HESTER. f HESTEK A STORY OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE BY MRS. OLIPHANT A springy motion in her gait, A rising step, did indicate Of pride and joy no common rate That flush'd her spirit : I know not by what name beside I shall it call : if 'twas not pride, It was a joy to that allied She did inherit. She was trained in Nature's school, Nature had blest her. A waking eye, a prying mind, A heart that stirs, is hard to bind ; A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind. Ye could not Hester." CHARLES LAMB. IN THREE VOLUMES YOL. II MACMILLAN AND CO. 1883 The Eight of Translation and Reproduction ?' Reserved LONDON : B. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOK, BREAD STREET HILL. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE THE YOUNG AND THE OLD 1 CHAPTER II. A FAMILY PARTY 18 CHAPTER III. CONFIDENCES 39 CHAPTER IV. ROLAND 53 CHAPTER V. WARNING 62 CHAPTER VI. DANCING TEAS 83 CHAPTER VII. THE FIRST OF THEM 104 2202855 vi CONTENTS. A NEW COMPETITOR A DOUBLE MIND CHAPTER VIII. PAGE , 126 CHAPTER IX. 148 CHAPTER X. STRAIGHTFORWARD CHAPTER XI. A CENTRE OF LIFE CHAPTER XII. WAS IT LOVE ? . . CHAPTER XIII. CHRISTMAS CHAPTER XIV. THE PARTY AT THE GRANGE 166 183 195 209 234 HESTER. CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG AND THE OLD. " I LIKE your Roland," said Miss Vernon. She had come to pay one of her usual visits to her old relations. The grandson whom Hester had made acquaintance with without seeing his face, had now been nearly a week at the Vernonry and was known to everybody about. The captain's precautions had, of course, come to nothing. He had gone, as in duty bound, to pay his respects to the great lady who was his relation too, though in a far-off degree, and he had pleased her. Catherine thought of nothing less than of giving a great pleasure to her old friends by her praise. " He is full of news and information, which is a godsend to us country folks, and he is very good-looking, qui ne gate rien." Mrs. Morgan looked up from her place by the fireside with a smile of pleasure. She sat folding her peaceful old hands with an air of beatitude, which, VOL. II. B 2 HESTER. [CHAP. notwithstanding her content, had not been upon her countenance before the young man's arrival. " That is a great pleasure to me, Catherine to know that you like him," said the old lady. " He seems to me all that, and kind besides." " What I should have expected your grandson to be," said Catherine. " I want him to see the people here, and make a few acquaintances. I don't suppose that our little people at Redborough can be of much importance to a young man in town ; still it is a pity to neglect an opportunity. He is coming to dine with me to-morrow as I suppose he told you ? " The old lady nodded her head several times with the same soft smile of happiness. "You are always good," she said ; " you have done everything, Catherine, for me and my old man. But if you want to go straight to my heart you know the way lies through the children my poor Katie's boys." " I am glad that the direct route is so easy," Miss Vernon said in her fine, large, beneficent way; " at least in this case. The others I don't know." Captain Morgan came and stood between his wife and the visitor. To be sure it was to the fire he went, by which he posted himself with his back to it, as is the right of every Englishman. His countenance wore a troubled look, very different from the happi- ness of his wife's. He stood like a barrier between them, a non-conductor intercepting the passage of genial sentiment. " My dear Catherine," he said, with a little form- ality, " I don't wish to be unkind, nor to check your i.] THE YOUNG AND THE OLD. 3 kindness ; but you must recollect that though he is poor Katie's boy, she, poor soul, had nothing to do with the up-bringing of him, and that, in short, we know nothing about him. It has been my principle, as you know, of late years, to insist upon living my own life." " All that, my kind old uncle, is understood," said Catherine. " There are a great many people, I believe, who are better than their principles, and you are one of them that is all. I understand that you know nothing about him. You are only a man, which is a great drawback, but it is not to be helped : we know, though we have seen no more of him than you have. Isn't it so ? " She leaned forward a little, and looked across at the old lady, who smiled and nodded in return. Old Mrs. Morgan was not disturbed by her husband's disagreement. It did not even make her angry. She took it with perfect composure, beaming over her own discovery of her grandson, and the additional happiness it 'had brought. " My old man," she said, " Catherine, has his own ways of thinking, we all know that ; and sometimes he will act upon them, but most commonly not. One thing I know, he will never shut his doors on his own flesh and blood, nor deny his old wife what is her greatest pleasure the thing that has been wanting to me all the time all the time ! I scarcely knew what it was. And if the boy had been distant or strange, or showed that he knew nothing about us, still I should have been content. I would have said, B 2 4 HESTER. [CHAP. Let him go ; you were right, Rowley, and not 1.' But it is not so," the old lady went on after a pause, " there's love in him. I remember when the girls were married there was something I always seemed to want. I found out what it was when the first grandchild was born. It was to feel a baby in my arms again that was what I wanted. I don't know, Catherine," she added with humility, "if you will think that foolish ?" " If I will understand that is what you are doubtful of for I am an old maid, and never had, so to speak, a baby in rny arms ; but I do under- stand," said Catherine, with a little moisture in her eyes. "Well, and this great handsome fellow, a man of the world, is he your baby that you wanted so much ? " " Pooh ! " said the old captain. " The great advantage of being an old maid, as you say, is that you are above the prejudices of parentage. It is possible to get you to hear reason. Why should my life be overshadowed permanently by the action of another? That is what I ask. Why should I be responsible for one who is not me, nor of my mind ? " 0^ " Listen to him ! You would think that was all he knows," said Mrs. Morgan ; " there is no fathoming that old man, my dear." " What I have to say is, that we know nothing of this young man," said the captain, shaking his shaggy head as if to shake off his wife's comments. " You will exercise your own judgment but don't i.] THE Yotns[G AND THE OLD. 5 take him on mine, for I don't know him. He is well enough to look at; he has plenty to say for himself; I dare say he is clever enough. Form your own judgment and act upon that, but don't come and say it's our fault if he disappoints you that is all I have to say. Excuse me, Catherine, if I take a walk even while you are here, for this puts me out I allow it puts me out," Captain Morgan said. " What has made him take this idea ? " said Miss Vernon, when Captain Morgan had hobbled out. " Oh, my dear, he has his fancies like another. AVe have had many things to put up with, and he thinks when it comes to the second generation he thinks we have a right to peace and quiet in our old age." " And so you have," said Catherine gravely, " so you have." She did not ask any questions. Neither she nor any one knew what it was with which, in the other part of their lives, these old people had been com- pelled to " put up." Nor did the old lady say. She answered softly, "Yes, I think so too. Peace is sweet, but it is not life." " Some people would say it was better." " They never knew, those people, what life was. I like to see the children come and go one here, one there. One in need of your sympathy, another of your help, another, oh Catherine, even that of your pardon, my dear ! " This made her pause, 6 HESTER. [CHAP. and brought, what was so unusual, a little glistening moisture to the old lady's eyes. She was silent for a moment, and smiled, perhaps to efface the im- pression she had made. " If you can do nothing else for them you can always do that," she said. Catherine Vernon, who was sixty-five, and knew herself to be an old woman, looked at the other, who was over eighty, as a girl looks at her mother wondering at her strange experiences, feeling herself a child in presence of a knowledge which is not hers. She had not experience enough to understand this philosophy. She looked for a little at her companion, wondering, and then she said, soothingly " We must not dwell upon painful subjects. This young fellow will not appeal to you so. What I like in him is his independence. He has his own opinion, and he expresses it freely. His society will be very good for my nephew Edward. If he has a fault and, indeed, I don't think that boy has many it is that he is diffident about his own opinion. Roland, if he stays long enough, will help to cure him of that. And how does the other affair go on ? " she added, with a perceptible pause, and in a voice which was a little constrained. " No doubt there is great triumph next door." Old Mrs. Morgan shook her head. " It is curious what mistakes we all make," she said. " Mistakes ? Do you mean that I am mistaken about the triumph ? Well, they have very good jreason. I should triumph too, if having been turned i.] THE YOUNG AND THE OLD. 7 out of a great house, like Mrs. John, I managed to get back again, and recover all that I had lost by means of a thing so entirely my own creation as a daughter. Even a son would have been different I suppose. You know I am not a judge on that point," Catherine said with a laugh. The old lady continued to shake her head slowly. "The only one that has not made a mistake is Harry. If he could have got what he wanted, it would have been the best thing that could have happened. There is no complication about that. For lim it would have been the best." "Do you mean to say," said Catherine, her eyes lighting up with that fire of curiosity and interest which overcomes even the languor of age. " Do you mean to say that he is not to get what he wishes ? Oh, this is too much ! That girl is eaten up with pride. What is she saving herself for, I wonder ? What can she expect ? " Again old Mrs. Morgan shook her head, smiling softly as at blunders upon which she could not be 'too severe. " I have said already what mistakes we make, Catherine ! often in our own career, always about other people, my dear." Upon this Catherine laughed, not having, though she esteemed her old relation greatly, as much re- spect for her judgment as probably it deserved. Miss Vernon was too sensible a woman either to feel or express any contempt for her own sex, as clever 8 HESTER. [CHAP. women who were not sensible used to do in those days ; but there was an undertone in her mind of indifference, to say the least, of another woman's opinion. She had a feeling that it could not be any better, and most likely was not so good, as her own, for she had held a position not usual among women, and knew that not many would have proved equal to the emergency as she did. What the old captain said would have impressed her more than what his wife said, and this although she was perfectly aware that the old lady in many cases was considered the most judicious of the two. " I know you are both fanatics for Hester," she said, " who is not my favourite as she is yours. You must take care that Roland does not fall a victim to her. There are few girls about, and in that case, when young men have a mind to make fools of themselves, there is no choice. Do not shake your kind head off; you know this is a thing in which we have agreed we shall never think alike." " Never is a long day," said the old lady, tran- quilly. She was well used to waiting. In her experience, so many things had come to pass which no one expected. Even now, she said to herself if any one had told her that Roland Ashton would one day be under her roof She added quietly, " You are too much alike to do each other justice." At this Catherine grew red. It had been in- timated to her before, and she had scarcely been i ] THE YOUNG AND THE OLD. 9 able to support the imputation. But she mastered herself with an effort. Nowhere perhaps but in this house would she have done so ; but these old people had an ascendency over her which she could not explain. " We will say nothing on that point," she said, quickly. " Your news has taken me so completely by surprise. Are you sure of it ? Why should Mrs. John's daughter have rejected so excellent a settlement ? She is looking for something better, I suppose ? " "I think that was a mistake too," said the old lady. " She says herself that Harry, though he is not clever, is good and true. Ah ! it is you who shake your head now. In some things even our Catherine fails ; he is not the equal of Hester ; but it is not my opinion that a man need be always superior to his wife. Where there is love, it does not matter. I should have been pleased to see it ; but she is young ; she thinks differently. She is looking for nothing consciously ; but in her heart for love, which is the visitor one is always looking for when one is young." " Pshaw ! " said Catherine ; " it is the old people that are romantic, not the young. It is the settle- ments that are the things to be considered ; or perhaps she is thinking of a title ? Her mother is capable of any nonsense," she said with a scornful laugh. Mrs. Morgan made no reply. Her peaceful aspect with her folded hands, the soft little smile on her old 10 HESTER. [CHAP. mouth, the slight shake of the head, was perhaps a trial of patience for the other, who felt herself thrown back into the category of the young and superficial by this calm expectation and quietness. Catherine Vernon was still in the region of prejudice and dis- like. She had not lived into that superior sphere of toleration and calm. Impatience filled her veins. But she mastered herself, the atmosphere subduing her. And Captain Morgan came hobbling back, having calmed himself down too. "Ellen has come back," said Miss Vernon, to change the subject, "from Paris, with clothes enough for all the neighbourhood. It amuses me to think of her among the bonnet-shops. What true enjoyment ! and scarcely less now to show them to all her friends. Now there is a pleasure you cannot enjoy, uncle. A man could not call his friends together to look at his new hats." " There is no telling what a young man can do in the way of folly till he is put to it," said the captain. " I am loth to recognise any inferiority. What do you think about all these failures, Catherine ? or rather, if you have withdrawn from it, what do the boys think ? " " J hope I am still capable of giving an opinion," said Miss Ternon. " None of them touch us, which is the chief thing. For my part, speculation in this wild way is my horror. If you could see the pro- posals that used to be put before me ! Not an un- dertaking that was not the safest and the surest in the world ! The boys are well indoctrinated in my i.] THE YOUNG AND THE OLD. 11 opinions on that subject. They know better, I hope, than to snatch at a high percentage ; and love the substance, the good honest capital, which I love. I think," she continued, " there is a little of a miser in me, or perhaps you will say in all women. I love to see my money to count it over like the By the way, it was the king that did that while the queen was eating her bread and honey. That goes against my theory." " A good many things go against your theory. They say that there are no such wild speculators as women. It seems easy to them that a sort of miracle should happen ; that something should come out of nothing." " They have not had my experience," said Catherine. " But Edward and Harry are as steady as two churches ; that is," she added with a complacency which they all recollected afterwards, " Edward is the head ; the other fortunately has the good sense not to attempt to think for himself." " Hester would have done that for him," said Mrs. Morgan, in an undertone ; but Catherine caught it and went on with heightened colour, for the idea that Hester tliat girl ! might have had something to say in the government of the bank, struck her as if some one had given her a blow. " Edward is the heart and soul of everything," she said. " How fortunate it was for me that my choice fell upon that boy. I should say he had an old head on young shoulders, but that I don't like the conjunction. He is young enough. He has 12 HESTER. [CHAP. always been accustomed to family life, and loves his home." " It is, no doubt," said Captain Morgan, kindly, " that he has had the advantage of your own experi- ence and teaching more than the other, Catherine." " That would be a delightful thought for me," Miss Vernon said with a suffusion of pleasure in her eyes. " Perhaps there is some truth in it. I have done my best to share my lights, such as they are, with him ; but he goes beyond me. And to think that I hesitated between Edward and Harry ! I hope I am grateful to Providence that turned me to the best. The other family are following out their lot quite characteristically. Ellen's husband has a good deal of worldly sense, which is wanting to that bit of a