TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER I

Fair and softly goes far in a day.

—Proverb.

Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.

—Lockeley Halt.

Thebe was nothing to do at Ottermouth, except to fish. Those who despised the excellent sea fishing which was to be had in the bay might whip the brace of trout streams inland, were they fortunate enough to obtain leave to do so from the owner of these preserved waters, and therefrom fill their baskets daily.

The fishing at Ottermouth was so attractive that the local authorities had run up a draughty pretentious hotel for the accommodation of amateur fishermen, and had contrived some one-brick villas as possible apartments, high up on the cliff above the village.

But Ottermouth had no charm for the vast holiday-making August public. The railway station was three miles distant from the primitive place, and the air on the sheltered southern coast was soft and humid—it was actively relaxing. There were no sands at Ottermouth; the sea, even at low water, touched the cliffs on either side the narrow beach of shingle, on the ridges of which the fishing-boats were drawn up high and dose.

Ottermouth was never called a town, except in advertisement—it was, in fact, little more than a hamlet. Its inhabitants loved it well, and such of them as had no lucrative ambition as citizens were wont to congratulate themselves upon the obscurity of their dwelling-place. They were wont to congratulate themselves on the lack of out-door music, of trippers, of donkeys, of Pierrots, of such licensed fraud as constitute genuine seaside recreation.

One serious drawback to life at Ottermouth was its abnormal rainfall. The inhabitants were inured to the soft, thick, dull, patient manner in which the plenteous rain continually fell, but visitors were irritated and depressed by the phenomenon.

Just now, upon the day of which I speak, in the middle of the proverbially dry month of July, rain had fallen for forty-eight consecutive hours. It had fallen fast hut gently. The clouds had broken repeatedly so as to deceive the uninitiated, who were thus kept ceaselessly upon a hopeful strain, for clouds that shift may surely be expected to lift.

Two young men stood side by side in the bay-window of the coffee-room in the “ Victoria Hotel,” and watched these misleading clouds. The bay-window was enormous; it had been built for the inroad of sunshine; now the great expanse of desolate glass was opaque with trickling raindrops.

The prospect was not inspiriting.

“ It’s going to rain for a month,” said the elder of the young men; reopening the book in his hand, he sat down in an adjacent diair, turned his back on the downpour, and laughed.

His companion saw nothing to amuse him in the situation. Inaction was distasteful to him; he was full of energy, he could not be quiet Twice during the last forty-eight hours he had chartered a boat, sailed into the bay, and fished unsuccessfully for bass.

At this moment he was wet through—he had but just come back from a tramp through tho village in the mud. His heavy boots and rough gaiters told a tale. The cap he wore was fringed with raindrops, even his dark hair was soaking wet “You’re an enviable chap, Gilbert Like love, you laugh at obstacles,” growled he, drumming his sinewy fingers sharply on tho window-pane, and keeping his eyes on the tricky clouds overhead. “ Obstacles are more in my'line than yours. Ho doubt that’s the reason why I take them seriously.”

“ The rain’s a nuisance.” The speaker’s temperament was calm; if a thing-could not be mended, it should not be minded. “ But it is not the right time of day for a change. It is only four o’clock.”

The younger man considered that he had a right to grumble at the weather, for he was a busy man, with a curtailed holiday. All the year round he was perched, uncongenially busy, on an office stool, in the provincial branch of a cousin’s bank, while this friend of his frisked through his idle hours with a silver spoon in his mouth.

It was hard to lose two out of fourteen short days of freedom. He could not read novels; he wanted to take life first-hand—he was but four-and-twenty. The favorite of fortune, his friend Gilbert Wykeham, was a couple of years his senior. As long as they could remember they had been friends. An inherited friendship was theirs; their fathers had been close friends before them. At Winchester and at Oxford the pair had been inseparable, and now, though their paths in life lay apart, one man having his way to make, and the other having a convenient right of way left to him by his progenitor, yet this David and Jonathan managed to keep their friendship green.

Richard Tempest was a fifth son. He was a member of a large family, whose creditable length of pedigree could not altogether counterbalance a depressing shortness of purse.

The father, Colonel Tempest, made it a point of principle to educate his sons as Tempests had hitherto been educated, and then he cast them forth to shift for themselves.

Tho plan, which seemed good in his eyes, had its drawbacks; it was risky, inasmuch as the hardships of shifting are not lessened by an inbred fastidiousness fostered by education.

The silver spoon that the elder man possessed was not cumbrous; there was not too much of it. His purse was sufficiently, without being overwhelmingly, long. Such land as he owned ho could, if he so desired, manage himself; it was enough but not too much to employ him, and to give him that congenial something to do, without which the pleasantest of lives are said to pall.

His father was dead; his widowed mother ruled household at Woodsford, and kept his domestic machinery briskly on the move.

Mrs. Wykeham was not the Bort of woman who spoils any one. She did not make over-much even of Gilbert, her only child. She was proud of him; he was a son of whom a mother must be proud. Good to look upon, manly, fair spoken, easy-going, amiable, well lived.

He let Mrs. Wykeham go her own way. She had a marked way and will of her own; she was welcome to them both at Woodsford. Gilbert was placid.

On this wet day which irritated Richard Tempest, and drove him frantic, Gilbert was unruffled and ready to settle contentedly down to a novel and a pipe.

“ Cursing the clouds won’t shift them, Dick,” he said. “ What wc want are the bellows. As long as tho wind blows from the southwest cursing won’t mend matters.”

Never were friends more oddly assorted than these. The younger of the two was not easy-going, nor was he tranquil.

He had a temper. I do not mean his temper was violent, but it asserted its existence by being either good or bad; it was seldom normal. It lurked in his keen deep-set eyes. In a sense, his rugged face was fine, with a manliness and power; his features were not much to boast of. He was dean shaven, so that the working of his firm mouth was laid bare. He was a strongly built man, with a broad, muscular frame and a thick throat. Children liked him; they were not afraid of his fierce eyes and his deep voice, and he never disguised hie love for them.

As yet he had not realized that it would not do for him to,foster his love of children, his domestic tastes, and the softer side of his nature.

Many years must pass before he could have a home of his own. Young men with little interest, little money, and mediocre talent have to learn to do without.

The dawning knowledge that he was a nobody and a detrimental had been implanted in him lately, firmly implanted by the unflinching hands of feminine nobodies.

Two years back there had been a girl on his uncle’s drag at Lord’s; he had seen her there at all the matches, he had seen a great deal of her before he had left Oxford. Two months ago at Studholme, where his work lay, he had met her again. She had a mother, a mother who had once been civil to him, but who now deliberately, frankly, openly forgot him. Both these ladies deliberately forgot him.

It was not much, but it was enough; the circumstance opened his eyes.

He was a nobody in the provincial town of Studholme. He was a detrimental; he could not afford even a sweetheart He had never wanted to marry Miss Montgomery-Jones; nevertheless he did'not relish having his deficiencies crammed down his throat There were many things in his life which he found it difficult to relish. He did not take things easily. Ho was equal to conquering his fate should it he necessary, but he would never blind himself to its unpleasantness. He was a man who would never get along anyhow or somehow; he must have a definite “ how.” Ha was not self-assertive; people who have been used to an assured position do not need self-assertion, but it might have been a useful attribute at Studholme.

Gilbert Wykeham’s good looks, his pleasant, genial manner, would have been a passport to social favor, even had they not been backed by Woodsford and an ample fortune. Small wander that he found the world an excellent place, and his fellow-creatures admirable.

“ Personally, I think cursing works wonders,” retorted Richard; “it’s a short way of driving your meaning home.” He walked away from the window, and began turning over a pile of newspapers that lay in disorder on the dining-table. “ Where is the Ottermouth Mail, Gilbert ?”

“ Good heavens! the Ottermouth Mail? Tou must be hard up for literature.”

“ I have thought of something to do.”

“ What a restless chap you are. Here’s the paper, under my chair. I wonder how you manage to perch on your office stool; it must be pain and grief to you and to your neighbors. You never could sit still.” Tempest was turning Qver the Gazette, scanning the item which consumed most of tho space in that publication.

“ There is a cousin of my mother’s living down here,” he said—“ a Miss Katherine Mildmay. If I nan only find her out, we will go and look her up; it will be something to do.”

Gilbert shut his book, he was on his feet in a moment ; he was eminently sociable, and he liked womankind ; he got on with them. Ho stood behind his comrade, and began to hunt the list of visitors.

“ What did you say her name was ?”

“ Katherine Mildmay.”

“There it is,” with an index finger on the list.

“ That is she. Mildmay, Mis9 Katherine, Paxford House, Otterton Road. I know tho place; it lies high; above tho Otterton pools. I noticed it when I was fishing up-stream last week, and asked a laboring chap whose house it was. Tho garden,’* with a reflective smile, “ was a blaze of flowers. Come along, Dick; hurry up; wo ought to get there just about tea-time. We may get a chance of talking about something except the deluge—anything for a change. Why didn’t you remember her before ?”

“ I made a point of forgetting her, but my mater wrote this morning and told me I must call. I hate that sort of business. I’m not exactly a ladies’ man.” “ You are just the sort of fellow women like, I fancy. You aro a great, strong chap, and yet you aren’t rough,” speculated the other, pleasantly. The subject interested him. He had lately come to a phase of mind when he thought a great deal of women—of their ways, and of their favor. He had begun to dream of a some one who would live at Woodsford, a some one who was not at all like his mother. A sweet fair some one who would sit opposite to him at his dinner-table, and whoso voice even now was often in his ears.

“ Katherine Mildmay is no chicken,” said her cousin, dryly. “ I haven’t seen her since I was at school; sho was an ancient dame then.”

Now Gilbert was fond of flowers, but it was not the purple beds of petunia, nor the rosy begonias, nor the fiery red geraniums in the garden of Paxford House that had interested him to the extent of cross-questioning a handy laboring man about the place.

Cherchez let femmes, it was a petticoat that had attracted his attention at Paxford. There had been a girl in the garden; while he had fished he had seen her. Then he had put his rod down and watched her. To and fro, in and out, up and down, round about the beds she had flitted, tying up carnation heads, cutting roses, smelling an odd flower here and there. Her figure attracted him, it was graceful, she never hurried but she never rested, busy as one of the bees that buzzed in the mignonette. He could not catch a fish while she distracted him; he gave up the attempt. Nevertheless he returned to those selfsame pools next day, and again he caught no fish, for again the slim white figure of the busy, but not bustling, maiden glided among the blaze of summer flowers in the Pax-ford garden.

Then down had come the rain and had driven tho fisherman home.

“ My cousin is quaint, faddy,” pursued Richard, with the frankness of a relation; “ she won’t come on with the times. She has got a story, but so, no doubt, have most people if their friends are fortunate enough to ferret it out.”

“ What’s the story ?”

“ She lent some man every penny she had, and he invested it.”

“Well?”

“ He invested it in himself, or in some other rotten security that failed, and when she was gone he didn’t marry her. He married quite another person. Ever since Cousin Katherine made a notable fool of herself, fotr the last five-and-Thirty years she has shut herself up down here.”

“Poor soul!”

“ She has got an annuity, so her bread and butter is provided for. All her relations had to put their hands in their pockets, and it whetted their tongues; She had a rough time of it then.”

“ Poor soul!”

“ Yes, poor soul; but she got free of tho man anyhow.”

“ Small comfort. I should thitnk she’d like something to show for her money.”

Richard shrugged his shoulders. The young men had set out through the rain on their way to Paxford; they were breasting the hill thither.

“ Perhaps so. It might be better than a skeleton in a cupboard.”

“ Do Miss Katherine Mildmay and her skeleton live alone?”

Gilbert was not a great talker, and he never argued; he kept his opinions, if he disagreed with his neighrbors, to himself. His love of peace had taught him this discreet policy, for Mrs. Wykeham’s opinions were strong, and they were advertized.

“Does Miss Mildmay live alone?” he repeated. Richard was knocking mud off his extremities and shaking his cap free of raindrops.

“ Not now. There’s a girl with her, a great-niece, whose mother died when she was born. The husband, Ralph Mildmay, was sent up to the front on active service, and he sent the girl to Katherine. He was killed later, and Katherine didn’t want to part with the child. She was delicate, born in India, you see, and Ottermouth suited her, so she stayed on at Paxford. Precious dull she must find it now she has grown up.”

Gilbert smiled a little to himself. He had known that the white, lithe figure among the scarlet and purple flowers had been that of neither recluse nor skeleton, but merely of the stuff of which his dreams were made.

He hastened his paces; they were within sight of their destination.

Paxford was a small villa, the shape of a tea-caddy; it was covered from roof to basement with ivy closely shorn, the uniform green of which was relieved by irregular windows painted white.

The young men halted in the porch and shook themselves. There were drops of rain everywhere; they driped from a thousand rustling leaves that fringed the porch.

The visitors were of neither age nor sex to appreciate the well-kept spotlessness of tiles and door and BEQUEATHED polished brass, but from some subtle influence of soap and friction they became painfully aware of their deficiencies, of piebald boots and soil and damp, during tlie brief moment that elapsed between the ringing and the answering, of the bell.

“ Is Miss Mildmay at home ?”

Tho maid lifted her eyebrows as if to say what decent female soul could possibly be out.

“ Miss Mildmay is at home.”

Even the advent of two strange young men did not fluster the spruce maiden into forgetting her mistress’s interest. With a deft movement she hauled from beneath her feet a stout wide mat, and spread it between herself and them.

“ Please walk in, sir,” she said, with a pregnant glance at tho gentlemen’s extremities.

Now that the door was open the sound of thin, sweet music, accompanying a contralto voice, became audible, and the conformable incomers scraped such mud as could be dislodged from their boots as softly as possible not to drown the melody. A moment later they wore ushered formally into the presence of Miss Mildmay.

They felt grateful to maid and mat when theyfound themselves in a dainty room, all white and green and Dresden china, a sanctum essentially feminine.

Their hostess was knitting a soft, white fleecy something, which she set carefully down on an occasional table as she rose to greet her guests.

She was like a piece of her own Dresden china in her pale flowery gown and a silk shawl of precise folds wrapped round her shoulders.

Her pink and white face was furrowed, her light-blue eyes restless, her manner strained. She welcomed the young men courteously, even warmly. That morning Mrs. Tempest had written to say that Richard was staying at Ottermouth, and would, doubtless, call upon her, and she had been expecting to have the pleasure of seeing him.

She knew of the Wykehams too, and of Woodsford, and of Gilbert’s mother. Though she lived quietly, she did not forget; she forgot very little; she had time to remember.

She talked some minutes before she turned to introduce the young girl who stood by the harp, to which she had been singing, until the visitors’ advent silenced her. She had broken off in her song and risen, but she had not moved; her right hand was still upon the strings of the instrument.

“ This is my great-niece, Ethel,” the old lady said. “ You, Richard, must have heard your mother speak of her. Mr. Wykeham, Miss Mildmay.”

The girl turned her full face to her cousin and his friend and curtsied, a gracious studied curtsey, which was in itself a ceremony, a spectacle. Then she smiled, but not ceremoniously now, a slow, winning smile as though she was glad to meet those two pairs of approving eyes.

She still stood by her harp, not awkwardly, but expectantly; she was but nineteen, and she hardly knew what was required of her at this juncture of her life.

“ I am afraid we interrupted your song,” young Tempest sad, returning her smile. “ I am so sorry; it was a pity; but won’t you finish it ?”

He hardly expected her to take his suggestion seriously, but so she did.

Socialities had not come in her way. Reseating herself on her spindle-legged chair she looked with a confiding diffidence at him.

“ Perhaps,” gravely, “ I had better begin again. I broke off in the middle of a verse.”

Then Gilbert went a couple of paces nearer her.

“ Do sing it all over again,” he urged; “ we should like to hear it all.”

His eagerness disconcerted her; slowly over her face the color rose. Richard frowned at the speakers lack of discernment.

“ It’s an old song,” she said, apologetically, “ but I like the air.”

Her fingers touched the strings. They were strong and steady fingers; again they filled the air with their sweet music.

Both the young men watched the singer while she sang. The song was so very old that the words and the air were new to them.

Gilbert accepted Miss Mildmay’s invitation to stay to tea almost before it left her lips, nor was the other visitor less cordial.

The gracious young girl had none of the airs of a beauty; she did not seem aware of the advantages of liquid eyes, long lashes, fair hair, and slender figure. She was not hard to please; she showed great interest in all that was said; she was earnest, gentle, responsive.

Her manner to the elder Miss Mildmay was such as was unfamiliar to the young men, being deferential and yet demonstrative. Respect to elders was even then out of date, and still the girl’s deference to the old lady did not seem out of place.

These two young judges in Israel did not find it in their hearts to pity poor “ Aunt Katherine ” for all her tragic story and her quiet life.

CHAPTER II

Infinite riches in a little room.

—C. Marlowe.

Flowers are lovely.' Love is flower-like:

Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O, the joys that came down, shower-like,

-Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty.

—Coleridge.

When .the men saw Miss Mildmay making tea, they found it more difficult than before to believe that there had ever been anything tragic in her life.

How could a woman, with a broken heart, tako such vast interest in so commonplace a ceremony?

How seriously she treated it, her old unsteady hands ladling out the tea from a silver caddy in a quaintly fashioned spoon with fluttering haste, because she feared the water which hissed and bubbled in the urn was boiling itself flat meanwhile.

Then, with watch in hand, she timed the drawing of the beverage, dispensing it at length in tiny Sevres cups, with rat-tail spoons to stir the clotted cream that mellowed the strength and fragrance of the brew. Gilbert praised the tea. Ethel was waiting on the guests, and their lack of appetite distressed her.

“ People are careless about tea-making,” said the successful author of the tea, bridling at Gilbert’s congratulations. “ Carelessness is the great evil of these hurrying days; One cannot do any work justice in a bustle.”

Certainly there was no bustle at Paxford. Nothing was hurried, and the guests did not hurry away. Perhaps one of the charms which kept them lingering so late was the quietude and peace of the little house. Ethel talked slowly; she moved slowly. There seemed to be as great an abundance of leisure as of flowers about the two ladies.

While young Tempest sat and talked to his old cousin, he fell to speculating about her.

