BERKELEY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA '^. /f 2.^ Che Jlutftor's edition MOUNT ROYAL NOVELS BY THE SAME AUTHOR* Lady Audleyt Secret Henry Dtuibar. Eleanor's Victory. Aurora Floyd. John Marchmont's Legacy, The Doctor's Wife. Only a Clod. Sir Jasper's Tenant. Trail of the Serpent. The Lady's Mile. Lady Lisle. Captain of the Vulture. Birds of Prey. Charlotte's Inheritance. Rupert Godwin. Run to Earth. Dead Sea Fruit. Ralph the Bailiff. Fenton's Quest. Lovels of Arden. Robert Ainsleigrh. To the Bitter End. MUly Darrell. Strangers and Pilgrims. Lucius Davoren. Taken at the Flood. Lost for Love. A Strange World. Hostages to Fortune. Dead Men's Shoes. Joshua Haggard. Weavers and Weft, An Open Verdict. Vixen. The Cloven Foot. The Story of Barbara. Just as I am. Asphodel Mount RoyaL The Golden Calf. Phantom Fortune, Flower and Weed. Ishmael. Wyllard's Weird. Under the Red Flag. One Thing Needful. Mohawks. Like and Unlike. The Fatal Three. The Day will come. One Life, One Lpve, Gerard. The Venetians. All along the River. Thou art the Man. The Christmas Hirelings. Sons of Fire. London Pride. Under Love's Rule, Rough Justice. In High Places. His Darling Sin. The InfideL The Conflict. A Lost Eden. The Rose of Life. The White House. Her Convict. Dead Love has Chains. During Her Majesty's Pleasure. Our Adversary. Beyond These Voices. I The Green Curtain. Miranda. ]y[oUNT ROYAL BY M. E. BRADDON Author of " LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," " VIXEN," ''LONDON PRIDE," ETC. eK*) Xont)on SmPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., Ltd. t>rintel> for the Butbor 3Bt! TCliUiam Clowes & Sons, Xiinitcbj* %on&on anl> JBeccles. CONTENTS m CHAP. PAGE L The Days that are No More . • . . 5 II. But then came One the Lovelace of hi3 Dat 18 III. *TiNTAOEL, Half iw Sea, and Half on Land" 32 IV. * Love I Thou art Leading Me prom Wintry Cold' 4^ V. *The Silver Answer Rano, — "Not Death BUT Love"' 55 Ti. In Society . . , 61 Tii. Cfpid and Psyche .;,••. 83 vm. Le Secret de Polichinelle .... 94 IX. *LovE IS Love for Evermore' . . . .113 X. *Let Me and My Passionate Love oo bt' . 122 XI. *Alas for Me then, My Good Days are Done' . . . . . . . . 128 XII. * Grief a Fixed Star, and Joy a Vane that Veers' 131 XIII. *7x)VE WILL have His Day' .... 140 XIV. *3uT Here is One who Loves i'^r as of Old' 155 XV. *TnAT LiF AND VoiCE ARE MUTB FOR EVER ' , 166 XVI. *NoT THE GODS CAH ShAKB THE PAST ' . . 17 J xviL *I HAVK PUT Mr Days and DuEAiia out ot MiuD' 18C 720 iv Contents. onAr. »Aai XVIII. 'And Pale from thb Past we Draw Nigh Theu' 185 XIX. ' But it Sufficeth, that the Day will End ' 201 XX. *"iyj[o Knows Not Circe?' . . . . 216 XXL *And Time is Setting Wi' Me, O' . .229 XXII. 'With sucn Remorseless Speed Still Come New Woes' 231 XXIII. * Yours on Monday, God's to-dat* , . 243 XXIV. Duec or Murder? 250 XXV. *Dust to Dust' 255 xxvL *Pain for Thy Girdle, and Sori.ow upon Tiiy Head' 265 xxvu. *I Will have no Mercy on IIim' , . 269 xxviiL *Gai Donc, la Voyaoeusb, au Coup du Pelekin !' 283 XXIX. 'Time Turns the Old Days to Derision' . 288 XXX. * Thou shouldst come like a Fury Crowned WITH Snakes' 299 xxxL 'His Lady Smiles; Delight is in Her Face' 305 xxxiL ' Love bore such Bitter and such Deadly Fruit' 318 xxxiiL 'She Stood up in Bitter Cask, with a Pale yet Steady Face' .... 330 XXVI7. V/ifi JLLAVJfi DjNB WITH TeARS AND TREASONS . 346 CHAPTER L THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE. And he was a widower,' said ChristabeL She was listening to an oft-told tale, kneeling in the firelight, at her aunt's knee, the ruddy glow tenderly touching her fair soft hair and fairer forehead, her big blue eyes lifted lovingly to Mrs. Tregonell's face. * And he was a widower. Aunt Diana,* she repeated, with an expression of distaste, as if something had set her teeth on edge. ' I cannot help wondering that you could care for a widower — a man who had begun life by caring for somebody else.' * Do you suppose any one desperately in love ever thinks of the past 1 ' asked another voice out of the twilight. * Those in- fatuated creatures called lovers are too happy and contented with the rapture of the present.' * One would think you had tremendous experience, Jessie, by the way you lay down the law,' said Christabel, laughing. * Bui I want to know what Auntie has to say about f aUing in love with a widower.' * If you had ever seen him and known him, I don't think you would wonder at my liking him,' answered Mrs. Tregonell, lying back in her armchair, and talking of the story of her life in a placid way, as if it were the plot of a novel, so thoroughly does time smooth the rough edge of grief. * When he came to my father's house, his young wife had been dead just two years — she died three days after the birth of her first child — and Captain Hamleigh was very sad and grave, and seemed to take very little pleasure in life. It was in the shooting season, aad the othtr men were out upon the hills all day.' ' Murdering innocent birds,* interjected ChristabeL * How I hate them for it ! ' 'Captain Hamleigh hung about the house, not seeming to know very well wh^t to do with himself, so your mothar I 6 Mount Boyal. and 1 took pit^ upon him, and tried to amuse him, which effort resulted in his amusing us, for he was ever so much cleverer than we were. He was so kind and sympathetia We had just founded a Dorcas Society, and we were muddling hopelessly in an endeavour to make good sensible rules, so that we should do nothing to lessen the indei)endent feeling of our eople — and he came to our rescue, and took the whole thing in and, and seemed to understand it all as thoroughly as if he had been establishing Dorcas Societies all his life. My father said it was because the Captain had been sixth wrangler, and that it was the higher mathematics which made him so clever at making rules. But Ciaxa and I said it was his kind heart that made him 80 quick at understanding how to help the poor without humiliat- ing them.' *It was very nice of him,* said Chriatabel, who had heard the story a hundred times before, but who was never weary of it, and had a special reason for being interested this afternoon. * And so he stayed a long time at my grandfather's, and you fell in love with him ? ' *I began by bein^ sorry for him,' replied Mrs. Tregonell. * He told us all about his young wife — how happy they had been — how their one year of wedded life seemed to him like a lovely dream. They had only been engaged three months ; he had known her less than a year and a half altogether ; had come home from India ; had seen her at a friend's house, fallen in love with her, married her, and lost her within those eighteen months. 'Everything smiled upon us,' he said. 'I ought to have remembered Polycrates and his ring.' * He must have been rather a doleful person,' said Christabel, who had all the exacting ideas of early youth in relation to love and lovers. * A widower of that kind ought to perform suttee, and make an end of the business, rather than go about the world prosing to nice girls. I wonder more and more that you could have cared for him.' And then, seeing her aunt's eyes shining with unshed tears, the girl laid her sunny head upon the matronly shoulder, and mui-mured tenderly, ' ITorgive me for teasing you, dear, I am only pretending. I love to hear about Captain Ham- leigh ; and I am not very much suiprised that you ended by- loving him— or that he soon forgot his brief dream of bliss with the other young lady, and fell despei-ately in love with you.' * It was not till after Christmas that we were engaged,' con- tinued Mrs. Tregonell, looking dreamily at the fire. * My father was delighted — so was my sister Clara — your dear mother Everything went pleasantly ; our lives seemed all sunshine. 1 ought to have remembered Polycrates, for I knew Schiller's ballad about him bv heart. But I could think of nothing beyond that pui feet till-sulhcing hapi»inosa. Wo were not to be mairied The Days that are No More, 1 till late in the autumn, when it would be tliree years since his wife's death. It was my father's wisii that I sliould not be \iarried till after my nineteenth birthday, which would not be till September. I was so happy in my engagement, so confident in my lover's fidelity, that I was more than content to wait. So all that spring he stayed at Penlee. Our mild climate had improved his health, which was not at all good when he came to us — indeed he had retired from the service before his marriage, chiefly on account of weak health. But he spoke so lightly and confidently about himself in this matter, that it had never entered into my head to feel any serious alarm about him, till ^rly in May, when he and Clara and I were caught in a drench- ing rainstorm during a mountaineering expedition on Rough Tor, and then had to walk four or five miles in the rain before we came to the inn where the carriage was to wait for us. Clara and I, who were always about in all weathers, were very little worse for the wet walk and the long drive home in damp clothes. But George was seriously ill for three weeks with cough and low fever ; and it was at this time that our family doctor told my father that he would not give much for his future son-in-law'a life. There was a marked tendency to lung complaint, he said ; Captain Hamleigh had confessed that several members of hia family had died of consumption. My father told me this — urged me to avoid a marriage which must end in misery to me, and waa deeply grieved when I declared that no such consideration would induce me to break my engagement, and to grieve the man I loved. If it were needful that our marriage should be delayed, I was contented to submit to any delay ; but nothing could loosen the tie between me and my dear love.' Aunt and niece were both crying now. However familiar the story might he, they always wept a little at this point. * George never knew one word of this conversation between my father and me — he never suspected our fears — but from that hour my happiness was gone. My life was one perpetual dread — one ceaseless strugle to hide all anxieties and fears under a smile. George rallied, and seemed to grow strong again— was full of energy and high spirits, and I had to pretend to think him as thoroughly recovered as he fancied himself. But by this time I had ^rown sadly wise. I had questioned our doctor — had looked mto medical books — and I knew every sad sim and token of decay. I knew what the flushed cheek and the brilliant eye, the dAinp cold hand, and the short cough meant I knew that the hand of death was on him wkom I loved more than all the world besidea There was no need for the postponement of our marriage. In the long bright days of August he seemed won- derfully well—aB well as he had been before the attack in May. I waa almost happy ; for, in spite of what the doctor bad tolcl 8 Mount BoyaX, me, I began to hope 1 but early in September, while the dress- makers were in the house making my wedding clothes, the end came suddenly, unexpectedly, wim only a few hours' warning. Oh, Christabel I I cannot speak of that day !