• • FRIENDS AND LOVERS. A NOVEL. BY ANNIE THOMAS (Mrs PENDER CUDLIP), AUTHOR OF "DENIS DONNE," ETC. Jl ileto ©Mtitfit. LONDON: F. V. WHITE & CO., 31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. [A U Rights retetu c Arminger gets abundance of sympathy and kindly feeling extended to her. but no one thinks of offering her pity any more than they would offer her alms. She smiles and looks cheerily satisfied with the world, even when her larder is empty, and she has not the where- withal to replenish it. And the world in return smiles and looks cheerily at her, kindly ignores her empty larder, and makes believe to think her as well off as she appears to be. For years she has striven gallantly, and succeeded be- yond all reasonable expectation in keeping and educating her children by the hard labour of her brain and hand. Her work is, artistically speaking, very worthy, but in Mr Vaughan's eai-s it would sound ignobly if any one were found brave enough to name it to him. She has kept her boy at school, and dressed her little lassies prettily on what she makes by painting lamp-shades and fire-screens. And now that her speciality is known and appreciated, and that her work commands a fairly remunerative price, she feels herself justified in withdrawing from the vicinity of the Great Mart, and making a home for her son in the village to which he is going as tutor in a school, the very name of which will be a recommendation to him through life. It is a matter of very little import to her that the rich sister, whom she has never seen since her own real life began, should be living at Clyst in a sphere far above the one she will occupy. Her sole thought is for her son's weal and comfort, and it is only because they shall not have it to say of her that she crept into their midst in an underhand way, that she writes to Mrs Vaughan at all. But she desires nothing from them, and expects nothing more than she desires. Consequently when Mrs Vaughan's answer comes, Mrs Arminger opens and reads it without an expectant throb. Fortunate is it for her that she has thus schooled her- self to form no bright anticipation of a warm and affec- tionate response from the sister from whom she has been 12 Don Ariiiinger. alienated for so many years. Mrs Vaughan's letter is a cautious compilation dictated by her husband. There is not a touch of tenderness, or even conventional geniality in it. But Mrs Arminger reads it without a sigh. It runs thus : — 'Strathlands, October 20th. " Dear Lily, — Your letter apprising me of the extra- ordinary resolution to which you and your son have come, reached me safely this morning. I am sorry that you should have chosen to make him an usher. It is not the profession of a gentleman, and his following it will preclude all possibility of Mr Vaughan ever being able to offer him any assistance. " With every good wish, believe me to be, yours very sincerely, Annabel Vaughan." Mrs Arminger's soft grey eyes sparkle more with amusement than anger as she reads this frigid effusion. " I recognise my augtist brother-in-law in every word. Poor, ductile Annabel ! You never had the vigour of a caterpillar even, and the little you had has been ex- hausted in the rarified Vaughan atmosphere. Poor sister, you needn't be frightened. If we live in different hemi- spheres we couldn't be w r ider apart than we shall be when I'm at Clyst." There is not an atom of pique, spite, or ill-feeling in her breast as she puts the letter down, and takes up a design drawn for her by the skilful hand of her daughter Maude. From this design an original half grotesque, half pathetic treatment of a witch on a broomstick flying through space, Mrs Arminger will make endless combina- tions for the adornment of countless lamp-shades. Orders are pouring in fast upon her, and she is in funds and high spirits consequently. The little room in which she is painting is the family sitting-room, but there is no disorder, no shabby subter- fuges, no air of barren tidiness about it. The hand of a gentlewoman and an artist is visible in every nook and Don Arniinger. 13 corner. The curtains are cretonne, a grey-green ground covered with fern leaves in every shade of brown and dull gold. The floor is polished, partially covered by an old Persian carpet, which, worn as it is, yet retains much of its subdued splendour of colouring. The walls are painted the same pale grey-green as the groundwork of the curtains, and on them are fastened innumerable well- carved brackets which serve to support some good bits of old china, and some exquisitely shaped and coloured modern glass flower vases. A cottage piano stands across a coiner with its back to the room, but its back is covered with a beautiful piece of silk embroidery on grey-green cloth, the work of the same deft little ringers that draw the designs for " mother's lamp-shades." There are plenty of books on ebony shelves which rise up on either side from chimney-piece nearly to ceiling, forming a frame for a plain piece of bevelled glass. Clever water- colour drawings hang on the walls and lie on little tables of divers shapes, all of them made by Mrs Arminger and her children. It is the best amusement this hard- working mother and her son and daughters have, this of beautifying and decorating their home with the work of their own hands. Taste in a great measure makes up for the want of money. Mrs Arminger has no rich or rare belongings, yet her apartments invariably give one the impression of beauty and refinement. She paints on undisturbed for several hours this morn- ing. Then, as the clock strikes one, the landlady comes in to lay the cloth and spread the table for the early dinner, to which the children will come in presently. When they do come in, Mrs Arminger, bright, trim, and picturesque in a becoming lace mob cap and pretty crewel apron with bib and pockets, will show no trace of her occupation, either by fatigue or stain of paint. She is a proud woman presently when they do troop in, the boy from the school, where he pays for the lessons he takes by the lessons he gives ; the girls from their respective drawing and music lessons. It is Mrs Arinin- ger's plan not to have her children crammed with mis- 14 Don Arminger. cellaneous learning, but discover the speciality of each one, and have it cultivated to the best of her ability. Don's gift of imparting knowledge to others has been worked upon with good and satisfactory results already. Dreamy Maude is studying art under a drawing master, to the exclusion of all other branches of education ex- cepting languages. These latter — German and French — she works at with a will, for she has visions of the Louvre and the Munich Galleries. Little Trixy's speci- ality has not been discovered as yet, but she avows that she likes music better than most things, and Lily Armin- ger is as hopeful of her younger child " doing something definite well " as she is satisfied with the others. Don is just seventeen— a tall, thoughtful lad, slight, but with no signs of delicacy in his firm, upright figure, or in the clear, brave face that is always held aloft with an unconscious air of command. He has his mother's grey eyes — eyes that offer their undefiled depths unflinchingly to your inspection. And he has her composure and self- possession. Altogether, he well deserves the verdict passed upon him by every master and every schoolboy with whom he has been thrown in contact. " Don's a gentleman every inch of him," they all aver, and they are right. He is as brave as a lion and as pure as a girl. Maude is fourteen, an age that is proverbially unbe- coming, but the beauty of Mrs Arminger's eldest daughter is incontestable. There is a dreamy grace in her pale complexioned face, and a good deal of latent pride in her large, grey hazel, longlashed eyes. But she is all a child when she is away from her drawing, and is behind none of them in animation and activity when romping with her playfellows. Trixy is a little, velvet-eyed brown mouse, brimming over with affection and vivacity — a rosy pretty little brunette, a lump of love, full of tempestuous feeling which sometimes shows itself in a storm of fury, but oftener in a burst of tenderness — idle, mischievous, and bewitching. " Capable of great things, but lacking in perseverance," her mistresses say, but a darling for all that. Don Arminger. 15 These are the young people who Mr Vaughan fears may, by their mere existence at Clyst, exercise a deterior- ating influence on his children ; and their high-hearted, hard-working, indefatigable, independent spirited little mother is the sister with whom he has forbidden his wife to hold any social intercourse. Yes, he has brooded over the "calamity" as he terms their promised advent at Clyst, till it really assumes the propor- tions of a colossal wrong and grievance. Never before has anything so untoward happened in the Vaughan family as that poor relations on the wife's side should obtrude their poverty and relationship upon the observation of the neigh- bourhood. Never before has Mr Vaughan had such an un- pleasant subject so forced upon and kept fresh in his notice. Through some miserable carelessness, either on his part or his wife's, it soon leaks out that the mother of the handsome young man who has come as usher to Mr Dalzel is none other than own sister to the squire's lady. As Mr Vaughan makes a majestic progress through the village street on horseback, or by the side of his wife in her splendidly appointed carriage, he knows that the busybodies are speculating as to whether he is going to stop at the little way-side house which has been, in the course of a few days, magically metamorphosed from a common-place cottage into a picturesque bowery kind of place, the windows of which give glimpses of filmy cream coloured muslin, from out whose folds hanging baskets of moss and fern and trailing ivy peep. He knows that these speculations are rife about him, and he cannot succeed in feigning to be unconscious of them. He feels himself turn pale one morning, when just as he is passing, a graceful woman, much fairer to look upon than his own wife, and with an air of distinc- tion about her that compels his admiration, steps out upon the threshold of the metamorphosed cottage door, and he feels his own eyes droop under the careless, cool gaze of his sister-in-law. It is like her audacity, he feels, to add to the compli- cations of the case, and to embarrass him by being a woman 1 6 Don Arminger, whom he can't denounce as vulgar or underbred. The roughest churls in the village cede her the same rugged homage and prompt respect which they show to the lady of Strathlands. Her very voice is vexatious to him, with its high-bred light intonation, and inflections, when he hears it raised laughingly through her open windows as she talks to her children. The little girls are thorns in his flesh. He cannot help seeing that his own daughters, and Miss Vaughans of Strathlandu, cannot vie with these obscure Arminger girls. And as for Don Arminger, he hates the lad with an intensity that sometimes astounds and alarms himself. " The fellow must be predestined to bring disgrace on me or mine, or I could not trouble myself to dislike him in this unaccountable way," Mr Vaughan says to his wife one day, when they pass Don swinging along the road buoyantly on his way from his mother's pretty way- side cottage to the rectory, where Mr Dalzel's young gentlemen are awaiting the usher. " I wonder if he knows I am his aunt V Mrs Vaughan falters, and her husband, who has been rendered testy by this terrible social calamity, answers testily now. " Knows that you are, and is prepared to trade upon the knowledge, that I dare swear ; however, trust en- tirely to me and I will keep the whole lot of them at bay." " Edmund, they don't deserve that you should speak of them in this way," she says, making a faint effort to pluck up something like spirit ; " they show no more desire to know us than we do to know them. Oh, it's an unnatural state of things, and we shall be punished for it some day ! " " You punish me already by wailing and whining in this way, Annabel ; I really wish you would remember that we have been perfectly innocent of all offence in bringing this extremely compromising complication about. Your sister and you have been strangers for many years ; why should you consider it ' unnatural ' that you should remain strangers still 1 " Don Arminger. 1 7 " I rear! contempt in my nephew's face as we passed him just now — my heart yearns to him — he is handsome as a star, and lie has the bearing of a prince." "You are uttering greater nonsense than I can con- ceive you imagining," he interrupts. " He has a fair amount of cheek and swagger for an usher in. a second- rate school, I admit, but that only makes him the more dangerous. You have daughters, remember, Mrs Vaughan, and it's your duty to save them from con- tamination, at the cost of any sentimental feeling you may have." " Such words to use about my sister's son — my own blood relation ! " she cries. But Mr Yaughan pooh-poohs her protest, and argues with her that it is better for her to keep to this line of absolute non-intercourse, than to adopt half measures, and see her sister occasionally in a semi-friendly way. Meanwhile the Armingers are very happy in their new home, and before many weeks pass over their heads in Clyst, they are well-known and better liked by a vast number of people, all of whom feel impelled to accord kindly and courteous consideration to the Armino-ers, and many of whom visit in the over-rated Vaughan set. Once or twice, in a surreptitious way that wins their scorn, Mrs Yaughan waylays Maude and Trixy when she knows her husband is far away at some magistrates' meeting, and tries to apologise herself into their affec- tionate interest, and to ingratiate herself with tempting offers of trinkets and sweetmeats, fruit and flowers. The ti-inkets and sweetmeats Maude resolutely rejects, but flowers she cannot resist; they are as sweet as angel's smiles to her. So it comes to pass that many a choice bouquet of hot-house flowers finds its Avay from Strathlands down to Mrs Arminger's unpretentious little parlour. One day, among the other flowers, she finds a pome- granate blossom, and its glorious, flame-like beauty attracts and takes possession of her. For hours she B 18 Constance Fielding. works at reproducing it, but fails till Maude aids her. Then— " The child's pencil and brush have magic in them ! " she says ecstatically, for she means this painted flower to be a message to her sister. CHAPTER IIL CONSTANCE FIELDING. The little girl at "Woodside, who is growing up, accord- ing to Mr Vaughan's idea and intention, for the sole purpose of being united to his son Donald, is a very quaint and interesting little girl of twelve, at the time when the Armingers take up their abode in Clyst. She is actually the owner of Woodside already — the little lady of the land ; for her father and mother are dead, and it is under the care and guardianship of a maiden aunt that Constance Fielding is growing up. She has been brought up on terms of fraternal in- timacy with the young Vaughans ; for Mr Vaughan has great faith in the winning power of propinquity, and Miss Damer, the maiden aunt, whose business it is to steer her niece over the sea of life till the latter is twenty-one, desires no better fate for her charge than to see her married to Donald Vaughan. But no embarrassing ideas of this kind shackle the intercourse of the young people. Constance is to Donald and Reginald merely a girl like their own sisters, to be played with, teased, amused, buffeted, tyrannised over, and petted, precisely as it suits their lordly boyish pur- pose. And she complains of them, quarrels with them, plays wild beasts or horses with them, and is alternately queen over and slave to them, just as their sisters do and are. She i3 a distinguished-looking girl already, young as she is. A well-grown, erect, fearless, blue-eyed, bold- fronted child, with a loud, ringiug, merry voice, an . Constance Fielding. 1 9 •inexhaustible fund of spirits, and a heart as ti-ue as gold. Altogether " Neighbour Constance," as Mr Vaughan is fond of calling her, bids fair to be the heroine of more than one exciting love-chase. As she sits demurely and reverently by her aunt's side on the Sunday following the Armingers' arrival in Clyst, her musical ear is pleased by a new voice, which rises high and clear above all others when the first hymn is being sung. She has but to turn her head an inch in order to command the rector's seat, from whence this voice proceeds, but she controls her curiosity till the service is over. Then she comes out of church in the wake of the Arminger family, and conjectures at once that the new tenor is the usher about whom Mr Dalzel has spoken to her aunt. The child is fascinated by the aspect of the whole family at once. The graceful, dainty-looking little mother, the dreamy - looking eldest girl, with her long, fair, streaming hair and glorious eyes ; the piquant beauty of bonnie little Trixy, and the thoroughbred manly look of the son, all exercise a potent spell over the little girl, who has hitherto been strictly limited to' the society of the Vaughans. Constance loiters behind them as tliey slowly saunter home, laughing and talking freely together. The tones of their voices, something pictur esque in their dress, the happy familiarity that evidently exists between the mother and her children, the unusual- nessof them altogether, all tend to charm the little predes- tined wife of Donald Vaughan into an enthusiastic desire to become acquainted with his disowned aunt and cousins. As she has been accustomed from her birth to have all her requests granted, it strikes her now as excessively hard that her aunt should refuse to "call on those dear people who live in that house, and who don't look like anybody else." MissDamer, instructed by Mr Vaughan, declines to do this, and perhaps the matter might end there, if she were not weak enough to attempt to defend her refusal, and prove to her far sharper- witted niece that she is right. 20 Constance Fielding. " They may be very nice people, Constance, but tbey do not belong to the class in which you "will visit when you are grown up, and if you get to know them now, it will be very awkward by-and-by." " Does Mrs Vaughan belong to the class I ought to visit 1. " " Most certainly." "And Mrs Arminger is her sister. I know she is, Aunt Emily ; I've heard several people say so." " My dear Connie, you shock me ; how can people dare to gossip to you about such things 1 " " Such ' things ' as Mrs Vaughau, do you mean, Aunt Emily 1 that's exactly what I call her; a regular mean- spirited old snob of a thing, to be ashamed of her own sister, because her own sister hasn't as much money as she has." " Dearest Connie, you mustn't speak disrespectfully of our dear friend Mrs Vaughan. She is very much to be pitied, and I consider that this Mrs Arminger shows a spirit of nasty, pushing vulgarity in hunting her sister out in this way, and coming here to disgrace her." Constance's face flames scarlet at once. She is only a child, and her choice of language is limited as yet, but she has words at command to express her feelings now. " I call it a beastly shame to look down on people be- cause they're poor ; and the Vaughans are stupidly silly too, because the Armingers look ever so much greater swells than the Vaughans do, and so I shall tell Bell and Edith ; and, if the Vaughans don't like the Armingers being poor, why don't they give them some of their money, and — " u Oh, Constance, Constance ! what is the use of your learning grammar, if you muddle up your sentences in this way 1 And wherever have you learned such ex- tremely low and foolish sentiments 1 It's no use arguing with me, my dear; I know my duty, and mean to do it, and it's my duty to keep you aloof from people who may be detrimental to you in after life ; so please let me hear no more about the Armingers, and promise me that you Constance Fielding. 2 1 will never allow yourself to get inveigled into an acquaint- anceship with them." "I don't know what 'inveigling' ineaus, but I won't promise not to know them the first chance I get ; they're as much ladies as we are — any fool can see that." " Such language as you use, Constance ! " Miss Darner says despairingly. " I learn to speak like that from Don and Reggie Vaughan," Constance says a little maliciously. " What- ever they say and do is right, you know ; they're so rich." " It's not their riches that makes them gentlemen ; do understand that, Connie. However poor they might be, the Vaughans must always be gentle people." " That's just what I say about the Armingers," Connie says ; and then the spirited little mistress of Woodside cuts further argument by ringing to order her pony. " I am going to ride through Clyst, and then round by Strathlands," she says to her aunt as she turns Pepper- corn's head from the door, and, followed by her own groom, canters down the avenue. Peppercorn is full of fun this morning, and gives his misti'ess all the work she can well do in regulating him. He is a handsome little fellow, twelve hands high, shaped like a horse, and full of courage. But Constance has ridden him for four years, and is an adept in accommo- dating herself to his wildest movements. She makes a pretty picture riding down the village street on this November day in her well fitting brown habit and little brown billycock hat ; and so Maude Arminger, standing at their open window, thinks. The two children look straight into each other's eyes with that interrogating but still trustful look which is char- acteristic of youth. Then they smile simultaneously, and in a moment Aunt Emily "s prohibition is disregarded, and Peppercorn's nose is turned over the wicket-gate. Maude is out by the gate in a second. "Hosv jolly for you to have a pony," she says, caress- ing Peppercorn's nose. " Are you the one who walked behind us home from church on Sunday \ " 22 Constance Fielding. " Yes. I wanted to speak to you then, only aunt is horrid sometimes, and wouldn't let me. I liked you awfully, and want to be chums. I know your cousins the Vaughans ; they're awfully grand, you know, and not half as nice as you and your sister, 1 am sure. Shall I come in 1 " She waits courteously, in spite of her impetuosity, for Maude to give her a hearty invitation to enter, and then she slips off her pony in a moment, and Trixy comes flying out to see "what it is all about," and with a little disposition to pout because she has " not beeu in it " from the beginning. " This is our mother," Maude says, introducing Con- stance with a certain suave velocity which is so conta- gious that Constance finds herself directly informing Mrs Arminger of her — Constance's — name, age, place of abode and any other trifle concerning herself which she can re- member at the moment ; and Mrs Arminger listens to the bold bright child with pleasure and sympathy, and goes on swiftly painting a lamp-shade the while in a way that seems little short of miraculous. "Do you always do these things'?" Constance asks, pointing to a newly completed shade. " They're awfully pretty, and you're very clever to do them ; but don't you get tired of doing them 1 Don't you want to paint other sort of pictures'?" " Don't you understand," Maude explains earnestly ; " we're very poor, and mother paints these for money, not for pleasure altogether." " You oughtn't to be poor. I mean, you oughtn't to have to work, any of you," Constance says, with beaming eyes. " Let me come here and learn to paint ; may I] Will you, Mrs Arminger 1 ? And let Maude ride my pony. He's called Peppercorn, and he is such a darling." " My dear little girl," Mrs Arminger says, putting her brush down and taking the child gently by the shoulders, "you shall come here and learn to paint, and Maude shall ride your pony if, after you have seen the Vaughans, Constance Fielding. 23 and told them what you want to do, you still wish to do it, and your aunt will let you. And now I must send you off on pretty Peppercorn, for it is not right that I should keep you here till I know whether or not your friends will like you to come." " When I'm older you will be my friends, won't you % " Connie says wistfully, for these people, with their avowed poverty and their impressive refinement, have given her a new outlook into life, and she shrinks from the thought of being cut off from them, and of going back to what and to whom she has always been accustomed. " Yes, we shall always be friends, I feel," Mrs Arminger says cheerily ; " that is, if those to whom you owe obedi- ence allow it ; and we shall always like you, even if they don't allow it — sha'n't we, my children 1 " Maude assents by a serious nod. " When I can paint portraits I'll do yours," she says to the little heiress of Woodside, whose face lights up with pride at the thought of having a girl-friend clever enough to paint. " I should like to ride Peppercorn," Trixy murmurs from the background, and as she is saying this her brother Don comes in. "This is Constance Fielding," his sisters begin eagerly, " and we're going to be great friends if she's let be ; and oh, Don, isn't the pony a love 1 " He jumps his youngest sister up in his arms, and kisses her as he says, — " I'm home for the afternoon, Trixy. Shall it be a ferning expedition 1 " The child shouts with delight at the prospect, and as Constance lingeringly leaves the room, she whispers in confidence to Maude, — " I wish he was my brother too : I like him. He's different to Don Vaughan." " Not so grand 1 " Maude questions. "Oh, grander, ever so much; good-bye," she leans forward and kisses her new friend. " Tell your mother I'm not a sneak ; I'm going straight back to tell Aunt 24 Constance Fielding. Emily that I've been to see you, and asked you to be my friends." With this Miss Fielding puts her little foot on the old groom's hand, and is popped up on Peppercorn in a way that commands Maude's willing admiration. There is beauty to the artist-souled child in the breezy freshness, and almost boyish frankness, and general munificence of her new acquaintance. If Maude and her family are a revelation and liberal education to the child who has been nurtured among mediocre-minded but extremely well- bred people, so is this child, Constance herself, a breath of new, enticing, entrancing life to Maude, who has never ridden, much less owned, a pony. " I shall dream of Peppercorn and Constance," she says, going back into the room where her brother is saying to her mother that they "must be careful not to arouse Vaughan's animus further by ingratiating themselves with this little Miss Fielding." " Already I fear I've been the cause of Mr Dalzel's losing a pupil. Mr Vaughan was going to send his son Donald there for a term, but the presence of your un- worthy Don, dear mother, as an usher in the school, has upset this arrangement; is there anything wrong about Aunt Annabel, mother, that they shun us so 1 " "My dear boy," she cries, laughing merrily, "your Aunt Annabel's one fault in life is that — I am her sister. That is the one black spot in her surroundings. Her husband hates us with a worse hate than he could visit on any sin, because we are poor and independent. If we were poor and needy he could banish us ; as it is, we exist, and make our existence tolerable under his nose, without his aid. Dear boy, does the contempt of your rich relations distress you 1 If it does, relinquish your situation, and we will leave Clyst ; you shall not stay here to suffer." " I have no feeling for my aunt, for I've never known her. Does her neglect hurt you, mother 1 " " Nothing can hurt me while I have such children as you about me," she says, tenderly and truthfully. Constance Fielding. 25 And then the two girls come leaping into the room, claiming the fulfilment of his promise to go ferning with them. " It must be nice to have Peppercorn," Maude says, sighing, as they pass Woodside presently, and Trixy cries rapturously, — " It must be nice to be Miss Fielding, and have a pony, and do as she likes, and have plenty of money to buy sweets, and not have to bother about lessons. Don't you love her, Don 1 Isn't she a darling 1 " " She's little Miss Fielding, of Woodside," he says, taking off his hat in playful, deferential mockery to the hill-side, on which Constance's house is situated. " While you remember that fact, my children, you'll be all right ; when you forget it, you'll be all wrong ; so remember it." " Oh, Don, and you'd be the first to forget that she's richer than we, if you only knew her as we do," Trixy says wisely. " She's but a brat of a child, like you two. Why should I think of her at all 1 " he says gaily. But he does think of her, nevertheless, and applauds Maude when she makes a sketch of Peppercorn, with his bonuie little rider on his back. Meanwhile in all honesty Constance has ridden home, and confessed the social enormity of which she has been guilty. But she has not done it in a penitential way. "I've got to know those Armingers," she says to her guardian aunt. " I blurted right in upon them, and they couldn't help themselves ; they had to be civil, you see. Maude's going to ride Peppercorn, and I'm going in there when I like, and oh, Aunt Emily, they are darlings, the little girls as well as Don." " For the tirst time in your life you've disappointed and hurt me, Constance," her aunt says severely. " The Vaughans will be more than distressed at what you have done ; the inconveniences that may arise from your action will never cease while these people stay here. Half-and-half people are invariably more difficult to deal with than quite the lower classes." 26 Very Indiscreet. ' " I shall never want to shake them off; I only hope they'll stick to me as truly as I will to them ; they're the best ladies and gentlemen I ever knew, and the cleverest and the handsomest ; and I don't care what the Vaughans say, or how distressed they are." " Oh, Constance, how can you turn aside to new friends from such old ones as the Vaughans 1 " " Mrs Vaughan has turned aside from her own sister, and a sister is more than a friend." " Mr Dalzel would have a more Christian spirit if he had dismissed this young man when he learnt how ob- noxious his presence here would be to the Vaughans," Miss Darner says with a heavy sigh, for her prophetic soul tells her that this young man may be a thorn of serious trouble to them all. The next day an affectionate letter of invitation for Miss Darner and her charge to come and stay at Strath- lands for a time arrives from Mrs Vaughan. The coincidence strikes Constance as rather strange, but the straight-dealing child has no idea that this in- vitation is the result of an appeal from her aunt to the Vaughans to aid her in breaking off this " pernicious acquaintance." CHAPTER IV VERY INDISCREET. It must not be supposed that Mrs Vaughan has re- nounced her sister and the liberty of the subject without a struggle. She has indeed set herself in opposition to her husband's arbitrary decree on several occasions, but she has always done it in a weak way and at the wrong moment. She has, for instance, protested feebly just before going to church against the uncharitable iniquity of being made to slight her own sister in the face of the full congregation, and cried weakly because her protest Very Indiscreet. 