He was surprised to And that this anxious-faeed woman, who had had such a bad time, could laugh and be genial, ad though she had got well on to the far side of trouble.

People, were their lots in life good or bad, seemed extraordinarily similar to meet at tea. This poor cousin of his had the girl with her. Had the companionship of Ethel been such as to make Miss Mildmay forget the bitter business of her youth t In truth, it had been sufficient to make her forget the bitter part of her woes. It had been enough to take the sting out of them, and to leave with her a memory that was not defiant.

Miss Mildmay shrunk from the world in the plural; in the singular she loved her fellows.

She was a proud woman; when she had been humiliated, she had shaken herself free from tho pity, interest, curiosity, or censure of her friends.

That step, once taken, was irrevocable.

She was not a strong woman, but she was an obstinate one. She had her own ideas; they might not be specially intelligent, but she clung to them. Sho was a faithful soul; faithful alike to loves, to likings, to convictions.

Miss Mildmay’s skeleton was locked in the proverbial cupboard. His bones wore never rattled to point tales or adorn morals for Ethel’s instruction.

No one disparaged any one in the Paxford precincts. Ethel was guileless, guiltless as her great-aunt had been in the happy far-off days of her youth, before the knowledge of good or evil cast shadows on her path.

If Miss Mildmay had missed the best of life, it must not be laid to her charge that through word of hers Ethel should lose a jot or tittle of joy.

Years ago, Miss Mildmay had stayed at Woodsford for a week. She knew about tho Wykehams; she knew that the men were God-fearing, intrepid, handsome; the women virtuous and fair to see. She liked the look of this kindly young man who was engrossed by Ethel; sho liked his inches and his pleasant voice.

Bain at Ottermouth, like the boiling of a watch pot, only ceased when unobserved; the clouds never lifted till people were happy indoors.

The quartette in the Paxford dining-room did not see the sun was shining until Ethel threw tho window open.

“Look at the sun,” she said to Gilbert, and he went over to her side, and together they put their heads through the casement into the fragrant air, and looked at the sunshine that was flooding the drenched flowers.

“ Do you see the carnations ? They hate rain; the weight of a dew-drop depresses them; they can hardly hold their dry heads up high enough.”

“ How fond you are of flowers. I saw you gardening. I was fishing in tho brook.”

She turned her eyes from her garden and fixed them on his.

“ You were there a long time. I saw you, too,” she said.

The sunshine was on her hair, brightening its tints. Her lashes were brown, long, and curly; they threw a broad, soft shadow on the pink bloom of her checks. Her eyes were blue, wide-open, earnest eyes that were observant without being critical, serious without sadness, sweet but not insipid. She was unusually tall; every movement of hers was graceful. She wore a flimsy black dress with a light-blue belt, and a turquoise brooch of the same hue fastened the black lace round her neck. She used her delicate white hands a good deal to illustrate or to emphasize her words, and some thin silver bangles on her wrists tinkled faintly as she did so.

“ You see there are no trees nor bushes about the house to screen us,” she explained. “Aunt Katherine thinks they would be unwholesome both for us and for the flowers. I think,” with a sudden laugh, “ she likes to be overlooked. She likes people to admire the garden.”

Gilbert laughed too.

“I don’t wonder. It is lovely; my mother is a gardener, but she has nothing like this. Have you a tennis-court ?”

Tennis had lately come into fashion. Gilbert and the girls whom he knew best had thought far more of courts than flower-beds.

Ethel shook her head.

“ Aunt Katherine does not wish me to play; she does not like anything at all rough, you see. She likes me to do just as she did years ago, when she was a girl.”

“ Isn’t it—” he broke off—he had almost said “ dull ”; only already he intuitively knew that she was superior to himself; that she had no weaknesses such as lead to dulness or boredom. Isn’t it odd ?” he substituted, feeling he blundered.

“ Isn’t what‘odd’?”

“ To live behind the times.”

She looked puzzled and again she reflected. He had begun to watch for this trick of manner, this way she knit her brow and closed her lips, when she was not quite sure of her own mind.

“ But it isn’t more odd for me than it was for her,” she said, at length, looking up at him. Her head was but on the level of his stalwgrt shoulders, though she was a. tall woman. “I do as she did when she was my age.”

“ What do you do ?”

It was not manners to catechise, but he wanted to know no little foolish fact about Paxford could be trivial. For nineteen years his. neighbor had been living here, only a scoro of miles distant from his home, and yet. he had not known it. His ignorance appalled him.

“ I paint, I play, and I sing; we garden, and we drive, and I work a great deal.” There was a high basket on the window-seat; she pushed her harp back so that she could reach it. Then she sorted out therefrom some rich embroidery, wrought in marvellous coloring, which, with a pretty pride in the stitches, she spread out for this uninstructed man’s admiration.

Had he been able to appreciate its workmanship, Gilbert could not have estimated it higher than he did, as he bent his tall head down, so that be might the better distinguish the jessamines and roses which she pointed out to him slowly, one by one. “ I copy them from nature, but they often fade before I have finished with them; that is the drawback, isn’t it? Beautiful flowers do last such a short timo; it hardly seems worth while to care so much for them.”

“ I always think it is worth while to care,”

She nodded, quickly, and then there was a pause in the duologue which he broke.

“ What else do you do ?”

“ I read a good deal. I read aloud in the evening. Not novels-Aunt Katherine doesn’t like novols. Sho thinks they make people expect too. much. They pick out just the excitement of life and write about it, and leave the rest, and there is so much rest, All the plums and the currants novels describe, she say,, and then girls are disappoiuted because there is so much plain dough in their cakes. When I am older I may read novels, because then my judgment will be formed.”

“ I fancy it is formed already.”

A whimsical smile spread over her face.

“ Perhaps judgments change.”

“ I should not think you would change.”

“ Why do you think that ?’’

“ You look—faithful. ”

“ I am glad you think, that.” .

She was so glad that she laughed,

“ If you don’t read novels, what do you read ?”

“ All the Times that is intereating. And we read ‘ lives,’ every ‘ life ’ that is published; some are very dull. Then I read poetry. I don’t care about it much, it is so bad sometimes, and sometimes it’s so difficult to understand. I like the Times best, because it is really true.”

“ Do you like the sea ?”

“ I love it. Aunt Katherine and I sail very often.

We are out for hours sometimes, just cruising up and down in the evening.”

“Do you never go alone ?”

“I never go anywhere alone.” She looked up at him to see what he thought of this confession.

“ Girls now do go about alone, I know, but Aunt Katherine does not like it. I housekeep, and I make the pot-pourri and the preserves. I do the shopping for the house. Bridget comes with me and carries the basket. Sometimes we go up to Exeter for a few days, but Aunt Katherine likes Ottermouth best.”

“ Do you like Ottermouth ?”

“ It is my home,” as though one statement answered the other.

“ Was it always your home ?”

He had not been attending to Mr. Tempest’s family recitals as he would have attended now. She had said the word “ home ” in a way that touched him, ! as though home was not a mater-of-course possession. They were looking at each other, his eyes were interrogative, she answered them.

“ It has been home as long as I can remember. My mother died when I was nine days old, my father was a soldier and he was sent abroad. If he had lived I should have gone to him.”

She did not tell her facts sadly, she was only pensive ; she had never been allowed to feel her loss, all honor to Miss Mildmay, but yet she saw her sympathetic listener was full of pity, and his emotion affected her.

In the silence that followed her words Mr. Tempest rose. He had never paid so long a call in his life; he was yearning for a pipe. Tobacco was not a male accessory in those days of which all ladies were tolerant. Miss Katherine Mildmay rose, too, but very slowly. She was fully alive to what was going on at the window. She had suffered so keenly in her youth that she did not forget its ways. She exaggerated rather than ignored his proclivities.

As I have said, she was not a strong woman. She was not of that sisterhood who have no dislike to standing alone. She wanted help, and fate had thrown her hack upon herself: she had done what she could—she had done well; but she had suffered in her loneliness. Pray Heaven Ethel need not suffer thus.

This well-born, kindly young man looked like a fit mate for her darling. She would not stretch one of her proud old hands forth to help a matrimonial contingency forward, but neither would she put any spoke in the wheel.

She could not repress the flutter of excitement that unnerved her when she noticed how unready Mr. Wykeham seemed to make his adieus.

She herself had cultivated her niece’s attractions; the milk-white hands were due to her, who had pnv tected them in gauntlet gloves, and hathed them with dew from their babyhood. No blemish of tan or freckle had been allowed to mar the feminine fairness of Ethel’s face. No defiling heat, nor snipping steel had coarsened her light hair. Just for this wet day she had not worn one of the fine white gowns with which her wardrobe was well stocked, but her thin dress was womanly, though black. Her shoes were thin as paper, her silk stockings clung to her pretty feet and ankles, which were unmarred by hard use or unseemly exercise.

Her voice was soft and traìmnte and she had plenty to say. Nq smattering of diverse manly knowledge. was hers, but she could look well to the ways of her house. She knew the why and wherefore of household management. She was neat and orderly.

The only storms at Paxford were dust storms, for old Miss Mildmay waged warfare against dust.

The girl sang as sweetly as a thrush. There were no bangs and crashes, no fireworks or thunderstorms, nothing startling or dramatic about her instrumental music, but she could coax soft, tuneful melody out of the old piano. Her needle she used like a daughter of Israel, being cunning with her fingers. She could arrange a bowl of flowers like an artist, and paint them like nature. She had a mind df her own, and she could express it. Her heart was warm and true, she was generous with her possessions.

More than this, though Miss Mildmay did not realize the truth, Ethel’s was the leading mind at Paxford ; it Was she Who kept its atmosphere so placidly pleasant It was she whose cheerinesS, Wisdom, and strength infected her surroundings, so that dear, sentimental Miss Mildmay was disappointed to find life Worth living, even though a jilted, commiserated old maid.

” It is getting late, Wykeham. I really think we must be moving, or we shall get no dinner.”

There was a shade of impatience in the Speaker's Voice. Ethel, recognizing this, turned her attention at once towards him, Gilbert following her example.

“ You will have a dry walk home,” she said, Walking from the window to Mr. Tempest’s side. “ You have been vexed with the weather, Mr. Wykeham flays} it has spoiled your holiday; Wasn’t it a pity? Hut I think it will be fine now. I keep some broad , seaweed hung in the garden for a Weathercock. It id always right; shall we go and look at it ?”

Poor Mr. Tempest grew gracious at once, and the three young people went out of the room together, and strolled out recklessly into the wet garden.

And Miss Mildmay watched from the window, and held her tongue, though paper shoes trod wet grass,and raindrops pattered down now and again on a bare head, and damp air blew on a flimsy frock.

“ My darling, my darling,” she cried, when some time later her radiant niece came back into the house. “ Here are dry stockings and warm shoes; and do drink this cup of hot tea. Men cannot mean any harm, but they don’t understand, and you may have caught a cold. You are not strong, my sweet, and it has been raining for forty-eight hours.”

Ethel looked up at the clock.

“ I had no idea it was so late,” she said.

Then old Miss Mildmay tittered softly, and turned away. All that evening they talked of their visitors, and the elder woman watched the younger surreptitiously, wondering anew at her beauty, at her sunny temper, at her sweet ways.

Once the girl looked up from her ’broideries, and found that there were tears in the anxious old eyes that met her own. Miss Mildmay put up her hands, and brushed them away.

“ I do love you so very much, my dear,” she faltered, terribly ashamed of her emotion; “ no one will ever love you better than I have done. There, there, don’t take any notice of me. Women have to be so very cautious not to give way to feeling, or they may become hysterical. Some people seem to consider all feeling hysterical; it is a great check to remember this.”

CHAPTER III

They call him away.

Ye do him wrong, ye do him wrong.

Love will stay for a whole life long.

—Lord Tennyson.

The more the love the mightier is the prayer.

—Proverb.

The following day was Sunday. Overnight the pair of friends had not talked much, though they had sat together smoking until the small hours.

When Gilbert came down to breakfast Richard had finished his kidneys and his fish, and had already gone out.

The morning was fine, the sun shone. Gilbert had no appetite, and he was as restless as a swallow; until the church bells began to ring he went out and wandered on the cliffs.

He was going to church, and thither he soon made his way, taking his place early in the shadowy nave. Later, She, like a white swan, sailed softly past him up the aisle.

He could see her from where he sat. In her pew She prayed as a nun prays: her earnest face, her interlaced fingers, her bowed head; he could watch them unseen from “ when the wicked man ” to the benediction.

When the service was over he waited in the churchyard, and She came out into the sunshine and talked to him by the lynch gate under the yews.

Later Gilbert helped the elder Miss Mildmay into her donkey chair.

“ And where is Mr. Tempest ?’* Ethel asked.

Gilbert did net know; he had forgotten his friend.

, He accompanied the two ladies to their home, and Ethel took him to the corner of the Paxford garden to see the view across the bay from thence. When the ltlnch bell rang he had to go, but he did hot go quite alone. There was some jassamine in his buton-hole that he took away writh hitn.

At lunch Richard was uncongenial ; the ineal was a silent one. What did it matter ? Gilbert had food for thought. And all tho afternoon he loafed alone . along the valley, wratching the trout dart in the pools, and dreaming to the sound of the rippling river.

In the evening the bells again attracted him, and again he went to church.

This time the Miss Mildmays were there before him, and when he stood unseated and forlorn by their pew in the aisle Miss Katherine Mildmay, looking white and constrained as she did so, beckoned him into her pew.

And he sat and knelt and stood beside the white-clad girl. And sitting there ho thought that he knew for the first time what was meant by the “ Beauty of Holiness.”

He thought, too, of his father; back went his wandering thoughts a score of years; he thought of his dead father, and of the end of life.

Were the other angels such as she who knelt beside him? Would they help mortal men to understand the ways of God ?

Again that day he walked up the hill beside the donkey chair. This time Miss Katherine bade him farewell at the gate.

She was scared by the effect of her boldness; Mr. Wykeham did not need encouragement; he was not shy. Ethel had turned color twice on the way from the church; she must not be frightened, dear child, poor child. Happy child, how gay she was that evening.

That night the young men went down to the bay and sat by the sea in the moonlight. The soft, uneven splash of breaking waves served, musically, as at once a cover for, and an encouragement to, talk.

Mr. Tempest, at first, talked most. He liked to hold forth to Gilbert, who was a patient listener and not fond of argument, for Mr. Tempest’s opinions were young and therefore strong, and he looked at life from a different standpoint to that of his prosperous friend, emphasizing the wrecks and shoals, the pit-falls and shadows of earth.

Had his heart been less warm, or his instincts less generous he would have grown hard, bitter; he did not do this, but sometimes he was sore at heart. Colonel Tempest’s scheme of life for his sons did not tend to smooth their paths.

Richard had made many friends from whom he was cut adrift; he had imbibed expensive tastes which he had no way of gratifying.

He found it difficult to settle down and to face life as it was. Men who find themeselves in such a situation too often do not settle down at all. They rebel, and fate is not kind to those who mutiny against her.

There was plenty of grit, of backbone, in young Tempest; he would do the best he could with what he had got, but he would not deceive himself into believing that he had got the best.

He had a knack of throwing himself into his neighbors’ concerns with an almost feminine adaptability, and when Gilbert broke into an harangue of his with a most irrelevant question, he answered him as earnestly as though the subject were as interesting to him as to the interrogator.

“ I say, Tempest,” said Gilbert; with his eyes far out on the indigo sea, “ do you believe in love at first sight ?”

“ Yes, no, I don’t know. I think the best love is not an instinct, but a growth. The best of it can’t come all at once—it must develop.”

“ I believe in it,” solemnly. “ I believe that a man can say, ‘

There, that is the woman I will marry,’ as soon as she conies into his sght. It is an instinct, bat it is complete. It is the whole world.”

Richard was kicking at the shelving shingle.

“ The whole world, as you call it, is made up, as life is, of little pieces. Love begins with an introduction, follows on with companionship, grows into love, remains love, drops into matrimony—and then —yon know what cat-and-dog consequences occasionally occur.”

“ That is blasphemous^ Don’t be a cynic.”

“ Cynicism is only a profession of incompetency, Gilbert. It collars hold of a man when he can’t get his own life to go smooth. I’m not a cynic—not yet.” He left off kicking the shingle and said suddenly, pointing at the jessamine in Gilbert’s coat: “ Who gave you that ?”

“ She gave it to me.” Gilbert’s rich voice was another of his enviable attributes. “ And who is she ?”

“ The girl that I shall many. I saw her yesterday.”

There was a long silence.

“ It will come all right,” said Richard, presently. He spoke thoughtfully. “ Why not ? You’re a nice fellow and a good match. You mean it and there is no one else. She ”—deliberately—“ is the sweetest sort of woman I have ever seen in all my life. And a woman is generally too good for a man.”

This speech unlocked the floodgates of Gilbert’s tongue. He talked, talked on till the sea sunk to its boundary and then crept back to their very feet, talked till the moon set and his comrade patently piloted him home, listening still to the new old eternal theme.

During the following ten days of Mr. Tempest’s stay at Ottermouth no friend in a trying situation could possibly have behaved better than he did.

He was patient, and his patiene was taxed. He was a keen sportsman, but he did not jeer when Gilbert went a-fishing without a fly—he did not jeer when Gilbert gave up the fishing farce entirely.

He sympathized with Gilbert’s despair and with his exultation. He was never weary with the repetition of Gilbert’s hopes and fears.

He was complacent during the long hours ho spent alone with his cousin Katherine, while Gilbert and Ethel wandered in the little Paxford garden.

He sailed the boat about Ottermouth bay in which Miss Mildmay and her niece were induced to picnic one warm evening, and he so soothed the chaperon’s nerves, that she consented to remain far out at sea till the moon rose and the stars came out.

Gilbert was a lucky man. Onlookers see most of the game, and Richard was shrewd and he saw much.

Ethel Mildmay was no fool for all her gracious adaptable sweetness. Her gentleness seemed to need protection; it had a knack of drawing out the manliness and strength of the strong and manly sex; yet slie had strength of her own, and wisdom, too. Eventually she would not be a drag on her mate, but a fit helpmate for this—

“Great, broad-shouldered, genial Englishman,” who wanted her to wife. She was no oyster, though she had lived in a shell.

