against my wishes ; but if it is for your 
 happiness old fellow, I shall not grudge my share of the bill 
 we must pay." 
 
 " Curse Hamley and all his crew ! " cried Sydney savagely. 
 
 " Yes, so say I too ; curse Hamley ! " repeated his father. 
 " I would sit here and swear at him till all was blue, if that 
 would do any good ; but as it will not, we might as well save 
 our energies for useful' things." 
 
 On which he lighted his cigar and strolled away, very sorry 
 for poor Syd, but decidedly of opinion that the best thing he 
 could do was to get out of his presence as soon as possible, and 
 that solitude was the safest condition for his son at the present 
 moment. 
 
 After a little while spent in useless thinking and vain regrets, 
 Sydney Lowe, also lighting a cigar, strolled away as his father 
 had done ; and, ordering his horse, went for a ride, to see if a 
 hard gallop through the leafy lanes and across the moor would 
 clear his brain so that he could discover how to make two and 
 two five, and in what manner it would be possible to put back 
 the hand of time and cut the knot that could not be untied. 
 And while he was riding he found himself in the Long Field 
 lanes, and came suddenly upon Jarnes Garth standing with his 
 chin resting in the palms of his hands, staring fixedly across 
 the fields where Mr. Hamley'e men were working, and where
 
 878 
 
 WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 had he ventured he would have been' warned off as a tres- 
 passer. 
 
 A sudden thought seemed to strike Sydney as he passed the 
 man. His wild and haggard face put a vague and misty idea 
 that had been passing through his brain into tangible shape. 
 Here was a man who, as well as themselves, had wrongs to 
 revenge; a common peasant, therefore^, creature without a 
 conscience, and to be either bought or impressed. He rode 
 forward for a short distance, then turned back and reined up 
 as he came to Garth still standing where and as he had left 
 him, his elbows on the gate and his chin resting in the palms 
 of his hands. 
 
 " Good-morning, Garth," said Sidney briskly: - 
 
 The man looked up with a sidelong, quick, suspicious glance 
 that had become habitual to him. He flung the young fellow 
 a nod, but did not answer. Nothing disturbed him more than 
 to be spoken to. He wanted to be left alone in the world, and 
 to have no interruption to his mournful broodings. 
 
 " That's a sad sight, Garth," said Sidney, pointing with his 
 whip to the fields. " I don't know when I was so sorry for 
 anything as I was for this trouble of yours." 
 
 "Eh?" said Garth. 
 
 " I call it a damned shame," continued Sydney speaking with 
 energy ; " a cruel scandalous injustice." 
 
 Garth looked up. The passionate speech and accent of the 
 gentleman struck him as odd. It was kind of him to feel so 
 keenly for him, a poor man ; but what call had a gentleman to 
 take the sorrows of a horny-handed working-man to heart ? It 
 jarred him somehow ; and yet it was kind. 
 
 " He laid his lines and he took it," said Garth slowly. 
 
 " Yes, I know all about that ; and how you can stand there 
 atid see it all I can't make out," said Sydney. " If the fellow 
 had done as much by me, or half as much, I would have broken 
 his head before now." 
 
 Garth's eye blazed out with sudden passion and his wan 
 cheek flamed. He clenched his right hand and muttered some- 
 thing between his teeth. Sydney did not hear the words, but 
 the look and the action were significant enough. 
 
 " That's what I say," repeated Colonel Lowe's son in a lower 
 yoice, and with a vicious kind of distinctness in his words. " If
 
 THE CLEFT STICK. 379 
 
 he had done as much by me, or half as much, I -would have 
 broken the fellow's head ; and broken it so that it would not 
 have been mended again in a hurry." 
 
 " It would be a good job done," said Garth as if to himself. 
 
 " A very good job ! " said Sydney. " The fellow is the pest 
 of the neighbourhood ; a low-lived cur ! He has neither the 
 manners nor the feelings of a gentleman. If he got knocked 
 on the head some dark night there is not a soul in the place 
 but would feel that a nuisance had been got rid of, and would 
 be right thankful to the hand that had done it." 
 
 " A rich man and few friends," Garth muttered. 
 
 He still spoke as if to himself, as if Sidney Lowe had passed 
 out of his sphere altogether. 
 
 " A blackguard without one friend," said Sidney. " Why ! 
 how did he treat that nice girl of yours ? sent her off at a 
 moment's notice because his wife had lost a pound or two ! 
 He did not dare to say why, but I -happen to know that was 
 the reason. What can you say of a man like that 1 " 
 
 James Garth made no reply ; his face was still turned to the 
 fields, his hand strongly clenched, his lips set, his eyes fixed and . 
 burning. A vision passed before him. He saw his enemy, the 
 man who had tricked and sold him, walking before him in the 
 evening darkness. He noted his jaunty stride, his chest thrown 
 forward, his shoulders set square, his head well up, as a man 
 who had conquered fortune and beaten all round in the game 
 of life. He saw Jhimself creeping after him with -a stealthy 
 step a shadow dogging him as revenge dogs crime ; he saw 
 the distance gradually lessening, he gained inch by inch upon 
 him ; he was creeping up to him, always in the shadow, till he 
 was close close ; and now 
 
 There was a cry that startled Sydney and made the men in 
 the fields throw down their picks and spades and come hurry- 
 ing to the gate. 
 
 " No ! no ! not murder ! Good Lord ! not murder ! " shrieked 
 James Garth, struggling and foaming. He had had an epileptic 
 fit once before in his life ; this was only a recurrence. 
 
 " Who said murder 1 " asked one of the men looking darkly 
 at Sydney. 
 
 " And what's to do here, sir ? " asked another. 
 
 " I do not know what it all means," Sydney answered. As
 
 380 
 
 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 he spoke his face changed, and his eyes had the look of aqnick 
 thought in them. " That poor fellow," he then went on to say 
 with an air of charitable disdain he was a gentleman now, 
 speaking of a boor to his fellow-boors "that poor fellow there 
 seems to have had a bad kind -of thought. We were talking oi 
 Hamley, and he said how infamously he had been used, and 
 then suddenly shouted ' murder ! ' I hope he was not think- 
 ing of doing for Mr. Hamley," with a slight smile that had a 
 ghastly look in it. 
 
 " That's a hard word to say, sir," said one of the men sul- 
 lenly. " James ain't the man to take life." 
 
 And Sydney, with a careless " Well, I hope not; but murder 
 has an ugly sound with it," rode away revolving. 
 
 That night he and Dora had an unreal kind of interview ; 
 but one in which he was defeated. Each wore a mask, and 
 both fenced cleverly, with more feints than threats ; but she 
 was the stronger of the two and spoilt his game. He told her 
 of his difficulties, his father's ruin, and the foreclosing of the 
 mortgage ; she sympathised with him in the dearest way, and 
 complained of her own perplexities in the Hamley resolve to 
 keep her as a kind of state prisoner at Abbey Holme for ever ; 
 and what could she do to help him ? Between too little money 
 and too much love, she thought life very hard and people very 
 queer, she said, with a pretty shrug of her round uncovered 
 ihoulder one of her nice little tricks that Sydney admired. 
 He asked for her counsel as to what he should do, as she could 
 not help him ; and hinted at Miss Manley and her hundred 
 thousand pounds ; but she was too wise to take up his hint. 
 She was determined that what he wanted her to know he should 
 say in plain terms, leaving no loophole by which to creep out 
 should things turn ill. Not that she wanted their marriage to 
 continue, as things were, could it be safely broken. She would 
 if she could have torn her marriage lines as she might have 
 torn a milliner's bill that had been paid and done with. As 
 she could not do that, she was not minded that Sydney should 
 have any advantage she could not share. 
 
 She was so full of innocence and high-mindedness to-night 
 no man could possibly have proposed to her a crime to which 
 she must give her assent so full of sweetness and love, no man 
 could have told her he meant treachery and desertion. He
 
 THE CLEFT STICK. 381 
 
 ras foiled at every turn. She would not understand his hints, 
 and he could not quarrel with her. How can any one quarrel 
 with a sweet, amiable, lovely little girl whose every accent is a 
 caress, every word an endearment ? a soft, purring creature, 
 sympathetic and responsive, and offering no more resistance 
 than a ball of swansdown 1 The thing is impossible ! You 
 might as well try to play fives with that same ball of swans- 
 down as cross swords with a woman of Dora Drummond's type 
 when she has set her mind to yield and to fascinate, to guide by 
 a silken thread yet to hold with an iron hand. 
 
 Ever since Sydney had made her take that roll of ten sover- 
 eigns Dora had begun to hate him, and to hate him all the more 
 because she had begun to fear him. She did not know what 
 horror he might not force her to commit, if his necessities 
 urged ; and she did not like the unhappiness of which he ha'd 
 been the cause. Soft, sensual, self-indulgent women never do like 
 to see unhappiness ; it disturbs and annoys them ; and for all her 
 capacities for cruelty if she was pushed to it, Dora was essen- 
 tially good-natured when it did not cost her too much. Never- 
 theless, though she hated him to-night, she held him and she 
 fascinated him, never having been more delightful, more en- 
 dearing. Not that she would at any time have suffered herself 
 to sink into the ordinary groove of English wives that groove 
 wherein they do not think it necessary to try to please their 
 husbands ; having got, not caring to retain. Had she detested 
 the man who owned her she would have' made herself none the 
 less pleasant and coquettish to him. She might have poisoned 
 him, and probably would, but she would have been careful to 
 have handed him his dose of quietness*with the prettiest little 
 smile and the most becoming little cap in the world. Ten min- 
 utes before she had eloped with her lover, she would have put 
 her arms round her husband's neck and have called him a dear, 
 and would have asked him if her dress was not pretty, and, 
 smoothing her flounces, just 'the thing for a journey ? Her 
 creed was, that if disagreeable things had to be done, there 
 was not the smallest reason vhy they should not be done plea- 
 santly ; and if jalap has to be taken, in the name of humanity 
 smother it well in jam. 
 
 Sydney understood nothing of all this. He saw her as she 
 cfcose he should see Tier, and took her at her own valuation.
 
 382 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 Had things gone well with them, he would never have seen 
 her other than as the sweetest and most amiable little girl the 
 .world had ever produced ; he would have been even a better 
 man through the soothing influence of her assumed virtues, just 
 as the Hamleys were both happier and better through that 
 same influence. He would have lived and died and have never 
 learnt the truth to the last not when he kissed her hand as 
 she gave him the poisoned .cup, and blessed his friend for whose 
 sake she had given it. These women soft, fair, and false 
 have ever been the women men love best. They have their 
 uses ; and one is that they sometimes avenge their honester 
 sisters. 
 
 When they were about to part, "Sydney said half-jokingly, 
 half-seriously $ " AVhat would you do Dody, if I was forced to 
 marry Julia Manley 1 " 
 
 " Syd ! " she answered, her cheek on his shoulder. " As I 
 cannot imagine anything so dreadful, I cannot say what I would 
 do." 
 
 " You would scarcely give me in custody for bigamy ? " he 
 laughed. 
 
 " Why not, dear ? " asked Dora, innocently. 
 
 " W T hy not 1 Because you would not like to be the wife of 
 a felon, in the first place ; nor a poor little lost love, turned out 
 of house and home and having to work for your living, in the 
 second," he answered. 
 
 " As if I should mind wnat became of myself in such a 
 horrible position as that ! " was her reply. " There are two 
 things for which all women, who are real women, would sacrifice 
 themselves, Syd," she went on to say with her pretty professorial 
 air; "love and revenge. I have gone far enough, as things 
 are, for the one ; I don't want *to find out by experience how 
 far I could or would go for the other." 
 
 " Not to your own ruin, though perhaps to mine," he said, 
 smoothing her hair caressingly. *" You might not care about 
 me, but I am sure you would about yourself." 
 
 " I think I would sacrifice myself too, if I wanted to punish 
 you," she said in the sweetest way. 
 
 And then he laughed and kissed her, and said she was a 
 dear little transparent darling, and good fun to humbug she 
 believed everything he said to her.
 
 THE CLEFT STICK. 383 
 
 To which Dora, smiling and showing her small white teeth, 
 said Why, of course she did ! What were women for but to 
 believe in and love their husbands 1 If pouting he hum- 
 bugged her, that was very wrong,, and very wicked of him. 
 She never humbugged him, and she thought he ought to be as 
 loyal to her. 
 
 " Well, then, I will ! " said^ Sydney. " So I may not marry 
 Julia Manley 1 " 
 
 " If you do I will kill you and your Julia Manley too ! " said 
 Dora with the most enchanting assumption of viciousness. 
 
 He laughed again, and pretended to be afraid of her ; and 
 then he vowed he would be a good boy, and so on ; with a 
 dozen varieties of falsehood and folly. But when he went 
 away he wondered to himself what Dora really would do if he 
 were to marry Julia Manley ; as he must he knew that well 
 enough. It was horrible, detestable, but he must ! She could 
 not betray him, let her threaten as much as she liked. The 
 same reasons which had kept them" both from confessing their f 
 marriage would keep her quiet when it was broken ; and for 
 the far-off future if the day should ever come when she should 
 be poor and he rich; a not very likely contingency, but if it should 
 come why then he must trust to the chapter of accidents, arid 
 hope for a miracle ; as weak men and bad men do. 
 
 But what a dear she was ! his fluid thoughts went that way 
 now. How could he ever grve her up 1 What a perplexing 
 pass he was in ! What could he do how could he save him- 
 self from pain and annoyance 1 How warmly he would have 
 welcomed the Mephistopheles who would have got him safely 
 out of this cleft stick in which he was held, even by the pay- 
 ment of that shadowy thing he called his soul ! And this 
 thought brought him once more to the remembrance of James 
 Garth and his soul ; and what a blessed solution of all present 
 difficulties it would be, could that half-mad fellow be induced 
 to break old Hamley'a head one of these dark nights, and so 
 end the coil once and for ever ! What would become of him, 
 the murderer, afterwards was a thing of no consequence. He 
 was played out ; and whether he died in the workhouse or a 
 madhouse, of starvation or on the gallows, his life was done 
 for and the manner of the end signified but little. How could 
 he tempt him? he thought ; how get the idea into his poor
 
 334 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 feverish head ? Probably the old ruffian had left Dora well 
 provided for. If only he could be swept out of existence at this 
 juncture, how smooth the road would be ! 
 
 Meanwhile Dora, 011 her side, resolved never again to meet as 
 of old Sydney Lowe, her lawful husband. What he intended 
 to do, she thought, let him, without counsel or consent from 
 her. If she wished to keep him in her power, as she did, he 
 must tie his own nooses and slip his own head into them with- 
 out help or hindrance so far as she was concerned. Her role 
 was innocence coupled with devotion ; and she must be careful 
 of both the properties and business belonging to her part. 
 This was her resolve, as she crept back into the house, and 
 locked up the key of the postern gate in her most sacred 
 drawer. The plot was thickening unpleasantly ; and she was 
 quite acute enough to know that her safest place was one to 
 the side, where she could observe bub where she was not 
 included
 
 ABANDONED TO HERSELF. 3S5 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 ABANDONED TO HERSELF. 
 
 RS. HAMLEY was not a woman to do'things by halves. 
 What she said she generally meant, and she had not 
 that kind of nature, morally severe and physically ten- 
 der, which promises hard things and does soft ones. On the 
 contrary, if her words were severe her actions ran them close ; 
 so that when she told Patricia she was cast out of her love and 
 abandoned to herself given her freedom on the one hand, but 
 receiving desolation on the other she said what her heart dic- 
 tated ; and she acted up to it. 
 
 Patricia was in very truth abandoned to herself. She was 
 never scolded, never thwarted, never denied, because absolute- 
 ly ignored. She came and went, and no notice was taken of her; 
 no one asked where she had been or what she had done. She 
 took her place at the table, and the servants attended on her 
 with the rest ; but she was not included in the inner kingdom, 
 and if she made an observation, which was not often, her words 
 fell flat and without response. Had she absented herself, no 
 one would have asked for her until the thing had begun to 
 look serious ; and once when she was late for luncheon and 
 made her excuse in her old frank, hurried way, her aunt 
 answered coldly : " Pray do not give yourself the trouble to 
 apologize. It really does not signify the least in the world 
 whether you are late or not." 
 
 Abandoned to herself ; cut off from all family communion ; 
 denied even the friendliness of rebuke ; it was infinitely worse 
 than being coerced and herded as in the older days ; and Aunt 
 Hamley intended that she should feel it worse. To add to Pat- 
 ricia's troubles, there was not only "a cut" between the Abbey 
 Holme people and the Fletchers, owing to their taking Alice 
 Garth without a character which cut perhaps Patricia might 
 have ignored in any circumstances, and more especially in these 
 present ones but they were away. Had they been at koine, 
 
 Y
 
 3Qg "WHAT WOULD YOD DO, LOVE?" 
 
 poor Garth would not have been ruined. So that she was ut- 
 terly alone at home and without a friend abroad. 
 
 Dora would have been kind to her in secret, and, to do her jus- 
 tice, always tried to put in a conciliatory word for her when she 
 could without hurting herself, and which Mrs. Hamley, even 
 while she rebuked, treasured up as evidence of her favourite's 
 sweet and lovely nature ; but Patricia would have none oi her. 
 Her heart had turned against the Dora of the actual, and she 
 refused to be caressed back to belief. The Dora she had loved 
 had died, and had left behind her nothing but a memory and a 
 regret. The Dora who remained was a mere show, a mask, an 
 unreality ; and she would not join hands again with one who 
 had deceived her as she had done. Her self-respect, too, was 
 outraged at having been made a tool wherewith to work ini- 
 quity, and her sense of honour had been revolted. She had 
 touched pitch and she felt defiled. And yet perhaps, Patricia 
 in future years would develop sufficient passionateness to be 
 able to touch pitch voluntarily in certain circumstances as the 
 offering of her soul to the good of a cause. But if this might 
 be true of the future it certainly was not of the present, when 
 the law of girlish righteousness allowed of no deviation from 
 the right line, and when she was both too young and too straight- 
 forward for casuistry ; and when, take it how she would, sup- 
 plying Sydney Lowe with money stolen from Mr. Hamley was 
 scarcely reason enough why she should have been dragged into 
 the mire of a crime, innocent of all criminal knowledge though 
 he was. So there she stood amidst the wreck of more than 
 home and fortune ; like some worshipper of the old-time gods 
 taken by the initiated into the secret places, and shown the 
 tricks by which the awful holy thunderings were made, and the 
 glorious beauty of the Divine revealed, and the kneeling crowd 
 held captive to the faith it never proved. 
 
 Night and day she thought of all this of the Dora she had 
 loved and believed in and of the Dora she had found in the place 
 of her ideal j of the good success of bas eness ; and then of her 
 old life at Barsands ; till she scarcely k new which was real, the 
 present or the past, and whether her uncle's teaching had been 
 right or her aunt's commentary wrong. Her mental condition 
 was in truth for the moment slightly clouded. Her brain had 
 been overtaxed, and was fogged like an imperfect photographic
 
 ABANDONED TO HERSELF. 387 
 
 plate. She had to fight through it alone. It was a bad pas? 
 for a girl given to singleness of mind and purpose and belief, 
 but it had to be gone through ; and there was so much good 
 in it that the struggle would make her all the stronger, and she 
 would be a nobler woman at the end of it than she was in the 
 beginning. 
 
 The warm spring days were mellowing into summer. There 
 was no earthly reason, thought Patricia, why she should not sit 
 out of doors under the shade of copper beeches and elms and 
 horn-beams, as well as in the heavy rooms of the magnificent 
 mansion. And as no one asked, though Mrs. Hamley always 
 took care to know, where she was, she did sit out of doors the 
 whole day long ; which was just the best thing she could have 
 done. Had she exhausted her strength at this time she would 
 probably have fallen ill. All she wanted was quiet and fresh 
 air, and to be left to regain her mental clearness undisturbed 
 by any outside influence whatever. 
 
 The poor girl bore herself with signal patience and dignity 
 all this miserable time of undeserved disgrace ; and with as 
 signal loyalty. Knowing that her aunt disliked her going 
 about alone, she would not have left the immediate home- 
 grounds under any temptation. She always sat in one place 
 in the shrubbery, out of sight but not lost, and within the 
 range oi the meal-time gong. The day when she had been late 
 she had fallen asleep, but she never let herself be overtaken 
 again ; and even her aunt, disposed as she was to see her in an 
 unfavourable light in which way soever she was facetted, could 
 not but acknowledge that, without the smallest attempt to re- 
 instate herself, she did not take a rebellious advantage of her 
 freedom, but ordered her life with as faithful a regard to rules 
 as if she benefited by their observance. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley almost wished she had not been so loyal. It 
 cut the ground of displeasure from under her own feet, and 
 made the girl's conduct about the cheque only the more inex- 
 plicable. For who indeed could understand euch a- strange 
 mixture of qualities 1 she used to say peevishly ; so good in 
 some things, so bad in others, and so tiresome in all ! Perhaps 
 it was wrong, she would add, to wish that she should be more 
 wicked than she was ; but it would be more comfortable and 
 more harmonious. These composite characters were trying to 
 deal with, and gave her a disagreeable sense of unrest.
 
 388 " WHAT WOULD YOU BO, LOVE ? " 
 
 So she grumbled, as was her wont, and watched with a 
 strange confusion of mind, half anxiously, half fearfully, for 
 signs of greater iniquity or for symptoms of repentant subjec- 
 tion. And when neither came she resented her disappointment 
 as an offence. This was one phase of mind ; another was a 
 very real unhappiness about the girl's condition when she did 
 not remember that she was angry. She used to watch her 
 wistfully enough when Patricia was not looking, and ever with 
 a heartache which neither her pride nor her anger would suffer 
 to be seen. She noted how the healthy appetite which had so 
 much distressed her in the first days by its unlimited appro- 
 priation of dry bread, had refined now into a sick indifference 
 to food altogether. She saw how thin she had become, how 
 listless in her movements, how feeble in her gait ; how her 
 once responsive face was fixed and rigid, and her once bright 
 eyes veiled and dreamy. She sometimes longed to take her to 
 her bosom, to scold her viciously, then to cry over her and for- 
 give her, and consent to accept the whole affair as a mystery 
 wherein she was not blameworthy. And then she remembered 
 Lord Merrian, and hardened her heart like an English Pharaoh. 
 Besides, Mrs. Hamley's temper could not brook mysteries in 
 the minor world about her. She claimed to be supreme pontiff 
 to whom all things should be known ; and if she felt at one 
 moment an impulse of tenderness she was able to damp it down 
 into manageable displeasure the next when she put it clearly 
 before her that Patricia had dared to have a secret, and to keep 
 it from her. 
 
 In the midst of all this, Patricia's daily dress got shabby ; 
 and a letter came from Gordon. 
 
 For her own sake as mistress of Abbey Holme, also- for a 
 certain womanliness of feeling still left for the girl amidst all 
 her displeasure, Mrs. Hamley must keep up appearances to 
 high-water mark. She could no more allow her niece to be 
 ill-dressed now, in the days of her dire disgrace, than if she had 
 been foremost in favour.. She was spiritually the" Cinderella of 
 the family, seated among the ashes weeping, but her body must 
 be clothed with decorous magnificence as befitted the mansion 
 in which she had her place. 
 
 Wherefore one day at breakfast Aunt Hamley said in a cold 
 voice
 
 ABANDONED TO HERSELF. % . 589 
 
 "Patricia, oblige me by not wearing that gown again." 
 
 Patricia started, and looked up as if awakened from a dream. 
 It was so strange to be spoken to again ! Dora glanced up 
 with a friendly little congratulatory smile which swept from 
 Patricia to Mrs. Hainley, and on to Mrs. Hamley's husband in 
 an impartial way, excluding none. 
 
 "Yes, aunt," Patricia exclaimed. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley smiled sarcastically. 
 
 " You are ready with your promises," she said. " Pray what 
 will you wear instead ? " 
 
 " I don't know, aunt," she said. " Have I any other?" 
 
 " What a question to ask ! " cried her aunt crossly. " A 
 young woman of your age, not to know what gowns she has to 
 wear ! Is it stupidity or affectation, Patricia ? " 
 
 " Stupidity I am afraid, aunt," said Patricia quietly. 
 
 Mrs. Hamlej r hesitated for a moment. The girl spoke with 
 such touching simplicity ; her sorrowful face, which had light- 
 ened up under the address, was so full of ingenuous humility ; 
 she looked so glad to be spoken to again, and yet was so little 
 self-assertive, so unaffected, that her aunt did not know 
 whether to call her to her and kiss her and forgive her, or scold 
 her for being so wicked when she was so nice. She was so 
 angry with her for her stupidity putting herself into this 
 miserable position when she might have made such a brilliant 
 alliance, atoned for her mysterious crime, and done them all so 
 much good ! And yet she was so sorry for her ! 
 
 Her momentary little struggle ended, however, in the main- 
 tenance of her old attitude of displeasure, sO she only answered 
 as coldly as she had spoken before : 
 
 " Well, never mind what you have or have not. You will 
 find a new gown in your room to-day ; so pray condescend to 
 attend a little to mundane things, Patricia ; give the one you 
 are wearing to Bignold to put away, and do not let me have to 
 speak to you about your personal appearance again. You are 
 going about like a cinder-wench ! " 
 
 " I did not know I was shabby," said Patricia looking at her 
 dress. 
 
 " Then you know it now," snapped her aunt. 
 
 tl Mrs. Hamley has given you such a pretty dress 1 " said 
 Dora pleasantly.
 
 ggO WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " I have done my best for a most ungrateful subject," said 
 Mrs. Ham ley with her martyr's air. 
 
 " Thank you, aunty, very much," said Patricia turning a ten- 
 der face towards her ; a moist-eyed face, with the curved lips 
 slightly quivering. 
 
 " Thank your uncle whom you have wronged," said Mrs. 
 Hamley severely. 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Hamley," repeated Patricia. 
 
 " Ah ! " said that gentleman plunging and fingering his 
 whiskers, and not sorry to see the bonds relaxed a moment ; 
 for though he too was angry at the fault, he was sorry for the 
 person, and would gladly have joined hands over the mystery 
 weeks ago, and have accepted it and reinstated the delinquent ; 
 but the Lady was mistress, and he found it best to follow her 
 lead when once within the four walls of Abbey Holme. Still 
 he was pleased at this little break so far. " To return good 
 for evil, eh ? heaping coals of fire ? I told you that you were 
 welcome to your diet and your clothes, and I am a man of my 
 word. I don't promise and when the time comes cry off, and 
 don't perform, do I, Lady ? " 
 
 " No, Mr. Hamley ; you always fulfil your promises," said 
 Mrs. Hamley ; " which is more than can be said for every one." 
 
 At this moment the butler brought in the letter-bag, which 
 was opened and the letters distributed by Mr. Hamley as usual, 
 Among them came that long-expected, long-desired ship-letter, 
 with its many official notifications, its signs of travel, its pro- 
 mise of abundance. 
 