27 is disregarded. The effect of this proceeding is that she goes into church with red eyes, and with her complexion mottled by her ill-timed but bitter tears. And Mr Vaughan has the unspeakable annoyance of knowing that people are pitying her and thinking him a petty tyrant, and altogether misjudging him and misunder- standing the situation. " Why do you think about them 1 They need not exist for you, for their presence in the place is not a shame to you, as it is to me," he says to her authori- tatively. And she murmurs that it " is impossible to forget that one's own blood relations exist, even if one does fossilise one's heart." " Nonsense ! " he says conclusively. " A woman with a well-regulated mind forgets all minor conventional considerations if she has a proper sense of her paramount duty towards her husband and children." " I have never failed in my duty to either," she moans reproachfully. And her husband assures her that she shall not be tempted to error by being permitted to indulge in intei - - course with a sister who has so slight a regard for the fitness of things as Mrs Arminger has shown. The visit which Miss Darner and Constance Fielding, Miss Darner's highly important young niece, pay to Strathlands just at this juncture is not fraught with much incident, but is productive of serious and important results. For one thing, Mr Vaughan, who has a manner of authority at command at all times, brings this manner to bear so powerfully on Miss Darner (who is Constance's sole guardian) that she submits without reservation to his decision as to the necessity of there being absolutely no further intercourse between the heiress and the young people of Clyst Cottage. " There must be no half measures," he says, rather sternly to Miss Damer. " Our dear little neighbour, Constance, is a high-spirited, determined little lady, and 28 Very Indiscreet. it is quite right, in her position, that she should be high- spirited and determined. But in this case you must conquer her will and insist upon her giving up these ex- tremely undesirable people entirely." "Connie is very wilful ; she may defy me," Miss Damer says hesitatingly. "In that case, sadly as both Annabel and I shall feel parting with our dear little favourite, you must take her away for a time. Change of scene and the knowledge she will soon acquh'e from the world of her own position, its importance and dignity, will soon work a change in her. At present she thinks it chivalrous to range her- self on the side of these people, because she sees that we look down on them. But after a time she will discover that they are not of her world, and that they are better and more at ease if left undisturbed in their own. Speak to her to-day. Tell her that it will be a source of deep sorrow to both Mrs Vaughan and myself if she persists in being familiar with these Armingers." In obedience to this behest, Mrs Damer does speak to Constance, and does so threaten, weep at, and otherwise badger Constance, that the poor child in despair at length gives an unconditional promise never again to seek the society of her new friends. " I'll promise not to go to their house, and not to loiter past their gate, and not to try and meet them, Aunt Emily," she says at last ; " but I won't promise not to speak to them if we meet by accident, and they stop and speak to me ; even Mr Vaughan can't wish me to be such a snob as that." " Even Mr Vaughan ! Why, child, Mr Vaughan has nothing so much at heart as your honour and happiness." " That's all bosh, as Donald Vaughan says, when his father has been extra grand about something or other ; my honour and happiness can't be as much to him as the honour and happiness of his own children ; and if it is, it oughtn't to be." Miss Damer deems it discreet not to enter into any argument on this point. She has a promise from her Very Indiscreet. 29 niece, which though not entirely as satisfactory as a vow- to " quite cut " the Armingers would have been, is still better than the defiance she half feared. At any rate, Constance is safe for the present. The future must take care of itself, or rather Mr Vaughan must take care of it for her. Another residt of this visit to Strathlands is that Mr Vaughan and the guardian aunt enter into a solemn compact to unite the eldest son of the one and the niece of the other in matrimony, so soon as the boy and girl shall be of suitable age. And a third result is that Mrs Vaughan, who has been excluded from these solemn conferences, conceives a fierce jealousy and a hearty detestation of the innocent and un- conscious Miss Darner. The mistress of Strathlands is indeed to be pitied now. Compelled to stand aloof from the sweet-faced, kind- hearted, merry-minded sister of whom she is daily re- minded ; with a gnawing sense of injury upon her with regard to her husband ; and cowed by the humiliating reflection that all the neighbourhood must scorn her for her cowardly disregard of the claims of her kith and kin, her reflections are in truth anything but enviable. Over and over again she almost resolves to be brave and speak out boldly, but the resolve melts away at the first glance of Mr Vaughan's cool, constraining eyes. But thougli she does not speak out, she frets, and maintains long silences, which have a strong resemblance to sulky fits, and cries, and grows paler and thinner, and more languid and uninteresting altogether than is agreeable to her husband. Meanwhile, Miss Damer and her charge have returned to Woodside, and Constance, whose heart is yearning for a sight even of the young Armingers, confines her rides and rambles entirely to her own grounds for many weeks, because she will not be tempted to break her promise. The winter has passed away, and all the land is break- ing out with gladness because the boyhood of the year has come. 30 Very Indiscreet. To the young Anninqers, whose lives have hitherto been passed in more or less crowded streets, the coming of spring this year has been a source of boundless joy. From the breaking forth of the first blades of corn in the fields, and the first snowdrops in the hedges, until now when all the banks about Clyst are thick ty carpeted with primroses and violets, every day has brought them fresh revelations of the beauty and joyfulness there is in the earth. Their little cottage home is more like a bower than ever now, for all the climbing plants and shrubs that cover it are in full leaf, and the pink monthly rose at the side of the sitting-room window is covered with flowers. The garden is a mass of colour and luxuriance. Beds of red, yeliow, and white tulips and crocuses dot the grass plat, and the borders that run up by the side of the path from the gate to the door are bright with various coloured clumps of cyclamens, primulas, and ranunculuses. Inside the house the air is sweet with the perfume of hyacinths and narcissus. And the social atmosphere which pervades this little home of taste is as sweet as the air the Armingers breathe. Always busy as the mother and her daughters are, their business hardly assumes the aspect of work in their eyes. If Maude has to labour hard all day at a "study from the round," which is entirely uninteresting by treason of its being a model of an apple or a melon that in its abnormal perfection is a possibility rather than a probability, in the evening she is requited by being allowed to paint some flower or richly-coloured bit of foliage, which Trixy has sought and found for her during the clay ; and if Mrs Arminger does find painting lamp- shades perpetually a trifle monotonous, she is amply re- warded for persisting in the pursuit by the knowledge that she is bringing comfort in the present and prospec- tive prosperity to her clever children. It does occur to them each and all, individually and collectively, to wonder silently, and aloud very often, that they never see anything in these days of the frankly Very Indiscreet. 3 j demonstrative little girl who rode into their lives like a princess in a fairy tale. In vain Maude waits for the hot-house flowers and tro- pical foliage which Constance, on that eventful day, pro- mised should be frequently forthcoming from the Wood- side conservatories. Equally in vain does sanguine Trixy listen for the sound of Peppercorn's hoofs. The eyes of the one and the ears of the other are doomed to disappointment. But their d'sippointment does not render them either distrustful or unjust. Whatever else it may be, they are certain of this at least, that it is neither Constance Fielding's fickleness nor fault which keeps her from them. There had been the genuine ring of true metal in her ex- pressions of friendship and regard. The separation has been the work of others, not of her will or caprice. Of this they are sure as they are of their own straightfor- wardness and honesty. Still it is hard never to see her except in church, where the extra light that shines in their respective eyes as they catch sight of one another is their sole means of communication. One never-to-be-forgotten morning in May when the hawthorn is in full bloom, making all the hedgerows round Clyst sweet with its nutty fragrance, Constance breaks through her self-imposed rule, and rides away into the country, with the old groom as usual in close attendance on her. Nothing has ever happened to the child in the nature of an accident, Peppercorn is such a staunch, thoroughly to be relied upon little fellow. It never enters into Miss Darner's wildest imaginings to be nervous about the little girl who has been perfectly at home in the saddle ever since she was four years old. So some hours passed away after Constance's departure this day, before Miss Darner experiences the slightest anxiety. Meantime Constance, after having ridden straight away into the heart of the country for many miles, rejoicing in the unwonted sense of freedom, takes a road which brings her home through a lar^e market-town. 32 Very Indiscreet. It chances to be market-day, and the streets are un- usually crowded. Mr Dalzel and his usher, Don Ar- minger, happening to come out of The lloyal yard, where they may have left the carriage, just as Miss Fielding is passing, remark to one another that "it's hardly the day for that child to be here." Then Mr Dalzel goes on rapidly about the business which has brought him here, and Don lingers in the market-place to look at the old cross in the centre of it, and — a little — to watch the busy crowd. Presently he hears a rush, a roar, and a horrified shout rises up from the mass of people assembled. A huge in- furiated bull comes bounding and bellowing down the street in the wake of Constance and her groom. He charges the latter, and the snorting, frightened horse is knocked down as if he had been a thing of straw, while his luckless rider is sent right through a shop window. For a moment the bull stands stamping with wrathful satisfaction, then he lashes his tail, and hurls himself along after Peppercorn. All in a moment Don finds himself tearing the child who is realising her danger out of the saddle, and has handed her back into safety before the bull discovers that part of his prey has escaped him. Then the bull knows that he has been baulked, and leaving bleeding, mangled, dying Peppercorn, he turns on Don. It is only one blow, and one stamp, that he has time to give before ropes are over his own wicked head, and he is dragged away. But Don lies perfectly senseless on the pavement, and the little girl whom he has saved kneels tearless and white by his side. " I know him," she says, when some passing lady stoops down and tries to persuade the well-known little heiress to "come away," "and I know his mother and sisters, and this will kill them, and they're worth a thousand of me." She stands up and gives directions presently quite quietly and cahnly, and so clearly, that when Mr Dalzel arrives at the scene of action, he finds he has nothing to do, save to see these directions carried out. Very Indiscreet. 33 The poor old groom is hurt a good deal, but he is able to tell where he is hurt, and how much. But for a long time the doctors can make nothing of poor Don Arminger, who is evidently hurt a good deal also, but cannot tell where, or how much, by reason of being speechless and unconscious. It is a very sorrowful journey back for Constance. She goes in Mr Dalzel's carriage, and opposite to her, propped up by cushions, is the young man who has risked his life and nearly lost it in the endeavour to save hers. The tears dim her eyes whenever she looks, and her heart aches with pity for his mother and sisters. " How shall I look them in the face % " she asks, clinging to Mr Dalzel's arm. And he tells her to have no fear of their judgment or feelings. " Mrs Arminger is like poor Don," he tells her, " brave, generous, and gentle-hearted." " But I'm not worth that," she says, passionately, pointing with her trembling little band to poor, shattered Don. When they get into Clyst, Mr Dalzel gets out, leaving Constance in charge of Don, who is regaining his senses a little, and goes on himself to perform that which is perhaps the saddest task that man or woman can be called upon to perform — namely, to tell a mother a child whom she idolises has been struck down. And while he is absent, and Constance with her heart in her eyes is bending forward, tenderly bathing Don's white, pain-lined face with a refreshing, soothing lotion, fantastic fate wills it that Mr and Mrs Vaughan, and their four children, shall pass by. Without ever having been told to do so, Donald Vaughan has come to take it for granted that little Connie Fielding is more his property than she is any- body else's. The sentiment of love has not informed his young heart as yet. But the sentiment of jealous in- tolerance of any interference with his pony, dog, hshing- rod, ferret, gun, or friends, has. Therefore, now when he sees " little Connie," the one c 34 Very Indiscreet. whom he always elects to favour with his constant notice when they are together at juvenile parties, famili- arly and rather fondly bathing the forehead of the youth whom he has already learnt to dislike and despise in the double character of his own cousin and Mr Dalzel's usher, Donald Vaughan is enraged. " Make Constance get out of that ! " he says, im- periously, to his mother, but at the same moment Con- stance sees them, and forgetting their hostility to her hero in her impatience to proclaim him one, she springs from the carriage, runs up to them impulsively, crying out, — " He has saved my life from a mad bull, and Pepper- corn, poor darling, is killed ; and isn't Don brave, Mrs Vaughan % You must be proud of him now ! " Mr Dalzel's timely return averts the necessity of Mrs Vaughan's replying directly to this appeal. But she sheds a few tears which win her partial pardon from Constance, and then at a signal from her husband she tries to detain the child, who is evidently longing to run off to the Armingers' cottage. " Stay with us, clear," Mrs "Vaughan says, softly. " You may be in the way if you go to their house now ; if the poor fellow is much hurt, his mother will not want any strangers there; we will take you home." " Not till I've been to tell his mother that I'll love him all my life for what he has done ; but that I would rather have been killed myself than that he should have been hurt," Constance says, impetuously. Then, to their horror and disgust, she runs — absolutely runs up the street, and is rewarded by a sight of Don, looking more himself again, and by the sound of his voice telling her that he is not so much injured after all. She is soon captured by the Yaughans, who send for her peremptorily, and taken home with an air of owner- ship in her, that irritates her for the first time. "Bulls are nasty things," Mr Vaughan says ; " but all that is wanted to tackle them is common-sense and caution. The young fellow wanted to do something Common Humanity. 35 melodramatic and sensational, and create a fictitious in- terest about himself. Dalzel is unwarrantably indiscreet in taking his usher about with him as lie does ! " Constance is only a child, and her logical and argu- mentative powers are as yet undeveloped. But she has strong intuitions and strong courage, and she says now — though Mr Vaughan is a power in her eyes, — " If you like me, as you all say you do, you must be glad that Mr Dalzel was indiscreet enough to take Don to-day." Mr Vaughan winces as she uses the familiar abbre- viation of 1) is nephew's name, and his son, proud young Donald, flushes angrily. " We will recompense the young man for what he has done, neighbour Constance," Mr Vaughan says, trying to assume an air of amusement. " He shall not be the loser for having behaved well." And Donald gets near to his little friend's side, and looks pityingly in her perplexed face, as he whispers, — " I would have done just the same as he did, Connie, for you ; you know that, don't you 1 It was nothing, after all, for you ! Why, I go into the field often where father's Ben Brace, his big white bull is, you know, and I just walk past him without caring a bit, with my stick in my hand ; he stamps at me sometimes, but that's nothing ; I've my stick in my hand, and I don't care ; he doesn't come at me." " But the bull in the market-place did come at Don," Constance says, reflectively. CHAPTER V. COMMON HUMANITY. It is terrible, but true ! That thoughtless, unwieldy, blundering bull has upset matters of far greater moment, in the eyes of Mr Vaughan and Miss Darner, than a mere tjroom and an insignificant usher. J 6 Common Humanity. The bull has, in fact, upset the plans of Mr Vaughan and Miss Darner, by goading Constance, as it were, to insist upon recognising the existence of those exceedingly inopportune people — the Armingers. Greatly to Mrs Vaughan's jealous chagrin, the strictly private conferences between her husband and Miss Danier become more frequent than ever after the incident of the bull. For Constance is "proving contumacious," Miss Damer declares, and Mr Vaughan's powers of manage- ment are being oftener than ever called into requisition for the purpose of subjugating the heiress of Woodside. Poor little Constance's contumacity after all does not amount to more than this, that she will go daily, laden with fruit and flowers, to inquire for Don Arminger. She does not see the dangerous youth, for, as a fitting punishment for his audacity in having presumed to approach her at all at the peril of his own life, the poor lad is still helpless and suffering in bed. But she sees his mother and sisters, and all her little heart goes out to them in a way Mrs Arminger cannot withstand. On one solemn occasion, the day after the accident, Miss Damer accompanies her niece, for, as she assures Mr Vaughan, she looks upon the doing so as a duty, which she might perform without compromising herself to the lowest in the land. " Common humanity takes me there and will carry me through the painful ordeal of an interview with his mother, who will probably think that we are under such an obligation to her son as will justify anything !" Miss Damer says to Mr Vaughan, and the latter knows that his sympathetic friend is hurling a veiled reproach at his wife for having such unseemly relations. "I think it would be wiser on your part to stay away," he says. " I have done all that is necessary on the part of Constance's friends. I have sent a note down, saying that I will be responsible for a medical attendant and a nurse, in case the young man requires either; you may conscientiously wash your hands of the business." Mr Vaughan omits to say that his note has been ac- Common Humanity. 27 knowledge! by one from Mrs Arminger, declining with courtesy his offers of assistance. " I think I must go ; people in the place will think I ought to go," Miss Darner, says deprecatingly. " You see, objectionable as these people are, they still are Mrs Vaughan's relations." Mr Vaughan bites his lip and says nothing. Mrs Van "ban is becoming a thorn in his flesh by reason of this sister of hers. "Besides, it will be perhaps as well that I should see them in their home once, in order to be the better able to point out to Connie the absence of all those refine- ments and elegances in their lives which are of course lacking. The child sees them at their best in church and going to school. Depend upon it, I shall do more good than harm by going." Accordingly her esteemed adviser gives her leave to «o, and Miss Damer wishes he had withheld it when she finds herself in Mrs Arminger's presence. For Mrs Arminger's graceful, womanly, honourable pride overtops Miss Darner's miserable, pompous sense of self-importance, and Mrs Arminger's exquisitely arranged little home makes up in refinement and beauty for all it lacks in grandeur and magnificence. It is impossible to patronise " these people," Miss Damer discovers in a moment. So she tries to be haughtily distant, and merely succeeds in being rude. " Your boy behaved very well indeed, I am sure," she says, watching Constance's manifestations of tenderness towards Mrs Arminger meanwhile with angry eyes. " Anything he may require in the way of wine or fruit shall be sent down from Woodside, and soups and jellies shall be made for him in our kitchen." Constance's face flames with fierce, righteous wrath as her aunt speaks. But Mrs Arminger puts the rudeness aside as a queen might pass over the insolent observation of a beggar. " It is my prerogative to make the soups and jellies, and to minister to my son in every way ; but in rejecting o 8 Common Humanity. your offer, let me thank you for all that is kind and liberal in it." Miss Damer does not stay long after this rojoinder, but she strives to revenge herself for the smart it causes her, by making little thrusts and stabs presently at inoffensive Mrs Vaughan. " I went to see that young man's mother, in the kindest and most considerate spirit," she says to the Vaughans, with whom she is dining this night, " and, if you can be- believe it, she met my offers of assistance with positive rudeness. It is evident that they will take no small recompense, but will ask for a colossal one by-and-by." " My sister is incapable of such meanness," Mrs Vaughan says, plucking up a little spirit for a moment ; but she is cowed at once by a reproachful look from her husband — a look which glances off her towards the chil- dren, who have come in to dessert. " Annabel, pray remember ; pray restrain yourself," he mutters, and Mrs Vaughan has not the heart to rise up and do battle for her own in the presence of the woman whom she regards as her rival. But though she has not the courage to do battle for them against her husband, she has at last the courage to look her sins of neglect steadily in the face. And she goes to bed with part of the burden which she has been bearing lately lifted from her, for, come what will, she will go to her sister in the morning, and hear and speak words of ancient kindness. She can hardly believe that she is herself as she walks unflinchingly through the village, and stops at her sister's. She is careless as to who may see her, indifferent as to what any one may think and surmise about her now. For at last she feels she is doing right, and the rest may take care of itself. The meeting between these two women in whose veins the same blood flows, and whose fortunes are so widely different, is fraught with more pain to the wealthy sister than to the poor one. For the heart of the latter is too full of rejoicing at the thought of the probable restora- Common Humanity. 39 tion of her son, to hold anything but gratitude and gladness. " You can never forgive me, Lily. I can never forgive myself, for the way I have been made to treat you," Mrs Vaughan weeps, and her sister soothes her very sweetly, saying, — " The desire to be a stranger to me — to me and mine — was not natural to you, Annabel ; believe me, I under- stand what your difficulties have been, and though I've often felt sorry for you, I've never felt angry with you." " People who only see the outside of things can't imagine what I have to contend with in Mr Vaughan," poor, crushed Mrs Vaughan goes on complainingly. She has burst her bonds, and made a confidante at last. But she is frightened at her own temerity, even while she speaks, and finds a pitiful pleasure in so speaking. "Every one far and near respects him, and has a good word for him, but no one thinks how hard he can be in his quiet, good way. There are times, Lily, when I can't bring myself to ask him to let me have a five-pound note, though he got a fine fortune with me. He chills me till I tremble like a culprit before him. He makes me feel I've been doing wrong when I haven't thought, much less done, anything that can be found fault with in reason. For all my riches, I'm not such a happy woman as you are, my dear ; and you must be forbearing with me." In reply to this long but thoroughly sincere plaint, Mrs Arminger says, — "Will you come and see my son 1 Don will teach you better than I can how to endure." But Mrs Vaughan shrinks from the meeting with her nephew in her newly-recognised capacity as aunt. " I have had a terrible time of trouble and fainting of spirit," she tells her sister, " and I feel as if a touch more kindness from one of you would break me down today ; but there are many other days and years before us, Lily, during which we and our children will learn to love and know each other better, and vanquish the oppressor, my dear — vanquish the oppressor ! " 40 Common Htimanity. She is overwrought, there is no doubt about it. This struggle which she has made in the cause of kith and kin against her cold, unexceptionably-conducted husband's un- written fiat has exhausted her. Maude and Trixy, her nieces, stand about her, and vainly proffer their childish, affectionate assistance as she rises and staggers, and then gropes her way hopelessly about seeking for the door, which she reaches in a faint- ing fit. She has a vague idea that she has transgressed in some way or other presently when she recovers, for she mur- murs, — " Don't tell Mr Vaughan, he will be so ang — sorry, that he mustn't know Tell my children — tell Donald — " She never finishes her sentence, for Mr Vaughan, called hither by an affrighted cry which has arisen through the village, walks in with his habitual air of command, and, waving aside all intervention and intercession, addresses her, — "My dear, I have come to take you away from scenes and persons who have distressed and harassed you. Our good friend, Miss Darner- — " He is interrupted by a piercing cry from his wife. " Not that woman, when I am dying ! Let my chil- dren, my little children come to me ; not that woman, who is no friend, no comfort, no help ! " " Dying ! Nonsense," Mr Vaughan says, xmeasily, but he loses a little of his self-sustaining power, and looks round for some one to aid him. Little Maude answers to his unuttered appeal for help. " My aunt is very ill, sir," she says, standing erect and unabashed before him in the royal, simple strength of her youth and graceful beauty. " Speak to her as if you feel it, and send for my cousins." He finds himself constrained to do as his little unknown niece directs. " His wife is very ill. Poor Annabel ! He remembers all her good qualities and income in a flash. Her money is settled solely on himself. Common Humanity. 41 "Thank heaven for that ! it shows there is hoth trust- fulness and gratitude in her nature," he thinks. "You will come home with me? I have sent for the carriage," he whispei*s. "Let me stay here with my own sister," she replies. "Send my children to me, and let me stay here." "Her mind is wandering," he says, explaining the state of the case loftily to the cool-mannered lady who stands by so regardless of him, so full of solicitude and sisterly affection for his wife. " Her mind is wandering." Mrs Arminger has no answer for him. She knows her sister's mind is home at last, and she almost pities the man who is so far away from all that is nearest and dearest to Annabel now. For when her children come, they, in their affrighted- ness, turn from their father, who seems ashamed to feel for them, to the genial, graceful aunt, who sorrows and sympathises with them about their mother's illness in a way that makes these children cling to their mother the closer, instead of shrinking from her as from one who more than half belongs to another world already. The poor mistress of Strathlands is taken home by-and- by at a foot-pace, for her breath is weak and laboured, and the least jerk may stop it. Mr Vaughan sits dutifully by her side as she is driven home, and refrains, in a manner that appears most con- siderate and unselfish, from taxing her failing strength by addressing her. But she knows, poor woman, that he is nourishing anger against her, and in her heart she condemns him for a worse sin against herself than one of mere neglectful ness. " He is tired of me ; he is wishing to be rid of me, that he may instal that woman, who has a rich relation, in my place," she thinks bitterly, and in her overtried heart she goes on to accuse him of sins and offences of which he has never been guilty. " He holds up me and mine to her scorn and derision ; he claims her sympathy for having such a weak and useless wife. He will give her the power to teach my 42 Common Humanity. children to despise my memory j he will cease to remember that he owes anything to me ; he will forget to teach my children to call me mother." So she rambles on for many and many a weary week, suffering, failing, wearing away, clinging to the sister who is unceasing in her attendance and devotion, recoil- ing reluctantly from the husband who, in the eyes of all Clyst, has led such a blameless course towards her. It is hard on Mr Vaughan that he should owe aught on account of his wife to this sister of hers whom he has so persistently set aside and snubbed ; but he cannot help himself. Mrs Arminger does not offer her presence at Strathlands, but his wife wails for her, and he is com- pelled to send for her. So, daily and hourly, the neglected sister waits upon the sick and dying one, and the husband of the sick and dying woman seeks solace for the ignominy of being beholden to her sister for anything in taking afternoon tea and counsel with Miss Darner. " If I could only feel that this most disastrous intimacy would end with poor Annabel's life I should be happy — that is to say, I should be comparatively happy," he says, pathetically, to Miss Darner, and she shakes her virgin ringlets at him, and replies, — " If poor Mrs Vaughan only realised the mischief she is doing, she would exert herself to nip it in the bud at once. It is her misfortune that Mrs Arminger should be her sister. It will be her fault if Mrs Arminger is per- mitted to traffic on the relationship." " My poor wife is so weak — in health," Mr Vaughan says, and Miss Darner sighs. " Yes, she is weak indeed — in health." "Don Arminger is better, and able to resume his duties." The vicar, Mr Dalzel, delivers himself of this sentence in a sonorous voice that seems to ring not only through the school, but through the village. He is himself so unfeignedly glad of his handsome, clever young usher's convalescence that he takes it for granted that all around Common Humanity. 