After a very few days of their constant intercourse Miss Mildmay and her cousin understood one another.

As no one heard what they said, they could talk of what their minds were full. At first they kept a curtain of reserve between them, discussing Gilbert and Ethel separately, exhaustively, continually, but as though the twain had nothing to do one with the other.

But the day before Mr. Tempest left the barrier was broken down.

“I am very sorry that you leave Ottermouth tomorrow,” the old lady said, looking at him ruefully. “ I have seen so much of you; you have been so exceedingly kind, Richard. I understand and appreciate your kindness. When does your friend, Mr. Wykeham, follow your example, and bid us adieu ?”

“ He will not bid you adieu. He is never going to bid you adieu.” Dick’s keen eyes looked up at her, and she nodded her head quickly. “ I brought him here, you know. I hope you will always be glad that I brought him.”

Miss Mildmay might have had a less difficult life are not always so tender, Richard, to their mothers. She has a warm heart and a pitifnl. Dear, dear, as a child in the early morning she would slip downstairs all alone, to let the mice loose from Bridget’s trap. Indeed, she necessitated my keeping a cat, an animal that I particularly dislike, but its presence is certainly an antidote to mice.”

A turquoise blue sash bound Ethel’s slender waist, the ends of ribbon fell softly down on her white dress; she wore the turquoise brooch at her neck, fastening a white rose there. Iler hat was garlanded with forget-me-nots. Richard was watching her. All through his life he remembered her as he saw her now.

“ You’ll miss her,” he said, involuntarily. Miss Mildmay wrung her hands together upon her lap.

“ If he is only what he looks. I am no judge of character. If he should not be good—enough,” she murmured, and her voice was husky.

“ No man could be quite good enough—at least, I don’t suppose so; but we are all the same, we are— human. He’ll do his best. I would trust him. But no doubt happiness, too, is only—human.”

“ I want her, Richard, to be happy. She was bom good and dear; it is only fair she should be happy. 1 ought not to talk to you like this. It is indelicate; it is premature; but indeed, indeed, I cannot help it. Richard, I have not slept a wink for many nights.”

“ No more have I,” said Richard, and he smiled at last. “Wykeham talks in bursts till dawn. I don’t like to leave him and go to bed, but it is telling on my constitution.”

Miss Mildmay’s excitement was subdued but intense. She smiled very agreeably upon her cousin.

“You are a kind-hearted man, Richard. I can talk to you almost as though you were of my own age, and of my own sex. You are so sympathetic. I trust that when your turn comes—”

He interrupted her with a quick, impatient gesture.

“ Don’t talk of my turn; it’s all in the clouds for me. Fortune doesn’t smooth the tangles for most men. Gilbert has got everything ship-shape. He is desperately in earnest, and there’s Woodsford to back him; and he’s such a good-hearted, nice-looking, genial chap. She couldn’t help herself; no woman could, I fancy; he’d make an iceberg follow him. Some of us get, and some of us don’t. I’m a doomed bachelor. We detrimentals are some of the people who have got to look on. We don’t share; we have none of the flesh-pots of Egypt”

“ Ah, there is much that is hard in life, Richard. It is sad at your age to hear you call yourself a spectator.”

“ But, Cousin Katherine, we don’t always look on at Paradise. Sometimes we look on down below at the other place, and then we thank our lucky stars tliat we are only onlookers.”

“ Don’t become lynx-eyed when you watch for evil or sorrow, Richard. Ah, that is the temptation that assails you young spectators. In all things you are immoderate.”

“ I won’t, I swear. I will give up spectatoring first.”

“ No, no; don’t give up; give up nothing. I did that, and sometimes I see my folly. There is much that is good in life. Tou are young, and Fortune’s wheel is not stationary—it turns.”

Next day Mr. Tempest returned to Studholme, climbing up upon his stool with his mind full of the blue sea, of the speckled peel, and of Paxford.

Thither Fortune’s wheel turned him.

Every day he watched for the post; it seemed to him that the looked-for letter was long a-coming; but it came at last The July sun streamed down day after day at Ottermouth, as though the fickle clouds had forgotten the locality.

Miss Mildmay’s flowers throve, dazzling and luxuriant ; never had the Paxford garden blazed thus with scented blossoms. And yet no one cut the withered flowers, -no one tied up heavy heads, no one guided the creeping roses from their roving routes.

For one hot week nature dispensed with art. The baked earth left the flowers thirsting, sweet heads drooped listless and invalidish. Where was the tea-

42 dcr caretaker, where the helper and defender of her gardenf She had been singing. She was sitting at her harp. Mr. Wykeham stood beside her, he had been listening. He seemed to be listening still, though tiie music was over and Ethel silent.

The young people were not talkative that evening. The pauses in their dialogue had kept Miss Mildmay, senior, garrulous for a nervous hour. She was tired out, her efforts never quite dispelled a threatening silence.

It was at her proposal that Ethel had sung, and now she hurriedly suggested that if the flowers were not to die, the flowers should be watered.

There is a heavy dew ; it has begun to fall, but it is not enough. Of late, dear Ethel, you have forgotten your poor flowers.” Miss Mildmay said this just for the sake of saying something; the effect of her words startled her, for the accused blushed, and got up and looked thoughtfully through the open window and sighed. But Gilbert strode to her side and laughed, as though he was glad to see the thirsty flowers.

-“ Came out,” he said, “ and we will water them.”

Though the sun was still on the south beds, Miss Mildmay was glad of his suggestion.

“ The watering-cans are hangnig upon pegs in the porch,” she said, and she opened the door.

It was a close evening; no one but Miss Mildmay 48 seemed to notice the heat, or the silence. Ethel Went out, and Mr. Wykeham followed her into the sultry garden.

Miss Mildmay knew her duties as chaperon, and she went up to her room to fetch her hat and her gloves. The thermometer stood at 88 deg., and the old lady was tired out. Just for a moment or so she sat down on the window-seat and rested; her heart had been a good deal strained of late. She kept an eye upon the garden; was it wrong to be out of ear-shot ? Indeed, indeed, she did not feel equal to watering herself.

Uncovered in the sunshine, upon the lawn, Ethel stood waiting, for she was alone. Miss Katherine tapped the window.

“ My love, Ethel, you will get so tanned,” she cried; “ pray send Bridget for your things.”

The girl looked up and nodded, smiling; Mr. Wykeham was aproaching her, striding across the turf with a dripping, brimming water-can in either hand; Ethel piloted him, still bareheaded, along the path to the hedge of sweet-peas.

Miss Katherine sighed for the fair face, the white hands, and for the—forgetfulness. But the sigh was premature, for there went Gilbert back again across the lawn to the house, whence he presently emerged, carrying the forget-me-not hat and the little gauntlet gloves.

The spectator smiled, and then involuntarily covered her mouth with her hand.

The sweet-pea hedge was behind the catalpa-trec, almost out of sight; but it got a famous drenching.

“ They want lots of water,” Ethel was saying, as the patter and swish from the can Gilbert held fell on the leaves and flowers and poured thickly on the hot, dry soil. “ Just a little surface drink tatalizes them and hurts them. They must drink deep down to the roots.”

“ Some roots lie very deep,” he said, and stopped his work “ How fresh and sweet they are;” she was stooping to smell a wet blossom.

He was watching, idle.

“ Tou are getting tired. Let me help you,” she said. “ I like to help. When you are not here, I do it all myself.”

“ But I am here, and I am not tired. I should never get tired.”

“Water is so heavy,” she repeated. “I should like to help. I always like to help.”

The water-cans were empty; he set them down, and he went a step nearer to her.

“ Yes,” he said, in a voice she had never heard, “ you like to help. You are that kind of—friend. And you do help—just by standing there—and living—you do help. I would work for you night and day. I could work for you, and never rest until I was dead, because you are the kind of woman who helps“

She answered mutely, more to his voice than to his words, turning white to her lips, but keeping her eyes lifted to his.

“ I could do anything, anything for you, if only I may stay, if only you won’t send me away. I could do anything but leave you. I couldn’t leave you; I can never leave you. Since that first day—that day in the rain—I have felt I could never leave you. I did not know there was any one like you in the world. I’m a clumsy, stupid chap, not good enough to touch your little gloves there.”

The tears were on her cheeks; she did not speak.

“ Can you care ? Can you ever make yourself I care? Because I love you with all my soul and | strength. I will wait patiently my whole life to hear ' you say it Ethel, can you care ?”

He paused, with that trick of manner with which | he was familiar; she stood weighing, pondering his | words. Slowly she laid her hand on his.

“ Tou need not wait,” she whispered; die was old* fashioned; her face and eyes were wet Suddenly she saw how he was trembling ; she saw the whiteness and the strain of his tanned face, and she smiled at him to comfort him. “ Don’t look like that I did not know you minded like that I don’t want you to leave me; never leave me. I do care. I do care.”

CHAPTER IV

Don't measure other folks' corn by your own bushel.

—Proverb.

And generations pass, as they have passed,

A troop of shadows moving with the sun;

Thousands of times has the old tele been told;

Tho world belongs to thoso who come the last.

—A Shadow.

Woodsford MaNtor was neither old enough nor young enough to bo ornamental. It was a substantial product of tho early Victorian period; squarely built, and formed for winter warmth and summer comfort. The closely clipped ivy which covered its rod walls and fringed its large windows softened tho austere lines of the architecture; and tho undulating verdant land on which it was built would have made a whitewashed workhouse presontable.

The house had a well-cared-for, polished, prosperous air from roof to basement. Every fitting, every detail was in a high state of preservation. It was not tho sort of place one would expect to find in the heart of the west country; the old manor had been pulled down and refashioned by Gilbert’s utilitarian grandfather; it was as slick as any modem villa in a wealthy suburb.

But there was nothing villa-ish about the wooded pasture land wherein it stood, and through which a shady drive wound to the house, ascending gently from the rustic lodge a quarter of a mile away. Jersey cattle cropped the grass, and an old gray horse stood in the shade of a Spanish chestnut, blinking at the familiar landscape, in the heart of which he had lived out the whole of his thirty years of life.

Behind the house the flower-garden stretched down to the woods, through which the river ran.

In no man’s memory had that river Ryl been fordable, save by the red bridge. But to account for a Woodsford Manor and a Woodsford Village, a tradition of stepping-stones across the shallows had been invented, or exhumed, such as might have given rise to the appellation.

The woods wanted no seeking. They lay broad and thick along the base of the blue hills, and spread far away down the valley. Beyond the lodge gates on the roadside promiscuous cottages were irregularly scattered. Pretty, gabled cottages, rising from flowery gardens; cottages which spoke of prosperous folk, of an open-handed master, of a discreet landlord.

A small church flanked the sprinkling of cottages. Skirting the churchyard was a holly hedge, beyond it, stationed amidst a group of elms, stood Woodsford Vicarage.

Here dwelt the trio of Bradshaw girls, the three Graces, thE Vicar’s daughters, with whom Mr. Wykeham had been reared on terms of intimacy.

The three Graces’ home did not interest them. Woodsford Village did not interest them. They had been infected with the black plague of their century, a dawning horror of grooves and narrowness, which led them to a dissatisfaction with a limited homo.

Nothing at Woodsford was broad enough to suit them. Their neighbors certainly were born and were reared and were married and breathed and died much as folk further afield have a knack of doing. It is not easy to find original ways of doing these commonplace things, though the Miss Bradshaws thought otherwise.

The critical spirit of offspring was theirs. They tried to be tolerant of their parents’ weakness; but between them they compelled their gentle mother to realize her incompetency. They could not shut their eyes to her lack of organization. Ignorance is proverbially obstinate, so though they argued with her, and told her what she ought to do, and how she should do it; nevertheless, she sometimes went her own way, and the bread cast upon the waters sank to the bottom.

The Vicar was a zealous churchman, whose opinions were hot, high, keen. He liked the sound of his voice, he piqued himself on the authority of his coat He realized that three unprejudiced observers did not agree with-him wholly, and the knowledge did not tend to soothe his peppery temper.

The girls cast no veil over their parents’ foibles, they discussed them among themselves and with their friends: loyally was nothing accounted of at the Vicarage. The Graces did not approve of their sphere of life. Frankly, they laid the blame of its circumstances at the door of their parents. But there were compensations even at Woodsford; Woodsford Manor and its inmates were a compensation. The girls were always ready to fetch and to carry at Mrs. Wykeham’s bidding; and this industrious matron could have employed a regiment of women every day all the year round.

Her fire was full as it could hold of irons, and she Spent her busy life in heating and reheating them.

Mrs. Wykeham, the mistress at Woodsford, was a lady of action, of energy. Her eye was quick, her tongue was sharp; there was no man, nor woman, nor child within her dominion who had not a great respect for Madam. She knew all about everybody, there was nothing so small as not to interest her, no task so delicate that she would shun it.

She held her handsome head high, and moved and spoke with the vigor of a girl rather than of a woman who had been no chicken, twenty-six years back, when her only child was bom.

To a certain extent she was reserved; sho had plenty to say, but she seldom spoke unreservedly.

In hor keen interest for others, she seemed to have lost any particular interest in herself. Every one who was acquainted with Mrs. Wykeham knew of her will and of her ways, but no one got further than the public will and the public ways. If the heart was there, it was presumably in the right place; she did not wear it on her sleeve.

There was a broad shade on the lawn at Woodsford cast by acacias, where Madam took her tea on summer afternoons; she lived, when the climate allowed it, out of doors. After a hard day of work, she was not altogether sorry, on the July day of which I write, to find the tea ready and a group of lounge chairs placed in readiness for her and her expected guests under the acacias.

She was the soul of punctuality, and it had not struck five when Hart set the singing kettle on the silver tray: he knew his duties, and he was a full minute before his time.

“ You are early, Hart.”

“ I have brought the letters ’m; they have just come.”

“ Ah, thank you.”

She had made inquiries for the second post. Her son delayed his return. His letter last week had been short; there had been preoccupation in every telegraphic sentence of it. She was not a mother given to the terrors and agonizings of maternal passion, she was far too busy, physically, for unnecessary. suffering, but she wanted her weekly letter, and here it was—a well-filled envelope directed in Gilbert’s excellent handwriting.

“ When the young ladies come from the Vicarage, show them out here, Hart, and bring some cocoa for Miss Kate.”

She poured out her cup of tea, she drank a sip, and then she broke the seal of her son’s letter and read his news.

She was not a calm or a tranquil person; she never sat down for longer than was necessary; now she got up and went out into the sun, pacing to and fro as she read and re-read Gilbert’s letter. It ran thus:

“ MR DEAR MOTHER,—I am the happiest man in the world. I can hardly believe that it is not a dream. I am going to be married. I am a bit of my head. I hardly know how to tell you. Ethel Mildmay has promised to marry me: she is much too good for me, I know that; but I will work all my life to make her happy.

“ She lives here at Ottermouth with a great-aunt, Miss Mildmay; they are cousins of Tempest; her mother was a Norfolk Nigels you used to know them, didn't you? Her father was in the Service. They are both dead; it is awfully sad for her; but she’s not sad. I want you to write to her; it’s all rather strange for her, and she’s got no mother of her own. You will know what to say to make it easier for her. She talks a lot about you. I shall come home on Friday or Saturday; I want to talk to you.

“ Your affectionate son,

“ GILBERT WYKEHAM.”

When the sound of approaching voices reached Mrs. Wykeham, she put the letter in her pocket and returned to her seat in the shade by the tea-table. A moment later the three Bradshaw girls came tripping across the turf towards her, as smiling and content os any girls could be.

Was not Mrs. Wykeham the potentate of hospitable Woodsford ? Moreover, as yet she had no prefix of Dowager to mar the interest of her name. Many a genial smile and friendly word came Madam’s way on her son’s account, and soothed her unsuspicious amour propre, no doubt.

She paid small heed to the convenance, and her guests were not Surprised when she motioned them to their seats without shaking hands.

“ I am sorry we are late; Lady Wigram came over about one of the puppies, and she caught us and kept us until now. You know what she is.”

Miss Bradshaw made this explanation. Her name was Kate; she was a delicate girl, full of energy; friction between constitution and inclination made her irritable, whetting her tongue, which for so young a woman she could use with remarkably acid effect.

Maud, the second Miss Bradshaw, was robust and good-humored. Evelyn, the third, was the best looking, the best mannered, and the best witted of the sisters. She had a head on her shoulders—a long head —and it was well set and well held. She took the lead at home, she had a name for prudence, her plans—she was a great planner—had a way of turning out well for herself in the long run.

Just now the three girls chirruped and chirped, like the birds overhead in the acacias, as they settled down in their pink cotton frocks and their shady hats, to the tea-cakes and delicacies for which Madam’s cook was famous.

Their chit-chat was a trifle nervous, for Mrs. Wykeham was a woman to fear rather than to love, and they were all three of them in wholesome awe of her. Her favor was coveted; they allowed her to work them hard; in her service they labored gayly. At home it was different, their parents did not “ ununderstand ” them; poor parents, it might have been that they understood them too well.

How in Mrs. Wykeham’s service they looked for some reward; almost unconsciously they reckoned on getting their wage over and above the lady’s gratitude.

The owner of Woodsford spent much of his leisure time at the Vicarage; he had been induced to sympathize, somewhat absently, it was true, with the narrow limits of the Graces’ lives among the pigs and turnips. He had shown a preference for Evelyn, to Evelyn he had talked, with Evelyn ho had walked, at Evelyn he had looked. Evelyn had a distinct position among her fellows because of all this.

Mrs. Wykeham was not wont to be absent, but that afternoon her wits were wool-gathering; she did not respond to any village news, she forgot the second cups of tea, her alertness had deserted her.

“ What a long while Gilbert has been away,” said Evelyn. She was pouring out her own tea, replenishing her cup. “ When do yon expect him bade, Mrs. Wykeham F

Maud tittered at the question, but such tittering was cut short, and many a plan splintered by Madam’s answer.

“ As you came I was reading a letter from him,”she answered, drawing it out of her pocket “ It came ten minutes ago—it has taken my breath away." Her dark eyes shone and sparkled—they were bright, but not observant “He writes me news which I never dreamed of. Dear Gilbert!”

Her news had moved her greatly.