 " For Miss Kemball," said Mr. Hamley, throwing it across 
 the table. 
 
 She took it. A mist came before her eyes. She forgot her 
 aunt and her late more mollified mood, Dora's pretty little con- 
 gratulatory face, Mr. Hamley's ostentatious graciousness ; she 
 forgot Abbey Holme and her present misery and all that was 
 her life now she had Gordon's letter ; Gordon was alive ; he 
 loved her ; he would come back for her some day ; he believed 
 in her and would trust her. 
 
 She held the letter in her hand, breathless while she looked 
 at it and took in the fact that it was really from him his 
 hand-writing paper he had touched words into which he had 
 put his lif* ; unconscious of the cold inquiring eyes that were
 
 ABANDONED TO HERSELF. 891 
 
 looking at her, weighing and measuring, judging and condemn- 
 ing. She was called back from her memory of the frank, fair, 
 honest face, the clear voice resonant and yet so tender, and 
 bright blue eyes that had never been ashamed to meet man face 
 to face and that would not be afraid to meet death and the 
 Eternal she was called back from her vision of the dear future 
 when he should come and take her hands in his before the 
 whole world, and lead her from darkness to light, from imprison- 
 ment to freedom, from degradation and despair to life and love, 
 Ly her aunt saying in her harshest manner ; " When you have 
 quite finished staring at that envelope, Patricia ; perhaps you 
 will attend to your uncle saying grace." 
 
 They had never had breakfast grace at Barsands ; but they 
 had thanked God more through the day. 
 
 Then the vision faded away, and she was once more Patricia 
 the i-eputed forger, or at least the guilty accomplice ; once 
 more a dependant in disgrace ; the truth living among lies, 
 which they had had the power to make appear the blackest lie 
 of all. 
 
 She stood up with the rest, and walked out of the room 
 with the rest ; but though the brief moment of the loosing of 
 the spell had passed, and her aunt had hardened herself against 
 her once more, and she was only Cinderella among her ashes 
 again, she felt as if she had a talisman now which could change 
 all things, and that even Aunt Hamley would have to yield 
 to it. 
 
 She went into the garden to her usual seat, and read her 
 letter. It was a long, true, and loving one ; the second Gordon 
 had written though the first she had not received. It said all 
 that words could say, and expressed more than it said. It spoke 
 of courage, faith, constancy, patience, and of the reward which 
 comes to true love in the end. Ic told her how she was his 
 hope, his dream, his beloved ; but it was .the letter of a man 
 as well as of a lover, and of a sailor above all ; a sailor full of 
 professional ardour and a not ignoble ambition, rejoicing in the 
 life to which he had devoted himself and glorying in his work. 
 It came like one of the old Barsands breezes into the dull and 
 stifling fog of Milltown, and seemed to clear the horizon of 
 her life. It roused her as nothing else could have done, and 
 geemed to give her new energy and to bring her back to herself
 
 392 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO. LOVE?" 
 
 and the need of action and a purpose. It was like the lifting 
 up of a matt-rial veil from her eyes, the taking of a weight 
 from her hards. She belonged not only to herself and to her 
 aunt, but to Gordon. Was she living now as his wife should 
 live ? Was this dull and clouded patience under injustice the 
 noblest thing she could do. or was there a better way ? Ought 
 she for his sake to remain where she was so misjudged, so hardly 
 punished ? or ought she not rather to withdraw herself from 
 Abbey Holme, and, ever keeping loyal silence, refuse to under- 
 go more humiliation ? Patience and humility are grand virtues 
 truly ; sweet and true Christian graces ; but the old, heroic, 
 pagan self-respect, which also was integral to Patricia's nature, 
 was a virtue too, and just now was in the ascendant. Hither- 
 to she had proved her patience, now she must justify her self- 
 honour. 
 
 It was on the fourth day after she had received this dear 
 letter, and when she had heard Mr. Hamley say how he had 
 met that precious pair of Tom Noddies, the Fletchers, in the 
 Market-place that day, that she went to her aunt sitting in the 
 drawing-room as usual, with her many-coloured worsteds in 
 her hands, with dear Dora still busy at Venetian point and 
 butterflies for the hair by her own little especial table. It was 
 a sunless sultry day, but only one window of the room was 
 open about a couple of inches from the top. 
 
 " Aunt," said Patricia coming in and going up to her aunt 
 very quietly and with the sadness always on her now, but with 
 a strange look of determination in her face and manner ; " May 
 I speak to you? " 
 
 Her aunt looked up at her curiously. 
 
 " Certainly," she answered with a surprised kind of con- 
 descension. " What is it you wish to say ? " 
 
 " I cannot go on living like this," said Patricia with quivering 
 earnestness. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley bowed her head. 
 
 1 And what do you propose to do to alter it? " she asked. 
 
 ' Let me go away," she cried. 
 
 ' Willingly. Where 1 to do what ? " 
 
 'Let me earn my own living," said Patricia. 
 ' Willingly again. But," with Mrs. Hamley's special smile, 
 " to come from heroics and generalities to common-sense details
 
 ABANDONED TO HERSELF. 893 
 
 how do you propose to earn your own living t As a gover- 
 ness? What can you teach? For my own sake I cannot 
 allow you to go out as a servant ; besides you cannot wait 
 at table, and I could scarcely recommend your honesty," she 
 said cruelly ; " and ability to steer a yacht on to the rocks, 
 or even to ride barebacked, will not T fear get you a living. 
 This last might indeed do for the circus ; but I see no other 
 opening. I am willing to discuss any scheme with you, but it 
 must be a rational one." 
 
 All this was cruelly said ; with intentional harshness and 
 insolence. Patricia turned pale and her hands clasped each 
 other with a nervous pressure. She held her breath for a 
 moment ; and then as if she had cast her anger from her as a 
 meaner tiling, raised her eyes and said with a sweet and-touch- 
 ing dignity, a noble patience that was the maturer fruit of her 
 former girlish cheerfulness ; " I know that I am very ignorant, 
 but I would indeed rather go out as a servant, earning my own 
 bread by my own labour, than live like this." 
 
 " Are you so very cruelly treated here ? " returned Mrs. 
 Hamley as if asking an honest question. "Who offends you ? 
 Dora, do you do anything to offend Patricia ? " Dora shook 
 her head. " If you have any complaint to make, Patricia, pray 
 make it. It seems to me that you are left very much to your- 
 self and have no cause to grumble. I do not interfere with 
 you. To be sure I would not like you to disgrace the house 
 by any wild or wicked ways ; but, failing this, I really do not 
 see how you are coerced or what cause you have to complain." 
 
 " Ah, aunt, you do not speak as you feel as you know," 
 said Patricia. 
 
 "Thank you, Patricia. At my age it is not quite usual to be 
 told one tells falsehoods." Mrs. Hamley said this with omi- 
 nous quietness. It was merely an argument she was holding, 
 not an offence she was resenting. 
 
 " I did not mean that exactly," returned Patricia ; " but you 
 want to try me. You will not come to my point, and when 
 people do that " 
 
 " They do tell falsehoods ? " she said. 
 
 " In a way, yes," answered Patricia bravely. 
 
 Her aunt smiled disagreeably.
 
 394 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ?." 
 
 ' " Are you adopting exactly the right method to make things 
 better for yourself ? " she asked. " Shall we, for your sake and 
 before you commit yourself farther, go back to the starting- 
 point 1 What do you purpose to do if you leave Abbey 
 Holme 1 " 
 
 " I see nothing now," she said with a candid throwing up of 
 her cards. After a pause, she added, in a pleading voice 
 " Aunt, will you let me go to the Fletchers for a little while ? 
 I know they are at home, and I am sure they would take me." 
 
 " As a dependant ? if you please. Why not ? It will be 
 simply a change of place not circumstances," said Mrs. Hamley 
 quietly. 
 
 " Aunt, don't ! " cried Patricia in a kind of agony. " Well ! " 
 she then said, pressing her hands over her eyes, " let me go. 
 Miss Fletcher will understand me and believe me." 
 
 Dora flushed a little, and glanced upward. She was very 
 sorry for the necessity, but she did not exactly want Patricia 
 to be understood. Mrs. Hamley flushed too. 
 
 ' I know you love Miss Fletcher better far than you have 
 ever loved me," she began in a level tone that soon rose to the 
 graver accent of displeasure, and that finally deepened into 
 anger. " Go to her if you wish it. I should be sorry to keep 
 you. Carry your false tales out of the house, and make out 
 that you have been ill-treated when you have only been too 
 kindly considered. Ungrateful, disobedient, untrustworthy girl, 
 you leave me as you came to me, a creature I have been utterly 
 unable to improve, and, with all my kindness, as utterly unable 
 to make love me. Not another word. Leave me, I say. If 
 the Fletchers, or any one else, will keep you till you are of age, 
 when I can wash my hands of you for ever, I shall thank them. 
 Go ! Will you go, Patricia ? I want never to see you again ! " 
 
 " Will you not say good-bye, aunt ? " said Patricia, standing 
 before her, holding out her hands. " I did not mean to vex 
 you. I do not like to part in anger." 
 
 " No, I will not say good-bye," answered Aunt Hamley. 
 " The word means a blessing. I cannot bless you. Go ! " 
 
 " Aunt ! " 
 
 The depth of anguish in the girl's voice made Mrs. Hamley's 
 every nerve quiver ; but she was not minded to yield to her
 
 ABANDONED TO HERSELF. 395 
 
 weakness. She looked resolutely away from the pleading face, 
 the beseeching figure, the imploring gesture. 
 
 " Not another word. Go ! " she said again. 
 
 Patricia turned her eyes on Dora. Dora was crying, with a 
 slightly scared look on her flushed face ; sincerely sorry for 
 poor Patricia ; sorry, too, for Mrs Hamley, who wounded her- 
 self as much as she hurt her niece ; hating herself and Sydney 
 and all that had led to this miserable complication neverthe- 
 less keeping silence. 
 
 " Good-bye Dora," then said Patricia. " Make my aunt for- 
 give me," she added, as with a stifled sob she left the room. 
 
 The innocent scapegoat on whom was laid the burden of 
 many sins, if ever she needed faith of the best kind it was now ! 
 
 That day Patricia was driven down to the Fletchers' with her 
 boxes. Bignold had had orders to pack up everything belong- 
 ing to Miss Kemball, and the coachman took her, wondering, 
 to the Hollies. It was very like a dismissal, he thought ; more 
 especially when he saw by the maid's astonishment that the 
 young lady was not expected. 
 
 " A rumpus, I make it out," he said to Mary Anne confiden- 
 tially ; and Mary Anne thought he was about right. 
 
 " My child ! '* cried Catherine Fletcher as Patricia came into 
 the room, the shadow of her former self; thin to as much 
 gauntness as a young girl can have; depressed, strange, sub- 
 dued ; all her brightness dulled ; her former abounding vitality 
 gone ; the whole being and manner of the brave and cheerful 
 Barsands nymph changed as if she had been transformed 
 changed as a green wood is changed when a fire or a storm has 
 swept through it. " Good heavens what has happened 1 " she 
 cried in real alarm. 
 
 " Oh ! Miss Fletcher, do not think me mad, but do take mo 
 for awhile ! Let this be my home ; I have none other ! " 
 cried Patricia flinging herself into her arms. " You are ray 
 only friends. Keep me just a little while till I can keep my- 
 self." 
 
 " Child my dear, dear girl! what is all this about 1 " cried 
 Dr. Fletcher 1 coming to her. 
 
 She held out her hands. 
 
 " Will you take me, Dr. Fletcher 1 " she cried prayerfully. 
 " Just for a little while till I get strong and can see my way ? "
 
 396 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 His face changed. 
 
 " For life, if you will, Patricia," he answered, holding her 
 hands in his. ' "'Don't say, ' only for a little while.' " 
 
 " Oh, how kind you are," Patricia said, looking into his 
 face ; " but don't be too kind to me just now I don't want to 
 cry." 
 
 "I should not like to see you do anything weak or silly," 
 said Miss Fletcher gravely ; " so don't cry, but tell us what it 
 all means." 
 
 " It means that I am in utter disgrace at Abhey Holme, and 
 that my life is too intolerable there. I cannot go on as I am," 
 said Patricia ; " so I asked aunt if I might come here. I felt 
 sure you would take me for a few days ; and she was angry, 
 and sent me with all my things, as if to live here. This was 
 her punishment to me because I asked." 
 
 "She was quite right," said Catherine Fletcher kindly 
 " She never did a better nor a wiser thing. She knew that she 
 could not have made me a more delightful present if she had 
 given me half her wealth." 
 
 " Quite right," repeated Dr. Fletcher. " I scarcely gave the 
 old lady credit for such perspicacity. . So now, missy, you are 
 at home remember at home for life if you will." 
 
 "But now you must hear my story before you take me," 
 said Patricia with her eager candour. " I do not think you 
 will disbelieve me, but it is just possible you may, and I should 
 like you to know what has happened." 
 
 "Will it take long? Shall I keep the carriage with the 
 boxes at the door till you have made your confession 1 or shall 
 I walk by faith and have them carried into the blue bedroom ? " 
 asked Miss Fletcher pleasantly. 
 
 " You had better keep them till you have heard," was the 
 grave answer. 
 
 " As if my Patricia could do anything worthy of condemna- 
 tion ! " said Catherine Fletcher, putting her comfortable arm 
 round the girl's neck and looking into her face lovingly. 
 
 Patricia caught her hand, and kept it there on her shoulder. 
 
 " You believe me then ? you will believe me, however much 
 appearances are against me ? " 
 
 " If you say that you are innocent yes," answered Catherine 
 emphatically.
 
 ABANDONED TO HERSELF. 397 
 
 " And you too 1 " Patricia turned to Dr. Fletcher. 
 
 " I ? I would not believe that you could do anything wrong 
 if you tried," he said. "And if you were even to confess to a 
 grave misdemeanor, I think I should have recourse to a blister 
 on your head and a dose of blue pill. I would rather accept 
 the theory of temporary monomania than that of intentional 
 immorality." 
 
 She drew a long breath. 
 
 " That is comforting," she said. " It seems to heal me some- 
 how." 
 
 Then with her hands clasped over her friend's, but every 
 now and then turning her eyes to that friend's brother, she 
 made her simple statement how that she had been asked to 
 change a cheque at the bank and to say nothing about it ; how 
 that she had done so, and had agreed to say nothing about it ; 
 how that cheque had turned out to be a forgery, for which she 
 was held responsible because of her silence. 
 
 " But," she said with a kindling face, " as I promised faith- 
 fully not to tell, I must keep my word, whatever it costs me. 
 I know nothing about it in any way. I simply did what I was 
 asked to do, and I had hot the faintest idea there was any 
 wrong connected with it." 
 
 '* And the person who asked you knows all that has happened 
 since ] " asked Dr. Fletcher. 
 
 " Yes," answered Patricia. 
 
 " And has made no sign ] " 
 
 "No," she said; "but," nervously, " please do not ask me 
 any questions. I want to say nothing, because I might say 
 too much if I did. I must be true to my word." 
 
 " So you shall be, dear," said Miss Fletcher, kissing her. 
 " We will never question you. We both believe in you im- 
 plicitly, don't we, Henry ? and can see how it all happened as 
 clearly as if we had been there. So now go up-stairs and take 
 off your things. At last I have a daughter of my own 1 " 
 
 " A friend to share our home, to make it bright for us and 
 to make her own happiness in it," said Dr. Fletcher hurriedly. 
 
 "It is so strange to hear myself loved again. I scarcely 
 know if it is pain or pleasure. It feels almost too strong for 
 me," Patricia murmured rather than spoke, pushing up her hair 
 dreamily.
 
 gg^ "WHAT WOT'T,'"* VOtT DO, L 
 
 Brother and sister exchanged looks. 
 
 Come, dear," said Catherine Fletcher briskly, " we don t 
 dream at the Hollies. We must have the boxes seen to, and 
 your things put away, child ; and, now I remember, there are 
 three or four gowns and things of mine hanging up in your 
 wardrobe. What an intrusion ! Come, let us make haste and 
 get all in order before dinner-time." 
 
 Her voice and manner roused the girl pleasantly. With a 
 little laugh that had just the beginning of a natural joyousness 
 in it, she left the room with her friend, and in less than an 
 hour was unpacked and homed, with a delicious sentiment of 
 rest and peace stealing like sleep over her. 
 
 When they were alone together, Catherine asked her brother ; 
 " What do you think of all this, Henry ?" 
 " I think it is evident ; Miss Drummond," he answered. 
 
 < ' So I think ; but what does it all mean 1 There is a mystery 
 beyond ; what can it be ? " 
 
 " That is just the difficulty," he said ; " but the person for 
 whom Patricia acted was evidently ' dear Dora,' as Mrs. Ham- 
 ley calls her." 
 
 " Yes ; evidently ; I always felt she was underhand." 
 
 " Tyranny. Tyrants make slaves, and all slaves are false," 
 was his answer. 
 
 " But how cruelly they seem to have treated this poor child. 
 How changed she is ! " 
 
 Dr. Fletcher's quiet brown eyes glanced -with an angry viv- 
 acity rare in him. 
 
 " Cruelly ! They have tried to kill her, body and soul ! " he 
 cried. " As if cruelty is only physical ! Why, this girl has 
 been assassinated murdered ! All that was best and most 
 beautiful in her they have tried to crush out, because it did not 
 square with their wretched, shallow lives ! Had she died 
 under their hands it would have been substantially murder 
 if not legally so." 
 
 He spoke with a vehemence his sister never remembered to 
 have noted in him before. She looked at him anxiously ; then 
 rubbed her eyes with her forefingers, which was a trick of hers 
 when she was puzzled. Just now Henry puzzled her immense- 
 ly ; and the key to the riddle was wanting.
 
 DISILLUSIONED. 399 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVL 
 
 DISILLUSIONED. 
 
 other arrangement could have helped Patricia at this 
 moment so well as this of making her home with the 
 Fletchers. Not even the return of Gordon and the 
 fulness of her love with him would have done her so much 
 good taking the phrase in its highest sense. Had he come 
 back and married her off hand, as he would have done, she 
 would have been intensely happy, of course ; and happiness 
 with some natures is a fine soil for the growth of the lovelier 
 virtues ; but she would not have learnt all she was learning 
 now, and she would therefore have lost the spiritual richness 
 given by the sympathy which comes of knowledge. 
 
 She was eminently purposeful in character, and she was 
 leading now a purposeful life. And one different in kind from 
 anything she had known before. As her uncle's housekeeper 
 and companion at Barsands, she had had her work and her uses 
 in a small sphere, but wholesome so far as it went ; but here 
 and now her horizon was enlarged, and her mind gained in 
 proportion. She was Doctor Fletcher's pupil indoors, and 
 Catherine's companion abroad. By the one, her intellect was 
 trained with more mastership than it had ever been trained be- 
 fore : and the other took her among her old friends, the poor, 
 where she must perforce pity and was able to help. Her life 
 was passed out of herself as it used to be at Barsands, but on a 
 higher platform ; and the more it was dedicated to the service 
 of others, the more her own sorrows and perplexities fell into 
 the background and became of less magnitude and importance. 
 She went among the poor and heard the sorrowful stories of 
 their lives ; she saw their hard struggles with misery, disease, 
 and debt ; and she watched their pathetic patience under their 
 afflictions. Sometimes it was their brutish patience, the sub- 
 mission of "dumb driven cattle" too spiritless to wish for 
 better things, too degraded to strive for them ; and sometimes,
 
 400 u WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 it was the recklessness which grows on that sandy soil where 
 there is no hope the scamped work, the filched time, the 
 husbands who left their wives to starve, and cared neither for 
 home nor duty so -long as they could drink away their ill-earned 
 wages ; the wives that were slatternly shrews who drank too, 
 and cast to the winds every womanly virtue and every lesson 
 of decent living; the mothers whose children were unwelcome 
 enemies, fetters and hindrances in the great battle of life, so 
 many extra mouths to feed out of the common stock, which 
 they wished the fever or the frosts would take away, and which 
 were taken away with at least the help of neglect if of nothing 
 more active ; men and women whom poverty, ignorance, and 
 the terrible conflict in which they found themselves worsted on 
 all sides, oppressed by man, forgotten by God, had reduced to 
 the level of savages, and some to the level of beasts all this 
 she saw with a burning heart ; her inherent desire to be of use 
 breaking out with tenfold force as she came to a more accurate 
 knowledge of the work that had to be done. And she was of 
 use, and never weary. Like Catherine herself, she gave up 
 herself to the service of humanity and to the alleviation of 
 suffering. Her life was passed among the poor, with no superior 
 patronage demanding gratitude and submission, no fine lady 
 daintiness playing at benevolence for a country pastime that 
 went no deeper than croquet or a new costume ; but as a sister, 
 a child, more richly endowed than themselves, and sharing her 
 treasures with those who had none. Reading to the sick and 
 to the old ; taking girlish gifts of use, or prettiness, or pleasure 
 only, to the children ; adding the grace and brightness of her 
 youth to the motherly prevision of Miss Fletcher ; comforting 
 those in sorrow ; helping those in need ; speaking good words 
 of human fellowship to those who had hitherto so sorely failed 
 digging down into these arid souls for the sweet waters of 
 conscience and self-respect, and seldom digging in vain this 
 was her work now done hand in hand with her older friend. 
 And it made a beautiful life for her ; a life full of blessing given 
 and received ; a life wherein she grew into a loveliness of soul 
 and body surpassing all she had yet attaine'd ; a life which 
 gave back the nobleness it wrought and the happiness it dis- 
 pensed, such as is ever found, no matter what the pattern of 
 their flag, by those who have thus consecrated themselves to 
 this service of humanity*.
 
 DISILLUSIONED. 401 
 
 In the beautiful activities of the present she wondered more 
 than ever at the purposeless existence of Abbey Holme ; its 
 ladylike excuses for idleness in those eternal strips of needle- 
 work and endless rolls of parti-coloured knitting which filled 
 up the hours for her aunt and Dora with such a comfortable 
 conviction of industry ; its want of depth at home or of interest 
 abroad ; its absence of all object or intention save the mainte- 
 nance of the proprieties and the smoothest manner of passing 
 time. She wondered just as much now at their material ar- 
 rangements too, as she did in the beginning ; and still more at 
 herself, that she had lived through them for tb^ ^ long weary 
 months. How stifling it was ! Those dreadful flues which 
 went through the house and made it all as hot as a greenhouse ; 
 those thick velvet pile carpets and heavy curtains and closed 
 windows and huge fires ; those dull evenings when she was 
 expected to interest herself in bdzique which she could never 
 understand, and was not allowed to read or employ her hands 
 in such work only as she could do and it was not fine work ; 
 those dull days ; those languid, compressed, silent weeks and 
 months ! She felt she could not have lived there at all had it 
 not been for Dora ; and how kind Dora was in the beginning ! 
 Kind, yes, always ; at the end quite as kind as in the beginning 
 even when she had ruined her doing her best to make her pain 
 less painful ! But how all that sweetness of manner had van- 
 ished into a mere bubble of no meaning, as she found out the 
 unworthiness underlying the real nature ! It seemed to her, 
 looking back and reflecting, that Dora would have been less 
 unworthy had she been less amiable ; for to Patricia, as well as 
 to Mr. Hamley, stratified characters, part noble, part base, were 
 distressing, and she thought that a bad person had better be 
 bad all through than only in bits , souls that are like Dead 
 Sea apples being apt to mislead the innocent to fatal issues. 
 
 Ah ; it was a dreadful time and place to remember ! like 
 gazing back into a prison, where " an angel beautiful and 
 bright" had come down and looked her in the face, like that 
 angel who bewildered the poor knight of whom Dr. Fletcher 
 read to her the sweet sad story the other night ; an angel who 
 had made the gloom shine like sunlight while she stayed, but 
 who had vanished one day, making the worst darkness of all ! 
 Soinelimes a horrible dread used to come over her that perhaps 
 z
 
 402 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 her aunt would fall into a softer mood towards her and send for 
 her again, to tell her she was forgiven, and that she was to be a 
 better girl for the future, and copy Dora with more zealous ex- 
 actness, and be sure not to tell any more stories, or have to do 
 with forgery or shameful secrets. She used to wake at night 
 in terror, dreaming that this had happened, and that she was 
 being dragged back to the Abbey Holme drawing-room where 
 she could not find the door and where the windows were all 
 closed. It was a dream that always shook her nerves for days 
 after, and that made both Dr. Fletcher and Catherine intensely 
 anxious when it came, for it was a sign that had a bad meaning. 
 Patricia, however, could not get rid of the thought ; it haunted 
 her waking as well as sleeping. She used to ask herself what 
 she should do if this chance came about ; and sometimes she 
 used to ask the Fletchers, with a clinging kind of mental terror 
 that distressed them even more than did her dream. When she 
 did, Catherine, to cover her deeper feeling, would laugh and 
 promise to hide her somewhere among the rocks like an old- 
 world fugitive ; but the feeding would be difficult, she used to 
 say ; and once Dr. Fletcher, not looking up, said in a constrained 
 manner ; " It will be your own fault if you go ; you have a 
 home here for life, if you wish it." 
 
 There did not seem to be much chance, however, of this 
 recall. As things stood, Mrs. Hamley refused to see either the 
 Fletchers or Patricia. She held the one as a criminal and the 
 others as her aiders and abettors ; and, as she said in her note 
 to Patricia wherein she declined a visit her niece had proffered, 
 she had always made it a rule in life to give up the acquain- 
 tance of people who did wrong. She did not understand else 
 what difference those who honoured the Ten Commandments 
 could make between vice and virtue ; and as she considered 
 that Patricia had sinned heinously, she necessarily held that 
 Doctor and Miss Fletcher had made themselves parties to her 
 offence by taking her as they had done from under her protec- 
 tion, undoing all the good she had been at such pains to effect, 
 and defying her right of anger and punishmejit. 
 
 So the breach was very wide and very pronounced between 
 the Hollies and Abbey Holme, and Milltown had a comfortable 
 little dish of gossip to discuss, wherein not one of the guesses 
 was true and not an arrow hit the right mark. Enough was
 
 DISILLUSIONED. 403 
 
 known, however, for abundant speculation ; and the Milltown 
 people did not neglect their opportunitias. 
 
 Chief of the humble friends to whom Catherine and Patricia 
 went with their kind acts and heartsome words, was poor Mrs. 
 Garth doing her brave battle with misfortune single handed, 
 and bearing her husband's collapse as well as their joint sorrow 
 with a steadfast courage that was as sublime in its own way as 
 any of those deeds of heroism which have stirred the world's 
 imagination for all time and changed the current of history. 
 Ah, how many of these poor hard-handed, rough-speeched 
 brothers and sisters of ours, whom now we despise as " the 
 common people" just admitted into the outer courts of humanity 
 will be shining angels in the days to come ; while we who wear 
 soft clothing and walk delicately, will be turned down in the 
 ranks and set to learn some elementary lessons of virtue 
 far beneath their feet ! Between the Hamleys and the Garths 
 of society lie more gulfs than one ; and the " wisdom which is 
 conversant with God " does not always dwell with the former. 
 