butterfly. He is trying hard to get her to make up to me. She has come to see me twice, full of pretty speeches about Algy's great respect for me. Human nature," said Catherine with a laugh, " is as good, nay, far better, than a play. How cunning it thinks it is, but in reality how very easy to see through." Here old Mrs. Morgan began to shake her head again, smiling always, but with an indulgent, gentle contradictoriness which was more near making Miss Vernon angry than anything she had encountered in this house before. " What does she sit there for, like a Chinese idol ? " said the captain. "She has a wonderful opinion of herself, that old woman. Human nature may be easy to see through, but it is very hard to under- i.j THE YOUNG AND THE OLD. 13 stand, Catherine. What is that the Bible says about ' deceitful above all things ' ? When you try to get hold of yourself, did you ever find a more slippery customer ? There's a kind of amusement in it, when you are up to all your own dodges." " Rowley, my dear ! " said the old lady, surprised. " It is true I am too old for slang : but one picks it up, and sometimes it is happy enough. I say when you are up to your own dodges ; but that is difficult, and takes a great deal of time. To find yourself trotting forth the same old pretences that you did at twenty, attempting to throw the same sort of dust in your own eyes, is wonderful. There is a sort of artlessness in the artifice that is amusing, as you say ; but it is only amusing when you are strong enough to get the upper hand." " When which of you gets the upper hand ? for there seem to be two of you," said Catherine, not so much amused in her own person as she made a pretence of being for this was certainly not her view. " To be sure," said the old captain, " there are two of you, we all know that ; and in most cases one of you a very silly fellow, taken in on every hand, while the other man sniggers in his sleeve. Of course I am speaking from my own side ladies may be different from anything I know. But after all," he went on. " I don't think so ; for I've been a woman myself, so to speak, through her, for sixty years that is a long spell. I don't see much difference, though in some things she has got to the last word sooner than I." 14 HESTER. [CHAP. " I think we mean different things," said Catherine, rising ; " that was not the view I was taking. Yours is better in the moral aspect, for I suppose it is more profitable to judge ourselves than others ; but one cannot always be studying one's self." There was a half-apology in her tone, and at the same time a half-impatience. She did not desire to be turned from the comedy which she had in her way enjoyed for years, seeing through, as she said, all the little world of dependents that hung about her, drawing out their weaknesses, perceiving the bitter grudge that lay under their exterior of smiles, and the thousand ways in which they made up to them- selves for the humiliation of being in her debt in order to turn to what might prove the less amusing contemplation of her own weaknesses, or recognise the element of evil in that which was certainly not amusing. Her carriage was standing at the gate which admitted to the garden front of the Vernonry, and it was with a sense of comfort that she got rid of the old captain at his door, and threw a keen, half-laughing glance at the windows on the other side. Mr. Mildmay Vernon was making himself very uncomfortable at the only angle of his room which permitted him to see the gate, watching for her exit. He kissed his hand to her as she paused and looked round before getting into the carriage, and Catherine realised as if she had seen it, the snarl of mockery with which this salutation was accompanied. In the intervening space were the two sisters keeping the most vigilant watch for her i.] THE YOUNG AND THE OLD. 15 reappearance, counting the minutes which she spent on the other side of the house, and saying ill-natured things to each other as they nodded and waved their hands. She was aware of the very tone in which these speeches would be made, as well as if she had heard them, and it gave her a great sense of enjoy- ment to reflect that they were all sitting in rooms well warmed and carefully kept, and full of benevo- lent prevision of all their wants, while they thus permitted themselves to sneer and snarl at the bestower. Just as she drove away, Hester by chance opened the verandah door, and came out to gather some of the leaves of the Virginia creeper which were dropping with every blast. Hester's serious eyes met hers with scarcely; any greeting at all on either side. Catherine did not know very well how it was that this girl came into the comedy. Had she been Harry's betrothed, Miss Vernon could have understood it, and though she could not but have felt the triumph of her old rival, yet it would have added delightfully to the commonplace drama in which everybody pursued their own mean ends under high-sounding pretences. She would have been able to smile at the commonplace young fellow taken in by the delusion that he was loved for him- self, and laugh in the conviction that Harry's was no deep affection to be wounded, but that he could quite well take care of himself, and that between these two it would be diamond cutting diamond. But the present state of affairs she did not under- stand. All that was amusing in it was the doubtless 16 HESTER. [CHAP. unbounded disappointment of the scheming little mother, who thus must find all her fine schemes collapsing in her hands. She could not refrain from mentioning the matter at dinner that evening, though Edward had a little failed on the former occasion, in that backing up of all her opinions and feelings which she had been accustomed to expect from him. " I find there is to be no match such as that we were speaking of," she said. "Harry has either drawn back or he is refused. Perhaps it may be that he has thought better of it," she added suddenly, without premeditation, grudging, as perhaps was natural, to let her young antagonist carry off the honours of the day. " I thought it was not quite so certain as people seemed to believe." " Do you mean that Harry would persevere ? " "I mean that she would accept him, Aunt Catherine. She is not a girl, so far as I can judge, of whom one could ever be so sure." " In the name of wonder," cried out Miss Vernon, " what does she expect ? Good heavens ! where is she to get another such chance again ? To refuse Harry, for a girl in her position, is madness. Where does she think she will get another such offer ? Upon my word," said Catherine, with a little laugh, " I can scarcely help being sorry for her poor little mother. Such a disappointment for Mrs. John her White House and her recovered ' position ' that she loves so dearly, and all her comforts I could find i.] THE YOUNG AND THE OLD. 17 it in my heart to be very sorry for her," she said, with another little laugh. Edward gave a glance up at her from his plate, on which he had the air of being intent. The young man thought he saw through Catherine, as she thought she saw through all the other inmates of her little world. What he did see through was the superficial badness which her position had made, but he had not so much as a glimmering of the other Catherine, the nobler creature who stood behind ; and though he smiled and assented, a sensation of disgust came into his heart. He, too, had his comedy of human nature, which secretly, under cover of his complacency and agreement with Catherine's opinion, he regarded with the bitterest and angriest scorn. What an extraordinary shock would it have been for his companion, who felt herself to sit in the place of the audience, seeing the puppets play their pranks upon the stage and exhibit all their fooleries, to know that she herself was the actor, turned outside in and seen through in all her devices, to this boy whom she loved ! VOL. II. CHAPTER II. A FAMILY PARTY. " A GRANDSON of Captain Morgan ! Well, that is not much to meet us at our wedding dinner at least, if it is not our wedding dinner Oh, I know there was our state one, and we met all the old fogies whom I detest ! " cried Mrs. Algernon Merri- dew, born Ellen Vernon ; " but this is only the second, and the second is quite as important as the first. She should have asked the county first, to introduce us properly and then the town ; but Aunt Catherine is one of the people who never do what's expected of them. Besides, I don't want to meet her relations on the other side. They're no- bodies. She spends quantities of money upon them which she has no business to do, seeing it's the Vernons' money and not hers at all, if you come to that." "Come, Nell," said her husband with a laugh. He was a dark young man, as was to be expected seeing that she was so fair a young woman good- CHAP, ir.] A FAMILY PARTY. 19 looking, with whiskers, which were the fashion in those days, of a bushy blackness, and hair which suggested pomade. " Come, Nell," he said, " strike fair. Catherine Vernon does a great deal of good with her money, and doesn't spare upon the Vernons all the town knows that." " Oh no, she doesn't spare upon the Vernons all those useless old creatures that she has up there in that horrid old-fashioned house ! I think if she did a little more for real relations, and left those old fogies alone, it would be more like Expecting one to call upon them, and take all sorts of trouble ! A.nd look at poor old Harry kept with his nose at his desk for ever." "Poor old Harry is very lucky, I think. Fair play is a jewel. If she doesn't do all you want, who do you expect would?" " You, of course ! " cried Ellen, as was natural : and they were so newly married that he thought it very pretty ; " that is the good of you ; and if you go in for Aunt Catherine too, when you know I can't endure her " Of course the good of me is to do whatever you want," he said, with various honeymoon demonstra- tions ; " but as for going in for Aunt Catherine you must know this, Nelly, that I'm very proud of being connected with Catherine Yernon. I have heard of her all my life as a sort of goddess, you know. You must not put me off it all at once I couldn't be put off it. There now, there's nothing to look sulky about." c 2 20 HESTER. [CHAP. " You are such an old Redborough person," Ellen said, with a little pout : which was very true. He was not, indeed, at all a good match for a Vernon ; but his whiskers things much admired in those days and her self-will had worsted all opposition. He was no more than the son of the perfectly respectable and very well-to-do solicitor, who was universally respected in Redborough, and though Algernon had been in town and sown his wild oats, he had never entirely got out of his mind the instinctive convic- tion that Redborough was the centre of the world ; and to feel himself within the charmed circle in which Catherine Vernon moved was a promotion which was intoxicating to the young man. Not even his devotion to his pretty wife, which was great, could bring him to disown that allegiance to Catherine Vernon which every Redborough man was born with. It was a sort of still more intoxicat- ing proof of the dignity he had come to, that the pretty wife herself turned up her little nose at Catherine. That Mrs. Algernon should be so familiar with the highest excellence known to them, as to venture to do this, was to the whole family of the Merridews an admiration just as a family entirely loyal might be flattered by having a princess among them who should permit herself to laugh at the majesty of the king ; but this did not shake their own fidelity. And Algernon, though he ventured with bated breath to say "Aunt Catherine" when he spoke of her in his own family, had not got over his veneration for Miss Vernon. He had IL] A FAMILY PARTY. 21 taken her in to dinner on the occasion of the great banquet, which Ellen described so lightly, with a sensation bordering upon the hysterical. Rapture, and pride, and panic were in it. He did not know, according to the vulgar description, whether he were on his head or his heels, and his voice made a buzzing in his own ears as he talked. The second time was to be in the intimacy of the domestic circle if it had been to meet a crossing-sweeper it would still have been a bewildering gratification ; but all the more, his wife's criticism and her indiffer- ence, and even discontent with the notice which to him seemed [so overpowering an honour, pleased the young man. She felt herself every bit as good as Catherine, and yet she was his Mrs. Algernon Merridew ! The thought was one adapted to make his head swim with pride and delight. It was entirely a family party, as Catherine had said, and a very small one. The Miss Vernon-Ridg- \vays had been invited, to make the number even, and their preparations for the unusual honour had taken up four days at least. When they sailed into the drawing-room at the Grange, having spent ten minutes in shaking out the flounces and arranging the flowers and ribbons with which they were orna- mented, it would be impossible to attempt to describe the disgust of the bride. She turned her eyes upon her husband, who for his part was in a state of beatitude not to be disturbed by trifles, with a look of indignant rage which he did not understand. " To think she should ask those old things to meet us ! 22 HESTER. [CHAP. I declare I have a great mind to go right away," she whispered to Harry, who was more sympathetic. Harry allowed that it was almost beyond bearing. " But I wouldn't make a quarrel if I were you," he said. In the meantime the sisters went up beaming to their dear Catherine, whom they kissed with devotion. How well she was looking ! how becoming her dress was ! but that lovely lace would be becom- ing to any one ! they cried. Catherine received all these compliments with a smile, and she took great pleasure in Ellen's disgust, and the way in which she turned her ear instead of her cheek to the salutations of the cousins, who were rapturous in their admira- tion of her in all her bridal finery. The entry of the stranger, who was unknown to any of them, made a diversion. Roland Ashton, when he was visible in the full light of Miss Vernon's drawing-room, turned out, in appearance at least, a very valuable addition to the society. Ellen, who was critical, and inclined by nature to a poor opinion of old Captain Morgan's grandson, looked at him with astonished, and indeed reluctant, approval. His whiskers were not so thick or so black as Algernon's ; but he had a fine mass of dark hair, wavy, and rather longer than is now per- mitted by fashion, fine features and dark eyes, with a paleness which was considered very interesting in those days. He was much taller and of more im- posing aspect than Edward, whose stature was not great ; he was far more intellectual than Harry ; altogether of the four young men present, his was no doubt the most noticeable figure. They all ii.] A FAMILY PARTY. 23 appraised him mentally as he came in Catherine first of all, with a sensation of pride that the one individual who was her relation, without being the relation of her family, was a creditable novelty to in- troduce among them ; the others, with various degrees of quickened curiosity and grudging. The grudge was intensified in the persons of the sisters, who could not endure this interloper. They had felt it their duty to draw the line at the Morgans long ago, and it was all they could do to behave with propriety at Catherine's table when they were seated beside the descendant of the old people on whom Catherine spent her money in what they felt to be an entirely unjustifiable way. They were the only persons pre- sent who kept up their grudge to the end. In Ellen's case it disappeared with the clear perception of his good looks. But when Mr. Ashton offered his arm to Miss Matilda Vernon-Ridgway, the look with which she received the offered courtesy was enough to freeze any adventurous young man into stone. It did not, however. It made him all but laugh as he glanced at Catherine, who for her part contem- plated her cousins with much gratification. Miss Matilda placed the end of her finger upon the young man's arm. She kept at as great a distance as possible as she crossed the hall by his side. To the little speech about the weather, which he thought it his duty to make her, she returned a sort of inarticulate reply a monosyllable, but conveying no meaning. When she was seated at table she flung herself, so to speak, upon her neighbour at the other 24 HESTER. [CHAP. side, who, as it happened, was Harry Vernon, and who was not prepared for the honour. All this was to Catherine as good as a play. " What a climate, and what a poky old place this Redborough is," said Ellen, preparing to lead the conversation, as she finished her soup. She spoke apparently to Edward, but in reality to the company, which was not too large for general conversation. " It is dreadful to come back here in the beginning of winter from Abroad. I declare I quite envy you, you people who have never been Abroad ; you don't know the difference. Bright sunshine all day long, and bands playing, and the best of music, and all your friends to talk to, sitting out under the trees. Compare that with Redborough, where, beyond a few tiresome little dinner parties, and perhaps three dances at Christmas " " The White House used to be a great addition to the cheerfulness of the place," said Edward. " Harry will have no heart to keep it up by himself now you have left him." " Oh, Harry shall marry," said Ellen, " I have made up my mind to that ; and as soon as we have got quite settled, I mean to set things a-going. I mean to have a Thursday, Aunt Catherine. We shall be glad if you'll come. It is to be a The Dansante, which is quite a novelty here. You learn so much better about all these things Abroad." " Where is Abroad ? " said Roland, in an under- tone which was so confidential and intimate, that had he been anybody else, Miss Matilda must have IK] A FAMILY PARTY. 