In an instant the three girls knew what the news must be. In those days we women thought modi of matrimony, and had then found then no substitutes of any sort to take its place in mind or life. Evelyn had ever had a vague dread of hearing some such announcement, for she alone knew how small had been the fire that had made the notorious Vicarage smoke.

“ Is it a secret ?" asked Maud.

“ No, no; not a secret at all Gilbert is going to be married."

“To whom?”

“ Her name is Ethel Mildmay.”

“I never heard of her.”

“ No more, my dear, did I.”

“ Has he known her long?”

“ A fortnight.”

“ How extremely quick,” Kate said, sharply; the news had fallen heavily on the trio. Evelyn changed and exchanged color; a hundred unpleasant consequences of this intelligence came one by one into her mind; it was hard to sit there, and to listen, and to say nothing.

“ I—I like a man who can fall over head and ears in love in a moment, as Gilbert has done. I like a man who doesn’t shilly shally. Shall he or sha’n’t he ? I like a girl who doesn’t keep a man loitering in misery to please her vanity, or from indecision. This young couple know their own minds. I like them for it.”

“ Then you don’t agree with the proverb, * to marry in haste is to repent at leisure,’ Mrs. Wykeham!” Kate suggested, and the others were glad to hear her say it.

“ I don’t think there is a shred of truth about it. There is plenty of repentance done, but not because of ‘haste.’ I knew this girl’s mother; she was a pleasant person—a Nigel; they were nice people. How curious that this should have come about. I never met a Nigel who wasn’t charming.”

“ I think it is very good of you to take the news .well, and to be so pleased, Madam. We sha’n’t half like another Mrs. Wykeham, shall we, Maud!”

The girls went home early. Gilbert might have chosen a wife nearer home; and his mother was weari some, she would allow no holes to be pricked in the marriage, not even the trivial, obvious hole of “ hurry.” But the announcement was very interesting. They found out all that could be found from Madam, and then they carried off the intelligence homewards. They had come to the Wykehams to discuss tho approaching school-feast, the cakes and ale had not been once mentioned. Great changes were imminent at Woodsford.

Mrs. Wykeham had taken the news well, hut to and fro up and down her lawn sho paced, staring at the turf and the beds and the trees with a hungry look in her eyes, and some faint unsteadiness about her lips. “ So pleased,” the girls had called her.

Her husband had bequeathed her a good jointure, and she had money of her own, but Woodsford he had left to his son; it belonged to Gilbert She loved her home deeply, she had ruled it with a rod of iron, she had controlled it all, she knew every inch of the land. She had supervised its culture. She had dominion of the garden and of the gardeners. Her practical, hard head had worked it all.

Now she must go. She could not share authority. She knew her limitations—the narrow limitations of her temper and of her patience—she must go. The head which once had foreseen these possibilities of the future had known them too.

She had realized that Gilbert would marry, she had realized that her dominion at Woodsford was transitory.

Evelyn Bradshaw was crying in her room—crying tears that were all the more bitter because of their illegitimacy ; her sisters knew that she was lamenting, and they discussed the aspects of her bad luck.

But Gilbert’s mother had a masculine streak about her; she was not the sort of woman who can cry. She could feel, she was vulnerable, though people did not think so; but she did not betray nor discuss such feeling.

She had got on with her son; they did not spar, but this was chiefly because Gilbert could live and let live. They had not much in common; he was an easy-going, good-humored, laissez-aller Wykeham; her disposition was antithesis to his. There had never been any tender maternal demonstration in her dealings with her son, but she had looked keenly after his mental and physical welfare. She was glad to hear “ that he was the happiest man in the world,” but she took all his ecstasies as a matter of course. Men always married thus.

Mrs. Wykeham did not think unkindly of the dear girl, but she saw her as a daughter-in-law. She was a clear-headed woman, and she knew that she must take to herself a new home, and fresh interests—that she must abdicate. Her husband’s will left her no other choice. The Wykehams had not come over with the Conqueror, they had made such money as was theirs in merchandise, and the head of the firm had bought Woodsford but forty years ago; there was no question of entail, and yet she must go.

In Hie hall at the house hung a life-size portrait of her husband, by a great master. Gilbert was proud of it; he might well be proud of the bronzed face, the kindly smile, the gentle eyes, the breadth of the shoulders, and the shapeliness of the dark head.

His son could stretch his memory back to those good times when he had a father. He could remember the sad day that brought mourning to Woodsford —the day when the master of the house was carried home, and laid prone there in the hall beneath the picture, with a ricked back and a splintered skull, to die in an hour.

Gilbert remembered the dark house, and his black clothes; he remembered how tender his old nurse had been with him when he had cried his heart out for his daddy.

The ricked back and the splintered skull had come about simply, easily, all in a moment. Mr. Wykeham had been riding home from the neighboring town with loose rein and absent mind, as the people knew . their careless master was wont to ride. He had ridden that day with loose rein and absent mind, even though his route lay across Fairway Common, which was riddled with rabbit burrows and dangerous ruts. And his good horse Kelson had put his foot in a hole, and had pitched his master forward on the stones, close to the high-road.

Kelson lived out his full span of years in idleness. Every day his mistress visited him. Every day she walked up the village to the churchyard and looked at her husband’s grave. She never from the first took her four-year-old son with her; she never talked to the boy of his father. But from that day to this she had never slept away from Woodsford, nor missed her visit to the grave.

At close quarters reserve is not an attractive quality, there is even a subtle offence in it; friends who are kept at arm’s-length resent it. It is impossible to keep so far, and to go no further off.

If Mrs. Wykeham was reserved as to feeling, Bhe was not so as to fact. When Hart came out to clear away tea she told him her news with so pleased an air that the hearer could detect no selfish regret, no emotion in the speaker.

Beforo night all the village were paying visits far and near to spread the intelligence, and Miss Evelyn Bradshaw’s name was mentioned once or twice in connection with the news. Mrs. Wykeham had written her letter to Gilbert, too, before the post went out Bhe took it to the village and saw it safely into the , box herself.

“ Woodsford Manor, July 30th.

“MY DEAR GILBERT—(she had written),—Your letter was a vast surprise to me. You write of your happiness; I trust it has such foundations that it may last you your life. In old days I knew the Nigels intimately. I remember Ethel’s mother, and I am glad you should be connected with such a family. I will not write to her now; you will no doubt show her this letter, and she will see that I am ready and glad to welcome her.

"I have long foreseen your marriage; and I had made up my mind that when I became a Dowager I should make my new home in London. London is a place in which to wean one’s self from regrets, and to destroy any sensibilities. I tell you this at once, because there is nothing for which your wedding need be delayed, and it will simplify matters to know that my plans are ready laid, and have only to be put into execution. Bring Ethel Mildmay to see me when you can—the sooner the better. I cannot write more now, or this letter will not catch the post. My love to her and to you, and every good wish for you both.

“ Your affectionate mother,

“ Horatia Wykeham.”

Mrs. Wykeham’s dinner was not a stately function, she soon got through it and hurried off to the den behind the library, which was the room in which she was accustomed to transact business.

Every drawer and pigeon-hole, every nook of her formidable writing-table, was in apple-pie order. She scanned her papers and her ledgers with affection. When, as a widow, she had taken the management of Woodsford into her capable hands, there had not been satisfactory balance sheets such as she now possessed.

Heigho! she loved to manage, she excelled in management. ’Twas hard to be shelved, and yet every one did not think so.

Macqueen, the gardener, was discussing the news with Hart in the yard. Madam had a knack of keeping folks up to their work, which was a way that he thought might be changed advantageously.

“ Madam is a good missus, yes, to a good servant, but she’s mightily fond of her own way; her way of growing pansies aren’t mine. I’ve heard how it was not all smooth sailing thirty years ago, though her husband was as easy-going as young Mr. Wykeham himself. Men and women, if ’tis to be peace, must give and take. The place isn’t hers. She’ll go. Mr. s Wykeham won’t be over-eager for two missusses. One’s plenty. The young lady will see to that, too. She’ll be wanting to missus herself.”

Shrewd though he was, Macqueen erred.

In the eyes of the bride-elect, “ to missus ” seemed devoid of charm.

Madam did not go; she stayed on at Woodsford; and she did this by the wish of her daughter-in-law-elect. !

Contrary to all experience, Ethel Mildmay had conceived no innate antagonism to her mother-in-law. She had even fostered a sentimental preference, it seamed, for Hilbert’s mother.

Sentiment is adhesive as a mussel; it cannot be got at by gentle methods and annihilated. Her betrothed argued with her; it was the first time that her judgment had clashed with his, and though he liked to hear her plead her cause, yet he was not easy to con vince. It might please him to give her her own way, yet he thought that way foolishness.

“ Let me try, Gilbert”

Let her try ? He was ready to let her do anything on earth but to make herself unhappy. And so he said in that charming extravagant fashion peculiar to the courtship days.

She smiled at him, but she was not to be silenced.

“We should not be happy;.” and her deep eyes backed up these words of hers; they were lifted to his. “ We should not be happy, Gilbert, if we remembered her. Yes, she says she will go; but she doesn’t want to go; how can she want to go? Woodsford is her home; we could not turn her out. She says, ‘ London is a place in which to wean one’s self from regrets, and to destroy sensibilities ’; that does not sound as though she would like to live there, docs it?”

“ You don’t realize what it would be if she stayed. Yon are an angel, Ethel, but you and she would clash; it is inevitable. My mother is an imperious woman. She’a got a temper, don’t you see ?”

“ Let me try.”

He began to realize that Ethel was not acting from blindness and ignorance; he must treat her seriously and leave off the personal bye-play which did not serve to distract her from her point.

“ Would it not be better not to try, Ethel, than to try and fail? I want to save you from all worry, sweet. Suppose I did let you try and that you failed. There would be all the friction and the unpleasantness. A row is odious, and it isn’t easy to forget You don’t quite understand the difficulties; you don’t know my mother. She has done everything at home; she would not like to knock under, and I should not like to see you in a false sort of position in your own house.”

“ I would be careful, Gilbert; sho should not feel that it was different.”

“But, dearest, it is different; it is all different. Care cannot hide facts. Ethel, don’t turn away; what is wrong ? You shall have your own way, even if it isn’t a wise way, darling.”

But the girl did not want to be given her will thus. She wanted him to think as she thought. She did not want any one to suffer for her happiness. She had no mother of her own; Gilbert’s mother should be hers. She was full of pity for Madam, whom Providence had deprived of her husband, and whom fate threatened to deprive of home and son.

That which all the world found hard, and all experience condemned, would not be easy. She knew it, and with unsteady lips she told her betrothed this, faltering a little while she spoke, but earnest and persistent. She did not think that life was meant to be —easy. She was happy, she had always been happy, but she had early learned of loss and of bereavement. She had been familiarized with death from, the days when she had lisped for “ auntie ”; having no need to school her lips to the “mother” and the “ father ” of nursery speech. Even Gilbert’s love would not protect her in life where death reigns as despot; and she—she wanted to be one of the people who “ helped.”

He himself had said that he liked such a woman.

She told him that she wanted to do much with the beautiful life that he was giving her.

And he listened and learned; loving her all the better because of the glimpses she gave him deep down into her fair mind.

And so it came about that a joint letter from the man and girl came to Woodsford, over which Mrs. Wykeham smiled, though her keen eyes lost their keenness as she read it.

The suggestion it contained tallied with her wishes. Her own desire so forcibly abetted it that she could not bring herself to refuse the invitation. She would not shun the dubious and difficult position offered her.

Gilbert’s future wife wrote like a sensible woman; she wrote “ stay,” and Mrs. Wykeham would do so. If it did not answer, well and good; she would go.

After receiving such a gracious invitation, it would be ungracious to refuse it; she would just keep an eye to the new government; her experience might be of help to the new queen.

The new queen was a bit of a fool to want her mother-in-law in the house during the first difficult married year; her mother-in-law realized this, but some sorts of folly appeal to people; Mrs. Wykeham felt warmly about such foolishness.

Then young Mrs. Wykeham came to Woodsford, and her reign began; and these two women, opposite as the poles in every attribute save sex, '‘got on.” From first to last they “ got on.” They seemed to understand each other; maybe they were on their guard, and there was no littleness in either the elder or younger matron.

Contrary to expectation, the Woodsford regime worked with success. The bride was not a cypher in the house, and yet there was no friction in the household. There were lynx-eyed observers on the lookout for squalls, but the weather was set fair.

Month after month went by, more than a year had gone; by that time every one knew that the Wykeham marriage had been a success.

CHAPTER V

Pleasant words are as a honeycomb.

A dream of man and woman

Diviner, but still human.

Solving the riddle old,

Shaping the Age of Gold.

The love of Chid and neighbor;

An equal-handed labor;

The richer life where Beauty

Walks hand in hand with Duty.

I feel the earth move sunward,

I join the great march onward,

And take, by faith, while living,

My freehold of thanksgiving.

The young couple at Woodsford did not fit such words as these to their present life, and yet to onlookers the verses seem applicable enough.

For them the earth moved sunward. In the light in which they lived they took their freehold of thanksgiving, telling each other from day to day that the world was very good and their love eternal.

Woodsford was attractive under the new reign. There was a subtle, indefinable atmosphere about the place such as makes an intruder glad to linger beneath the roof which covers it. An atmosphere of happiness—nothing to do with cook, or sport, or cellar— attracted people to Woodsford; an atmosphere made up of many components, such as cannot be hired for money, nor worked with guns nor ferrets, nor fashioned in a winepress.

And Gilbert knew that this was so, and he knew, blessing Ottermouth and Tempest and his Maker, who had brought this new atmosphere to Woodsford and filled for him his heart and hearth and home.

They were a sociable couple, though Ethel, by reason of a serene nature, had been content in her Paxford shell, yet she was too sympathetic and genial not to interest herself in her kind.

By the time she had been married twelve months, she knew all her neighbors, both great and small, and had made many a good friend, too. She wanted to please, not for the sake of popularity, but because of a kindly heart; her beauty, her mind, her manner found her an easy way.

Even the backbiters and the gossips could not find much to say against young Mrs. Wykeham.

Her conversation was insipid; she never knew of the damaging facts about any one.

She looked delicate; that brilliant color was never to be seen in health.

She could not have any spirit or she would insist on being mistress in her own house. She deferred to Madam, she waited on Madam. The speaker wondered why her husband allowed it. The time would come when young Mrs. Wykeham would find out her error and be sorry for it.

Ah, the time comes when most of us are sorry; but the grief is not for our own deference, or service, or long-suffering.

Woodsford was a hospitable house, and on Christmas Eve it was lit from garret to basement. People who did not know better, seeing the twinkling lights from the windows in the small hours of the morning; would have thought the Wykehams were keeping high festival.

The clock on the stables had struck two, but not a soul under the Woodsford roof was in bed. Every now and then, a blind here and there was drawn aside from a window, and a face looked out. The faces were different, but they all looked in the same direction ; they looked down the drive.

A bitter wind was blowing, the cold was intense; there was no moon, and the stars were half obscured by the driving clouds. Presently the door opened and the young master of the house came into the dark and bitter night. The light from the hall streamed across the frozen gravel. With neither hat nor coat, he made his way to the corner of the drive which commanded a view of the distant road. He stood there a minute, holding his breath to listen. The wind was sobbing down the valley and tearing at the trees by the garden; there was no other sound.

He was keeping Christmas strangely; his blithe youth wore an odd look. He turned back; hanging his head he retraced his steps, pausing again to listen when he reached the porch. Hart had followed him.

' “ It is a cold night; put on a coat, Mr. Gilbert, for pity’s sake.”

“ He ought to be here, Hart.”

“ He can’t be long now, sir.”

“ How long do you think ?”

“ Not five minutes, sir. I’ve put your dinner on again; it’s quite hot. You’ll have time to take it before he comes.”

“ All right.”

He passed the dining-room and went up-stairs; his haggard eyes and strained yet unsteady mouth were not reassuring to meet. He met no one; the servants slipped out of his way.

The door of his wife’s little sitting-room stood open; her books, her harp, her dainty needle-work, her flowers were there; a jar of her favorite heliotrope with which Macqueen kept her supplied; she had left them all twenty-four hours ago. Left them and him, and had gone away to a distant room. She was ill—very ill; she had sent him away; she was among strangers.

His agony of mind was dreadful. Her room would be empty, but he turned there for comfort.

It was not empty; his mother stood by the mantelpiece. He caught sight of her face before she knew that she was observed, and he shivered.

She was not given to caress him, but she put out her hand and pressed his, and she bent her head and kissed his cheek.

“ Hasn’t he come, Gilbert ?”

“ Not yet”

“ Why did yon send for him ? He’s no good.”

“ Markham came to me two hours ago; he wanted a second doctor. I sent the carriage for Lang. Ethel liked him when I took her to him in the summer. She thought him kind.”

“ Kind ? Of course he’s kind. All doctors aro kind. I never met a doctor who wasn’t kind. But we want a clever doctor, Gilbert—we do, indeed. I have faith in Dr. Pollard—send for him. It is not seventeen miles. Charles can ride Primrose. I have been down to the stables; the horse is saddled; they are ready to start. We want you to write him a line. Sit here. Here’s a pen and here’s paper.”

Gilbert sat down and wrote; it was his way to do as he was told; he was ready to do anything, anything, except to go beyond the threshold of his home.

Oh, this deathly, idle waiting, away from her, out of her sight. He set his teeth and wrote.

One doctor was in the house, another momentarily expected;'now his mother urged him to summon a third.

She, who had rallied him during the past months for his vague fears. It was cruel. She, who had laughed at anxiety and despised foreboding; she was unnerving him now and driving the pluck out of him.

While Gilbert had been down-stairs, the doctor had come out of the sick-room and had asked for Madam, and Madam had seen him; they had talked together. Later her manner had changed.

When Gilbert had come, she was no longer talkative nor excited. She stood very still; she did not again suggest he should lie down, that it was late, that he should have a nap. She did not gainsay his restlessness, his coming and going; she let him alone.

Some time passed. Three doctors were there under the Woodsford roof. The sun was shining, but the blind was down and the fire was out, when a sudden sound, a new sound, a rustle in the passage, a quick but stealthy opening and shutting of doors reached the watchers’ ears.

Inarticulate sounds have a knack of conveying accurate meaning. Gilbert began to tremble from head to foot. Madam went over to the door.