 Yet how brave soever Mrs Garth was, her path was very 
 rough ; and she felt it to be so. There was no lack of immedi- 
 ate means ; but the future that terrible future troubled her 
 greatly ; and not without reason it was all so utterly dark ! 
 Time seemed to work but little good for James. He was still 
 as broken-spirited as ever ; though to be sure he had twice done 
 a day's work for Dr. Fletcher, and it seemed to have heartened 
 him and brought back a flash of his old cheery manhood while 
 the impulse to be doing lasted. The worst of it was, it lasted for 
 so short a time ; and then he sank back into the wandering idle- 
 ness of his former state, haunting- the lanes that looked on to 
 Long Field Farm, and breaking his heart at every change being 
 wrought in field or fence. If he had lost his land fairly, perhaps 
 he would have been as brave in his sorrow as his wife; but it 
 was the sense of having been tricked, and tricked by Mr. Ham- 
 ley above all men, that was the poison in the wound and hindered 
 it from healing. It was madness, granted ; but it was pitiable 
 all the same. 
 
 One day Patricia was out for a walk by herself. The Fletch- 
 ers were calling at the Quest, and she was to be picked up on 
 their way home. She had never told them why she did not 
 care to go to the grand house, but they could imagine jAbntv of
 
 404 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 reasons, if none of them the true one ; and she was therefore 
 left behind as a matter of course, without questions or explana- 
 tions. She went up by the farm on her way to meet them, 
 taking the lane where she and Dora had walked that botaniz- 
 ing day when they had met Lord Merrian, and Mrs. Garth, as the 
 farmyard Constance, had broken the conventional canon of fit- 
 ness by railing in Doric against a rich man's injustice. 
 
 What a lifetime had passed between this and then ! She felt 
 as far removed from the perplexed and entangled self of that 
 day as she had felt removed then from the joyous Barsands Pat- 
 ricia who had never known a heartache and never a tear, till 
 that last sad hour when all had gone to wreck together. How 
 changed the whole aspect of life was now from what it had been 
 both then and in the old, old days of the dear home ! Little in- 
 trospective as she was, her heart was perforce turned back on 
 itself to-dayand she couldnot choose but look within, asking her- 
 self how things were with her and noting where they differed from 
 the past. The answer was well. She was happier now than 
 she had been, in spite of that terrible shadow under which she 
 lived ; but how much graver, how much less joyous ! how the 
 scales of girlish blindness and unconscious romance had fallen 
 for ever from her eyes, and what terrible truths had been re- 
 vealed to her ! 
 
 Then she thought of Lord Merrian, and his strange love lor 
 her. What was there in her, a simple country girl without 
 family or fortune, to attract a man in his position 1 Why, noth- 
 ing ! It was just a day-dream to him no more ; his reason had 
 gone to sleep, and he had wandered in his dream. She remem- 
 bered with a blush that one rapid thought which had come like 
 a vision of temptation, of the good she could do the world 
 through him, and the power she would have had. And then 
 she looked up, as if some one had been walking with her to 
 whom she was speaking aloud, as she thought ; " Bat I have 
 found that I can do good as I am ; that we all can if we like ; 
 and that I need not be Lord Merrian's wife to make a few hearts 
 lighter and a few lives better." 
 
 The root of this thought was a miserable young couple fast 
 going to ruin, whom Catherine and she had visited much and 
 taken in hand to teach aud improve, and whom they had both 
 taught and improved. The chief evil had been the young wife's
 
 DISILLUSIONED. 405 
 
 incapacity and the young husband's impatience; but a well-or- 
 dered home, the means whereof had been partly taught and 
 partly given, had closed the ginshop door and made a worthy 
 household out of a pauperized and vicious hovel. This was 
 just one of the instances of remediable ignorance of which they 
 so often spoke at the Hollies, where it was held as a cardinal 
 article of faith that human lives can be redeemed if only there 
 is energy and love enough to do it. 
 
 And while she was thinking thus she came upon the gate 
 where James Garth usually took his mournful station ; and 
 found him standing there in the old attitude, his chin resting 
 on his hands, staring down on the fields that had been his 
 father's, but would never be his son's. He was so wrapped up 
 in his own thoughts, that he neither saw nor heard her, though 
 she said " Good-day, Mr. Garth," cheerily. 
 
 Had he still been the proprietor of Long Field Farm, she 
 might have called him Garth, simply. As a ruined man she 
 was careful to give the little note of respect. 
 
 As he did not hear he did not answer her ; and then she drew 
 down into the gateway and touched his arm. He started and 
 muttered a savage oath ; but when he saw who it was, he 
 dropped his eyes, and touching his battered cap said, mildly 
 enough : 
 
 <; Beg pardon, miss, I did not know it was you." 
 
 " I thought you were coming to the Hollies again to finish 
 that bit of garden you left half done," said Patricia, not as an 
 opening by way of improving the occasion, but simply because 
 she thought he had been coming ; and she wanted to see the 
 bit which the Fletchers had taken in from the field finished and 
 made into the rose-garden they said should be called after her 
 "Patricia's portion." 
 
 " I have no heart for work ! " said Garth more sadly than 
 sullenly, turning away. 
 
 " Oh I don't say that ! " she cried with a kind of grieved sur- 
 prise in her voice ; " what is life good for if we do not work ! " 
 
 "Life is good for nothing now to me," he answered. 
 
 " I cannot bear to hear you say so ; is that like a man ? " she 
 said very earnestly, leaning forward and looking into his face. 
 " Why, Mr. Garth ! I should have thought you would have had 
 more courage than this 1 "
 
 406 " WHAT WOULD VOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 u It has taken the heart out of me," he said ; and put his 
 head down into his hands with the old despairing gesture. 
 
 " But surely the very good of trial is to prove our strength I " 
 Patricia answered. " What would become of the world if we 
 all gave way like cowards as soon as things went wrong ! And 
 we can be cowardly in mind as well as in body." 
 
 " I am no coward, miss 1 " said Garth, lifting up his angry 
 face. 
 
 The word caught and stung him, not unwholesomely. 
 
 " No, I dare say you are not ; I should not think you were," 
 Patricia answered ; " at least not in the usual way. But what- 
 ever you may be in one way, you cannot say that this kind of 
 thing is either bravo or manly ! It does no good. It will not 
 
 five you back your farm and even if it would, all this gloomy 
 espair would not be a worthy kind of purchase-money ; as it 
 is, it only makes you more miserable than you need be, and adds 
 to your poor wife's troubles." 
 
 " It is well for a young lady like you to talk," said James 
 Garth with some scorn. " A soft young lady as has never 
 known a cross nor a strain, how can you judge for a man like 
 myself with such a sorrow as I have on me ? " 
 
 " Have I known no sorrows ] " answered Patricia in a low 
 voice. " I think I have ; and very bitter ones too ! I have 
 lost all that you have, Mr. Garth my old home where I was 
 brought up, and where I was so happy ; my uncle who was 
 like my father and that I loved like my father ; my only friend ; 
 and more " she added with a flushed face : " more than I 
 can tell you. And I too, nearly broke down as you have done, 
 but " with the old Joan of Arc look in her bright young eyes 
 lifted up so straight and earnest into the sullen face beside her, 
 " I made a better fight of it than you have ! I am only a girl 
 and you are a man a man with a wife and children depending 
 on you but I would have cut off my right hand before I would 
 have wasted my time and strength and neglected every duty as 
 you have done, just to give way to all this useless regret ! It 
 is unworthy of you ; and however angry you may be to hear me 
 say so, I fed as if I must ! " 
 
 " You are a bold speaker, miss," said Garth with a dark look- 
 Once the sunny temper of him would have been no more 
 ruffled by a woman's words than his flesh would have been hurt
 
 DISILLUSIONED. 407 
 
 by a child's blow ; but he was easily made angry now and for 
 the moment looked, as he felt, like a murderer. 
 
 Patricia shrank back at his eyes ; then she seemed to nerve 
 herself, and held out her hand. 
 
 " Forgive me if I have spoken too roughly," she said with a 
 noble self-surrender, as if she had been speaking to a king. 
 " But I am so sorry to see you so broken I do so long to know 
 that you have taken your griefs into your own hands, and con- 
 quered them as a brave man should, that perhaps I have said 
 too much ! You are doing yourself so much harm too, in every 
 way, and making us all so unhappy ! I want you to forgive me 
 now if I have hurt you, but to try and be braver than you have 
 been, all the same. You mvst come out of this trouble, Mr. 
 Garth ! you must be a man and conquer it ! " 
 
 She spoke passionately, with a pleading look and manner 
 that could not fail to touch any one, not a madman nor a savage, 
 It is the power that truth and love possess ; the faith which at 
 times removes more than the material mountain. 
 
 There was silence for some moments, he looking down, she 
 looking at him. 
 
 " Perhaps you mean well, miss," he then said with a deep 
 sigh, and turned away his head. 
 
 Whether he would or no he was touched ; but he did not 
 want to yield to her. He had not taken her proffered hand 
 when she held it out to him, now she put it into his, and clasped 
 her fingers over the rough brown skin. 
 
 " I do mean it well." she said with a fervent ring in her voice. 
 " Show me that you believe I do, and that you are not angry 
 at my speaking so plainly for after all you are so much older 
 than I by coming to-morrow to the Hollies. If you would 
 only take up work again, Mr. Garth, you would conquer every- 
 thing live it all down ! " 
 
 "Wages for working on another man's property are not 
 pleasant to a man who has been his own master, and held his 
 own land all his life, and his father's before him." said Garth. 
 
 " But if you have not got your land any longer, wages are 
 better than nothing, and work on any man's property is better 
 than no work at all," said Patricia with a deeper wisdom than 
 perhaps she knew. " Do come to the Hollies, Mr. Garth ! you 
 know that Doctor and Miss Fletcher are as much interested in
 
 408 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 you as if you were their brother. I cannot tell how you have 
 distressed them by the way in which you have borne your 
 trouble, so unlike what might have been expected from you ! " 
 
 She was still speaking with the same passion of earnestness ; 
 pleading with the man's better self and judgment against his 
 lower state ; hei hand in his, her fingers pressed close in her 
 zeal. She looked like some girl saint preaching the truth to un- 
 converted ears, calling the darker soul into the higher life As 
 indeed she was ; and as James Garth felt her to be. 
 
 Her courage and enthusiasm touched the dying spark of man- 
 hood in him ; her woman's zeal woke up his pride ; her frank 
 friendliness lifted him back to his old state of sell-respect, and 
 seemed to heal the wound in his sore soul ; the warm girlish 
 grasp did him good, as he told his wife ; and looking at her 
 with his hollow eyes kindly, a smile came over his gaunt face 
 and he said, shaking her hand : 
 
 " I'll come to-morrow, miss , I'd scarce be a man if I could 
 refuse a young lady like you who speaks so well ! " 
 
 And as they stood there, with the warmth of the moment on 
 them both she to save and he to yield the clatter of horses 
 came near, and Lord Merrian, riding with a fair pretty girl, 
 passed them at a slow pace and took in the whole scene. 
 
 They had never met since that last interview in the draw- 
 ing-room at Abbey Holme ; and when they did meet now all 
 things were changed. Patricia was no longer the possible co- 
 heiress with Dora Drummond ; no longer Mrs. Hamley's beau- 
 tiful niece who was worth even a young lord's looking after ; 
 but a discarded relative, evidently living in disgrace and as 
 evidently having done something to deserve it. And Lord 
 Merrian was no longer the enthusiastic Numa worshipping his 
 hidden Egeria, but the wise and far-seeing young statesman 
 who had just ideas on the value of matrimonial alliances, and 
 who had come to the rather tardy possession of his senses and 
 tVe knowledge" that a Lady Maud, born in the purple and edu- 
 cated in the shibboleth of the aristocracy from the beginning, 
 would make a fitter wife for him than even a Joan of Arc who 
 was a heretic to the inner creed, and not quite up in the acci- 
 dence of the outer observances. 
 
 Lady Maud was a good, well-behaved, placid young person, 
 untroubled by doubt social or religious, and who would have
 
 DISILLUSIONED, 409 
 
 condemned an original thought, either in herself or any other 
 woman, as dangerous and unladylike. She was one of those 
 who accept the present arrangements of society as final, and 
 who cannot understand what people find to perplex and dis- 
 compose them. There are the Queen and royal family ; the 
 aristocracy ; the two sections of the middle elapses, both the 
 moneyed who may be known and the professional and poor 
 who may not ; and then there are the common people who have 
 to work for all these grander creatures, and who are not of the 
 same human nature somehow, neither living nor suffering nor 
 yet feeling as. the high people, and who are so horribly vulgar 
 and dirty ? And then there is the Christian religion, which is 
 the only religion in the world ; all the re't being shocking 
 idolatries destitute of the first principles of morality ; and the 
 English Church, which is the only true centre of Christianity, 
 every other embodiment being so absurd that the wonder is how 
 people can be found to believe them ; and what can folks find 
 in all this to make them unhappy or discontented 1 Things are 
 as they were ordered from the beginning ; the England and 
 English society of this our nineteenth century being the very 
 perfection of God's counsels , and people are very wicked who 
 try to change the established order. To be sure a few Acts of 
 Parliament may be passed that just touch an unimportant law, 
 but nothing more. As tor these dreadful doctrines of liberty 
 and all that, Lady Maud thought they ought to be put a stop 
 to and done something with. She believed they were all mur- 
 derers in heart who held them ; and could not understand any 
 woman, still less a lady, with such awful opinions. Neverthe- 
 less, Philistine as she was, she was a good little girl who would 
 make a faithful wife and a tolerably efficient mother ; who 
 would give recherch6 dinners to ambassadors and royal princes, 
 and would regulate her household with discretion. She had a 
 fair understanding, and was by no means dull to talk to if you 
 kept in the shallows ; but she was lost on all subjects wanting 
 thought, being utterly devoid of philosophic instincts, and never 
 seeing the cause or the outfall of any emotion whatsoever. 
 She was immensely popular in society, being pretty, accom- 
 plished, amiable, and with perfect manners ; and when she 
 caught Lord Merrian's heart at the rebound, and made it her 
 own, the world congratulated him on his good luck and told
 
 410 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 him he had chosen the very girl made for him. So they were 
 engaged with much rejoicing on all sides, and the young lord 
 himself felt that he had chosen the better part. 
 
 As they rode along the lane, however, his head would run 
 on Patricia to-day. She seemed very near to him, with a 
 strange surge of memory that distressed him ; for he was 
 honest-hearted, and did not want to have his allegiance to the 
 lady of his choice disturbed even by a memory. He was quite 
 content with his pretty fiancee, and had no wish to look up 
 into heights impossible for her to reach. Still, his Egeria had 
 been very dear to him ! She had been like his good angel 
 the voice which had called to him from above, and to which 
 he had replied Excelsior before he failed and fell. 
 
 He was a little silent as they rode between the leafy hedges. 
 His imagination, always his strongest or his weakest point, had 
 invested Patricia with even more than her rightful share of 
 charm and beauty ; and just now she seemed to come before 
 his eyes like some glorified creature, half angelic, half heroic, 
 who would have compelled crowds to kneel to her had she ap- 
 peared and spoken. 
 
 Then they passed the Long Field gate, and he saw a tall, 
 rather badly-dressed girl, with her hat pushed unbecomingly 
 off her face, standing holding a peasant's hand in hers and speak- 
 ing to him as equals together ; speaking to him with the same 
 love, the same passion, the same fervour as she used to show 
 when speaking to him, Lord Merrian, a gentleman and the son 
 of a peer. 
 
 He took off his hat as he passed and Patricia bowed too ; 
 but the spell was broken. Henceforth Lady Maud had no 
 need to fear the past. There would be no rival in his memory 
 to dwarf her mental stature and pale her spiritual charms. 
 He acknowledged his folly and the blindness of his fascination. 
 That kind of thing would never have done ! It is all very 
 well to talk of brotherhood and equality and helping on human- 
 ity and all that : it is a beautiful theory, and one that warms 
 one's heart when speaking of it. But when you come to its 
 practical confession, standing thus shaking hands with a dirty, 
 unwashed, unshaven peasant Lord Merrian's blue blood as- 
 serted itself then with an indignant throb ; and Patricia fell 
 for ever from her pedestal. She was simply a handsome girl
 
 DISILLUSIONED. 411 
 
 with rather low tastes and an inferior kind of manner ; and 
 he wondered, like a child suddenly conscious that its coveted 
 plaything was a snake and would have stung him, what they 
 should all have done had she taken him at his word, and be- 
 come Lady Merrian and his mother's daughter-in-law. What 
 a mercy she did not ! And as he thought this he looked at 
 Lady Maud with as much gratitude as love, and closed the 
 Kemhall episode for ever. 
 
 Soon after this the Fletchers drove up, and Patricia got into 
 the carriage with them ; but not before she had made Garth 
 promise again that he would come to-morrow to finish his work 
 in the garden, and not before she had poured still a little more 
 life and courage into the poor fellow's sunken heart. 
 
 " What an extraordinary thing, that girl to whom you bowed, 
 shaking hands with that common man 1 " said Lady Maud 
 after a long pause. , 
 
 Lord Merrian looked innocent. 
 
 " That is Miss Kemball," he said ; " niece of the people who 
 live there," pointing with his whip to Abbey Holme. " She is 
 an enthusiast, and goes in for communism and all that ! " 
 
 "And you know her ! " Lady Maud's face had just a shade 
 of possible displeasure athwart its surprise. " She is not quite 
 in your style I should think," with a nervous little laugh. 
 
 " No, she is not ; but of course I know her slightly," was 
 his answer, made with a reassuring indifference and a wise 
 suppression of the identity of Egeria. 
 
 " I cannot bear to see women go out of their sphere in this 
 manner," said Lady Maud. " I think all these theories and 
 extravagance perfectly awful. The idea of any one holding 
 the position of a lady being so familiar as that with a common 
 man ! I wonder how she could ! " 
 
 " Yes, it is odd to what lengths enthusiasm will carry 
 people," said Lord Merrian simply ; and turned the conversa- 
 tion by a master-stroke
 
 WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIL 
 
 HAMLEY, M.P. 
 
 fHE whole country was in a fever of excitement. A fete 
 was to be given at the Quest, surpassing iu magnificence 
 anything that had ever been done before even in that 
 lordly domain ; and the world of Milltown stood still to watch 
 the proceedings. All the visitable people of the locality were 
 of course invited, and there was to be a large gathering of 
 notabilities from London as well as of magnates from county 
 places. A popular novelist who went into society for his raw 
 material, and looked on a dinner as copy and a ball as a dozen 
 pages written to his hand and only needing to be transcribed j 
 a handsome young poet of high renown who made love to mar- 
 ried women and celebrated them afterwards in verse ; a sprink- 
 ling of able editors, modern Joves whose thunder-bolts tell, and 
 whom the great ones of the earth are fain to court as the kings of 
 the fourth estate ; and a couple of distinguished artists who 
 lived like princes and with them represented the aristocracy 
 of talent beside whose glories, in the minds of some, stars 
 grow dim and garters and ribbons are of- no more value than 
 so many yards of coloured tape. it indeed, all sorts and 
 conditions of men were represented at this fete ; and even the 
 industrial had his envoy in the person of a rich cotton-spinner 
 who had bought for a hundred pounds his foreman's invention 
 for the better .winding of thread, and who, by saving fractions 
 of farthings on the reels, had rolled up millions of pounds as 
 the. gross results. 
 
 But among all these favoured guests bidden to see the show 
 and swell the court of the local royalties, one house was passed 
 over ; and the Hamleys of Abbey Holme were not invited. 
 
 It was an impolitic omission ; and no one knew exactly how 
 it came to pass. When things turned ill in consequence the 
 Countess threw the blame on the house steward ; not ashamed, 
 proud woman though she was, to make her subordinate suffer
 
 HAMLET, M.P. 413 
 
 for her own deed. On his side the steward swore that her lady- 
 ship had run her pen through the name when she went over 
 the list ; and that he was bound to obey a sign as much as a 
 word. 
 
 " A signal's an order," he said ; and his hearers agreed with 
 him that it was. 
 
 As no commission of inquiry was appointed, and the private 
 visiting-list of the Quest was not submitted to official inspec- 
 tion, the thing passed as an inadvertence, regrettable but by no 
 means to be apologized for, even when the consequences be- 
 came evident a week or so later, and the mistake in policy 
 fructified so disastrously. 
 
 By whose fault however it might have been that it came to 
 pass, my lady's or the steward's, the fact was undeniable ; the 
 Hamleys were not invited to the fete, and the whole country 
 knew of the slight. It was delightful to Colonel Lowe. It re- 
 joiced his spirits like his morning cordial brewed of double 
 strength, and stood ior so much per centage off that terrible 
 mortgage money which had to be paid else Cragfoot must pass 
 from his hands like a dissolving view. It reconciled him for 
 a moment to his hard fate in being obliged to do without the 
 cakes he had already eaten, and to pay for the pipers to whom 
 he had danced. It was a day worth living for, he said to his 
 son, to see that old shoe-black slapped in the face as he de- 
 served, and he hoped he should live to see him slapped on the 
 other cheek before he had done with him. 
 
 "I should like to see him a beggar at my door," he said; 
 " and I would not give him a crust to keep him from starving." 
 
 To which Sydney answered in the manner of a rebuke : 
 " There is no good in wishing impossibilities ; but cannot some 
 one put a bullet through his head ? " 
 
 " Easily, my boy, if no hemp was handy," laughed the colonel 
 unpleasantly. 
 
 " By Jove ! the old Italian society knew what it was about ; 
 and a hired bravo is a useful kind of scavenger after all," said 
 Sydney. 
 
 " He cleared off the vermin," answered his father, " when 
 all other means had failed," significantly; and Sydney's thoughts 
 went back from James Garth, whom in his heart he cursed for 
 cowardice, to Julia Manley to whom that day at the fete he had
 
 414 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 determined to propose. There was no help for it. It -was big- 
 amy sure enough, or would be, and bigamy was a felony ; but 
 murder would have even more unpleasant consequences, and 
 between the two he took credit to himself for choosing the 
 minor crime. He had not chosen without long deliberation, 
 many qualms, and a few angry tears ; but he had chosen now, 
 and so must make the best of it and go through to the end. 
 
 This slight stung the Hamleys deeply. It was too evident to 
 be concealed, and no varnish could gloss it over. It hurt the 
 master of Abbey Holme in his most sensitive part his recog- 
 nised social position ; and even when he went about explaining 
 to every one that the reason of it was his wife's niece had re- 
 fused the offer of Lord Merrian's hand he did himself no good 
 and mended matters not a whit. For the mischief of it was 
 no one believed him, and a few said the Quest people should 
 really take it up and prosecute him for libel. It was impossi- 
 ble that a girl in her senses, and without prospects to be called 
 prospects, should have refused the heir to an earldom ; and just 
 as impossible that she should have had the chance. Lord Mer- 
 rian might have trifled with her ; they saw nothing to condemn 
 in that, for was not he a viscount and Patricia Kemball a com- 
 parative nobody 1 and her vanity might have taken as serious 
 attentions which he meant as just so much amusement ; but he 
 never made her an offer, they said with an incredulous intona- 
 tion. It was not in the nature of things, and some one told 
 untruths. It was just one of that conceited fellow's brags, 
 said Colonel Lowe ; or the girl's own falsehood which had im- 
 posed on him. 
 
 Thus, though Mr. Hamley talked of it everywhere, Patricia's 
 lofty acMon gave them but a very barren kind of honour at the 
 best. To be able to boast of a briHiant offer of marriage re- 
 fused by a wrong-headed young person his wife's niece who 
 had absurd ideas about loyalty, when half the world doubted 
 the statement, was a poqr exchange for the actual recognition 
 of an invitation ; and so the master of Abbey Holme felt. He 
 was not a business man, accustomed to weigh the comparative 
 values of investments, for nothing ; and he understood as well 
 as most the worth of a fact over that of a word. The woid 
 melted into air, but the fact stood like granite. 
 
 Mr. Hamley was scarcely a Christian of the kind to receive
 
 HAMLEY, M.P. 415 
 
 an affront and forbear to pay it back. On the contrary, he 
 upheld the doctrine of an eye for an eye as the soundest ever 
 preached, and boaeted that he had always given tit for tat in 
 his life ; a method of proceeding quite in harmony with the 
 fluent good nature of the man when not ruffled nor thwarted. 
 He was in no wise minded now that " the Dovedales " should 
 escape their tit ; they had to have it, he said, and he meant to 
 give it them, hot and strong. If he could not make them ser- 
 viceable friends he would be their formidable foe ; and as they 
 declined to give him a hand up the ladder, he \vould teach 
 them what ib was to have a saw rasping their own rungs. 
 They wanted Lord Merrian to represent the borough, did they 1 
 and my lady had canvassed him when she thought he would be 
 of use, had she 1 She seemed to have forgotten that now, but 
 he had not ; and when the next election came, as it would, a 
 fortnight hence, they would find the course my young lord was 
 to walk over pretty hotly contested, and in all probability the 
 peer would lose what the parvenu would win. He had the 
 most money to jingle in the ears of the free and enlightened ; 
 and, ballot or no ballot, local influence tells and votes are 
 marketable all the same as before. 
 
 So Mr. Hamley set to work at once on the plan of his cam- 
 paign ; and soon all Milltown was on fire again with the news 
 this time that Ledbury's successful office-boy was going to con- 
 test the borough with Lord Merrian ; and every one said he 
 would win. He had large local influence, and he represented 
 the self-made. Though a swell now of appalling magnitude, 
 had he not known hunger in his day, and been ragged and 
 barefooted t The working classes held a kind of vested right 
 in him in their own minds, and regarded him as a flower from 
 their root, a crystal from their clay. And beside these there 
 were the people who disbelieve in youth and prefer maturity 
 without any reference to the intrinsic quality of either people 
 who would rather trust the bag to a bearded Judas than to a 
 boy-saint with a woman's face, and to whom Mr. Hamley, as a 
 man having experience, was to be infinitely preferred to a raw 
 lad who had not even a wife to help him. 
 
 The game was by no means desperate. Indeed it looked 
 marvellously hopeful; and the Countess repented herself afresh- 
 that she had listened to pique rather than prudence, and been 
 more instinctive than politic.
 
 41 C " WHAT WOULD YOU BO, LOVE ? " 
 
 ' Spite never pays," she thought ruefully ; " it would have 
 been better if I had asked them and kept that monster in good 
 humour." 
 