* * No, darling, you shall not, you must not,* cried Christabel, showering kisses on her aunt's pale cheek. * And yet you always lead her on to talk about Captain Ham- lei^h,* said the sensible voice out of the shadow. ' Isn't that just a little inconsistent of our sweet Belle V *■ Don't call me your * sweet Belle' — as if I were a baby,' ex- claimed the girL ' I know I am inconsistent — I was bom foolish, and no one has ever taken the trouble to cure me of my folly. And now. Auntie dear, tell me about Captain Hamleigh's son — the boy who is coming here to-morrow.' * I have not seen him since he was at Eton. The Squire drove me down on a Fourth of June to see him.' ' It was very good of Uncle Tregonell.' * The Squire was always good,' replied Mrs. Tregonell, with a dignified air. Christabel's only remembrance of her uncle was of a large loud man, who blustered and scolded a good deal, and frequently contrived, perhaps, without meaning it, to make everybody in the house uncomfortable ; so she reflected inwardly upon that blessed dispensation which, however poorly wives may think of living husbands, provides that every widow should consider her departed spouse completely admirable. * And was he a nice a boy in those days ] ' asked Christabel, keenly interested. * He was a handsome gentleman-like lad — very intellectual looking ; but I was grieved to see that he looked delicate, like his father ; and his dame told me that he generally had a winter cough.' * AVho took care of him in those days ? ' * His matern.'d aunt — a baronet's wife, with a handsome house in Eaton Square. All his mother's people were well placed in life.' * Poor boy ! hard to have neither father nor mother. It was twelve years ago when you spent that season in London with the Squire,' said Chi'istabel, calculating profoundly with the aid of her finger tips ; and Angus Hamleigh was then sixteen, which makes him now eight-and-twenty-^readfully old. And since then he has been at Oxford — and he got the Newdigate — what is the Newdigate ? — and he did not hunt, or drive tandem, or have rats in his rooms, or paint the doors vermillion — like — ^like the general run of young men,' said Christabel, reddening, and hurry- mg on confusedly ; * and he was altogether rather a superior sort of person at the university.' He had not your cousin Leonard's high spirits and powerful The Days that are No More, 9 physique,' said Mrs. Tregonell, as if she were ever so slightly offended. * Young men's tastes are so different.' * Yes,' sighed Christabel, ' it's lucky they are, is it not ? It wouldn't do for them all to keep rats in their rooms, would it ' The poor old colleges would smell so dreadfuL Well,' with another sigh, * it is just thi-ee weeks since Angus Hamleigh accepted your invitation to come here to stay, and I have been expiring of curiosity ever since. If he keeps me expiring much longer I shall be dead before he comes. And I have a dreadful foreboding that, when he does appear, I shall detest him.' * No fear of that,' said Miss Bridgeman, the owner of the voice that issued now and again from the covert of a deep arm- chair on the other side of the fireplace. * Why not. Mistress Oracle 1 * asked Christabel. * Because, as Mr. Hamleigh is accomplished and good-looking, and as you see very few young men of any kind, and none that are particularly attractive, the odds are fifty to one that you will fall in love with him.' * I am not that kind of person,' protested Christabel, drawing up her long full throat, a perfect throat, and one of the girl's chief beauties. * I hope not,' said Mrs. Tregonell ; * I trust that Belle has better sense than to fall in love with a young man, just because he happens to come to stay in the house.' Christabel was on the point of exclaiming, * Why, Auntie, you did it ; ' but caught herself up sharply, and cried outinstead, with an air of settling the question for ever, 'My dear Jessie, he is eight-and-twenty. Just ten years older than I am.' ' Of course — he's ever so much too old for her. A bias/ man of the world,' said Mrs. Tregonell. * I should be deeply sorry to see my darling marry a man of that age — and with such ante- cedents. I should like her to marry a young man not above two or three years her senior.' * And fond of rats,' said Jessie Bridgeman to herself, for she had a slirewd idea that she knew the young man whose image filled Mrs. Tregonell's mind as she spoke. All these words were spoken in a goodly oak panelled room in the Manor House known as Mount Royal, on the slope of a bosky hill about a mile and a half from the little town of Boscastle, on the north coast of Cornwall. It was an easy matter, according to the Herald's Ofiice, to show that Mount Royal had belonged to the Tregonells in the days of the Norman kings ; for the Tregonells traced their descent, by a female branch, from the ancient baronial family of Botterell or Bottereaux, who once held a kind of Court in their castle on Mount Royal, had their dungeons and their prisoners, and, in the words of Carew, 10 Mount BoyaL 'exercised some large jurisdiction.' Of the ancient castle hardly A stone remained; but the house in which Mrs. TregoneU lived was as old as the reign of James the First, and had all the rich and qviaint beauty of that delightful period in architecture. Nor was there any prettier room at Mount Royal than this spacious oak-panelled parlour, with curious nooks and cupboards, a recessed fireplace, or * cosy-comer,' with a small window on each side of the chimney-breast, %nd one pfirticuLar alcove placed at an angle of the house, overlooking one of the most glorious views in England. It might be h3rperboie perhaps to call those Cornish hills mountains^ yet assuredly it was a mountain landscape over which the eye roved as it looked from the windows of Mount Eoyal ; for those wide sweeps oi iiill side, those deep clefts and gorges, and heathery slopes, en which the dark red cattle grazed in silent peacef ulness, an*^ the rocky bed of the narrow river that went rushing through, the deep valley, had all the grandeur of the Scottish Highlands, all the pastoral beauty of Switzer- land. And HAvay to the right, beyond the wild and indented coast-Hue, that homed coast which is said to have gi ven its name t(j Cornwall — Comu-Wales — stretched^the Atlantic The room had that quaint charm peculiar to rooms occupied by many generations, and upon which each age as it went by has left its mark. It was a room full of anachronisms. There was some of the good old Jacobean furniture left in it, while spindle-legged Chippendale tables and luxurious nineteenth- century chairs and sofas agreeably contrasted with those heavy oak cabinets and corner cupboards. Here an old Indian screen or a china monster suggested a fashionable auction room, filled with ladies who wore patches and played ombre, and squabbled for ideal ugliness in Oriental pottery ; tliere a delicately carved cherry-wood jom-cfiew, with claw feet, recalled the earlier beauties of the Stuart Court. Time had faded the stamped velvet curtains to that neutral witliered-leaf hue which painters love in a background, and against which bright yellow chrysanthemums and white asters in dark red and blue Japanese bowls, seen dimly in the fitful fire- glow, made patches of light and colour. The girl kneeling by the matron's chair, looked dreamily into the fire, was even fairer than her surroundings. She waa thoroughly English in her beauty, features not altogether perfect, but corajjlexion of that dazzling fairness and wud-iose bloom which is in itself enough for loveliness ; a complexion so delicate as to betray every feeling of the sensitive mind, and to vary witli eveiy shade of emotion. Her eyes were blue, clear as siunmer skies, and with an expression of childlike innocence — that look which Ui\\s of a soul wIiohc purity has never been tamislied by the knowledge of eviJ. That frank clear outlook waa natural in The Days that a/re No More, 11 A girl brought np {la Christabel Courtenay had been at a good woman's knee, shut in and sheltered from the rough world, reared in the love and fear of God, shaping every thought of her life by the teaching of the Gospel She had been an orphan at nine years old, and had parted for ever from mother and father before her fifth birthday, Mrs. Courtenay leaving her only child in her sister's care, and going out to India to join her husband, one of the Sudder Judges. Husband and wife died of cholera in the fourth year of Mrs. Courtenay's residence at Calcutta, leaving Christabel in her aunt's care. Mr. Courtenay was a man of ample means, and his wife, daughter and co-heiress with Mi-s. Tregonell of Kalph Champer- nowne, had a handsome dowry, so Christabel might fairly rank as an heiress. On her grandfather's death she inherited half of the Champemo%vne estate, which