Dr. Markham was there; he had come to tell Gilbert that his child was bom.

“ A boy ?” Madam asked.

It did not matter; and yet the child should be a boy.

“No, a girl.” The doctor looked at the young father. “ A splendid baby, but a girl.”

“ How is she—my wife ? May I see her ?”

“ Not just yet, not just yet. Just for the present she must be kept absolutely, quiet.”

“How is she?”

“ She is—very ill.”

“Absolutely quiet.” For three whole days and nights a terrible stillness fell on Woodsford. All sound of life was muffled, no footsteps, no voices, no bells, no shutting of doors, were to be heard. Now and again a lusty wail broke out of the far corner of the house, where, out of reach of the mother’s ears, the baby girl was banished.

In the hush of the improvised nursery sat two sad old women, watching the ways of the nurse, subdued and stiffened as they were, these women-loved ways, by the tragic turn her work had taken.

On the eve of Christmas Day, in answer to Gilbert’s summons, Miss Mildmay had come to Woodsford; a common vital dread drew her to Madam. Heart to heart the ill-assorted women watched and waited through the desperate hours.

Had the baby been delicate, perhap she might have been of some count even in these days of anguish, but she ate and slept and flourished, recking nothing of the desolation she had brought with her.

There was no pride and joy, no crooning and rejoicing over the comely scrap of humanity, who inhabited the costly laces and delicate dainty needlework which with such yearning tenderness and loving forethought had been prepared for her.

Her mother might not see her. Her father had forgotten her, as he crept to and fro, up and down the first-floor passage, waiting for news which did not come; fighting against a dawning dread; trying to bear with silence the suffering that wrung him, trying to brace his sick and shuddering soul to patience.

The doctors let him alone; they did not waste breath in telling him to eat, or to sleep, or to rest.

He who of late had been watched, and cared for, and tenderly considered, and who had never known a solitary thought of hope or fear, was now alone.

His wife lay twelve yards off, but out of reach, content, it seemed, and dying without him.? He could not bear it. Would she never want him ? Would she never ask- for him ? Would it always be bad for her if he should creep to her bedside and watch her as she lay? She had not slept, not yet. When she should sleep they would call him; it was promised him.

The waiting and the watching, the “ absolute quiet ” was coming to an end.

He was lying late one night upon the sofa in his wife’s little sitting-room; his mother had besought him to do this, and he had done it. Closing his eyes, a blessed sleep had come, from which one of the sickroom nurses gently wakened him.

“ She has roused and asked for you.”

He laughed a little between a laugh and a sob. The experienced woman looked closely at him. Would he make a scene ?

“ She has asked for the baby, too.”

“ May I go to her ?”

“ The baby is with her now, and will you come ?”

There was an inarticulate sound which saved the poor messenger all need of further words. He rose and followed her.

The necessity for “ absolute stillness ” in the sickroom was at an end. The nurses and the doctor were not there, but side by side, hand in hand, Madam and Miss Mildmay stood at the bottom of the bed. Quiet, mute, with dry faces and stern eyes they kept their watch.

Close by the bedside the baby’s nurse was stationed. She had laid the infant by her mother, face to face; she had softly pushed the tiny red clenched fist within the snowy dying hand, which closed upon it weakly. The woman was crying natural tears; the calmness of the other women was mere artifice.

Gilbert stood one moment on the threshold, then he came into the room and bent over, kneeling down by the bedside, his face near Ethel’s. She moved her head slightly, looked at him, smiled a wan smile in answer to his brave attempt, then her lips trembled.

“ You—are—ill,” she whispered; her voice was far off like a voice in a dream. “ Gilbert—you—look— ill.”

“ My own, I am anxious. I am anxious about yon, sweet. I am not ill.”

“ I am—tired, Gilbert.” Very slowly, reluctantly it almost seemed, she closed her eyes. “ Just— now I wanted—you; but—I am so—tired; I—must —go to sleep.”

“ Ethel, Ethel, look at me. I have no life without you. You are my life, my soul.”

Her hearing failed her. She seemed asleep.

“ Gilbert, my son.”

He looked up at his mother, and something in her face made a man of him again.

Miss Mildmay crept nearer to him. There was a rustle, a sharp wail from the bed; the child had roused.

Then her eyes, which they had feared were eternally closed, opened wide.

“Gilbert,” panted a tender voice, “take—her. Please—take—her. Gilbert—don’t—let—her— cry.”

The poor fellow took the little one—she lay against his bursting heart—and her wailing ceased. The mother smiled, watching them. A minute later the strange brightness of her smile faded; her eyes closed with a sigh.

The motherless child wailed again; the nurse, unreproved, stepped to the father’s side and took the infant from his arms and bore her, her little face wet with her father’s tears, away from the group round the bedside.

CHAPTER VI

Life ia mostly froth and bubble.

Two things stand like stone.

Kindness in another's trouble.

Courage in our own.

Poor Madam, she was indeed to be pitied, though no one at this juncture lavished any special compassion upon her. It is hard for a woman of her ago to learn for the first time her own inoompetency, her own insufficiency. Sho had had bad days in her life of which she could not bear to think; but she had had her own pain under control. Other people’s pain she could not govern—she could do nothing for Gilbert though she strove her best. If Madam could not act she was lost. She neglected her own business for him; she mellowed her voice and softened her words and wept for him. She laid awake at night, and thought of him and for him.

Her labor was lost; he no longer answered to rein, or spur, or whip.

“My dear boy,” she said. Sho had come upon him in the garden; he was standing mooning by the new rose-bed, blue and pinched with the cold, whilo she was bustling homeward from the stables. “I wanted to see you.” Sho was not nervous, nor sensitive, but the subject she was about to broach would be painful to him, and she realized this, laying her hand gently upon his arm. “I wanted to speak to you ! about—the little girl. She is a month old, Gilbert; she must be christened.’'

“ Must she !”

“ My dear, you are not a—heathen.”

He bit his lip. No, no, he was not a heathen; he was stunned, not maddened; his memories were not such as to make a heathen of him, even now.

“ Some of these roses look bad, mother.”

The bed was a new one; it had been cut to please j his wife; his mother had inwardly chafed at the ex- j posed situation that had been chosen for its site, but ' she had held her tongue; all honor to her, she held it . now.

“ Macqueen shall attend to them; they want some shelter, that’s all. They’ll do well yet. But, Gilbert, one moment. I want you to listen. The child I must be baptized.”

“.Of course, of course. I had forgotten. Will you arrange it, if yon please, mother ?”

“ I have thought about it. I have seen Mr. Bradshaw—the twenty-third is a saint’s day, St Paul’s; it will be quite quiet—only ourselves. Dear Gilbert, will you come?”

“ Just as you think.”

“ And—her name, Gilbert, what shall the child be called?’

Madam spoke under her breath; the name she had upon her lips choked her voice.

Call her what you like.”

“ Have you not thought about it ? Had you never talked of it!”

He shook his head, his lips quivered at her allusion.

“ Shall we call her after her—”

" No,” he rapped out sharply; “ no, no.”

" But she—she is a dear child, Gilbert.

He nodded; his mother would not leave him alone. He would break away presently; away by himself, and tramp again for miles through the bare woods and frozen land, till the darkness came to drive him home to face another sleepless night of loneliness. What was the brainless, helpless, ignorant child to him ?

“ Will you ask Bichard Tempest to be godfather, Gilbert!”

“ Yes, if you wish.”

“ He will come, I think; he writes so often, Gilbert. And poor Miss Mildmay and I will be the baby’s godmothers.” Tears stood in Madam’s eyes, and tears were not easy to her. She was not impressionable, she did not care easily, but she had cared for her daughter-in-law; and she could not but contrast in her mind the days that were gone, with these latter times in which she herself had learned her mortal weakness. Her son never talked to her, nor came to her, nor leaned on her in his restless, lonely suffering.

He was fidgeting now to be off; she saw it in his eyes.

“ What shall we call her ?” The question must be settled, and Madam did not shirk it.

“ What you like.”

“Oh, Gilbert, don’t be like this, my dear. Be courageous; there is no bitterness, no remorse in your grief. Yours is not what mine was. I had harsh words to repent, cruel scenes to haunt me. You have nothing which you would give the world to undo, but which is done for evermore.” For his sake she laid the reserve of a lifetime aside and humbled her pride. Poor Madam, he hardly heard her; comparison was no consolation of anguish to him. He was not the sort of man who defines and dissects his feelings; ho accepted them blindly of necessity.

“ I’ll go and write to Tempest,” he said. “ And— and call her what you choose—any name except— that.”

Madam had set her heart on a little Ethel Katherine Mildmay Wykeham, but she was lost to posterity. There was to be no second Ethel Wykeham at Woodsford.

Mr. Bradshaw came up to the house that very morning to hear about the christening. The sun had come out, and a tall, blackly clad nurse was pacing to and fro the drive with a white burden in her arms, an innocent destroyer who had devastated her home when she entered it, but who recked nothing, knew of no mourning except for herself. No one talked foolish baby talk to her; they talked grim sense around her cradle, and sometimes tears fell on her face instead of kisses. Notwithstanding this she grew and throve apace.

Mr. Bradshaw walked softly as he approached her. Such sorrow seemed sacred, transforming the very carriage drive to holy ground.

The nurse was solemn and subdued.

“ How is the little one, nurse ?”

“ She gets on wonderfully, sir. I never nursed a more beautiful child.”

She drew back the baby’s veil, the sun shone on the tiny maiden. Mr. Bradshaw was a family man; he looked intelligently upon her.

“ She’s a very dark child, nurse, a regular gipsy— not at all like her—”

“ She’s the image of her grandmainma, and sir, sho has such a spirit.”

“Poor child !”

He nodded and sighed.

“ What is she to bo called ?”

“The name is not settled, sir. Poor.Mr. Wykeham, you see, takes but little interest in it all.”

“ To be sure, to be sure,” said the Vicar, shaking his head. “ It is natural; one might almost think it inevitable,” and sighing again he made his way on to tho house.

Hart showed him into the library, where he found Madam, seated before her writing-table, with ledgers and papers and documents spread before her, How many hundred times had he thus found her in bygone years ? The Golden Age at Woodsford, now that it had passed away, seemed like a dream; except for the white bundle sunning on the terrace, the only white light-hearted thing in all the house of mourning.

“ You are at work—again, Madam.”

“ Yes. I have had a long holiday—nearly a two years’ holiday. When he married I gave my son the charge of everything; he took to it, ft was her doing; she had the sense of a woman thrice her age; she interested herself in all his best interests. She knew idleness never made a home, nor man nor a woman happy; she wanted him to be useful. That pretty head, of hers was as full of wisdom as it was of sweetness. She kept him up to the mark; but now, poor fellow, he won’t think, he can’t think, and he has asked me to take to the work again. Work is salvation.” “ It is a road to it, Madam.”

“ It’s a sure road, Mr. Bradshaw, I’ve known trouble, and I have found its antidote, Work is the cork jacket of living. You may sink, you may go down in deep water with the shock of a fall, but you’ll come up again if you stick to your cork jacket I don’t kuow,” sighing, “that one does much of any sort, even when one is up again and bobbing about. I declare 1 would rather do harm than do nothing.” She passed a firm, large hand across her brow, and looked wistfully at Mr. Bradshaw. He had never seen her despondent; now that she spoke of cork jackets he knew that once he would have compared her to a cork, a hard, even substance that remained upon the surface, doing surface work and not capable of plunging into depths. This simile had not altogether done Madam justice.

“ How is Gilbert!” he asked.

“ It has fallen hard on him. The doctor wants him to go away, but he won’t; he is always in her room. It isn’t to be altered in any way; everything is as she left it; he walks up and down there half the night; he can’t sleep, and he won’t eat. A breakdown, must come; this can’t go on. We are all waiting for it.”

“ Poor fellow! And the little girl is quite satisfactory, I hear.”

“ Yes, but he won’t look at her. He won’t tell me what I am to call her. It must not he by her poor mother’s name, he says, but will say nothing more.”

“ She might well be a Rachel, a Dolores, or an Ombra.”

Madam tapped her foot on the floor.

“ I will not have the baby branded as though she were guilty of trouble. We have lost much, but what is our loss compared to hers ? I will call her by a wholesome name, a cheerful name, poor little soul.”

“ The 25th is the Conversion of St. Paul,” he suggested. “ Paul is a pleasant name.”

“Well, he was a vigorous man of stony character. I much admire him. But a girl can’t he a Paul.”

“ Pauline might be appropriate.”

“ Not in the least appropriate to her. Thank goodness, she has not a drop of foreign blood in her veins. French manners and French morals and French appellations are, to my mind, frivolous and flighty. I will call her after her great-grandmother, who was a beauty and a good woman. There is a miniature of her in the drawing-room. Perhaps, the baby may grow up such another, with her dear mother’s blood to help her. She shall be Letice—Letice. It’s a simple, homely English name.”

And by this simple name, little Miss Wykeham was baptized.

During the ceremony the baby lay quiet and content, opening her dark eyes wide in the dim light. The water did not disturb her; she was used to the falling of tears.

That night the breakdown which his mother had foretold befell Gilbert. At dinner he fainted, and was helped up-stairs to bed, where hie lay, too ill to resist the care that was lavished upon him for many . a long day and night.

At length his health became partially restored, and he no longer rebelled when change of scene and travel were prescribed for him.

He went abroad, and spent the first weary months of his bereavement in wandering through unknown lands with Richard Tempest, who, of his charity, and by favor at court, got leave of absence from his stool of office on urgent private affairs, and devoted this Bame leave, which cost him his chance of promotion, to poor Gilbert.

In April there came to them the news of Miss Mud-may’s death.

The brittle, dainty Dresden-china lady had had her death-blow that cold Christmas.

“ You are my whole world,” Gilbert had said to his wife; Miss Mildmay had not said so; nevertheless, her world had come to an end upon that bitter day, when she had stood among the many mourners at the open grave.

She had gone back to Paxford, but the Pax and the life were alike over.

She and her neglected flowers faded together— quietly, unostentatiously faded. She missed her letters sorely. Ethel’s long, bright letters, that had come to her so regularly. Each several one had been read and re-read till its successor arrived to put its nose out of joint, just for the time.

All interest in the hours and days had gone; if this is so, the hold on life is weak.

In March the winds were bleak. Miss Mildmay caught another cold; she was only ill a week; no one thought of danger, but suddenly she failed, and died before the conventional fiat had gone out to summon those, whom, in her strength, she had shunned, to be near her in her weakness.

She died as she had lived, troubling no one. Her folly had brought lasting sorrow upon none but herself. She had left a letter for Mrs. Wykeham, and a recent memorandum of a will bequeathing to Letice Mildmay Wykeham all her small possessions.

“ Paxford, April 10th.

“ DEAREST MAIAM ’’ (the letter ran),—" I call you so, not from conventionality, but from my heart. The past, the present, and the future alike draw us together. From all I learned of yon in the time we spent side by side, I can fed glad that my Ethel’s daughter is in your care. I may speak as 1 feel, for I know that I shall have no strength to write again.

“ I do not blame your son, but I wish he could feel otherwise towards his child. My girl, in death as in life, thought for her dear ones. I can hear her feeble words, and 1 pray that some day he, too, will hear them. ‘ Oh, Gilbert, Gilbert, take hor, do not let her cry.' Poor babe, she will have her share of weeping, as we all have. Surely she will find her way into his kind heart.; I will not fear otherwise.

“Ian not well; while strength and understanding are mine, I write you these last words. Very little I own in the world, but what there is I wish the babe to have. All her mother’s trifles,, some day, she will value. I have put them together. Will you keep them till the little one is of an age to understand? Then will yon give them to her, with a few linos of my own which I have written and directed?

“ I knew her mother best of all. I well may speak of what I knew—for once. Kiss the poor lamb, and with my warm gratitude for helping to make the life that is ended the blessed life it was,

“ Your attached,

"KATHERINTE MILADY.”

Madam went down to Ottermouth; she stayed till the grave was filled, and when she returned she brought her granddaughter’s inheritance with her:

The servants had a busy day or two in stowing the quaint bits of Paxford furniture away in an empty room at Woodsford. The Sheraton chairs, the inlaid btireau, the Dresden china, the dressing-case packed full of letters, among which lay a curl of yellow hair and a faint-hued string of coral.

There was a box, too, of well-worn toys and books, and faded doils, packed carefully away, over which Madam choked.

Phoebe, an Ottermouth girl, who had come from Paxford in youing Mrs.Wykeham’s personal service, and who had been transformed by Madam into the baby’s nurse, sighed to see these familiar things housed so uhfamiliarly.

Madam had a knack of government; Intuitively she knew when to lay her hands on good material, and she laid them on Phoebe.

Phoebe had a warm heart and a qiiick brain, both of which qualities are essential in a nursery.

So Phoebe sat at the feet of the stately nurse during that lady’s reign, and then with heart and mind set solely on her charge, she accepted the great responsibilities of office with the god-like devotion to its duties, which is not uncommon in a nursery prime minister.

At Madam’s age, the modifying of character is difficult, the metamorphosing of it impossible.

Her efforts to fill the emptiness at Woodsford, though heroic enough, were failures. Because of their mutual memories of the Gulden Age, mother and son had grown somewhat nearer to one another, but they did not understand each other a whit the better.

The poor widower loafed through his life; he mooned away a score of months with a lamentable apathy.

“ If it were not for me, Gilbert,” she cried one day in dudgeon, “ the place would go to wrack and ruin. You never put your foot down; you let anything pass. I told you he left the gate open; the cattle trod the ground to pulp. He must go. He is a lazy man.”

“ I have a fellow-feeling for him, mother. I am lazy, too.”

“ You can afford to be lazy. He cannot.”

“ Poor chap.”

“ Gilbert, you provoke me.”

“ So I see.”

“ Gilbert, think one moment.”

“ I have thought. You see, mother, you’ve no sympathy with idleness; you wouldn’t be idle if you were paid for it. It is no temptation to you.”

“ Then you desire me to overlook this gross carelessness of Tucker’s !”

“ My dear mother, send Tucker away if you wish, but don’t worry yourself about it.”

“ You interest yourself in nothing,” she said, curtly, and was ready to eat her words when his face flushed, and he got up from his chair.