 With all this encouragement the monster had fierce opponents 
 as well ; none fiercer than Colonel Lowe, who made the vote a 
 personal matter, and reseated it as an insult offered to himselt 
 if yellow was worn and not blue ; and none more influential in 
 his quiet way than Dr. Fletcher. Between an impressionable 
 young soul full of fluid convictions, and a cast-iron mind welded 
 through and through into wrong ones, he thought there was 
 more chance of good from the former. Lord Mercian would 
 probably drift into the wrong lobby on some divisions, but then 
 he would go into the right one on others ; but Mr. Hamley 
 would be invariably wrong. If the one had everything to learn, 
 and most of all a central idea round '?rhich his theories of lite 
 might crystallize, the chances were even between learning good 
 and evil j but what was to be hoped from a man who had 
 adopted finality, and perfected his views on every point, yet 
 who had spelt all his lessons backward and learnt nothing of 
 life but the religion of success ? Wherefore, though the bustle 
 and insincerity of an election time were not much in Henry 
 Fletcher's way, he consented to be one of Lord Merrian's com- 
 mittee, not because he affected him warmly but because he 
 wished to keep out the other. And this more than ever widened 
 the breach between the Hollies and Abbey Holme, and gave 
 - increased tangibility to Mr. Hamley's wrath. 
 
 The campaign, though short, was sharp. 
 
 Mr. Hamley stood on the high Tory interest. He despised 
 as trumpery palterings with great questions all the boneless 
 liberal-conservatism of young England, he said when he ad- 
 dressed the free and enlightened on his nomination, and was 
 required to give the text of his convictions. To blow hot aL.d 
 cold was not his motto, and whatever he was he was Thorough. 
 The altar and the throne ; our glorious institutions and out 
 national flag; England the home of the free, and the knavish 
 tricks of socialists and reds confounded by the high good sense 
 of the people that was his platform let those find a better 
 who could ! The people's heart was good, their judgment was 
 sound. They knew where their best interests were to be found 
 in the union of all classes, not in class division. They would
 
 HAMLEY, M.P. 
 
 vote then, for the man who understood them best, who had 
 been one of them, and whose success was as much an honour 
 to them as to himself. They would vote for him rather than 
 for the young gentleman who had no definite policy to offer 
 them, who knew nothing of the great questions he was setting 
 himself torward to decide, and who would be simply so much 
 material for clever whips and unscrupulous Ministers. To 
 elect that young gentleman would be to confide their interests 
 into the keeping of hands that could not hold them, to steer 
 by a weathercock that veered with every breath. As for the 
 third candidate, who had been sent down at the last moment 
 as a feeler by the republicans, he, Mr. Hamley, being a law- 
 abiding man did not recommend the horse-pond, but he supposed 
 the men of Milltown would have more seli-respect than to 
 choose for their representative a friend of petroleum and the 
 Communists ; a wretch who would deluge the fair face of Eng- 
 land with blood, and who would leave neither religion nor 
 morality nor yet property standing. 
 
 His speeches and addresses which were written for him were 
 effective ; his showy presence also had its own value his ready 
 tongue, his definite views, all as positive and final as the multi- 
 plication table, pleased many ; his money did more ; and his 
 uncompromising toryism, which yet bade for the working man 
 as integral to imperial greatness, did most of all. Milltown 
 was conservative to the backbone ; and though Lord Merrian 
 carried many of the gentry and the more independent thinkers 
 with him, his admixture of philosophic liberalism gave Mr. 
 Hamley just the advantage which won the day. The radical 
 candidate of course was nowhere. He had been sent down 
 merely as a gauge, and his exit from the town was ignominious. 
 
 Thus the game was lost and won in spite of Colonel Lowe 
 and Henry Fletcher ; and Mr. Hamley's name came out at the 
 head of the poll, beating my lord by some scores. 
 
 It was a proud day for him. Jabez Hamley, M.P. It was 
 a glorious rubber in the game of bowls that had begun between 
 him and the Quest since that memorable day of omission ! 
 Jabez Hamley, M.P., and my young lord with the influence of 
 his name, his earldom in the distance, and the flag flying from 
 the Quest like royalty itself at home, defeated. Who says that 
 the working man has not the power of station and riches in his 
 AA
 
 418 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 hand if he chooses! Good sense, energy, and will and here 
 you see him, the richest landed proprietor of Milltown, and 
 M.P. for the borough ! 
 
 The man's self-congratulations were inexhaustible and even 
 his closest adherents were weary of them. He was as if pos- 
 sessed by a peripatetic demon of pride and elation, and neithei 
 street nor road was free from him. Wherever you went you 
 met Mr. Hamley, florid, condescending, self-satisfied ; with his 
 head held high and his shoulders set square ; his radian* 
 humour shining out all over him like a sun ; inexhaustible in 
 talk of the election, and what he did, and how he had beaten 
 my lord by pluck and energy and right views ; and how splen- 
 didly his fellows had fought for him, and how ill my lord had 
 managed everything yes, even with my lady the countess, and 
 the young person he was to marry all over the shop with their 
 fair speeches and more tangible bribes. But pluck and energy 
 " Oh ! that eternal pluck and energy ! " said Mr. Borrodaile 
 sarcastically, after he had listened with smiling politeness to a 
 full hour's declamation on the Hamley qualities as interpreted 
 by the Hamley intellect. 
 
 Hamley, M.P. 
 
 He wrote the name as many times as a love-sick school-girl 
 writes her lover's and her own. He spent all his quiet time in 
 devising a proper flourish, one that would replace the ordinary 
 Scroll he had elaborated up to this time, and that should be like 
 an ornamental fence-work about the cherished initials. He 
 gave Dora a new bracelet on the occasion, with " From Hamley 
 M.P.," engraved in bossed and fanciful letters that looked like 
 flowers about his photograph, which formed the centre orna- 
 ment ; and he bought his wife a diamond ring, which he pre- 
 sented to her with a set speech that pleased the poor lady whom 
 long habit had rendered less critical than of old. It was a 
 speech in the worst possible taste, and would have set her teeth 
 on edge in former days ; but now she smiled in her frosty way, 
 and said " Thanks, Mr. Hamley, you are very kind, and I 
 like this token of your success." And she was, as she said, 
 really gratified by his gift. 
 
 Thus the Hamley sun shone bright and warm, and there was 
 not a shadow anywhere save one Patricia Kemball, and the 
 breach existing between her and them.
 
 HAMLEY, M.P. 419 
 
 As for the " cut with the Dovedales/'as Mr. Haraley phrased 
 it, he regarded that now as a providential ovderi-ng providence 
 being on his side. Had they asked him to the fete he would 
 have still been their humble servant, and would have worked 
 for Lord Merrian for the wages of their social patronage ; but 
 having cast him off they had made a free man of him, and an 
 M.P. to follow. No, there was not a shadow anywhere ; and 
 even Patricia Kemball was but as a mote in the sunbeam of 
 really no importance. When Mrs. Hamley dropped, her niece 
 would be wiped off the slate as though she had never been. 
 He had no kind of ill-feeling to her ; quite the contrary ; but 
 she had been a mistake, and Mr. Hamley was too keen a man 
 of business to cherish mistakes. Things that begin with bother 
 end with loss, he always said, and Patricia Kemball was no ex- 
 ception to the rule. Wherefore he looked to her aunt's decease 
 as the sponge over the slate where her name stood : when h 
 would have no more to do with her. What else might remain 
 rested in his own mind only.
 
 420 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO. LOVE?" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIIL 
 
 WHAT MILLTOWN SAID. 
 
 Mr. Hamley could afford to be philosophic and magnani- 
 mous about that " uncomfortable young person/' as he 
 called Patricia, society was less patient. After the ex- 
 citement too of the fete and the election, and the odd rumours 
 that were afloat concerning many things and people, Milltov, i 
 wanted something special in which to interest itself, as a kind 
 of aftermath of gossip. So it fastened on the extraordinary 
 state of things existing between the Hollies and Abbey Holme, 
 and made it a personal matter as to which was right and which 
 was wrong ; the two sides quarrelling fiercely together. The 
 fact was people could not make it out, and were angry in con- 
 sequence. Why had she so suddenly left her aunt's house, 
 they said, speaking of Patricia, and taken up her abode with 
 an unmarried man of no nearer kinship than Adam 1 Some said 
 it was infamous in Mrs. Hamley to allow it, and others said 
 it was shameless in the young lady to do it. To be sure, 
 Henry Fletcher was an old fogey, and there was a sister to 
 stand sponsor for the girl to Mrs. Grundy ; but it was a very 
 odd position all the same. And when people talk about an odd 
 position they mean something wrong in the background. If it 
 is a woman who is athwart the lines, her false perspective is 
 sure to be accounted to her as a sin ;-and no one could persuade 
 the Abbey Holmeites that Patricia was not a good-for-nothing 
 young baggage who had done something abominable for which 
 she had been justly turned out of doors. But what a wicked 
 thing of those Fletchers to take her in and countenance her as 
 theydid ! It was just like them ! Look at the servants they 
 had that Mary Anne, quite an improper girl ; and Alice 
 Garth, who had been dismissed from Abbey Holme at a mo- 
 ment's notice ; and now Miss Kemball ! It seemed as if a 
 woman need only go wrong and be disgraceful to ensure their 
 patronage and friendship, and it was really shameful
 
 WHAT MILLTOWN SAID. 421 
 
 So the Abbey Holmeites stormed, and the partisans of the 
 Hollies, being few and feeble, were for the most part discom- 
 fited, having only vague charity to go upon for their defence. 
 And this never does much good in a local slander. 
 
 Mr. Wells too had been a little incautious, and had hinted 
 at some things and told others. He was as much in the dark 
 as everybody else as to the truth of that forgery, and he did 
 not believe that the young lady had done it herself. But he 
 had no clue to her accomplice; and at all events it was too 
 strange a secret to keep entirely to himself. People are for 
 the most part generous with strange secrets and like to share 
 their wealth with their neighbours, and Mr. Wells was no ex- 
 ception to the rule ; though he was a good, inoffensive soul 
 who picked up caterpillars and small frogs from the dusty roads 
 and put them into the moist banks, when taking his evening 
 rambles, and was otherwise meek and benevolent. Still, he 
 told more than he should about that hundred-pound cheque, 
 and he hinted more than he told. Whence it came to pass 
 that Patricia's name got more and more into the public mouth, 
 and that people were beginning to regard her as a scandal to 
 the place. A society so eminently respectable as that of Mill- 
 town does not like its young ladies to be talked of. gEver on 
 the look out for causes of offence, and ever in the mood to 
 imagine what it does not find, it punishes the victims it creates. 
 As it had chosen Patricia for its present victim it assumed that 
 she must have been guilty of something bad because she was 
 being talked about. It is a circular kind of logic common to 
 nzrrrow communities ; and the Milltown community was very 
 narrow. 
 
 At last some one took heart and spoke to Miss Fletcher 
 seriously, warning her against her guest affectionately, as is the 
 way with people when they have put on their armour of un- 
 righteousness and mean mischief. It was the rector's wife, 
 Mrs. Borrodaile chosen spokeswoman by the rest on account 
 of her official position which gave a reflected sanctity to her 
 warnings who came one day to the Hollies and begged to see 
 Miss Fletcher alone. She hoped she did not offend in her zeal, 
 she said ; but was she quite satisfied with her young friend ? 
 quite sure that she was all she seemed to be, and as simple and 
 good as she had once represented her ? Strange reports were
 
 422 " WHAT \voru> YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 going about the town concerning her. There was some dis- 
 graceful mystery connected with the Bank and a cheque of 
 which she, Mis. Borrodaile, had not full particulars ; but it was 
 something very dreadful, and she knew quite enough to make 
 her uneasy. She was a very odd young person too she had 
 heard in opinion ; and was quite a freethinker and all that ; 
 with queer notions about morality, and the most objectionable 
 habits a very unsatisfactory young person indeed, and one to 
 beware of. 
 
 So the good lady sat and talked, and stabbed a young crea- 
 ture's fair fame with the best intentions in the world ; think- 
 ing she was performing the part of a Christian minister's wife 
 as it should be performed, and feeling satisfied that her matronly 
 purity and propriety were justly incensed against youthful 
 iniquity. 
 
 Catherine Fletcher smiled while Mrs. Borrodaile spoke ; and 
 her smile, though genial and pleasant, was not reassuring. 
 
 "Yes, I know all the story," she said; which was a long 
 shot measured by facts ; " and I know that Miss Kemball was 
 used most shamefully in that transaction used in a double 
 sense," she added meaningly. " You can tell me nothing new 
 about it, Mrs. Borrodaile." 
 
 " And you are satisfied you know the truth 1 " asked that 
 lady emphatically. " I am very fond of young people, as you 
 know, dear Miss Fletcher ; but I am bound to say that my ex- 
 perience of girls is unfavourable. They -are generally untruth- 
 ful, and I would not trust one of them." 
 
 " I, on the contrary, would trust most of them greatly, and 
 Patricia Kemball entirely," said Catherine. 
 
 " I call that simply offering a premium to deceit,"" Mrs. Bor- 
 rodaile answered. 
 
 She was a woman who held fast to the doctrine of inherent 
 depravity, and considered trust in one's fellow-creatures an 
 heretical doctrine to be discouraged like Wesleyanism or Soci- 
 nianism, or any other objectionable weed in the garden of ortho- 
 doxy. 
 
 " I think if you knew Patricia you would not say this," was 
 Miss Fletcher's answer. " I never knew so lovely a character, 
 so beautiful a nature." 
 
 " It is very odd," said Mrs. Borrodaile crisping her lips. " If
 
 WHAT MILLTOWN SAID 423 
 
 she is so charming as you represent, how was it that she could 
 not get on with Mrs. Hamley ? I am sure a more correct-minded 
 woman never breathed than dear Mrs. Hamley ; and we can 
 judge for ourselves of her kindness by the way in which she 
 has brought up Miss Drummond a no nearer connection than 
 her husband's cousin I If Miss Kemball was really so sweet, I 
 wonder she did not manage to make things pleasanter for 
 herself at Abbey Holme than by all accounts they were." 
 
 " If they were unpleasant, of which I have no doubt, that 
 does not prove that the fault was Patricia's," said Miss Fletcher. 
 
 " Of course it proves nothing ; but the supposition would be 
 that it was. And at all events it is pleasanter to believe in 
 one's old friends, people too of mature age, rather than in a 
 young stranger of whom one knows .nothing." 
 
 " I think it is pleasanter to believe in the truth," said Ca- 
 therine simply, and Mrs. Borrodaile bridled. 
 
 " Well," she said rising, " it is of course no business of 
 mine. I merely thought it my duty to warn you, and to let 
 you know that the most unpleasant reports are going about the 
 place in connection with Miss Kemball. This horrid Bank 
 affair for one her ungovernable temper, so that her poor aunt 
 could not possibly put up with her for another her loose opi- 
 nions, so shocking in a young person ! and then this ridiculous 
 assertion that Lord Merrian made her an offer of marriage, 
 which she refused." 
 
 " I hear so little gossip I had not heard that before," said 
 Catherine. 
 
 " Not that Lord Merrian proposed ? " cried Mrs. Borrodaile 
 shrilly. 
 
 " No ; not a syllable of it." 
 
 " Why all Milltown is ringing with it." 
 
 " Who says so 1 " 
 
 " Every one." 
 
 " But who first set the report afloat, I mean t Patricia did 
 not, I am sure," 
 
 " Oh ! I believe Mr. Hamley first mentioned it. I wonder 
 you never heard it, Miss Fletcher ! He told Mr. Borrodaile 
 before the fete came off so long ago as that ; and said that 
 this was the reason why Abbey Holme had been excluded from 
 the list of invitations. So I suppose it^js true. At least, Miss
 
 424 " "WH AT VTOrLD yOU BO, LOVE?" 
 
 Kemball mnst have made them believe it." This was said with 
 a little natural feminine spite ; for Mrs. Borrodaile bad nailed 
 her colours to the mast now, and was determined to find Pa- 
 tricia tanlty on one count if not on another. 
 
 " You may see how little she boasts by her not telling me, 
 her nearest friend, that she had had such a flattering offer," 
 said Catherine. "She never gave me the faintest hint of any- 
 thing of the kind; so she did .not plume herself very much on 
 her conquest." 
 
 "You might say instead how insincere she is not to have con- 
 fided in you ; but I see that you are infatuated, Miss Fletcher, 
 and no good is to be done with you. However, I .have performed 
 my duty," was Mrs. Borrodaile's rejoinder, as she shook hands 
 indigna. ly, more than evej annoyed with Patricia as the inno- 
 cent cause of her rebuff. 
 
 Had Catherine Fletcher been more skilful say as skilful as 
 Dora she would have done Patricia more good. She would 
 have agreed with Mrs. Borrodaile up to a certain point, by 
 which she would have asserted her own sympathy and won her 
 informant's respect. This would have put the envoy of Mill- 
 town morality into good humour, because people like to be 
 successful in their work whatever it may be private slander 
 or public benefaction. Then, by a cleverly-dropped word here 
 and a kindly suggestion there, she would have modified some of 
 the harsher tints, softened some of the broader lines. And Mrs. 
 Borrodaile would have adopted her suggestions, thinking them 
 her own original impulses of charitable judgment. Tims she 
 would -have seemed to hold with the righteousness of matronly 
 indignation while sweetening its sour doctrine of youthful ini- 
 quity ; but this kind of thing was as little in Catherine's way 
 as Patricia's. By which lie too failed in her possibilities in a so- 
 ciety which cares mainl- to be flattered and which dislikes to 
 be taught. This two-iaced faculty which the world calls tact, 
 is that wherein the children of the generation are stronger than 
 the children of light, and wiser in the way of work-a-day policy. 
 
 Without a line of deception in her whole character, ^Patricia 
 was yet not a girl to talk of herself, or to tell the facts of her 
 life unasked. She had but few to tell, indeed. Her uncle's 
 death, her engagement with Gordon, and her refusal of Lord 
 Merrian, were the three most important items in her inventory ;
 
 WHAT MILLTOWN SAID. 42&' 
 
 but as she had never been asked about the last she had not 
 spoken of it. It would Lave seemed to her dishonourable had 
 she done so. Of Gordon she had often talked ; but naturally ; 
 with none of the shyness, the blushing consciousness, which 
 betrays the girl's love-affair. Had he been her brother she could 
 not have spoken of him with more open affectionateness, 
 more confessed pride. It was this very openness which threw 
 her friends off the track ; s<< that it never occurred even to Ca- 
 therine, w|io had the woman's keen scent in such matters, that 
 her child, as she called Patricia, was engaged in the formal 
 manner recognised by the world. And Henry Fletcher, who 
 had heard the name of Gordon Frere even less frequently than 
 his sister, suspected less in proportion. 
 
 The evening of Mrs. Borrodaile's visit the three were sitting 
 in the drawing-room alter dinner, when Catherine, looking up 
 from her book, said somewhat suddenly : " Patricia, Mrs. Bor- 
 rodaile has been telling me the oddest story about you to-day ! 
 I wonder if it is true ? " 
 
 There were never any secrets at the Hollies ; so that Cathe- 
 rine's speaking out before her brother was neither a breach of 
 confidence nor an embarrassment. 
 
 " A story about me ? What can it be 1 " said Patricia meet- 
 ing the kind smile with one as frank. 
 
 " It is about Lord Merrian." 
 
 A sudden flush that made her face flame to the tips of her 
 ears was Patricia's first answer ; her second, in words, was the 
 natural inquiry : " What did she say 1 '\ 
 
 " That Mr. Hamley has , been telling every one the reason 
 why they were not invited at the Quest, when that fete was 
 given, was because Lord Merrian had made you an offer, and 
 you had refused him." 
 
 " I think Mr. Hamley ought to hold his tongue," said Pat- 
 ricia indignantly. 
 
 Dr. Fletcher looked at her narrowly. He was arranging a 
 microscopic slide, but he spoilt his object and had to begin 
 again. 
 
 " Then it is true ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Patricia. " But I think it very dishonourable of 
 Mr. Hamley to speak about it." 
 
 " You refused Lord Merrian I It was a brave thing to do,
 
 426 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 child ! " cried Catherine warmly, her mind talcing in at a 
 glance the whole situation, with the pressure that must have 
 been brought to bear on her. 
 
 " I could do nothing else," the girl answered ; " I did not 
 love him ; besides, how could I, with Gordon 1 " 
 
 Dr. Fletcher put down his hands. 
 
 " What has Gordon to do with itl" asked Catherine open- 
 ing her soft brown eyes. 
 
 " Everything," Patricia answered with grave simplicity. 
 "Uncle gave me to him the night before he died." 
 
 There was a pause of a few moments. 
 
 " I did not know you were engaged," then said Catherine, 
 to whom the information had come rather as a shock. 
 
 " No ? I thought you did. I have spoken of him so often I 
 thought you knew everything," Patricia answered. 
 
 " Not so much as I do now," said Catherine glancing at her 
 brother. " I had no idea that our country lassie had been a po- 
 tential countess, or that we were some day to lose her." 
 
 " Oh, as for losing me, you will not do that for along time ! " 
 said Patricia innocently. " Gordon will not come home for 
 another year at the earliest perhaps not for five. It all de- 
 pends on the Admiralty ; and no one ever knows what their 
 orders will be." She looked up wistfully. " The time seems 
 long when I think of it." she added. " I should so like to see 
 him again ! But it does no good to grumble, and I would rather 
 he did his duty to the service if I did not see him for twenty 
 years, than shirk his work and come home to me." 
 
 " That's the right spirit, dear love," said Catharine. " Is it 
 not, Henry ? " 
 
 " Surely," said Dr. Fletcher rather slowly. 
 
 He had taken no part in the conversation ; but this was not 
 extraordinary. He was a silent man by nature, and it amused 
 liim to hear his sister and her young friend talk, as they did, 
 every ^evening on all sorts of subjects, while he sat by, generally 
 occupied with his microscope and listening to what they said 
 in between his graver observations and the notes made thereon. 
 But though he was silent, he had become very pale during these 
 last sentences ; a kind of greyness had stolen over his face that 
 startled his sister when she looked at him. It was only a 
 change of colour and expression. His manner was the same as
 
 WHAT MILLTOWN SAID. 4J7 
 
 ever, quiet, tranquil, self-possessed. And when he called Pat- 
 ricia to come and see the little shell he had at last fixed for 
 her conveniently, not the keenest watcher could have detected 
 a shade of difference in his tone or hearing. Unless indeed, it 
 had been that he was more tender to her than usual. 
 
 So the evening passed, and the conversation after a time 
 drifted into other topics; but not before Patricia, the icebi-ing 
 now broken, gave as circumstantial an account of all mattei ? as 
 she could, which showed the springs of Mrs. Hamley's conduct 
 in a clearer light, if not a fairer. To have been implicated in 
 a crime of which she would not betray the real offender, and to 
 have refused a viscount, were both together reasons sufficiently 
 strong to account for any amount of reprobation from a woman 
 oi her nature ; and neither Catherine nor her brother wondered 
 now at Mrs. Hamley's practical desertion of her niece " a loss 
 by which we have made our gain," said Demeter lovingly, 
 when Patricia had gone to bed. 
 
 And Henry Fletcher assented and said, " yes, indeed," with- 
 out looking up from his work. How that evening's conversa- 
 tion affected him, or if it affected him at all, no one ever knew; 
 not even Catherine, his confidante and favourite friend. He 
 was not of the kind to wear his heart on his sleeve for daw or 
 dove ; nor yet of the kind to nourish impossible desires or un- 
 availing regrets. Whether lie had hoped that P.i'. i iciaKemball 
 would have remained with them for ever as their daughter and 
 delight, or whether he had hoped for a still nearer and dearer 
 love, who can say 1 And was it only a coincidence, the degra- 
 dation of health which followed so soon on this conversation t 
 No one knew. 
 
 All that any one could say or see was that Dr. Fletcher was look- 
 ing very ill, and had grown quite an old man lately. His hair 
 was greyer, his leathery brown face more marked and puckered, 
 his mild kind eyes more mournful than of old ; and these had 
 always been his characteristics. But as he did not complain no 
 one took much heed of him. They supposed he had been 
 poisoning himself with some of his abominable chemicals, or 
 chilling his poor thin blood by star gazing when he ought to be 
 in bed and asleep, like a rational Christian gentleman. And if 
 he was ill he had brought it on himself, they concluded ; so 
 shut up their hoard of compassion for some better occasion
 
 428 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE? " 
 
 such as poor Colonel Lowe's embarrassments which Mr. Hamley 
 took care should now be public property, and the pity it would 
 be if Cragfoot was obliged to be sold. For though Milltown 
 was content to 'have a self-made Colossus bestriding their town, 
 it did not quite like to see the huge splay foot set down on one 
 of their real gentry. That huge splay foot might crush the 
 Garths of humanity, as many as it would, but society itself was 
 interested in the Nemesis overtaking a spendthrift born in the 
 local purple. Society was just now full of poor Colonel Lowe 
 whose house was tumbling about his ears ; so that between him 
 and Patricia Kemball the Milltown hoppers were full fed with 
 grist, and tea-party tongues wagged merrily. 
 
 They wagged still more when it became known that young 
 Sydney was engaged to Miss Manley, who had a'hundred thou- 
 sand pounds at least for her fortune ; and they all said it was 
 the most barefaced thing of 'its kind they had ever known. In 
 this perhaps, they were not so far out ; for the fact of an un- 
 personable young woman with a large fortune being demanded 
 in marriage by a man of somewhat mildewed name, when the 
 ruin of his house had just been made public, carries a doubtful 
 look with it somehow, and seems to justify unfriendly comment. 
 
 Not that either father or son cared for what was said of 
 them, so long as they touched the material advantages for which 
 they sold themselves. When, years ago, Colonel Lowe had 
 married Lady Anne Grahame's daughter, and had married her 
 without settlements and against the wishes of her clearer-sighted 
 friends, the world had made pretty free with the gallant young 
 officer's assumed motives ; but the Colonel came in for the Crag- 
 foot estate, and let the world play at ninepins with his motives 
 as it liked. And now when his son was treading in his steps 
 the same kind of disfavour was repeated. They only hoped 
 however, that Miss Manley would be advised by those who 
 knew, and have her fortune settled on herself. She had warn- 
 ing enough in her poor mother-in-law that was to be, they said, 
 who had married in that irrational trust which possesses weak 
 and loving women. The handsome young officer full of fervour 
 and very much in debt, with a halo of Crimean glory round his 
 .curly head, was more to be believed, she thought, than her staid 
 old tiresome friends who drew gloomy pictures, and wanted to 
 have no end of legal straps and backstays. She did not accept
 
 WHAT MILLTOWN SAID. 429 
 
 their gloomy pictures as in any way applicable to her. Men 
 had married for money and ill-treated their wives afterwards, 
 she acknowledged ; of course they had ; and would again ; but 
 Charles was an exception ; and it was absurd, she argued, to 
 give herself to a man she could not trust with her property. 
 In giving herself she entrusted him with something far more 
 precious than Cragfoot ; so the two might well go together, 
 and the estate follow her happiness. Wherefore the marriage 
 was celebrated according to their joint wishes ; and Lady Anne 
 Grahame's well-endowed daughter gave herself in haste and had 
 repented for a lifetime at leisure. 
 