25 yielded to its seduction. As it was, she only gave him a look of surprise at his ignorance, and cleared her throat and shook her bracelets in order to be able to strike in. " A Thd Dansante is exactly the kind of entertain- ment that suits me," Catherine said. " Yes, won't it be nice ? " said Ellen, unconscious. " I learnt all the figures of the cotillion, which is the most amusing thing to end up with, and I made Algy learn it. As soon as ever our house is ready we shall start. It will be a new feature in society. As for Harry, till he's married he'll have to be content with bachelor's dinners, for I can't always be leaving Algy to look after him." Here Harry murmured something, stammering, and with a blush, to the intent that the bachelor's dinners would last a long time. " We don't see you so often at our place as we used to do, Mr. Harry," said Miss Matilda, sweetly. " It used to be quite a pleasure to watch for you ; and the summer evenings were so tempting, weren't they ? Oh, fie ! it is very naughty to love and to ride away. We always said that was what was likely to happen, didn't we ? " she said to her sister, on the other side of the table. Miss Martha nodded and smiled in return, and cried " Oh, always," in a shriller tone. " What's that you thought likely to happen ? Then it didn't happen if it was Harry," cried Ellen, instinctively, ranging herself on her brother's side. 26 HESTER. [CHAP. " But about this cotillion ? " said Edward. " What is it ? I thought it had something to say to a lady's dress. I am sure it had in the eighteenth century. We shall have to go to school to learn what your novelty means." " She put me to school, I can tell you," cried Algernon, from the other end of the table. " I had O ' to work ! She is the most dreadful little tyrant, though she looks 'so soft." " Dancing is neglected shamefully nowadays," said Miss Matilda ; " shamefully ! We were taught very differently. Don't you remember, dear, Mousheer D'Egmont and his little violin, Martha ? we were taught the minuet first on account of our curtseys " " Oh, the funny, old-fashioned thing ! You never curtsey nowadays ; even in the Lancers it is only a bob," said Ellen, " or a bend mostly with your head. You never see such a thing nowadays." " My dear ! In the presence of your sovereign," said Miss Matilda, with dignity, " it always continues necessary. There is no change in that respect so far as I am aware, Martha, is there ? You were in the habit of attending Drawing-rooms longer than I." " Oh, never any change in that ! " cried Miss Martha, rising upon herself, so to speak, and erect- ing her head as she looked from one end of the table to another. It was not often that they had such a triumph. They had been Presented. They had made their curtseys to their Sovereign, as Miss Matilda said. ii.] A FAMILY PARTY. 27 Silence fell upon the table, only broken by the jingle of Ellen's bracelets, which she pushed up her arm in her mortification ; and there were so many of them that they made a considerable noise. Even she was cowed for the moment ; and what was worse was, that her husband being simple-minded, and getting a little familiar with Catherine, now turned his looks of awe and veneration upon the Miss Vernon-Ridgways, who were so well acquainted with the court and its ways. And Catherine laughed. " We are all behind in that respect," she said. " I am fond of pomp and ceremonial for my part. It is a pretty thing, but I like it best at a distance. It is my fault, I have no doubt, that your wife is ignorant of Drawing-rooms, Mr. Merridew." " I always said so, Aunt Catherine," cried Ellen, who was ready to cry, in the midst of her triumph. " It is horrid for girls to have relations with those out-of-the-way notions." Catherine only laughed ; it was her habitual comment. She turned smiling to young Ashton by her side. " You ought not to dislike state," he said, in an undertone ; " you who are a kind of queen yourself or, shall I say, grand duchess in your own town ? " "A queen without any subjects," said Catherine, shaking her head. This time she did not laugh } and there was even a little glimmer of sadness in her eyes. " Not so. I am a stranger, you know. When I 28 HESTER. [CHAP. go about the town, I hear of nothing but Catherine Vernon. They call you so, do you know tout court, without miss or madam that has a great effect upon one's imagination." Young Merridew had thrust forward his head, and was listening, which perhaps was not very good manners. " It is quite true," he said eagerly. " Ellen says I am a very Redborough person. I have been born and bred here. I can't remember the time when I didn't look up to her, as if she was something above the human " " And yet you have married a Vernon ! " said Catherine ; but she was pleased. " It is not an un- common thing in this world," she said. " People at a distance think more kindly of one than those who are near; but this is not talk for a dinner-table. Not to interfere with Ellen's cotillion" she said, in a louder tone, " I am thinking of a party for Christmas, young people. As it is for you, you must lay your heads together, and decide what it is to be." Then there arose a flutter of talk, chiefly main- tained by the ladies, but in which young Merridew was appealed to by his wife ; and Harry, stimulated by the same hand, and Edward, mindful of his duties, took part. Catherine and her young relative were left, as it were, alone, amid the babble of tongues. " I cannot allow myself to look at it gravely," she said. " I laugh ; it is the best way. They all take what they can get, but their opinions, if they were ii.] A FAMILY PARTY. 29 individually weighed, of Catherine Vernon, would surprise you. They don't think much of me. I dare say I quite deserve it," she said, after a pause, with another laugh. " Don't you think that in most cases enthusiasm is confined to those people who person- ally know the least of the object of it ? That's an awkward sentence, but never mind." " Isn't it the same thing as to say that a great man is never a hero to his valet, or that a prophet has no honour in his own country ? " " Not the last, at least," said Catherine ; ",for being no prophet, you yourself say I have got some honour in my country. As for the valet, I don't know," she continued, " but a maid, though she appraises you at your true value, and is convinced you are a fool in many things, still is not without a prejudice in your favour. She would like, though she maintains her erect position, to see the rest of the world bow down before you. That is amusing too." " You are a philosopher," said the stranger, look- ing at her with a tender regard in his eyes, which made a great impression generally upon younger women, and moved even Catherine as with a sense of kindness of kindness disproportioned to their actual knowledge of each other, which is a thing which conciliates everybody, looking as if it implied a particular attraction. " Your grandfather thinks me a cynic," she said. She liked these few words of quiet talk in the midst of the mingled voices of the others, and was grateful to the young man who looked so sympathetic. " I 30 HESTER. [CHAP. don't know that I am a cynic, but rather than cry, I prefer to laugh. Is that cynicism ? " He gave her a look which would have no doubt had a great effect upon the heart of a younger woman, and which pleased Catherine, old as she was. " I think it is true philosophy ; but some of us have feelings that will not be laughed at," said Roland. He was accustomed to make great use of his fine eyes, and on this occasion he did so with the greatest effect. There could not have been more tender sympathy than was in them. Could he be really so much impressed by her character and position, and the failure of true gratitude and kind- ness ? Catherine Vernon would probably have laughed at any one else of her own age who had been so easily persuaded ; but it is always so much more easy to believe in the sincerity of affection which is called forth by one's self ! Her eyes softened as she looked at him. " I think you and I, Roland, are going to be great friends," she said, and then turned with a slight little sigh, so small as to be almost imperceptible, to the louder voices appealing to her. " You must settle it among you," she said. "I give Edward carte Uanche. The only thing is that it must take in everybody, all the Vernonry and our neighbours as well a real Christmas party." " Oh, don't you think, Aunt Catherine, Christmas is such a bore ! " said Ellen, "and family parties ! Let us have strangers. Let us have people we never set eyes on before. Christmas is so vulgar ! Look at n.] A FAMILY PARTY. 31 all the newspapers with their little stories; the snow on the ground and the wanderer coming home, and so forth. I am so glad we haven't got a wanderer to come home." " Christmas brings a great many duties I am sure," said Miss Matilda. " Have you seen the charity flannel at Roby's, Catherine ? It is so good, almost good enough to wear one's self; and the blankets really look like blankets, not horse-cloths. Do you think that is good or bad ? What you give in charity ought to be different, don't you think ? not to let them suppose they have a right " " You forget," said her sister, eager to get in a word, " that dear Catherine always gives the best." " Ah ! it is well to be Catherine," said Miss Matilda, "but many people think there should be a difference. What do you think, Mr. Harry ? Cathe- rine may consider poor people's feelings ; but there are some who think it is wrong to do so for who is like Catherine ? She is always giving. She is always so considerate. Whatever she does is sure to be the best way." " I am certain/' said Algernon Merridew beaming with honest loyalty from where he sat by Miss Yernon's side, "that all Redborough is of that opinion ; a%d Redborough ought to know." " You mean all but the people to whom I give," said Catherine, "there are not so many of them: but they are the best judges of all, and I don't think they approve." " There's nobody so unreasonable as the poor," 32 HESTER. [CHAP. said Ellen, " they are never satisfied. You should just see them turning over the pieces from my kitchen. Of course all the pieces are quite nice ; everything is, I hope, where I am housekeeper. Oh, I know I am extravagant, I like the best of every- thing : but nothing satisfies the poor. Cold potatoes now with mayonnaise sauce are what I adore, but they throw them away." " Perhaps they don't have the mayonnaise sauce ? " suggested Edward. " Oh, goodness ! I hope not ; that would be simply immoral," cried Miss Matilda. " But, Mr. Harry, you don't give your opinion, none of the gentlemen give their opinion. Perhaps that is because money is what they give, and one shilling is just like another. You can't have charity shil- lings. Oh, but I approve of charity flannel ; and some people always like to make a difference in what they give to the poor. Poor ladies and gentle- men soon find that out, I assure you. People give you useful presents. If they want to invite you, they invite you when there's nobody there. They think a family dinner or high tea quite treat enough for you. And quite right, don't you think, when one is in the position of a dependent ? It keeps people in their proper places. Dear Cathe- rine buys the best flannel, better than I can afford, for her Christmas gifts. She is never like other people, always more liberal ; but I should buy the whitey-brown, that is, if I could afford any at all you know." ii.] A FAMILY PARTY. 33 " Don't attack me, Matilda," said Catherine, with a laugh, " all along the line." " Oh, attack ! you, dear Catherine ? not for the world. We all know what a friend you are. What should we do without you ? Whether we are in Paris fashions or our old silks, don't we owe it all to you ? " There was a little pause round the table which was somewhat awkward ; for what could anybody say ? The clever ones were all non-plussed, but Harry, who was the stolid one, suddenly became audible with his round rolling bass voice. " Whoever says that, and whether it was well meant or not, I say the same. It's all quite true. We owe every- thing to Aunt Catherine. I am always ready to say so, wherever I go." " Have we come to Christmas toasts already ? " said Edward intervening. " We had better not start that sort of thing before the time. We all know what we owe to Aunt Catherine." " Hush, hush," she cried, waving her hand tohim as she rose. " Now we shall release your noble intellects from the necessity of coming down to our level," Catherine said as she followed carefully Miss Matilda's long train. It was very long, though it was rather flimsy, and the progress of the ladies was impeded by it. Ellen swept out lightly in advance with a perfect command of hers. It was the first time she had preceded the old cousins in her dignity as a married woman, and the ring of her bracelets sounded like a little trumpet-note. As she followed VOL. ii. D 34 HESTER, [CHAP. them out Catherine Yeruon returned to her habitual mood of amused indulgence. She had been almost sentimental for a moment, she said to herself, be- guiled by that boy's sympathetic eyes, which no doubt he must make great use of among the young ones. She laughed at herself not unpleasantly, to think of the confidences she had almost been beguiled into. But it pleased her to think that it was her mother's blood which had exercised this influence upon her. After all, it might be the Vernons only who were sordid and ungrateful. The old captain and his wife had always been exceptions to her sweeping judg- ment of human nature. And now it was their descendant who had touched her heart. Perhaps it was only the Vernonry after all. But she was fully restored to her usual kind of amusement as she watched the progress of her three companions into a temporary but eager intimacy on the score of Ellen's Paris fashions which they were eager to ex- amine. The bride was as eager to exhibit as they were to see, and was so well pleased with herself as to be impervious to the little covert blows which Miss Matilda gave under the shield of her flatteries. Catherine Vernon established herself in her own chair, and gathered her costly silken skirts about her, and took up the newspaper, which people in the country have to read in the evening instead of the morning ; but she did not read much. She was diverted by the talk. " Crinoline is certainly going out," said Ellen. "I heard it from the very best shops. Look at mine, it is quite small, hardly to be n.] A FAMILY PARTY. 35 called crinoline at all. This is the very newest, from the Grangd Magaseens du Louvre. You see yours are twice as big," Ellen added, making a little pirouette to exhibit the diminished proportions of her hoops. The Miss Vernon-Ridgways looked down upon their own skirts with unquiet eyes. "The French are always so exaggerated," said Miss Matilda. " Ignorant persons have such strange ideas. They think really nice people in England take their fashions straight out of Paris, but that is quite a mistake. It has always to be modified by English good taste " Ellen interrupted with a little shriek. " Oh, good taste ! You should just hear how they speak of that Abroad. Sometimes I could have cried. They say no woman knows how to dress herself in England. And when I come back and see the dreadful things that are worn here This is pretty," Ellen con- tinued, drawing attention to a portion of her dress. " The Empress wore one just the same at a ball." " Dear Ellen," said Miss Matilda, " and you wear it at a little family party ! that shows the difference. I am sure it was done just to please us, to let us see what the new fashions are, in your unselfish way, dear ! " And Catherine laughed behind the newspaper. The honours of the occasion were to the old sisters after all. In the meantime conversation of much more serious import, though scarcely more elevated, was going on round the table in the dining-room, where D 2 36 HESTER. [CTAP. young Ashton had got the lead, though none of the others looked upon him with over-favourable eyes. There was no doubt that he was a very handsome fellow, and both Harry and Edward had that in- stinctive sense that he was a competitor likely to put them on their mettle, which is supposed to influence the bosoms of women alone. They thought (instinctively, and each in their different ways,) that he must be a coxcomb. They divined that he was the sort of fellow whom women admired, and scorned him for it as women perhaps now and then indulge in a little sneer at a gentleman's beauty. But by and by he touched a chord which vibrated more or less in all their bosoms. He began to talk of the city, for which country men of business have a natural reverence. He revealed to them that he himself was on the Stock Exchange, and incidentally let fall an anecdote here and there, of the marvellous incidents, the fairy tales of commerce, that were taking place in those magic regions every day : of men who woke in the morning with the most moderate means at their command, and before night were millionaires. They gathered close about him as he added anecdote to anecdote. Edward Vernon was like tinder, prepared for the fire ; for all his thoughts for some time past had been directed in that way. And young Merridew was launching forth upon life, rather more lavishly than was consistent with his income and prospects. Harry was the least interested of the three, but even to him the idea of making a fortune in a few hours and being able to ii.] A FAMILY PARTY. 