“ It’s so true, mother,” he said, under his breath, and was gone out of hearing, beyond recall in a moment.

She had touched him on the raw; she knew it; but what is to be done with a temper that is quick, and a tongue which will not be controlled ?

If there is no prevention, alas! neither is there any cure.

Gilbert had come back to Woodsford in the late spring. The autumn shooting had done something for him, and he had got through Christmas somehow, with no return of sleeplessness. In the spring those who cared most for him had again been anxious about him, but now he was better. The color had come back to his cheeks, he held up his head; he was more like the Gilbert of old. People were beginning to talk to him of the news of the day, invitations assailed him, he was no longer set apart from the ruck of humanity.

The silent fine hand of time had done something for Gilbert, and for his little daughter it had worked wonders. She had thriven royally, as though nothing was wanting to the nursery life, as though she missed nothing.

It was Phoebe, not Letice, who was hurt when her father passed the child without a smile or a word. It was Phoebe who sighed to think that atiy heart could he closed to the joyous baby, with her fine, sturdy limbs, cheeks red as pomegranates, hair dark and thick and softly curled, smiles that flashed as suddenly as did the fiery sparks of temper that distressed her guardian, but which vanished suddenly as they came.

She was a friendly little mortal, ready to meet any advances, ready to hold any finger that was held out to her, ready to respond to any amusement that eame her way. It was only when trouble came that she showed where her heart was. When bruises and bumps and chastisements were about, she would turn and fly to—“ Phib, Phib, Phib,” meaning Phoebe, her nurse, who openly, in culpable heathen-idol fashion, worshipped her.

Madam was fond of the child; she was no great child-lover, but she was partial to little Letice. Her father avoided her; if she cried it distressed him, if she laughed and romped he sighed; now and again he would stand and watch her, then Phoebe’s heart beat high, but too soon he would turn from her.

“ Take her away, Phoebe,” he Would say; “ it’s cold here,” or “ it’s hot here,” Or “ I am busy,” or “ I am fired.” As yet the time had not eome when he wanted his little girl.

Now the baby’s grandmother was not the kind of woman who spoils any one. She had a great idea of discipline, wholesome, every-day discipline, which was, there call be no doubt in the world, expedient for the headstrong, lively little lady, Letice.

Much as of yore the vicarage girls camo in and out at Woodsford.

It Was kind of them to have grudged Mrs. Wykeham no service, to have been eager to help through the first days of trouble; nowadays they played with the baby. They were patient with poor Gilbert’s heaviness, they made much of Madam. Their presence had been, and still was, some sort of assistance to every one at Woodsford.

The house was not a lively place in which to stay at this time, but Richard Tempest had come thither to spend his short annual holiday. The friendship between Gilbert and himself was deep and strong, cemented by sorrow which joins dose. Upon the day of which I write, the twain had trudged homeward through the October twilight, after a long, hard day's rough shooting on the hills. Gilbert was tired, his great strength was gone; nowadays he had to take care alike of body and mind. lie had lost flesh, so that his height and his width made him look gaunt, and his handsome face was worn. His eyes shone, however, and he spoke cheerily to the two dogs that followed at his heels, lowering his voice, however, as he led the way into the house.

As they made their way through the hall, Mr. Tempest pointed to strange umbrellas on the table.

“ There is some one here,” said he, with a masculine disrelish for callers.

“ Only the Bradshaw girls.”

“ They live here.”

“ My mother can’t get on without them; they are uncommonly kind to her. Here, come across into the library; we can he quiet there and get our tea.”

Delicately they walked in thither; a door, now closed, connected this room with the inhabited drawing-room.

“ I’m dog-tired,” said the master of the house, subsiding into a chair by the fireside.

The men spoke and moved softly. Should she guess their vicinity, Mrs. Wykeham would summon them; sociability she connected with cheerfulness. They sipped their tea cautiously, listening meanwhile to the lively sounds that proceeded from their unconscious neighbors next door, whose voices were so distinct as to be almost articulately audible.

It soon became evident that the daughter of the house was down-stairs; the babbling of women’s voices was broken by baby-laughter or the scurrying patter of little feet.

Mr. Tempest sat listening intelligently, with a half smile to these sounds.

Gilbert did the same, but listless and yawning until his attention was awakened by a shrill outcry.

“ Letice is in trouble, poor little soul.”

His goddaughter was a great favorite with Mr.

Tempest He was not a young man who sat still when there was trouble about; setting down his cup, he jumped up.

Sympathy is contagious. Letice screamed and Gilbert fidgeted.

Madam’s voice was audible; a sharp utterance, short and stem, fell from her lips. For a moment there was silence, followed by the sound of well-directed punishment, Hearty punishment, which was met by a great outbreak of baby-wailing and baby-woe.

Mr. Tempest’s comment escaped him in one word.

The pastel portrait of the sinner’s mother looked down from its easel at Gilbert.

He was on his feet in a moment Striding across the room, he opened the door that led into the drawing-room, and broke into the presence of the four poor women, who, though they were innocent of offence, felt guilty.

“ What on earth is the matter with that baby ?’ he cried, with great accent on the noun.

Gilbert angry—Gilbert uncourteous—Gilbert, by no means apathetic, stood by his little girl.

“ Letice bit Kate,” said Madam, not at all offended—merely apologetic. “ I could not let such a thing pass, could I?”

“ Kate was teasing her,” Maud said, frowning.

“ Don’t cry, sweet,” cooed Evelyn, softly, but her pretty voice did not soothe the frantic little one, who “ It was charming to see Gilbert with his daughter, Madam; it was charming of him to be angry with us all. I—I admired him for it; it was like—Gilbert.”

It was charitable of Evelyn to admire a trait in him, such as might have hurt a less delicately observant mind.

She could not hut understand that he and Mr. Tempest had elected to enjoy a tête-à-tête tea, rather, than share the society in the drawing-room. She could not but suspect that the pair had crept in thither softly to avoid detection.

It was too bad of Mr. Tempest to do this; he had no excuse for being a misanthrope. Evelyn did not get on with this young man; she could find nothing attractive about him. He had neither money nor manners, no advantages worth cultivation. She was a great cultivator in some branches of husbandry.

How ill Gilbert looked. She feared sometimes that he was irrevocably damaged; and how terrible that would be. He wanted bracing, but she was not in a position to figuratively pour cold water down-his back, and to drive him forth to duty.

She had had trouble herself—a bitter, rasping, nasty trouble in the past; a trouble that had made itself acutely felt everywhere about her, except in the heart—that organ had escaped scot free.

More than once during the four years that had passed since Gilbert’s marriage, Miss Bradshaw had had serious thoughts of striking out a new line, of leaving a life which she found tedious and “ doing something.” Doing a “something” which should take her far away from Woodsford, and the happy dual lives that thrust themselves into her notice at each turn and twist of her existence.

It is hard not to compare our own life with that of our neighbor. It is difficult to remember the copybook axiom that “comparisons are odious.” Our neighbor’s shoe has a knack of appearing a perfect fit, while our personal shodding does pinch and squeeze us vilely.

But circumstances had conspired to keep Evelyn at home; her sister Maud had become engaged to tho curate of a neighboring parish. Kate had ailed more than usual, and when Evelyn had taken Madam into her confidence, and told that lady that she felt a call to go forth into the world and to do “ something,” that austere lady had jumped down Evelyn’s throat.

“You want to go nursing, my dear; what for? Good Heavens! why should you leave your home! With Kate ill, Maud preoccupied with lovers and trousseaux, your mother is worked to death. You have ample to occupy you at the vicarage. Stay where you are wanted. Women don’t bear and rear daughters without some hope of repayment. I remember what a slave your good mother was to you little ones, and if, nowadays, she can’t find enough for you to do, come to me. Why, my dear, you are one of my most capable workers. I myself can’t spare you. By-the-way, Jane Sednor is ill at the lodge; just go in on your way home, and tell her to let me know what she wants.”

Evelyn was not inclined to be biassed overmuch by Madam’s splutter of opposition, but before the girl’s shadowy plans were, matured, great changes befell her path. Woodsford was the centre of alteration.

Young Mrs. Wykeham was dead.

No Bradshaw nowadays, could be fretted by the contrast between the domestic routines at manor and vicarage; the Bradshaws had the best of it.

It was better, Evelyn realized, to be in commonplace than in tragic surroundings. It was better to be treated with calm civility than to be mourned for passionately. Anything was better than to be hidden away under the turf, with tears for gifts, and flowers instead of jewels.

It was better to be Evelyn Bradshaw than to be poor dead Mrs. Wykeham.

A live dog is better than a dead lion.

So Miss Bradshaw was not nursing; she was at her home, and notably neighborly and useful.

The Mrs. Wykeham who was now spoken of as “ poor ” had not made much way with the vicarage girls; she had never quite conquered the vague enmity with which it had been natural they should regard her. She had not guessed what the barrier was which kept them apart, but she had known some sort of barrier was there.

When Evelyn said that Gilbert's little outbreak of anger in the drawing-room was “ like Gilbert,” Madam laid down her knitting, leaned her handsome old head back in her chair, and sighed.

“ Nothing about him is like the Gilbert you knew, my dear. He is another man. I’m glad Letico cried; she should cry more if I thought it would rouse him. The acuteness of his grief is over; it must bo over; but there he sits moping, moping, moping; as apathetic as ever. It would break his dear wife’s heart to see him as he is.”

“ But, Madam,” urged Maud, opening her eyes, “ you can’t expect him to forget already.”

“ Forget ? Of course he won’t forget. He will never forget; but there is'a better way of remembering than his, I think. My dears, I want him to do something, to hope something, to think of something. She was always occupied, the sweet, wise, pretty woman. Why, she was ready to help the very weed-boy on the drive, if she could. But he thinks there never was a sorrow but his; he hugs it to him.”

“ It’s so soon.”

“ Soon to you, but the time for him, as he has spent it, seems a thousand years.”

It was the first time Madam had spoken of Gilbert to the girls. It was odd to see behind the scenes in a widower’s establishment.

After all, the death of a wife might mean much

more than a two years’ interval, and then a second courtship.

Hitherto they had not considered what took place during that conventional period of seclusion; their experience had not been in that direction. Madam’s view of the situation was depressing. In sober truth would he never forget ? Widowers married again.

In the silence which followed Mrs. Wykeham’s remark the sound of a laugh from the next room came through the closed door.

“ He has Letice in there with him,” said the grandmother, a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. “ Listen, my dear; don’t you hear her laughing?”

As a matter of fact, Letice had a great fancy for her dad. Ever since she had known anything she had known him. Encouraged by Phoebe, she had watchedfrom her nursery windowto see him come and go; she could be induced to sit quiet and hear stories concerning him.

And now when he had lifted her up in his arms, she had been speedily comforted, and she had put np her chubby hands to pat his cheek. No one save her dad ignored the advances of this ingratiating person; so according to the law of her sex she valued his attention.

Dad’s room, too, was forbidden ground, so an incursion thither was interesting.

Here, too, she found one of the humblest of familiar subjects, her godfather, an admirable playfellow this, and a constant nursery visitor. She lorded it over him, but she respected her dad. Hero worship is innate, and hers had been directed, fostered, developed by the faithful Phoebe.

How seated demurely on the unfamiliar frieze knee, she put her thumb in her mouth, and stared with great dark eyes from one young man to the other.

“ Give her some bread and butter, Wykeham,” suggested Richard; he was ridiculously anxious at this momentous moment that the child should behave creditably.

“ Does she eat bread and butter?” said the ignoramus, with incredulity.

“ Do,” lisped Letice, holding out her hand. “ Do,” she repeated more firmly, as her father hesitated.

“Fold it up,” said the well-informed master of the ceremony.

“ Daddy, do,” urged his daughter.

“ She wants you to give it her,” the interpreter explained.

This was gratifying.

“ Are most babies of her age whacked, Dick, in that rough and ready way?” The child was munching the bread and butter now; she had rested her dark wavy head against Gilbert’s breast “ My people didn’t spare the rod from the beginning. We were licked into shape young. Then there were ten of us.”

“ Mack,” suggested Letice, solemnly. “ No hurt Letty.”

“ Poor little soul.”

“ Betty now.”

“Betty who?” puzzled and interrogatory.

“ Better,” said the more intelligent man. “ She’s better—that’s it.”

“ She’s getting quite knowing,” said her father.

“ She is as sharp as a needle, and so plucky. Do you see the bruise on her arm ? Here, baby, let him look. She came an almighty cropper yesterday and hardly shed a tear. I was there.”

“ She sheds tears freely at times, Richard. I have heard her shriek the house down. I hate to hear it, but they tell me it’s inevitable, that these little things always cry.”

“ Big girl,” said the traduced one, softly.

“ Isn’t she cute ?” with suppressed eagerness. “ I never saw such a nice child, Wykeham; no—no wonder you are proud of her.”

It was not with a gesture of pride that the young father put up his hand and covered his face; there was no pride in the eyes' from which little Letice dragged his concealing fingers.

“ No ky,” said she, firmly.

And to please her, Gilbert smiled, with fene arm round her. She returned his smile; red lips, white teeth, dimpled cheeks, and innocent eyes all laughing at him.

“ She hasn’t a look of—of Ethel,” He said, with a long-drawn breath. “ Not a look, not a trace.”

“ Poor little girl.” The tremor in Mr. Tempest’s voice disgusted its author. He bent down and pinched the child’s chubby cheek.

“ ‘ Ruddier than the cherry,

Brighter than the berry.’ ”

“You are a little gypsy, eh, Letice ?”

“ She is like my mother, Richard.”

“ Yes, but I see the look of her"—mother, too— sometimes. If you watch for it, you will see what I mean.”

For a full half-hour Letice behaved herself discreetly with her grave new comrade.

When Phoebe came down-stairs to look for her charge, she listened outside the door of the library, hardly believing the sound of her delighted ears. Letice was with her father. She stole away from the laughter and baby prattle, back to her precincts, with a happy smile on her face, affecting unconsciousness of the change in the day’s programme, when later Mr. Wykeham himself brought Letice back to her nursery. She concealed her joy when Gilbert kissed his daughter on her curly head as he set her down.

Then Gilbert went down-stairs again; he walked quietly, but it seemed his slow-coming step was audible afar off, for when he reached the hall, from out the shadow by the porch Miss Evelyn Bradshaw came treading softly, and met him face to face.

“ Is the sweet little thing comforted, Gilbert?”

Evelyn had a pretty voice, and she spoke tenderly. She was a nice-looking woman; although her face had lost its girlish bloom, it was not unattractive. Her beauty was bird-like, with high nose, bright eyes, short jaw, long throat, and there was a bird-like want of repose about her.

There is a distressing maxim that runs:

“ Man may work from sun to sun,

But woman’s work is never done”—

which she seemed to illustrate. She did not do her twittering and unceasing movement in quite the inconsequent way of her feathered prototypes; there was some underlying definite purpose in the hoppings and the twitterings.

“ Is the sweet little thing comforted ?” she asked.

“ Oh, she’s all right, thanks.” The speaker’s hand had been on the handle of the library door; he left it open, and came a step nearer his interrogator.

“ I was so sorry,” Evelyn murmured; “ I was so distressed. Poor Letice! Poor darling, she is only a baby after all. I—I can’t believe it is right to punish, to hurt such a tiny mite—especially a poor little girl like she is. Madam thinks differently, and Madam is hasty—she is too hasty. And, oh— Gilbert—”

She broke off; he could fancy in the dim light that there were tears in her eyes. Gilbert had never taken his daughter’s rearing into consideration. He knew little about his mother’s ways with the child, but a dawning wonder whether Letice had been bullied made its way into his mind. An introduction between suspicion and ignorance is soon effected. It. was not easy to interest him, but he thought it very kind of Evelyn to care so much. He was touched by her sympathy; he knew what her broken voice and speech were intended to convey; his faculty for minor feeling had been stunned for so long, and yet now he was grateful.

“ So you don’t believe in discipline ?” said Mr. Tempest, speaking abruptly; he was standing there in the library doorway, and they had not seen him. There was nothing subdued in his tones; he did not understand the peculiar delicacy of the baby’s situation. Gilbert sighed, but Evelyn answered, suavely:

“ I am not so ill-judged as to disbelieve in discipline; one may believe in a principle, but circumstances alter cases, Mr. Tempest.”

“ To be sure,” grimly. “ Personally, I fancy we are most of us the better and the happier for a licking into shape.”

“ You may be right, but I, myself, could not bear to punish Letice.” She looked eloquently at Gilbert; he would understand her; she was sure of his comprehension. But his eyes were beyond her; through the open door of the porch he looked at the early darkness of the autumn evening.

“ It is late,” he said, “ for you to be going back— alone, Evelyn.”

“ The girls are close by; they are waiting for me outside. I only stayed behind to hear if Letice was comforted. Good-bye, Gilbert Good-bye, Mr. Tempest; I shall he afraid of you, now that I know you are such a martinet”

. She tripped off down the steps, and both the men stood and watched her go; then Richard banged the door to sharply on her heels.

“ That is a nice woman,” Gilbert said, yawning; “ she is very good to my mother; she doesn't shun this dreary house; she never did from the first; she is a good friend—like you, old chap. You can stick to a ship though its rudder has gone, eh ?”

Tempest’s reply was inaudible as he turned away; he did not respond, but he went off alone to the smoking-room, and got his pipe and sat there before the fire, smoking, with his deep eyes upon the blaze. His thoughts were hot as the heart of the heat, and they burned within him. He told himself in his haste that all that came of the fire, and of the light, and the heat, and the pain was the smoke that puffed away from grate and pipe, and was lost for evermore.

Once in his sore heart he had compared his lot with' that of Gilbert; he had looked at the fulness of his friend’s life, and he had kicked at his own fate; at its loneliness, at the contrast of it. .

Like a recurrent, besetting sin the feeling did not know when it was beaten, but had shown life again and yet again, when Tempest had thought it effectually slain.

Then befell the Woodsford tragedy, and Richard had come out well; he had done what he could. As an arrow from the bow he had gone to the house of mourning; it is not man’s nature, it was not his nature, to force his way into such company as Woodsford then contained; nevertheless, thither he went.