 And now the same thing was going to be repeated with 
 Sydney and Julia Manley in that odd way in which events 
 double themselves in certain families. Miss Manley was as 
 much in love with the son as Miss Grahame had been with the 
 father, and the ravens of ill-boding croaked their ugly prophe- 
 cies in vain. She only desired to show her lover how much 
 she' believed in him and loved him ; and the resolve of a weak 
 woman for love or spite is for the most part unalterable. 
 
 Milltown was all agog with the news ; but aghast too ; for 
 poor Miss Manley was liked well enough in the place, and Syd- 
 ney was, as we know, distrusted. 
 
 Mr. Hamley came home one evening full of the report. He 
 waited until he had drunk his prescribed amount of claret 
 before joining the ladies, and then he began. 
 
 " Well, Dora, that precious lover of yours has not been long 
 before he has given you a successor," he said, planting himself 
 on the hearthrug, and speaking with a kind of contemptuous 
 jocularity, which was not his most becoming manner. 
 
 " What do you mean, Mr. Hamley ? " answered Dora inno- 
 cently. 
 
 " That precious scamp, that young Lowe, has engaged him- 
 self to Miss Manley ; and the fool is going to marry him." 
 
 " Indeed ! " cried Dora, who just then dropped her book 
 and had to stoop rather a long time before she could pick it up 
 again. 
 
 " Yes, I think it is, indeed ! when such shamelessness takes 
 place before one's eyes. ' He has taken her for her money, that's 
 as plain as the nose on one's face ; and that's why he wanted 
 you," was Mr. Hamley's answer.
 
 430 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE? " 
 
 " You are not very complimentary, Mr. Hamley," .said his 
 wife. " 1 had no more wish that Dora should be his wife than 
 you had, but I would not say so rudely as you do that he 
 wanted her only for her dower. Dora and Julia Manley are 
 not very much alike, I think ! " 
 
 " You dear ! " purred Dora. " You are always so good to 
 me ! But Miss Manley is a great deal better than I am, and 
 perhaps Sy , Mr. Lowe, does really like her." 
 
 Let those explain the contradictions of human nature who 
 can. Dora did not want to go away with Sydney, and she was 
 sorry for his distresses ; she did not want to share his poverty, 
 nor indeed did she wish him to be poor at all ; she repented 
 her own marriage with him ; she was even ashamed of it now 
 that the first excitement had worn off and she had realized the 
 difficulties and dangers of her position ; yet with all this, when 
 she heard that Sydney Lowe was really engaged to Julia Man- 
 ley, she was almost choked, partly with rage and partly with 
 tears, and could scarcely command herself to speak in her 
 usual tone and manner. Nothing but the deadly fear of discov- 
 ery, with Mr. Hamley's small keen eyes watching her so nar- 
 nowly, could have nerved her for her part ; but power cornea 
 when it is needed, as it came to her now in calmness and seli- 
 control. 
 
 " I grant all that, Lady," Mr. Hamley answered. " I am 
 not fool enough to place such a cart-horse as that Manley 
 woman and our little Arab here in the same harness ; but it 
 looks fishy all the same " 
 
 " It looks what, Mr. Haraley I " interrupted the slow, severe 
 voice of the wifely critic. 
 
 He laughed, and shifted his feet noisily. 
 
 " A lapse, Lady, a lapse," he said. " Well, then, it looks 
 doubtful when a young man pretends to be broken-hearted for 
 Dora one day and makes up to Miss Manley the next. It looka 
 more like money-bags than love, I must say. For my part," 
 with an assumption of patriarchal experience, "I cannot under- 
 stand the young fellows of the present day. I am a man as 
 doesn't change myself, either in my admiration for the ladies, 
 or in my sentiments elsewheres. The lady as I have loved once 
 I should for always, and I don't understand this game of skip- 
 jack one do\vn and another up before you can say Jackftobin- 
 sou. I think that's the way to do, isn't it, Lady 1 "
 
 WHAT MILLTOWN SAID. 431 
 
 He spoke to his wife but he looked at Dora; and Mrs. Ham- 
 ley smiled and said yes, she approved of his fidelity. It was 
 one of the virtues she always had admired in him, and she 
 hoped she should have reason to admire it to the end. 
 
 Not much more was sard at the time of this projected mar- 
 riage, and Dora escaped the detection of her secret with her 
 usual cleverness ; but when Patricia heard of it, she startled 
 the Fletchers by a curious outburst of anguish and terror, which 
 they had some difficulty in calming. She would not say why 
 the news so powerfully affected her ; not even to Catherine, 
 from whom she had not a thought unshared. She only looked 
 white and scared, and said, " No, no, it ought not to be," and 
 " it must not be," weeping hot heavy tears, and falling back 
 again into her old position of self-torture not knowing 
 whether to tell what we know and so prevent further evil, is 
 the right thing to do, or to keep silence in the presence of sin. 
 and by silence to consent with sinners, may not be at times the 
 truest good. Catherine comforted her as well as she was able, 
 but she could not console her entirely ; for, to which side soever 
 she turned, she found grief and perplexity and one form of mo- 
 ral evil. Do what she would she could not keep herself pure 
 nor hold her action harmless. 
 
 While she was sitting there doing her beat to face her diffi- 
 culties bravely, the Hamley carriage dashed up to the door, and 
 a note was brought in to her from Mr. Hamley desiring her in- 
 stant presence at Abbey Holme. Mrs. Hamley was ill. Had 
 it then come at last 1 Patricia thought, as with trembling 
 hands she threw on her hat and jacket. Had her aunt discov- 
 ered the whole thing, and was she to be assoiled and reinstat- 
 ed? taken back to favour, and perhaps taken back to the 
 house ? she would be glad of the former ; but the latter ? 
 
 As she turned to go she threw her arms round Catherine with 
 a feverish grasp. 
 
 " Whatever happens we are always friends together, as we are 
 now ? " she whispered. " You will not give me back to them 1 " 
 
 "No," said Catherine kissing her fondly; "you shall not go 
 back to Abbey Holme, my love, save at your own desire." 
 
 "Then that will be never!" cried Patricia with a shudder, as 
 she got into the carriage and was borne away borne away to this 
 house of falsehood and fair-seeming, where nothing was as it look- 
 ed, and where evil was accepted for good and deception for truth.
 
 432 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX, 
 
 THE LAST LOOK. 
 
 RS. HAMLEY'S health had long been declining. She 
 was one of those lean and ascetic women who, with a 
 cordon bleu in the kitchen and all sorts of coraetic vin- 
 tages in the cellar, eat dry toast for breakfast and drink plain 
 water for dinner. She gave one the impression of being only 
 half-nourished and always insufficiently clad ; a woman to whom 
 the senses were things accursed, and who kept her luxurious 
 table and wore her magnificent clothes as matters due to her 
 position rather than as personal indulgences in which she took 
 pleasure-obligations for the pride of life, not delights for the lust 
 of the flesh. 
 
 This last year had tried her severely. Ever since Patricia's 
 arrival she had been more or less disturbed in mind, and her 
 frail body had suffered in consequence. The last three weeks 
 had put the c jping-stone to her troubles. That her niece should 
 De implicated in a crime which she refused to confess, that she 
 should have thrust aside the providential settlement offered to 
 her, and lastly, that she should have preferred the Hollies to 
 Abbey Holme, and Catherine and Henry Fletcher to herself and 
 her husband all this was too much for her. Add to this the 
 excitement consequent on her husband's election ; the breakfasts 
 she had to give, the luncheons, the dinners, at which she must 
 preside ; the uproar and confusion introduced into her well-or- 
 dered household ; the bodily fatigue and mental excitement she 
 had to undergo ; and it was small wonder if, lying awake all 
 night and fretting all day, now resenting Patricia's absence from 
 their unusual festivities, now resenting those festivities them- 
 selves, exhausted and feverish, her health went down as Mr. 
 Hamley said " with a run." Her scanty bit of dry toast grew 
 smaller at each breakfast, her temper more uncertain. She was 
 evidently very ill and profoundly wretched : but she would not 
 allow them to send for Dr. Wickham, nor would she recall Pat-
 
 THE LAST LOOK. 433 
 
 ricia. She would own to nothing but fatigue and the east wind ; 
 and had it not been for dear Dora, she used to say, she did not 
 know how she should have survived either. 
 
 Dear Dora was everything to her. In truth, the girl was 
 sorry to see her suffer, and desperately frightened lest she 
 should die. Her death would indeed be shooting Niagara, with 
 that terrible " and after 1 " to follow. She was perfectly aware 
 of the contingency it included ; indeed she had known it for 
 years ; and though she had encouraged it when it suited her 
 purpose, the knowledge of what had to come when Mrs. Ham- 
 ley's death should leave Mr. Hamley free, had perhaps had 
 something to do with the ceremony in which Mr. Sydney Lowe 
 had been the principal performer mbre than a year ago behind 
 the New Road caryatides. But though Mrs. Hamley's death 
 would always have been a terror and a trouble, it was doubly 
 so now when Sydney's engagement with Miss Manley was 
 made public, and she could not claim even such slight protec- 
 tion as a confession of her love for him might have given. 
 Would she have had courage for that, had she been able 1 Look 
 where she would the waters were closing rapidly round her, 
 and she saw no way of escape to the right or to the left. 
 
 Pear Dora was intensely unhappy at this time ; terrified and 
 distracted ; and her own secret sorrows gave her such a de- 
 lightful appearance of sympathy as much from an instinct of 
 self-preservation as from her natural amiability she attended oa 
 Mrs. Hamley with such unremitting care, so deliciously unob- 
 trusive yet so full of thought and charming management that, 
 with the propensity there is in human nature to round off 
 characters harmoniously and to find velvet coats without seamy 
 sides, no one who had seen her at this time would have believed 
 that a girl, so sweet and full of thought for her dying friend, 
 was able at the same time to be so false and base. 
 
 Day by day Mrs. Hamley had grown worse and drawn nearer 
 and nearer to the Great Hour. She had no perceptible ailment 
 that could be catalogued. Weakness, loss of appetite, loss of 
 sleep, frequent faintings, a gradual decay that long slow death 
 of which the stages are so many before the last is reached, and 
 passed these were the symptoms and the root of her malady. 
 There was nothing special to combat in all this. The machine 
 was wearing out ; that was all; and she knew it. She had a 
 BB
 
 434 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 tough spirit and had always made a good fight of it. In poverty 
 of circumstances as in distress of mind she never showed what 
 she suffered, save by increased acerbity of temper. She was 
 peevish in affliction, but she was grim and determined. Even 
 now she had not given up till forced to do so. She had come 
 down punctually to breakfast, and read the prayers in her 
 quavering treble, though she was obliged to yield so far to her 
 weakness as to sit during the office. She had poured out the 
 tea to the last with her frail and shaking hands that could 
 scarcely lift the massive silver pot, both together ; and she had 
 had her poor old face and head dressed with her usual care and 
 precision. It was painful to see the unnecessary struggle that 
 she made. If only she would have consented to her state, and 
 been a comfortable unpowdered and unsightly goody wrapped 
 up in flannel without beads or bugles, lace or ribbons about 
 her, how much better it would have been, dear Dora used to 
 think ; while she said sweetly, to please her : " What a pretty 
 cap that is, dear ! Bignold certainly knows how to make 
 caps." 
 
 At which Mrs. Hamley would smile complacently, and think 
 she was masking her batteries and fading cleverly. 
 
 And all this time she was fretting about Patricia. Too 
 proud to yield to her inward wish for a reconciliation, or to 
 write telling her to come and see her, she was angry that the 
 girl whom she had repulsed BO severely did not again beg for 
 grace, divining the moment when it would be granted. 
 
 " She must know that I am ill," she used to think, half be- 
 tween tears and anger. " My own flesh and blood my only 
 relation to whom I have been so kind, a very mother to treat 
 me with such ingratitude, such heartlessneas ! It ia her evil 
 conscience. She knows that she has sinned, and she is ashamed 
 and afraid to see me." 
 
 So she thought, lying awake during the long watches of the 
 night, tossed between her secret consciousness of Patricia's in- 
 nocence and her determination to find her guilty for her own 
 self-justification; growing weaker day by day; more harassed 
 night by night ; till at last the moment came when her will 
 had to go down before disease, and when she must perforce 
 keep the bed from which she could not rise. 
 
 Then, and not till then, she desired that Patricia should be
 
 THE LAST LOOK. 435 
 
 sent for ; she not having heard cf her illness, and to whom Mr. 
 Hamley's hurried note : " Miss Kemball, return with the car- 
 riage if you please ; Mrs. Hamley is ill and desires to see you," 
 was scarcely sufficient preparation for the terrible change she 
 found. 
 
 Propped up in bed, her hair restorers, pads and braids, laid 
 aside with her smart dress-caps, and her scanty whitened locks 
 pushed off from her pinched and sallow face ; her eyes sunk in 
 her head ; her thin lips, black and dry, drawn back from her 
 teeth ; her body wasted ; and her hands idly plucking at the 
 sheet Patricia, suddenly ushered into the presence of her aunt 
 into the presence of death could not at first realize what she 
 saw. It was like something unreal ; a picture, or a dream. 
 She could scarcely believe that that formidable power of whom 
 she had been so often afraid should be lying there, a poor weak 
 helpless thing appealing only to human pity and dependent on 
 compassion for every act of her life ; her arbitrary will set 
 aside ; her autocratic power gone ; nothing left now but the 
 bare bones of humanity. It was very terrible to her ; a sudden 
 reversion of conditions she so strong, and her aunt who had 
 mastered her so weak that made her feel almost cruel and un- 
 dutiful. 
 
 She could not repress grievous little cry as she came up 
 to the bed, and took the wasted hand that moved feebiy across 
 the sheet towards her, saying as she carried it to her *ip, " I 
 did not know that you were ill, darling aunty ; no one told me 
 till this moment." 
 
 "I thought you might have come to see me, Patricia," said 
 Mrs. Hamley with feeble reproach. 
 
 ' If I had only known that I might, I would not hare waited 
 to be sent'for," she answered tenderly. 
 
 The dying woman looked up. 
 
 " In spite then, of your wickedness, you feel that you owe 
 me some respect ? " she said. 
 
 Had she been in her ordinaiy state her severity of accent 
 would have chilled and checked Patricia ; now her assumption 
 of moral superiority was almost tragical from its impotence. 
 
 " I only wanted to love you with my whole heart. Oh, let 
 me hear \ . i say that you believe me !" Patricia said earnestly, 
 her honest eyes full of tears.
 
 436 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " I dare say you did," Mrs. Hamley answered after a pause ; 
 " I did not see it, but T am willing to believe it now." 
 
 " I never meant to offend you, aunty dear, at any time. I 
 have been ignorant and clumsy, I know ; but I always wished 
 to do what was right," said the girl kissing her hand. 
 
 ""But you did what was wrong instead," Mrs. Hamley an- 
 swered, looking up with that strange and awful death-bed scowl 
 which seems more like demoniacal possession than human 
 anger. 
 
 Patricia shivered as she met her look, and shut her eyes for 
 an instant ; then, as if she put it from her, she said : 
 
 " Yet indeed I tried hard to satisfy you, dear, though I 
 failed." 
 
 " Yes,' you failed you failed," repeated Mrs. Hamley, half 
 closing her eyes. 
 
 " I know I did, to my bitter sorrow ; and I never understood 
 how nor why," returned Patricia, bending over her with an 
 earnest caressing gesture, as if she would have taken the poor 
 sick head to her bosom, and given some of the fulness of her 
 own life to the fast-ebbing stream pulsing each moment more 
 faintly in those shrivelled veins. 
 
 " If you are sincere in saying that, tell me the truth about 
 the cheque," cried Mrs. Hamley suddenly, with a quick flam- 
 ing up of her old angry tenacity. 
 
 Patricia looked across the bed to where Dora stood, dis- 
 tressed truly, but self-possessed and fully alive to the danger 
 of the moment. She had not braved all the perils which had 
 surrounded her for so many months to yield now to an impulse 
 of weak compassion or puerile conscience. She was sorry for 
 both Mrs. Hamley and Patricia, but she would be more sorry 
 for herself if things were different. Hard as it was on both 
 that the one should die deceived, and the other be condemned 
 while innocent, it would be harder she thought, on herself, if 
 the mask which she had worn with such success should be 
 taken off now at the last moment, and the labour of a life be 
 undone. 
 
 " Dora, help me ! " cried Patricia in an imploring tone. 
 
 Dora looked at her steadily. 
 
 " I cannot help you, Patricia," she answered. " I know 
 nothing about it you know that I do not," emphatically.
 
 THE LAST LOOK. 437 
 
 Patricia covered her face. It took all her strength and 
 loyalty to stand up against the agony of this moment, to bear 
 Uiis terrible burden. That her aunt should die believing this 
 grievous falsehood true, believing Dora pure, and ignorant of 
 the awful chapterof further crime contemplated and announced, 
 was of itself sorrow enough for a sincere nature ; but also, un- 
 selfish as she was, it did seem hard that she should be forced 
 to sacrifice the appearance of honour the thing which was 
 dearest to her in lite for the reality, in maintaining the false 
 repute of another. 
 
 The dying woman plucked her feebly by the sleeve 
 
 " Tell me," she said. " Why do you trouble Dora about 
 it?" 
 
 Patricia lifted ap her face, pale, quivering, but steadfast. 
 
 " I canntt tell you aunt," she said in low distinct tones "I 
 have promised faithfully that I never would, and I have not got 
 leave to break my word. Only believe that I was innocent in 
 the whole matter oh believe that, dear, for it is true ! " 
 
 Her aunt gave a pathetic little sigh. She was too weaiy, too 
 weak to combat longer. She must resign herself to defeat. 
 Undutiiul and self-willed even at this supreme moment, she must 
 leave that stubborn spirit now to its own hard course. She had 
 done all she could ; and life was fading too fast for struggle. 
 
 She turned her wan eyes to Dora. It was rest to her to look 
 at the soft-flower-face she knew so well and loved so dearly ' 
 the face that had been, to her fancy and belief, like an open 
 book of which she had read every page from end to end ! It was 
 her haven, her comtort , and yet, with the natural sense of fam- 
 ily, she regretted even in this her last hour that her own niece 
 had not been as dear and good as her husband's cousin, and had 
 not been able to at least share in the love she gave so Ireely to 
 this. 
 
 " God bless you, my child ! " she said in the gasping, inter- 
 rupted utterance of the dying. " You have been my comfort 
 ever since you entered the house. You have made me happy." 
 
 " 1 have loved you, dear," said Dora, laying her soft hand on- 
 the fleshless fingers. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley smiled faintly. "Take care of her, Mr. Ham- 
 ley," she said ; for Mr. Hamley had just entered by a side door, 
 $nd now stood by Dora.
 
 WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 " I will, my dear I will," he answered fervently, and put 
 his arm round his young cousin's slight figure, drawing her close 
 to his ample chest. 
 
 "She deserves your fatherly care," said Mrs. Hatnley. "I 
 leave her to you. God bless her ! God bless you, Dora ! " 
 
 Dora sobbed, and Mr. Hamley pressed her to him tenderly. 
 Tears were in his eyes too. The woman who was dying there 
 before him had been his true friend, if never his beloved. Though 
 she was leaving the way open for the happiness he had waited 
 for so patiently and defended so jealously, still she had been 
 staunch and loyal in her day. And then his very f ^nderness 
 for Dora made him pitiful for his wife, just as his natural emo- 
 tion for her death made him yet more loving to Dora. 
 
 " Don't fret my darling, I will take care of you," he said in a 
 low voice. 
 
 Mrs. Hamley looked pleased. 
 
 " Right," she whispered. " Be her father take care of her," 
 
 " Have you no word for me, aunt 1 " cried Patricia with the 
 passionate cry of the Esau unjustly defrauded. " Bless me too 1 " 
 
 There was a pause. Mrs. Haniley looked at her mece wea '-ily, 
 sternly, sadly. 
 
 " God forgive you, and turn your stubborn heart. I- forgive 
 you," was then her feeble response made with an effor 4 - , and 
 again her eyes turned to Dora. " God bless you, my Dora ! " 
 she murmured. 
 
 No other word was spoken. The evening sun streamed into 
 the room and showe'd the pallid face of the dying woman : Pa- 
 tricia's silent agony, yet clear of self-reproach ; the grief, the 
 fear, but the self-control that comes of the very need of terror, 
 of Dora ; the subdued and decent regret of Mr. Hamley. divided 
 as he was between pity and love, regret and relief. The silence 
 was broken only by the harsh rattle of the labouring breath 
 growing harder, slower, at every instant ; by the stifled sobs of 
 the onlookers gathered there to watch but unable to help ; when 
 suddenly, Mrs. Hamley opened her eyes. It seemed as if she 
 saw something beautiful in the air before her, for a smile, softer 
 and more divine than ever had been on her face before, irradiat- 
 ed her whole countenance. She half raised herself from her 
 pillow, turning towards Patricia. The last spark of life blazed 
 up iu her eyes with a sudden vividness that burnt more like
 
 THE LAST LOOK. 439 
 
 
 
 fire than human life. She could not speak, though her dry lips 
 moved ; but her look fastened itself on the girl with a yearning 
 and intense desire, a passionate longing that was as mournful as 
 a cry. 
 
 Patricia stooped over her and took the half-raiied body in 
 her arms. 
 
 ''What is it dear ?" she said. " Do you know me now I* 
 
 The face that looked into her* was scarcely Aunt Hatnley's 
 face at all : it was that of a creature divinely illumined, bright- 
 ened with more than human knowledge, burning with more than 
 human love. It lasted only for a moment ; but that moment 
 seemed an eternity, during which her very soul had looked from 
 her eyes into Patricia's. Then her head sank back on the girl's 
 arm, her glazed eyes turned, her jaw dopped, her laboured 
 breathing ceased ; and she was dead. But she died in her niece's 
 arms and her last look had been hers. 
 
 Patricia laid her head reverently on the pillow, and with a 
 strange superstitious feeling kissed her mouth for the faint ling- 
 ering breath that might be about her lips. 
 
 Mr. Haiuley stretched out his large hand and closed her eye- 
 lids. 
 
 " Thus die the Just," he said with pompous solemnity ; while 
 Dora drew a deep breath as one who has safely skirted by a 
 danger, though the next instant she slightly shivered, knowing 
 what was before her. 
 
 To Patricia the world felt wider and darker somehow now 
 than it had done this morning. Her last relative had gone, and 
 she remembered with a pang ot self-reproach how base it 
 seemed ! her terror lest her aunt should send for hr to live at 
 Abbey Holme again, and once more plunge her into the old life 
 of misunderstanding and "consenting with sinners." If it 
 could have brought her back again how willingly she would 
 have returned to the stifling air and unwholesome morals of 
 Abbey Holme ! If her own sorrow could have ensured that 
 poor dead soul's peace, how gladly she would have paid the 
 price ! But the door was closed and the seal set for all timo 
 now ; and as the past had been so must it remain for eternity. 
 She could only hope that what had been wrong hero was made 
 right there ; but for this world all was over. 
 
 Yet it was cruel Dora blessed and loved and thanked, and
 
 440 "WHAT WOULD YOU BO, LOVE?" 
 
 Dora the cause of it all ! Dora -who had lived a life of decep- 
 tion from the first, who had simply offered a manner for a 
 reality, a facile temper for a heart, and falsehood for truth ; and 
 she who had failed she scarcely knew why, but surely not for 
 want of trying to succeed by faithful endeavour yet she was 
 simply forgiven and Dora was blessed ! She wished her aunt 
 had blessed her too. She was glad of that strange loving look; 
 it seemed to soften the hardness of the last word, and lessen its 
 injustice ; but she wished that she had blessed her 1 She had 
 not forfeited this holy consecration of death ; she had been 
 loyal to her promise, but in her loyalty she had not injured her 
 aunt, and she had done nothing to make her unworthy of her 
 blessing. It had been a less sorrow to believe her, Patricia, 
 guilty of some mysterious misdemeanor than it would have been 
 to have known Dora's life of deception and falsehood. She saw 
 no different way of action for herself had she her time to come 
 over again ; unless indeed she had suspected Dora from the be- 
 ginning, and refused to do the service asked of her. But still 
 her thoughts went back to the central point of her sorrow at 
 this moment; she wished that her aunt had blessed her that 
 she had spoken just one comfortable word of love and trust be- 
 fore the time for speech had passed for ever ! 
 
 Presently Mr. Hamley spoke. 
 
 " Your dear aunt has died forgiving you," he said to Patricia, 
 his arm still about Dora ; " so do I." 
 
 He held out his hand over the bed, and Patricia, waking up 
 from her dreamy thoughts, put hers into it. It was like a com- 
 pact across the dead. 
 
 " Thank you," she said simply.- 
 
 She knew he meant well, and she accepted his meaning in 
 lieu of the right. They shook hands solemnly ; after which 
 Patricia stooped down and lovingly kissed the white still face 
 on the pillow. Dora and Mr. Hamley kissed it too, both with 
 a certain shudder ; and then they all went down into the draw- 
 ing-room, when Patricia prepared to go. 
 
 " Must you leave now ? " said Mr. Hamley, meaning to be 
 kind. " if you must you must ; but remember that Dora will 
 always be your friend." 
 
 He said this as if he had offered her a coronet. 
 
 Patricia did not answer. She looked at Dora hurriedly, not
 
 THE LAST LOOK. 441 
 
 wishing to draw suspicion on her, and indeed on her own ac- 
 count not caring to look at her longer or more narrowly than 
 was absolutely necessary. 
 
 The fair downward-bended face had a look on it of such abject 
 terror overmastering it for a moment, as humiliated Patricia to 
 see. How would she act now 1 Dora thought. Her silence 
 during Mrs. Hamley's lifetime had been always sure, but she 
 did not feel so certain of it now. There was this marriage with 
 Miss Manley publicly talked about : would she keep her coun- 
 sel faithfully even through this 1 But what of the future ? 
 When she too had heard that word which had to come, what 
 would she do 1 Would she lift up her voice and cry aloud, and, 
 to prevent the commission of a sin, tell all she knew, and so 
 dash her former friend headlong to destruction ? or would she 
 still keep loyal silence and consent with sin and sinners for the 
 sake of truth ? This was why she looked so terrified that it 
 touched the braver heart with a sense of shame and shared 
 humiliation to see it. 
 
 . ButPatricia was far from suspectingthe truth of Mr. Hamley's 
 feelings or Dora's cause for fear. She, like her aunt, had no 
 other idea but that of a fatherly affection on his side and a filial 
 love on hers ; and as for Sydney Lowe, she supposed that now, 
 Aunt Hamley being dead, Dora would come forward openly and 
 prevent the illegal marriage of her husband by taking up her 
 own publicly. She was sorry for her too, all things considered j 
 and notwithstanding her own griefs against her would not have 
 added a feather's weight to her troubles. 
 
 " I hope you understand that it will be a good thing for you 
 to have Dora as your friend," Mr. Hamley went on to say. 
 "Dora will have a large amount of power in her hands ; she 
 will be mistress of Abbey Holme, and you will want some one 
 to stand by you. Dora will stand by you. I make bold to gay 
 so much. You make her your friend, and all will come out 
 square." 
 