37 retire to the country to give himself up to dogs and horses, instead of going down to the bank every morning, was a beatific suggestion. The present writer does not pretend to be able to inform the reader exactly how it was, or in favour of which schemes, that the poet of the Stock Exchange managed to influence these rustic imaginations, but he did so. He filled their minds with an impatience of their own slow business and its mild percentages, even when he seemed to praise it. " Perhaps it does feel slow work ; I can't say. I think it is a vast deal more wholesome. It is very hard to keep your head steady, you know, when you feel that the chances of an hour or two may make you the richest man in England." " Or the poorest perhaps ? " said Edward, more with the idea of subduing himself than checking this flow of instruction. "Ye-es," said Ashton, indifferently, "no doubt that's on the cards : but it ought not to be if your broker has a head on his shoulders. About the worst that can happen, if you take proper pre- cautions, is that you're no worse than you were to start with, and better luck next time. I don't approve the ' gain or lose it all ' system. But what will Miss Vernon say if we stay here talking shop all the evening ? " he added. There was never a more clever conclusion ; it was like the exciting close of, an act in the theatre, for he could not be persuaded to begin again. When they went reluctantly into the drawing-room, Ellen 38 HESTER. [CHAP. n. thought her Algernon had taken too much wine ; and even Edward, who never offended the proprieties in any way, had a curious light in his eyes, and did not hear when he was spoken to. But Catherine Vernon, for her part, did not notice anything ex- cept the filial kindness of young Roland, and the sympathy and understanding which shone in his eyes. CHAPTER III. CONFIDENCES. "I WOULD not speculate if I were you," said Ashton. "What would be the good? You are very well off as you are. You are making your fortune steadily, far hetter than if you did it by a successful coup. Yes, yes, I can understand that a man should desire a little more excitement, and rebel against the monotony of a quiet life, but not you, Vernon, if you'll excuse my saying so. You don't go in for any sort of illegitimate pursuit. You don't play or bet ; you have no claim upon you that you want extraordinary means of supplying " " How can you tell all that ? " said Edward Yernon. "Do you think life's so easy a business that you can read it off from the surface, and make sure that everything is as it seems ? " " I don't say that. Of course, I go upon appear- ances. I can understand that perhaps you are tired of it " "Tired of it!" He twirled his stick violently in his hand, hitting at the rusty bramble branches 40 HESTER. [CHAP. and gorse bushes that bordered the Common as if they were his enemies. "I suppose one is apt to tire of anything that lasts and never varies," he cried with a forced laugh. " Yes, I am tired of it. Quiet life and safe business, and the hope of making a fortune, as you call it, steadily, in twenty or thirty years Good life ! Twenty or thirty years ! Only think of the number of days in that, one after the other, one exactly like the other. I begin to feel as if I should welcome anything to break the monotony crime itself." " That means, old fellow," said Ashton, soothingly, " nerves, and nothing more." Edward laughed out, a laugh which was not harmonious with the soft dulness of the autumnal atmosphere. " I have no nerves, nor tastes nor inclinations, nor any mind of my own," he said. " I do what it is the right thing to do. Though I arn sick of it, I never show that. Nobody here has the slightest idea that I was ever impatient or irritable or weary in my life." Ashton looked at him with some curiosity, but took no further notice. " Does Miss Vernon," lie said, " take any share in the business of the bank I mean, in the work, in the regulations ? " " Miss Vernon," said Edward, " takes a share in everything that is going on around her, it does not matter what. She has been so long used to be at the head of everything, that she thinks it her natural place ; and, as she is old and a woman, it stands to reason " in.] CONFIDENCES. 41 " But she is a very intelligent woman ; and she must have a great deal of experience." " The experience of a little country town, and of steady business, as you call it oh, she has all that. But put your own views before her, or suggest even the advantages of the circulation of money, quick turning over, and balance of losses and gains " "I can understand that," said Ashton. "You don't appreciate the benefits of the Conservative element, Vernon. But for you and your steady- going banks, how could we operate at all ? The money must be somewhere. We can't play with counters only in this game." " There was no question of counters," said Edward ; " we have the money in our hands. It seems to me that you and I should change places : you to do the steady business here, and please Aunt Catherine who has taken a great fancy to you, you must know I, to watch the tide, how it comes and how it goes." " There might be worse arrangements," Ashton said with a laugh : but he added quickly, meeting a keen, sudden glance from Edward, "if you could transfer to me your training, and I mine to you. I am counted rather bold sometimes, you must know," he added, after a moment, returning that look. They talked with great apparent readiness and openness, but with a curious dread of mutual observation going on under the current of their talk all the time. " So much the better," said Edward, " so long as you know when to hold in." They were going along the side of the Common 42 HESTER. [CHAP. between the Grange and the Vernonry. It was Sunday afternoon a dull day, the sky hanging low, the green parts of the Common very green, glistening with wetness, the gorse and brushwood very brown and faded. Nobody was about on this day of leisure. Even the slow country cart, the farmer's shandry, the occasional roll of a carriage, was absent from the silent road. There were no nursemaids and children from Redborough picking their way along the side path. Captain Morgan, feeling his rheumatism, had retired to his chimney corner ; the young men had it all to themselves. Ashton had been lunching at the Grange. He was on the eve of going back to town to business, from which he declared he had been absent far too long. The object of his visit was not very clear to any flrjg : he had left his grandparents for years without showing so much interest in them. But, whatever his motive had been, his expedition had not been without fruit. He had discovered a new and wealthy vein well worth working, and lit a fire which, no doubt, would light up still further illumi- nations, in some inflammable spirits. No one had received him more warmly than Edward Vernon, but he was less easy to make out than the others. He was less simple ; his life did not correspond with the betrayals of his conversation, whereas neither Harry Vernou nor his brother-in-law, had any- thing to betray. What was evident, at least, was that Catherine Vernon smiled upon the acquaint- ance which had been formed so rapidly between her nephew and the stranger. She called Edward in.] CONFIDENCES. 43 " your cousin " to Ashton, then laughed and apolo- gised, explaining that where there were so many cousins it was difficult to remember that her relation was not Edward's too. When Ashton replied, " There is connection enough to justify the name, if it is agreeable to Vernon," there could be no doubt that it was, at least, agreeable to her. She smiled upon them from her window as they went out together, waving her hand. And no foolish mother could have been more unaware than Catherine, that the know- ledge that she was there, watching with tender looks of affection the two figures as they went along, was to Edward irksome beyond expression. He felt no charm of love in the look, but substituted suspicion for tenderness, and believed that she was watching them, keeping them in sight as far as her eyes could carry, to spy out all they did, and make for herself an explanation of eveiy gesture. He would not even have twirled his stick and cut down the brambles but in a momentary fit of forgetfulness. When they got beyond her range, he breathed more freely, but, even then, was not without a recollection that she had her opera-glasses at hand, and might, through them, be watching his demeanour still. " Let us go this way," he said, turning into the road, which slanted away on the nearer side of the Vernonry, leading out into the open country and brown fields. Ashton hesitated a moment. " I am not sure that I am not expected at home. It is my last day," he said. 44 HESTER. [CHAP. " Home is a kind of irons," said Edward, " hand- cuffs, ankle chains. One is always like an unhappy cockatoo on a perch. Any little attempt at flight is always pulled back." "I don't think that is my experience. My old people are very indulgent ; but then, I am a mere visitor. Home does not mean much to me," said Ash ton. If he had been in the presence of any lady he would have sighed as he said this being in absolute freedom with one of his own kind he smiled, and it was Edward who sighed. " There is such a thing as having too much of it," he said. " What I suffer from is want of air. Don't you perceive it ? There is no atmosphere ; every breath has been breathed over and over again. We want ventilation. We welcome every horror with delight in consequence a murder or even a big bankruptcy. I suppose that is why bankruptcies are so common," he added, as if struck with the idea. " A man requires a great deal of original impulse before he will go the length of murder. The other has a milder but similar attraction ; you ruin other people, which shakes them up, and gives a change of air." "Ill-omened words," said Ashton, laughing, and throwing out the fore-finger and little finger of his right hand with a play at superstition. " Ugly at all times, but especially when we are talking of business and the Stock Exchange." " Are you aware," said Edward, sinking his voice, " that our predecessor, before Aunt Catherine, did something of the kind ? " in.] CONFIDENCES. 45 " Who was he ? " " A certain John Vernon. His wife lives yonder, with the rest of Aunt Catherine's dependents in that red house. He found it too much for him ; but it was a poor sort of a flash in the pan, and hurt nobody but himself." "You would like to do more than that," said Ash ton, with a laugh. But in Edward's face there was no jest. "I should like," he said, "if I broke down, to carry the whole concern along with me. I should like to pull it down about their ears as Samson pulled the temple, you know, upon his persecutors." " Vernon," said Roland, " do you know that you are very rash, opening out like this to me ? Don't you see it is quite possible I might betray you ? I have no right to preach, but surely you can't have any reason to be so bitter. You seem tremendously well off, I can tell you, to a friendless fellow like me." " I am very well off," said Edward, with a smile ; " no man was ever better. I came out of a strug- gling family where I was to have gone to the colonies or something. My next brother got that chance, and here I am. John Vernon, so far as I can hear, was an extravagant fool. I have not the least sympathy with that. Money's a great power, but as for fine houses, or fine furniture, or show or dash as they call it " " I told you," said Ashton, " you have no vice." Edward gave him a dark, suspicious look. 46 HESTER. [CHAP. / " I have even a contempt for it," he said. " There are plenty of men who have that a horror even ; and yet can't do without the excitement." " I prefer your sort of excitement. John Vernon, as I say, was a fool. He ran away, poor wretch, and Catherine stepped in, and re-made everything, and covered him with contempt." " He is the father (is he dead ?) of the young lady who is such a favourite with my grandfather?" " Hester ? Oh, you know her, do you ? One of Aunt Catherine's pensioners in the Vernonry, as she calls it." " It is a little hard upon them to be called depen- dents ; my old people live there. They have their own little income to live upon. Miss Vernon gives them their house, I believe, which is very kind, but not enough to justify the name of pensioners." " That is our way here," said Edward laughing. " We are very ready to give, but we like to take the good of it. It is not respectful to call the place the Vernonry, but we do it. We are delighted to be kind ; the more you will take from us, the better we will like you. We even rather like you to be ungrateful. It satisfies our theory." " Vernon, all that seems to me to be diabolical, you iSrow, I wish you wouldn't. Miss Hester is a little of your way of thinking, I fear. She makes it amusing though. There are parties, it appears, where she stands all night in a corner, or looks at photographs." " She says that, does she ? " said Edward. His in.] CONFIDENCES. 47 smile had not been a pleasant one, but now it disappeared from his face. " And I suppose she tells you that I never go near her ? I have to look after the old ladies and take them to supper. I have the honour of standing in the position of master of the house." " I don't know that she blames any one," said Ash- ton indifferently. " It is more fun than anger. Talk of want of air, Vernon ; that poor child wants air if you please. She is as full of spirit and life as any one I ever saw. She would like to do something." " Something ! What kind of something ? Go on the stage or what ? " " I have never heard of the stage or anything of the kind. She wants work." " Excitement ! " Edward said, with an impatient gleam in his eyes. " She is like you then," said Ashton, trying to laugh, but not with much cordiality, for he felt himself growing angry in spite of himself. There was excitement enough now in Edward Vernon's face. It grew dark with passion and intolerance. " A woman is altogether differeDt," he said ; then subduing himself with a change in his voice from rage to scorn, " she will soon have it in her power to change all that. Don't you know she is going to marry Harry Vernon ? an excellent match for her money and little brains whereas she has much brains and little money, the very thing in marriage," he concluded, with a harsh laugh. 48 HESTER. [CHAP. " Is that so ? " said Ashton. He had been listening quite at his ease, turning his face towards his companion, and it was a satisfaction to Edward to see that the stranger's countenance clouded over. He was astonished, and Edward could not help hoping more than astonished for being sore and bitter himself he liked to see another feel the sting. " That's well," Roland said after a moment, " if she likes it. I should not have thought but a week's acquaintance does not show you much of a character. I am glad to hear it," he said, after a pause, " if she likes it," which was but a dubious sort of satisfaction after all. Edward looked at him again with an expression of gratified feeling. He was glad to have given his new friend a little friendly stab. It pleased him to see Roland wince. When one is very uneasy one's self, that is always a little consolation. He looked at him and enjoyed it, then turned away from the subject which had given him this momentary pleasure. " Let us return to our muttons," he said. " Tell me what you think of these papers ? I put them into my pocket to show you. Now that we are fairly out of sight " then he turned back to glance along the still damp road, upon which there was not a single shadow but their own " and nobody can spy upon us for I distrust windows we may think of business a little," the young man said. Ashton looked at him as he took the papers with a in.] CONFIDENCES. 