was not entailed. But she had hardly ever given a thought to her financial position. She knew that she was a ward in Chancery, and that Mrs. Tregonell was her guardian and adopted mother, that she had always as much money as she watted, and never experienced the pain of seeing poverty which she could not relieve in some measure from her well-suj^lied pm^e. The general opinion in the neighbourhood of Mount Koyal was that the Indian Judge had accumulated an immense fortune during his twenty years' labour as a civil servant ; but this notion was founded rather upon vague ideas about Warren Hastings and the Padoga tree, and the supposed inability of any Indian official to refuse a bribe, than on plain fa-cta or personal knowledge. Mrs. Tregonell had been left a widow at thirty-five years of age, a widow with one son, whom she idolized, bnt who was not a source of peace aud happiness. He was open-handed, had no petty vices, and was supposed to possess a noble heart — a fact which Christabel was sometimes inclined to doubt when she saw his delight in the slaughter of birds and beasts, not having in her own nature that spoi-tsman's instinct which can excuse such murder. He was not the kind of lad who would wilfully set his foot upon a worm, but he had no thrill of tenderness or re- morseful pity as he looked at the glazing eye, or felt against his hand the last feeble heart-beats or snipe or woodcock. He waa a troublesome boy — fond of inferior company, and loving rather to be first fiddle in the saddle-room than to mind his manners in his mother's pink-and-wMte panelled saloon — among the best people in the neighbourhood. He was lavish to reckkisness in the use of money, and therefore was always furnished with fol- loweiB and flatterers. His University career had been altogether a failure and a disgrace. He had taken no degree — had made himself notf good family and ample means might fairly be entitled to bola The Days that are No More. 16 Christabcl had no eager desire for tlie gaieties of a London season. She had spent six weeks in Bath, and had enjoyed an occasional fortnight at Plymouth- She had been taken to theatres and concerts, had seen some of the best actors and actresses, heard a good deal of the finest muaic, and had been duly delighted with all she saw and hem-d. But she so fondly loved Mount Royal and its surroundings, she was so completely happy in her home life, that she had no desire to change that tranquil existence. She had a vague idea that London balls and parties must be something very dazzling and brilliant, but she was content to a))i(lo her aunt's pleiusure and convenience for the time in which she w;ia to know more aUtiit metropolitan revelries tiian was to be gfithered from lautlatory paragnir)lis in fashionable newspapers. Youth, with its warm blood ana active spirit, is rarely so contented as Christabcl was : but then youth is not often placed amid such harmonious circumstances, so protected from the approach of evil Clu'istabel Courtenay may have thought and talked more about Mr. Hamleigh during the two or three days that preceded his arrival than was absolutely necessary, or strictly in accord- ance witli that common-sense wliich characterized most of her acts and thoughts. She was interested in him upon two grounds — first, because he was the only son of the man her aunt had loved and mourned ; secondly, because he was the first stranger who had ever come as a guest to Mount RoyaL Her aunt's visitors were mostly {)eopl«» whose faces she had known ever since she could remember : there were such wide potentialities in the idea of a perfect stranger, who was to be domiciled at the Mount for an indefinite period. * Suppose we don't like him ? ' she said, speculatively, to Jessie Bridgeman, Mrs. Tregonell's housekeeper, companion, and fac- totum, who had lived at Mount Royal for the last six years, coming there a girl of twenty, to make herself generally useful in small girlish ways, and proving herself such a clever manager, so bright, competent, and far-seeing, that she had been gradually entrusted with every household care, from the largest to the most minute. Miss Bridgeman was neither brilliant nor accomplished, but she had a genius for homely things, and she was aamii-able as a companion. The two girls were out on the hills in the early aijtumn morning — hills that were golden where the sun touclied them, purple in the shadow. The heather was fading, the patches of lurze-blossom were daily growing raxer. Yet the hill-sides were alive wi^h light and colour, only less lovely than the translucent blues and gi^eena of yonder wide-stretching sea. * Suppose we should all dislike him 1 ' repeated Cliristabel, digging the point of her walking-stick into a ferny hillock on th« c 16 Mount Boyal, topmost edge of a deep clett in the hills, on whicli commanding? spot she had just taken her stand, after bounding up the narrow path from the little wooden bridge at the bottom of Uie glen, Almost as quickly and as lightly as if she had been one of tlie deeply ruddled sheep that spent their lives on those precipitious slopes ; 'wouldn't it be too dreadful, Jessie % ' *It would be inconvenient,' answered Miss Bridgeman, coolly, resting both hands on the horny crook of her stm-dy imbrella, and gazing placidly seaward ; ' but we could cut him. * Not without offending Auntie. She is sure to like him, for Ihe sake of Auld Lang Syne. Every look and tone of his will recall his father. But we may detest him. And if he should like Mount Royal very much, and go on staying there for ever ! Auntie asked him for an indefinite period. She showed me her letter. I thought it was rather too widely hospitable, but I did not like to say so.' *I always^say what I think,' said Jessie Bridgeman, dog- gedly. * Of course you do, and go very near being disagreeable in consequence.' Miss Bridgeman's assertion was perfectly correct. A sturdy truthfulness was one of her best qualifications. She did not volun- teer unfavourable criticism ; but if you asked her opinion upon any subject you got it, without sophistication. It was her rare merit to have lived with Mrs. Tregonell and Christabel Courtenay six years, dependent upon their liking or caprice for all the com- forts of her life, without having degenerated into a flatterer. * I haven't the slightest doubt as to your liking him,' said Miss Bridgeman, decisively. * He has spent his life for the most part in cities — and in good society. That I gather from your aunt'« account of him. He is sure to be much more interesting and agi'eeable than the youn^ men who live near here, whose ide.is are, for the most part, strictly local. But I very much doubt his liking Mount Royal, for more than one week.* * Jessie,' cried Christabel, indignantly, ' how can he help liking this?* She waved her stick across the autumn landsca])e, describ- ing a circle which included the gold and bronze hills, the shadowy gorges, the bold headlands curving away to Hartland on one side, to Tintage' on the other — Lundy Island a dim line of dun coloui «a the horizon. *No doubt he will think it beautiful — in the abstract. He will rave about it, compai-e it with the Scottisli Highhuids — with Wales — with Kerry, declare tliiee Cornish hills the crowning glory of Britain. But in three days he will begin to detest a place where there is only one post out and in, and where he ha.s to wait till next day for his morning paper' ' What caji he want with newspapers, if ho Ib enjoying hiH lifo The Days that are No More. 1? with U8 ? I am sure there are books enough at Mount Royal He need not expire for want of something to read.* * Do you suppose that books — the best and noblest that evei were written— can make up to a man for the loss of his daily paper ? If you do, offer a man Shakespeare when he is looking for the Dail^ Telegraph, or Chaucer when he wants his Times, and see what he will say to you. Men don't want to read now- adays, but to know — to be posted in the very latest movements of their fellow-men all over the universe. Ileuter'a column is all anybody really cares for in the paper. The leaders and the criticism are only so much padding to fill the sheet. People would be better pleased if there were nothing but telegrams.' * A man who only reads newspapei-s must be a most vapid com- panion,' said Christabel. ' HartUy, for he must be l)rira full of tacts.' * I abhor facta Well, if Mr. Hamleigh is that kind of j>ei'son, I hope he may be tired of the Mount in less than a week.' She was silent and thoughtful as they went home by the monastic churchyard in the hollow, the winding lane and steep rillage street Jessie had a message to carry to one of Mrs. Tregonell's pensioners, who lived in a cottage in the lane ; but Christiibel, who was generally pleased to show her fair young face in such abodes, waited outside on this occasion, and stood in a profound reverie, digging the point of her stick into the loose eai-th of the mossy bank in front of her, and seriously damaging the landscape. *I hate a man who does not care for books, who does not love our dear English poets,' she said to herself. * But I must not say that before Auntie. It would be almost like snying th.