45 roust share in his gladness. He really expects an ovation tor the young fellow who is a hero in his kind eyes, and it more than staggers him when Mr Vaughan bears down upon him in his balmiest and most superior mood, saying — " Get this young Arminger the best post you can, away from Ciyst, Dalzel. My poor wife's health is too delicate for her to be subjected to the worry and annoyance which the presence in the place of the hero of this melodramatic event will surely occasion. Get the young fellow a post away ; my influence and recommendation are at his service." " Shall I tell you that your offer is nolle ? " Mr Dalzel says, looking him fixedly in the face, "or shall I speak the simple truth, without a word of comment 1 I'll take the latter course, and tell you that I am justified in re- fusing your influence and recommendation on behalf of your nephew. Better things are in store for him than either you or I can aid him in attaining." " I merely made the offer in a conventional way, feeling that I ought to reward him for anything he may have suffered in that affair with the bull," Mr Vaughan says, stiffly. " Oh, he's getting over that affair capitally," Mr Dalzel laughs. " Don't you distress yourself about any of your undone duties to young Don Arminger, as far as he's concerned ; but, take my advice, and let things take their reasonable, commonly human course from this time forth ; the lad's of kin to you, and you'll have to be proud of him yet ; stretch out the hand of kindness to him and his now — and he'll never forget it." " My poor wife's state of health forbids my entering upon any discussion of this nature," Mr Vaughan says, with such mournful loftiness that Mr Dalzel feels afraid that he may have been uncharitable and unchristian in preaching peace and goodwill thus inopportunely. " These unfortunate Armingers have been the real source of all the trouble which has come into my family circle lately, and I regret to say the trouble has not been confined t<> 44 u It's a Wrench, Bon." my house alone. Miss Damer is a fellow sufferer. Little Constance Fielding is infatuated with these people." " Brava ! little Con ! " the vicar cries enthusiastically, for he is fond of the little heiress, without having any ulterior views regarding her, and he loves to hear of her exhibiting right feeling in any direction. CHAPTER VI. "it's a wrench, don." The Strathlands household is a very disorganised, excited, and uncomfortable one during these spring and early summer months. Every member of it, from the house- keeper to the crudely formed and minded but withal kind hearted young person " who does the clouts and dishes," as she calls the scullery work, knows that the mistress of the mansion is stricken down and will not in all human probability ever rise up again. She is waning, in fact, and another is waxing. But it is hard for de- pendents to kick off fidelity at the right moment, and so some show a lagging love for poor Annabel still, and others undue impatience at the prolongation of her reign. Her children are not impatient in this time-serving spirit. But they are not inclined to put any manner of curb upon themselves, when they see Miss Damer coming in and ordering things in the same not-to-be- questioned way in which she orders things at Woodside. She even attempts to regulate the quantity of beef which has to be daily boiled down for Mrs Vaughan's tea. And she scrutinises the housekeeper's weekly account in a way that makes that worthy vow that she will never render another to her master. Through all this sea of disaffection Mrs Arminger has a troublesome course to steer ; love and duty hold her close by her dying sister's side, while inclination and " Ifs a Wrench, Don." 45 taste would carry her far away from the covert incivilities to which she is subjected. Mrs Vaughan's assurance to the sister who has been so long and coldly neglected that she " is her only comfort now,'' is not a mere empty one. It is painfully true. For her husband, though he pays frequent visits to her room, is constrained and out of place in it, and is evi- dently relieved and able to breathe more freely when the moment comes at which he can decently retire. And her motherly heart aches with the keenest anguish when she sees her children and remembers how soon she may be called upon to leave them. Will they forget her 1 Will they bury her memory, and turn as gladly to another mother as she feels sure her husband will to another wife 1 ? These are questions which she is perpetually asking Mrs Arminger ; and Mrs Arminger, eloquent with pity, says all she can to prove how utterly impossible it is for the young Vaughans ever to love their mother less, or to let her memory pass away from them. It is hard on the industrious little lady to be away from her own children and occupation for such a length of time, and it is harder still to be under the roof of one who detests her as she knows her brother-in-law does. But she bears the hardship of it bravely, for the sake of the poor sister whose "only comfort" she is. It is a trite but true saying that much comedy and more that is commonplace is mingled with the majority of tragedy in real life. Even this solemn chamber of death is not free from it. The housekeeper comes in with murmurs against the in- terference of some one whom she does not distinctly de- signate, but who is, Mrs Arminger infers none other than Miss Darner. "Old maids should stay at home and mind their own business, and not come messing aud muddling about in gentlemen's houses when their wives are ill in bed," the first lieutenant of Strathlands says sometimes to Mrs Arminger, in one of those whispers which are so con- 46 " It's a Wrench, Don! stantly employed in sick-vooms in order to make the words uttered be heard in every corner. At this Mrs Vaughan moans and turns restlessly, and asks pettishly, — " Is Miss Damer here again, Page 1 " " Yes, ma'am ; she's constant in her inquiries for you ; never misses a day." Page has no desire to hurt the mistress to whom she is really attached, but she cannot resist telling Mrs Vaughan what she knows well it will give Mrs Vaughan heart- sickness to bear. " Such goings on sha'n't be in any house where I am, without the mistress knowing of it," she tells herself. Not that she could define even to herself what the objectionable goings on are. She only knows that Mr Vaughan alters the order of things at Miss Darner's bid- ding, and that Miss Damer has the name in the neigh- bourhood of being a fussy and stingy housekeeper. " Coming here with her cheese-paring ways, telling master there's twice too much beef used for poor missus's soup," the cook says, indignantly, to her fellows, when Page has conveyed her master's dictum as to the quantity of meat henceforth to be used to the incensed queen of the kitchen. " Actually telling master yesterday, when she didn't know I'd just come into the room, that unless he had a check-book against me, he'd never know how the wine went," the outraged butler says to Mrs Page, when they are supping comfortably, winding up their repast un- ostentatiously with a bit of excellent Stilton and a glass of something very choice. "It's my opinion she'd burn farthing dips," the house- maid says to the cook. "The master complained to-day there was twice too many lamps lighted every night, and it's not him to be mean, unless he's brought to it by her." " My belief is she'd have the stones in the courtyard and the vegetables we give to the pigs boiled down for poor missus rather than master should buy a bit more meat than she thinks proper ; and who's she, I'd like to know, to do it; she'd be nothing if it wasn't for little Miss Fielding." " It's a Wrench, Don." 47 " And she'll be nothing when little Miss Fielding grows up and marries," the footman chimes in oracularly. "Ah, no such luck 1 Long before that day she'll have stepped into poor missus's shoes, and then no more Strathlamls for me," the housemaid replies. "Not she," the footman says, scornfully ; "she'll never catch him at that game ; why, she's no figure to look at, and she's getting up in years, and she's no money." " But she've got Miss Fielding," the housemaid cries, triumphantly ; "and if she was a 'ag or a witch, master would marry her to get Miss Fielding for Master Donald by-and-by." So the motives of the exalted Mr Vaughan and his irreproachable friend are discussed in that universal par- liament — the kitchen. Meanwhile Constance, who is essentially human, finds considerable solace for the honest sorrow she feels about Mrs Vaughan's illness, in the frequent and prolonged absences of her maiden-aunt guardian. For during these absences she has the joy of receiving her little friends, Maude and Trixy Arminger, in her own house, where they frequently play at giving dinners and receptions, in the smallest and least pretentious room in the house. But on other occasions she feels proud to take Maude through the picture gallery, where generations of brave and fair Fieklings look down with various expressions on the little artist-child who appreciates any beauty they may have so keenly. They make a fair group, these three children, standing in the rich light which is streaming through a grandly- painted oriel window at the one end of the gallery, one June afternoon. Constance — the little mistress of all they survey — with her beauty set off pleasantly by a fashionably-made dress of simple material, and her golden hair neatly braided back, and tied by a ribbon of the same colour, is a type of carefully pinned and trimmed true aristocratic modern beauty ; while Maude and Trixy, with their long hair 48 u It's a Wrench, Don:' across their foreheads, and their supple little figures dressed in round-bodied frocks with putted sleeves and deep falling collars of lace, look like "little Stuart Princes," Constance is just saying, when a shout of joy from Trixy makes them all look out of the window, when they see with astonishment Don making rapid progress up the avenue to the house. "Something must be the matter," Maude says, for though they often come to Woodside now (Miss Darner having her own reasons for keeping Mr Vaughan anxious) their brother has never been to this enchanted hall which holds his princess yet. " I will go and meet him ; you stay with Constance, Trixy." They watch her as she runs along and meets her brother, and turns, clinging to his arm. Then Constance turns away, and with a tone of pain in her voice sa\ s, — " It's a little hard to see you w T ith your brother some- times. All mine died." " Take him for yours too," Trixy says, with prompt generosity. " He'll always feel like a brother to you since the bull, you know." " Isn't Maude pretty 1 " Constance says, abruptly turn- ing the conversation. " Well, not so much ' pretty ' as like a pretty picture," Trixy says, critically. " She was lovely, but now her face is only graceful- looking. Her pictures ought to be nice by-and-by, oughtn't they, if she can make them any- thing like herself?" " Oh ! she'll be a swell in painting," Constance says, seriously. " And then she'll be grand, and every one will want to know her. I shouldn't wonder if the Queen wants to know her then," Trixy says, with calm conviction. "I wonder if she'll care to know me then 1 " says the little heiress of Woodside. At which remark Trixy comes down from the sphere of exalted anticipations in which she has been dwelling for a few moments, and with many a hug and kiss assures "It's a Wrench, Don." 49 Constance that she will always "be more than the Queen to them and Don." Don comes in presently, and explains to them briefly why he has broken the unwritten law which has excluded him from Wcodside. He has come to say good-bye to his sisters. He is " off within the hour,"' he tells them gleefully. A great piece of good fortune has befallen him. By the death of a cousin of a lad called Divett (one of Mr Dalzel's pupils), the father of the lad has become the Earl of Tiiuerton, and Divett himself has merged into Lord Sylvertre. His father, hitherto a poor major in the line, has now con- sented to gratify his son's yearning for travel, and Don Arminger has been chosen to be his tutor and companion. " We are going to Mexico first, to the land where Montezuma reigned magnificently, and was magnificently conquered by Cortes. Maude, my darling, I wish I could take you with me. Mexico would put colour into your soul. Trixy, I'll send you a set of gold ornaments and feather trimmings that will make you like a gorgeous foreign bird." " And gather every kind of flower you see, and press, and send home," Maude cries. " And catch all the humming-birds and butterflies and parrots and send home," says Trixy. Only Constance is silent. He is going away, and he is full of pleasure at the prospect, and she is not his sister, and must not expect him to care for her, or to think of her. But Don is a gentleman, and does not forget her for more than the first five minutes of jubilee with his sisters. Recollecting her, he says at once, — " Give me a commission, Miss Fielding. What shall I bring to you when I come back from Mexico 1" If he brings himself safely back that will be enough for Constance, but she will not allow herself to tell him so. Her little girl dignity is as true and sensitive as if she had already crossed the b*ook where womanhood and childhood meet. D 5y his own set under his nose, is more than his patience can endure. He feels as if his sovereignty were being disputed, and girds in spirit against his first wife's relatives more in their day of prosperity than he had done in those of their poverty and obscurity. Oddly enough, it is not the celebrity which Don Ar- minger has acquired in letters which goads Mr Vaughan nearly to madness every time he thinks of his lost wife's "poor relations." It is rather the popularity and place which Don's mother and sisters have made for themselves in the narrow world about Clyst, of which Mr Vaughan believes himself to be a great head-centre. " I dislike self-made men," Mr Vaughan says to his spouse, when she applies her little lash to him of lauding " his nephew's success." " I dislike self-made men ; as a rule they are made after a pattern that gentlemen are not cut by ; but I don't grudge the lad anything that he 62 Rebels in the Camp. may have gained by his success, such as it is; he is out in the busy mart, and I have nothing to do with him. But I do object to being forced into familiar association ■with his mother — a woman who came down in a state of humiliating penury in order, as I firmly believe, to trade on her remote relationship to me." " Holding those views, you can surely never wish to trade on your even more remote relationship to Con- stance," his wife says, tartly, in reply to this exordium. " You will please to refuse Mr DalzePs invitation to meet Mrs Arminger at dinner," he says, stiffly, ignoring his wife's reference to Constance. " Mrs Dalzel has not made the vulgar mistake of ask- ing us 'to meet ' any one at dinner. I simply happen to know through Connie that the Armingers will be there, and as tliere is nothing to prevent Constance and me going, I shall be delighted to resume my acquaintance with them." " Nothing to prevent your going, excepting my desire that you do not go. I will not have Constance en- couraged in this pernicious path ; I can't control her, but 1 shall think that you strangely forget your duty as a wife if you make it easy for her to see these people of whom I so strongly disapprove." " She would see them whether I made it easy for her to do so or not; she must have companionship, and it says much for her taste and discretion that she has chosen the most cultivated companions the neighbourhood affords." " If she wants companions there are my daughters." " Your daughters are no companions for Constance," Mrs Vaughan says, with so perceptible a sneer that Mr Vaughan in a moment of irritation condescends to notice it, and so loses more ground. " Upon my word, Mrs Vaughan, you forget yourself, and what is due to me in a way that is — that I cannot conceive a gentlewoman doing ; no sweeter, gentler girl ever lived than Grace, and few cleverer ones than Ada I fancy." Rebels in the Camp. 63 "It's your misfortune to be blind to the weaknesses and defects of your own family," she says, coolly. " Grace's 'sweetness and gentleness' are but other words for silliness and inanity ; and what you consider cleverness in Ada, I call mere pertness. They haven't an idea in their heads excepting about dress, and they have no taste in that. Constance has a very different order of intellect, and has been very differently brought up. You can't expect her to talk on the exciting topic of the Miss Vaughaus' ribbons, and frills, and artificial flowers by the hour." "They are quite well educated enough to be able to talk on any subject that may be discussed in good society, and they will never be in any other. My daughters have not been brought up to be governesses, or ' professionals' of any sort." " What an undignified allusion to your niece, Miss Arminger, being likely to make a name as a painter," his wife says, tauntingly, for the secret ill-temper which so effectually tamed his first wife, has only made his second hate him. Then seeing that he winces at this, she goes on, "Take care how you say slighting things of Miss Arminger ; it may make ill-feeling between you and your son Donald, if you do.'' " Donald ! " "Yes, Donald: vain and empty-pated as Donald is, I give him credit for this, that he has fallen head over ears in love with the prettiest, cleverest, and most charming girl who has ever crossed his path." " Who has dared to put this girl in his path, madam 1 " Mr Vaughan asks, almost foaming with fury, and striking his wife's work-table with his clenched fist in a way that makes it totter. "Pray, don't be so foolishly violent," she says, calmly. "Constance introduced Donald to her particular friend yesterday at his special request." "I'd have that woman and her family drummed out of the parish if I could," he says, with such concentrated wrath in his tone that, for the first time, his wife 64 Rebels in the Camp. realises how very terribly vindictive he can be, and how long lie can nurse anger. " You can't do that, and you can't snub them, for they're quite indifferent to your notice ; and you can't ignore them, for every one who is worth knowing about here is seeking them." " Who has told you all this 1 " he asks, in bewilderment, for he knows that the language she is using is not her own. " Constance and Donald have both told me so. Donald is furious at finding that the way you have behaved to them for years, may, and probably will, be the means of barring their doors to him now ; he was speaking about it to-day after yo\i left the luncheon-table, and I couldn't help feeling that his anger was a judgment upon you, for the way you have behaved to your wife's family." " He will never be mad enough — wicked enough, to give up Constance for this girl," Mr Vaughan says, with quivering lips ; but his emotion wins him no jsity from his wife. "I must remind you," she says, sharply, "that Con- stance has never given herself to Donald, therefore the question of his giving her up need never be raised. Con- stance, frank as she is about all other matters, is very properly reserved about the state of her heart ; but I have formed an opinion about it, which I will give you if you care to hear it." He feels sure that whatever opinion she has formed, will be adverse to his hopes and wishes. Still he finds himself drawn into asking for it. " I had better know what is hatching," he says, sullenly. " Just as well. The shock will be less when what I am anticipating comes about. If Constance ever enters your family, it will be as the wife of your nephew, not as the wife of your son." " Of the fellow who was Dalzel's usher 1 " " Of the man who has made such a name for himself as must make you proud of him, though you won't admit it yet." Rebels in the Camp. 65 " I have no appreciation of literary distinction," he says, sneeringly. " You certainly have no ambition for your niece, if you are inclined to throw lier at the head of a fellow who has managed to make a little noise in a little world through the fortunate fact of having been bear-leader to a lordling. I have more respect for her. and for the family she represents. So once more I mil entreat, or rather command, that you endeavour to check the folly which seems rife around me with regard to these Armingers." " You can hardly expect me to go down to the Grange and tell Mrs Arminger that you forbid her son to ask Constance to be his wife, before he has shown any desire to do so," she retorts, provokingly. " From what you said just now, I thought he had shown some such desire." " Not at all. I was speaking of what I believed to be the state of Constance's feelings towards him. I've had no opportunity of forming any conjecture as to the state of his towards her." "These humiliations will shorten my days," Mr Vaughan says, dejectedly. " But I'll take care of one thing — that girl shall never be mistress of Strathlands. If Donald marries her. the property shall pass to Reggie, and Mrs Arminger shall find that her plotting has ended in her daughter's marrying a pauper." " And perhaps Reggie will marry a barmaid or a ballet-girl. Judging from his photograph album, his chief female friends belong to one or other of these classes." " I would as soon see him marry a barmaid or a ballet-girl as see Donald marry that other girl," Mr Vaughan says, excitedly. Then he adds, " I will not sit down to dinner till I have spoken to Donald, and crushed this cabal against my honour and happiness." He goes away gustily from the room, and presently Mrs Vaughan hears the front door bang, and understands that her husband is gone to have it out with his son, who, as usual during this hour before dinner, is having a cigar in the harness-room. E 66 Rebels in the Camp. For smoking in the house is strictly forbidden at Strathliinds, and is only done surreptitiously in the harness-room by day, and in the kitchen at night by the two sons. "They have both of them such evil tempers that I'm glad they're going to clash," Mrs Vaughan says, con- tentedly, to herself. " The idea of Mr Vaughan thinking, after all I have seen of him and his family, that I should give Constance to his son ! " Mr Vaughan has no difficulty in finding his son ; but he does not find the other part of his programme so easy to carry out. Donald Vaughan is a good-looking, well-mannered, moderately-educated, and intensely self-satisfied young fellow, whom circumstances have combined to spoil, considerably. The heir to a large property, he has been brought up with the notion that a life of pleasant, amusing idleness is his portion by right. The lesson that he need do nothing for his living has been well learnt by him, and though he is not utterly void of ambition, it is not ambition of the right sort which ani- mates him. For example, though the prospect of a seat in the House has a fascination for him, he will not be at the trouble of mastering the merest rudiments of the politics of the day. But he rides well, few can live with him after the hounds in his own country. He is a capital shot, and deports himself very creditably in private thea- tricals. These accomplishments, together with a certain quiet, easy assurance, and a remarkably self-possessed address, make Donald Vaughan a popular man in society. But underlying this quiet, indifferent, easy manner of his, there is a deep stratum of obstinacy. And to-day, when his father broaches the subject of the Armingers, this obstinacy develops itself at once. "I hear from Mrs Vaughan that in disregard — I may say in defiance — of my known wishes on the subject, you have made acquaintance with those people at Clyst," Mr Vaughan begins, overbearingly. Rebels in the Camp. 67 Donald has sauntered out into the stable-yard with his father in amiable unsuspieion of what is about to follow. But he checks himself when his father says this, and answers rel elliously, — "I don't know what 'people' you are speaking of, but I'll tell you at once that I shall make any acquaint- ance I please, quite irrespective of you." " I am speaking of those people at the Grange — the Armingers." " My aunt and cousins 1 " " I have never admitted that any relationship exists," Mr Vaugban says, intemperately. "Then you repudiate my mother 1 ?" " I didn't come out here to listen to insolence or to nonsense. I came to speak on a matter of vital interest to us both. Is it true that you are thinking seriously, or indeed at all, of that girl 1 " " Do you mean Maude Arminger ? " " I don't know her name — " " Your niece's name is Maude." " But I mean the eldest girl, who is to be an artist, or something of the sort. Good heavens ! Donald ! I should have thought the instincts of your caste would have saved you from the snare of a girl to whom some amount of publicity may attach ; her name may be in the public journals. Any little cad of an art critic will have the power and the right to pat her on the back in the press ; the idea of it is appalling, revolting to a degree." "I'm neither appalled nor revolted by it," Donald says, smothering his wrath as well as he can. " You mean that you will persist in seeking this girl — in making this ignoble and most ruinous marriage 1 " " I shall be a better man if I can get her than I shall be if she won't have anything to say to me, father ; my only fear is that Maude Arminger will feel that she's worlds too good for a fellow like me ; she'll compare me with her own brother, and — " A snort of futile, supercilious rage from the father interrupts the son's speech here. 68 Rebels in the Camp. " Compare you with her brother ! " he gasps out. " Donald, have you forgotten that you are my son 1 Do you remember that these people are outside our social circle 1 " "They are what my mother was." " They are not, I tell you," Mr Vaughan snaps. " Your mother took my status when I married her ; it was her misfortune that these people should have had any claim of kith or kin upon her ; it is to her credit that she never admitted such claim." Donald groans. " Don't try to make me as much ashamed of my dear mother as lam of you, sir," he says, striving to deport himself after the manliest pattern he can remember. " Don't bandy words with me and try to make me forget that you are my son," Mr Vaughan says, letting his fury become ungovernable. " Strathlands shall never be yours if that girl is your wife ; she shall be warned that in marrying you she will marry a pauper, for not a shilling of my money shall ever find its way into your pocket. If you defy me in this way it will be to your own destruction." In answer to this Donald murmurs something relative to his readiness to resign Strathlands, father, and every shilling that father may be possessed of, rather than give up the sweet hope and possibility of eventually winning his cousin Maude for his wife. But though he murmurs this, the thought of losing Strathlands for her sake, makes him feel that she ought really to consider him a very heroic creature. At dinner this day Constance openly announces that she is "going up to town with the Armingers, who will leave the day after to-mori-ow." And Donald resolves to follow them without delay, and meet his fate in London. Lady Elinor s Eyes are Red. 69 CHAPTER IX. LADY ELINOR'S EVES ARE RED. Don Armixger has done all that a man can do, and provided all that a man's foresight can suggest as necessary or desirable for the well-being of his mother and sisters during their stay in town. He lias taken apartments for them in a house in Norfolk Street — fair-sized, fairly-furnished, indisputably well-situated apartments, in which they are well served and waited upon. His efforts on their behalf would probably have ended here, but they have been supple- mented by the efforts of another. This other is one for whom Don's mother and sisters have a subtle fascination which she cannot define to her own satisfaction, but to which she succumbs with willing grace — Lord Sylvertre's only sister, Lady Elinor Divett. For eight years she had been thrown into frequent and intimate association with Don, and she had passed through various phases of feeling respecting him. For the first few years of their acquaintance she regarded him as a sort of brotherly being — as one, indeed, who owed her fraternal duty and allegiance to the same extent as Sylvertre did, but to whom she owed naught in return, and over whom she had an indisputable right to exercise all the imperial airs of which she was mistress. But these years of affectionate negligence passed away, and there came another day, in the light of which she saw him as he was — neither brother nor friend, but something infinitely nearer and dearer. She is a very handsome girl, this young patrician — tall and stately, with clean-cut features and manners, and a strong inward conviction that whatever she sets her heart upon ought to be hers — a conviction which is fostered by one of the best-hearted and weakest- minded mothers on record. All the world knows Lady Timerton. and nearly all of it likes her. In the days of her youth, she had been 70 Lady Elinor's Eyes ai'e Red. spoken of by her com poors as "a sweet, stylish-looking girl,"jnst as her daughter is spoken of by the present generation as a "jolly girl, and good form all round." But tliis attractive past is only a memory now, and the present Lady Timerton strikes the eye as being rather overblown, and the ear as being rather of the garrulously given order of womankind. She has hobbies without end, and she rides them with much awkward indiscretion. Her endeavours to amel- iorate the condition of standing shop-girls, starving dogs, street-performing children, and the unbeneficed clergy, are arduous and incessant ; but little good results from these endeavours, for the reason that she forces her hobby, for the hour, right into the heart of the most in- congruous society, where it gets rebuffed and cast down, simply because it is inopportune. But, in spite of her want of tact, Lady Timerton is a popular woman, for she is the soul of goo l-nature, and this dominating quality of hers asserts itself forcibly when she hears that Don Arminger's mother and sisters are coming to town. Everything she can think of that may add to their comfort she sends to their furnished lodgings, in order, as she expresses it, that they " may feel at home