 " Thank you, but I shall not ask her for her help," said 
 Patricia hastily. 
 
 Dora looked up, but over her head, not into her face. She 
 avoided Patricia'.; eyes as she spoke. 
 
 " I will always be glad to help you, dear," she said sweetly. 
 " you are her niece ; and this kind, good friend," turning to
 
 442 "WHAT WOULD YOTT DO, LOVE?" 
 
 Mr. Hamley and looking at him with shy affection and covert 
 and most delightful consciousness, " this dear friend has always 
 wished you well and been good to you. I can do nothing better 
 than carry out hi* wihes." 
 
 ' I do not knovr what you mean exactly," said Patricia with 
 a certain stately bearing, drawing herself away. " I want no 
 help of any kind, and what I want more than I have I can work 
 for. The greatest good that you could have done me, Dora, 
 before she died, you refused ; I want nothing of you now ! " 
 
 " You take high ground, Miss 1 " said Mr. Hamlev with an 
 annoyed air. 
 
 " I mean nothing offensive, but I can accept no favour at 
 your hands, Mr. Hamley, nor at Dora's," said Patricia. 
 
 " You need not be afraid. Affairs will be properly conducted, 
 and not the most particular-minded person, as I call it, will 
 have a word to say," put in Mr. Hamley hastily. 
 
 He took it that she knew his heart and mind, and that she 
 resented his intentions. And for a moment the thought flashed 
 across him whether " that tale of Gordon Frere was all a bam, 
 and had the girl taken a liking for himself t She had always 
 been uncommon good to him, and more unlikely things had 
 happened. n 
 
 " I am sure you will do all that is right," answered Patricia, 
 believing him to mean the funeral, or the disposition of his wife's 
 property to Dora, or something else in the way of business, she 
 did not know what ; " but Dora knows quite well why I would 
 not accept a favour from her, and why now that poor aunty has 
 gone I have no place here and never shall have again." 
 
 " My goodness ! Patricia, I know nothing of the kind 1 1 have 
 not the least idea of what you mean 1 " cried Dora roused co un- 
 usual energy of voice and temper by the imminence of her peril. 
 
 " Dora ! how can yoa carry on this awful thing with what I 
 know, and you know too, and with what we have just seen ! " 
 cried Patricia pressing her hands on her heart. 
 
 " What the dickens does the girl mean 1 " cried Mr. Hamley 
 looking at her in a curiously embarrassed way. 
 
 If it was what he thought, her sentiments, though flattering 
 and predisposing him to generous treatment and kindly judg- 
 ment, were decidedly in the way afc the present moment, and 
 b,e wished her to understand as muck
 
 THE LAST LOOK. 443 
 
 " I have not the remotest idea," said Dora sternly. Then 
 in a low voice she added, " Our poor dear thought her mad, 
 and I do rea'iy believe she is." 
 
 " It loo-, .ike it." he answered in the same key. 
 
 He went up to Patricia, and took both her hands in his, 
 speaking to her in that peculiar way in which people speak to 
 maniacs rather loud, in n artificial voice, every word staccato 
 and distinct. 
 
 " Yes, yes, Dora knows all about it," he said wagging his 
 head in a soothing manner. u Dora quite understands it all 
 you hear? she quite understands what you mean ; so go home 
 now like a good girl, "and tell Miss Fletcher to put your feet in 
 hot water It will draw the blood from your head. Bad 
 thing, blood in the head, my dear," pointing to his own forehead 
 with his forefinger ; " hot foot-bath will do you good." 
 
 " I don't understand you," said Patricia looking at him in 
 blank amazement. " What do you mean ? " 
 
 Mr. Hamley rang the bell. 
 
 " Jones," he said when the man entered the room, " is the 
 carriage waiting ' 
 
 " Yes, sir," answered Jones. 
 
 " Now my dear Miss Kemball, let me send you to your 
 friends," said Mr. Hamley graciously. " Jones tell Bignold to 
 put on her bonnet and escort Miss Kemball -to the Hollies. I 
 do not like her to go alone, Mrs Hamley did not like h<*rto go 
 alone," with a sudden sigh. " She might do herself a mischief," 
 in a whisper to Dora. 
 
 And Dora answered, " Yes. It is better to send Bignold." 
 
 How lucky it was that she thought of making Patricia mad ! 
 Whatever she might say now Mr. Hamley would not believe 
 her, and if she said too much she could easily get her locked 
 up. Only the ravings of a diseased brain taking the false im- 
 pressions characteristic of disease and accusing. those who are 
 the nearest and dearest of impossible crimes 1 It was a happy 
 thought, and she was infinitely relieved by it ; though indeed 
 she was not cruel or hard by nature, only driven into both 
 cruelty and hardness by fear and falsehood. And when she 
 thought of getting Patricia locked up in a lunatic asylum if she 
 told too much, she felt something like a person who is being 
 fast surrounded bv the tide, when he suddenly, strikes on. a path-
 
 m "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 way up the cliffs which lie had not known nor foreseen, and 
 whom it would but little discompose if he had to fling down an 
 unoffending sheep or lamb that stood in his way and made his 
 escape else impossible. 
 
 Patricia at first refused both Bignold and the carriage ; but 
 when Mr. Hamley insisted so strongly that her refusal became 
 contentious, she yielded, and suffered him to take her out to 
 the door on his arm, as he had brought her in just about a year 
 ago. As she passed through the hall she gave one sudden sob 
 as if her heart would break ; and Mr. Hamley patted her hand 
 affectionately. The new idea that had taken possession of nim 
 was flattering, if inconvenient ; and he felt that he could afford 
 to be compassionate to the poor soul. Then they shook hands 
 together, and he was really quite tender to her ; so much so 
 that she wondered at it, and the servants wondered too ; as he 
 assisted her into the carriage, and so sent her back to the 
 Hollies in state, and guarded. She little suspected however 
 that the former maid was her present keeper, and that she was 
 regarded by Mr. Hamley on the -MIO hand as a lunatic, danger-" 
 ous to leave alone, on the othei as a poor dear unfortunate 
 young woman who had contracted a not unnatural but wholly 
 unreturnable affection for himself. 
 
 "And now," she said, after sh^ had told her friends how 
 her aunt had died told them t-\> with many tears of that 
 strange earnest look, and how she seemed to feel in it that the 
 poor darling had at the last momeiM recognised her innocence, 
 and what a comfort it was that sho had died actually in her 
 arms when all this was told, "and now," she said, "we 
 must come to some understanding ibout myself. I did not 
 mind staying here so long as poor aunt lived somehow it did 
 not seem like fastening myself on yon because, I suppose you 
 could have sent me back at any hoiu when you were tired of 
 me. But now it is different. * I cannot live on you for ever; 
 I must do something for myself." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said Henry Fletcher. 
 
 " Henry is right," said Catherine. " Besides my dear, to 
 take up your own point, you cannot do anything that will keep 
 you. No one who has not a specialised education can make a 
 reasonable income ; and so few women have a specialised educa 
 tiou I You, my darling, certainly have .ot."
 
 THE LAST LOOK. 445 
 
 "But I can learn something," said Patricia a little vaguely. 
 
 " We must first of all arrange what you can learn, and what 
 you can utilise when learnt," Catherine answered, as if arguing 
 a possible point. 
 
 ' You know how much I love you both," said Patricia ten- 
 derly, as she returned to the charge. " You know I came to 
 you like your own child when I was in trouble ; but how can I 
 go on living here, perhaps for years, till Gordon comes home 
 and is able to marry me 1 I am sure you must' both feel it 
 would be better and nobler to do something for myself." 
 
 " So it would, if we were not ourselves," Dr. Fletcher said. 
 '* If you were with any one else, I would counsel you to go out 
 into the world and be industrious and independent ; but not 
 from us. We love you too well," he added, looking at her 
 quietly. 
 
 " Patricia," said Catherine glancing at her brother. " I am 
 going to tell you something ; something about myself that you 
 have never heard. Henry knows it all, so it is nothing that 
 will shock or startle him. Long before you were born, long 
 before your father married, he and I were friends the dearest 
 friends ! My darling, he was the only man I ever loved ; and 
 at one time he loved me. But then," she added hastily, " he 
 had not seen your mother. Still, we weie friends and lovers 
 in earlier days, and but for a mere v chance we should have been 
 married. And does not that give me a certain claim to be 
 your pro-mother now 1" 
 
 Tears stood in her eyes, and the round, soft matronly cheek 
 was pale while she spoke. A woman's heart never grows old, 
 and the love which, by long years, has become a habit of re- 
 membrance and is no longer a present influence, has neverthe- 
 less always the same power to move her when spoken of. 
 Catherine Fletcher's love had been very true and very deep. 
 It had saddened lier life for many a long day ; and, for all that 
 it was a thing of the past now, and she was entirely happy in 
 her life, for all that she was a childless old maid and her only 
 love had married and died so many years ago she could never 
 speak of him without tears. The habit of remembrance was 
 the habit of sorrow too ; and deep down in her heart was that 
 everlasting spring of grief which, however closely it might be 
 covered up, would never run dry. Ah 1 the graves WQ all carry
 
 446 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 about with us ! the sorrows that time only scars over and never 
 heals ! 
 
 " Then uncle knew it 1" cried Patricia, as she suddenly re- 
 membered her uncle's look when Gordon was speaking of Mr. 
 Fletcher the solicitor, and how he had mentioned ** bonny Kate" 
 so kindly. 
 
 "Yes, I have no doubt he did;, what there was to know, 
 which was not much," said Catherine. ' : He and your poor 
 father were very fond of each other, and trusted each other en 
 tirely, though they were so different in character and your uncle 
 so much the older of the two. But now I think the question 
 is settled. You will look on me as a kind of step-mother, Pat- 
 ricia t They are not all as bad as the fairy-books make out. 
 I think I have known one or two who have been faithful, and 
 who have deserved the love they gained." 
 
 " Yes, you are my mother ! " cried Patricia, throwing her 
 arms round Catherine's neck with a passionate burst of self- 
 surrender ; " and I will be your daughter, now and for ever. 
 Thi is home, it is not dependence ! " 
 
 " Now you are a good girl and a wise one," said Henry 
 quietly ; while Catherine, crying too, for the silly sympathy of 
 tears to which even strong-hearted women yield, could only kiss 
 the dear young face that was resting on her breast ; and call 
 her " daughter " and " dear child," while feeling as if she was 
 holding Reginald with her in her arms, while feeling as if he 
 was there and knew what she felt, and loved her for what she 
 was doing. 
 
 So that little hitch was got over satisfactorily. Patricia was 
 formally adopted into the Hollies as the daughter of the house, 
 and Dr. Fletcher was careful to call her 4i my sister's child " 
 when he spoke of her which was not offcn. 
 
 But Milltown, having a suspicious mind, WM not quite cer- 
 tain whether it approved of the arrangement or not ; and at 
 all events it was quite sure that the Hollies was just the worst 
 home that odd girl could have found, and that she, in her turn, 
 was just the most undesirable kind of young person those fool- 
 ish people could have adopted. And, good heavens ! why did 
 they want to adopt any one t These things always turn out 
 badly, prophesied the malcontents ; and the best wisdom in life 
 is to accept the fewest responwbiliteei, and to interfere least 
 with other folks' concerns.
 
 FREE TO PLEAD. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 FREE TO PLEAD. 
 
 HAMLEY did the thing handsomely. If the Count- 
 ess of Doredale herself had died there could not have 
 been a more splendid show of grief ; perhaps there 
 would not have been one so splendid. The shops put up their 
 mourning shutters, and all the blinds of the private houses were 
 drawn as the magnificent cortege, the best Milltown, helped by 
 the county capital, eould furnish tramped slowly down the 
 High Street to the intense enjoyment of a hundred peeping 
 eyes. The two or three little fishing-boats lying in the harbour 
 had streamers hoisted half-mast high they had been sent down 
 by order, and were scarlet and buff, the Hamley colours, with a 
 black bar for mourning across ; half the community were made 
 mourners by the undertaker, and had hat-bands and scarves aa 
 symbols of their grief; and on the Sunday following Mr. Bor- 
 rodaile preached the funeral sermon, wherein he called the de- 
 funct Mrs. Hamley a mother in Israel, and said that at the last 
 day the poor, who were her children, would rise up and call her 
 blessed. Seeing that the practice of almsgiving was held in 
 abhorrence at Abbey Holme, and that charitable contributions 
 were condemned as bad political economy, this was taking rather 
 more than the ordinary ecclesiastical license, which as a rule 
 goes even beyond the poetic. 
 
 As for Mr. Hamley's private and personal emblems of woe 
 they were of the most expressive and expansive kind. The 
 crape on his hat did not leave a quarter of an inch ot bearer to 
 be seen ; his jet studs and watch-chain were of the largest size 
 and broadest and most florid pattern made ; and his glossy black 
 clothes seemed as if an extra dip in the dyeing- vat had been, 
 given to them. Dora's mourning was almost as deep M a 
 widow's ; save the characteristic cap indeed, it might hare been 
 a widow's. She looked very fair and interesting in her sables 
 " black always did became her," sid Bignold, who had bten
 
 *48 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 promoted black, just touched round the face with a narrow 
 line of transparent white; and when she came into church, 
 leaning on Mr. Hamley's arm, she created quite a sensation by 
 the unusual prettiness of her person and the presumed desolate- 
 ness of her condition. 
 
 She was assumed to be so desolate, and Mr. Hamley's grief 
 was taken to be so sincere, that Garth was heard to say bitter- 
 ly : " He's had it out of the Psalms now, and God. has cursed 
 the unrighteous as He promised ! " 
 
 After this Sunday there was a great deal of talk throughout 
 Milltown about Dora. What would become of her no one could 
 exactly determine. Of course she could not live at Abbey Holme 
 with Mr. Hainley alone ; and until he married again, which he 
 was pretty sure to do, her case seemed a hard one, brought up 
 as she had been and made so much fuss with, they said among 
 themselves. A few wondered whether the great man would 
 marry Dora herself ; but for the most part they believed he 
 would look higher than his cousin, and maybe plant his foot in 
 the peerage this time. Besides, men don't generally take for their 
 wives their own dependants whom they have seen grow up un- 
 der their roofs from childhood. So it was settled by the majority 
 that Dora would have to leave Abbey Holme, and that Mr. Ham- 
 ley would marry some grand lady of high degree and small pos- 
 sessions, and found the Hamley family at last. 
 
 Colonel Lowe, discussing the great event of the hour with, 
 his son, supposed for his part that Mr. Hamley would marry 
 Dora. He could understand now the old shoeblack's policy, he 
 said. He had loved the girl himself, and in all probability 
 everything had been understood and arranged between them 
 long ago , which was the secret of his refusal to give her a dowry 
 when he, Sydney Lowe, had done her the honour to propose to 
 her. 
 
 " Any one can see it with half an eye. It was clear as day- 
 light to me at the time, as you must remember I hinted broadly 
 enough to you," said the Colonel in his disdainful way. " These 
 low-bred people have always their mysteries and intrigues on 
 hand ; and Syd, my boy, you are well out of that galkre. You 
 have made better terms for yourself by a long way, and chosen 
 as a gentleman should." 
 
 This he said joyously, with his hand laid kindly on his soa's
 
 FREE TO FL^AU. 449 
 
 shoulder, who looked sulky and by no means responsive. He 
 had not seen Dora since his engagement with Julia Manley, and 
 he dreaded though he longed to see her. He did not know how 
 he could face her with such news as he had to bring, but he 
 thought she would understand the necessities of his position, 
 and he did not want to lose her -in the future. He did warmly 
 and honestly love her with such warmth and honesty as he 
 possessed ; and though his love sprang from, and rested on, only 
 the lowest stratum of a man's fancy and passion, still it was all 
 he had to give ; and if gold cannot be got from brass, what 
 qualities brass has in itself may at least be recognised. 
 
 Among the other qualities however, which this love'of his 
 possessed, jealousy was one of the strongest ; and when he 
 hecird his father speak of Dora's possibly belonging to Mr. Ham- 
 ley, he felt as if he should go mad on the spot mad enough 
 to throw Julia and her thousands to the wind, confess every- 
 thing, and take Dora away into poverty if it mast be so long 
 as it was into his own keeping before the world, safe from any 
 other man's intrusion. But the habits of a lifetime, and the 
 sordid aims of a selfish nature, were too strong for him. Pov- 
 erty was Sydney Lowe's Apollyon whom he dared not fight and 
 could not conquer ; and rather than meet this terrible demon, 
 whom we of the nineteenth century dread more than all the 
 others drawn up in-line of battle together, he would consent to 
 be perjured on his own account, and to give up the woman he 
 loved and had married. He was essentially the child of the 
 age ; indifferent to everything but physical enjoyment and so- 
 cial well-being, and with no more belief in morals than he had 
 in religion. 
 
 Provided a mail is not found out, it does not much signify 
 what he does, according to Sydney Lowe ; and rather than be 
 found out in a folly that would carry consequences, he would 
 commit a crime for concealment. Money and position were his 
 two gods of equal height and power; and to these everything 
 in heaven and earth, in life and humanity, had to give way. 
 
 Not being able, however, to bear his father's -cynicism, and 
 being as profoundly miserable as he could be an J if shallow, 
 he was passionate he dashed from the room, determined to 
 see Dora at any cost, and to come to some definite understand- 
 ing with her his wife ; his wife, married to another man 1 That 
 CO
 
 450 " tt'HAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?'* 
 
 he should destroy his own secret marriage was one thing, and 
 in the circumstances in which he found himself quite allowable, 
 if to be regretted ; but that Dora should give herself and her 
 smiles to Mr. Hamley no ! he could not stand by and see that 
 done ! She might commit a crime as well as himself, so far as 
 the sin was concerned. It was not that which troubled him. 
 But she should not give him a rival ; and the liberty he took 
 for himself he would kill her before she should share. 
 
 While. he was fuming at his unlucky position with all its 
 detestable surroundings, cursing Julia, his father, Dora, Mr. 
 Hamley, every one concerned but himself, Mr. Hamley at 
 Abbey Holme was talking seriously to Dora. 
 
 It was Monday evening, the day after the funeral sermon 
 which had closed the cycle of the burial solemnities. Every- 
 thing was done now. Even the undertaker's bill was paid, as 
 well as the bills for servants' mourning and liveries, the carriage 
 trappings, and the like : by which Mr. Hamley got off a large 
 discount for ready money. At home, everything characteristic 
 of and belonging to Mrs. Hamley was put away. Her special 
 little work-table had been placed like a shrine in a corner ; her 
 special chair removed ; her pile of handsomely bound religious 
 books was laid up in the library ; and her whole personal pro- 
 perty was made over unconditionally to Dpra, with the excep- 
 tion of the few poor trinkets and ornaments she had possessed 
 before her marriage. These were sent down to Patricia labelled 
 " Family heirlooms," and accompanied by a note meant to be 
 kind but worded with unconscious offensiveness, wherein Mr. 
 Hamley conveyed these precious deposits to her keeping as the 
 last representative of the Kemball family ; at the same time 
 begging to enclose a aum of fifty pounds in token of respect for 
 the dear departed whose niece she was, and to meet expenses 
 incidental on the melancholy event. It was kindly thought if 
 ' clumsily and pompously done ; and Patricia had no idea she 
 should hurt him as she did when she returned his fifty-pound 
 note with thanks. But he -was really hurt. The man's heart 
 just then was softened, and he was more &ensitive than he had 
 ever been in his life before. 
 
 Well ! the Kemball page of his life was turned down now for 
 ever ; and as he said, with a not undeserved sense of satisfac- 
 tion, judging by his lights, it was a page of which he was not
 
 SftEE TO PLEAD. 451 
 
 ashamed, and where he had done his cfuty like a 'man. But 
 now he was free the last word had been spelt out, the last 
 line written. He had gonawthrough his lesson triumphantly, 
 and now his play-time had begun. He was free free to plead, 
 free to enjoy. The man had never looked so well, so near to a 
 strain of nobleness as he did this evening when he came into 
 the drawing-room after dinner, prepared' to receive the crown- 
 ing mercy of his life. 
 
 Dora was sitting in her accustomed place alone, dressed for 
 dinner as usual ; pretty, soft, amiable also as usual but de- 
 voured by secret fear and anxiety, knowing exactly what was 
 to come but not knowing how it would end. 
 
 When Mr. Hamley entered, and she met him with her pretty 
 smile subdued to the proper melancholy tone of the moment, 
 making a graceful, half-receptive movement of her head and 
 hand as if welcoming him to her apartment she saw her fate. 
 She saw it in the man's white, moved face; in the subtle 
 change from master to wooer, from friend to lover which was 
 in every line and movement, as he drew a chair close to her 
 and in his turn motioned her to sit down. It was a queer, 
 theatrical manner of meeting ; but it was the kind of thing 
 that pleased him. All display did. 
 
 He oame to plead. He came confident of the result, but 
 timid too, as real love makes even strong men before they are 
 assured. He came to pour out such wealth of affection as he 
 possessed like hoarded treasures in her lap ; and Dora looking 
 up at him with her sweet, affectionate little face, and heart that 
 seemed to stand still for dread, only wished that he might die 
 fall dead there at her feet before he had got time to say 
 what he had waited almost these ten years to say, and what 
 she herself had made it a crime to hear. 
 
 He sat, down beside her, and took her dainty hand in both 
 his own. 
 
 " Dora," he said in a husky voice, so low and changed it 
 scarcely sounded like his voice at all j "I have something to 
 say to you." < 
 
 " Yes," said Dora innocently. 
 
 Had she not had nerves of steel she would have shrieked 
 aloud in her terror. As it was, she smiled tenderly, and looked 
 with the sweetest friendliness, like a child or an angel by hia, 
 side.
 
 452 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " It cannot be a matter of amazement to you what I have to 
 gay," began Mr. Hamley oratorically ; but his grand manner 
 ill accorded with his tremhling^hands and unsteady voice. 
 *' You must have discovered it tor yourself that I love you 
 love you very dearly, I may say." 
 
 "You have always been the kindest of the kind to me," said 
 Dora, lifting her eyes .with her special look of shy girl's grati- 
 tude. 
 
 " I have tried to be so," he answered. " It was not difficult, 
 feeling what I did for you. From the first moment when you 
 came into the house, a pretty little girl, just budding as one 
 may say, up to this hour when I have your hands in mine over 
 my desolate hearth, I have loved you." 
 
 Dora gave his hand a little press, but said nothing. 
 
 " Year by year as you grew prettier and more and more the 
 lady, I grew more to love you," he went on to say, drawing a 
 deep breath. " But I do not think I ever took advantage of my 
 position, or treated you with anything but the respect which I 
 should naturally show a lady. You have been always the lady 
 with me, Dora. I loved you no man more; but I think 1 may 
 claim to say that I did not show it to you rudely, or make the 
 sainted soul who has just left us anxious or uneasy." 
 
 " You have been always very good to me," said Dora softly. 
 " No one could have treated anyone with more kindness or gen 
 erosity than you have treated me." 
 
 " I have wished to do so, Dora ! I have wished to do so ! 
 But it has been hard work at times to control myself ; and when 
 other men came after you, it was a struggle then, I can tell you. 
 Still, I did ; and I am proud of myself that I did. At one time 
 I was afraid of that young dog that young Lowe." 
 
 Dora raised her pretty shoulder* with a movement of disdain. 
 " Oh ! " she said, with a satirical little laugh. 
 
 " But you assured me it was not so, and I \rat content. I 
 said to myself, Dora does not know my heart. Dora does not 
 see that 1 love her as a man and a husband I must control my- 
 self, and not let Dora know my great designs for her when the 
 sainted soul shall be taken from us. If I could show myself to 
 Dora, and let her understand me and the future I design for her, 
 I should have no fear ; but as I cannot, I must do my best to 
 keep her safe, and to save her from mere tuffc-hunters, greedy of
 
 FREE TO PLEAD. 453 
 
 money, like that mean fellow Lowe. So I put it to you, Dora, 
 a you may remember ; and I cannot tell you how you light- 
 ened my heart when you said you did not love him. Dora, you 
 gave me new life that day ! " 
 
 He said this with a burst of tenderness that nearly broke 
 him down. It was pathetic in its own way to see the coarse, 
 strong face of the man softened and quivering with emotion, to 
 see his eyes turned with such tender longing on the fair droop- 
 ing head beside him, his self-complacency absorbed in the inten- 
 sity of his love for this girl who was fooling him. Whatever 
 of pure and true and noble there was in Mr. Hamley's nature 
 was all centred in his love for Dora Dora, the wife of Sydney 
 Lowe the Rachel for whom he had waited so long, and who 
 had deceived him as she had deceived everyone else. 
 
 " And you do not love him 1" continued Mr. Hamley in the 
 tone of a question. He was sure of his answer, but he longed 
 to hear it again. There are some things which never tire in 
 repetition, and the assurance to a jealous man that he has no 
 cause for jealousy is one of them. 
 
 She lifted her eyes to his face with her sudden swift look, 
 dropping the lids immediately. 
 
 " Love him ! " she said with the most enchanting contempt. 
 " No ! " 
 
 "And, Dora, you do love me? Let me' hear you say so, 
 darling ! You have often told me so with those pretty eyes of 
 yours ; tell me so now in words," he pleaded. "I must hear 
 you say it ' I love you ! ' ' 
 
 " 1 love you ! " replied Dora in a low voice. It was her task, 
 and she must get through it in the best way she could. "Poor 
 Syd ! " she thought a little ruefully ; which did not prevent her 
 saying her prescribed formula in the most bewitching manner 
 possible. 
 
 He caught her to his heart. Strong, conceited, arrogant aa 
 he was, at this moment he was nothing but the humble and en- 
 raptured lover whom a pair of blue eyes and two red rosebud 
 lips had transported into heaven. 
 
 " Now I have won all that I care for in life ! " he said, smooth- 
 ing her hair with a tremulous hand. " Dora as my wife puts the 
 finishing touch to it all. Ob, Dora, you have made a happy 
 man of me to-night ! My darling, my pretty pet, my little 
 queen, how happy I shall be ! how happy I am ! "
 
 454 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 "You have made me happy too," said Dora from the breadth 
 of his chest where her golden head was resting; "how shall I 
 get out of this awful scrape ! " being the unspoken commentary 
 that ran side by side with her words. 
 
 He passed his large hand over her face. It was such a de- 
 licious luxury to him to feel that he had so far the right. He 
 had, as he truly boasted, always treated her with self-restraint 
 and respect, and the slackening of the curb was a joy so great 
 he scarcely regretted the price of so many years' control he had 
 paid for it. 
 