-it I hated my cousin Leonard. I hope Mr Hamleigh /ill be — Ct a little different from Leonard. Of coui-se he will, if his life been spent in cities ; but then he may be languid and super- cilious, looking upon Jessie and me as inferior creatures ; and that would be worse than Leonard's roughnesa For we all know what a good heart Leonard haa, and how warmly attached he is to ua' Somehow the idea of Leonard's excellent heart and affec- tionate disposition was not altogether a plesisant one. Christabel shuddered ever so faintly aa she stood in the lane thinking of her cousin, who hail hist been heard of in the Fijis. She banishe*i« But then came One, the Lovelace of his Day, 19 tati(m ; yet ho felt that in going to immure himself in an iid manor house for a fortnight — anything less than a fort- fight would have been uncivil — he ,wa8 dooming himself to ineffable boredom. Beyond that pious pleasure in parental reminiscences, there could be no possible gratification for • man of the world, who was not an ardent sportsman, in such a place as Mount RoyaL Mr. Hamleighs instincts were of the town, towny. His pleasures were all of an intellectual kind. He had never degraded himself by vulgar profligacy, but he liked a life of excitement and variety ; he had always lived at high pressure, and among people posted up to the last moment or the world's history — people who drank the very latest pleasure cup which the Spirt of the Age — a Spirit of passing frivolity — had invented, were it only the newest brand of champagne ; and who, in their eagerness to gather the roses o! life, outatripped old Time himself, and grew old in advance of their age. He had been contemplating a fortnight in Paris, as the first stage in his journey to Monaco, when Mrs. Tregonell's letter altered his plans. This was not the first time she had asked him to Mount Royal, but on previous occasions his engage- ments had seemed to him too imperative to be foregone, and he had regretfully declined her invitations. But now the flavour of life had grown somewhat vapid for him, and he was grateful to anyone who would turn his thoughts and fancies into a new direction. * I shall inevitably be bored there,' he said to himself, when he had littered the railway carriage with newspapers accumulated on the way, 'but I should be bored anywhere else. When a man begins to feel the pressure of the chain upon his leg, it cannot much matter where his walks lead him : the very act of walking is his punishment.' When a man comes to eight-and-twenty years of age — a mar who has had very little to do in this life, except take his pleasure — a great weariness and sense of exhaustion is apt to close round him like a pall. The same man wiU be ever so much fresher in mind, will have ever so much more zest for life, when he comes to be forty — for then he will have entered upon those calmer enjoyments of middle age wh^ch may last him till he is eighty. But at eight-and-twenty there is a death-like calmness of feeling. Youth is gone. He has consumed all the first-fruits of life — spring and summer, with their wealth of flowers, are over ; only the quiet autumn remains for him, with her warm browns and dull greys, and cool, moist breath. The fires upon youth's altars have all died out — youth is dead, and the man wha was young only yesterday fancies that he might as well be dead also. What is there left for him ? Can there be any charm ia this life when the looker-on has grey hair and wrinkles t Having nothi>:g in life to do except seek his own pleasarf 90 Mount Boyal. »nd spend his ample income, Angus Hamleigh had naturally t^iken the time of life's march prestissimo. He had never paused m his lose-gathering to wonder whether there might not be a few thorns among the flowers, and wiiether he might not find them — afterwards. And now the blossoms were all withered, and he was beginning to discover the lasting quality of the thorns. They were such thorns as inter- fered somewhat with the serenity of his days, and he was ghid to turn his face westward, away from everybody he knew, or who knew anything aljout him. * My character will present itself to Mrs. Tregonell as a blank page,' he said to himself ; * I wonder what she would think of me if one of my club gossips had enjoyed a quiet evening's talk with her beforehand. A dear friend's analysis of one's character and conduct is always so flattering to both ; and 1 have a plea- sant knack of offending my dearest friends ! ' Mr. Hamleigh began to look abput him a little when the train had left Plymouth. The landscape was wild and romantic, but had none of that stern ruggedness which he ex})ecterl to behold on the Cornish Border. Deep glens, and wooded dells, with hill-sides steep and broken, but verdant to their topmost crest, and the most wonderful oak coppices that he ever remem- bered to have seen. Miles upon miles of oak, as it seemed to him, now sinking into the depth of a valley, now mounting to the distant sky line, while from that verdant undulating surface of young wood there stood forth the giants of the grove — wide- Bjireading oak and towering beech, the miglity growth of many centuries. Between Lidford and Launceston the sct^nery grew tamer. He had fancied those deep ravines and wooded heights the prelude to a va-st and awful symphony, but Mary Tavy and Lifton showed him only a pastoral landscape, with just so much wood and water as would have served for a Ci-eswick or a Con- stable, and with none of those grand Salvatoresque effects which he had admired in the country round Tavistock. At liaunceston he found Mrs. Tregonell's landau waiting for him, with a pair of powerful chestnuts, and a couple of servants, whose neat brown liberies had nothing of that unsophisticated semi- savagery which Mr. Hamleigh had expected in a place so reiDote. ' Do you drive that way ? * he asked, pointing to the almosr' perpendicular street. * Yas, sir,' replied the coachman. * Then I think I'll stroll to the top of the hill while you are putting in my portmanteaux,' he said, and ascended the rustic street at a leisurely pace, looking about him as he went. The thoroughface which leads from Launceston Station to th« ruined castle at the top of the hill is not an imposing promenadeu Its architectural features might perhaps be best described Uk« But then came Ortc, the Lovelace of his Day, 21 the snakes of Ireland aa nil — but here and there an old-fashioned lattice with a row of rtower-i>ots, an ancient gable, or a bit of cottage garden hints at the picturesque. Any late additions to the domestic architecture of Launceston favour the unpretending usefulness of Camden Town rather than the aspiring sestheticism of Chelsea or Bedford Park ; but to Mr. Hamleigh'a eye the rugged old castle keep on the top of the hill made amends. He was not an ardent archieologist, and he did not turn out of his way to see Launceston Church, which might well have rewarded him for his trouble. He was content to have spai-ed those good- looking chestnuts the labour of dragging him up the steep. Here they came springing up the hill He took his place in the carriage, pulled the fur rug over his knees, and ensconced h'rn- self comfortably in the roomy back seat. * This is a sybaritish luxury which I was not prepared for,' he said to himself. ' I'm afraid I shall be rather more bored than I expected. I thought Mrs. Tregonell and her surroundings would at least have the merit of originality. But here is a carriage that must have been built by Peters, and liveries that suggest the sartorial excellence of Conduit Street or Savile Row.' He watched the landscape with a critical eye, prepared for disappointment and disillusion. First a country road between tall ragged hedges and steep banks, a road where every now and then the branches of the trees hung low over the carriage, and threatened to knock the coachman's hat off. Then they can>e out upon the wide waste of moorland, a thousand feet above the sea level, and Mr. Hamleigh, acclimatized to the atmosphere of club- houses, buttoned his overcoat, drew the black fur rug closer about him, and shivered a little as the keen breath of the Atlantic, sweeping over far-reaching tracts of hill and heather, blew round him. Far and wide as his gaze could reach, he saw no sign of human habitation. Was the land utterly forsaken 1 No ; a little farther on they passed a hamlet so insignificant, so isolated, that it seemed rather as if half a dozen cottages had dropped from the sky than that so lonely a settlement covdd be the result of deliberate human inclination Never in Scotland or Ireland had Mr. Hamleigh seen a more barren landscape or a poorer soil ; yet those wild wastes of heath, those distant tors were passing beautiful, and the air he breathed was more in- spiring and exhilarating than the atmosphere of any vaunted health-resort which he had ever visited. * I think I might live to middle age if I were to pitch my tent on this Cornish plateau,' he thought ; * but, then, there are s< many things in this life that are worth more than mere length of days.' He asked the names of the hamlets they pjiased. This lonely cUwch, dedipjiited to §t. D?ivid— wfe^uce, oU I wlie^ce came tW 22 Mount Boyal oongregution — belonged to the parish of Davidstowe ; and hert there waa a holy well ; and here a Vicarage ; and there — oh ! crowning evidence of civilization — a post-office ; and there a farm-house ; and that was the end of Davidstowe. A little later they came to cross roads, and the coachman touched his hat, and flaid, * This is Victoria,' as if he were naming a town or settlement of some kind. Mr. Ilamleigh looked about him, and beheld a low-roofed cottage, wWch he assumed to be some kind of public- house, possibly capable of supplying beer and tobacco ; but other vestige of human habitation there was none. He leant back in the carriage, looking across the hills, and faying tD himself, * Why, Victoria ? ' Was that unpretentious and somewhat dilapidated hostelry the Victoria Hotel ? or the Victoria Arms 1 or was Royalty's honoured name given, in an arbitrary manner, to the cross roads and the granite finger-post ? He never knew. The coachman said shortly, ' Victoria, and as * Victoria ' he ever after heard that spot described. And now the journey was all downhilL They drove downward and downward, until Mr. Hamleigh began to feel as if they were travelling towards the c«sntre of the earth — as if they had got altogether below the outer crust of this globe, and must be giadually nearing the unknown gulfs beneath. Yet, by some geographical mysteiy, when they turned out of the high road and went in at a lodge gate, and ilrove gently upward along an avenue of elms, in whose rugged tops the rooks were screaming, Mr. Hamleigh found that he