through having home comforts about them. Books, bottles of perfume, hothouse plants, bouquets of exotics, magazines, and such things, she scatters over the tables witli a lavish hand, and then she looks at her daughter, and exclaims, — " Elinor ! how could we 1 "We've forgotten the brougham ! " " You can't put that in the drawing-room," Lady Elinor ^ays, laughing, but secretly overjoyed that her mother is showing such kindly forethought for Don Arminger's people. " No more I can, but I can leave a note saying that the coachman shall call for orders to-morrow at ten. I can't do less, as I shall tell Mrs Arminger, feeling almost as if Don were my son, — as I do." Lady Elinor s Eyes are Red. 7 i "Oh, mamma! you mustn't say that, indeed you mustn't," Elinor says, blushing vigorously. " But I shall say it, because I feel it," Lady Timerton cries, in an ecstasy of good feeling ; " lie's like one of us, and bis mother and all the world may know that I say so." Then she writes an effusive note to Mrs Arminger, and bustles away on one of her cuuntless missions of philanthropy. Now it is a fact that though Don Arminger may be " like a son " to Lady Timerton, he is not in the least like a brother to Lady Timerton's daughter Elinor. From the day of his first coming to Barrow<*ate as Sylvertre's friend, Don has been the supreme object of interest to Lady Elinor. And there have been times •when, as far as the engrossing and exciting natures of his pursuits would admit,he has seemed to return this interest. With all the power of machination that is in her guileless soul, Lady Timerton has schemed and plotted to bring about a union between her handsome favourite and her only daughter. But Don, though he has neither seemed to see nor to avoid the scheming and plotting, has not profited by it to any extent beyond this — that he has suffered himself to fall into almost fraternal familiarity with the sister of his former pupil. He calls her " Nell," just as Sylvertre does, and treats her generally with such brotherly, affectionate kindness, as sometimes makes her heart beat with pleasure, and at others throb with pain. She has a hard part to play, both in her own family and in society, this rich, well-born, pretty, highly-placed young lady. Her secret is no secret to her brother, who, though he sympathises with her, jokes her about it occasionally in a way that makes her hate Don Arminger for half-a-minute, and be cold to him for the following few hours. On the other hand, it is not even suspected by her father, who would as soon believe her capable of en- tertaining a penchant for the butler, or the best-looking groom. " Arminger is a capital fellow " in his lordship's 7 2 Lady Elinor s Eyes are Red. estimation, a valuable acquisition to the home party, either in town or country, and altogether a most satis- factory familiar friend for them all, and companion for Sylvertre. All these worthy merits of Don's are freely admitted by Lord Timerton. But as a possible husband for his daughter, his lordship has never been enlightened enough to regard Don Arminger for a moment. Regarding his noble spouse as an extremely silly and gushing person, Lord Timerton takes very little notice of the wild enthusiasm with which her well-meaning ladyship dwells on the fact of Mrs and the Misses Armingers' approaching visit to town. " I suppose you'll have them here 1 ? " " Have them here ! I hope they'll be here per- petually," she replies. Then she goes on to say fluniedly that as she regards Don " quite like a son, it will be only natural to be most intimate with his family." " Nonsense ! Ask them here to dinner, and have done with it," he says, sharply. " Don's having the run of the house is a very different thing to giving it to his people." " Don has the run of plenty of houses that are quite as good as ours," Lady Elinor puts in injudiciously, colouring up, and obviously taking the slur on Don's dignity and importance to herself. " What have you to do with it % " her father asks, with stiff politeness. " I scarcely conceive it needful to re- ceive instruction from you as to the tone I may adopt towards your brother's friends." "Don Arminger is my friend, too." "Really!" her father says, sarcastically. "When young ladies become demonstrative about their friend- ship with young men, it is time for a little parental ad- vice to be given. You'll get misunderstood, my dear, if you flare up about Arminger in this way ; not only the world but he himself may fall into the fatal error of imagining that you are in love with him." Her face is in a moment dyed with a scorching blush that is a revelation to him. Lady Elinor s Eyes are Red. jt> " And if I were, papa 1 " she asks, as firmly and dauntlessly as if she were not shivering inwardly at the expression of horrified incredulity which is rapidly over- spreading her father's face. "If you were! But that is incredible. I should be compelled to ask Mr Arminger to at once resign a position which he has so grossly abused." " He holds no post under you, papa ; he is no servant of yours, nor of any man's, to be dismissed ; he is my brother's friend, as good a gentleman as any I know, and much better than most," she adds, indignantly. "And it is really cruel of you to speak in such a way to the dear child about dear Don," Lady Timerton says, half crying and wholly flustered by this very unex- pected scene. " Elinor must learn to hear home truths when she makes a fool of herself, and Don Arminger must bear the brunt of my displeasure, since he has chosen to forget what is due to me." " Papa, you'll kill me if you talk like that to him," Lady Elinor says, trying to force herself to be brave enough to state the case fairly. " Don has never hinted or looked or done a single thing that could lead me to suppose he cared for me or could vex you in any way. If you charge him with having done so it will kill me." " Then I am to understand that the lolly is entirely a spontaneous growth on your side, and has been quite uncultivated and utterly unreciprocated by him 1 Upon my word, Lady Timerton, you have brought up your daughter nicely ! That she should throw herself at the head of her brother's tutor speaks well for her training." " Is it a disgrace to have taught Sylvertre to be what he is 1 ?" Lady Elinor asks, with a mingling of pretty pride in her brother and half shame-faced idolatry of Don Arminger, that is infinitely touching. " It is a disgrace to us all that I should have been led to speak in such a way," Lord Timerton says, liberally dividing the error between them. " No one likes Don or admires and respect^ u : m more than I do; but I'm 74 Lady Elinor s Eyes are Red. not going to have any romantic nonsense about him, and I'm not going to let my only daughter tin ow lierself away." "You may say what cutting things you please to me, papa, hut please spare Mr Arminger, who knows nothing of m y — I mean who is quite innocent of having given any cause of offence," the young lady says, proudly. Then she goes away and cries, and hopes when they next meet that Don Arminger will know for whose sake her eyes are red. " Have you any reason to think that Arminger is sneaking into Elinor's good graces 1 " Lord Tinierton says to his son this same night, when a note comes from Don excusing himself from dining with them as usual, on account of the arrival of his mother and sisters. " Don wouldn't sneak into anything." "Don't quibble about a word, Sylvertre. Do you think he has been taking advantage of the trust and confidence reposed in him to try on any humbug with your sister 1 " " I think my sister is quite capable of discriminating between humbug and genuineness," Lord Sylvertre says, with far too much of an air of taking it all for granted to be agreeable to his alarmed father. " I meant you to understand my question in this way : have you any reason to suppose there is anything — any nonsense or secret engagement between them 1 " " Not the slightest reason in the world for supposing that Don likes Elinor more than as one of the family, nothing more : but rather a strong suspicion," he adds with a merry twinkle in his eye, " that Nell has flopped—" " Has what 1 " the Earl of Tinierton interrupts hurriedly. " Has gone down like a shot partridge before one of the nicest fellows in the world, before he has even aimed at her," Lord Sylvertre says, with cool candour. "1 wish you would speak intelligible English," Lord Timer ton says, testily. Lady Elinor s Eyes are Red. 75 " "Well, I think Elinor likes him so well that she would marry him to-morrow if he would only ask her," Lord Sylvertre says, cheerfully ; "hut there's the rub, you see. Don's a deuced proud fellow, and though he can't help seeing, if he looks, that Elinor likes him, he doesn't care to make a sign that may get him called to account by you." " Do you mean that he sees your sister's infatuation and has the insolence to disregard it % " Lord Timerton asks, in an inconsequent rage at the very result being brought about which he himself desires. " I can't say whether or not he sees it, but most certainly he disregards it," Lord Sylvertre says, laugh- ingly ; then seeing that his father looks annoyed, he adds more seriously, "I thought you would prefer hearing my real opinion as to Don's sentiments, since they so entirely coincide with your own, sir." "It is in ill taste to canvass these delicate possibilities concerning your sister." " I agree with you entirely in that, sir," Sylvertre cries out heartily ; " but you opened the subject, and I — " " Pui-sued it to its bitter end,'' Lord Timerton says, savagely. " These are pleasant things truly to be told me on the same day ; first, that my only daughter is in love with an underling ; and secon Uy, tliat he hasn't the grace to make the poor amends of returning her regard." " Puor Nell ! it's hard lines on her," Sylvertre says, compassionately ; and then, to his father's wrathful indig- nation, he goes on to explain that he feels it hard his sister's fancy should be unrequited, and utterly refuses to sympathise with his father as to the enormity of Don Armingei-'s conduct in allowing himself to be loved within the prohibited social degree. " I say," Sylvertre says to his sister the following day, " the mother and you call to-day on Don's people, duu't you?" 7 6 The Clash. " Yes, one has to do it." " Exactly ; but you needn't try to come the governor over me, Nell, for I happen to know better ; you want to go, it isn't that you have to do it. But a word in your ear. They've brought a lovely young heiress up with them, a local professional beauty, and the heroine into the bargain of a romance wherein Don and a bull played prominent parts. Now it strikes me, unless I am prepared to sacrifice myself to her, you had better relinquish all ideas of sacrificing yourself to him." " How Billy you are, Sylvertre," she says, gaily ; but he sees she is pained, and so he drops badinage, and says, — "Seriously, Nell, look to yourself now; I'd give my life for Don if I were a woman, but I'm not a woman ; and being a man, I don't want to see my sister give her life to him, do you see? You have it in your hands still to recover — you're blighted a bit, but not blasted." " Not even 'blighted ' yet," she says, proudly. " Who is this girl — what is she that I should shrink before her 1 " CHAPTER X. THE CLASH. " You must forgive me if I am not with you much by day, mother," Don says to Mrs Arminger at dinner on the night of their arrival; "the preliminaries of this new Central African Expedition take up my time, unfor- tunately, just when I want to give it all to you." " Does that mean that you are really going to explore Central Africa, or that you don't want to bore yourself by exploring London in the company of country friends 1 " Constance asks. " It means that the conduct of this new expedition is entrusted to me by Government, but if my mother looks so terribly disappointed, I'll resign it, and go with her to the Tower and the Thames Tunnel instead." The Clash. 77 " But you really will do the pictures, Don % Maude pleads. " And go with us to all the theatres? " Trixy puts in. "And take us under your protecting wing at Lady Timerton's ball, or we poor little unknowns will be swept into utter obscurity," Constance adds. "I am afraid that in spite of the claims of Central Africa, you will find I shall become monotonous, Miss Fielding. As for Lady Timerton's ball, I shall pro- bably not win a word, much less a waltz, from either of you there ; she tells me she has secured all the best waltzers in town." "What's Lady Timerton like?" Maude asks. " A good old soul, always in a good-natured fume about something." " And what is Lord Sylvertre like?" " One of the best and best-looking fellows breathing," Don says, heartily. "And his sister — the 'Nell' you used to talk about when first you went to Barrowgate?" Mrs Arminger asks. "Lady Elinor? Oh, she's a capital girl, devoted to Sylvertre, and not half as much spoiled as you would ex- pect to see a London beauty of two years' standing." " Don't you call her Nell now, Don ? " Trixy asks, with inopportune curiosity, for her question causes Don to look a little embarrassed, and he is conscious that Constance Fielding's eyes have involuntarily fixed them- selves on him. " I call her Lady Elinor," he says, gravel)*, but he does not add, " on rare occasions," which would have been the whole truth. " I thought you were all like brothers and sister," Trixy says, in disappointed accents. " I don't call it at all fraternal to address her as 'Lady Elinor ;' do you, Connie?" " Not at all fraternal," Constance says, slowly ; " but perhaps — " Then she checks herself, remembering that he does not call her " Constance," and fearing that a personal 78 The Clash. feeling ami meaning may be ascribed to any idle words she may utter about this unknown Lady Elinor. It is a tait that Constance Fielding has cherished the image of the handsome, gallant boy who risked his life for hers, very tenderly and jealously in her heart during all these years of non-intercourse. Now that she meets him again, it is, perhaps, a little unfortunate that the cherished memory Bhould fade and pale before the reality. Don as a man is grander in her eyes even than the ideal Don whom she has been thinking about all these years ; and Don as a man has an intimate friendship with a Lady Elinor, a London beauty of two seasons' standing. There is not a particle of vanity about this girl, who is an important little queen in her own country. It does not occur to her to think of herself as a beauty who would have been one of Loudon's famous ones if only London had been allowed to see her. Lady Timerton's little note relative to the brougham has been found, read, and acted upon. It is to be at their door at half-past two, but at two Lady Timerton sails in upon them herself, her daughter leisurely following in her wake, with an air of indifference that is in reality assumed to cover the agitation she feels about meeting Don's people for the first time, and that is erroneously set down by them all as a supercilious affectation of superiority. Lady Timerton is full of enthusiastic pleasure, not to say of emotional gush, at this opportunity of becoming acquainted with Don's family. Regardless, or rather forgetful of her husband's strictures on the subject, she with lively zeal seeks to identify them with every form of entertainment in which she and her daughter are involved during the ensuing fortnight. " Whenever you have a free evening you must dine with us, just as dear Don does," Lady Timerton de- clares ; and Lady Elinor with cheeks aflame, reminds her that, — " Mr Arminger gives more of bis free evenings to work than to dining with us, mamma." The Clash. 79 "No, my dear, I contend I'm right: when he's at work he is not 'free;' and I will repeat that I hope Mrs Arminger and her daughters" — her ladyship looks round approvingly on the three girls as she speaks — " will make our house their home as Don does." " This is not ray daughter. I must apologise for not having introduced Miss Fielding more distinctly," Mrs Arminger says, and Lady Elinor owns to herself liberally that the heroine of the bull adventure is well worthy of being the life-romance even of Don Arminger. Lady Timerton has a scheme for the furtherance of their happiness even this first day of knowing them. She tells them that at four o'clock a meeting has been convened to be held in her own drawing-room, which will be attended by all the influential members, and many more well-wishers of the Anti- Vivisection Society, and addressed by a lady whose pen, purse, voice, and talents generally are exclusively devoted to the cause. " It will be most interesting," her ladyship assures them. " Do come and be converted to our side, — to the side of humanity." " I don't think we, or any of us, need conversion to the cause of anti-cruelty," Constance says; and Maude murmurs something relative to her anxiety to see certain famous pictures which are on view separately in Bond Street. " I should like very much to attend the meeting, but you see my girls have other plans," Mrs Arminger says, apologetically. "I'll go with you if you like, mother," Trixy puts in, " and Don can take care of Constance and Maude." "Mamma never takes into consideration that other people are not so intensely interested in these meetings and lectures as she is herself," Lady Elinor says, coldly, for the programme as arranged by Trixy does not please her. " Dear Elinor, I wouldn't press it if I didn't feel sure that Mrs Arminger will be well repaid for sacrificing any other engagement to come and hear Miss Angel Ormond. So The Clash. You will be horrified ! your flesh will creep, and you'll feel faint and sick at the things she will tell you," Lady Timerton adds encouragingly to Mrs Arminger and Trixy. Then she goes on to describe some of the diagrams illustrative of the vivisection tables and instruments, and of the helpless, agonised, living creatures which are stretched upon them in the cause of "pure science." " I've been anxious, ever since I've read at all, to see Miss Angel Ormond," Trixy says, kindling up. " I read every article of hers that I meet with ; she has the heart of a woman and the head of a man, and I always feel that her name describes her." " She is an angel of mercy and tenderness to every living thing," Lady Timerton says, and tears that are caused by no especial feeling, but which flow as freely as if they were, well into her amiable eyes, as she pays tribute to the goodness of her friend. Lady Timerton and her daughter have scarcely taken their departure when Don conies in. He has tried to resist the inclination which has led him hither, has tried to force himself to do something which he knows ought to be done. But the desire to see more of the gir] who is as a sister to his sisters has been too strong for him. He knows how steadily she has held her own, from her childish days until now, in the matter of being loyal to his family in the face of all opposition. He remembers how frankly she told him she " would love him all her life," when he was nearly clone to death in her service. And knowing and remembering these things, and seeing her as she is now, fair and sweet as any woman that ever blessed a man's life, he does desire to see her again, he does desire to be warmed by the sunshine of her presence before he goes off to the damps and swamps, the disagreeables aud dangers of Central Africa. It is not fair to say that the re-introduction to Constance has blotted out the recollection of some thoughts which have at intervals flashed through his The Clash. 8r brain i-especting Lady Elinor. There have been tim«>s when it. has seemed to him that he is so identified witli Lord Timerton's family as for it to be only m the natural order of things that ho should fall in love with and marry Lady Elinor. And there have been times, too, when he has very nearly fallen in love with her — very nearly, but not quite. At such times as it has happened, something has always intervened to take one or other of them away, and by the time intercourse has been renewed between them, Don has forgotten how nearly he had been over the border a while ago. To-day, as he walks from his club to his mother's rooms in Norfolk Street, in spite of all his keen desire to see ami know more of Constance, he finds himself think- ing of Lady Elinor. " She likes me, I'm sure of that. I wonder how she'll like Constance 1 ?" bethinks, and an involuntary, doubtful shake of the head proclaims that he, for some reason or other, fears that these two ladies may collide. But he forgets doubt, fear, and Lady Elinor when he comes in and timls Maude and Constance ready and anxious to go out, both of them frankly expectant of his appearance, both of them delighted to see him. " Your friends, Lady Timerton and Lady Elinor, have been here, Don, and have been more than kind," his mother tells him. Then she goes on to explain to him what they are going to do, and why they are going to do it. " Miss Fielding and Maude wouldn't get entangled in Lady Timerton's humane net ; they want you to go to the pictures with them, Don," Trixy says ; " but I'd rather hear Miss Angel Orniond than see all the pictures in the world." " Lady Timerton's a dear old soul ! but she does shove people on to her hobbies, without much regard as to whether they care to ride them or not,'' Don laughs. "I don't think Lady Elinor is exactly what I should call sjmpatica as far as her mother is concerned," Maude F 82 The Clash. says ; " slie gave mo the impression of shrugging mental shoulders whenever L;idy Timerton grew enthusiastic." "Nell hears a lot of it, you see," Don Bays, good- naturedly, and directly he has said it lie wishes he had not spoken of her as " Nell," and does not know how to recover the trip. "I can hardly fancy Lady Elinor Divett being sym- pathetic with anvbody or anything that did not conduce to her own honour and glory," Constance says, and she regrets her petulant speech immediately, quite as sincerely as Don is regretting his familiar one. " Oh, Connie ! that's unkind," tempestuous Trixy cries out. "She was as cordial and friendly as any one could be to us all ; she doesn't gush like her mother, but I felt that she was well inclined to make friends with us ; didn't yon 1 " "Indeed I didn't, aid indeed I don't see why she should," Constance says, with a flushed and vexed sense of being in the wrong in having uttered disparaging words about Lady Elinor. " I move that we get to the pictures as soon as possible, before Trixy discovers more merits, and Miss Fielding more demerits, in Lady Elinor," Don says, and there is a little confusion and bustle while Mrs Arminger and Trixy are being sent off in the brougham, and a cab is being fetched for the others. The remaining hours of the afternoon are hours of pure ami perfect delight to Maude. But they are not hours of pin e and perfect pleasure to either Constance or Don. For being thrown together, and, by reason of Maude's abstraction, cast upon themselves, they keep on coming near to a clear understanding of one another, and then sheering oil* as if such understanding were contra- band. "How tame all this must be to you," Constance says to him, waving tier hand in a way that is meant to express that she is referring to London life all round. "Then I must plead guilty to liking tame things in preference to wild," he replies, and he means it The Clash. 83 thoroughly, for if companionship with her is one of the consequences of civilisation, then civilisation has it in his estimation over Central Africa. "How Lady Timorton and all of them will miss you. She spoke to-day as if she looked on you as one of them." "I think she does, dear, kind woman that she is; but Sylvertre is the one who will miss me, unless he makes up his mind to go with me." "Don't his family wish him to go s" " His father and mother have some natural parental qualms about the dangers and diseases he may encounter; but Ne — his sister, Lady Elinor urges him on." "Why didn't you tinish her pet name, ' Nell,' as you began it, Mr Arminger?" " Because I remembered in time that I was speaking of her to a stranger, who would not know to whom I was referring." "And she wishes her brother to go out with you 1"' "Yes, she's rather an adventurous girl." " I suppose reading all your travels and explorations has made her wish to travel and explore too?" " I don't think I can lay claim to the honour of having formed the taste ; I think it was born in her. In fact, I believe that if it wouldn't give a shock that might never be recovered to the home social system, she would propose going with Sylvertre ! " "Oh ! from your tone you evidently don't sympathise with her desire to knock about the world 1 " u I certainly don't sympathise with her conventional scruples about gratifying it." " If 1 had a brother going to the torrid zone or the North Pole, and I wanted to go with him, I'd go, and the social system might get over the shock as best it could." "You see you speak as an absolutely independent young lady. You are in a position which is above all power and control, save your own sweet will. Lady Elinor Divett is not in a position to exercise independent judgment and will." $4 The Clash. ■• Is she very fond of her brother 1 ?" " Yes, I think she is." "And is lie very fond of her?" "Yes, and very proud <>f her." "Tlien I think Lady Elinor Divett will be able to do as she likes about travelling and everything else ; for her mother is wax to receive any impression her daughter wants to have. Am I not right?" " Yes, but she is not marble, to retain it. I pity Lady Elinor sometimes ; she has a iine nature, and it must hurt her to feel how far she is superior mentally to her mother." " Maude and Trixy are sure to get fond of Lady Elinor, as she is so clever," Constance says, meditatively. " I don't say she's ' so ' clever ; I don't think her 'clever' in the ways that Maude and Trixy are. She hasn't thought half as much as Maude or read as Trixy has, and she hasn't the natural vigour and brain power that they have ; but she is a brightly intelligent and very fairly well-informed girl." " And she's very, very pretty, and has charming, polished, graceful ways," Constance says, with a mighty effort. " What a grace she would lend to your expedition if she could persuade her father and mother to let her go ! How she would be guarded and waited upc n and watched by the whole camp ! Why, it would be the romance of the period, Mr Arminger." " It will never be enacted, Miss Fielding," he says, smiling at her earnestness. " Why ? Don't you wish her to go?" "Most decidedly not." "Poor Lady Elinor!" Constance says, smiling freely and brilliantly. " She is doomed to di;-appointment then, L feel, for yours is the will that must be carried out. If I ever set my heart ou going into savage countries, I won't ask to l>e personally conducted by you." " If it were your wish to go, you need never fear my answer," he says. And they both feel relieved, and, as it were, extricated "/low shall I My True Love know ?" 85 from a precarious position, when Maude comes to theni, saying, — " I'm not tired, but I'm merciful, and I know you two are sick to death of being here. O'i, D.m ! I'm feelin^ myself such a dauber at this moment; no one will ever stand before a picture of mine, and feel as I felt before that just now." "Then the want will be in those who pass before it, not in your picture, Maude," Constance says, forgetting Don, herself, and all minor jealousies in her earnest de- sire to soothe and comfort the artist, who is artist enough to feel her own defects. " How could I dare to send a paiuting of mine to be looked at by thousands 1 " '•Your mother, Trixy, the Dalzels, and I looked at it with pleasure, Maude; are we more tasteless than the majority ? " "No, but more fond of me." "My dear little sister, you may never be a Rosa Bonheur, or a Miss Thompson, but — " "She may and will be something equally fine," Con- stance cries, with such perfect sincerity, that Maude's fainting spirit revives, and she retracts the vow she has mentally made — never to paint again. CHAPTER XL " HOW SHALL I MY TRUE LOVE KNOW 1 " It is a curious fact that this reunion with Miss Fielding makes Don Arminger think more of La>ly Elinor than he has ever thought of her before. Whenever for an un- guarded moment — or shall it be said a moment not oc- cupied by literary business or other more important con- siderations? — the image of his old child-friend grown into perfect womanhood arises before him, straightway recollection of Lady Elinor obtrudes itself. 8 5 "How shall I My True Love know ? " As ho walks away from the door of his mother's lodg ings this afternoon, having refused to go in with them, the remembrance of Lady Elinor is very vividly upon him. He cannot but remember — now that he is think- ing of her, and contrasting her with this peerless Con- stance — how she has always singled him out above all dt hers to be the recipient of the smiles and favours which it behoves her to dispense to her father's guests. He cannot but remember that she has shown more interest in his exploits than she has in anything else, save her more important society engagements; that she has asked for his advice, taken his opinion, adopted his professional views unhesitatingly about things which she does not in the least understand. All these things he cannot but remember that Lady Elinor has done, now that he has met Constance Fielding again, and duds himself thinking her charming. He tells himself that he will dine at his club to-night, in order that he may see one or two men whom he feels sure will be there. But there is a latent desire in his mind to get out of the Timerton home-circle for a day or two, until, in fact, his quiet student habits have resumed their sway over him, and the thoughts of Lady Elinor and Miss Fielding have ceased to jar, and have become customary and commonplace. But just as he is finishing dressing, and has sent for a cab to take him safely into club-land, a note is brought to him from that excellent well-meaning blunderer, Lady Timerton. "You must dine with me to-night. Lord Timerton is out, and I have something very particular and private to say to you. — Yours, Julia Timekton." "She is going to say something about Nell !" This is his first horrified and bewildered thought, but he puts it away from him. Lady Timerton, devoid of all tact as she is, is not wanting in maternal pride and feeling. He is sate not to have unmanageable mention made to him of Lady Elinor by her mother. "How shall I My True Love know ?" 