49 glance as suspicious as his own. They had grown into a sort of sudden intimacy in a single night. Edward had been exactly in the state of mind to which Roland's revelation of chances and possibilities was as flame to tinder. To have his impatient desires and longings made practical was everything to him, and the prudence and business instinct left in him which made him hesitate to make the plunge by himself without skilled guidance, endowed the new- comer with an importance which nothing else could have given him. He was at home in those regions which were so entrancing and exciting, yet strange to Edward. These communications had brought them to something like confidential friendship, and yet they did not know each other, and in many things were mutually antipathetic, repelling, rather than attracting each other. This interview, though it was to seal the connection between them, made their mutual want of sympathy more apparent. Edward had showed the worst side of himself, and knew it. He felt even that his self-betrayal had been so great as to put him almost in his companion's power, while at the same time Ashton had impertin- ently interposed in tjie family affairs (a point upon which Edward was as susceptible as any one) by what he had permitted himself to say about Hester. Ashton, on the other hand, whose temper in a way was generous and easy, regarded the fortunate but ungrateful possessor of Catherine Yernon's sym- pathies with an indignant astonishment. To have VOL. II. E 50 HESTER. [CHAP. been so taken up by such a woman, to have her affection, her confidence, her unbounded approbation and trust, and to so repay her ! It was incredible, and the fellow was Should he fling up all his pretence at sympathy with this cub, and go off at once, rather abandoning the possible advantage than consenting to ally himself with such a being ? This was the point at which they stood for a moment ; but beside the pull of mutual interest how were they ever to explain the sudden breach, should they follow their mutual inclinations and make one ? . It would be necessary to say something, and what could be said ? and then there lay before Edward a world of fabulous gain, of sudden wealth, of a hundred excitements to which Roland seemed to hold the key ; and before Roland the consciousness that not only the advantage of having Edward, but a whole population of eager country people ready to put their money into his hands, and give him such power of immediate action as he had scarcely dreamt of, depended upon his self-restraint. Accordingly the sole evidence of their absolute distrust and dislike of each other, was this mutual look, exchanged just before they entered upon the closest relations of mutual aid. It was a curious scene for such a beginning. The solitude of the country road was complete ; there was no one to interrupt them. Although they were in the freedom of the open air, and subject to be overtaken by any passer-by, yet the Sunday stillness m.] CONFIDENCES. 51 was so intense that they might have been in the most secret retirement on earth. Had they been seated together in Edward's room at home, a hundred disturbances were possible. Servants can never be shut out; if it is only to mend the fire they will appear in the middle of the most private conference. And Catherine herself, all unconscious that her presence was disagreeable, might have come to the door to summon them, or perhaps even to bring them, with her own kind hands, the cups of tea which in his heart Edward loathed as one of the signs of his slavery. They were the drink of bondage those poor cups that never inebriate. He hated even the fragrance of them the little steams ascending. Thank Heaven no one could bring him tea out upon the high road ! The chill outer air, the faint scent of mossy damp and decay, the dim atmosphere with- out a sparkle in it, the absolute quiet, would have better suited confidences of a different description. But if business is not sentimental it is at least so urgent and engrossing, that it becomes indifferent to circumstances. The , do-nothing calm of the Sunday closed curiously around the group ; their rustling papers and eager countenances brought the strangest interruption of restless life into the almost dead and blank quiet. The season, the weather, the hour, the brown quiescent fields in which for the only moment of the year no mystery of growth was going on, but only a silent waiting for the seeds and the spring ; this day of leisure when everything was E9 M 52 HESTER. [CHAP. m. at rest, all the surrounding circumstances united to throw into full relief the strange centre to the landscape the two figures which brought a sharp interest of life into this still-breathing atmosphere, and waiting stagnation, and Sunday calm. CHAPTER IV. ROLAND. ROLAND ASHTON had been in little doubt as to his own motives when he came after so many years' in- difference to " look up " his old grandparents, and take up late, yet not too late, the traditions of filial duty. These traditions, indeed, had no existence for this young man. His mother, the victim of a dissi- pated and hopeless spendthrift, had died when her children were young, and her father and mother had stood aloof from all but the earliest years of the handful of boys and girls she left behind. The children scrambled up somehow, and, as is not un- usual among children, whom the squalor of a parent's >vice has disgusted from their earliest consciousness, succeeded in doing well ; the girls making much better marriages than could have been hoped for ; the boys, flung into the world on their own account at a very early age, finding the means of maintaining themselves, and even pushing forward to a position as good as that which their father had lost. That father 54 HESTER. [CHAP. had happily died and gone out of all power to injure them, a number of years before> and it was only on a rare visit to the elder sister, who alone knew much about the family connections, that Roland had learned something of the state of affairs at Red- borough. Elinor was old enough to remember the time when the grandfather and grandmother had taken charge of the little weeping band of babies in their far-off help- less days, and she had kept up a certain correspondence with them, when, half ruined by that effort, they were saved by Catherine Vernon, the mysterious, wealthy cousin, of whose name everybody in the family had heard. Elinor remembered so many details when her memory was jogged, that it occurred to Roland that it would be a very good thing to go down to Eed- borough and pay his grandfather a visit. Catherine Vernon might turn out to be worth cultivating. She had stepped in to save old Captain Morgan and his wife from the consequences of their own liberality to their daughter's children. She had a little colony of pensioners about her, Elinor was informed. She was very rich, so rich that she did not know what to do with her money. There was a swarm of Vernons round her, eating her up. " We are her nearest relations on her mother's side," Elinor had said. " I do not see why we should not have our chance too. Don't forget us, Roland, if you make any way ; and you ought to do something ; for you have the right way with women," his sister said, with some admiration and a little doubt. Her iv.] ROLAND. 55 faith was that he was sure to succeed, her doubt whether his success would be of use to anybody but himself; but however it might turn out, it was always better that one of the Ashtons should benefit by Catherine Vernon's colossal fortune, than that it should all go into the hands of the other people. Roland himself was well aware that he had the right way with women. This was not the result of art and calculation, but was pure nature. The young man was bent upon his own ends, without much con- sideration, in great matters, of other people. But in small matters he was very considerate, and had a delightful way of deferring to the comfort of those about him. And he had the power of looking inter- ested, and even of feeling ^jiterested in everybody he addressed. And he had fine eyes ! What more is needed to enable a young man to make his way with women ? He was very popular ; he might have married well had he chosen to take that step ; indeed, the chief thing against him was, that he had waver ed too long more than once, before he could make up his mind to hurt the feelings of a sensitive girl by not asking her to marry him. It was not, to be sure, his fault, if they thought that was his meaning. A prudent girl will never allow herself to think so until she is asked point-blank ; and when you came to in- vestigate each case, there really was nothing against Roland. He had made himself agreeable, but then, that was his way. He could not help making himself agreeable. The very tone of his voice changed when 56 HESTER. [CHAP. he spoke to any woman who pleased him, and he was. very catholic in his tastes. Most women pleased him if they had good looks, or even the remains of good looks ; or if they were clever ; or even if they were nice ; and he was pleasant to all, old and young. The quality was not without its dangers ; but it had great advantages. He came to Redborough fully deter- mined to make the conquest of Catherine Vernon, whom, save that she was rich and benevolent, he knew very little about. Very rich (according to Elinor), rather foolishly benevolent, old a young man who has the right way with women could scarcely be indifferent to such a description. He determined to find an opportunity in the dull time of the year, when business was not too exacting, to pay some of the long over-due respect and gratitude which he owed to his grandfather. Captain Morgan professed to have cut himself clear of all his relationships, but it was true that twenty years before, he had spent every- thing he had, and deprived himself of every comfort, he and his wife, for the maintenance of his daughter's children. He had never got any return for this from the children, who kuew very little about him. And it was full time that Roland should come with his power of making himself agreeable to pay the family debt no harm if he did something for the family fortunes by the way. And it has been seen that the young man fully proved, and at once, the justice of his sister's descrip- tion of him. His grandmother, to be sure, was van- quished by his very name, by a resemblance which iv.] ROLAND. 57 .she found out in his mouth and eyelids to his mother, and by the old love which had never been extinguished, and could not be extinguished in her motherly old bosom. But Hester, by a mere chance encounter in the fire-light, without even seeing him, without knowng his name, had been moved to a degree of interest such as she was not con- scious of having ever felt before. And Catherine Vernon had yielded at once, and without a struggle, to his influence. This was delightful enough, but after all it did not come to very much, for Roland found himself plunged into the midst of a society upon which he had not at all reckoned. The com- munity at the Vernonry was simple ; he was prepared for that, and understood it. But when he went to the Grange and made acquaintance with the closer circle there, the young men to whom Catherine had made over the bank and all its interests, and especially Edward, who was established as if he had been her son, in her house, a change came over Roland's plans and anticipations. He had a strong desire for his own advantage, and inclination to follow that wherever it might lead him ; but he was not malignant in his selfishness. He had no wish to interfere, unless it proved to be absolutely necessary, with another man's career, or to injure his fellow-creatures in promoting his own interest. And it cannot be denied that he felt a shock of disappointment which, as he found when he reasoned with himself on the subject, was somewhat unreasonable. How could he expect the field to be clear for him, and the rich, childless woman 58 HESTER. [CHAP. of fortune left at his mercy ? As if there were not crowds of other people in the world who had a quick eye for their own advantage, and clear sight to see who was likely to serve it ! But these discoveries put him out. They made his mission purposeless. They reduced it to the mere visit to his grandfather, which he had called it, but which he by no means intended it solely to be. After this first shock of disappointment, however, Roland began to find himself at once amused and interested by the new community, into the midst of which he had dropped. The inmates of the Vernonry were all simple enough. To be very poor and obliged to accept favours from a rich relative, yet never to be able to escape the sense of humiliation, and a grudge against those who are better off that is indeed too general : and it is even a conventional necessity of the imagination, that there should be bickerings and private little spites among neighbours so closely thrown together. Ash ton did not see much of the Miss Vernon-Ridgways, who had refused to know him at Catherine's house, nor of their kindred spirit Mr. Mildmay Vernon ; but he could imagine them, and did so easily. Nor was the gentle little widow, who was now on one side now on the other, according as the last speaker moved her, or the young heroine her daughter, difficult to realise. But Catherine, and the closer group of her relations, puzzled him more. That she should gauge them all so exactly, yet go on with them, pouring kindness upon their ungrateful heads with a sort of amusement at their ingratitude, almost iv.] ROLAND. 59 a malicious pleasure in it, surprised him less than that among all who surrounded her there was no one who gave to her a real and faithful devotion. And her faith in Edward, whose impatience of .her bonds was the greatest of all, seemed to> Roland in his spectatorship so pitiful, that he could scarcely help crying out against it to earth and heaven. He was sorry for her all the more that she was so little sorry for herself, and it seemed to him that of all her sur- roundings he was the only one who was sorry for Catherine. Even his old people as he called them, did not fathom that curse of her loneliness. They thought with everybody else that Edward was a true son to her, studying her wishes, and thinking of noth- ing so much as how to please her. It appalled him when he thought of the snarl on Edward's lips, the profound discontent in his soul. It would be cruel above all things to warn her she who felt herself so clear-sighted of the deception she was the victim of ; and yet what could it come to but unhappiness ? Roland felt himself overpowered and almost overawed by this combination. .Nobody but he, it seemed, had divined it. He had walked back with Edward to the Grange after their long talk and consultation, and had taken off his hat with a smile of kindness to the indistinct figure still seated in the window, which Edward recognised with a secret grimace. To see her seated there looking out for their return, was a pleasure to the more genial spirit. It would have pleased him to feel that there was some one who would look out for his coming, who would watch him 60 HESTER. [CHAP. like this, with, tenderness as he went away. But then he had no experience of the kind in his own person, and Edward perhaps had too much of it. While the one went indoors with a bitter sense that he could go nowhere without being watched, the other turned away with a pleasant look back, waving his hand to Catherine Vernon in the window. She was not likely to adopt him, but she was kind to him, a pleasant, handsome old woman, and a most creditable relative. He was glad he had come if it were for that and no more. There were other reasons too why Roland should be glad he had come. He had found a new client, nay, a group of new clients, by whose means he could extend his business and his prospects solid people with real money to risk, not men of straw. Though he was full of aspirations they were all of a practical kind. He meant to make his fortune ; he meant to do the very best for his customers who trusted him as well as for himself, and his spirits rose when he thought what a power of extensive and successful operation would be given him by the money of all these new people who were so eager to face the risks of speculation. They should not suffer by it ; their confidence in him should be repaid, and not only his, but their fortunes would be made. The certainty of this went to his head a little, like wine. It had been well for him to come. It had been the most important step he had ever taken in his life. It was not what he had hoped for, and yet it was the thing above all others that he wanted, a new start for him in the world, and probably the turning-point of his iv.] ROLAND. 61 life. Other matters were small in comparison with this, and approbation or disappointment has little to do with a new customer in any branch of business. As for other interests he might have taken up on the way, the importance of them was nothing. Hester was a pretty girl, and it was natural to him to have an occupation of that sort in hand ; but to suppose that he was sufficiently interested to allow any thought of her to beguile him from matters so much more serious, would have been vain indeed. He felt just such a momentary touch of pique in hearing that she was going to be married, as a woman-beauty does when she hears of any conquests but her own. If she had seen him (Roland) first, she would not have been, he felt, so easily won ; but he laughed at himself for the thought, as perhaps the woman-beauty would scarcely have been moved to do. CHAPTER V. WARNING. " I THINK, if you will let me, I will send down Emma for a little fresh air and to make your acquaintance, grandmother. She is rather of the butterfly order of girls, but there is no harm in her. And as it is likely that I shall have a good deal to do with the Vernons " " What do you want with the Vernons ? Why should you have a good deal to do with them ? " asked Captain Morgan, hastily, and it must be added rather testily, for the old man's usually placid humour had been disturbed of late. " In the most legitimate way," said Ashton. " You can't wish me, now that I am just launched in busi- ness, to shut my eyes to my own advantage. It will be for their advantage too. They are going to be customers of mine. When you have a man's money to invest you have a good deal to do with him. I shall have to come and go in all likelihood often." "Your customers and their money to invest CHAP, v.] WARNING. 