was titill high above the undulating edges of the cliffs that overtopped the Atlantic, while the great waste of waters lay far below golden with the last rays of the setting sun. They drore, by a gentle ascent, to the stone porch of Mount Jioyal, and here Mrs. Tregonell stood, facing the sunset, with an Indian shawl wrapped round her, waiting for her guest. *I heard the carriage, Mr. Hamleigh,' she said, as Angus jidighted : * I hope you do not think me too impatient to see what change twelve years have made in ^ou ? ' * I'm afraid they have not been particularly advantageous to me,* he answered, lightly, as they snook hands. * How good of you to receive me on the threshold 1 and what a delightful place you have here ! Before I got to Launceston, I began to be afraid that Cornwall was commonplace — and now I'm enchanted witli it. Your moors and hills are like fairy-land to me 1 ' ' It is a world of our own, and we are very fond of it,' said the widow ; * I shall be aorry if ever a railway makes Boscastle open to everybody,* * And what a noble old house 1 * exclaimed Angus, as he foUowed his hostess across the oak-panelled hall, with its wide shallow staircase, curiously carved balustr^uies, igid lantern root \ re you quite Alone here 1 * But then came One, the Lovelace of his Day, 2S * Oh, no ; I have ray niece, and a young lady who is a com- paniou to bolh of us.' Angus Hamleigh shuddered. Three women 1 He waa to exist for a fortnight in a house with three solitary females. A niece and a companion ! The niece rustic and gawky ; the companion sour and fmmpish. He began, hurriedly, to cast about in his mind for a convenient friend, to whom he could telegraph to send liim a telegram, summoning him back to London on urgent business. He was still medi- tating this, when the butler opened the door of a spacious room, lined from floor to ceiling with books, and he followed Miu Tregonell in, and found himself in the bosom of the family. The simple picture of home-comfort, of restfulness and domestic peace, which met his curious gaze as he entered, i)lejused him better than anything he had seen of late. Club life — with its too studious indulgence of man's native selfishness and love of ease — fashion- able life, with its insatiable craving for that latter-day form of display which calls itself Culture, Art, or Beauty — had afforded him no vision so enchanting as the wide hearth and high chimnevof this sober, book-lined room,with the fair and girlish form kneeling in front of the old dogstove, framed in the glaring light of the fire. The tea-table had been wheeled near the hearth, and Mrs. Bridgeman sat before the bright red tea-tray, and old brass kettle, ready to administer to the wants of the traveller, wlio would be hardly human if he did not thirst for a cup of tea after driving across the moor. Christabel knelt in front of the fire, worshipping, and being worshipped by, a sleek black-and-white sheep-dog, native to the soil, and of a rare intelligence — a creature by no means approaching the Scotch coUey in physical beauty, but of a fond and faithful nature, bom to be the friend of man. As Christabel rose and turned to greet the stranger, Mr. Ham- leigh was agreeably reminded of an old picture — a Lely or a Kneller, perhaps. This was not in any wise the rustic image which had flashed across his mind at the mention of Mi-a. Tregonell's niece. He had expected to see a bouncing, countryfied maiden — rosy, buxom, the picture of commonplace health and vigour. The girl he saw was nearer akin to the lily than the rose — tall, slender, dazzlingly fair — not fragile or sickly in any- wise — for the erect figure was finely moulded, the swan-like throat was round and fulL He was prepared for the florid beauty of a milkmaid,and he found himself face to face with the elegance of an ideal duchess, the picturesque loveliness of an old Venetian portrait. Christabers dark brown velvet gown and square point lac© collar, the bright hair falling in shadowy curls over her forehead, and rolled into a Ipose knot at the back of her head, sinned in no wise against Mr. Hamleigh's notions of good taate. Then 34 Mount Boyai. was a picturesqueiiess al)ont the style which indicated that Miss Courtcnay belonged to that advanced section of womankind which takes it« ide;is less from modern fashion-plates than from old pictures. So long as her archaism went no further back than Vandyke or Moroni he would admire and approve ; but he ehuddered at the thought that to-morrow she might burst upon him in a mediaeval morning-gown, with high-shouldered sleeves, a ruff, and a satchel. The picturesque idea was good, within limits ; but one never knew how far it might go. There was nothing picturesque about the lady sitting before the tea-tray, who looked up brightly, and gave him a gracious bend of her small neat head, in acknowledgment of Mrs. Tre- gonell's introduction — ' Mr. Hamleigh, Miss Bridgeman !' Thia was the companion — and the companion was plain : not un- pleasantly plain, not in any matter repulsive, but a lady about whose looks there could be hardly any compromise. Her com- plexion was of a sallow darkness, unrelieved by any glow of colour ; her eyes were grey, acute, honest, friendly, but not beautiful ; her nose was sharp and pointed — ^not at all a bad nose ; but there was a hardness about nose and mouth and chin, as of features cut out of bone with a very sharp knife. Her teeth were good, and in a lovelier mouth might nave been the object of much admiration. Her hair was of that nondescript monotonous brown which has been uhkindly called bottle-green, bat it w{\a arranged with admirable neatness, and offended less than many a tangled pate, upon whose locks of spurious gold the owner haa wasted much time and money. There was nothing unpardonable in Miss Bridgeman's plainness, as Angus Hamleigh said of her later. Her small figure was neatly made, and her dark-grey gown fitted to perfection. * I hope you like the little bit of Cornwall that you have seen this afternoon, Mr. Hamleigh,' said Christabel, seating herself in a low chair in the shadow of the tall chimney-piece, fenced in by her aunt's larger chair. ' I am enraptured with it ! I came here with the desire to be intensely Cornish. I am prepai-ed to believe in witches — war- locks ' * We have no warlocks,' said Christabel * They belong to the North.' * Well, then, wise women — wicked young men who play foot- ball on Sunday, and get themselves turned into granit^rocking stones — magic wells — Druids — and King Arthur. I believe the principal point is to be open to convictien about Arthur. Now, I am prepared to swallow everything — his castle — the river where his crown was found after the fight — ^waa it his crown, by- the-by, or somebody else's ? which lie found — hia hair-brushes— hi9 boots — anything you please to show n»f.' But then came One, the Lovelace of his Day. 25 ' We will show you his quoit to-morrow, on the road to Tin- lagel/ said Miss Bridgeman. * 1 don't think you would like to swallow that actually. He hurled it from Tintagel to Trevalga in one of his sportive moods. We shall be able to give you plenty of amusement if you are a good walker, and are fond of ' I adore them in the abstract, contemplated from one's windows, or .in a picture ; but there is an incompatibility between the human anatomy and a road set on end, like a ladder, which I have never yet overcome. Apart from the outside question of my legs — which are obvious failures when tested by an angle of forty-five degrees — I'm afraid my internal machinery is not quite so tough as it ought to be for a thorough enjoyment of mountaineering.' Mrs. Tregonell sighed, ever so faintly, in the twilight. She was thinking of her first lover, and how that fragility, which meant early death, had showed itself in his inability to enjoy the moorland walks which were the delight of her girl- hood. ' The natural result of bad habits,' said Miss Bridgeman, briskly. ' How can you expect to be strong or active, when I dare say you have spent the better part of your life in hansom cabs and express trains ! I don't mean to be impertinent, but I know that is the general way with gentlemen out of the shooting and hunting season.' * And as I am no sportsman, I am a somewhat exaggerated example of the vice of laziness fostered by congenial circum- stances, acting on a lymphatic temperament. If you write books, SB I believe most ladies do now-a-days, you shall put me in one of them, as an awfiU warning.' * I don't write books, and, if I did, I would not flatter your vanity by making you my model siniier,' retorted Jessie ; * but I'll do something better for you, if Christabel will help me. I'll reform you.' * A million thanks for the mere thought I I hope the process will be pleasant.' * I hope so, too. We shall begin by walking you off your legs.' * They are so indifferent as a means of locomotion that I could very well afford to lose them, if you could hold out any hope of my getting a better pair.' * A week hence, if you submit to my treatment, you will be AS active as the chamoise hunter in ** Manfred." ' * Enchanting — always provided that you and Miss Courtenay will follow the chase with me.' ' Depend upon it, we nhall not trust you to take your walks aloa^i unless you have a pedometer which will hefHT witness to 26 Mount Boyal^ Ihe distance you have done, and which you will be content to submit to our inspection on your return,' replied Jessie, utemly. * I am afraid yon are a terribly severe high priestess of this new form of culture,* said Mr. Hamleigh, looking up froru his tea- cup with a lazy smile, 'almost as bad as the Dweller on the ITireshold, in Bulwer's " Zaiioni." * * There is a dweller on the threshold of every science and every admirable mode of life, and his name is Idleness," answered Miss Bridgeman. * The vis inerticg, the force of letting things alone,* said Angus ; * yes, that is a tremendous power, nobly exemplified by vestries and boards of works — to say nothing of Cabinets, Bishops, and the High Court of Chancery ! I delight in that verse of Scriptiu-e, " Their strength is to sit still." ' * There shall be very little sitting still for you if you submit yourself to Christabel and me,' replied Miss Bridgeman. * I have never tried the water-cure — the descriptions I have heard from adepts have been too repellent ; but I have an idea that this system of yours must be rather worse than hydropathy, said Angus, musingly — evidently very much entertained at the way in which Miss Bridgeman had taken him in hand. * I was rot going to let him pose after Lamartine's poete mourant, just because his father died of lung disease,' said Jessie, ten minutes afterwards, when the warning gong had sounded, and Mr. Hamleigh had gone to his room to dress for dinner, and the two young women were whispering together before the fire, while Mrs. Tregonell indulged in a placid doze. * Do you think he is consumptive, like his father ? ' asked Cliriatabel, with a compassionate look ; * he has a very delicate appearance.