8; When, after a moment's debate with himself as to the wisdom of it, lie does go to Lady Timerton's house to dine, he finds that lady waiting for him in the ante-room, and his partially assuaged fear that she may he going to tackle him on the subject of her daughter returns in full force. For her ladyship looks fatigued and pre-occupied, and is dressed sombrely, not to say dowdily. However, she explains without delay why these things are, and relieves him considerably. "Dear Don," she says, " I have had a most delightful afternoon. Our anti-vivisection meeting — you can't think how your dear mother and sister enjoyed it — was not over till six, and then Lady Kenwyn came, and we've had a most satisfactory seance." The Countess of Kenwyn is Lord Timerton's sister, and is most cordially hated by that nobleman for the way in which she exposes herself to the sneers of the scoffers in the matter of spiritualism. Hence her visit during his absencs for the purpose of conducting a seance. " You must be bored to death," Don says, unsym- pathetically. " Bored ! No, Don, far from that. Awe and per- plexity are my pervading sensations, for Lady Kenwyn assures me that if I persevere I shall become a medium. I can hardly believe it myself, but a voice told her, while we were sitting in this room not an hour ago, that I was in process of development, and that I should soon be in a higher star circle, when I should both hear and see." Don laughs at the glib way in which Lady Kenwyn has taught her guileless proselyte to gabble out the jargon of the craft. " Did Lady Kenwyn give you any hints as to how you were to accelerate the process of development 1 " he asks. Then before she can answer, he adds, " My dear Lady Timerton, don't let Lady Kenwyn's miserable hallucination affect you. She was originally a clever and agreeable woman. See what she has become since she has been t lie dupe of a lot of charlatans — a laughing stock to society, and a nuisance to her friends." 88 l TIow shall I My True Love know ?" " She lives surrounded by higher interests, that make her indifferent to society and — " " Indifferent also to her friends. That's not a whole- some state of all'airs." " It's too mysterious altogether for me to discuss it with you," Lady Timerton says, vaguely. " I only know this: she has a dual being — she told me so herself ; she holds constant converse with Catherine de Medicis, who, it appears, was a most interesting and elevated character, and who has been terribly — oh, really terribly maligned. 15ut what I want you to do to-night, Don, is to take me to a sjiirit-circle that is sitting in some place. I don't quite seem to know it, but here's the ad dress." "It's a loathsome little purlieu between Holborn and Fleet Street. I'm afraid you won't find Catherine de Medicis there. Besides, you're too late, Lady Timerton. It's eight already. By the time you have dined — " " I'm not going to dine," Lady Timerton puts in eagerly. " Lady Kenwyn has given me a few rules for self-development. For one thing, I am to abstain en- tirely from shell fish. They are evil spirits. In fact, she says the sooner I bring myself to strict vegetarianism the sooner I shall — " "See Catherine de Medicis 1 ?" Don laughs. "No," Lady Timerton says seriously, "she will only reveal herself to Lady Kenwyn, who tells me, do you know, that she never derived such happiness from inter- course with any earthly creature as she does from her intercourse with ' dear Catherine,' as she calls her, for they are as familiar as sisters; but I'm chattering and wasting time as usual. Are you ready to go with, me to-night 1" " If you command me, I have no alternative." " Oh, Don, don't put it in that way," she says, half crying at the possibility of being baulked; "it's my only chance, now that Timerton is away. I asked Sylvertre to go, and he roared with laughter. So if you won't be kind, I can do nothing." " My dear Lady Timerton, I'll go anywhere to please "How shall I My True Love know ? " 89 yon, but I can't bear the idea of taking you with me. These wretched people who hold special circles will have made it their business to find out everything concerning you and your family before you £0 in to-night, and they'll not scruple to astound you, and perhaps frighten you, for the sake tit' obtaining an influence over yuu. What does Lady Elinor say to the expedition?" " She is dining, and going to the theatre with her cousin, Lady Vic Gardiner, and knows nothing about it; come, Don, be the kind, dear boy you've always been, and come. I shall feel hurt if you refuse me, for I feel quite an impulse to go; Lady Kenwyn told me if I felt that, to obey it unhesitatingly." "And forthwith you felt it," Don says; but, in spite of his disapproval, he finds himself offering his arm to Lady Timerton when her carriage is announced. It is a grimy, unpleasantly odoriferous dwelling into which they finally enter. Apparently neither the spirits, nor those mortals who have formed a circle for their re- ception, are at all fastidious on the score of dilapidated appearances, or evil smells. They pass along a passage permeated by the fusty aroma of a number of coats and cloaks which hang up on one side, and after ascending a dark and raggedly. carpeted staircase, arrive in a meagrely-furnished, dimly- lighted room, where a number of men and women of vari- ous orders of semi-gentility are sitting solemnly round in a circle, which is now made perfect by the addition of Lady Timerton and Don Arminger. Presently the medium, who is to open the night's proceedings, pushes aside the black curtain which oc- cupies the open square left by the doors which have been taken down between the front and back rooms, and with a broad ami business-like smile says, " Good evening to all assembled friends," pulls towards her a square table, on which are a Limp, several tambourines, and other musical instruments, and some blank paper and | encils. Seating herself by it, and resting a corpulent hand and arm on it, the meu : >.,n, who is an obese person of 90 "I low shall I My True Love know ? " forty-two or three, begins her exalted mission by stating that the spirits had just sent a message to her to say she must not lie rash. Urged by an ardent member of the circle to ask the spirits what they meant by this, the medium, after a minute of deep abstraction, followed l»y a few spasmodic contortions, comes round sufficiently to say, in that soft voice which is an excellent thing in woman, — "Dear friends, the spirits say that unles-i the medium is built up, there will be no further manifestations to- night." "Their ain't been none yet," the unbelieving husband of a believing wife shouts out. But the gentleman is quickly hushed down by a group of sympathisers with the medium, who press her to "name" what she will take to build her up. A slight delay arises owing to her apparently uncon- trollable human aversion to have resort to " stimerlants" as she calls them. But eventually the spirits are too strong for her, and with a shudder that it is indicative of her dislike to the course to which she is driven, she feebly cries out, — "Champagne is what they will go on ordering." "Champagne be it," says an advanced member of the circle. "All the ladies and gentlemen here present will, I am sure, gladly give towards a pint of the best fizz for our esteemed medium." At this moment, while the purses are being taken out for the laudable purpose of contributing towards a pint of the best fizz, for the medium's immediate and their own ultimate advantage, the medium is again seen to struggle, subside, gasp, and recover. "They will have it a quart; they say I need it worse than ever before," she es not add, "for my sake," but her eyes say it, and Don feels angrily sure that there is some folly afoot, in which Lady Vic is seeking to involve Lady Elinor. Meanwhile Constance has vanished, and so has Lord Sylvertre, and Don's jealous fancy connects the dis- appearance of the two, and the pleasure of the night is poisoned to him. It does not occur to him, being Trixy's brother, to speculate as to sparkling, piquant Trixy's whereabouts. Other men in the room ax - e missing the girl who is At the Ball. 99 pleasantly ensconced in a far-off corner of the conserva- tory, with Lord Sylvertre by her side. He has attracted her interest, first by talking about Don, and now he is chaining it by talking about himself. "The relations of tutor and pupil didn't exist very long between Don and me," Sylvertre says. "We be- came fast friends before we had been together a month, and now we're like brothers, and shall continue on these terms till the end, I trust," he adds warmly. " Or until you both marry, and your wives either absorb you away from one another, or are jealous of each other," Trixy suggests. " I'm rather like a bird of ill-omen to throw such a leaden possibility over your rosy vision of the future relations between Don and you, am I not 1 " "You're a very realistic young lady." "I'm a very prosaic one." " Yet you write romances 1 " " No, I don't. I write stories of the real life I know, and there's very little romance about that." "I don't know ; I've always thought your life at Clyst by way of being a poem. Your home is beautiful and picturesque to a degree, and your mother, sister, and yourself all are employed in beautiful artistic work. Then you have for a friend a lovely young lady wlio is a little princess in her own land, and all the people round wonder at you for having such a celebrated brother, and for still condescending to walk the earth. Yes, I still contend your existence is a poem, and a poem that I am learning by heart." He drops his voice as he says this. But Trixy, as she says herself, "is too prosaic" to fall to low tones and honeyed words. "It would serve you right if I made mother invite you to Clyst on the strength of the nonsense you've been talking to me about our lives, and let you bore yourself to death there." " I wish you'd try that form of revenge. You would find that I should bear my hard fate bravely." too At the Ball. "Hero comes my partner," Trixy says, fooling relieved at the prospect of escaping from the seclusion of the conservatory, for she is beginning to find it strangely pleasant to listen to Lord Sylvertre, and she has no intention of surrendering at the first appeal. "The supper waltz is mine, remember," Sylvertre says as she is moving away; and as she assents with a bright, heart-free smile, Sylvertre feels that the man who is taking her away, and who will presently be clasping her closely in authorised fashion, is a presumptuous brute. Meanwhile Don Arminger has been captured by lovely Lady Vic. They have only swung half round the room when she stops and backs out of the revolving masses. " Come out on the stairs, we can breathe there, and can speak without half a hundred old harridans hearing what we're talking about." " As far as I am concerned, the harridans are quite welcome to the instruction or entertainment, whichever it may be, that will be afforded by our conversation." " That's so like you ; you're always up aloft about everything. Now I'm of the earth earthy, and being that, I do like baffling and puzzling, and generally put- ting out my fellow-worms ; so, out on the staircase if you please, and hear what I have to say." His repugnance to the office to which she is hilariously appointing him is very strong. But it is weak compared to what it would be if he knew what her real object is. "You know my place, The Keg, at Barnes?" " I do not know it." " Nonsense, Mr Arminger. You've heard of it often enough, and disapproved of it oftener, as I know very well. Now I'm going to be nice and forgiving, and beg you to come and honour my poor place with your pi'e- .sence for three or four days. I'll have nothing but fun and sunshine. I've not asked a single man or woman without grave deliberation, and I've succeeded in getting together those who most want to meet each other ; in fact we're all paired in perfection." At the Ball. 101 "And Mr Gardiner and you play the Darby and Joan in this domestic Arcadian light comedy?" "Nothing of the kind,' .she says, laughing; "Mr Gardiner would spoil everything by being the unwanted one in the first place, and wouldn't come in the second. No ; The Keg is sacred to me and pleasure." " And I should be strangely out of place in it," he says coldly. " Oh, I know you think I ought to be stoned," she laughs carelessly, "but I'm very forgiving, and never quarrel with any one's opinions. I want you to come because my cousin Elinor will feel safer in her prudish little soul if you're there ; she is not exactly in my set, you know, and some of them frighten her." " Lady Elinor going ! " "Why not?" she asks haughtily. Then wishing to carry her point, and feeling that she will gain nothing by a display of temper, she resumes her coaxing tone. " Don't interfere to prevent her coming, there's a good fellow. I really am fond of Elinor, and it doesn't do never to be seen with one's own people ; really, I'm not half as mad, bad, and dangerous to know as people make me out ; so, come to The Keg, and be convinced that it's perfectly proper Elinor should be there ; no one will try to flirt with her; we married women will take care of that." " Why do you say this to meV "Because — it's no secret, is it? — you'll carry your point and sweep all poor Lord Timerton's silly objections into outer darkness, as I did when he remonstrated with me about marrying Cecil Gardiner. I'd better not have done it, she continues, shrugging her shoulders; "but Elinor and you will probably get on better." She is saying this in the light, ringing tones which she rarely thinks it worth her while to modulate, when Constance Fielding passes by. "Who is that?" Miss Fielding asks of her partner. " Lady Victoria Gardiner. Arminger has kept clear of her up to now, but I suppose from what she said, 1 02 After the Ball. that he's going into the family, and feels he may as well be on cousinly terms with Lady Vic." " I suppose so," Constance says quietly, and when Don does free himself from Lady Vic's net, and reaches Miss Fielding at last, he meets with an iron welcome. CHAPTER XIIL AFTER THE BALL. " T can only vouch for what I heard Lady Victoria Gardiner say to your brother as I passed them, and I am only telling you because I thought you would be glad to have Lady Elinor for a sister-in-law," Constance says to the two Misses Arminger as they are about to part for a few hours' rest, before facing the pleasures and business of the new day. " I don't feel a bit glad," Maude says definitely. " Lady Elinor will be deadly dull to live with, unless she can go on living in the set, and living as that set lives, in which she has been brought up ; and so Don will find if he marries her, and Don can't stand deadly dulness well." " You can't judge her properly any more than I can," Trixy says eagerly, for Lady Elinor is Sylvertre's sister, and Svlveitre has been the reverse of deadly dull in Trixy's opinion during the last few hours. As a rule, the youngest Miss Arminger does not permit her fancy to run away with her l'eason, but to-night's experience has been unlike the experience of all other days and nights of her life. Words have been spoken to her in tones that will ring for ever in her ears, and she does think all manner of good of the one who has spoken them, and of all to whom he is dear from the family point of view. A double marriage ! Don and herself wedded the same day to another brother and sister ! As the vision of this possibility Hashes through her mind, she blushes After the Ball. 103 furiously, and feels half guiltily that she would pro- nounce any other girl a fool for jumping to the con- templation of such an extreme improbability. "Honestly, Constance, wouldn't you think Don was throwing himself away if he were to marry a girl who is just an innocuous society puppet — nothing more 1 ?" Maude persists, and Constance replies with more acidity than she usually employs to flavour her words, — " Under Lady Victoria's auspices, Lady Elinor may soon cease to be innocuous ; but I'm too tired to talk about them now. Good-morning, dears. Oh dear, how I wish myself back in the country ! These hours kill me, and make me cross." "Wish yourself back with the Vaughans'?" Trixy asks, with surprise. " Yes — why not 1 ? I know the "Vaughans so thoroughly that I am never deceived in them. I expect to And self-seeking, and unkindness, and selfish forgetiulness in them, and I'm not disappointed ; I find it." There are tears in her eyes and a pathetic strain in her voice as she says this, and Don's sisters read these signs aright, and mercifully permit her to depart without remark. " Poor Con ! I always thought she'd be our sister ; didn't you hope so too?" Maude says, yawning, for other people's love affairs are rarely exciting enough to banish sleepiness. "I don't know about 'hoping.' Lady Elinor may be quite as nice," Trixy says. " Yes ; only she has never been presented to us in this light until a few minutes a^o ; and I liked the con- templation of the old possibility best," Maude mutters sleepily. Then she kisses her sister, and is soon in a deep restoring sleep, while Trixy is in a happier dreamland than she has ever visited before. A waking dream is Trixy's, but it is as full of sweet mysteries and subtle perplexities as any sleeping one could be. Constance Fielding does not subside into a restoring 104 After the Ball. sloop ; nor is sho in a happy, waking dreamland. She is wrestling with the first, worst, bitterest disappointment of her life. The knowledge, namely, that she has given her heart to one who has not wanted it, and who has given his to another. " If he doesn't suspect the truth already, he shall never see a sign of it now ; anything would be preferable to being the object of his half-pity, half-contempt." Then she remembers having told him, when he saved her from the bull, that she would "love him all her life," and her contempt for her own candour on that occasion is prodigious now. It is a satisfaction to her now, in these her hours of angry mortified repentance, to remember how coolly she has been deporting herself to Don Arminger during these latter days, and how cuttingly indifferent her manner was when he did at last find her out, and solicit from her the honour of a dance. Yet with the remembrance of her manner on this occasion comes a sense of degradation. The man who had been her last partner was still with her, well pleased to be seen in close attendance on a girl whom he saw was a beauty, and heard was an heiress. And this man she instinctively felt was one from whom Don Arminger would revolt. Yet though she shrank from his over- bold, too confident, too caressing manner, she would not rebuff it to-night, because Don Arminger should see how little she cared for his approval of her companions and conduct. He is not an attractive man in many respects, this one whose empresse manner towards her caused Don's soul to kindle within him this night. He is an earl, fifteenth of his line, with a magnificent family history and an equally magnificent rent-roll. He is in the bloom and strength of his youth too, for only a quarter of a century has rolled over his head. But his steps are tottering as an infant's frequently, and his voice at the same time thick, and his words incoherent as a very old man's. After the Ball. 105 Tn fact he is doing his best to obliterate the noble marks of high-born manhood which is set upon him by too copious libations of every form of alcohol that can either stimulate his often flagging spirits or drown reflection. But for all this the Earl of Charklale is the object of almost universal charity in the world he lives in. "Such a fine young fellow — so full of noble impulses, and so easily led !" they say. "Kind to every one who approaches him. After all, what are his follies but the follies of a boy V It is the prevailing opinion in the breasts of all the high-placed matrons in town who have marriageable daughters that a "good wife" will be the saving of Charklale, and will be able to lead him from the brandy and wine bin to the five o'clock tea-table with a silken thread. There is great unanimity of feeling about this. But here the unanimity ceases. For each mother feels that her own daughter is the predestined good wife, and each has no toleration for the schemes or hopes of other daughters' mothers. But this night of Lady Timerton's ball further un- animity of feeling prevails among the mothers, who one and all combine in denunciation and detestation of the audacious young invader from the remote country who is so unconcernedly allowing herself to be the object of Charldale's devotion. It is true that she makes no effort to monopolise his coveted attentions, nor does she respond to them en- couragingly. But even her quiescent acceptance of them is offensive in the eyes of those who regard her as an interloper. Charklale has not only been " sought," he has been coursed and hunted and stalked, till at times he has been compelled to seek safety on the broad ocean from the fair sportswomen who have nearly brought him down. There is accordingly something irresistibly attractive to him in the way in which Miss Fielding just tolerates him. He is even fascinated by the look of weariness 1 06 After the Ball. which overspreads her face when lie persists in pouring his uninteresting sentences into her ear. " Not another girl in the world would have the honesty to look limed when I spoke to her, whatever she might feel," he tells himself rapturously, and then he sets with ardour about the easy task of bringing another rebuff upon himself. "You ride and all that, I suppose V he asks. " I ride ; but I don't know what ' all that ' means, so I can't tell you whether 1 do it or not." " .May I hope to see you in the Row in the morning?" " Indeed, you may not. I have no Row-riding blood iu me." " Where do you generally go 1 Tell me, for I am sure I should like it better than the Row." "I have no horses in town." " May I— will you—" He is about to proffer the loan of one of his horses, but Constance stops him with a look of such unmistake- able surprised indignation that he is spared the actual commission of this offence. " You are staying with Lady Timerton, aren't you 1 " he says lamely. "Lady Elinor would mount you, wouldn't she?" Constance shudders at the idea of the favour of a mount being offered her by Lady Elinor, Then collects herself, and replies haughtily, — " I am staying with Mrs Arminger." "Arminger's mother?" "Yes." "Don't like Arminger myself," Lord Charldale says confidently, for the wine he has taken at an earlier stage of the evening is beginning to tell upon him. " Don't like Arminger myself; he's too much of the cultured cuss about him ; but Sylvcrtre and the rest of them in this house think him perfection. I think Lady Elinor is throwing herself away.' " I must ask you to take me to Mrs Arminger," Constance says coldly, and Lord Charldale, feeling that After the Ball. 10; he has offended her, and not having the most remote conception of how he has done it, grows more sober through contrition and fright. It Is after this that Don comes to her. Lord Charl- dale is still hanging round about her, and as she declines to give Don the honour of a dance, Charldale feels that, for all her refusal, this Arminger, whom he dislikes already, is his rival. Events march rapidly in a London season. People who mean to do anything during it soon realise that they have no time to lose. Two days after Lady Timerton's ball, Lord Sylvertre, in the course of an hour's stroll in the park with Mrs Arminger and her daughters, gives Trixy to understand that she can accomplish her fate at once if she will. They are five or six yards ahead of the others, when he asks her suddenly to marry him. And Trixy, who has been hoping and wishing him to do so for the last three days, does not express any surprise. " I'm so slad you've said it before I have to go home," she says frankly. "I shall go back to Clyst quite contentedly." " But, my dear little girl, I hope you won't go home at all, till I take you as my wife," he tells her. " I am sure Lord Sylvertre is proposing to Trix at this very moment," Constance whispers to Mrs Arminger; "the tips of her nose and chin both beam with satis- faction, and his profile looks so happily silly." " How very angry his papa and mamma will be, I'm afraid," Mrs Arminger says unconcernedly. And then a vexed shadow crosses her face as she recognises in a young man who steps forward eagerly from the rails dotting his hat low to Miss Fielding and Maude, her nephew, Donald Vaughan. She does not desire to have aught to do with him or his. She is not a woman in whose heart a corroding sense of injustice or injury can find a place for any time. Still, she cannot but recollect how persistently the Vaughans have tried to press down and crush out 108 After the Ball. both herself and her children. Still, though she is human enough to remember this, she is generous enough not to feel disposed to resent the sins of the father upon the son. Moreover, though she is sorry to see him at all, and more than sorry to see the eager, enamoured air with which he takes his place at Maude's side, he is her sister's son, and blood is thicker than water. But she is glad when the Itow and chairs begin to thin, and she has a fair excuse for breaking up the party and getting her own charges home. " I shall call upon you at four," Lord Sylvertre says, as she is shaking hands with him. And maternal in- stinct teaches her that he is coming to ask her to sur- render the first right in one of her cherished daughters. " Why could not this man have waited a little longer," she thinks half angrily. Then she looks at Trixy's love- lit face, and chides herself for her seltishness. It is an aggravation of the unpleasantness of the situation to her that her nephew Donald takes it for granted that he may walk home with them. He is so intimate with Constance Fielding in such a perfectly free and fraternal way, that, on the face of it, nothing could be more natural than that lie should do this. But Mrs Arminger's heart is a little rasped about Trixy already, and there is no balm for this soreness in the sight of Donald Vaughan by Maude's side. " I hope in v own dear Don will come and see me before that man calls at four," she says to herself, and in her secret soul she accuses Lord Slyverti'e of having been unwarrantably hasty and impatient. The happy young girl makes full confession the minute she gets home. " He lias asked me to marry him, mother darling, and I'm more than happy." Mrs Arminger does not dash this happiness by uttering the words, "More than happy in the thought of leaving me for this stranger," but she thinks them, as probably most mothers do when a daughter, who has been a mother's chief consideration from her birth, signifies her After the Ball. 109 readiness to flee from the love-saiictiiied safety home, at the first note of an untried, untested lover's voice. " Remember he has parents, darling ; don't raise your hopes too high till you know how they look upon his project," Mrs Arminger says very tenderly. Then she adds more brightly, "Don't think me a croaker, dear Trixy, for reminding you of them ; very few marriages take place without opposition from some quarter ; may yours be one of the exceptions." Trixy's face flushes partly with pride and partly with love. " If his people oppose his marrying me, never fear for me, mother ; I will not fight for what is held to be too good for me." Don does not come. He stays away to-day as he has been staying away for so many days, because the earth seems to have been shattered under his feet, and he no longer knows where is safe standing-ground. The way in which two members of Lady Elinor's family have seemed to relegate him to her fetters perplexes him horribly. For the first time in his life he adopts a hesitating, faltering, half-and-half policy. Instead of making an opportunity and going boldly to Sylvertre with a frank declaration of having no other intention than friendship in his intercourse wtih Lady Elinor, he waits for an opportunity which does not come. The fact is, Don stultifies himself by recalling and reflecting upon every act of kindness which has ever been shown to him by the Timerton family. He piles these up, and contemplates them, until he is overwhelmed by the thought of the colossal debt of gratitude he owes them. And then the image of Constance Fielding rises, and the ring of the tones in which she told him that she would " love him all her life ! " And altogether poor Don is in a situation of dire distress, not to say danger. As he does not come, Mrs Arminger has to pass through the ordeal of an interview with Lord Sylvertre, unaided by any counsel from her son. 1 10 Lord Sylvertre s Suit. "It's like preparing to have a tooth drawn, isn't it, mother ? " Trixy asks, when four o'clock is about to strike ; and Mrs Arminger says, sighingly, that they had better all three go down to the dining-room, and leave her to receive Lord Sylvertre alone. " If it were only a tooth to be drawn, I shouldn't send you three girls away ; two should hold my hands and the other one my feet, in order that I mightn't be able to scratch and kick the dentist if I felt inclined," she says, trying to laugh. "As it is there will be no one to prevent you from scratching or kicking Lord Sylvertre," Trixy says. " Lear mother ! how it does love its cubs." The visitor's knock is heard, and the girls fly, all of them excited out of the usual calm of conventionality on account of the one. "I wonder how he'll begin?" Constance says, when they are regaining their breath in the dining-room. ' Your mother isn't like most mothers, and so ought to be approached differently ; she's been so much to you, hasn't .she?" " She'll go on being more and more to us all her life," Trixy says, with a laugh that has a sob in it. And then the girl bursts out crying, makes a dash from the room, and soars on frightened wings past the drawing- room to the sanctuary of her own chamber. " Trixy is the first of us to want to go, Con," Maude says, meditatively. " I haven't seen the man I could marry yet — have you 1 " " Yes," Constance says bluntly ; ' but I sha'n't tell you who he is, and — I sha'n't marry him." CHAPTER XI Y. LORD SYLVERTRE's SUIT. Lord Sylvertre wins his case with Mrs Arminger the ninute he enters the room. He comes in, looking so ex- Lord Sylvertres Suit. 1 1 1 tremely dubious of his reception, that the mother of the girl he has been wooing feels satisfied that he will not think that girl has been lightly won. " You know what I have come here for, Mrs Arminger 1 Don will be able to tell you better than I can myself what sort of fellow I am, and if he satisfies you, will you give me your daughter'?" " Don is sure to satisfy me as far as you are concerned," she says cordially. "I think I know you well through my sou already ; but I know my daughter better. Before you ask my consent, you have, of course, obtained your father's 1 " "Well, no, to tell the truth, I have taken that for granted ; my father has never thwarted me in any reasonable thing." "Lord Timerton may be justified in considering this an unreasonable thing. My child is very precious to me. Before I agree to giving her up I must be well assured that the one to whom I give her will secure for her all the tender regard, all the delicate consideration by which she has been surrounded from