63 what do mean by that ? I hope you haven't taken advantage of my relationship with Catherine Vernon to draw in those boys of hers " " Grandfather," said Roland, with an air digne which it was impossible not to respect, " if you think a little you will see how injurious your words are. I cannot for a moment suppose you mean them. Catherine Vernon's boys, as you call them, are nearly as old, and I suppose as capable of judging what is for their advantage, as I am. If they choose to entrust me with their business, is there any reason why I should refuse it ? I am glad to get everything I can." " Yes, sir, there is a reason," said Captain Morgan. " I know what speculation is. I know what happens when a hot-headed young fellow gets a little bit of success, and the gambling fever gets into his veins. Edward Vernon is just the sort of fellow to fall a victim. He is a morose, ill-tempered, bilious being " " Stop," said Roland ; " have a little consideration, sir. There is no question of any victim." " You are just a monomaniac, Rowley, my old man," said Mrs. Morgan. " I know everything you can say," said the old captain. " All that jargon about watching the market, and keeping a cool head, and running no unnecessary risks I know it all. You think you can turn over your money, as you call it, always to your advantage, and keep risk at arm's length." " I do not say so much as that ; but risk may be 64 HESTER. [CHAP. reduced to a minimum, and profit be the rule, when one gives one's mind to it which it is my business to do." " Oh, I know everything you can say," said the -old man. " Give your mind to it ! Give your mind to an honest trade, that's my advice to you. What is it at the best but making money out of the follies of your fellow-creatures ? They take a panic and you buy from them, to their certain loss, and then they take a freak of enthusiasm and you sell to them, to their certain loss. Somebody must always lose in order that you should gain. It is a devilish trade I said so when I heard you had gone into it ; but for God's sake, Roland Ashton, keep that for the outside world, and don't bring ruin and misery here." " What can I say ? " said the young man. He rose up from the table where he had been taking his last meal with the old people. He kept his temper beautifully, Mrs. Morgan thought, with great pride in him. He grew pale and a little excited, as was natural, but never forgot his respect for his grand- father, who, besides that venerable relationship, was an old man. " What can I say ? To tell you that I consider my profession an honourable one would be superfluous, for you can't imagine I should have taken it up had I thought otherwise." " Rowley, my old man," said Mrs. Morgan, " you are just as hot-headed as when you were a boy. But, Roland, you must remember that we have suffered from it ; and everybody says when you begin to gamble in business, it is worse than any other kind of gambling." v.] WARNING. 65 " When you begin ; but there is no need ever to begin, that I can see." " And then, my dear I am not taking up your grandfather's view, but just telling you what he means then, my dear, Catherine Vernon has been very kind to him and me. She is fond of us, I really believe. She trusts us, which to her great hurt, poor thing, she does to few " " Catherine Vernon is a noble character. She has a fine nature. She has a scorn of meanness and everything that is little " The old lady shook her head. " That is true," she said ; " but it is her misfortune, poor thing, that she gets her amusement out of all that, and she believes in few. You must not, Roland," she said, laying her hand upon his arm, " you must not, my dear lad Oh, listen to what my old man says ! You must not be the means of leading into imprudence or danger any one she is fond of she that has been so kind to him and to me ! " The old hand was heavy on his arm, bending him down towards her with an imperative clasp, and this sudden appeal was so unexpected from the placid old woman, who seemed to have outgrown all impas- sioned feeling and lived only to soothe and reconcile opposing influences, that both the young man and the old were impressed by it. Roland Ashton stooped, and kissed his grandmother's forehead. He had a great power in him of response to every call of emotion. " Dear old mother," he said, " if I were a villain VOL. n. F G6 . HESTER. [CHAP. and meant harm, I don't see how I could carry on with it after that. But I want you to believe that I am not a villain," he said, with a half-laugh of feeling. Old Captain Morgan was so touched by the scene that in the weakness of old age and the unexpected- ness of this interposition the tears stood in his eyes. " When you do put your shoulder to the wheel, Mary," he said, with a half-laugh too, and holding out a hand to Roland, with whom for the first time he found himself in perfect sympathy, " you do it like a hero. I'll add nothing to what she has said, my boy. Even at the risk of losing a profit, or failing in a stroke of business, respect the house that has sheltered your family. That's what we both say." "And I have answered, sir," said Roland, "that even if I were bent on mischief I could not persist after such an appeal and I am not bent on mis- chief," he added, this time with a smile ; and so fell into easy conversation about his sister, and the good it would do her to pay the old people a visit. " I am out all day, and she is left to herself. It is dull for her in a little house at Kilburn, all alone though she says she likes it," he went on, glad, as indeed they all were, to get down to a milder level of conversation. The old captain had not taken kindly to the idea of having Emma ; but after the moment of sympa- thetic emotion which they had all passed through, there was no rejecting so very reasonable a petition. And on the whole, looking back upon it, now that the v.] WARNING. 67 young man's portmanteau stood packed in the and he himself was on the eve of departure, even the captain could not deny that there had been on the whole more pleasure in Roland's visit than he had at all expected. However he might modify the account of his own sensations, it had certainly been agreeable to meet a young fellow of his own blood, his descendant, a man among the many women with whom he was surrounded, and one who, even when they disagreed, could support his opinions, and was at least intelligent, whatever else. He had received him with unfeigned reluctance, almost forgetting who his mother was in bitter and strong realisation that he was his father's son and bore his father's name. But personal encounter had so softened everything, that though Roland actually resembled his objection- able father, the captain parted from him with regret. And, after all, why should not Emma come ? She was a girl, which in itself softened everything (not- withstanding that the captain had recognised as a distinct element in Roland's favour that he was a man, and so a most desirable interruption to the flood of womankind but nobody is bound to be con- sistent in these matters). It was good of her brother, as soon as he was afloat in the world, to take upon himself the responsibility of providing for Emma, and on the whole the captain, always ready to be kind, saw no reason for refusing to be kind to this lonely girl because she was of his own flesh and blood. He drew much closer to his grandson during these last few hours than he had done yet. He went F 2 68 HESTER. [CHAP. out with him to make his adieux to Mrs. John and her daughter. And Hester came forward to give them her hand with that little enlargement about the eyes, which was a sure sign of some emotion in her mind. She had seen a great deal of Hoi and, and his going away gave her a pang which she scarcely explained to herself. It was so much life subtracted from the scanty circle. She too, like Edward, felt that she wanted air, and the departure of one who had brought so much that was new into her restricted existence was a loss that was all. She had assured herself so half-a-dozen times this morning therefore no doubt it was true. As for Roland, it was not in him to part from such a girl without an attempt at least to intensify this effect. He drew her towards the window, apart from the others, to watch, as he said, for the coming of the slow old fly from Red borough which was to convey him away. " My sister is coming," he said, " and I hope you will be friends. I will instruct her to bring in my name on every possible occasion, that you may not altogether forget me." " There is no likelihood that we shall forget you ; we see so few people here." " And you call that a consolatory reason ! I shall see thousands of people, but I shall not forget you." It was Roland's way to use' no name. He said you as if there was nobody but yourself who owned that pronoun, with an inference that in thinking of the woman before him, whoever she might be, he, in his heart, identified her from all women. v.] WARNING. 60 Hester was embarrassed by his eyes and his tone, but not displeased. He had pleased her from the first. There is a soft and genial interest excited in the breasts of women by such a man, at which everybody smiles and which few acknowledge, yet which is not the less dangerous for that. It rouses a prepossession in his favour, whatever may come of it afterwards ; and he had done his best to fill up all his spare moments, when he was not doing some- thing else, in Hester's company. It would be vain to say that this homage had not been sweet, and it had been entertaining, which is so great a matter. It had opened out a new world to her, and expanded all her horizon. With his going all these new outlets into life would be closed again. She felt a certain terror of the place without Roland. He had imported into the air an excitement, an expectation. The prospect of seeing him was a prospect full of novelty and interest, and even when he did not come, there had always been that expectation to brighten the dimness. Now there could be no ex- pectation, not even a disappointment ; and Hester's eyes were large, and had a clearness of emotion in them. She might have cried indeed, it seemed very likely that she had cried at the thought of his going away, and would cry again. ' ' Though I don't know," he. added, leaning against the recess of the window, and so shutting her in where she stood looking out, " why I should leave so many thoughts here, for I don't suppose they will do rne any good. They tell me that your mind will be 70 HESTER. [CHAP. too fully, and, alas, too pleasantly occupied. Yes, I say alas ! and alas again ! I am not glad you will be so pleasantly occupied. I had rather you were dull a little, that you might have time now and then to remember me." " You are talking a great deal of nonsense, Mr. Ashton but that is your way. And how am I to be so pleasantly occupied ? I am glad to hear it, but I certainly did not know. What is going to happen ? " " Is this hypocrisy, or is it kindness to spare me ? Or is it ? They tell me that I ought to congratulate you," said Roland with a sigh. " Congratulate me ? On what ? I suppose," said Hester, growing red, " there is only one thing upon which girls are congratulated : and that does not exist in my case." " May I believe you ? " he said, putting his hands together with a supplicating gesture, " may I put faith in you ? But it seemed on such good authority. Your cousin Edward " " Did Edward tell you so ? " Hester grew so red that the flush scorched her. She was angry and mortified and excited. Her interest changed, in a moment, from the faint interest which she had felt in the handsome young deceiver before her, to a feeling more strong and deeply rooted, half made out of repulsion, half bitter, half injured, yet more powerful in attraction than any other sentiment of her mind. Roland was ill-pleased that he was superseded by this other feeling. It was a sensation v.] WARNING. 71 quite unusual to him, and he did not like it. " He had no right to say so," said Hester; "he knew it was not true." " All is fair in love and war," said Roland ; "perhaps he wished it to be not true." " I do not know what he wishes, and I do not care ! " Hester cried, after a pause, with a passion which did not carry out her words. " He has never been a friend to me," she said hastily. " He might have helped me, he might have been kind not that I want his help or any one's," cried the girl, her passion growing as she went on. Then she came to a dead stop, and gave Roland a rapid look, to see how much he had divined of her real feelings. " But he need not have said what was not true," she added in a subdued tone. " I forgive him," said Roland, "because it is not true. If it had been true it would not have been so easy to forgive. I am coming back again, and I should have seen you changed. It was too much. Now I can look forward with unmingled pleasure. It is one's first duty, don't you think, to minister to the pleasure of one's grandparents ? they are old ; one ought to come often, as often as duty will permit." Hester looked up to him with a little surprise, the transition was so sudden ; and, to tell the truth, the tumult in her own mind was not so entirely subdued that she could bestow her full attention upon Roland's double entendre. He laughed. " One would think, by your look, 72 HESTER. [CHAP. that you did not share my fine sense of duty," he said ; " but you must not frown upon it. 1 am coming soon, very soon, again. A fortnight ago the place was only a name to me ; but now it is a name that I shall remember for ever," he added with fervour. Hester looked at him this time with a smile upon her mouth. She had recovered herself and come back to the diversion of his presence, the amuse- ment and novelty he had brought. A half sense of the exaggeration and sentimental nonsense of his speech was in her smile ; and he was more or less conscious of it too. When their eyes met they both laughed; and yet she was not displeased, nor he untouched by some reality of feeling. The exaggeration was humorous, and the sentiment not altogether untrue. " Do you say that always when you leave a place ? " Hester said. " Very often," he acknowledged ; and they both laughed again, which, to her at least, was very welcome, as she had been doubly on the verge of tears for anger and for regret. " But seldom as I do now," he added, "you may believe me. The old people are better and kinder than I had dreamt of ; it does one good to be near them ; and then I have helped myself on in the world by this visit, but that you will not care for. And then " Here Roland broke off abruptly, and gazed, as his fashion was, as feeling the impotence of words to convey all that the heart would say. v.] WAKNING. 73 It was very shortly after this that the white horse which drew the old fly from Redborough the horse which was supposed to have been chosen for this quality, that it could be seen a long way off to console the souls of those who felt it could never arrive in time was seen upon the road, and the last moment had visibly come. Not the less for the commotion and tumult or other feelings through which her heart had gone, did Hester acknowledge the emotions which belonged to this leave-taking. The depth and sadness of Roland's eyes those expressive eyes which said so many things, the pathos of his mouth, the lingering clasp in which he held her hand, all affected her. There was a magic about him which the girl did not resist, though she was conscious of the other side of it, the faint mixture of the fictitious which did not impair its charm. She stood and watched him from the low window of the parlour which looked that way, while the fly was being laden, with a blank countenance. She felt the corners of her mouth droop, her eyes widen, her face grow longer. It was as if all the novelty, the variety, the pleasure of life were going away. It was a dull afternoon, which was at once congenial as suiting the circum- stances and oppressive as enhancing the gloom. She watched the portmanteau put in as if she had been watching a funeral. When Roland stepped in after his grandfather, who in the softness of the moment had offered, to the great surprise of every- body, to accompany him to the station, Hester still 74 HESTER. [CHAP. looked on with melancholy gravity. She was almost on a level with them where she stood looking out ; her mother all smiles, kissing her hand beside her. " I wish you would show a little interest, Hester," Mrs. John said. "You might at least wave your hand. If it were only for the old captain's sake whom you always profess to be so fond of." Roland at this moment leant out of the window of the fly and took off his hat to her for the last time. Mrs. John thought it was barbarous to take no notice. She redoubled her own friendly salutations ; but Hester stood like a statue, forcing a faint ghost of a smile, but not moving a finger. She stood thus watching them long after they had driven away, titi they had almost disappeared in the smoke of Red- borough. She saw the fly stop at the Grange and Miss Catherine come out to the door to take leave of him : and then the slow vehicle disappeared alto- gether. The sky seemed to lean down almost touching the ground ; the stagnant afternoon air had not a breath to move it. Hester said to herself that nothing more would happen now. She knew the afternoon atmosphere, the approach of tea, the scent of it in the air, the less ethereal bread-and- butter, and then the long dull evening. It seemed endless to look forward, as if it never would be night. And Mrs. John, as soon as the fly was out of sight, had drawn her chair towards the fire and O * begun to talk. " I am sure I am very sorry he has gone," Mrs. John said. " I did not think I should have liked him at first, but I declare I like him very v.] WARNING. 