* * Hollow-cheeked, and prematurely old, like a man who has lived on tobacco and brandy-and-soda, and has spent his nights in elub-house card-rooms.' * We have no right to suppose that,* said Christabel, * since we know really nothing about him.* * Major Bree told me he has lived a racketty life, and that if he were not to pull up very soon he would be ruined both in health and fortune.* * What can the Major know about him 1 ' exclaimed Christ* abel, contemptuously. This Major Bree was a great friend of ChristabeFs ; but thert Jtre times when one's nearest and dearest are too provoking for endurances. * Major Bree has been buried alive in Cornwall for the last twenty years. He is at least a quarter of a century behind the age,' she said* impatiently. But then came One, the Lovelace of Ms Day. 27 * He gpent a fortnight in London the year before last,' said Jessie ; * it was then that he heard such a bad account of Mr. Hamlei^h.' * Did he go about to clubs and places making inquiries, like a private detective ? * said Christabel, still contemptuous ; * I hate such fetching and carrying !' * Here he comes to answer for himself,' replied Jessie, aa the door opened, and a servant announced Major Bree. Mrs. Tregonell started from her slumbers at the opening of the door, and rose to greet her guest. He was a very frequenl visitor, so frequent that he might be said to live at Mount Royal, although his nominal abode was a cottage on the outskiits of Boscastle — a stone cottage on the crest of a steep hill-side, with a delightful little garden, perched, as it were, on the edge of « ▼erdant abysB. He was tall, stout, elderly, grey, and florid — altogether a comfortable-looking man, clean shaved, save for a thin grey moustache with the genuine cavalry droop, iron grey eyebrows, which looked like a repetition of the moustache on a somewhat smaller scale, keen grey eyes, a pleasant smile, and a well set-up figure. He dressed well, with a sobriety becoming his years, and was always the pink of neatness. A man welcome everywhere, on account of an inborn pleasantness, which prompted him always to say and do the right thing ; but most of all welcome at Mount Royal, as a first cousin of the late Squire's, and Mrs. Tregonell's guide, philosopher, and friend in all matters relating to the outside world, of which, despite hia twenty years' hybernation at Boscastle, the widow supposed him to be an acute observer and an infallible judge. Was he not one of the few inhabitants of that western village who took in the Times newspaper ? * Well ! ' exclaimed Major Bree, addressing himself generally to the three ladies, * he has come — what do you think of him ? ' * He is painfully like his poor father,' said Mra. Tregonell. * He has a moat interesting face and winning manner, and I'm afraid we shall all get ridiculously fond of him,* said Miss Bridgeman, decisively. Chi-istabel said nothing. She knelt on the hearth-rug, play- ing with Randie, the black-and-white sheep-dog. * And what have you to say about him, Christabel ? * asked the Major. * Nothing. I have not had time to form an opinion,' replied the girl; and then lifting her clear blue eyes to the Major's friendly face, she said, gravely, " but I think, Uncle Oliver, it was very unkind and unfair of you to prejudice Jessie against him before he came here.' ' Unkind ! — unfair I Here's a shower of abuse ! I prejudice ! Oh 1 I remember. Mm. ISregonell asked me what people thought 38 Mount Boyal, of him in London, and I was obliged to acknowledge that his reputation was — well — no better than that of the majority of joung men who have more money than common sense. But that was two years ago — Nous avons chxing^ tout cela I ' 'If he was wicked then, he must be wicked now/ said ChriatabeL * Wicked is a monstrously strong word I* said the Major. * Besides, that does not follow. A man may have a few wild oats to sow, and yet become a very estimable person afterwards. Miss Bridgeman is tremendously sharp — she'll be able to iind out all about Mr. Hamleigh from [)ersonal observation before he has been here a week. 1 defy him to hido his weak points from her.' * What is the use of being plain and insignificant if one hjus not some advantage over one's superior fellow-creatures I ' aske- montory, many a dip and rise. * It is the most everlasting kind of beauty, is it not ? ' asked Christabel, delighted at this little gush of warm feeling in one ii(*) Mount Boyal. whose iiBual mattii«r wa.^ so eqnuble. * One could never tire of the sea. And I am always proud to remember that our sea is so big — stretching away and away to the New World. I should have liked it still better before the days of Columbus, when it led to the unknown ! * ' Ah ! ' siglied Angus, * youth always yearns for the un- discovered. Middle age knows that there is nothing worth dis- covering 1 ' On the top of the hill they paused for a minute or so to con- template the ancient Borough of Bossiney, w^hich, until dis- franchised in 1832, returned two members to Parliament, with a constituency nf little more than a dozen, and which once had •Sir Franci.s Drake for its representative. Here Mr. Ilamleigh beheld that modest mound willed the Castle Hill, on the top of which it was customary to read the writs before the elections. An hour later they were eating their luncheon on that windy height where once stood the castle of the great king. To Christabel the whole story of Arthur and his knights was }is real as if it had been a part of her own life. She had Tennyson's Arthur and Tennyson's Lancelot in her heart of hearts, and knew just enough of Sir Thomas Mallory's prose to give sub- stance to the Laureate's poetic shadows. Angus amused himself a little at her expense, as they ate their chicken and salad on tl«e grassy mounds which were supposed to be the graves of heioes who died before Athelstane drove the Cornish across the Tamar, and made his victorious progress through the country, even to the Scilly Isles, after defeating Howel, the last King of Cornwall. * Do you really think that gentlemanly creature intheLaureate'f 5pic — that most polished and perfect and most intensely modern English gentleman, self-contained, considerate of othei-s, always the right man in the right place — is one whit like that lialf-naked tiixvh century savage — the real Arthur — whose Court costume was a coat of blue paint, and whose war-shriek was the yell of a Red Indian % What can be more futile than our setting up any one Arthur, and bowing the knee before him, in the face of the fact that Great Britain teems with monuments of Arthurs — Arthur's Seat in Scotland, Arthur's Castle in Wales, Arth ur'a Bound Table here, there, and everywhere ? Be sure that Artlmr •— Ardheer — the highest chief — was a generic name for the princes /f those days, and that there were more Arthurs than ever theio were Ccesars.' * I don't believe one word you say,' exclaimed Cliristabej, indignantly ; * there was only one Arthur, the son of Uther and Ygerne, who was born in the castle that stood on this very cliff, on tlie first night of the year, and cjirried away in secret by Merlin, and reared in secret by Sir Anton's wife — the brave good Arthur — the Christian king — who was killed at the battlo of * Tintagel, half in Sea, and half on Latid' 37 Camlan, near SlaughUr Bridge, and was buried at Glastosi- bury.' 'And embalmed by Tennyson. The Laureate invented Arthur — he took out a patent for the Round Table Mul hia invention is only a little leas popular than that other )'iH)iluet of the age, tJie sewing-machine. How many among moderu tourista would care about Tintagel if Tennyson had not revivet' »Jie old legend ? ' The butler had put up a bottle of champagne *or Mr. Hamleigh — the two ladies drinking nothing but p» Kling water — anfl in this beverage he drank hail to the spirit of the legendary prince. * I am ready to believe anything now you have rae up here,' he said, * for I have a shrewd idea that wifhout your help 1 should never be able to get down again. I shouid live and die on the top of this rocky promontory — sweltering m the summei 8un — bulfeted by the winter winds — an unwilling Simeon Stylites.' ' Do you know that the very finest sheep in Cornwall are said to begi'own on that island,' said Miss Bridgeman gravely, point- ing to the grassy top of the isolated crag in the foreground, wheron once stood the donjon deep. ' 1 don't know why it should be so, but it is a tradition.' 'Among butcheiv ?' said Angus. *I suppose even butchers* have their traditions. And the poor sheep who are condemned to exile on that lonely rock — the St. Heleiia of their woolly race — do they know that they are achieving a posthumous pej'fection — that they ar« straining towards the ideal in butcher's meat % There is room ior much thought in the question.' ' The tide is out,' said Christabel, look seaward ; * I think w e ought to do Trebarwith sands to-day.' 