her cradle." " I love her as much as even you can desire," he says simply and earnestly. " I believe you thoroughly ; but your family — how will they take this wish of yours 1 For it can be nothing but a wish of yours to be engaged to Trixy till your side has spoken." " My mother will adore Trixy, and as for Elinor, Don's sister will be the most welcome sister-in-law I can give her." He laughs a cheery meaning laugh as he says this. But Mrs Arminger steadily ignores his meaning. What- ever there may be looming between Don and Lady Elinor, is a veiled mystery to her as yet. Her son has not yet confided it to her, therefore she will not notice any allusion to it. "And your father 1 ? You don't say a word of the one who must be the real arbiter of your destiny with my daughter." i i 2 Lord Sylvcrtrcs Suit. " 1 admit that my father is crotchety, hut I am confi- dent of being able to talk him over, even if he objects, which I don't anticipate, at tbe first blush.' Unconsciously Mrs Arminger's head settles itself into a prouder pose. "My dear Lord Sylvertre, I am pleased as a mother must be that you have thought my daughter the one woman in the world best ritted to be your wife; when you bring me your father's consent to your marriage with her, you .shall have mine. Until then there must be no engagement." " May I see Trixy 1 " he asks anxiously. " Certainly," she says heartily. " I can trust you to tell her my terms, and I can trust my child to keep them. I will tell Trixy to come to you." Trixy, waiting in a tempestuous state of mind in her own room for the summons which seems to her so very long in coming, answers her mother's knock presently with flying feet and a trembling inquiry, — " Mother dearest, are you satisfied 1 ?" " As far as he is concerned, yes, dear. But he has a father, remember, and till that father endorses his son's request, you cannot be engaged. Remember that, Trixy. And now go down and see him, as I have promised you shall." The gilt is off the gingerbread, the bloom off the plum ; the sweetest odours of the roses of love must not be inhaled by them yet. " The happy prince with joyful eyes," who is waiting for Trixy, longs to clasp the girl to his heart, and press the diamond ring he has brought for his affianced on her finger ; but he does not dare to offer either the ring or the embrace in defiance of Mrs Arminger's unwritten law. " I'm as sure of my father in the end as I am of my- self," he says, and Trixy, who is trying to seem interested in a wonderfully intricate piece of silk embroidery, replies, — " But you're not sure of him in the beginning — is that it?" Lord Sylvertre s Suit. 113 " He never thoroughly likes a plan until he has looked at it all round, and viewed it in every aspect. • In fact, he likes to keep up our habits of obedience, but I know- how to manage him, and invariably get my own way in the end." " I shall be glad when you've got it in this matter," Trixy says, half laughing as she speaks, hoping to conceal the nervous agitation which has possession of her. Assuredly the girl's is a trying position just now. Her mother has set a task, which Trixy finds a hard one to perform. She has, in fact, to keep her lover aloof from her on an undemonstrative friendly platform, though she has accepted him for her future husband, and promised to be his loving wife. " I shall have to choose an auspicious hour to break the news to him," Sylvertre says, unconsciously letting her perceive that he is more in doubt and fear of his father than he has professed to be ; " but I suppose in the meantime I may come here and see you 1 ' " I think you had better not." " Trixy ! won't you care to see me ? " he asks, in pained tones. There is a spice of the unjust selfishness of his sex about Lord Sylvertre, and it seems hard to him that he may not see the girl of his heart as often as he likes, though he can't consult her dignity by proclaiming her as such at once. " Perhaps I might get to care too much, and then, when your father has looked at the case in every aspect, and failed to find it pleasing, you might never come again ; then there would be nothing for me to do but to put my head under my wing, poor thing, and be a very disconsolate bird indeed." " Fifty fathers would fail to keep me from you, Trixy. No human power will detach me from you, if you are staunch." " Fifty fathers might reasonably be expected to fail — theirs would be such divided authority ; but I shall not H 1 14 Lord Syhcrtres Suit. defy Lord Timerton if, after ' looking at me all round,' as you say, he finds me wanting." " At least you will let me call on Mrs Arminger every day 1 It will only be two or three days at the utmost that things will be \insettled. When I bring my father's consent, as I shall in a day or two, you will think you have been too stern to me, Trixy." He has risen and come near to her as he says this ; and now he is bending down, and his lips almost touch the soft, nut-brown hair that waves over her brow. But Trixy, though her whole heart yearns towards him, knows that, if she keeps faith with her mother, no kiss must pass between this man and herself till he is her affianced husband. She looks up unflinchingly ; it is hard to throw a shade of rebuke into her manner when all the while she is loving him so well ; but a promise spoken or implied to "mother" is a very sacred thing in the estimation of these Arminger girls. "You have come to shake hands and say 'good-bye' for a time ; haven't you, Lord Sylvertre 1 " she says quietly, holding out her steady, slender hand. "This is a cold parting," he murmurs, but Trixy rises now and draws herself up. " If you knew how it tries me that you should seem not to understand the reason why, that you should seem not to wish to help me," she says falteringly. And as she says this, he resolves more earnestly than ever to have this woman and none other for his wife. About an hour after he is gone Trixy goes back to the drawing-room, and finds her mother there alone. " You have just missed Don," Mrs Arminger says ; "he loitered on here till nearly six, hoping that one of you girls would come in." " You haven't told Don about me, have you ? " Trixy asks quickly "Yes, dear. We have never had mysteries or secrets in the family yet ; we won't let the love-affairs be the means of introducing them." Lord Sylvertre s Suit. 1 1 5 " You're right, I'm sure," Trixy sighs, " but I feel so uncommonly like being rejected by Lord Timerton as vmsuited to the character and requirements of his family ; and if that's the case, Sylvertre and I will have to go on for years, maybe for ever, attached but not united. I've told him I won't defy his father myself, and given him to understand that he mustn't do it either ; but I am sorry that I have to be approved and chosen by another man besides the man who wants to marry me. It's so very unlikely that both father and son will prefer me to any other girl in London for Lord Sylvertre's wife and the future Countess of Timerton." "Whatever comes of this, Trixy, remember we are powerless to avert disappointment from you, but we are powerful in the perfect rectitude of our conduct. They may cut us, but they can't censure us." " What does Don say, mother 1 " "That you must be prepared for opposition from Lord Timerton, who has what Don calls an almost besotted sense of the magnitude of his position ; but Don says Sylvertre will conquer in the end." " Conquer — I don't like that word ; I don't want to be fought over." " You're worth fighting for," the mother thinks, and something seems to tell her that Sylvertre will fight for Trixy very manfully and well. Meanwhile two or three things have been happening at Timerton House, which have not been conducive to Lord Timerton's peace of mind or sense of greatness. In the first place his sister, Lady Kenwyn, has been quoted, and worse than this, sneered at and derided in the public press as being either an arch-duper in the cause of spiritualism, or a dupe and tool of the first water. Her ladyship is in the habit now of introducing paid charlatans who are professors of spiritualism in all its branches, into good society at her own house, and the orgies which take place under her noble auspices are making her a laughing-stock in the world to which she belongs. i i 6 Lord Sylvertrcs Suit. Tn the second place his niece, Lady Victoria Gardiner (\\ hose gay and (Ubonnaire way of kicking her heels over all social traces, has been a thorn in his flesh since her childhood) has carried off his daughter Elinor to Lady Vic's own little bijou nest, The Keg, at Barnes. And, in the third place, Lady Vic has committed the cruel and unpardonable indiscretion of assuming in a pretty little note to her uncle that he can't possibly be annoyed at Elinor's being with her, as his favourite, Don Anninger, is of the party. " What the deuce does that precious niece of yours mean by writing such a letter as this to mel Coupling Elinor's name with that fellow Arminger's, in a way that I'd like to whip her at the cart-tail for doing," Lord Timer ton says one morning, striding into his wife's private room, and flinging the letter down on her table, as if it had been a torpedo which he trusted might explode and demolish her. Lady Timerton Hurriedly picks the letter up, and without meanly reminding him that Lady Vic is his niece, not hers, proceeds to read the combustible epistle. " Well 1 " he says, with rather a savage and alarming note of interrogation when she has finished it. '' Victoria always expresses herself so prettily," Lady Timerton says cheerfully, not having the faintest idea which way the wind is blowing her lord's temper. " Does she ! " he exclaims with such ferocity that she jumps in her chair ; " and it's a pretty subject that she ex- presses herself about, isn't it 1 And it's a pretty prospect that you are preparing for your daughter. I solemnly declare that whatever evil or misery may come to your children in after life, it will be your own doing, it will be you they have to thank for it all. You encourage them to set themselves up against me ; you encourage Sylver- tre's extravagance, and Elinor's idiotic and disgraceful feeling for Arminger, and now you actually approve and applaud your niece's indecent conduct in getting my daughter to that den of iniquity, The Keg." Lord Sylvertres Suit. 117 " You make niy blood run cold, Tiuierton," the poor lady says tremblingly. " You and your tribe make mine run hot enough," he roars. " Victoria Gardiner is a woman who — " He is raving out his denunciation with such volume and force that lie does not hear the door open and a servant announce " Lady Kenwyn," and so he declares Victoria Gardiner to be a woman who is unfit to enter a decent house, in the presence of her astounded mother. When he does awake to the situation, it is to see his grand Junodike sister confronting him with the port that possibly may have been one of the queenly attributes of Catherine de Medicis. " Were you under the dominion of an evil spirit, Timerton, or did you know you were speaking of your niece — my child 1 " she asks in her low, soft, placid accents. But her blue eyes flash proudly as she speaks, and Lord Timerton wishes that his subjective wife only had been the recipient of his opinion concerning his niece. " I was under the dominion of a spirit of fatherly in- dignation, that my daughter should have been persuaded by yours to go to The Keg in the society of men and women of whom I highly disapprove," he explains rather shufflingly. " Oh, is that all ? " Lady Kenwyn says indolently, accepting the explanation, for her mind is full of a revela- tion she lias just received through the mediumship of an accomplished American, who is in such a highly rarified " circle " that he is enabled to read clearly the closest secrets of all who approach him antagonistically. As the secrets and thoughts he attributes to these unwary ones are in all instances the reverse of praiseworthy or even reputable, his power is becoming widely acknowledged, and he is much respected, and has great reliance placed in him by the faithful who believe in and take council with him. •' Oh ! is that all? Really, I think you may be quite satisfied that Victoria has no second-rate people with her; indeed, I consider her painfully fastidious and worldly 1 1 8 Lord Sylvertres Suit. Her manner to dear Mr Mott " — Mr Mott is the new medium — "was really most repellant when I took him to one of her at-homes." " I give her credit for objecting to receiving cads, hut she is anything but particular enough- — anything but particular enough," Lord Timerton says, phrasing his censure much less harshly than he would do if Lady Vic were listening to him instead of her mother. He is still smarting under his sense of having been cowed into comparative silence respecting her daughter's indiscretions by his foolish sister-, and lashing himself into fury at the thought of Elinor's name being coupled with Don Arminger's, when his only son Slyvertre rather solemnly requests an interview with him. " I suppose it's the old story? You've been imprudent and extravagant, and now you come to me to free you from the fruits of your folly," Lord Timerton says gruffly. For it is true that on two or three occasions, excellent fellow as Slyvertre is, he has found himself compelled to apply to his father to relieve him of debts which, in all integrity, he ought not to have incurred. " No, it's not money ; in fact, it's nothing disagreeable in any way this time, sir," Slyvertre says, trying a gay laugh, which catches his breath before he can bring it to a natural conclusion, and causes him to gasp in an un- dignified way. " It's something you're in a great hurry about, appar- ently," Lord Timerton says dryly, "for you've run your- self out of breath, it appears, and now you're tumbling over your own words. If it's not the old story, what is it, may I ask % " " Well, it's the old, old story, ' love,' not money, sir," Slyvertre says with a certain frank shyness that is Aery becoming to his young manhood, but which his father chooses to seem to regard sarcastically. " I have asked the dearest girl that ever lived to be my wife, and now I want to ask you to consent to my marriage, and also to ask you how I am to live when I am married." " The best way you can, is the only answer I can make Lord Syli'crtrcs Suit. 1 19 to that last question, until I know who the lady is, and what her people can settle on her." " The lady — " Slyvertre is beginning, when his fat In r looks up with such angry suspicious interrogation in the eyes that gleam under the bent and bushy brows, that the young man pauses involuntarily. " The lady is — a great fool if without a large fortune of her own she thinks of marrying you. Out with it all — who is she 1 " " Don Arminger's sister ; the second one — the very pretty one, and I don't fancy she has any fortune." " I don't fancy she has, either," Lord Timerton says savagely; " and deuce a bit of my consent will you gain to have any nearer or further connection with Don Arminger or his family." The old man throws himself back in his chair as he speaks, fuming and foaming in a frenzy of passion which makes his son fear he is going to have a tit. But the paroxysm passes away without anything fatal happening, and rather to Slyvertre's relief, his father brings the interview to a close with these words, — " Don't look so frightened, my boy : I've had one or two of these attacks, but I get over them quickly when I'm left quiet and to myself ] you must leave me to myself now." So in obedience to this desire Slyvertre leaves his father, feeling disconsolately that he has not made much headway towards gaining the object which is now nearest to his heart, and knowing that he does not dare to take the tale of delay and discomhture to Trixy and her mother. " The poor old governor ! he looked awfully bad for a few moments. I should never have forgiven myself if anything bad had come of that struggle. If he had only listened to me, and heard how determined Mrs Arminger and Trixy were to abide by his decision, he wouldn't have got into that way ; but he never will listen." As day after day passes, and still Lord Slyvertre does not come near the Armingers, and still Don stays away i 20 "Gladly, Dear Don / " from them because he does not dare to trust himself near Constance Fielding, a longing to get back to Clyst again comes upon Mrs Arminger. It is evident that Maud is the only one of the party who is perfectly at rest in London. Her picture has made a great sensation, and has been sold for a corre- sponding price. She is hard and heartily at work on another, and when she is not working she is employed much to her own satisfaction, in finding out the latent good that is in her cousin Donald. " Altogether would we were safely back at Clyst 1 " Mrs Arminger si Miss Fielding's did things." Lord Charldale was rapidly getting to find the whole- some moral restraint which was upon him a wearisome and almost unendurable thing. For some weeks past he had 1 n a :ting a false part under the fear of losing the beautiful woman who would so grace and dignity las ion. Now that the time had nearly come when she would be ' iter or for worse, so long as they both lived, the tension of " keeping straight,'' as his ad\ called it. se med to him a d< . over-strained one. He felt himself being narrowly watched at dinner by his mother and two or three of his more intimate friends. But the time was so short now ! The hour that would make Constance his own, to whom and before whom he could do as he pleased, had so nearly come. Champagne was all very well now just to keep the ball rolling during dinner, but he would take something stronger bv-and-by just t<» nerve him when he got away from these observant doubtful friends. So by-and-by, while Constance was kneeling and pray- 160 Several People " nerve" Themselves. ing that she might prove to be a good, staunch friend as ■well as faithful wife to this man whom she was to marry- on the morrow, while she was denying herself even the dear companionship of Maude and Trixy Arminger be- cause she would concentrate herself entirely on the Subject of the great responsibility she would assume in a few short hours, while she was doing these things with all her pure heart and womanly strength, Lord Charldale Mas u nerving" himself for the event of the morrow in a widely different way. He had spent the earlier hours of the evening de- corously as has been said. At dinner there had been no unseemly hilarity in his manner, and in candour it must be conceded there had been no equally unseemly depres- sion. Mrs Vaughan thought his demeanour "perfect. More fitting the occasion than she had ever witnessed before in any man similarly situated." Not only did Mrs Vaughan think this, but she ex- pressed her thought to every one in the room, until Lord Charldale became the object of universal approbation. Constance, quiet, resigned, strangely calm and self- contained, with much of old Constance verve and vigour gone from her, but unaltered in other respects, marked her future husband keenly, and frankly told herself that he would command her respect, though she might never be able to give him her love. Manly, clever, and amus- ing in a way about which there was no suspicion of drawing-room buffoonery, he might become the object of her pride and ambition, though love, such love as she knew herself to be capable of feeling, might for ever be out of the question. She would sympathise at any rate with him, and take such a hearty interest in his political career, that for her sake he must make it a grand one, and so justify her acceptance of him in the eyes of — " the world," she said, but she meant Don Arminger. Yes, when Mrs Vaughan said to her, — "Are you satisfied now, Constance 1 Any girl might well be proud of such a man. II 's mother tells me 'as you have seen Charldale to-night, so has he been from his Several People " nerve " Themselves. 1 6 1 boyhood; isn't it too heinous that disappointed women, whose daughters have failed to catch him, should have given my boy a bad name'?'' "Did Lady Charldale say that, aunt?" "Well, her words may not have been exactly the same as mine, but I have given you the meaning of them." " Then her words either to me or to you are false, for when I asked her this morning if she had ever known or ever heard that Charldale drank too much sometimes, she vowed to me that she had never heard a murmur of it. Oh, who is there left that I can believe or trust •" " It was a delicate question to put to a mother, Connie, and I must say that it didn't show your usual tact to put it. Lord Charldale is evidently a man of whom every- one connected with him has reason to be so proud, that the least aspersion on him is painful to them ; I shall have you flaring out at me in a few months if I un- guardedly remind you of the fears and doubts you once felt about him." "No fears, scarcely a doubt, aunt; if I had a strong doubt of him even now, I would break off the marriage ; buthe has given me no reason to doubt him — he has left me no excuse for not keeping my freely given promise. " It's like my dear, honourable, noble-minded Connie to say that," Mrs Vaughan, said with an air of mingled relief and emotion. To tell the truth the good lady had been living in a state of suspense and dread for weeks, feeling that it was quite in the order of things that some rumour so strong that it would have to be relied upon might reach Con- stance's ears, and justify the girl in breaking off a match that was very dear to the heart of her aunt. But now this painful period was past, and the noon of the next day would see Constance safely ensconced for life in the ranks of the aristocracy ! Breathing a brief but fervent prayer that all would go well with the guests and the breakfast, Mrs Vaughan bid her niece good-night, and returned to her own rooiv L 1 62 Several People " nerve r ' Themselves. Lord Charldale's suite of rooms at Woodside consisted of a study, dressing-room, and bedroom, and one of the study doors opened through a conservatory into a wind- ing laurel-bordered path that led to the stables. In this study Lord Charldale and two other men set- tled themselves for a quiet smoke before going to bed on the night before the wedding. The men who were with him were about the best companions he could have had from among his own set. They were men who were considerably older than he, men who had sown their wild oats. Their influence and example would both have been good for him if only he had followed cither. After one cigar, with an accompaniment of Apol- linaris water on their sides, and of brandy-and-soda on his, they rose simultaneously, declaring that " bed was the proper place for them now." "My fellow is waiting for me in the next room," Lord Charldale replied, as he bid them a cordial " good- night." Then he added, as they were leaving the room, " I shall only stay here for a little while, but I feel that I want a few minutes to myself to-night." As the friends mounted the steps together, one said to the othei\ — " I wish we hadn't left him till he went to his room ; he's straight as an arrow now, but you know what Charl- dale is, and if he breaks down now, the lady will hate him for life.' "He'll be all right ; he's too proud of what he has half won not to make the effort to win her wholly," the other man said. But still the other one, who knew Charldale best, Avished he had stayed with him till he was ready to retire for the night. Meantime, Lord Charldale had tinkled a silver hand- bell, which summons was responded to by his man, bear- ing in his hand a small tray, on which was a small bottle of brandy and a claret-glass. Then his lordship began to " nerve" himself, and after some hours spent in fruitless attempts to do so he was borne to bed by his valet. Several People " nerve" Themselves. 163 At eight o'clock the following morning Lord Charklale was senseless as a log. At nine he was the same. At ten his man, with a vivid recollection that the marriage was to be at eleven, went to the friends who had seen Lord Charklale the last thing before the fatal introduction of the brandy, and confided to them the state of affairs. They went and looked at him, and then told the countess, his mother, who had come from Strathlands in a fright, on account of a rumour which had reached her privately, that she had better allow it to be said, " that the earl was taken seriously ill with congestion of the liver, and advise that the marriage should be deferred till the following day." "If it's deferred for an hour, it's deferred for ever," the old lady said, rising in her anxiety to a spirit of pro- phecy. "I know Miss Fielding's spirit ; if Charklale is not waiting at the altar at the hour appointed to meet her, he need never be there at all. Rouse him j surely something can be done to rouse him ! " She looked round appealingly at all who knew him best as she said this, and they proceeded to undertake the task assigned to them. But for many valuable minutes the Earl of Charklale remained log-like. At last they got him up, and, as his valet said, " A bath did wonders for master." Then they got him erect upon his hind legs (in speaking of him in his then con- dition, it is difficult to remember that he was not an animal), and he allowed himself to be dressed, but could not remember what studs he had determined upon wear- ing. Indeed, if he had remembered them, the remem- brance would not have been worth much, as he could not word it. His lordship's speech had become incoherent. In this state he was conveyed to the church, where his bride had been baptised and confirmed, and was now aw-itinir him. 164 A Painful Release. CHAPTER XX. A PAINFUL RELEASE. Constance Fielding woke on her wedding morning to the sound of church-bells pealing, and a great many other joyous noises. There was, for instance, a good deal of rush and tumble going on between the bridesmaids and their attendants. Mrs Vaughan was almost hysterical over the successful aspect of the bridal breakfast. And everybody was quite cordial and outspokenly friendly with the sun, who had done his best to outshine other things that day, Maude and Trixy Arminger came early by appoint- ment ; no hands but theirs were permitted to aid the bride in dressing. No eyes but theirs were allowed to rest upon her, until the moment came for her to emerge from her room and go down to the carriage which was to take her to church. By Constance's own desire her aunt was to give her away, so that Mr Vaughan was not called upon to endure this crowning pang of bestowing what he had meant for his own son upon another man. The whole party were assembled before Constance, by whose side Mrs Vaughan walked with an air of exultant pride, came up the aisle. No, not the whole party. The most important member of it had not yet arrived, and consternation at the extraordinary absence of Lord Charldale was depicted on every face. For at least twenty minutes Constance, motionless as a statue, knelt at the altar, while messengers went and came to and from the laggard in love ! At length she rose, and for the first time seemed to be conscious of the indignity that was being offered to her by this delay. Meantime, the expression of consternation on the faces of Lord Charldale's best friends had changed to that of despair. Suddenly, there was a commotion at the church-door, and on the appearance of the bridegroom an air of relief A Painful Release. 165 spread over his party. But this was but of momentary duration. " He is not very well, but quite able to go through the ceremony, my dear," old Lady Charldale bent forward and whispered soothingly to Constance, for the look of horror and loathing winch swept like a storm over Miss Fielding's face, made the mother fear that the marriage, which was to be the making of her son, would be marred after all. Constance faltered for a moment, and those nearest to her thought she was about to faint. But as Lord Charl- dale lurched nearer, and with a foolish smile strove to articulate a few words, she drew herself up with such a concentrated expression of repugnance to him, that he was almost startled into sobriety. " You must take me home again at once, aunt," she said, in a low, firm voice. "No power on earth will make me marry that man." Horrified, Mrs Vaughan, who felt that a little more liberality should surely be shown towards an earl — especially so wealthy an earl as this one — than might reasonably be claimed by a commoner, still found herself powerless to resist her niece's will. Before the bewildered lady could offer a word of expostulation, she found herself hurrying out to the carriage by Constance's side, and in a moment the mob had got hold of the facts of the case, and instead of jubilant cheers, shouts and derisive laughter greeted them. "Even the people who have known me all my life won't spare me, now they know how near I have been to marrying a drunkard," Constance said sorrowfully. "Oh, aunt, for once feel for me! Rejoice over my de- liverance from that fate." " It is terrible that it should have happened this morn- ing," Mrs Vaughan sobbed. " The poor young man was overcome." " As it was to happen at all, it is a mercy for which I can never be grateful enough that it did happen this morninjr. I am saved ! " J i 6 A Painful Release. " But — but you don't mean that the marriage is any- thing but postponed 1 " Mrs Vaughan stammered, in tones of anguish. "Oh! Constance, Constance ! you only mean that it is postponed." "What do you take me for 1 ?" Constance asked, with fine scorn. But her aunt, as frequently happened, mis- understood her. " I thought you were too good and sensible a girl to break off such a solemn thing as a marriage on account of a slight though most painful — I admit, most painful slip on the part of the one to whom you have pledged yourself," Mrs Vaughan said, breathing more freely. But her hopes were dashed to the ground by Constance at once. " Cease to believe in my goodness and sense then, aunt ; when I have returned Lord Charldale's presents, I have done with him for ever." She bounded upstairs and into her own room at Strath- lands, and was stripping off dress and veil with trembling hands, but an untrembling heart, by the time Maude and Trixy and the rest of the bridesmaids arrived. And then she went down on her knees and gratefully and humbly thanked God that she had been saved from the snare, and escaped the danger. " My soul would have been in daily peril through the disgust I should have felt ; a stronger, a more forbearing woman than I am may save your son still, Lady Charl- dale ; I should only have lost myself," she said to the Countess of Charldale, who is with tears trying to get Constance to reconsider her determination. " The shame, the disgrace of this will kill my boy ! Spare him to his mother's tears and prayers." " Lady Charldale, your words cannot alter my purpose ; your son is dear to you rightly enough ; win him from his ways if you can. He would become hateful to me, with a hatefuluess I coiddn't endure if I ever saw him again as he was this morning." " He is quite himself now. Do see him," Lady Charl- dale pleaded. " Not for anything you could offer me. He and I had A Painful Release. 