75 much now. How long is it since he came, Hester ? Only a fortnight ! I should have said three weeks at least. I 'think it was quite unnatural of the captain to talk of him as he did, for I am sure he is a very nice young man. Where are you going ? not I hope for one of your long walks : for the night closes in very early now, and it will soon be time for tea." "Don't you think, mamma," said Hester, some- what hypocritically, "that it would be kind to go in and keep Mrs. Morgan company a little, as she will be quite alone ? " " That is always your way as soon as I show any inclination for a little talk," said her mother pro- voked, not without reason. Then she softened, being at heart the most good-natured of women. " Perhaps you are right," she said, " the old lady will be lonely. Give her my love, and say I should have come to see her myself, but that " Mrs. John paused for a reason, " but that I am afraid for my neuralgia," she added triumphantly. "You know how bad it was the other day." Thus sanctioned Hester threw her grey " cloud " round her, and ran round to console Mrs. Morgan, while her mother arranged herself comfortably with a footstool, a book upon the table beside her, and her knitting, but with a furtive inclination towards an afternoon nap, which the greyness of the day, the early failing light in the dark wainscoted parlour, and the absence of all movement about her, natur- ally inclined her to. Mrs. John was at the age 76 HESTER. [CHAP. when we are very much ashamed of the afternoon nap, and she was well provided with semblances of occupation in case any one should come. But Mrs. Morgan was far beyond any such simple deceit. Eighty has vast advantages in this way. When she felt disposed to doze a little she was quite pleased, almost proud of the achievement. She had indeed a book on the table with her spectacles carefully folded into it, but she did not require any occupation. " I had a kind of feeling that you would come, my pet," she said as Hester appeared. " When I want you very much I think some kind little angel must go and tap you on the shoulder, for you always come." " The captain would say it is a brain-wave," said Hester. " The captain says a great deal of nonsense, my dear," said the old lady with a smile, " but think of him going with Roland to the station ! He has been vanquished, quite vanquished which is a great pleasure to me. And Emma is coming. 1 hope she will not wear out the good impression " " Is she not so nice ? " Hester asked. The old lady looked her favourite intently in the face. She saw the too great clearness of Hester's eyes, and that her mouth was not smiling, but drawn downward ; and a vague dread filled her mind. She was full of love and charity, but she was full of insight too ; and though she loved Roland, she did not think it would be to the advantage of cHester to love him. v.] WARNING. 77 " Roland is very nice," she said. " Poor boy, per- haps that is his temptation. It is his nature to please whomsoever he comes across. It is a beautiful kind of nature ; but I am not sure that it is not very dangerous both for himself and others." It was fortunate that Hester did not divine what her friend meant. " Dangerous to please ? " she said, with a little curiosity. She liked Roland so much, that even rom the lips of those who had more right to him Jian she had, she did not like to hear blame. "To wish to please everybody," said the old lady. " My poor lad ! that is his temptation. Your grandfather, if he were here my dear, I beg your pardon. I have got into the way of saying it : as if my old man was your grandfather too." " I like it," Hester said, with the only gleam of her usual frank and radiant smile which Mrs. Morgan had yet seen. But this made the old lady only more afraid. '' There is nobody he could be more fatherly to," she said. " What I meant was that if he were here, he would have something ready out of a book, as you and he are always going on with your poetries ; but I never was a poetry woman, as you know. Life is all my learning. And I have seen people that have had plenty of heart, Hester, if they had given it fair play but frittered it away on one and another, trying to give a piece to each, making each believe that she (for it is mostly upon women that the spell works) was the one above all others. But you are 78 HESTER. [CHAP. so young, my darling; you will not know what I mean." A faint, uneasy colour, came on Hester's face. " I think I know what you mean," she said. " I understand how you should think so of Mr. Ashton. You don't see so well as you did, dear Mrs. Morgan, when you have not got your spectacles on. If you did, you would see that when he talks like that, he is ready to laugh all the time." " Is that so, my love ? Then I am very glad to hear you say so," cried the old lady. But she knew very well that her supposed want of sight was a delusion, and that Hester knew it was only for reading that she ever used her spectacles. She felt, however, all the more that her warning had been taken, and that it was unnecessary to proceed further. " You are young and sweet," she said, " my dear : but the best thing still is that you have sense. Oh, what it is to have sense ! it is the best blessing in life." Hester made no reply to this praise. Her heart was beating more quickly than usual. What she had said was quite true : but all the time, though he had been ready to laugh, and though she had been ready to laugh, she was aware that there was something more. The tone of banter had not been all. The sense of something humorous, under those high-flown phrases, had not exhausted them. She was intended to laugh, indeed, if they did not secure another sentiment; but the first aim, and perhaps the last aim, of the insidious Roland, had been to v .] WARNING. 7i) secure this other sentiment. Hester did not enter into these distinctions, but she felt them ; and when she thus put forward Mrs. Morgan's failing sight, it was with a natural casuistry which she knew would be partially seen through, and yet would have its effect. This made her feel that there was no reply to be made to the praise of her " sense," which the old lady had given. Was it her cunning that the old lady meant to praise ? There was a little silence, and the subject of Roland was put aside, not perhaps quite to the satisfaction of either ; but there was nothing more that could be said. And presently the old captain came back, groaning a little over his long walk. " Why do you never remind me," he said, " what an old fool I am ? To drive in that jingling affair, and to walk back two miles if it is a yard well, then, a mile and a half. My dear, what was half a mile when you and I were young is two miles now, and not an inch less ; but I have seen him off the premises. And now, Hester, we shall have our talks again, and our walks again, without any interruption ' " Do not speak so fast, Rowley. There is Emma coming; and Hester will like a girl to talk with, and to walk with, better than an old fellow like you." " That old woman insults me," said the captain. " She thinks I am as old as she is but Hester, you and I know better. You are looking anxious, my child. Do you think we are a frivolous old pair 80 HESTER. [CHAP. talking as we ought not two old fools upon the brink of the grave-? " "Captain Morgan! I, to have such a thought! And what should I do without you ? " cried Hester, in quick alarm. This brought the big tears to her eyes, and perhaps she was glad, for various, causes, to have a perfectly honest and comprehen- sible cause in the midst of her agitation, for those tears. " This was brought to my mind very clearly to- day," said the old captain. " When I saw that young fellow go off, a man in full career of his life, and thought of his parents swept away, the mother whom you know I loved, Mary, as dearly as a man ever loves his child, and the father whom I hated, both so much younger than we are, and both gone for years; and here are we still living, as if we had been forgotten somehow. We just go on in our usual, from day to day, and it seems quite natural ; but when you think of all of them gone and we two still here " " We are not forgotten," said the old lady, in her easy chair, smiling upon him, folding those old hands which were now laid up from labour, hands that had worked hard in their day. " We have .some purpose to serve yet, or we would not be here." " I suppose so I suppose so," said the old man, with a sigh ; and then he struck his stick upon the floor, and cried out, " but not, God forbid it, as the instruments of evil to the house that has sheltered WARNING. 81 us, Mary ! My heart misgives me. I would like at least, before anything comes of it, that we should be out of the way, you and I." " You were always a man of little faith," his wife said. " Why should you go out of your way to meet the evil, that by God's good grace will never come ? It will never come ; we have not been preserved for that. You would as soon teach me Job's lesson as to believe that, my old man." " What was Job's lesson ? It was, ' Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,' " Captain Morgan said. " Oh, my Rowley ! " cried the old lady, " I was wrong to say you were of little faith ! It is you that are the faithful one, and not me. I am just nothing beside you, as I have always been." The old captain took his wife's old hands in his, and gave her a kiss upon her faded cheek, and they smiled upon each other, the two who had been one for nearly sixty years. Meanwhile, Hester sitting by, looked on with large eyes of wonder and almost affright. She did not know what it meant. She could not divine what it could be that made them differ, yet made them agree. What harm could they do to the house that sheltered them, two old, good, peaceful people, who were kind to everybody ? She gazed at them with her wondering young eyes, and did what she could to fathom the mystery : then retired from it, thinking it perhaps some little fad of the old people, which she had no knowledge of, nor VOL. II. G 82 HESTER. [CHAP. v. means of understanding. The best people, Hester thought, when they grew old take strange notions into their heads, and trouble themselves about nothing ; and of course they missed Roland. She broke in upon them in that moment of feeling, as soon as she dared speak for wonder, making an effort to amuse them, and bring them back to their usual ways ; and that effort was not in vain. CHAPTER VI. DANCING TEAS. IT was shortly after the departure of Roland that a new era dawned for Hester in social life. Mrs. Algernon Merridew had felt from the moment of her return from Abroad that there was a work for her to do in Redborough. It was not the same as in her maiden days, when she had been at the head of Harry's household, wonderfully enfranchised indeed, but still somewhat under the awe of Aunt Catherine. But now she was altogether independent, and nobody had any right to make suggestions as to who she should invite or how she should entertain, to a married lady, with an admiring husband, not to speak of brother and sisters-in-law, eagerly anticipating social elevation by her means, at her back. Ellen was not ill-natured. She was very willing to promote the happiness and prosperity of others, so long as she could do so without any diminution of her own a negative goodness which the world at large is very well pleased to acknowledge as satisfactory. And it G 2 84 HESTER. [CHAP. is not at all probable that the representations of Harry, or the good-humoured suggestions of Algernon inspired by Harry, to the effect that it would be sublimely good of her to take up and brighten the life of Hester, would have come to very much, had it not at the same time occurred to Ellen that Hester was the best assistant she could have on her own side of the house, in the indispensable work of making her Thursdays "go." Rather than that they should not " go," she would have embraced her worst enemy, had she possessed one ; and she did not care to rely upon the Merridew girls, feeling as she did that she had condescended in entering their family, and that they must never be allowed to forget that they owed everything to her, and she nothing to them. But at the same time she required a feminine auxiliary, a somebody to be her right hand, and help to make everything "go." The result of her cogitations on this subject was that she set out for the Vemonry one afternoon in the little victoria, which Algernon, rather tremulous about the cost, had set up for her, and which, with the smart coachman who for the moment condescended to be gardener too, and the boy on the box who was of quite a fashionable size, looked a very imposing little equipage. Ellen lay back in her little carriage enveloped in her new seal- skin, with a little hat of the same upon her head, and a muff also of the same, and her light hair looking all the brighter against that dark background, with bracelets enough to make a jingle wherever she went, and which she had to push up upon her arm from vi j DANCING TEAS. 85 time to time, and a violet scent about herself and all her garments, at least the scent which is called violet at Piesse and Lubin's, which served her purpose. When she drove up in this state, it may be supposed what a nutter she made in the afternoon atmosphere. The inmates of the Vernonry rushed to their windows. " It is that little doll Ellen, come to show ofi' more of her finery," said one sister. " I wonder why she comes here, when you set her down so, Matilda," said the other. They kept behind the curtains, one over the other's shoulder, that she might not see how curious they were. But when Ellen floated in at the verandah door, and was evidently gone to see Mrs. John, their astonishment was boundless. They shrugged their shoulders and interchanged glances with Mr. Mild- may Vernon, who, with his newspaper in his hand, had appeared at his window. . "Did he think she was going to see him?" Miss Matilda said, even while addressing these satires in pan- tomime to him. " What interest can he take in Ellen ? It is just prying and curiosity, and nothing more." The gentleman's comments were not more friendly. He chuckled as he saw where Ellen was going. " The old cats will think it a visit to them, and they will be disappointed," he said to himself, all the same shrugging his shoulders back again to Miss Matilda. They kept on the watch all the time the visit lasted, and it was a long one. The sisters discussed the victoria, the horse, the little footman, the great fur rug which Ellen threw off as she 86 HESTER. [CHAP. jumped lightly out of the carriage. It was somewhat hard indeed that a little minx like Ellen should have all these things, and her seniors, her betters, who would have enjoyed them so much, none of them. But so it always is in this unjust world. On the other side of the partition from where the sisters were sitting, Ellen's appearance had caused an almost equal sensation. She was not looked for, and the proposal she made was a very startling one. " I am going to begin my Thfe Dansantes, and I want you to help me," she said abruptly. " I want you to be my right hand ; just like my sister. You know I can't do everything myself. Mrs. John, you shall come too, I never intended to leave you out ; but I want Hester to help me, for she is the only one that can help me. She is really my cousin. Clara and Connie are only rny sisters-in-law, and I don't care to have them about me in that position. It would be nice for me, and it would be giving Hester the best of chances. Now, Mrs. John, I am sure you will see it in that light. What could be better for a girl ? All that she will meet will be the best sort of people : and she would have her chance." " I don't know what you mean by having my chance and I don't want any chance," said Hester, in a flush of shame and indignation ; but Ellen put her down with