'Is Trebarwith another of your lions 1' aaked Angus, placidly. ' Yes.' * Then, please save him for to-morrow. Let me drink the cup of pleasure to the dregs where we ai-e. This champagne htis a magical taste, like the philter which Tristan and Iseult were so foolish as to drink while they sailed across from Ireland to this Cornish sliore. Don't be alarmed, Miss Bridgeman, I am not going to empj.y the bottle. I am not an educated tourist — have read neither Black nor Murray, and I am very slow ab(»ut taking in ide:is. Even after all you have told me, I am not clear in my mind as t^ which i? the castle and which the chapel, and whicK the burial-ground. Let us finish the afternoon dawdling about Tintagel. Lei u>* see the sun set from thisspot, where Arthur must so often have watched it, if the men of thirteen hundred years ago ever cared to ^^atch the sun setting, which I doubt. The^ 88 Mount Boyal. belong to the night-time of the world, when civilization wa« dead in Southern Europe, and waa yet unborn in the West. Let ue dawdle about till it is time to drive back to Mount Royal, and then I shall carry away an impression. I am very slow at taking impressions.' ' I think you want us to believe that you are stupid,' said Christabel, laughing at the earnestness with which he pleaded. * Believe me, no. I should like you to think me ever bo much better than I am. Please let us dawdle.' They dawdled accordingly. Strolling about upon the short sea- beaten grass, so treacherous and slippery a surface in summer time, when tierce Sol has been baking it. They stumbled against the foundations of long-vanished walls, they speculated upon fragments of cyclopean masonry, and talked a great deal about the traditions of the spot. Christabel, who had all the old authorities — Leland, Carew, and Norden — ^at her fingers' ends, was delighted to expound the departed glories of this British fortress. She showed where the ancient dungeon keep had reared its stony walls upon that * high terrible crag, environed with the sea ; and how there had once been a drawbridge uniting yonder cliff with the buildings on the mainland ' — how divorced, as Carew says, * by the downfallen steep cliffs, on the farther side, which, though it shut out the sea from his wonted recourse, hath yet more stiengthened the island ; for in passing thither you must first descend with a dangerous declining, and then make a worse ascent by a path, through his stickleness occasioning, and through his steepness threatening, the ruin of your life, with the falling of your foot,* She told Mr. Hamleigh how, after the Conquest, the castle was the occasionaJ residence of some of our Princes, and how Richard King of the Romans, Earl of Cornwall, son of King John, entertained here his nephew David, Prince of Wales, how, in Richard the Second's t^jne, this stronghold was made a State prison, and how a certain Lord Mayor of London was, for his unruly mayoralty, con- demned thither as a perpetual penitentiary ; which seems very hard upon the chief magistrate of the city, who thus did vicarious penance for the riot of his brief reign. And then they talked of Tristan and Iseult, and the tender old love-story, which lends the glamour of old-world fancies to those bare ruins of a traditional past. Christabel knew the old chronicle through Matthew Arnold's poetical version, which gives only the purer and better side of the character of the Knight and Chatelaine, at the expense of some of the strongest features of the story. Who, that knew that romantic legend, oould linger on that spot without thinking of King Marc's faith- less queen ! Assuredly not Mr. Hunleigh, who waa a staunch believer in the inventor of * aweetuesB and light,' and who kiiew ▲mold's yeraee by heait *Tintagel, half in Sea, and half on Land* 89 •What have they done with the flowers and the terrace walks ? ' he said, — ' the garden where Tristan and his Queen basked in the sunshiue of their days ; and where they parted for ever! — • " All the spring time of their love la already gone and past, And instead thereof is seen Its winter, which endure th still— Tyntagel, on its surge-beat hill. The pleasaunce walks, the weeping queen, Oihe flying leaves, the straining blast. And that long wild kiss — their last." And where — oh, where — are those graves in the King's chapel in which the tvrant Mare, touched with pity, ordered the fated lovers to be buried ? And, behold ! out of the grave of Tristan there sprung a plant which went along the walls, and descended into the grave of the Queen, and though King Marc three several times ordered this magical creeper to be cut off root and branch, it was always found growing again next morning, aa if it were the very spirit of the dead Jbiight struggling to get free from the grave, and to be with his l^y-love again 1 Show me those tombs, Miss Courtenay.' * You can take your choice,* said Jessie Bi idgeman, pointing to a green mound or two, overgrown with long rank grass, in that part of the hill which was said to be the kingly burial-place. * But as for your magical tree, there is not so much as a bramble to do duty for poor Tristan.' * If I were Duke of Cornwall and Lord of Tintagel Castle, I would put up a granite cross in memory of the lovers ; though I fear there was very little Christianity in either of them,* said Angus. * And I would come once a year and hang a garland on it,* •aid Christabel, smiling at him with • Eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue- Eyes too expressive to be blue. Too lovely to be grey.* He had recalled those lines more than once when he looked into Christabel's eyes. Mr. Hamleigh had read so much as to make him an interest- ing talker upon any subject ; but Christabel and Jessie noticed that of his own life, his ways and amusements, his friends, his ■urroundings, he spoke hardly at all. This fact Christabel noticed with wojider, Jessie with suspicion. If a man led a ffood wholesome life, he would surely be more frank and open — ne would surely have more to say about himself and hit MHOciateB. iO Mount Royal. They dawdled, and dawdled, till past four o'clock, and to none of the three did the hours so spent seem long ; but they found that it would make them too late in their return to Motint Royal were they to wait for sunilown before they turned then faces hom<>wards ; so while the day was still bright, Mr. Hani- leigh consented to be guided by sleep and perilous paths to the base of the rocky citadel, and then they strolled back to the Whaniclitfe Arms, where Felix had been enjoying himself in the stable, and was now des])erately anxious to get home, rattling up and down hill at an alarming rate, and not hinting at anybody's alighting to walk. This was only one of many days spent in the same fashion. They walked next day to Trebarwith sands, up and down hills, which Mr. Hamleigh declared were steeper than anything he had ever seen in Switzerland ; but he survived the walk, and hia spirits seemed to rise with the exertion. This time Major Bree went with them — a capital companion for a country ramble, beic-jj just enough of a botanist, archaeologist, and geologist, to leaven the lump of other people's ignorance, without being obnoxiously scientific. LIr. Hamleigh was delighted with that noble stretch of level sand, with the long rollers of the Atlantic tumbling in across the low rocks, and the bold hea/llands behind — spot beloved of marine })ainters — spot where the gulls and the <\ia,gs hold their revels, and where man feels himself but a poor creature face to face with the lonely grandeur of sea, and cliff, and sky. So rarely is that long stietch of yellow sand vulgarized by the feet of earth's multitudes, that one-half expects to see a procession of frolicsome sea-nymphs come dancing out of yonder cave, and wind in circling measures towards the crested wave- lets, gliding in so softly under the calm clear day. These were halcyon days — an Indian summer — balmy western ze])h/fa — sunny noontides — splendid sunsets — altogether the most beautiful autumn season that Angus Hamleigh had known, or at least, so it seemed to him — nay, even more than this, surely the most beautiful season of his life. As the days went on, and day after day was spent in Cliris- tabel's comjjany — almost as it were alone with her, for Misa Bridgeman and Major Bree were but as figures in the back- ground — Angus felt as if he were at the beginning of a new life — a life filled with fresh interests, thoughts, hopes, desires, unknown and undreamed of in the former stages of his being. Never before had he lived a life so uneventful — never before had he been so happy. It surprised him to discover how jimple are the elements of real content — how deep the charm of a placid existence among thoroughly loveable people ! Oiris- Ubel Courtenay wjis not the loveliest woman he haii ever luiown, nor the most eleg<-mt, nor the most accojuplished, « Tintagelj half in Sea, and lialf on Land. i I aor tlie most fascinating ! but she was entirely dilFerent from all other women with whom his lot had been cast. Her innocence, her unsophisticated enjoyment of all earth's purest joys, her transj)arent purity, her perfect trustfulness — these were to him as a revelation of a new order of beings. If he had been told of such a woman he would have shrugged his shoulders misbelievingly, or would have declared that she must be an idiot But CLristabel was quite as clever as those brilliant creatures whose easy manners had enchanted him in days gone by. She was better educated than many a woman he knew who passed for a wit of the fii-st order. She had read more, thought more, was more sympathetic, more companionable, and she was delightfully free from solf-consciousneas or vanity. Ho found himself talking to Christabel aa he had never fcilked to anyone else since tliose early days at the University, the blight dawn of manhood, when he coutided freely in that second self, the chosen friend of the hour, and