167 better rever meet again. It would only be humiliation to both of us." Then Lady Charldale left her, and a raid was made upon her by others, by her aunt, by Lord Charl- dale's friends, by countless acquaintances, who did not like this cruel abbreviation of the wedding festivities. But nothing moved Constance from the position she had taken up. Nothing would induce her to marry Lord Charldale now, therefore it would be better that she should not see him again. The wretched cause of this was nearly beside himself. Completely sobered now, but shattered and broken by the shock, he was at one moment vowing that he would drop his title and income and go abroad into some wild country, where civilised man would never hear of him, and the next declaring that he would shoot himself. " Let me see her, let me hear it from her own lips," he kept on raving ; " she can't be such a stone as you're making her out to be. Let me see her, I say ; she'll shrink from having my death at her door." But they could not drag the young lady down to see him, nor could they surprise her, for she kept her door locked. Accordingly, towards nightfall, after taking bitter counsel with his friends, Lord Charldale took his departure, pursued by hoots and yells from the excited and disappointed roughs of Clyst. The rest of the wedding party dispersed rapidly and sadly, Maude and Trixy remained with Constance, and Mrs Arininger sat up late that night writing a detailed account of all that had happened during the last two days for Don's benefit by-and-by when she should know where to address him. So the gr< at Charldale alliance came to an end, and Constance Fielding prepared to live an independent un- married life in her own beautiful home at YVoodside. "I have made two ventures, one for love, and one for position," she said frankly to Maude and Trixy. " The man I gave my heart to didn't want it ; the man I was going to give my hand to forfeited my respect fortunately 1 68 A Painful Release. before he had t:\ken it, T shall never make a third ven- ture, but I moan to lead a happy life." "And so do I," Trixy said stoutly ; "though I have had my chance and lust it too. I shall always be glad Lord Sylvertre liked me, though he hadn't the strength to prove it quite, but he's spoilt me for smaller men. What do you say, Maude 1 Will you join the guild of old maidens? " "I don't think I shall," Maude laughed; "I'm con- tented with ' no hero but a man,' and I've found him. Whether Mr Vaughan likes it or not, Donald and I are going to fight the world together." The two girls who listened to this announcement were far too fond of Maude to give a word or look that might show disapprobation of her intention; hut they felt it. Trixy knew that it would always be hard for her mother to treat as a son the son of the man who had treated her with studied insolence and contempt during the whole term of her residence in Clyst. "And Maude will feel hurt if mother doesn't take Donald to her heart and love him next best to Don," she said to Constance when they two were alone. " And Maude will do all the fighting as far as fighting is represented by work," Constance replied. " Maude will paint beautiful pictures, and make much money, which she will humbly hand to her husband, who will take it graciously, and counsel her not to be extravagant in the use of what he will allow her to retain. I know Donald Vaughan well. I made a careful study of him when I knew that Mr Vaughan designed me for his son. Donald is the best of his family, but he has faults which will pinch Maude by-and-by." " I don't suppose any man is without faults — at least, hardly any," Trixy said, a timely remembrance of Lord Sylvertre tempering the sweeping severity of her judg- ment. " But Donald Vau "ban's faults are such as affect those of his own household only. He doesn't in the least mind spending money, but he likes to do it entirely in his own A Painful Release. 169 way, without regard to others, and he'll like his wife to do it in the way that seems best to him, ami it" Maude doesn't yield she will not have a pleasant time with him." "Maude is quite capable of yielding" Trixy laughed. "That's what I'm afraid of for her; she is so much the higher, stronger character of the two that his weakness will conquer her. However, she'll be happy in her own way, 1 trust, and we'll be happy in ours; won't we, Trixy i You industrious girl ! I envy you the gift which enables you to get away from real life and its many bothers and troubles, into a region that you can till en- tirely with pleasant people and agreeable things, if you please." "I'm afraid my most natural characters are anything but altogether pleasant," Trixy said. "Xo\\ r that I've made studies of mother and Maude, and Don and you, from every point of view I can think of, my readers demand a change, and lo ! I find I have exhausted my list of pleasant people." "Trixy, I believe if Lord Timerton could only see you and hear you for half-a-minute he'd become importunate in his desire for Sylvertre and you to marry," Constance said, looking with admiration on the brilliant, pretty face that was so eloquent and true. "That's a page of the past that we won't turn over again," Trixy said gravely. But in her gravity there was nothing morbid, nothing sickly nor sentimental. It was evident that she would always stand fast to the memory of the man who was dead to her. But she would not do it sombrely, so that others should see and be de- pressed by the sight. Clyst was anything but a united little A'illage in those days. Intercourse between Strathlands and Woodside was of the most limited kind, and was only kept up on Mrs Vaughan's part at all to save appearances. The disappointed lady could not get over or forgive the obstinacy which had deprived her of an earl and countess for her nephew and niece. If only Lord Charldale had i yo A Painful Release. deferred his escapade until the wedding-breakfast even INIrs Vaughan would have been a happy woman, what- ever her niece might have been. Extraordinary rumours got into the papers as to the real reason of the rupture at the altar of a marriage in high life. Some had it that the lady from her childhood had been subject to epileptic fits under the influence of any strong excitement. Others that just as the service com- menced she caught sight of an old lover hiding behind one of the pillas. Only one or two hinted, and that in very guarded language, at the real disgraceful truth. It was several months before Don saw a newspaper version of the story, and in all that time his mother's true rendering of it had not reached him. Being the most important it was unfortunately the only letter from home which had miscarried. And as in his replies he made no allusion to the occurrence, his mother and sisters thought the topic was a painful one to him, and so did not touch upon it. The first report he read was one of those which ascribed the breaking off of the match to physical infirmity on Miss Fielding's side. This tilled Don with indescribable feelings of sorrow and pity. But soon a second and more veracious account reached him, and then his heart bounded high with joy at the thought of Constance free. But his elation was of brief duration, choked as it was by the remembrance that it was in the bond that at the end of the twelve months he was to go home and marry Lady Elinor if she would have him. Still, there was a great deal of happiness and satisfac- tion in the thought that Constance was released from what would have been a direfully ignominious fate for her, and was now at liberty to marry some better man who — lucky fellow ! — was free to win her. For a long time he debated with himself as to whether or not he would write and congratulate her on her narrow escape, and at last he decided to do so. He tried to think of her only as the dear, grateful, en- A Painful Release. 171 thusiastic little girl who had hugged him and told him she would love him "all her life." But visions of her shy stateliness towards him in London sadly marred the lines of the mind-picture he tried to paint, and a timely recollection of Lady Elinor chilled the ardour with which, but for her, he might have ex- pressed himself. However, he wrote, and this is what he said : — " KlMBKKLET, February 20th. "My dear Miss Fielding, — I have just read with inexpressible delight that you bravely freed yourself at the last moment from a fate which I am sure would have been a hideous one for you. Will you forgive me for venturing to express that delight to you directly instead of conveying it through my mother or sisters ? — Always yours truly, Don Arminger." "He was never 'mine truly,'" Constance said pa- thetically to herself, when she read the letter. But there was not a particle of pathos in voice or manner when she told the Armingers of it. "I've had a letter from your brother congratulating me on not being married. He writes as an old gover- ness might be expected to do to a former pupil who had abstained from picking and stealing something which would have led to transportation for life." "I dare say it's difficult for a man to write to a girl with whom he has been very intimate, when he's not quite so intimate any longer," Trixy pleaded ; and Constance said, — " Lord Sylvertre doesn't seem to experience that difficulty at any rate, judging from the length and frequency of his letters. Trixy, you're a heartless little thing to hold out against him as you do." " I'm not holding out against him ; it's his father is holding out against me." " But you won't see him, and you won't say you'll marry him." 172 Slackening the Chain. " Because I won't marry him till his father says I may ; if that day ever comes, then you'll see how little I can hold out against Sylvertre ; but if it never comes, I had hotter keep a firm footing where I am." " Does he ever say anything about his sister 1 " Con- stance asked. " Yes," Trixy said, blushing furiously as she did not blush when her own love affair was under discussion. " He says he doesn't know whether she has given up thinking of Don, but she certainly has recovered her love for society. " "How I shall hate her if she undervalues him and forgets him," Miss Fielding said slowly. " But, Connie dear, if she does that, Don will be free," Trixy said, considerately looking another way. " With his freedom I have nothing to do," Constance said, her head involuntarily settling itself into a prouder position, "but I should be angry if after winning him she threw him over." " I am afraid Lady Elinor is not nearly so noble and good as her brother," Trixy said. Whereat Constance only smiled. CHAPTER XXI. SLACKENING THE CHAIN. It was in September that Don Arminger had left England, and now it is May, and still he is in suspense as to whether Lady Elinor will cling to him and her un- written troth to the bitter end of the twelve months or not. No word or hint has reached him which would justify him in showing jealousy and " throwing up the whole thing." It comes upon him like a nightmare sometimes that she is going to be beautifully faithful. And he could so i-eadily find it in his heart to forgive her if she were faithless. But still he has striven hard, as these months have Slackening the Chain, 173 rolled over his head, to bring himself into subjection to such an extent as may enable him to find peace and com- fort in his own fate, and to make her happy as his wife. For one thing, his love and regard for her brother will aid him greatly. Lady Elinor will not be alienated from her " own set " by her marriage to any great extent. That is to say, Don Arminger hopes that she will con- sider herself sufficiently " in it," though there is no in- tention in his mind of setting up an establishment in London for the season, unless she will consent to live in a modest way in London altogether. Meanwhile the lady, whom her unbetrothed but still probable future husband regarded as a too-perfect model of constancy, gathered her roses, made hay while the sun shone, improved the shining hours, and generally en- joyed herself. It was in October that Lord Charldale defeated him- self and lost Miss Fielding, and it was at Christmas that Lady Elinor went, with her father and mother, to stay at Lady Kenwyn's place in Cheshire, which was only a couple of miles from Crowniston, the Cheshire seat of the most noble Earl of Charldale. At Crowniston this year Lord Charldale was keeping Christmas with his mother and two or three old family friends only, very quietly, as his guests. His lordship had neither shot himself nor dropped his title and exiled himself, as he had threatened, but he had sulked and sequestered himself a good deal ; and now that Christmas had come, and he had no " house party " about him as usual, he found it very dull. Ever since the day that the unfortunate man had so disgraced himself, his mother had been " hard and un- comfortable to him," as he phrased it. The proud old lady ami loving mother could not bring herself to forgive " her boy " for having thrown away the chance of be- coming a better man which had been oilered to him in a union with Miss Fielding. She was not exactly angry with him, but she was angry, beyond the power of words to describe, at his weakness. i 74 Slackening the Chain. "If he had only restrained himself that one night, he would have become Constance's husband the next day, and she would have saved him from himself," she said to herself. To her acquaintances she said, — " That unhappy girl's loss of temper because Charldale was a little late at the church has cost her a coronet. He will never seek her again ; of that I am sure. Deep-rooted vanity and ungovernable temper are things that a man does well to avoid in marriage." Gradually people (though they didn't believe it) af- fected to take this view of the case; and three months after that baffled wedding at Clyst, Lord Charldale found himself white-washed so completely that he began to think himself a grievously-insulted man, and to bestir himself about another wife. He was in this mood when he came down to play host at Crowniston to his mother and two or three familiar friends. Old Lady Charldale had adopted the moody manner with her son, under the profound conviction she had that it would not be well to allow him to rely upon her powers of soothing solely at this juncture. " He must be stimulated by the apparent want of sym- pathy into seeking a sympathetic wife," she said to Lady Kenwyn, just before leaving London. " Your Vic would have been the very girl for him if she were younger and free. Is she going to get a divorce from that brute who struck her 1 " " She is going to live on with me whether she gets a divorce or not," Lady Kenwyn said gently ; and Lady Charldale, who wouldn't have had Vic for her daughter-in-law for the worth of her own diamonds, smiled resignedly, and wished Lady Kenwyn would let the subject drift on to her niece, Lady Elinor Divett. For Lady Elinor was known to have not only a fair face, but a line, firm will of her own also, and to that will the anxious mother was desirous of committing her son. "We shall meet in Cheshire. I am croimjf to Crowni- Slackening the Chain. 175 ston on the twentieth ; shall you be starting about that time 1 " old Lady Charldale asked, and in reply got the information she had been seeking. " No : Vic and I l;-" earlier. Lord and Lady Timerton and Elinor spend Christmas with us, and I have not been down at Scallow for so long, that I expect to find things greatly out of order." "Is yours merely a family party, like my own this year, Lady Kenwyn?" " With the exception of Mr Mott, yes," Lady Kenwyn replied. " Mr Mott is the spirit-rapper, isn't he 1 ?" Lady Charl- dale, who had a wholesome contempt for all such people, asked abruptly. " He is the most powerful and advanced medium it has ever been my happiness to meet," Lady Kenwyn said softly, but at the same time she registered a vow- that Lady Charldale should not have many opportunities of offering the cold shoulder or slight of any kind to the illustrious American medium. However, in spite of this vow, when the two families found themselves in Cheshire, under rather dull condi- tions, a habit of intimacy was set up between them which had not existed formerly. From the time the party assembled at Scallow, Lao 1 }' Elinor became the object of a couple of schemers, each one of wdiom fathomed the motives of and resolved to defeat the other if possible. Lady Charldale's scheme was a good and honourable one in the main. In Elinor, as has been said, she recognised the "will" which might, if brought to bear upon Lord Charldale, dominate and save him from his besetting sin. H< rs was a motherly and worthy machination. The same, in honesty, cannot be said of the other plotter. This second one, Avhose mind was bent to the task of upsetting Lady Elinor's unavowed fidelity to the absent Don Armingei", was none other than Mr Mott, the medium, whose thoughts were suj>posed by Ladv 1 76 Slackening the CJiain. Kenwyn to be wholly given to the higher sphere, with which he lield endless communications. It seemed to the powerful medium that this fair English gill with a title and a large fortune would repay him far better for wooing and winning her than the spirits did whom he was perpetually invoking. And as he was endowed with perseverance, plenty of self-esteem, and an unlimited stock of audacity, he went in for the work with vigour. His position in the circle was against him certainly. But handicapped by that even as he was he entered himself with a good heart for the race for "her lady- ship," as he always called Lady Elinor. He talked an immense quantity of mystical trash to her, which half fascinated her (as it had wholly fascinated her aunt) when she had nothing better to listen to ; and he looked a great deal of adoration at her, which she accepted since there were no other men to adore. Poetry of the intense, pathetic, simple, yet love-laden American order he quoted to her by the yard, generally giving her to understand that it was his own, which it was not ; but as she was not deeply versed in American literature that did not signify. His spirit friends served him in good stead too, for he continually made those who were possessed of the loftiest sentiments and highest-sounding names, send him messages about her soul being in unison with his own, though she had not discovered it yet. These messages he scrupulously delivered to her, and altogether, after a few days of assiduous work, he gained her attention and interest. " How can you let that odious humbug, whom mamma retains on the premises to delude her, make love to you, Nell 1 " her cousin Vic asked her, in accents of utter disgust. " I really find a great deal more in him than you would suppose, Vic. And if he has been silly enough to fall in love with me, that won't hurt me, you know," Lady Elinor laughed. Slackening the Chain. 177 "How you can stand his vulgarity and his awful assumption as you do, puzzles mo," Lady Vie said impatiently ; "and you all the time engaged, or half- engaged, to Don Arminger." " One can't keep on thinking of a man who is thou- sands of miles away," Lady Elinor said, shrugging her shoulders, " and one must talk to someone, and Mott is the only man here." "I know the creature thinks it will end in your marrying him, and 1 can't endure that he should dare to think it; he would no more plump himself down on a sofa by me and begin spouting his maudlin poetry, than he would seat himself on a bee-hive." "I don't mind being liked," Lady Elinor said lan- guidly; "and the lies lie tells me about what the spirits in the best set — I mean the best 'sphere' — say of me, amuse me. I can leave Mr Mott off at any moment ; don't be alarmed." "We dine at Crowniston to-night, and Lady Charl- dale wouldn't ask him, I'm happy to say, though mamma gave her broad hints enough to have made most women ask a baboon," Lady Vic said, with glee, for the sight of her cousin surrendering ever so lightly to Mr Mott's attentions was sorely distasteful to her. "I don't care; I shall have Charldale to-night," Lady Elinor said indifferently. " His mother told me yester- day that she had never seen him so bright since his illness as he is with me." " Blows the wind from Crowniston, does it 1 " Lady Vic laughed, and Elinor held her fair head up with affected unconcern, but coloured faintly. That night after dinner at Crowniston, as the ladies huddled over the drawing-room fire, the topic of Charl- dale's brightness came to the fore once more. " I have never seen my dear boy so lively and like himself as he is tonight since the day that horrid girl treated him so basely," Lady Charldale said joyfully, and sounds expressive of happy commiseration emanated from the lips of the other ladies. i/S Slackening the Chain. " There was always something about that Miss Field- ing that I disliked extremely," Lady Elinor said truth- fully enough. There was always something about Constance's beauty and charm which her rival had disliked with all her heart. "Oh, but her conduct to Charldale puts her outside the pale of all toleration," Chaiidale's mother went on warmly ; " there can be no doubt about it that there was some other man in the ease." Lady Timerton faintly ventured to state that her friends, the Armingers, couldn't speak too highly of Miss Fielding. "Ah, I'm afraid your friends, the Armingers, have a very pernicious influence on the unfortunate, misguided girl," Lady Charldale replied; "the mother is a terribly gushing, presuming woman, Mr Vaughan told me, and she wants to secure Miss Fielding's money for her own son, the author." " Don Arminger will never look at Miss Fielding," Lady Elinor said, tossing her head. "Besides, Don Arminger is engaged," Lady Timerton said excitedly, in spite of a warning frown from her daughter. But just then Lord Charldale and his guests came into the room, and further disclosures were ar- rested. "I think Crowniston is the very dearest place I ever saw," Lady Elinor said to Charldale later on in the even- ing. They two were apart from the others, looking at a portrait of the earl when he was little Lord Crowniston, and a very pretty little boy. This portrait hung in an ante-room, or rather a passage between the dining-rooms. The colour of the room was warm terra-cotta. The looking-glasses were framed in glowing chased copper. The fender and all the fire-irons were of the same metal, elaborately wrought. Everything in the room was suggestive of warmth and beauty and comfort, to say nothing of riches and splendour. Lady Elinor liked the look of things, and the suggestions made by them. Slackening the Chain. 179 " T had the whole place done up under 0110 of the best men in the town last year when I was going to be — " The won! "married" choked liim, and he did not say it, but Lady Elinor glibly went on, and spared him further embarrassment. " And it's done up in such exquisite taste. I am sure you bad more to do with it than anyone < lse." "Well, I had, because T wanted it to be very pei-fect in the eyes of the one who was to have been its mistress," he said rather sadly ; and Lady Elinor said quickly, — "I felt sure your influence predominated. Now we must go back ; Lady Charldale asked me to sing." " Will yon sing something for me 1 ?" She smiled assent. '• Will you choose the song, or shall I choose the one for you 1 " she asked, and he, feeling that he might safely leave the delicate matter in the young lady's hands, said, — "You shall choose it." She went back into the room where the others were, and Lady Charldale looked up with irrepi'essible anxiety, hoping tl. sequestered situation had seduced her son ii :ing definite words. But Lady Elinor's fair unruffled face and mien tell no tales. " Did I hear you say Don Armingerwas in Kimberley now, Elinor?" Lord Timerton asked somewhat sarcasti- cally, as he saw his daughter slowly unbutton her long gloves, and then hand them to Lord Charldale to hold for her while she sung for him. " No, papa," she said, with a little faint air of surprise, that did 1 iape her father. "It was Sylvertre ; but you always will mix Sylvertre and me up in everything." Lord Timerton said nothing ; but he laughed. It was clear to him that he need have no further fear of his daughter on account of Don Arminger. "I always thought Nell was a girl who would take care of herself; and, by Jove '. she can be trusted to take care of Charldale too," his lordship thought with much self-satisfaction, as he saw his daughter singing i So Slackening the Chain. at the best match in the country with considerable success. "Oh, that we two were maying," was the lay which Lady Elinor chose to sing for Lord Charldale, and the words, sang very feelingly to i an air full of languor and sweetness, carried hira on in imagination to the spring still buried in the depths of Nature. And we have it on high authority that " in the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." "You sang that song for me 1" he whispered, seating himself comfortably by her side on a lower chair. "Because I am so fond of it myself," she said quietly, taking her gloves from him. Then there was a general request from the others that she should sing again. " For me again," he whispered, and Lady Elinor, who liked Crowniston very much, and had no reason to doubt that all Gharldale's other places were equally admirable in their way, sang for him again. This time she consulted his sporting tastes, and sang — " Drink, puppy, drink, and let every puppy drink,'' with much spirit. It ended in Lord Charldale's proposing to take her for a ride the next day if there was a thaw, and Lady Vic Gardiner could go with them. " What does it mean 1 " Lady Vic asked, when her cousin propounded this plan to her in Lady Vic's dressing- room that night. "It means that I like Crowniston," Lady Elinor said simply. " And you'll give up your hero, Don Arminger 1 ?" "Dear Vic, there's no 'giving up ' in the case. Papa was very wise ; he wouldn't allow an engagement?" " AVh°n you see Don Arminger again you'll just loathe Charldale — yes, you will, Nell. lie may have reformed under your strong hands by that time ; but the mere sight of Don Arminger will make you wish that you hadn't cared so much for Crowniston." Slackening the Chain. iSl " There's a good ileal about it besides Crowniston that I like," Lady Elinor said calmly, "and perhaps I shall a( ver see Don again. If I do, he will have the good feeling to forget there lias been anything between us." But though the ride came off under the most respect- able auspices, Lord Timerton being of the party, the offer was not made then : and for a clay or two, as Lord Charldale secluded himself again, poor Lady Elinor "was com] celled to fall back upon the devotion of Mr Mott. He indeed was a man of whom it could not be truly said that he lacked energy. He possessed the quality to a redundant degree, and therefore contrasted favourably for the moment with the absentees. Still Lady Elinor held herself aloft, and never deemed for a moment that he would dare to dream that she would deign to marry him. "There's no one round, and so I'll take my chance of speaking to you now, right off," 3Tr 3Iott said, coming upon Lady Elinor suddenly one afternoon, as she was lounging back in an arm-chair before the library fire, reading a novel, and thinking of Crowniston. She opened her eyes at him ; but unabashed he went on, — " When I came to the old country first, matrimony was just the farthest way round to where I meant to go ; but since I've seen you, that's just become number one notion in my mind — " He was compelled to stop, for Lady Elinor had risen, and was walking with her grandest step to the door. " Pray pardon me," she said ; " but I never do listen to people who have 'notions' about anything, especially matrimony. I should recommend you to speak to the object of your affections, and not to attempt to introduce the subject to me again." " By the holy poker, her ladyship doesn't think small snakes of herself ! " Mr Mott muttered, when he had recovered his breath. "1*11 take her advice, you bet; for these are right down the cosiest quarters I've ever been iu." 1 82 Slackening the Chain. Then the daringly soothing idea took possession of him that perhaps be mighl invoke the spirits, and get thern to persuade or threaten Lady Eenwyn into thinking smaller snakes of herself than her niece thought of her- self. "And the old lady'll do for a windy day; poor fortune wouldn't have much chance of blowing me into nasty places if I had the handling of the countess's dollars." So he overlooked Lady Elinor's snub as utterly as if she had never offered it to him, and set himself to storm the loftier fortress. The question of what he would be called if lie married Lady Kcnwyn soon l>eeame an absorbing one. He was in doubt as to whether he would be a count or an hon- ourable; he hoped the former, because it would strike the deeper envy into the hearts of his relations, who kept a dry-goods store in ISTew York. Lady Elinor took good care not to let Lady Vic know of the indignity that had so nearly been offered her. In- deed, at this juncture it was easy enough to leave Mr Mott off, as she called it, without exciting suspicion as to the real cause ; for Lady Charldale invited Lady Elinor to stay with her at Crowniston, and Lord Charldale, whose wounded pride and bitter mortification were not quite healed }-et, found Iter presence and her graceful flatteries soothing as oil. Still there was nothing definite clone during the visit, and even in May, when the Timertons and their friends were back in town, Lady Elinor's allegiance to Don Arminger was still unbroken. But Lord Charldale had confided to his mother that, if no younger beauty threw herself at his head early in the season, he would marry Lady Elinor Divett about the middle of it. Xow the middle of it had nearly come. " It's a pity to defer it," old Lady Charldale said to her son ; " while you do, that horrid girl down at Clyst will think you're wearing the willow for her." " I wish Elinor were as good-looking as that girl down at Clyst," he grumbled. Elinor balances Things. 