How distinctly he remembered the journey, and his arrival at the house; the shrouded windows, like sightless eyes, had looked out at him.

He remembered how that he durst not disturb the silence by the ringing of the bell, but had crept round the shrubbery to the flower garden, and had entered the house like a thief, through the unlocked door of the conservatory. He remembered the horror of doing this, and yet the impossibility of doing otherwise.

He remembered how he had found Madam sitting in the darkened library, writing. She had looked up as though she had expected this strange entry of his.

“ He won’t see you,” she had said; “ it was good of you to come, but he won’t see you—he will see no one.”

She had wiped her eyes and gone on writing, and he stood still watching her, and wondering why he had come.

But he was soon to find out good reason for his presence, and to wonder no more. Madam employed him; the distressing technical work of bereavement had fallen to his share. His sorrow was judged to he of that trivial sort which may humanely be allowed to perform these necessitous functions. Richard had carried the burden of his bursting heart and dry eyes for many days without a wince or shudder.

He remembered when Gilbert had come to him in the dead of the night, and through the hours till the day dawned refused to be comforted.

To say that Richard Tempest remembered this is to imply that he had forgotten. He had not forgotten —all was fresh in his mind. Perhaps if his work and surroundings at Studholme had been more genial, if his own daily life had been brighter and more to his liking, his memory might not have been so true and vivid; he might not have lived in the life at Woodsford as he did. He might not have spent his spare time in wondering about and speculating upon Gilbert’s feelings and doings, in writing to him—in lavishing of his poverty many a gift upon his goddaughter.

His goddaughter! And he had perverted the truth, and talked of “licking her into shape,” as though he could ever have assisted at such moralities.

Why, “ he could not get resigned to the association of any sort of suffering with her laughing, dimpled little tody—it was the blowing about in the wind of a heap of roses”

It was unreasonable of the thinker to he sad because his hopes had been fulfilled, because Gilbert was—'better. That day the young widower had talked of bird and beast, he had been keen for sport, he had laughed once or twice, he had reminded Richard of the Gilbert of yore, and Richard had grown rather quiet and grave at the talk and laughter, only expanding on the way home when reaction had taken his now listless and silent comrade.

It was inevitable that Gilbert should smile again; and his smiles would be of tbe same character as his had ever been—they would be easy. Nature would do her work. Nature with Gilbert had been pleasant, kindly; he had had no need to thwart her from his cradle until now. He would comply with her. Nature had forced him to undergo anguish, his light heart had been crushed, bruised, wrung within him; the mill through which it had passed would leave its traces. Nature would have her way with him; he would not wrestle, he had not wrestled with her.

Occasionally Nature is abhorrent in our eyes. The feeling which is called sentiment is at war to the knife with levelling, gentle, slow, almighty, but somewhat indelicate, Nature.

Who was Richard that he should grudge his best friend a convalescence ? And yet young Tempest was ready in his improvident, fiery youth, to swear it was better to be deadly ill than to be fairly well; better to be dead than to be cured. His view of the case differed from that of Madam. He accepted no middle course; he was young. The mere possibility of forgetting shook him'like an ague. He was ready with his, “ Lord, keep my memory green,” and ready, too, to face the consequences of such a petition, should it be granted him.

CHAPTER VIII

Is there rest? But the earth seems so near

And the Heavens so far!

—Caroline Norton.

The gift of prophecy has disadvantages. Male prophets are scarce, but the females flourish in this profession which, alike with many another calling, they have filched from their lords.

The prophet Richard, a second Balaam, realized the evil of his gift, for he was constrained to prophesy evil, not good, concerning the house of Wykeham. ne kept his prophetic vision to himself and brooded over'it.

Other soothsayers about Woodsford did not hold their tongues j they whispered and watched and waited. The waiting was longer than the very acutest prophet among them had foreseen.

Four years passed by before Letice had an Easter present of a new mamma.

The new mamma herself thought she might have come to Woodsford sooner, had not Gilbert interested himself, somewhat half heartily it was true, in his attractive daughter, an interest which all the Woodsford womenkind fostered and cultivated to a ridiculous degree.

Letice, now a tall maiden of six years old, was not in her new mamma’s eyes by any means faultless.

Notwithstanding her grandmother’s discipline, and Phoebe’s prayers, Letice was somewhat wilful. She kept court at Woodsford like a young queen, dispensing her favors with open hands, but letting her voice be both heard and heeded when she had a mind to.

Her grandmother had a will of her own, for which she was mightily revered. Letice had inherited it, the people said, and they were amused at the little flashes of temper to which her Majesty occasionally gave way.

There was nothing great or alarming about the peppery temper, for it had a generous bent, and broke put in defence of some one, or something alien to herself. She was a warm-hearted, cheery little lady. The man or woman would be hard to please who did not find her individuality ingratiating.

She was attached to her new mamma with all her heart Every one was kind, but no one quite so persistently, almost encroachingly kind, as her good neighbor at the Vicarage.

Miss Bradshaw was a playfellow who was always ready to play, who never tired, who never cried off from treats of all sorts. Letice loved her almost as well as she loved her big father who was king to her queen, whom she never presumed to hector or rule, but whom she followed about like a dog, though his romps were tantalizingly fitful, his treats uncertain, his spirits variable, and nothing reliable about him but his gentleness. The subdued sadness of this great dad appealed in some way to her little soul. Her devotion to him was pretty to see, the neighbors said, and there was no sort of cupboard love about it. He gave but little for what he got. Alas, there should be some “ cupboard ” in love, for without food love will not continue to abound.

Madam had too many irons in her fire to heat them all through and through; she had no happy knack of winning any deep affection. Bolling stones gather little moss, it is said, and love gets ravelled thin as it follows in the wake of a bustling, energetic mortal, who never rests for refreshment in the green glades of home.

Letice and her grandmother were excellent friends; Madam was so constituted that an overflow of demonstrative affection would have overwhelmed her, and she was content with her granddaughter’s good fellowship. She aired her wholesome theories of child-rearing upon Letice, and was never lax in discipline, even though Gilbert frowned and fidgeted.

Nevertheless, the child was not afraid of Madam; they were a just-minded couple, and understood one another. The criminal realized that Madam’s punishments fitted crimes, so when Letice transgressed she did so with her eyes open.

Winters at Woodsford were long, but then Fhcebe and Letice talked together day after day of the sum mer-time that was coming. They built castles in tlie air, which became real castles, and never vanished away; for flowers come, and the sun shines, and the woods make play-grounds year by year, though tho Golden Age had passed away from some of the dwellers at the Manor.

The nursery life was pleasant, but nursery days do not last forever; play has to turn serious and to take the name of work. Letice was intelligent; with Phoebe’s help she had learned to read and to write, but of lessons with a big L, and educational anxieties, sho knew nothing, and the sense of her own deficiency was to find her out.

It happened thus. The Wigram children came to tea with her upon one cold February afternoon; they were neighbors of hers, and of her own age, but she saw but little of them. Madam did not altogether approve of the great house of Wigram, the greatness of whose members was developed in many ways, but not in the paths of virtue.

There had been more black sheep than white at Wigram House. My lord was not the worst of his race; if ho was not a white member of the flock, neither was he black, and my lady was a beauty. If you reached her heart neither by horse nor dog, you might yet gain admission by comeliness, and Letice’s eyes and Letice’s skin were the only things at Woodsford, except Letice’s mother, that had ever impressed Lady Wigram.

Letice was asked to Wigram House far oftener than she went; moreover, occasionally there was a return of hospitalities, and Euth and Betty Wigram came to Woodsford.

Then was an uproar all through the house, war-whoops and death shrieks and extensive damage, for Wigram spirits were higher than Wigram principles, and had a way of running away with the latter altogether.

These mad tea-parties excited the hostess, and were not encouraged by the home authorities; however, upon the February afternoon of which I speak the entertainment fell flat, for little Letice's guests were more full of conversation than of pranks. A new governess had arrived at Wigram House upon the preceding day, and the children’s minds overflowed with reminiscences of a school-room examination which had taken place in the morning.

Their conversation was entirely intellectual. They asked Letice the questions which had been put to them, and were amazed at her ignorance. She was crashed by her own inferiority.

When the entertainment was over, and the guests gone, die no longer attempted to hold up her head or to disguise her feelings, hut climbing up on the box in the nursery window, die drew the blind aside, and tried to find out whether it could really be true that the high hills that touched the starry sky belonged to a yellow world like an orange.

While Letice was thus engaged the door opened softly, and Miss Bradshaw, closely followed by the master of the house, came into the room.

Letice put her head round the comer of the blind, and accosted her father:

“ I’m a ‘ silly,’ dad; I don’t know much. I am not going to be a ‘ silly ’ any longer.”

“ What do you mean, Letice ?”

“Ruth and Betty said I was a 'silly’ No one hadn’t said it before, but. I am. I don’t write right, and there is pininisilers, and islands, and napoleons, and lots of things I didn’t know. Betty says the world’s all round like a yellow orange; I didn’t know —and neither don’t Phoebe, I don’t suppose.”

The dunce was flushed, but her great eyes shone; she was not going to be excelled and browbeaten again if she could avoid it “ The little Miss Wigrams, sir, have been telling her about their lessons,” put in Phoebe; she was concerned at the turn of nursery politics. “ It put Miss Letice out to be asked them questions, seeing she hasn’t been parrot-taught like the others. She will learn soon enough when she gets her chance; there is no call for her to be ashamed.”

There were tears in Letice’s eyes, and she was not easily moved to tears. Gilbert put his hand under her chin, and turned up the little face.

“What? You are no child of mine, Letty; crying for lessons, are you ? You little ignoramus, you, to cry for lessons. The only time you might fancy the world round is before you know its shape.”

“ Miss Letice likes to hold up her head with tho rest, sir,” said Phoebe; her goose was a swan through and through; she could not be less. “ Small blame to her. It tried me to hear Miss Ruth, who is not a year older than Miss Letice, laying down the law to her.”

Hurt feelings were about, a rankling sense of inferiority, that most rankling of all senses, had made its way into the Woodsford nursery.

Evelyn Bradshaw had not spoken; she was thinking, thinking hard and fast, forming a hasty plan which it was impossible to mature minutely on the spur of the moment When Phoebe ceased speaking, she went close to Letice, and laid her pretty, ungloved hand on the child’s cloud of brown hair.

“ Shall I teach you lessons, dear ? If you would like me to, I will teach you lessons. Oh!” in response to Gilbert’s murmur, “ I mean it, I mean it with all my heart Ho, it would be no trouble at all; anything I do for Letice is a pleasure.”

There was a pretty scene round the toy-box in the nursery; the little girl eager and earnest, full of physical geography and what not, wound her arms about Miss Bradshaw. She was a graceful child, and her face, brilliantly colored, ruddy cheeks and lips, ink-black lashes, framed in her curls, and set off by her white frock, was good to look upon. Miss Bradshaw smiled gently; there was some sort of maternal graciousness upon her, as seen in the nursery lamp-light. Gilbert liked the picture, but Phoebe was not in the tableau; with a pang she realized that the moment was a bad one both for her and for her precincts, and she slipped out of the room, closing the door sharply behind her.

Of course it would come; it must come; but—but —Phoebe had the dusting of the empty room; she kept the key and went in and out among the unused fading daintiness of the—the first Mrs. Wykeham’s chamber, and she wanted no changes—not yet.

“ And if you teach me lessons, Evie,” Letice was saying, “you will have to come and live with me, you know. Yes, you will; Miss Pearse lives with Betty and Ruth,”

Miss Bradshaw shook her trim little head, and she was not in the habit of shaking it at Woodsford. Evelyn’s reluctance was, to Letice’s understanding, born merely to be annihilated.

“Evie must stay with us always, mustn’t she, dad?” You tell her so. She will stay if you tell ‘ her.”

“ Will you live with us always, Evelyn ? Letice wants you as well as I.”

So Letice herself, in this auspicious moment, introduced both a new mamma and her own serious education into Woodsford. Miss Bradshaw falteringly consented to live always with the father and daugh ter. It was natural that Evelyn, who was before all things a woman of forethought, should have turned over in her mind the possibility of domiciling at ' Woodsford; it was natural that she should have planned out its probabilities, considered its problems, and prepared to pave a prudent path to peace and prosperity within the solid walls thereof. She was-prepared to accept the little step-daughter as part of her establishment—needs must when necessity drives —but Madam was quite another story..

Evelyn knew what was due to herself; no man . should fancy that a wife could consent to a mother-in-law and a step-daughter being added to the difficulties of domestic existence. Madam, as a permanency in Evelyn’s home, would be more than mortal could bear. Evelyn made her head ache over the devising of sundry delicate schemes by which Madam could be civilly ousted from Woodsford.

Madam was dense; civilities of some sort were lost upon her.

In truth, at bottom Madam was a guileless, fresh-minded old woman. When her son told her that he was about to take Miss Bradshaw to wife, she was pleased; though she sighed, she was glad.

Gilbert was wise in his choice; the girl was amiable, obliging, she had her share of common-sense, industry, and discrimination. Evelyn had been a favorite of hers for many years. How much advice had she bestowed upon her, how many acts of kind ness had she both given to and received from her in the past.

She was glad that Gilbert should be taken in hand by such a capable woman. He might have chosen one of the flighty, frivolous, good-looking women whom the Wigrams had asked him to meet of late.

When a man’s nerves are shaken by trouble he is apt to make a disastrous marriage. He was putting as neat a patch on his tom life as man could do.

“ She won’t want to turn me out,” Madam said to her son, with a faint smile; she was thinking of that other letter which had come to her in the past. Perhaps he, too, was looking back, for he only nodded in response, as though the conclusion was so obvious as to need no discussing.

Gilbert was not fond of discussion. He fell in with all his betrothed’s wishes. There was no radical reason why the wedding should be quiet, and therefore it was a ceremony of bridesmaids and bells, flowers and rice, guests, presents, and paragraphs. There was no reason why Evelyn should be done out of the great fete day of her life. He had some vague idea of giving her all that it was possible for him to give, because of the impossibility of bestowing some things upon her. That vague idea of the bridegroom’s brought much tangible advantage with it to the bride.

Once the boyish eagerness of his arrangements for a bride bad turned Woodsford topsy-turvy.

This time his mother made such preparations as were deemed necessary for the reception of the second Mrs. Wykeham.

Their honeymoon was a long one. Mr. and Mrs. Wykeham were married at Easter, and they did not return to Woodsford until June.

There was a flutter of interest among the household over the arrival; all the inmates of Woodsford had a pleasing conviction that he or she was a special individual favorite of the bride.

The Vicarage servants spoke of Miss Evelyn’s fidgets, but fidgets none but professional fault-finders discover; what were fidgets to those who had lived under Madam’s autoratic rule ?

Macqueen was surly because he had been set to cut flowers and to fill baskets with his beautiful roses, which he grudged sorely; but even he had no fault to find with the second marriage.

“ I’m glad the master’s mated,” he said to Phoebe; he was a bachelor, and he was to be found more often than duty led him in the spots most frequented by the nurse and child. “ Man was not meant to live alone.”

“I don’t know that,” said Phoebe. “What’s meant is difficult to say, when the Lord takes us. What’s done by us is a different matter. There is not many marriages in which the Lord has a finger.”

“ Man was not meant to live alone; it warps him, mind, or health, or temper.”

Even in his palmy days it had been natural for Gilbert to follow, rather than to guide. He had done good work as a wheeler, but had not excelled as leader. He had no inclination to head; hitherto he had followed a straight lead across open country.

He would let the women settle this question between them. At length Evelyn agreed to this, and once the ice was broken, Evelyn wondered at herself at the delay, for the question settled itself rapidly and easily.

The settlement came about in this fashion. Evelyn had come into the conservatory one morning in December ; an east wind blew hard, and an east wind it is that stirs the temper and jars nerves and promotes wrangling. Madam was out there among the flowers talking to Macqueen, and they went on talking, not taking any sort of notice of Evelyn, until young Mrs. Wykeham raised her voice and broke in upon their conversation.

“ There is nothing here to pick to-day, Macqueen. You used to have such a lot of heliotrope in this house. I know the tree died—I remember it’s dying.” It had never recovered the robbing and tearing it had received seven Decembers back, and if it had not had a successor, it was because of some undefinable sentiment on the part of Macqueen or Madam. Heliotrope was no longer cultivated at Woodsford. “ But surely you might plant another. I don’t care about the smilax; it is an artificial sort of green ery. Heliotrope used to scent the whole house when this door was open.”

Macqueen said that ’twas an obstinate grower, but he’d do what he could; and he staggered out of the ladies’ presence with an arm-load of pots, bearing a not wholly genial demeanor.

Evelyn’s courage received just the little fillip it required from wrath.

“ Madam,” she said, “ don’t go for a moment. I want to talk to you. I want your advice. I may, of course, have been weak. I may not be so experienced a housekeeper as you are, but I have my own methods, my own ways, and it really tries my temper to give orders, and to have them disregarded.”

“ I never allow an order of mine to he disregarded,” said Madam, looking puzzled.

“ Just so. I know it. Every one knows it. That is the reason why the servants attend only to you. There cannot be two mistresses. Cook does not even send up the dinners which I order.”

The speaker’s voice shook; her sense of proportion was not nice; she took cook-troubles as seriously as she could take the deeper tragedies of existence.

Life at Woodsford was not quite all that she had expected it to be. Maud had told her sister, when her engagement to Mr. Wykeham had been announced, “that she was a brave woman to start matrimony with a mother-in-law and a step-daughter in her menage.”

Evelyn was not brave, blit she was a good manager, and she had smiled at Maud’s remark. Who was Maud, with her poverty and her twins, that she should pit in judgment upon Evelyn’s alliance? Neither Madam nor Madam’s granddaughter should be allowed to tarnish the brightness of the bride’s future.

Her gentle husband was all that Evelyn had fancied him to be. He gave her her own way; he was kind and indulgent. When she was busy on her feminine affairs he was content to be alone—he was always content.

Letice’s exuberant affection was trying; she was forever at her step-mother’s heels, sure of her welcome and greedy of her attention. A child who expects much and fears nothing is a trying companion to a much-occupied woman.

Moreover, the bride was pinned down to her promise of education, and for an exhausting daily hour Letice and she struggled over the acquisition of knowledge side by side in the nursery.