 " But we will keep it secret between ourselves, my dear," he 
 said. " I should not like to do anything that would be offen- 
 sive to that sainted soul's memory. She was a good wife to me, 
 if a trifle crabbed and stiff, and 1 would not like people to say 
 that I danced on her grave, or took my second wife before my 
 first was cold. We will keep all this to our two selves ; and 
 when the year is out we will be married quietly, you know, and 
 
 M-dthout much of a spread. Don't you think I am right, Dora'? " 
 " Certainly," she said. " No one must know ! " 
 She said this quite warmly. It was a reprieve to her so far, 
 and who knows what that reprieve might not bring forth ? 
 Mr. Hamley might die he did not look very like it though ; 
 or Sydney might die ; or Julia Manley ; or a thousand things 
 might happen which would set her feet free from their present 
 fetters. Wherefore she assented with alacrity, and so gave 
 Mr. Hamley cause to congratulate himself again on the posses- 
 sion of a prospective wife so full of nice feeling and so entirely 
 the lady as dear Dora. 
 
 Furthermore it was agreed between them that Dora should 
 sometimes visit friends, and sometimes live at Abbey Holme, 
 where there should always be some married woman to he her 
 chaperon and bear her countenance, as Mr. Hamley said ; and 
 that everything should be conducted in such a manner as to 
 give no cause of scandal to a world only too ready to find cause. 
 " I must have my Dora's name kept as clean as a new pin 1 " 
 said Mr. Hamley with more poetry of feeling than of speech. 
 " We both owe so much to the memory of the dear departed." 
 To which Dora, sighing with the most admirable imitation 
 of melancholy, said, " Yes, we do," and was rewarded for her 
 sweetness by a kiss.
 
 FREE TO PLEAD. 455 
 
 So the evening passed, and there was not in all England a 
 happier heart or a prouder man than Jabez Hamley, M.P., and 
 the accepted lover of Dora. Not all the wealth of England 
 could have won him from his present position. He had not a 
 wish ungratified not a care, not a cloud in his horizon any 
 where. Accustomed to self-control and fond of display, it was 
 no great trial to him to have that year of probation before he 
 could call Dora really his own. He wanted the world tosee how 
 decorously he could mourn for the sainted soul who had just 
 departed. He too, like Mrs. Hamley, knew that affection and 
 harmony are the only things which render marriage respecta- 
 ble, and that one of open disunion is also one of open scandal. 
 It would have been painful to him, and would have brushed 
 the bloom from the flower of his happiness, had any one been 
 able to suspect that he had, as he said, danced on his wife's grave, 
 and taken a second before the first was cold. It was even an 
 additional pleasure to him that he was obliged to conceal his 
 joy. It seemed to make it more entirely his own ; and the 
 secret which no one shared with him and Dora was so much 
 the closer bond between them. Yes he was thoroughly, divinely 
 happy. He stood on the pinnacle, and asked no more of man 
 or gods. 
 
 The next day he went down to Mr. Simpson's office. 
 
 " Simpson," he said in a melancholy voice, " I wish to add a 
 codicil to my will" 
 
 Obsequious Simpson bowed. " Certainly, Mr. Hamley ; 
 certainly, sir," he said. " Your instructions ? " 
 
 " Only a few words," said Mr. Hamley. "Absolute and un- 
 conditional bequeathment of all of which I may die possessed, 
 in whatever form the property may consist, to my cousin, Dora 
 Drummond." 
 
 Mr. Simpson was too wise to show any feeling, but he was 
 profoundly astonished all the same. He w*s even more so when 
 Mr. Hamley declared he would not leave the office till this co- 
 dicil had been written, signed, witnessed, and delivered. The 
 man's whole nature seemed changed. With his widower's 
 sorrowful air was a certain abounding sense of inner joy that 
 did not escape a man so astute as the Milltown lawyer ; but he 
 made no comment farther than that it was natural for Mr. 
 Hamley to wish to ensure the well-being of his only relation :
 
 456 "WHAT WOTTLn VOTT T>O, LOVE?" 
 
 and tli at, -wiping no ill to Miss Drummond, he yet hoped she 
 would not profit by his generous disposition in her favour for 
 many a long day yet to come, if indeed she ever did. 
 
 To all of which Mr. Hamley answered judiciously, and rode 
 away with a light heart ; feeling that should he meet with any 
 accident, which however he did not expect, dear Dora would be 
 fully provided for and would wear his memory in perpetual 
 magnificence and sorrow. He wished though, that he had made 
 a proviso against her marrying. In his lover-like haste to as- 
 sure her good fortune, he had not thought of that ; but he felt 
 it would be enough to make him turn in his grave, as people 
 say, if Dora should marry on his money ; and he was deter- 
 mined to repair the omission tomorrow. Taking time by the 
 forelock was one of Mr. Hamley'a principles as well as Colonel 
 Lowe's ; and to-morrow he would acton it. 
 
 Meanwhile he went home to what it pleased him to call out 
 of doors his desolate hearth, where he found a superb little din- 
 ner, and a beautiful young woman in the most becoming dress 
 possible to be constructed out of crape and bugles, waiting to 
 receive him with a mixture of open friendliness and secret bash- 
 fulness which seemed to him just the most fascinating mixture 
 of manner any lady could evince. 
 
 This evening too passed like the former, save that the softer 
 tremulousness of the as yet unassured suitor had gone, and a 
 certain fever of delight a certain bounding, irrepressible, and 
 enthusiastic joy had taken its place. -He could not go to 
 bed ; he could not sleep ; and when Dora stole down the etairs 
 in her old noiseless way, and went out into the garden to meet 
 her husband, from whom she had had a peremptory letter to- 
 day (she could receive private letters now), Mr. Hamley was 
 in his own room thinking of .her, and of all she had said and 
 done to him to-night. She was like a fairy or an angel, he 
 thought with a smile ; and that fairy, that angel, loved him 
 and was bis ! 
 
 " Where nothing is, but all things seem ! " How much of 
 life is real anywhere 1 Prosperity, happiness, truth, even love 
 what is actual, what only an appearance? More secrets lie 
 behind the closed doors of hearts and homes than the world 
 outside ever dreams of; and more men worship shadows and 
 are made happy by pretences than ever come to the knowledge 
 that they have been tricked.
 
 1H.E SHADOW I.\ liLE WOOD. 457 
 
 CHAPTER XLL 
 
 THE SHADOW IN- THE WOOD. 
 
 YD, it has come at last 1 J ' cried Dora as she ran into 
 her husband's arms in the shrubbery. 
 
 What had come 1 thought Sydney. Her knowledge 
 of his intended marriage with Julia Manley ? or had Mr. Hamley 
 discovered all 1 or could it be that his father was right, and 
 that this vulgar ruffian had dared to lift his eyes to the prize 
 he had won ] 
 
 " What has come, Dora t " he asked quickly. 
 
 " Mr. Hamley," said Dora. 
 
 "What about Mr. Hamley V repeated Sydney. "You 
 speak in riddles to-night do please be plain! " 
 
 Dora felt all the awkwardness of the confession she had to 
 make ; but as it must be done she had better get over the bad 
 piece of road as quickly as possible. It was a curious position 
 for a woman to have to tell her husband that she had pretended 
 only pretended, mind ! she was going to be married to 
 another man, even when that husband had announced his in- 
 tention of marrying another woman ! 
 
 " Mr. Hamley has proposed to me," said Dora, clasping her 
 hands in each other and resting them on his bended arm. 
 
 The moon was bright enough for her to see her husband's 
 eyes, and she did not like the look in them. She felt there 
 was mischief behind them ; and angry as she was with him she 
 instinctively met it with a caress. 
 
 Caresses do a great deal with some men, and in general they 
 did a great deal with Sydney Lowe. But though, when she 
 looked as she looked now, she had hitherto always made his 
 will her own, to-night she failed. Between love and jealousy 
 the latter was the stronger of the two. 
 
 "And what did- you say, Dora?" he asked, griping her 
 hands harshly. 
 
 " Wiiat could I say, dear ? " she answered deprecatingly.
 
 458 "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE?" 
 
 " I did not ask that. You could say a great many tilings. 
 I asked, what did you sayt" he repeated, still with his dead- 
 white face and flaming eyes and dangerously calm manner. 
 
 " Dora looked at him innocently. 
 
 * " I said, yes, of course. What else was there for me to do 1 " 
 she answered, arching her eye-brows. 
 
 With a savage oath he flung away the hands which until now 
 he had been grasping, and lifted his arm as if to strike her. 
 Had she shrunk or cowered, he would; but she stood her 
 ground so quietly, and looked at him so prettily, that in a 
 manner she unnerved him. She was desperately frightened 
 nevertheless ; but it would never do to let Sydney see that she 
 was afraid of him, she thought. She must hold her own now 
 or never, and make him understand that by his own iniquity 
 he had made himself responsible for all that had come, or was 
 to come. But if he did beat her, and make her black and blue 
 he looked capable of it and Mr. Hamley saw the bruises, 
 and asked her about them to-morrow, what should she say to 
 him ? Her difficulties were really very great. How she wished 
 one of these two men would die ! At this present moment she 
 was quite indifferent which of the two, so long as she was free 
 .. of one. 
 
 All these things she thought in the moment during which 
 she stood with her hands clasped in each other, her head a little 
 bent and her blue eyes looking up with the tenderest sweetness 
 into Sydney's angry face. 
 
 " What nonsense, Syd ! " she said, creeping up to him and 
 taking hold of his arms. " How absurd of you to go on like 
 this, dear ! If I had not said yes, and pretended that I would, 
 what would have become of me ? He would have turned me 
 then and there out of doors, and where could I have gone ? Your 
 father is ruined, and you cannot give me a home ; besides it is 
 all over the place that you are on the point of marrying Miss 
 Manley, and I should like to know what I am to do ! " 
 
 " Starve, rather than do such a shameful thing as this ! " cried 
 Sydney violently. 
 
 " Willingly, if you will starve with me," said pretty Dora 
 amiably. " But I tell you Syd, frankly, if you marry Julia 
 Manley for money I will marry Mr. Hamlep ; so now you know." 
 
 " Dora, you are too detestable ! " cried Sydney. " You seem 
 to forget altogether that you are my wife,"
 
 THE SHADOW IN THE WOOD. 459 
 
 " Xo I do not, dear," she answered. " I remember it too 
 well ; for it makes the whole thing so dreadfully complicated. 
 If we had been only lovers all this time there would have been 
 nothing to be afraid of ; but it will be a horribly awkward 
 position for us both when you walk out of the church with Miss 
 Mauley on your arjp as your wife, and we go out to our bridal 
 dinner-parties afterwards. We shall meet at some of them." 
 
 "Oh, Dora, do not say such awful things!" cried Sydney, 
 fairly writhing under her words. " I always thought you had 
 some kind of feeling, some kind of sympathy. You will send 
 me wild if you go on like this ! " 
 
 " Well, Syd, you are the most extraordinarily unreasonable 
 person I have ever seen ! " said Dora. " You first of all marry 
 me undertake pretences; then you discard me, and are going 
 to marry somebody else ; but you will neither hear it spoken 
 of, nor let me secure myself from ruin. What do you propose ? 
 or have you anything to propose at all?" 
 " I have," cried Sydney. 
 "Well? what?" 
 
 He turned away. Sydney Lowe was not much troubled with 
 conscientious scruples nor moral delicacy, but even he hesitated 
 before he propounded the scheme he had devised, whereby he 
 should take all the infamy on himself and make it unnecessary 
 for Dora to imitate him. 
 
 " .No, Syd," said Dora, when he had taken the bad courage 
 to speak, " 1 will not do that. We are in an awful scrape, but 
 I don't think that would make it much better. At least not 
 for me. It would be pleasant enough for you; but for myself 
 no I don't see it, Syd ! " quite gravely. 
 
 " And you prefer that low-lived ruffian, that big brute, to 
 me ? " cried Sydney, savagely. 
 
 " No, Syd, 1 don't. I loathe and hate Mr. Hamley, and you 
 know that I do ; and I love you, and you know that too. I 
 have never loved any man but you, and never shall." 
 
 Her head went down on his breast, and his arms were round 
 her dainty waist. His passion changed in an instant to despair, 
 and his anger to a woman's grief. 
 
 " Oh, Dora, how can you leave me ! " he sobbed. ' It breaks 
 my heart to* think of it when it does nob send me mad ! " 
 
 " How can you leave me ! " she retorted, also sobbing. " You
 
 46C " WHAT worm VOTT no, LOVE ? 
 
 are going to be married now at once ; I only said I would in a 
 year's time, to keep things quiet and see what could be done. 
 It is you, not I, who are the deserter." 
 
 " What else can I do, darling ? " he pleaded. " We are 
 ruined, all of us, unless we can get money, and I know of no 
 other way than this." 
 
 This was the first time he had confessed to his intention ; 
 and it brought the present frightful state of things very vividly 
 before Dora. She turned away and shook herself free from his 
 arms : but if the movement was petulant she softened its harsh- 
 ness by sobbing vehemently. At that moment she hated Mr. 
 Hamley and loved Sydney to distraction ; so she thought ; and 
 would brave everything rather than give him up to Julia Man- 
 ley, and accept the bitter portion assigned to her on her own 
 side. Her tears unmanned him more than ever. He clasped 
 her to him again, frantically crying 
 
 " Dora ! my wife ! my own little wife ! I cannot give you up ! 
 Whatever happens, poverty or no poverty, let us keep together 
 and make the best of things as we have them." 
 
 " I will if you will," said Dora between her sobs ; and then 
 they kissed each other and cried afresh, and were both pro- 
 foundly and intensely miserable. They knew well enough that 
 they not could face poverty, but none the more did they wish to 
 part. Selfishness, deceit, recklessness, treachery, crime all these 
 lay heaped in burning flames on their young heads; but all the 
 same, utterly worthless as they were, they loved each other at 
 the moment and they suffered. It soothed them to cry : " Let 
 us^go into ruin together, so long as we are together." It was a 
 deception born of love and despair. Each recognised the de- 
 ception in that deeper reasonableness which passion never stirs 
 in some people ; but it was a sweet if passing solace, and each 
 thought the other believed in it.- 
 
 So they stood there in the shadow, clasped in each other's 
 arms ; Dora crying on Sydney's shoulder, and he crying over 
 her golden head too, in between alternations of hope and misery, 
 impossible suggestions, untenable promises, and sometimes blank 
 confessions of necessities ; feeling that the final moment had 
 come, and that the calm counsel of the morning^would show 
 them the madness of the night, while both pretended that this 
 madness was to last and to be acted on. More than once, how-
 
 THE SHADOW IN THE WOOD. 461 
 
 ever, Sydney begged her to forgive him for the wrong he had 
 done her so unintentionally in marrying her ; assuring her and 
 here he spoke the truth that he had no kind of knowledge of 
 his father's affairs when he made her his wife, and that he 
 thought the sole hitch was that father's possible refusal to accept 
 her as a daughter-in-law ; and Dora assured him which was 
 not the truth that she had never until last night had the least 
 idea that Mr. Hamley loved her or regarded her as other than a 
 daughter. Then they spoke of their running away together, 
 and even went to the length of comparing their joint posses- 
 sions. They did not reckon ten pounds between them. Mr. 
 Hamley paid bills to any amount without remark, but he made 
 no allowances, and he disapproved of ladies possessing much 
 pocket-money ; and ten pounds was but a small sum on which 
 to begin life for two young people who could not do a hand's 
 turn for themselves. On which they kissed each other again ; 
 and Dora wept as she had never wept in her life before ; and 
 Sydney felt that he should go mad or do something hideous and 
 desperate if thii kind of thing went on much longer. He was 
 in fact wrought up to that pitch of fierce excitement wherein a 
 man is no longer master of himself, where consequences are not 
 ^!culated, results are not foreseen, and where the impulse of 
 . moment, whatever it may be the passion that lies upper- 
 .ust must be obeyed ; and is ; because reason, conscience, all 
 that renders humanity human, has gone to sleep and only the 
 animal remains. His own tears maddened him, and Dora's dii- 
 tress but added to his madness. A voice seemed to sound in 
 his ear. just two words repeated again and again, " Kill him I 
 kill him ! " it said ; " kill him ! kill him ! " 
 
 No ways and means presented themselves to his fancy, nor 
 
 when nor how ; only the impulse, only the voice : " Kill him ! " 
 
 As he held his wife strained in his arms as in a vice, she felt 
 
 his heart throb against her bosom while he groaned with a kind 
 
 of angry despair that was scarcely human. 
 
 " Sydney," she said, in terror, " are you ill, dear t" 
 He made no answer, and as the last breath of her words pawed 
 over his cheek they heard the door of the house unbolted and 
 unbarred, and presently a man's footstep came heavily down the 
 broad stone flight that led from the door, and on to the gravel 
 of the drive, tiuuing to the left where they were hidden.
 
 462 
 
 Dora clung to her husband in terror. There was no danger 
 of her sobbing now. 
 
 " Mr. Harnley ! " she gasped. 
 
 They shrank back among the trees, but they dared not gc 
 very deep into the wood. The night was still, when sound 
 travels far, and the crisp fallen leaves would have betrayed 
 them. Sydney grasped the heavily-loaded life-preserver he 
 always carried with him in these midnight expeditions an in- 
 strument much after his own pattern, slight and inoffensive to 
 look at, but deadly if used in earnest then pressed his arm 
 closer round Dora and whispered to her hoarsely not to be afraid. 
 But she was even the more afraid for his very words ; he looked 
 so dark and deadly, like a human tiger somehow. 
 
 Her mind took it all in ; discovery ; the men struggling to- 
 gether and one of them badly hurt ; her disgrace ; the public 
 scandal and the open shame ; and then the enforced poverty 
 after all ! A minute ago she had been bewailing her hard fate 
 in being forced to separate ; now she shuddered at the harder 
 prospect of being forced to keep together. 
 
 The steps came nearer. They were firm and heavy, and with 
 them they heard Mr. Hamley's voice, sometimes speaking to him- 
 self, sometimes breaking out into a few false notes of song, and 
 sometimes laughing softly as a man whose hearb is too full of 
 joy for thorough self-containment or repose. 
 
 He crossed the broad carriage-drive and came along the walk 
 that skirted the croquet-lawn, and so into the shrubbery path 
 where hit iiance'e and her husband were hidden. They heard 
 his breathing and the very fret of his watch-chain as he passed. 
 
 " Dora ! " he said in a tone of such abounding love, such in- 
 tensity of passion, that Sydney felt the blood leap like fire to 
 his face, " My Dora ! my wife ! How she loves me ! Little 
 angel, how devoted she is to me ! I always suspected it I 
 knew it but to hear her say it, ' I love you ! ' " in falsetto 
 " Gad ! it nearly did for me for pleasure ! Dora ! beauty ! 
 little angel ! how I love you ! " 
 
 He went on a few paces, then he came back again, singing 
 softly what he thought was one of Dora's favourite songs. 
 And then he sat down on a garden chair placed so close to 
 where the young couple stood that Dora thought he must 
 surely hear their breathing and the beating of her guilty, 
 frightened heart.
 
 IN THE WOOD. 463 
 
 " What hands she has ! " Mr. Hamley said to himself after 
 a moment's silence. " What lips ! That good-night kiss of 
 hers I thought I should have turned faint and lost my head ! 
 How delightful to feel her soft hair and her velvety cheeks 
 she is like a flower ; and she is my own. Dora I her very name 
 is the prettiest in the world. Dora Hamley ! They'll say in 
 London that the M.P. for Milltown has the loveliest little wife 
 in England ; and they'll say right. Not the Queen herself can 
 show such another in all her court! And to think of that 
 young beast Lowe, presuming so high ! The wife of the Mem- 
 ber for the borough of Milltown is rather a cut above a pro- 
 fligate blackleg and his son ! My Dora ; no other man's 
 Dora ; only mine ! And she loves me so much, and says it so 
 prettily ! To think of her saving herself for me j refusing them 
 all because she loved me ! Jabez Hamley, you are a happy 
 man to-night ! There's not a happier on the whole face of the 
 earth, let him be who he may ! " 
 
 So he .went on talking in broken interrupted sentences to 
 himself ; the man's heart too full for sleep, too rich in joy for 
 rest. He felt as if he should have been suffocated in the house, 
 had he stayed there. He had that strange yearning to carry 
 his joy into the infinity of nature which we all have, even the 
 most prosaic of us, the least sensitive and refined, when our cup 
 is very full and the gates of heaven have rolled back and let 
 us in. The passion of happiness that possessed him was almost 
 more than he could bear, and he came out into the fresh night- 
 air to throw its burden on to something stronger and holier 
 than himself. 
 
 He had been happy before this ia his life ; indeed, his life 
 had been singularly blessed, he said to himself. He had been 
 prosperous in all ways, successful on all points of his ambition ; 
 but he had never felt as he felt now, so possessed with his joy, 
 so overpowered with his bliss. He had to keep silence to all 
 the world of his happiness in Dora. To the outside onlookers 
 he mnst wear crape round his hat and a sorrowful countenance 
 for the due observance of the decencies ; he could tell his secret 
 to none ; but like the man who must whisper what he knew of 
 the king to the reeds, he too must whisper what he felt to the 
 night. It was very un-English, very boyish, but it was nature. 
 His life hitherto had been arid of love. He had married early
 
 464 " WHAT worm YOTT TK>. 
 
 for ambition, and he had prudently resolved to jnake that 
 marriage a success. To do tins he had not suffered his fancy 
 to stray to the right or the left ; and his very love for Dora 
 had been a growth, not a sudden passion, and never fully con- 
 fessed even to himself in its intensity, if it had bee'n in its hope, 
 because he had never dared to indulge in it till now. And the 
 first love of a man's life matured at nearly fifty, is a deeper and 
 more absorbing passion than even the most fervid fancy of 
 earlier youth. 
 
 He did not sit there long, though it seemed like an age to 
 the two hidden behind the trees listening to his boastful glad- 
 ness the one in such chill of abject terror, the other in such 
 fire of torturing rage. Restless, feverish, with his chest ex- 
 panded and his head held high, he wandered down the avenue, 
 and presently they heard the gate leading into the wood from 
 the shrubbery creak as it swung back, and the last .of his foot- 
 steps died away. 
 
 Then Sydney, putting Dora from him without a word, with- 
 out a sign, turning only upon her a pair of flaming eyes burn- 
 ing like fire beneath his dark brows, . motioned her silently to 
 the house ; while he, drawing a deep breath, shifted his loaded 
 cane to a yet more convenient hold in the middle, and set off 
 with a swift and stealthy pace down the avenue. 
 
 " Sydney ! " whispered Dora. 
 
 But he was gone. Keeping in the shadow of the trees, and 
 with that light walk of his which he had practised so often and 
 which was scarcely more noisy than the tread of a panther, she 
 could neither see nor hear him ; and after lingering for a mo- 
 ment, she too turned and ran, and was coon safe in her own 
 room, unseen and unsuspected. No one who had seen her fair 
 pretty face half an hour after, nestled among the lace and linen of 
 her luxurious pillow, sleeping as tranquilly as a child, her 
 cheeks just touched with a pink flush like a monthly rose, her 
 small hand half-hidden among her golden hair, would have 
 imagined that she had just escaped from one danger to herself, 
 while leaving in the thick of peril the two men who loved her. 
 She was of the tribe felis femina, not cruel of nature if she was 
 of need, and preferring her own ease before all other things 
 above or below. 
 
 Still softly singing to himself, Mr. Hamley_ walked on through
 
 TH1 SHADOW IN THE WOOD. 465 
 
 the little wood, which when he first bought Abbey Holme was 
 the boundary of his possessions. He had a special love for this 
 tangled thicket : it was pretty and picturesque, with a pleasant 
 trout-stream running through, broadening into a fair expanse of 
 water where he kept a couple of swans and some favourite fowl 
 He remembered how glad he was, years ago, when he walked 
 through this very path and took possession of the wood as mas- ' 
 ter and owner. He had often stolen over the fences and got 
 nuts and blackberries there in his ragged days ; he took care 
 that no ragged urchins stole over the fences now for nuts or 
 blackberries ! and he remembered his proud de'' _ht in finding 
 himself the lawful master of his former filched Paradise. It 
 was eighteen years ago. How time had passed and prospered 
 with him since then ! Year by year he had gathered more, and 
 year by year he would gather more still. His wealth had got 
 to that point when it increases by itself; for spend as much as 
 he could that is, as much as he cared to spend he could not 
 get through all his income. He had that Cragfoot estate to get 
 in yet, he thought ; and maybe more land might come into the 
 market, which he would secure. There were outlying bits he 
 was beginning to covet, and that he thought would fit in well 
 with his fields ; but for these he could afford to wait. 
 
 He was glad about Cragfoot though. He would make it a 
 Dower-house for Dora. Had Patricia Kemball been a sensible 
 girl and done as she ought to have done in her aunt's lifetime, 
 he would have made over the whole concern to her as her por- 
 tion ; now he would give it to Dora, and call it "Dora's Dower," 
 as a remembrance. He laughed right out when he thought of 
 this. It would be a pleasant revenge on that young profligate 
 who had dared to ask him for Dora's band ! 
 
 How beautiful the night was !* The scented autumn air hang- 
 ing in a light vapour that shone like silver among the tre, 
 veiling the direct brilliancy of the moon and softening it into a 
 general atmosphere of mild radiance rather than a specialised 
 light, seemed more delightful to him than he had ever known 
 an October night to be, or indeed, any night of any year. It 
 was quite summer-like he thought, as he took off his hat and 
 flung back his coat, looking about him. He had got now to tho 
 Oval ; a cleared space by the side of the lake, as the broadened 
 reach of river was called ; and stood thew bareheaded in tho 
 DD
 
 466 <> WHAT WOHLH yon DO, LOVE?" 
 
 moonlight, watching the white swans floating lazily on the water. 
 His back was towards the house, the chimneys of which could 
 be seen over the tops of the trees in daylight. 
 
 Watching the swans, something in their graceful gliding 
 movement struck the imagination of the man Avhose very soul 
 seemed transformed to-night. It was the whiteness of Dora, 
 the grace of Dora, the caressing, subtle charm of Dora, the 
 purity of Dora. He saw her everywhere ; earth and heaven 
 and all forms of loveliness were filled with her, and everything 
 was but a type a repetition of her excellence and beauty. 
 
 " My Dora ! " he said aloud. Then, with a sudden rush of 
 feeling, the like of which he had never known before, he cried 
 out as if in an ecstasy ; " Thank God for her love ! " 
 
 A whistling noise as a stick cut sharply through the air, the 
 crash of breaking bone, a stifled cry, a heavy fall, and Mr. Ham- 
 ley's life was over ; his love, his joy, his prosperity, his vain- 
 glory, nothing more now than a handful of dust fanned by the 
 midnight air the thought of a man which had passed like a 
 summer's cloud. Had his death been by any other method, had 
 his heart burst in his great joy, had he died by the visitation 
 of God or by a thunderbolt from Heaven, one would have said 
 that he had died at the right moment. To-morrow the ecstasy 
 which had lifted him to-night beyond himself would have with- 
 ered down into the vulgar narrowness of his everyday life ; his 
 soul, which had expanded into poetry, would have shrunk back 
 into its old groove of ignoble ostentation^ of insolent self-asser- 
 tion ; and his very love for Dora would by time have become 
 first the mere pride of possession, then indifference, and perhaps 
 have ended in jealousy and estrangement. He would never 
 have been so great again, so near to nobleness as he was to- 
 night ; for thought the cause of his passionate emotion was a 
 cheat, his feeling was true. The tragedy by which all was over 
 for him in life was a foul and cruel crime, but it gave him a 
 pathos he would never have had else, and crystallized for ever 
 the dignity and sublimer passion of the hour. 
 