1 8 3 "Do you know, Charhlale, I think she could be if she tried. Xot one of the new ones is to be compared with her." Eut Lord Charldale still hesitated, waiting on for the possible <; fairer she." CHAPTER XXIL ELINOR BALANCES THINGS. The necessity for himself seeing his book through the press brought Don Arminger hack to London in the mid- season. He arrived by one of those uncomfortable trains which land you at your destination when it is much too early for breakfast, and much too late for bed. Accord- ingly he took a bath, and then went out for a stroll through the squares, where the atmosphere was fragrant with the breath of mignonette and the countless other flowers with which all the windows were brilliant. It was not any intense impatience to behold the casket which contained his jewel which led him past Timerton House. It all looked very familiar, just exactly as it had looked a hundred times when he had gone home in the early morning soft summer light with Sylvertre. Familiar, and yet with an air of comfort and luxury and perfection about it to which he had been long a stranger. The upper windows with their red silk blinds and creamy lace curtains ; the flower-boxes decking every window- sill right up to the top of the house ; the crystal clearness of the glass and brilliancy of the brass knocker all spoke in a pleasant way of wealth and a well-ordered establish- ment. A desire to go in by-ancl-by and breakfast with them, and get a hearty, loving welcome from Lady Timerton and Sylvertre, and perhaps a few surreptitious sweet glances iVom Lady Elinor, seized him. The prospect of goiug back to his hotel seemed a dull one after his ob- 1S4 Elinor balances Tilings. sewation of Timerton House, and his revived recol- lections of its interior. Accordingly lie loitered about, and amused himself by watching aristocratic London wake up. He managed to be at the door with the milk, and the servant who took the latter in suspected him on the spoc of being a gentleman burglar. She was on the point of a scream, but suppressed it, when Don told her to go to the butler and tell him that " Mr Arminger was at the door." And soon he found himself in the library with a cup of cocoa, and (now that he was committed to the situation) a regret in his heart for having acted with what would look like ardent precipitation. " Elinor will think that I was eager to see her, whereas in truth it was those home-like red blinds and flowers that lured me in," he said to himself. Cut there being nothing for him to do now but go through with it, he drank his cocoa, felt refreshed, and waited. From the butler he had heard that all the family, Syl- vertre included, were at home, and so at a reasonable time he .sent Lord Sylvertre's man up to tell his master that Mr Arminger was below, and the result of this was an immediate request that Mr xVrminger would go up to his lordship. " Don, old boy ! if I shouldn't look too ridiculous I'd jump out of bed to greet you," Sylvertre cried when Don went in. Then they shook hands reasonably, as became a brace of Englishmen, and for the next hour talked over the majority of things concerning themselves and each other. Except Lady Elinor ! Oddly enough both her brother and her lover foigot to say anything about her. " We'll breakfast in my den ; the others never turn up till midday," Sylvertre said. So they breakfasted to- gether, and had another long happy conversation, during which Don gave Sylvertre an invitation to go down to Clyst, which invitation Sylvertre accepted with avidity, never hinting to Don that Trixy had forbidden him to go to her till he could carry with him his father's consent. Elinor balances Things. 185 But suddenly Don remembered. " How about Trixy and you, though ; have you buried your dead, and got over any awkardness, about meeting 1 " " We've no dead to bury ; I write to her frequently, awfully amusing letters, too, Don, I assure you, posting her up in everything, and gently keeping it in view that I mean to marry her by-and-by; and all I get in return is a beautiful line about once a month : — "Dear Lord Sylvertre, — Thanks for your kind and clever letters. — Yours truly, Trixy Arminger." Don laughed. " Trixy's right. I think children owe absolute obedi- ence to their fathers, especially in your position." " Do you ! Nell didn't like your advising her to knock under to the governor that time just before you went away." Don winced at the recollection, not of the knocking- under, but of Lady Elinor ; for his suggested visit to Clyst had brought back vivid visions of the old child- friend who had volunteered to " love him all her life." " I hope your sister is quite well 1 " he said. "Wonderfully ! I don't see it myself, but they say she has become a beauty ; how women do that after they have been grown-up, and merely good-looking for some years, I don't understand ; but Elinor's got the trick it seems. I drew the line at her being shop- windowed, but she has managed all the rest of it. I think she did the trick this year at the Academy private view. Went in rather late, marvellously dressed, made no pretence of looking at a single picture, but just walked round the rooms twice with Charldale. The next morning when we turned into the Row, the crowd turned to look at her, and it has gone like that ever since." " Oh, she walked round the rooms with Charldale, did she?" Don asked, with a guilty feeling of intense relief. And then Sylvertre proposed an adjournment to his club. 1S6 Elinor balances Things. Just as they were leaving the house and getting out beyond the shelter of the broad awning into the tierce blaze of the sun, three or four riders clattered up, and Lady Elinor, the foremost horsewoman of the group, re- cognised Don Arminger with a fainting spirit. By her side was Lord Charldale, and behind them came Lady Vic Gardnei*, and a group of acquaintances. But it was evident that Lord Charldale had constituted himself Lady Elinor's cavalier. "I thought you were in Africa, Mr Arminger?" Lady Elinor said, leaning over to shake hands with him with her easiest air of self-possession. "I was ; but I thought today T would just look in to breakfast at Timerton House," he said, laughing, and then Lady Yic, who was enjoying the situation, rode up and said, — " I believe Elinor had a presentiment you were here, she has been so singularly lively this morning. Now, Elinor, didn't you, ' by the pricking of your thumbs,' or by what your Mr Mott used to call 'spiritual affinity,' feel that Mr Arminger had come back?" "My thumbs never prick, my pulses are too well regulated," Lady Elinor said calmly as she slipped out of her saddle. Then, after a parting word with Lord Charldale, she went into the house, and the cavalcade moved on. " That's my impassioned lady-love of eight months ago ! " Don thought, as he went on to the club with Sylvertre. " Charldale's not the brother-in-law I should have chosen, but as a rule fellows can't choose their brothers- in-law," Slyvertre said. And then, presently finding Don made no rejoinder, be went on : " But I suppose I shall have him for one unless Nell and you swear un- alterable affection at the end of twelve months." "Are they engaged 1 ?" Don asked, steadily ignoring the reference to himself. "Engaged, my dear fellow! no. Probably now you've come back, Nell will cut him short." Elinor balances Things. 187 "I wouldn't wish for a moment to stand in the way of Lady Elinor's brilliant prospects," Don said so blithely that Sylvertre felt ho spoke the truth. Lady Elinor, her pulses still in their usual admirable order, but nevertheless a trifle perplexed, wont in and divested herself of her habit, and then sat down to think of a method of precipitating matters. If Don had only stayed away a few days longer, she firmly believed that sin; would have been able to have lier engagement to Lord Charldale announced. As it was she might now have to go through the fuss and dis- agreeabl :ne s of an explanation with Don. At any rate his arrival was inopportune and inconsiderate in the highest degree, and she felt that it was an act of in- justice on bis part towards her to reappear when she was forgetting him so comfortably. At luncheon she said to Lady Timerton, — " Don Arminger is back • did you see him this morning ? " "He has not been here, has he, Elinor 1 ? It was selfish of you to keep him to yourself when you know how I'm Lmging to see him. Our dear Don !" "Indeed, mamma, I only met him on the doorstep as 1 was coming in, and he and Sylvertre were going out. The sun was blazing down on my head, and that you know I never can stand, so we didn't say much. I told him I thought he was in Africa, and he said no, he had been here to breakfast, and there it ended.'' "Oh! there it ended!" Lady Timerton said, looking vaguely at her dang) iter. " Don't invite him here often, it will only annoy papa ; and, do you know, we must be careful about doing that, for I am sure papa is not well. 1 think he has those attacks oftener than we know of. Any ex- citement would bring them on, and naturally it would excite him if he saw Don Arminger here, when he wishes not to see him here." " I don't know what to do, Elinor ; I know it will be dreadful for you not to see a good deal of Don." iSS Elinor balances Things. " Oli, don't think of mo," Elinor said politely; "please don't; think only of papa." So Lady Elinor got rid of the Don difficulty at home, but it was obstructing her in another direction of which she had no knowledge yet. Lord Ch arid ale had nearly brought himself up to the point of openly consoling himself by taking for his wife the lady who had got herself taken for the beauty of the year, when ill-conditioned circumstances brought DonArminger out under the awning. Now this was annoying, to say 1h" least of it, for Lord Charldale ; for a rumour relative to Don and Lady Elinor had reached him, and he felt that it was due to his noble self to take the beauty of the year without any encumbering associations. " 1 feel that I shall cut the whole concern, and go off in the White Squall for a cruise to heaven knows where ! ' he said to his mother, after he had narrated the Don under the awning incident. ' : The fellow looked so perfectly indifferent to my presence, that Elinor is safe to flirt with him again, if it's only for the sake of pain- ing him, and I won't stand that." 'The dear girl is incapable of doing anything so foolish," Lady Charldale said with energy, for the idea of her son going off in his yacht, the White Squall, for an indefinite period, with unlimited alcohol on board, was abhorrent to her. "She has just sent me a little painting of the passage-room at Crowniston, painted on a terra-cotta plate — the sweetest thing ! — painted from memory." Lord Charldale laugl.el. "You needn't think that I doubt her affection for Crowniston, mother, and I know she thinks the diamonds and herself will do each other justice ; but I won't have her if she's going to make mental comparisons between Arminger and me." And then Lord Charldale grew sulky, and for the first time for some months retired to his own room with that fatal little tray and bottle. No wonder that his moth t grew more and more Elinor balances Things. 189 anxious to bring this great good tinner of a marriage with Elinor about. Intuition told lier that under that graceful, sometimes indifferent, and always rather languid manner of Lady Elinor's was concealed a will so impregnated with selfishness that it was indomitable. "Her amiable resolve thai everything shall redound to her own credit will be a shield to Charldale," the old lady told herself. And then she went and called on Lady Timerton, and took the opportunity of Elinor being at home to let fall several hints as to Charldale's sensitive jealousy. "If I could only meet him before I see Don Arminger again I'll make him bring things to a climax; but if he finds out that Don is about the house in the meantime, good-bye to Crowniston and the Charldale diamonds," Lady Elinor said to herself. She was thoughtfully dressing for a "small and early" at Mrs Vib art's, and Mrs Vibart was a niece of the late Lord Chavldale's. It was more than possible that Lord Charldale might be at his cousin's. It was almost a certainty. Lady Elinor weighed the chances, and dressed herself with care. On her way down to dinner she met her brother rushing up two or three stairs at a time. " I've got Arminger to say he'll dine here to-night," he said as he passed her, and she vouchsafed him no answer, but went on to the drawing-room where Lady Timerton was alone reading. "Is Sylvertre going with us to Mrs Vibart'sl" she asked. " I think so, dear, and Don Arminger too," Lady Timerton said cheerfully. " What a drove from one house ; I shall stay at home, and I will ask von to give a little note for me to Lady Charldale; will you 1" " Of course I will, but what a disappointment for poor Don," Lady Timerton said pathetically. To which Elinor replied that Don "ought to have staved in South Africa honourably till the twelve months were up." 190 Elinor balances Things. With t lie announcement of dinner Mr Arminger walked into the room, and almost at the same moment n diversion was made that would have been blessed by Lady Elinor had it been caused by anything less un- toward. Lord Timerton's own man came forward, and with much agitation and a little consequent incoherency made them understand that his lordship bad been " taken strange" suddenly a few minutes ago, and that he was now lying back in his chair, speechless. They flocked to his room, and as they entered he opened his eyes, and his lips moved, but no sound issued from them then, or ever again. There were a few struggles, a few wild directions given by the frightened group, a cry for " Sylvertre," who had not come down yet, and then the end came. When Don Arminger's former pupil joined them, he was the Earl of Timerton. There was deep sorrow in the house that night, and for many days — sorrow upon which Don felt that it would be more than unseemly for him to intrude ; but though he stayed away, he wrote both to Lady Timerton and to the young earl, and from her mother and brother Lady Elinor learned that he was still in town. The young lady who had felt herself within a hair's- breadth of being Countess of Charldale, was in bitter uncertainty as well as deep grief now. That Lord Charldale, whose fickleness was proverbial, might forget his fancy for her, and either go off in the W/tife Squall, or after some brighter, happier beauty, during the period of her enforced retirement, was quite upon the cards. In that case would it not be well to be faithful to Don? After all, Don was the only man to whom so much as she had of heart had ever warmed. But after Crown- iston, and all the other places, and the diamonds, had been almost within her reach, it would be hard to come down to a single establishment, and that not too magni- ficently appointed. This much must be said for Mr Arminger: he did not in any way actively add to her difficulties. After Elinor balances Things. 191 the late lord's funeral, lie called on the w idow before she left towr, and saw Lady Elinor for a few minutes. He made no reference to the agreement which existed be- tween them about coming to a decision for life at the expiration of the specified twelve months, but spoke as easily about his plans as if it was not contemplated that she might have a share in them. "If you"ll come down to us by-and-by with Timerton, we shall be very glad, Don," Lady Timerton said, her eyes tilling with tears as she spoke of her son by the title which could not be his while his father had lived. " I am going down to Clyst to-morrow, and shall be therefor some time, I think/' he said. "1 have seen but little of my mother and sisters for the last few years ; a quiet month with them will do me all the good in the world." " Is that girl who behaved so abominably to Lord Charldale living at Clyst now?" Lady Elinor asked coldly, for though she was ready to throw Dun over, she was not ready to resign him to a rival. " I don't know or any girl who behaved abominably to Lord Charldale." " I mean Miss Fielding." "She lives at Woodside, not at Clyst." " Oh ! " That was all that was said between them, but Lady Elinor made up her mind that if Lord Charldale went oft" in the White Squall without speaking, she would summon Don back from Clyst without scruple. Day after day she managed by some means or another to delay their departure for a week. At last Lord Charl- dale dropped a i'.P.C. card, but did not ask for admis- sion; then Lady Elinor, feeling greatly discomfited, went out of town wich her mother, and gossip said "the pro- jected match of the season was off." Lord Charldale went off to Norway in I . but his mother took measures to have heise r kept well in- formed as to his movements. She made up her mind 192 A Lesson learnt. that when ho ramo homo he should find her at Crown- iston, and that Elinor Divett should be with her. Meantime Don had gone down to Clyst, feeling him- self as tightly bound and as unable to speak openly of his bonds as ever. He found his sister Maude carrying out one of the old childish dreams— .painting a portrait of Constance Field- ing, namely, and painting it in a way that would satisfy even a lover. What wonder, this being the case, that his sister's studio became his favourite haunt 1 ? He found his mother sweet, sagacious, active, and in- dustrious as ever; he found Trixy Hushed into brighter, softer beauty by the glory of an intensified happiness which she knew was coming to her. Only Constance was changed towards him. She had crown wiser and colder. CHAPTER XXIII. A LESSON LEARNT. There was still about Constance Fielding that straight- forwardness and outspoken boldness which had character- ised her in her childhood, and his lively recognition of this quality made Don feel sure that she would before long speak to him of Lady Elinor. And what, if she did so speak, had he to tell her % One morning when she came to give Maude a sitting, Constance found herself with Don alone — Maude being engaged in pacifying Donald Vaughan, who had come to vent the rage he was in with his father, who had just refused to advance him a large sum of money, in her safe atmosphere. For Donald Vaughan was engaged to his cousin Maude openly, in spite of his father's fury that such should be the case, and in spite also of Mrs Arminger's milder disapproval. " I needn't hope to see Maude for the next hour," Con- A Lesson learnt. 193 stance saitl, when she came in and found what the reason of Maude's absence was. "Your mother is hard at work, as usual, and Trixy's writing something that must go off to-day, so you and I must make the best of each other for a time, Mr Arminger." "I shall have no difficulty in fulfilling my part." "Don't say things that sound like compliments; they don't suit either of us." Then there was a pause for a few moments, which she broke by asking in her down- right way, "Why do you never speak to me of the lady you are goinn; to marry 1 It would be so much more friendly and like you, if you would." " Because, Miss Fielding, I don't know that I am going to marry any lady." "I shouldn't like to think that you prevaricated — no — I couldn't do that," she said, looking at him thought- fully ; " still, I know from Trixy the promise you and Lady Elinor made to her father to wait twelve mouths ; now her father is dead, and her mother and brother will offer no opposition, so why don't you speak of it to me?" " I have no right to speak of Lady Elinor as being in any way bound to me. Her father's decision holds good though he is dead ; at a specified time I shall give her the option of accepting or refusing me, and I think she will do the latter." "What a cold-blooded way of going to work ! and how hard on you to feel all this time — or to fear rather — that some one is trying to alienate her from you. It can't be true these reports that I have read, that she is — that there is a chance of her marrying Lord Charldale. Know- ing what I diil from Trixy about you, I felt it couldn't — it couldn't be true; but now that you have told me this, I'm afraid. Is it true 1 " " I really can't say," he replied, smiling. "I can only rejoice that some one else is not going to marry Lord Charldale." Constance shivered, then repressed the shiver and drew herself up. "It was different with me," she said; "but she has N 194 -A Lesson learnt. had you to think of and to know that you are thinkingof her all the time. It can't be true, of course it can't! And she's so beautiful too, grown more beautiful than ever ; how proud you must be of her." " I don't see that she has grown more beautiful," Don said. "I can fancy that she has, under the influence of deep feeling," Constance went on, compelling herself to discuss the subject of Lady Elinor in all its most painful bear- ings without further delay. " Will you let me come with my sisters to Woodside % " he asked, being desirous of introducing a new topic. " Will I let you % What a reproach to my hospitality to put it in that way ! I am always hard at work trying to make Woodside as perfect as my dear father and mother meant it to be, and you shall come and tell me how I can further improve it. Perhaps by-and-by, when you're married, Lady Elinor and you will come and stay with me, and you'll see then what a methodical, managing, staid mistress of a house I have become." This was a little beyond what he could bring himself to bear. " Even should it ever come about that I have the ricdit to take Lady Elinor anywhere, which is an extreme im- probability, I shall never take her to Woodside," he said impatiently. " Don't you wish your wife to be friendly with me % " she asked, a little surprised at his sudden outburst of pettishness. Then she went on to point out to him how inevitably they would all be "mixed up in the future through Trixy's marriage with Lord Timerton. I'm too much like one of the family to be left out of Trixy's arrangements. I'm to be the old maid-aunt of the family, and Woodside is to be the place where the family are to come and recruit their faded health and spirits, when any of them are done up by gaiety or work." He did not answer her. He would not encourage her to put a further strain upon herself, for he saw that she was suffering a good deal in the effort she was making A Lesson learnt. 195 to take a familiar and matter-of-fact view of his probable marriage with Lady Elinor. So he just sat quiet and silent, and let her talk on as she willed. And if giving up his life would have served her, he would have given it freely, but he would not give her one look of love. "Do you like my portrait?" she asked presently. "It looks to me much more like the 'Connie' I was a year ago than the ' Miss Fielding ' I am now ; Maude has always seen the best of me, and she has put in the best she has seen." " Maude sees very clearly." " What a lovely picture she will make of Lady Elinor ; don't let anyone hut Maude paint her, Don. Maude can paint the skin, and indicate the soul at the same time ; oughtn't we to be proud of Maude ? " So she went on, innocently identifying herself with his dearest interests. It was really a relief to him when Maude came in; for, sweet as it was to him to have Constance all to himself in this way, there was danger in the sweet- ness. After this there came many happy days at "Woodside. Days that were full of sunshine, and flowers, and sweet sounds. Days that were tenibl} r testing ones to poor Don, for Lord Timerton had come down to Clyst to prove to Trixy that there was no obstacle to their marriage, and to make her heart sing with this proof of his loyalty and fidelity. So it came to pass — as the two pairs of engaged lovers had a habit of eliminating them- selves from the others — that Miss Fielding and Don were thrown very much together. "It's useless attempting tennis. Trixy and Lord Timerton play in such a maddeningly limp way now, that they spoil any game, to say nothing of any temper; and Maude makes no pretence of wishing to play. What shall we do, Mr Arminger, when they desert us in this way?" Constance said to him one day when Maude had gone away in one direction with her sketching 196 A Lesson learnt. materials, and Donald Vaughan and Trixy had taken Tennyson's last poem, and Lord Timerton away to the summer-house by the river, — " Shall we try being idle for a change?" " No, no ; Satan will find some mischief for idlers to talk about ; there's danger for everyone in idleness, I'm sure. I suggest that we garden ; you shall do the hard part, and I'll do the fancy work." " There's nothing to be done in this garden," Donald protested. " It's in too perfect order for any of our artistic touches to be visible. I feel no ambition to labour hard when I know there will be no perceptible result." " There speaks the tempter. You are letting vanity and laziness get the better of you ; if the garden doesn't excite your horticultural ambition, perhaps the green- house will? Come and see. There's always plenty to do in a greenhouse ; you shall fill the pots, and I'll trans- plant and take cuttings." " How restless you are ; you must always be doing something," Don said, as he followed her to the green- house, but he said it very admiringly. In spite of his pretence of unwillingness, Don Armin- ger liked his occupation far too well for a semi-engaged man. The programme as arranged by Constance, that he should fill the pots and she put in the cutting*, involved constant and close companionship, for Don felt it to be needful that he should assist in placing the delicate transplants symmetrically in the middle of their new homes. Altogether in her desire to avoid dangerous idleness, Miss Fielding had proposed a more dangerous pastime. " How's that going to end 1 " Lord Timerton said to Trixy as they passed the greenhouse, and marked the confidential way in which the pair within were pursuing their calling as gardeners. " In nothing more than there is at present — in friend- ship, 1 suppose," Trixy replied. M Do you know, I hardly think you are justified in A Lesson learnt. 197 supposing anything of the sort; she is free, and they're desperately in love with one another." " But you can't say that Don is free 1 ? " " I should consider myself so if I were in Don's case. Elinor is not treating him fairly at all. It's all nonsense; her pretending that she is simply abiding by my lather's wishes in sticking out for the expiration of the twelve months before she gives her decision. She's holding off to see if Charldale will come back to her, and if he does, she'll throw Don over." "If you think that, you ought to tell Don so," Trixy says with glowing cheeks. "It's too shameful ! Don is too good in every way to be anyone's plaything. Hugh, I shall be so indignant, I shall detest your sister if she treats Don badly, or only marries him because she can't get Lord Charldale." " My dear Trixy, Elinor is one of the coolest-headed, coolest-hearted girls out; but she did take a fancy to Don, there's no doubt of that. That fancy to a great extent has faded since she went to Crownistown, and discovered that Charldale's wife will have some of the finest diamonds and places in England. She'll always prefer Don to Charldale naturally, but if she marries Don they'll both be wretched. I should urge on the affair with Miss Fielding if I were you." " Don is so honourable ; he will leave it entirely to your sister," Trixy said rather dejectedly, for the idea of Don being either jilted or unhappy in his marriage with Elinor was galling to her. "May I come and pot some more cuttings to-morrow 1 ?" Don asked when he was going away that day. " No ; to-morrow we picnic out in the Berryan Woods, and as we're not going to take any servants with us, you'll have an opportunity of making yourself useful in another way. I'll teach you how to compound a salad on un-English principles, and show you how to lay a cloth and keep it quiet on a breezy slope." " In fact, under your auspices, I shall become as good 1 9S A Lesson learnt. an amateur butler as I already feel myself to be a gardener," he told her ; and Constance said, — "Yes; I am very kindly making you useful. Lady Elinor ought to be grateful to me." Mrs Arminger and three or four of their Clyst friends went with them to this picnic in Berryan Woods, and Constance managed it so that she kept some of her guests with her all the day, and by this means increased Don's feeling of safety, but gave him one of deadly dulness in its place. It was in vain that he tried to tempt her away into flowery shady places on little botanising expeditions. She shook her head, and ad- hered steadily to the companionship of some rather tedious guests and the path of duty. But when the day was over, Don descended to strategy, and after packing away his mother and their friends in their respective carriages, contrived to get himself left behind with no means of getting home unless Miss Fielding would give him a seat in her little oak village- cart. The prospect of doing this, of driving Don home in the soft fading summer light, through long winding lanes whose hedges were wreathed with tue wild briony, honey- suckle, and white convolvulus, and rich with briar-roses — those faithful " dog" roses that remain with us so late into the summer — was full of delight for Constance. In- deed, the delight was so keen and vivid that she im- mediately became conscious that she ought not to give it to herself, Lady Elinor being in the background. " If I were you I would walk ; the footpath through the woods to Clyst is a mere nothing as to distance, and you can't imagine anything prettier than it is," she said, displaying a degree of earnestness in her description which revealed more than she meant to reveal. "I can imagine it very well, I've tramped it many a time when I was an usher in Dalzel's schojl ; the road will have a greater charm and beauty for me this even- ing than the footpath " A Lesson learnt. 199 " You are very obstinate, and I am very weak ! Get in." He got into the little carriage by her side, and she started her pony at a pace that promised well for their speedy arrival in Clyst. " Why are you driving so fast 1 " he asked presently. " It's safer," she replied, looking at him steadily ; then she added, " the pony's not nearly so likely to stumble over rough ground if you drive fast. Do you remember Peppercorn 1" " Too well ! " he said with a rush, which immediately awakened his repentance. " So do I, and everything that happened that day when you saved my life." Her voice softened and broke, and for a moment he was afraid she was going to cry. But she recovered her- self quickly, and asked brightly, — " When are you going away, Mr Arminger 1 " "Soon, I think." " You ought to go soon." " Why do you say so 1 " " You know you ought to go soon. I don't think you have been wrong in coming — there are the lights of Clyst — for we both had a lesson to learn, and we have learnt it by heart, and we shall never forget it ; but now that the lesson is learnt, you ought to go and obey its precepts." '• I cannot act, I can only wait," he said in a low voice, and again Constance felt her heart fill with dangerous pity. Then silence set in, and reigned between them until they reached Clyst, and Don said good-evening to her at his mother's garden-gate. It seemed as if her words, "You ought to go soon," had been uttered in a spirit of prophecy, when the next day there came a letter from the widowed Lady Tinierton, asking him to go and spend a few days with them at Scallow, which had been lent to her by Lady Kenwyn. "Elinor must man to bring things to a climax, or she wouldn't have me here," he told himself despondently 2oo Elinor s Future Home. But he hail "learnt his lesson well," in very truth, and did not