believed that all men lived and moved according to his own boyish st-andard of honour. He talked to her, not of the actualities of his life, but of his thoughts and feelings — his dreamy speculations upon the gravest problems which hedge round the secret of man's final destiny. He talked freely of his doubts and difficult! -a, and the half-belief which Ciime so near unbelief-^the wide love of all creation — the vague yet passionate yearning for immortality which fell so far short of the Gospel's sublime certainty. He revealed to her all the complexities of a many-sided mind, and she never failed him in sympathy and understanding. This was in their graver moodt, when by some accidental turn of the conversation they fell into the discussion of those solemn questions which are always at the bottom of every man and tvoman's thoughts, like the unknown depths of a dark water- pool. For the most part their talk was bright and light aa those sunny autumn days, varied as the glorious and ever- changing hues of sky and sea at sunset. Jessie was a delightful companion. She was so thoroughly easy herself that it was impossible to feel ill at ease with her. She played her part of confidante so pleasantly, seeming to think it the most natural thing in the world that those two should be absorbed in each other, and should occasionally lapse into complete forgetfulness of her existence. Major Bree when he joined in their ramblea was obviously devoted to Jessie Bridge*r«n. It was her neatly gloved little hand which he was eager to clasp at the crossing of a stile, and where the steepness of the hill-side path gave him an excuse for assisting her. It was her stout little boot which he guided so tenderly, where the ways were niggedest Never had a plain woman a more respectful ad?nirer — iiev»» Wtuj beauty in her f)eerl3S8 zenith more devoutly wojahipped I i2 Mount BoyaL And BO the autumn days sped by, pleasantly for all : with deepest joy — joy ever waxing, never waning — for those two who had found the secret of perfect sympathy in thought and feeling. It was not for Angus Hamleigh tiie first passion of a spotless manhood ; and yet the glamour and the delight were as new as if he had never loved before. He had never so purely, so reverently loved. The passion was of a new quality. It seemed to him as if he had ascended into a higher sphere in the universe, and had given his heart to a creature of a loftier race. * Perhaps it is the good old lineage which makes the differ- ence,' he said to himself once, while his feelings were still suffi- ciently novel and so far under his control as to be subject to analysis. * The women I have cared for in days gone by have hardly got over their early affinity with the gutter ; or when I have admired a woman of good family she has been steeped to the lips in worldliness and vanity.* Mr. Hamleigh, who had told himself that he was going to be intensely bored at Mount Royal, had been Mrs. Tregonell's guest for three weeks, and it seemed to him as if the time were brief and beautiful as one of those rare dreams of impossible bliss which haunt our waking memories, and make actual life dull and joyless by contrast with the glory of shadowland. No word had yet been spoken — nay, at the very thought of those words which most lovers in his position would have been eager to speak, his soul sickened and his cheek paled ; for there would be no joyful- ness in the revelation of his love — indeed, he doubted whether he had the right to reveal it — whether duty and honour did not alike constrain him to keep his converse within the strict limits of friendship, to bid Christabel good-bye, and turn his back upon Mount Royal, without having said one word more than a friend might speak. Happy as Christabel had been with him — tenderly as she loved him — she was far too innocent to have considered lierself iU-treated in such a case. She would have blamed herself alone for the weakness of mind which had been unable to resist the fascination of his society— she would have blushed and wept in secret for her folly in having loved imwooed, * Has the eventful question been asked ? ' Jessie inquired one night, as Christabel lingered, after her wont, by the fire in Miss Bridgeman's bedroom. * You two were so intensely earnest to- day as you walked ahead of the Major and me, that I said to my- self, " now is the time — the crisis has arrived ? " ' * There was no crisis,' answered Christabel, crimsoning ; * he has never said one word to me that can imply that I am any mora to him than the most indifferent acquaintance.' * What need of words when every look and tone cries * I love Tou ? ' Why he idoHzes you, and he lets all the world see it I Lope it may be well for you — both,' ' Tintagel, half in Sea, a/nd Ttalf on LamA* 43 Christabel waa on her knees by the fire. She laid her cheek sgainst Jessie's waistband, and drew Jessie's arm round her neck, holding her hand lovingly. ' Do you really think he — cares for me 1 * she faltered, with her face hidden. * Do I really think that I have two eyes, and something which is at least an apology for a nose ! ' ejaculated Jessie, contemptu- ously. ' Why, it has been patent to everybody for the last fortnight that you two are over head and ears in love with each other. There never was a more obvious case of mutual infatua- tion.' * Oh, Jessie ! surely I have not betrayed myself. I know that I have been very weak — ^but I have taied so hard to hide » * And have been about as successful as the ostrich. While those drooping lashes have been lowered to hide the love-light in your eyes, your whole countenance has been an illuminated calendar of your folly. Poor Belle ! to think that she has not betrayed herself, while all Boscastle is on tiptoe to know when the wedding is to take place. Why the parson could not see you two sitting in the same pew without knowing that he would be reading your banns before he was many Sundays older.' * And you — really — like him ? ' faltered Christabel, more shyly than before. ' Yes,' answered Jessie, with a provoking lack of enthusiasm. * I really Uke him. I can't help feeling sorry for Mrs. Tregonell, for I know she wanted you to marry Leonard.' Christabel gave a little sigh, and a faint shiver. * Poor dear Leonard ! I wonder what traveller's hardships he is enduring while we are so snug and happy at Mount Royal ? * «he said, kindly. * He has an excellent heai-t ' 'Troublesome people always have, 1 believe,' interjected Jessie. * It is their redeeming feature, the existence of which no one can absolutely disprove.' ' And I am very much attached to him — ^as a cousin — or as an adopted brother ; but as to our ever being married — that is quite out of the question. There never were two people less suited to each other.' * Those are the people who usually come together,' said Jessie ; * the Divorce Court could hardly be kept going if it were not so.' ' Jessie, if you are going to be cynical I shall say good-night, I hope there is no foundation for what you said just now. I hope that Auntie has no foolish idea about Leonard and me.' * She has — or had — one prevailing idea, and 1 fear it will go hard with her when she has to relinquish it,' answered Jessie, lerioasly, * I know that it has been her dearest hope to see 44 Mount BoyaX. jrou and Leonard married, and I should be a wretcb if I were not sorry for her disappointment, when she has been so good to me. But she never ought to have invited Mr. Hamleigh to Mount RoyaL That is one of those mistakes, the consequences of which last for a lifetime.' * I hope he likes me — just a little,' pursued Christabel, with dreamy eyes fixed on the low wood fire ; * but sometimes I fancy there must be some mistake — that he does not really care a straw for me. More than once, when he has began to say some- thing that sounded ' * Busiuess-like,' suggested Jessie, as the girl hesitated. * He has drawn back — seeming almost anxious to recall hia words. Once he told me — quite seriously — that he had made up his mind never to marry. Now, that doesn't sound as if he meant to marry wie.' * That is not an uncommon way of breaking ground,' answered Jessie, with her matter-of-fact air. * A man tells a girl that he is going to die a bachelor — which makes it seem quite a favour on his part when he proposes. All women sigh for the unattain- able ; and a man who distinctly states that he is not in the market, is likely to make a better bargain when he surrender^,' ' I should be sorry to think Mr. Hamleigh capable of such petty ideas,' said ChristabeL ' He told me once that he was like Achilles. Why should he be like Achilles ? He is not a soldier.' ' Perhaps, it is because he has a Grecian nose,' suggested Miss Bridge man. 'How can you imagine him so vain and foolish,' cried Cliristabel, deeply offended. *I begin to think you detest »um!' * No,fBelle, I think him charming, only too charming, and I had rather the man you loved were made of sterner metal — not such a man as Leonard, whose loftiest desires are centred in stable and gun-room ; but a man of an altogether different type from Mr. Hamleigh. He has too much of the artistic temperament, without being an artist — he is too versatile, too soft-hearted and im- f)ressi()nable. I am afraid for you, Christabel, I am afraid ; and if it were not too late — if your heart were not wholly given to him ' * It is,* answered Christjibel, tearfully, with her face hidden ; * I hate myself for being so foolish, but I have let myself love him. J know that I may never be his wife — I do not even think that he has any idea of marrying me — but I shall never marry any other man. Oh, Jessie 1 for pity's sake don't betray me ; never let my aunt, or any one else in this world, learn what I have told you. I can't help trusting you — you wind yourself into my heart somehow, and find out all that is hidden there ! ' ' Lwe / Thou art leading Me from Wintry Cold,' 46 * Because I love you truly and honestly, my dear,' answere