a wave of her gloved hand and arm, all tinkling with bangles. " Of course you don't know anything about it," she said, " an unmarried girl ! We don't want you to know. Your mother and I will talk about that ; but M] DANCING TEAS. 87 you can understand that a nice dance in a nice house like ours will be something pleasant. And you would be there not just like a visitor, but like one of the family, and get a good deal of attention, and as many partners as ever you liked." " Of course, Ellen, of course," cried Mrs. John. " I am sure / understand you. It would be very nice for Hester. At her age every girl likes a little gaiety, and in my position I have never been able to give it to her. It was very different when my hus- band was alive, when we were in the White House. I am sure I have never grudged it to you, but it made a great difference. I was not brought up to this sort of thing. I had my balls, and my parties, as many as could be wished, when I was Hester's age. If her poor papa had lived, and we had' stayed in the White House, she would have held a very different position. It gives me a little prick, you will under- stand, to think of Hester wanting anybody to be kind to her ; but still, as it is so, and as you are her relation, I never could object. You will find no objection from me." " No, I should think not," cried Ellen, throwing back her warm coat. It was at the time when seal- skins were rare, when they were just " coming in," and Mrs. John looked at it with admiration. She did not ask, as the Miss Vernon-Bidgways did, why this little minx should have everything ; but she remembered with a little regret the days when she too had everything that a young woman could de- sire, and wondered, with a little flutter at her heart, 88 HESTER. [CHAP. whether when Hester married she would have a sealskin and a victoria, and all the other crowns of happiness. She looked with something of a pathetic look at her daughter. Ah ! if she could but see Hester as Ellen was ! Meanwhile Hester was elevating her young head as was natural, in special scorn of the " chance " which her cousin meant to secure for her, and in defiance altogether of the scheme, which nevertheless (for she was but human and nineteen, and the prospect of a dance every week took away her breath) moved her in spite of herself. " When I was a child," Hester said, " when you first came to see us, Cousin Ellen, you said you must see a great deal of me, that I must go to your house, that you and Harry would take me out, that I should have a share in your pleasures. Perhaps my mother and you don't remember but I do. How I used to look out for you every morn- ing ; how I used to watch at the window, thinking they will surely come or send, or take some notice to-day. I was very young, you know, and believed everything, and wished so much to drive about and to go to parties. But you never came." " To think she should remember all that ! " cried Ellen, a little abashed. " Of course I didn't. Why, you were only a child. One said so to please you ; but how can you suppose one meant anything ? What could I have done with you then a little thing among lots of people ? Why, you wouldn't have been allowed to come ! It would have been vi.] DANCING TEAS. 89 bad for you. You would have heard things you oughtn't to hear. You wouldn't have let her come, would you, Mrs. John ? " " Certainly not, my dear," said Mrs. John, promptly. To tell the truth, it was she who had complained the most though it was Hester who had been most indignant. She forgot this, however, in the new interest of the moment. "It would never have done," she said, with all sincerity. "Your cousin, of course, only spoke to please you, Hester. I never could have permitted you, a little thing at your lessons, to plunge into pleasure at that age." " Then why " cried Hester, open-mouthed ; but when she had got so far she paused. What was the use of saying any more ? She looked at them both with her large brown eyes, full of light and wonder, and a little indignation and a little scorn, then stopped and laughed, and changed the subject. "When I go to Cousin Catherine's," she said, "which I never do when I can help it, we stand in a corner all the evening, my mother and I. We are thankful when any one speaks to us the curate's daughters and the ~Miss Keynoldses and we There is never anybody to take us in to supper. All the Redborough people sweep past while mamma stands waiting; and then perhaps some gentleman who has been down once before takes pity, and says, ' Haven't you been down to supper, Mrs. Vernon ? Dear me ! then let me take you.' You will please to remember that my mother is Mrs. Vernon, Ellen, and not Mrs. John." 90 HESTER. [CHAP. "I only say it for short," said Ellen, apologeti- cally ; " and how can I help what happens at Aunt Catherine's ? I don't go in for her ways. I don't mean to do as she does. Why do you talk of Aunt Catherine to me ? " " It is only to let you see that I will not be treated so," the girl said with indignation. " If you think I will go to your house like that, just because you are a relation, I won't, Ellen ; and you had better under- stand this before we begin." " What a spitfire it is ! " said Ellen, raising her hand with a toss of all her bracelets to brush Hester's downy cheek with a playful touch. " To think she should put all these things down in her book against us ! I should never remember if it were me. I should be furious for the moment, and then I should forget all about it. Now, Hester, you look here. I am not asking you for your own pleasure, you silly ; I am asking you to help me. Don't you see that makes all the difference ? You are no good to Aunt Catherine. She doesn't need you. She asks you only for civility. But it stands to reason, you know, that I can't look after all the people myself if I am to have any of the fun. I must have some one to help me. Of course you will have every attention paid you ; for, don't you see, you are wanted. I can't get on without you. Oh, of course, that makes all the difference ! I am sure your mamma understands very well, even if you are too young and too silly to understand ! " " Yes, Hester, your cousin is quite right," said Mrs. vi.] DANCING TEAS. 91 John, eagerly. The poor lady was so anxious to secure her child's assent to what she felt would be so manifestly for her advantage that she was ready to back up everything that Ellen said. A spark of animation and new life had lighted up in Mrs. John's eyes. It was not a very elevated kind of hope per- haps, yet no hope that is centred in the successes of another is altogether ignoble. She wanted to see her child happy ; she wanted Hester to have her chance, as Ellen said. That she should be seen and admired and made much of, was, Mrs. John felt, the first object in her life. It would not be without some cost to herself, but she did not shrink from the idea of the lonely evenings she would have to spend, or the separation that might ensue. Her mind, which was not a great mind, jumped forward into an instant calculation of how the evening dresses could be got, at what sacrifice of ease or comfort. She did not shrink from this, whatever it might be. Neither did she let any visionary pride stand in her way as Hester did. She was ready to forgive, to forget, to condone all offences and in the long dis- cussion and argument that followed, Mrs. John was almost more eloquent than Ellen on the mutual advantages of the contract. She saw them all the instant they were set before her. She was quite tremulous with interest and expectation. She ran over with approval and beaming admiration as Ellen unfolded her plans. " Oh, yes, I can quite under- stand ; you want to strike out something original," cried Mrs. John. " You must not think I agree with 92 HESTER. [CHAP. Hester about Catherine's parties. I think Cathe- rine's parties are very nice ; and relations, you know, must expect to give way to strangers, especially when there are not enough of gentle- men ; but it will be much pleasanter for you to strike out something original. I should have liked it when I was in your circumstances, but I don't think I had the energy. And I am sure if Hester can be of any use Oh, my darling ! of course you will like it very much. You always are ready to help, and you have plenty of energy far more than I ever had and so fond of dancing too ; and there are so few dances in Redborough. Oh, yes, I think it is a capital plan, Ellen ! and Hester will be delighted to help you. It will be such an open- ing for her," Mrs. John said, with tears of pleasure in her eyes. Hester did not say much while the talk ran on. She was understood to fall into the scheme, and that was all that was necessary. But when Ellen, after a prolonged visit and a detailed explanation to Mrs. John, which she received with the greatest excitement and interest, of all her arrangements as to the music, the suppers, and every other particular they could think of between them, rose to take heir leave, she put her hand within Hester's arm, and drew her aside for a few confidential words. " Don't think of coming to the door," she said to Mrs. John ; " it is so cold you must not stir. Hester will see me out. There is one thing I must say to you, dear," she added, raising herself to Hester's ear VL] DANCING TEAS. 93 when they were out of the mother's hearing, " and you are not to take it amiss. It must be a condi- tion beforehand now please, Hester, mind, and don't be offended. You must promise me that you will have nothing to say to either of the boys." The quick flush of offence sprang to Hester's face. " I don't know what you mean. You mean something you have no right to say, Ellen ! " " I have a very good right to say it for I'm a married lady, and you are only a girl, and of course I must know best. You are not to have anything to say to the boys. Any one else you like. I am sure I don't mind, but will do anything I can to help but not the boys. Oh, I know something about Harry. I know you have had the sense to Well, I don't understand how far it went, but I suppose it must have gone as far as it could go, for he's not clever enough to be put off with anything less than a real No. But you may have changed your mind, or a hundred things might happen. And then there's Edward ; Aunt Catherine would be wild if anything got up between you and Edward. Oh, I think it's always best to speak plain, and then one has nothing to reproach one's self with after. She would just be wild, you know. She thinks there is nobody good enough for him ; and you and she have never got on. Oh, I don't suppose there's anything between you and Edward. I never said so ; the only thing is you must promise me to have nothing to say to them. There are plenty of 94 HESTER. [CHAP. others much better matches, and more eligible : and it's always a pity to have anything to say to a cousin in that way. You're sure to set the family by the ears; and then it narrows the connection, and you keep always the same name ; and there are ever so many drawbacks. So just you promise me, Hester, there's a dear never." said Ellen, seizing * * ^ o her with both hands, and giving her a sudden per- fumy kiss, " never ! " and the salute was repeated on the other cheek, " to hswe-Mny thing to say to the boys " " The boys ! if you think I care anything for the boys! I shall have nothing to say to anybody," cried Hester, with indignation, drawing herself out of this too urgent embrace. Ellen tossed back all her bracelets, and shook her golden locks and her seal- skin hat, and made an agitation in the air of scent and sound and movement. "Oh, that's being a great deal too good," she cried. Hester stood at the door, and looked on while Mrs. Algernon got into her victoria and drew the fur rug over her, and was driven away, waving the hand and the bracelets in a parting jingle. The girl was not envious, but half-contemptuous, feeling herself in her poverty as much superior to this butterfly in furs and feathers, as pride could desire. Hester did little credit to the social gifts, or the popularity or reputed cleverness in her own way, of her gay cousin who had been the inspiration of Harry, and now was the guide of Algernon Merridew. She said vi.] DANCING TEAS. 95 to herself with the downrightness of youth, that Ellen was a little fool. But her own cheeks were blazing with this parting dart which had been thrown at her. The boys ' She had a softened feeling of amity towards Harry, who had done all a stupid young man could do to overcome the sentence of disapproval under which Hester was aware she lay. It had been embarrassing and uncomfortable, and had made her anything but grateful at the moment ; but now she began to feel that Harry had indeed behaved like a man, and done all that a man could to remedy her false position, and give her a substan- tial foundation for the native indomitable pride which none of them could crush, though they did their best. No ; she would have, nothing to say to Harry. She shook her head to herself, and laughed at the thought, all in the silence of the verandah, where she stood hazily gazing out through the dim greenish glass at Ellen, long after Ellen had disappeared. But Edward ! that was a different matter altogether. She would give no word so far as he was concerned. Edward was altogether different from Harry. He piqued and excited her curiosity ; he kept her mind in a tremor of interest. She could not cease thinking of him when she was in his neighbourhood, wondering what he would do, what he would say. And if it did make Catherine wild, as Ellen said, that was but an inducement the more in Hester's indignant soul. She had no wish to please Catherine Vernon. There had not been any love lost between them from the first, and Hester was glad to think she was not one 96 HESTER. [CHAP. of those who had in any way pretended to her kins- woman's favour. She had never sought Catherine, never bowed the knee before her. When she went to the Grange it had been against her will, as a matter of obedience to her mother, not to Catherine. If it made Catherine wild to think that there was a friend- ship, or any other sentiment between Edward and the girl whom she had so slighted, then let Catherine be wild. That was no motive to restrain Hester's freedom of action. All this passed through her mind as she stood in the verandah in the cold, gazing after Ellen, long after Ellen was out of sight. There were many things which gave her a sort of attraction of repul- sion to Edward. He had tried to deceive Roland Ashton about her, telling him she was about to marry Harry, when he knew very well she had refused to marry Harry. Why had he done it? And in his manner to herself Edward was two men. When they were alone he was more than friendly ; he was tender, insinuating, anxious for her approval, eager to unfold himself to her. But when he saw her in the Grange drawing-room he never went near her. In early times she had asked why, and he had answered with deceiving words, asking how she thought he could bear to approach her with common- place civilities when she was the only creature in the place for whom he cared at all, a speech which had pleased Hester at first as something high-flown and splendid, but which had not preserved its effect as time went on : for she could not see why he should not be civil, and show some regard for her presence, vi.j DANCING TEAS. 97 even if he could not devote himself to her. And why could he not devote himself to her ? Because it would displease Catherine. When Catherine was not present, there was nobody for him but Hester. When Catherine was there, he was unconscious of her existence. This, of course, should have shown clearly to Hester that he was not worthy of her regard, and to some degree did so. But the con- viction was mingled with so lively a curiosity in respect to him, so strong an opposition as regarded her, that Hester's moral judgment was confused altogether. She was anxious, eager to overcome her adversary, excited to know what Edward's meaning was. He would not stand up for her like a true friend, but at the same time he would never let her alone, he would still let her see that she was in his mind. She disliked him, yet She almost loved him, but still Nothing could be more tantalising, more entirely unlike indifference. To think of meeting Edward in society, yet not under Catherine's eye, made her heart beat loudly. She had never done this hitherto. She had met him by chance on the Common or in the country roads about, and his voice had been almost that of a lover. She had met him before the world, and he had scarcely seemed to know her. But how could these meetings test what he meant ? This it was that made Ellen's proposal exciting, even while she herself half scorned it. Harry ? no ! Poor Harry ! she would not disturb his peace, nor say a word, nor even look a look which should put him in jeopardy. But Edward ? VOL. II. H 98 HESTER. [CHAP. ah ! that was a different matter. It was with all the vehemence of a quarrel that she snatched at the chance put into her hands, even when she had seemed to scorn it. To know what he meant to know what was his real state of mind. If he would be afraid of what the world would say, as well as of what Catherine would say in that case there was n