 As Mr. Hamley fell a slight young figure shot quickly by ; 
 plunged again into the shadow of the wood ; leaped wall and 
 fence and gate, going always by circuitous paths till it struck 
 the high road, where running still, always keeping in the shadow, 
 Sydney Lowe soon gained the shelter df his own home as en-
 
 THE SHADOW IN THE WOOD. 467 
 
 tirely unsuspected and undiscovered as Dora had been. Creep- 
 ing noiselessly up-stairs, he went into his private room ; carefully 
 examined his clothes whence iie removed certain damning stains 
 and spots ; stirred up the dying embers of the fire, and burned 
 in the flame a heavilyloaded life-preserver, running the lead 
 through a bullet-mould, as he had often done when a boy. 
 And then he went to bed, where he laid as if in an ague fit till 
 the morning. He had obeyed that haunting voice, and com- 
 mitted the crime he had been half-unconsciously meditating for 
 many weeks, and now stood face to face with the consequences. 
 His chance of detection ? It all depended on whether he had 
 been seen or not, or if seen recognised. And if seen and re- 
 cognised, what then was he to do 1 
 
 He lay there calculating, inventing, his brain on fire, his 
 thoughts incoherent in their activity, half resolving to leave 
 the place and England to-morrow, then again feeling that his 
 only policy was to remain and trust to his good stars and his 
 own cleverness, should suspicion arise and his name get bruited 
 abroad. And while he was torturing himself with the crimi- 
 nal's coward fears, James Garth was making his way too, fr<Jm 
 the wood, carrying a bagfull of game which he had just netted 
 in the preserves. Not half an hour before Mr. Hamley came 
 to the Oval, he had passed through the paths with his snares, 
 and had lifted what his last night's setting had brought him. 
 
 For Garth had turned poacher of late days, more as an act of 
 revenge than for any other reason. It pleased the man's savage 
 feeling to rob Mr. Hamley, who he always said had robbed 
 him. It was his crude version of the law which gives an eye for 
 an eye and a tooth for a tooth ; and he helped himself pretty 
 freely. More than once the head-keeper had warned him. 
 They had been old friends in the days when James held his 
 father's land, and he did not want to be hard on him. Still, 
 his duty was to watch the game, and let no man meddle with 
 it ; and so he said ; and each time he had it to say he spoke 
 more sternly than before. He had been about the preserves 
 to-night as usual, and had seen a figure come out of the littl* 
 wood and run across the open in the moonlight for a moment, 
 then dart under cover again. It was a younger, slighter look- 
 ing man than Garth, it seemed to him, and evidently carrying 
 nothing weighty. But there was not much doubt in hit own
 
 468 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 mind that he had made a mistake, and that it was Garth whom 
 he had seen, when all the circumstances came to light ; for 
 who else was it possible to have been 1 When he and the un- 
 der-gamekeeper, making their rounds the next day, came upon 
 the stiff body of their murdered master lying in the Oval with 
 his skull battered in by one tremendous blow given from be- 
 hind, and a piece of white spotted blue bandana hanging on one 
 of the bushes near, the man's heart stood still ; for he recog- 
 nised the neckerchief as the one James Garth habitually wore, 
 and the whole crime became clear. 
 
 " Whosever throat this fits has done it," said the under- 
 gamekeeper pointing to the bush ; and the police^ when they 
 were sent for, said BO too. 
 
 And what excuse could Garth maket There, under his 
 bed, was the bag of game ; round his neck the torn bandana, 
 with its missing piece found on the bushes close to where Mr. 
 Hamley was lying murdered. There was no denial ot the one 
 fact, and the inference was too strong to be gainsaid. The 
 poacher wa* arrested on suspicion, committed on the capital 
 charge, and sent to jail to stand his trial at the coming assize, 
 Milltown having but one mind on the matter that he was 
 guilty. For again and again they asked who else could have 
 done it ? Mr. Hamley was not the beloved of all men, but he 
 had no enemies save this gloomy, discontented peasant whose 
 land he had bought, and whom he had thus made his foe for 
 life and death.
 
 TRUTH AND SEEMING. 469 
 
 CHAPTER XLIL 
 
 TRUTH AND SEEMING. 
 
 is nothing of which a poacher is not capable. 
 Given a pair of hands bold enough to set snares for the 
 squire's game, and you have a heart black enough to 
 compass the squire's murder. This is a logical sequence in the 
 minds of the landed gentry, and they act on it when they have 
 the chance with singular uniformity of feeling. A poacher is 
 the common enemy of all men with game preserves ; and they 
 think they do the community good service by getting rid of 
 him on any pretext that will serve. 
 
 Whether it is he who is intrir-sically bad, or the law which 
 makes him so, does not trouble*them. Men in possession are 
 not given to abstract reasoning, the first principles have noth- 
 ing to do with Acts of Parliament. To break the law has an 
 ugly sound with it to those whose gain is to keep it, and prac- 
 tical protest against inequitable decrees is a crime where read- 
 justment would pare off some of the golden fringes from the 
 rich man's garments to give decent clothing to the poor. So 
 it is that a poacher has but hard measure meted out to him at 
 the hands of magisterial game preservers ; and class enmity, 
 always bitter, is never more so than when it has to deal with a 
 man who has snared a pheasant or netted a salmon by the 
 right of nature, and against the game law. 
 
 Thus, when it became known that James Garth had taken 
 to poaching, his arrest on a charge of murder was quite in the 
 order of things. Discontent and springs together make an 
 amalgam that renders the worst crime of all easy ; and the poor 
 fellow was condemned long before he was tried. When that 
 conclusive bit of white-spotted blue banrtuna was compared 
 with the yoeman's neckerchief and found to correspond with 
 the torn end, there was then not the shadow of doubt left, nor 
 the chance of escape. The whole thing fitted in piece by piece
 
 470 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 with as much accuracy as those two ends of torn silk ; and the 
 hypothesis was as clear as demonstrated fact. 
 
 Garth had been poaching ; Mr. Hamley, suspecting some- 
 thing, or perhaps only restless from grief at the loss of his 
 wife, had gone out into the wood and had caught him in the 
 fact. There had been an altercation ; and Garth, being ordered 
 off, had gone sullenly away, when he had turned, and creeping 
 noiselessly behind his detector had struck him on the back of 
 the head with some round, heavy instrument, and so had killed 
 him treacherously on the spot. Nothing could be clearer. 
 The game was found under his bed, and the gamekeeper, his 
 own friend, had seen him running across the open. He had 
 not known him at first ; at least not for certain in the shimmery 
 moonlight ; the man he had seen looked younger and of lighter 
 build, he said, and he had not taken him to be his old friend 
 and mate ; but enlightened by after events he reconsidered and 
 corrected his first impression, and was prepared now to main- 
 tain, sadly enough, that it was James Garth, and none other, 
 whom he had seen escaping from the place of murder. For 
 you see, said the man, as all Milltown said in concert, who else 
 could it be ? 
 
 All the bitter words Garth had said, all his discontent and 
 angry despair. Mrs. Garth's loud-voiced passion at the dismissal 
 of her daughter, every small and until now half-forgotten in- 
 cideut, and specially that scene where he had had that kind of 
 fit. and had cried "Murder! " at the Long Field Gate came 
 back to the memories of those who had heard and seen. And 
 then that torn fragment of bandana ! It was a small thing on 
 which to hang a man ; but it hanged him nevertheless. All 
 saw in it the finger of Providence, which forces a man who 
 commits a crime to leave some betraying sign by which the old 
 saying ttn't murder will out may be justified ; and the finger 
 of Providence was accepted as a guide pointing in the right 
 direction in this instance. 
 
 A proved poacher; confessedly out in the preserves on the 
 night of the murder 1 ; seen escaping from near the very spot by 
 his friend the gamekeeper, a reluctant if honest witness ; and 
 with a fragment of his neckerchief found fluttering in the 
 bushes close to the spot what could save him 1 Not the ab- 
 seiice of the instrument with which the deed was done ; though
 
 TRUTH AND SEEMING. 471 
 
 the woods were searched far and near for something that would 
 fit into that awful wound ; not his own protestation of innocence 
 made once and never repeated, for he became sullen on the 
 trial and stood as if he did not care which way the verdict 
 went ; not his previous good character, seeing that even good 
 men may lapse and that no saint is sure ; not even the current 
 rumour that his brain was touched, for the jail surgeon certified 
 his perfect sanity ; nothing that could be urged had any weight 
 in face of the overwhelming force of the circumstantial evidence 
 brought against him, backed by the hypothesis born of his 
 notorious enmity and discontent. 
 
 He was tried ; well defended j but found guilty all the same ; 
 and sentenced to be hanged by the judge in an impressive speech 
 which lost its point so far as the prisoner was concerned, from 
 the simple fact that he had not done that thing for which he 
 was exhorted to repent and condemned to die. But it moved 
 the judge who delivered it and the audience who heard it, and 
 indeed was a fine bit of eloquence full of good, honest human 
 feeling. 
 
 After sentence was passed, a petition headed by Dr. Fletcher, 
 but sparsely signed by the rest of the community, was forward- 
 ed to the Home Secretary praying for commutation of the cap- 
 ital sentence. The petitioners were either those few who did 
 not believe, in spite of appearances and no one else possible, 
 that James had done this murder those half superstitious and 
 wholly unreasonable people who have more faith in character 
 than in circumstantial evidence ; or those kindly apologists who 
 believed that he had done it sure enough, but who thought him 
 mad and therefore not responsible. But the Home Secretary 
 was a strong man, and returned the memorial with the answer 
 , that he saw no reason to interfere with the regular course of 
 justice. The prisoner had had a fair trial, and the laws must 
 be obeyed. 
 
 'i here was no help for it then. In heaven there might be a 
 re-arrangement of the sentence, but on earth it was final ; and 
 James Garth was hanged within the precincts of the county 
 jail ; his last words, while Calcraft was arranging the drop, be- 
 ing " Gentlemen, I am innocent ! " as he lifted his wan face to 
 the lightand looked as abrave man does when hemeets an ignoble 
 <|oom nobly. But all the thinking and educated people of Mill-
 
 472 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 town said he richly deserved his fate. All save Henry Fletch- 
 er ; whose defence however had done the poor fellow no kind of 
 good, and himself that amount of harm which comes from the 
 open expression of unpopular opinions. The gentry took grave 
 exception at this continual advocacy of the poor characteristic 
 of him. They said, bitterly, that it did not signify what a com- 
 mon man did, if it would only injure and annoy the rich that 
 mad fellow was on his side. They might all have their throats 
 cut, and he would move heaven and earth to get the interest- 
 ing criminal off, without a thought for the victim. It was in- 
 famous, disgusting, and he ought to be drummed out of society 
 for it. 
 
 No one was so indignant as Colonel Lowe ; though to make 
 amends no one was so silent as his son. The Colonel liked 
 Henry Fletcher well enough, he said, as they all knew ; and he 
 had always disliked that poor Hamley fellow, as also they all 
 knew ; and he had never concealed his contempt for him nor 
 kowtowed to him as the rest had done ; but when it came to 
 taking sides with his murderer good heavens ! that was an- 
 other matter. A gentleman may keep aloof from a vulgar up- 
 start and yet not hold with the ruffian whfc has assassinated 
 him in his own grounds. A petition for a reprieve ? No ! If 
 Garth could be hanged twice over the punishment would not be 
 more than he deserved ; and he, Colonel Lowe, would vote for 
 the second drop. What would become of the country if such 
 crimes as these were winked at ? No.; none of these sentimen- 
 talities suited the Colonel. Gag such mischievous demagogues 
 as Henry Fletcher ; let Garth swing ; and above all things de- 
 fend the majesty of the law and keep up the due subordination 
 of classes. 
 
 So Garth did swing, and no living soul knew the real truth 
 but one he who had burnt a slight cane in the h're one Octo- 
 ber night, and run a lump of lead through a bullet mould. And 
 no living soul suspected the truth but one she who had seen 
 her husband steal, with his panther-like tread, on the traces of 
 her lover in the shadow of the wood, and who knew what was 
 in his heart. 
 
 After this a subscription was got up for Garth's widow and 
 orphans, aud they were shipped off to Australia, as creatures 
 too tainted for the purity of Milltowu. They were the victims
 
 TRUTH AND SEEMING. 473 
 
 of circumstances, as so many of us are ; martyrs crushed under 
 the wheels of that tremendous car where sits the Justice of the 
 World \ the helpless struck down by the blind ; sinless Cains 
 bearing the brand unrighteously, but none the less shunned of 
 men because of that unrighteousness. It had been a frightful 
 page in Milltown history ; there had never been such a one be- 
 fore ; and the citizens felt the best thing to do was to obliter- 
 ate the last traces as quickly as possible, and wipe out the name 
 of Garth from the annals of the place. 
 
 When Mr. Hamley died and was buried, his will was read ; 
 and Dora Drummond was proved his heiress. He had made 
 it hastily a mere codicil of a few words the very day before 
 he was murdered, poor man ! as if he had had a prevision of 
 his fate, they said, with pale cheeks. Nothing touched the 
 public imagination more than this. There was a pathos, almost 
 a poetry in the action that counted much in the general indict- 
 ment against Garth ; and the popular feeling ran high in favour 
 of the murdered member for a disposition of his effects which 
 betokened such a generous and fatherly interest in his young 
 relative. 
 
 Thus Dora came into absolute possession of everything un- 
 trammelled by a gingle condition. No guardian, no trustee had 
 been appointed ; nothing but her own sovereign will to admin- 
 ister and distribute all this immense fortune. She was the mis- 
 tress of Abbey Holme and of the whole estate ; the richest 
 woman for miles round ; before whose wealth poor Julia Man- 
 ley's hundred thousand pounds shrank into insignificance, and 
 to whom rumour gave even more than she had. 
 
 It was marvellous to see how beautiful and beloved she be- 
 came all at once to Milltown ; how much every one suddenly 
 found out she had been always admired and liked ; and how 
 each person claimed to have specially discerned her worth, and 
 valued it, in the bygone years. Not a house failed in its sym- 
 pathetic respect for the young heiress, and the Countess of 
 Dovedale was among the earliest condolers. Perhaps she gave 
 a half rueful thought to Lady Maud who accompanied her ; at 
 any rate, that young noblewoman imagined, as Patricia had so 
 often done in her past world, that her future mother-in-law had 
 a headache, and had best be left to herself during the d-ive. 
 When they had deposited their cards and driven away, my lady
 
 474 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 epoke of Miss Drummond quite warmly. She was so perfectly 
 well-bred, she said ; and such a lovely creature ! She must be 
 fabulously rich too rich indeed for a woman ; and she, the 
 Countess, hoped she would marry soon, and marry well. It was 
 too heavy a responsibility for such a young and lovely creature 
 as she was ; she ought to marry into a good family where there 
 was a sensible mother a woman of the world who could guide 
 and direct her and where her .money would do good and be 
 the means of exalting herself ; one of the aristocracy, in short. 
 To which Lady Maud answered tranquilly ; yes, she ought, and 
 perhaps under the Countess's wing and her own, when she 
 should be Lady Merrian, she would. 
 
 All these kindly speculations however, were soon set at rest ; 
 and in a very short time it became known that Dora Drum- 
 mond was going to marry young Sydney Lowe. People of 
 course found fault with her choice and ridiculed her taste, and 
 cried what a pity ! to each other when they met in the market- 
 place ; but a few of the robuster kind those whose wealth- 
 worship nothing could chill nor shock affected to have known 
 of this attachment from the beginning, and to find it an ex- 
 quisite instance of human constancy. To be sure, there were 
 a few awkward whispers about Julia Manley ; for the Colonel, 
 to clinch the decision he had good reason to consider wavering, 
 had told every one exultingly of his son's engagement to this 
 young lady, whose excellences he had vaunted in almost poetic 
 terms. Now, within twelve hours of the reading of Mr. Ham- 
 ley's will, an occasion was found for a rupture between the 
 lovers ; and though Julia humbled herself, poor soul, to that 
 point where submission ends and degradation begins, she could 
 not soften her angry idol. He definitively and somewhat 
 coarsely broke with her for ever ; and the heart-broken crea- 
 ture fled away with her thousands and her sorrows into Corn- 
 wall, where she established herself in a mining town, embraced 
 Wesleyanism. and became a thorn in the side of the Broad 
 Church clergymen. 
 
 Dora and Sydney married quite soon after all these stirring 
 events. The world said she was right. She was too young to 
 live alone, and though Mr. Hainley had made her his heiress, 
 and she owed all imaginable respect to his memory he had nob 
 been a near relative ; and, considering all the circumstances she
 
 TKUTH AND SEEMING. 475 
 
 need not -wait long. Indeed in view of these circumstances she 
 need not have waited long had he been her father. A quiet 
 marriage giving her a companion and protector was far the best 
 tiling for her; and they applauded her decision. A month 
 after that melancholy murder then, she was united to Sydney 
 Lowe, very quietly and without parade. Colonel and Mrs. 
 Lowe were the only people at the wedding, Patricia Kemball 
 refusing to be bridesmaid. But the bride was dressed in white, 
 with a long lace veil, ail the same as if the wedding had been 
 one according to conventional rule, having no other meaning 
 attached to it. 
 
 For oiie thing she was greatly blamed by all sensible people, 
 her gross imprudence in having no settlements. It was a 
 curious bit of irony that Mr. Hamley's wealth should pass un- 
 conditionally into the hands of Sydney Lowe, but the world is 
 full of such. Mr. Simpson urged her to secure at leasfc some- 
 thing ; and even the Colonel, not planning villany, thought she 
 would do well to have her own dower properly assured ; but 
 Sydney said he would marry no woman on earth with settle- 
 ments ; and after a private conversation with Dora, she gave in, 
 and his will triumphed as the man's should, he said. No one 
 suspected the root of this imprudent arrangement ; and Syd- 
 ney got great credit for generosity in making a post-nuptial 
 settlement which assured Dora a fair share of her own wealth. 
 For the rest, he made no bad use of her money. Indeed he be- 
 came rather close-listed than otherwise, responsibility seeming 
 to have worked a radical change in him somehow, and to have 
 even gone beyond the point of steadying him. He released 
 Cragfoot, paid off his father's debts, and set him on his legs 
 again ; but he told him sternly that this was the only thing he 
 would do for him, and that if he fell into the mire again he 
 might pick himself out the best way he could. He was as little 
 like the old Syd, now that he had money, as was the law-re- 
 specting king like the law-breaking prince. He was gloomy, 
 stern, morosely pious, would keep no society, and of frightfully 
 irritable nerves. His health broke suddenly, and he was soon 
 startled, soon made angry and uneasy. He had a listening look 
 about his eyes that struck people as odd, and he hated to hear 
 the names of Hamley or G-arth. People said he drank in pri- 
 vate - t some that he ate opium ; others that he gambled. A
 
 476 " "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 thousand reasons were whispered from one to the other to ac- 
 count for this extraordinary change in him ; and none hit the 
 truth. For so far from any such vice as secret drinking or drug- 
 ging, he seemed afraid to trust his senses into the keeping of 
 any one or anything but himself, and always slept with locked 
 doors, and a loaded pistol lying handy. 
 
 He and Dora got on together pretty well, judging by ap- 
 pearances ; which were fallacious. She was too well trained 
 in the way of concealment to show him what she suspected or 
 the world what she felt ; nevertheless she often cried in secret, 
 and wished she had never known Sydney Lowe, and that she 
 was once more under the Hamley rule. She had but exchanged 
 masters ; and of the two her husband's hand was the heavier. 
 
 She got a small amount of feminine consolation however, in 
 the- quiet impertinence with which she treated the Colonel and 
 Mrs. Lowe. Once she had courted them by all her pretty arts 
 in vain ; now they were obsequious to her, while she snubbed 
 them with merciless good-breeding, and made them regret that 
 they had not had enough prophetic insight to have secured her 
 when they might, and before she had become publicly a prize. 
 This was their judgment of affairs : and it was as false as all 
 the rest. 
 
 On the whole then, the Abbey Holme household, though a 
 failure and a wreck if judged of by truth and principle, was 
 sufficiently well ordered for outward purposes. True, Dora 
 lost her beauty, and became old and haggard suddenly, with a 
 scared look in her eyes that seemed the reflection of her hus- 
 band's abiding expression of listening and watching ; but she 
 was always graceful and conciliating to her world on those rare 
 occasions when she appeared in society, and if Sydney was not 
 popular he had abundant obeisance done to him. No one cried 
 out against him that he had committed theft, forgery, and mur- 
 der, when he stood up in the Abbey Holme pew on Sundays, 
 and enriched the choir with his clear tenor that sounded above 
 all the rest. Nor when he sat on the bench and leaned ever 
 to the side of rigour and righteousness, did his brother magis- 
 trates denounce him as a greater criminal than the poor half- 
 witted clods whom he judged so severely. What was done, 
 was done ; and no one knew or ever would know ; and for the 
 rest he passed through life in the odour of respectability, be-
 
 TRUTH AND SEEMING. 477 
 
 loved by none, known by none, bearing ever with him the con- 
 sciousness of crime and the belief in his own eternal damnation, 
 but bowed down to by all. Was he not the master of Abbey 
 Holme, and the wealthiest man for miles round ? Does the 
 world ask more, or seek to know more than this 1 
 
 Patricia spent her days tranquilly enough at the Hollies in 
 the midst of love and duty. There were no brilliant meteors 
 in her sky, but no clouds and no storms ; it was sunlight of the 
 best kind the sunlight of affection, contentment, and a pure 
 conscience. Her happy girlhood had passed for ever, but it 
 had left a womanhood greater and nobler than itself had been ; 
 a womanhood of deeper thought and higher aims yes, 'and of 
 a more exalted love than would have come to her had she re- 
 mained untaught of sorrow. 
 
 Yet she was always under a cloud at Milltown, and she never 
 lived down the vague disrepute that hung about her fair fame. 
 Every one said that she had done something very wrong once, 
 though no one knew exactly what it was ; and the Fletchers 
 were too " queer " themselves to reinstate her by their respect. 
 Her very severance too from Dora told against her ; and, as 
 the world argued, if she could have estranged one so sweet and 
 amiable and forgiving as Mrs. Sydney Lowe, what must she 
 not have done, what must she not have been ! She was con- 
 scious of this public disfavour, which she neither braved nor 
 feared. She knew that she had not deserved it, so bore with 
 equanimity the high estate and public honour of those who 
 had done the wrong, and the general condemnation of herself 
 who had only suffered by it. Between truth and seeming she 
 had chosen the better part, and she never regretted her elec- 
 tion. 
 
 Years passed before Gordon returned, but years that did 
 good work in both. When the drift-time was over, and they 
 stood once more together hand in hand on the seashore as in the 
 old days, she was no longer a girl living only in the joy of her 
 own youth and love and innocence, but a woman who had 
 learnt the deeper meaning of life through the high teaching of 
 suffering and trial ; a woman self-consecrated to live, like the 
 Fletchers, by principle rather than expediency ; for truth, not 
 seeming ; for the inner law of nobleness, not the outer gain of 
 pleasure. And he too was no longer the mere boy who h*d
 
 478 " WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LOVE ? " 
 
 the boy's hope and the boy's courage, but a man who had 
 learnt like herself something of the deeper meaning of the 
 Great Kiddie, and had set himself to live according to his know- 
 ledge. 
 
 She and Gordon were poor enough when they married ; and 
 Dora, now that she was no longer afraid of Patricia, knowing 
 by experience how entirely she might trust her silence and 
 loyalty, pitied them profoundly from the luxurious depths of 
 her gorgeous, loveless, miserable home. She would have 
 helped them generously, if they would have taken help at her 
 hand. But Patricia, though she had long ago forgiven her 
 freely and fully long ago resolved to bear that burden of 
 shame for her to her life's end, patiently and faithfully would 
 never enter into terms of friendship with her again. Besides, 
 though poor in the world's goods she was infinitely richer in 
 heart and spirit than the faded, frightened, melancholy mistress 
 of Abbey Holme ; the wife of the man who slept with locked 
 doors and a loaded revolver by his side, and who had bad dreams 
 and believed in his own eternal destruction. 
 
 She never felt so keenly how far better truth is than seem- 
 ing, and love than riches, as when, one summer evening, she 
 and the Fletchers and Gordon were standing on the high cliff 
 road, looking at the golden sunset just now flooding earth and 
 sky with that glory which no words, no pigments, can possi- 
 bly describe. They were watching the gradual passing of the 
 gold to crimson, and then to deeper purpl, in that quiet, half- 
 entranced way which makes silence so eloquent when a carriage 
 drove slowly past. It was the Abbey Holme carriage, contain- 
 ing Dora and her husband. Dress, appointment, equipage all 
 were of the costliest kind, the most absolute perfection. The 
 land they drove over was their own ; the men they passed did 
 homage to them, their masters ; they had conquered fortune 
 and distanced justice ; they were above even the accidents of 
 life ; and they had means to gratify every conceivable desire. 
 But the inner misery of the faces that looked out from those 
 superb surroundings sufficiently confessed their worthlessness. 
 
 " Well ! for all their money I would not exchange places 
 with those people," said Gordon, as they passed. " It is not 
 what we have, but what we are, that tells ; and of the two we 
 are the more to be envied what do you say, Pat ? n
 
 TRUTH AND SEEJIING. 479 
 
 She looked up into her husband's handsome, manly face, 
 bending down to hers with such frank and trustful love. 
 
 " I think so," she said earnestly. 
 
 " And I know it," said Henry Fletcher taking her hand on 
 his arm. " Between Dora and Patricia the world would make 
 no doubt which was the more to be envied ; but I fancy the 
 judgment of God will not go with the verdict of the world ; 
 and that truth and seeming were never at greater odds than 
 they are and have been all through the history of these two 
 girls ! " 
 
 " Thank God the truth has come to my share ! " said Gordon 
 fervently. " I should have done ill with a whited sepulchre. 
 Don't you remember, Pat, how I always counted on your true- 
 heartedness ? ! 
 
 She laughed a little shyly, and blushed vividly. 
 
 "Yes," she said, looking at him tenderly. "I remember 
 how' good you always were to me ! And so long $& you and 
 these dear ones are satisfied with me I am quite happy. And 
 I don't think people want much more than love, and that their 
 own consciences should not condemn them to make life only 
 sweet ! " 
 
 " Dear child," said Catherine caressingly. " How sweet life 
 must be to you then ! " 
 
 " To us all 1 " she answered. 
 
 " Yes," answered Gordon ; "to us all 1 
 
 THE HtlX

 
 v : ' " " .