Of course this trial could not continue. Any other man save Gilbert would have saved his bride such an infliction. He did not think for Evelyn; he was not considerate, unless the need for the consideration was pointed out to him. Fortunately the bride could be trusted to think for herself—aye, and to act, too, should occasion arise.

“ Cook does not even send up the dinner that I order,” she had said, solemnly.

“ Why didn’t you tell me this before, my dear ? I would have spoken.”

“ But, Madam, that was precisely what I do not desire. It is my authority which I wish to he recognized. As Gilbert’s wife I must be just to myself.”

Madam looked hard at her daughter-in-law, who returned the gaze steadily, though she twisted her head from side to side with a pretty, bird-like motion.

“ If the servants do not give you satisfaction, dismiss them.”

“ I do not think they are wholly to blame; their situation is not easy. Perhaps, on the whole, it might be wiser to start fresh.”

Madam bit her lip.

“ My position is a very difficult one,” said the younger lady, boldly. She did well to be bold; her’s was a case in which delicacy was useless. “ Gilbert is not observant; he is no help to me at all. Last night I ordered two savories and one sweet. Cook sent up two sweets and one savory. When I remonstrate, she says that you, Madam, do not eat savories. Naturally I feel that I am treated as a cipher in my own house.”

If Madam winced she gave no outward sign. Tho girl was right To the Woodsford employes Mrs. Wykeham was still regarded as one of the Vicarage young ladies, while Madam remained mistress of tho establishment. It was hard on Evelyn; though this was true, yet were some truths best left inarticulate.

“ Perhaps it would be better for you, my dear, if I went away,” said Madam, suddenly, speaking the thought as it came into her head; she did not realize that this conclusion had been suggested to her. The words escaped her before she weighed their consequences, as words had a knack of doing from Madam’s mouth.

“ I don’t think the climate suits you,” said her daughter-in-law, distinctly enough, though her heart thumped hard over her courageous words. “ You have been so rheumatic, Madam, and here you see you are so seldom in the house. I am sure it would | be healthier to lead a less out-of-door life.” The words were out. Why should not Madam go, as she had planned to do years ago, and live in London ? No old bird should be found in a young bird’s nest.

“ To bear, to rear, to love, and then to lose ”

is nature’s law for birds and men.

The first Mrs. Wykeham was a simple sort of ignoramus, who imagined she might break a law of nature and not suffer for it. Mrs. Wykeham number two was of a different mould, and could never be guilty of the transgression of law.

Madam and she stood opposite to one another, but it was the elder lady who did not look the younger in the face.

“ It has been a damp autumn, Evelyn.”

“ You have been looking ill.”

“ I have not felt ill—but excuse me, my dear; I must go down to the kitchen-garden. I want to speak about the celery; all the years Macqueen has been here he has never sent such flavorless celery to the table. I forgot to question him about it when I spoke to him just now.”

The master of the house sat up late at night in his library; he had not broken through this habit of his, which seemed to have become second nature during his lonely years in the immediate past; so Madam found him dreaming idly in his arm-chair, with an open book upon his knees, a pipe in his mouth, a fire blazing in the hearth before him, long after his household were in bed and asleep.

He rose to his feet with alacrity. Letice was never ill, and yet, for a moment, he thought of Letice.

“ What is the matter, mother ? I thought you were never out of your bed at twelve o’clock at night.”

“ There is nothing at all the matter, but I wanted a quiet talk with you. I have made up my mind to go and live in London. I am getting old, and I shall have to take care of myself. This place is a deadly rheumatic snare for me. I cannot keep in-doors, and I shall get doubled up with rheumatism if I stay down here.”

She did not want him to remonstrate overmuch, but she had expected him to argue with her; but he did nothing of the sort.

“ You must do as you think wisest,” he said; every surrounding of his spoke of “health and home,” everything except his listless face. Madam sat down opposite to him; she was not a selfish or a self-seeking woman, but that evening had aged her.

“ To-morrow I will go up to London and see about a house, Gilbert. I should like to look into everything myself.”

“ It is very sudden, mother.”

“ At my age we have not much time for dawdling, Gilbert. By-the-way, I think you should let me look out for a governess for Letice; the lessons she does with her step-mother are a farce—and a farce which is fast becoming a nuisance to both of them. Get a governess; don’t be persuaded to send her to school. You believe that idea to be impossible now, but I think it not only possible, but probable. Don’t send her to school; you would forget each other; and the girl has no mother.” Madam repeated those last words impressively, as though their significance struck her with fresh meaning. “Letice has no mother.”

The next day, when Madam’s plans were divulged, the bride was angry with no one but herself; why had she not plucked up courage and spoken those few words of hers months ago ? They had accomplished their work with such comfortable ease, they had been useful and expedient.

CHAPTER IX

Fame guards the wreath we call a crown

With other wreaths of fire;

And dragging this or that man down

Will not raise you the higher.

Many changes came to Woodsford. Little by little were these alterations effected; change was the breath of its mistress’s nostrils. She planned and she loved to plan; she found her occupation and her pleasure in planning. Her energy was remarkable; it wanted an outlet. There was nothing peaceful in the domestic' life at Woodsford, for neither rest nor composure nor placidily were to be found in young Mrs. Wykeham.

Fully two years hack a son had been bom to Gilbert, and many a deft plan had been laid for the small boy’s uprearing. But a few weakly pounds of pale humanity had proved strong enough to frustrate every scheme laid for his training.

! For his mother had not planned that the little one should be a puny, delicate weakling; she had arranged for the welfare of a ruddy, lusly boy, built on the likeness of his sister. She was thrown out of her reckoning, for little Fulke was unmanageable, and had barely survived the first few months of harden ing, through which he had been piloted by maternal forethought.

“ The boy must be coddled, cosseted, and cared for if you want him to live,” said the doctor, brusquely. The vigorous treatment was abolished then, for Evelyn had never taken death into her calculations about her boy.

Phoebe, robbed by Juggernaut education of hor nurseling, Letice, had transferred her service to Letice’s brother for a time. The time had been but short, for she and her mistress were as oil and vinegar —they did not agree.

Phoebe had methods, but no hard and fast plans; she found that this child had invalidish ways of his own. She, poor soul, had to take all blame for his ailments, as well as all pains for their mitigation. Human nature could not stand this; her anxiety about her change and the mistrust of her mistress, between them, drove her frantic. To tramp all night with a fretting child in your arms, and to be frowned at for your pains is more than mortal woman can bear. Macqueen was Phoebe’s confidant and adviser, so the end of it all was that she found a matrimonial escape from her intolerable situation, settling with crusty Macqueen in the village of Woodsford, where she could be refreshed with an occasional sight of little Miss Wykeham, who took her walks abroad nowadays with a staid Fraulein of mature years.

In Phoebe’s place there came a magnificent lady of vast experience, who ruled her mistress and her nursery precincts by the power of knowledge, as Phoebe had neither the wish nor capability to do.

Under this new rule Fulke became more or less of a mystery to his nearest and dearest He did not die, neither did he thrive. To every one except to his nurse his ailments and betterments were enigmatic; no one understood the ways and wishes and will of the little lad. He was no joy to his parents, but a care.

To some minds there is a certain reproach in the bringing forth of delicate offspring. His mother said that he certainly did not inherit a fragile constitution from her, which was true enough. She did not like to share the compassion which people expressed for the boy; she liked to be envied, not to be pitied. She liked her associates to be good to look upon, prosperous, genial people. This son of hers was a child over whom no one smiled. How could they smile at those pathetic eyes and pale lips ?

And the blunt old woman, Jane, at the lodge, had not mended matters by her reasoning on the question.

“ His father had known a deal of sorrow, ’m—a deal of sorrow. Yon can see it in his baby’s little face. ’Tis but nature to see it, after all.”

Whv should no sorrow be seen in Letice’s fair face ?

She had brought disaster with her, and yet she was as gay as a bird; overful of bubbling spirits, and strong as a young oak.

So lira. Wykeham’s plans about the boy languished as he did, and with them her interest in the child. His health was her master, balking her at every turn. The grand-dame nurse, with her overwhelming information in nursery lore, seemed to oust Evelyn from her boy. Mrs. Wykeham was not naturally fond of children, and little Fulke turned from her, | wailing for his nurse. Soon, wonderfully soon, under the new regime, her visits to her nursery grew j into a duty, not a pleasure, and were, as duties are, occasionally scrimped for want of time.

Nurse understood the baby, the mother did not, and was content to be thus lamentably ignorant.

Gilbert believed what he was told. Evelyn took wifely precaution that he should not be unnecessarily worried over his son’s health. It put the nurse out if people worried. Anxiety of any sort depressed her master unreasonably; his nerves were not what they had been.

In a small way there was what is familiarly known as a-good-deal-going-on at Woodsford.

Mrs. Wykeham possessed that restless form of soul which inspires a society-soarer. She aspired.

The station in which it had pleased Providence to j place her, even though it might have pleased Providence to place her among golden balls and strawberry leaves, can never satisfy a woman of such a temperament. Now that Miss Bradshaw had become Mrs. Wykeham, now that she had changed Vicarage for Manor, she wanted a further advancement in the social scale. She worked like a nigger to attain her end. Forming desirable acquaintances, developing intimacies, cementing ambitious friendships, making no wry face over the dirt to be eaten during such progress.

Of course she was successful: a little wit, a little patience, and the ball is set rolling, which the soarer laboriously forces up the long, long hill.

All this was rather tiresome to a husband who, by temperament and inclination, had no such ambitions. He knew that his wife spelled position with a very big F indeed. He knew that his wife aspired to uppermost seats, that she relished the “few days” at “ good houses,” the “ best dinners,” the gatherings of Burke and Debrett to which they were bidden. He was not the kind of man who would thwart a woman in the indulgence of these trivial gratifications.

Gilbert was docile, he was perhaps “ don’t care,” and he went “ about,” and he gave exclusive dinners, and he amused guests, and he went annually to town. He fished a little, and shot a little, and loafed aimlessly enough through his life.

The school-room swallowed Letice, the nursery engulfed Fulke. His wife had never a spare moment to be wasted on him; he took his life as it came, but sometimes he passively wished it was otherwise. When quarter-days came round he realized that he missed his mother; his affairs got muddled and confused; he could not make head nor tail of them.

In this direction he had no one nowadays to give him a lead. His wife was interested in the rents, but not at all so in those who paid them. He could not rouse himself to he keen about his acres or his tenants. It came to pass that he did not answer letters, nor did he listen to suggestions, nor did he heed complaints.

It happened that at Michaelmas, some four years later than Gilbert’s second marriage, Madam was paying her annual visit to Woodsford, and, at her son’s particular request, she spent a morning with his hooks and with him, before the writing-table in the library.

“ I want you to have a look at tilings. There is a lot of work to be done,” he had said; “ I have no business head.”

For the first hour, during which she had “ looked at things,” she was patient, hut, finally, she could not keep her emotions to herself, and she lost her temper.

She lost it hopelessly, ruthlessly, and effectually with this idle, unabashed destroyer of law and method. She turned on Gilbert, and rent him with sharp words.

“ It is hopeless to try and extricate anything from this muddled maze of littered paper,” she cried, taking off her spectacles, to show that her attempt to do so was at an end. “There are desultory entries, and no checks; you have faint hold on any one, or anything. If this is to be your manner of managing Woodsford, the sooner you sell it the better. No wonder Parsons has given you notice. Promises which you made in my time have not been fulfilled. You have let everything slide; you have looked into nothing. You—” She would have said far more in the same strain, but looking up from the chaos before her, she caught full view of her son’s face. It was not such as stimulates wrath; she stopped her homily abruptly, fluttering some letters in her firm hands. When she spoke again, her voice had altered; it was grave and almost gentle.

“My dear Gilbert, so much depends upon yon; the welfare of so many is in your hands. If you have no taste for such work, you must employ an agent. Neglect does as much harm as mismanagement; it is even more dispiriting to your people.”

“ I haven’t enough work for an agent. I might give Coles more responsibility. He’s a decent sort of fellow.”

“ His head isn’t worth a pin. The farm is well worked because his wife’s a capable woman. She is at the bottom of all the success with which he is credited. Ho wouldn’t be any good to you, Gilbert” He yawned, a yawn which was half a sigh.

“ Gilbert, do the work yourself.” His mother spoke with great earnestness. “You want occupation, interest, and an object in life; I know you do. Here you would find them all.”

“My dear mother, I shouldn’t. I don’t care a straw about this sort of thing. I can’t set to work as if my bread and cheese depended upon it.”

“I wish,” said Madam, under her breath, and though she was a stanch Tory, at that moment she meant what she said—“ I wish that your bread and cheese did depend upon your personal exertion. Work is the salt of life, depend upon it.”

At that moment a youngish man came into the room, whose life was salted in the wholesome manner to which Madam alluded. The youngish man was Richard Tempest, who was that year, as was his autumn habit, spending a brief holiday with his old friends at Woodsford.

“I am just beginning to find that out, Madam,” he of the salted life said, answering her last words, which he had overheard. “ Yours is one of those trite sayings that we have to grow to. I see Michaelmas is providing Gilbert with salt, and to spare ”— laughing.

“ Look there,” said the master of the house, pointing to the litter of papers that covered the writing-table. “ Here is salt for you both. All my accounts, she says, are at sixes and sevens. Tempest is the man you want, mother. Sit down, Tempest; you can have my plaee; I will leave you and Madam to your salt. I want a smoke; my head aches.”

He sauntered out of the room, and then poor Mrs. Wykeham took Mr. Tempest into her confidence.

Tears were in her eyes as she drew his attention to the blunders and the bungles in Woodsford accounts.

“Do help me,” she said; and he did help her, bringing his clear, quick brain to the disentaglement of Gilbert’s maze, and sparing neither trouble nor time to the work.

Small beginnings have large endings, and this dual conference over Gilbert’s unbusinesslike mismanagement of Woodsford affairs later wrought a radical change in Mr. Tempest’s manner of life.

Mr. Wykeham was enthusiastic about nothing, but he did show a preference for his old friend. He sought his company; he listened to his words; he liked Richard Tempest to be within hail.

And when Mr. Tempest entered into every detail concerning the welfare of Woodsford heartily, his influence, with Madam’s to back it, so far infected Gilbert that he began to feel a mild interest in setting his affairs straight.

When Madam saw this, she set her brain to work.

“ If Mr. Tempest could be here more,” she said to herself, “everything would go right; Gilbert would be induced to work; moreover, he would like it. I will see what I can do, but the time is short”

On the last evening of Madam’s Woodsford visit, it chanced that Mr. Tempest was left to keep her company, for their host and hostess were dining at Wigram that night.

A mutual, though unacknowledged, sentiment draws people together in some subtle way. A common feeling concerning this second wife of Gilbert’s bound Madam and Mr. Tempest together in pleasant friendliness.

Madam had settled down in her flat in Ashley Gardens, and she bravely professed a liking for her life therein. If the scapegoat rheumatism had not been cured by her change of scene, she did not complain about it. She complained of nothing; nevertheless, her daughter-in-law dreaded the annual month which Madam spent at Woodsford, and she inhospitably counted the days to her departure.

Fulke should have been a bond of union between them; but he was, on the contrary, a bone of contention.

Madam’s temper was quick and explosive; Evelyn had a temper too, but it was small, slow, tough. Young Mrs. Wykeham, in confidence, told her friends that they did not understand one another; the elder woman would have said that they understood each other too well; and perhaps the elder woman’s conclusion was right.

Madam walked in and out of the nursery at odd hours, and gave her advice concerning her grandson to the great lady who ruled his precincts; the great lady was pert, and Madam rebuked her. Then the great lady revenged herself by lodging a complaint against Madam to her mistress, and she talked of leaving.

“ You bounce into the nursery, Madam, nurse says, at all sorts of hours, and you wake Fulke.” The word bounce was offensive; young Mrs. Wykeham knew it “ I wake up his nurse, my dear. She may be a treasure, but she’s a human treasure. The best of us are all the better for a little supervision. Women in our position leave the care of our children to paid labor; if we are worth our salt, we at least see that we get what we pay for.”

“ Nurse talks of leaving.”

Nurse’s mistress beat her foot on the floor; the situation was provoking.

Nurse talked of leaving, of leaving wistful Fulke, when no one but nurse knew what clothes he wore, or how he wore them; no one save she knew how he went to sleep, or what he ate or drank, or how much of the contents of the medicine-chest he consumed weekly. No wonder his mother fumed at the prospect of having such an organizer as the nurse driven from her household.

“ The boy can’t walk and he’s two years old, my dear. I don’t believe that you give him enough to eat.”

Evelyn flushed.

“ Fulke is not a robust boy.”

“ By-the-by, what do you give him to eat ?”

“I have implicit trust in nurse. I leave such questions to her.”

“ Implicit trust is all very well in its way; in this case it wouldn’t be my way. Fulke doesn’t improve; be goes back.”

“Nurse tells me that Lord Duncan’s eldest boy could not stand until he was three years old. , And now,” with a triumphant inflection of voice, “ he is captain of the Harrow eleven.”

“ Then his delicacy was not constitutional, but the result of mismanagement. Did this nurse of yours look after him ?”

“ She was nurse at the Duncans’ for ten years.”

“ Humph! Lady Duncan is a poor creature—all paint and powder and frivolity, but she is a great lady. Now we middle-class people have leisure in which to be domestic.”

“ Fulke is devoted to his nurse. He will go to no one'else.”

“ I don’t know that; I think he likes Letice better than any one.”

“ Letice tires him. I don’t allow her to be in the nursery overmuch. She has plenty to do in the school-room with Fraulein.”

“ I can’t make head or tail of Fraulein; foreigners always puzzle me.”

“ She was highly recommended by Baroness von Blomberg. She doesn’t speak a word of English, which is an advantage for me as well as for Letice. You see, I don’t speak German, so she is no sort of gêne in the house.”

Madam and her daughter-in-law seldom came together without some such skirmish as this. When five broad counties lay between them, they quite meant to keep the peace, but when they met face to face they fell out. Madam was no light skirmisher; in warfare she was a heavy dragoon. Both in war and in peace she went straight to the point.

So on the night about which I am writing, when Madam found herself tête-à-tête with Richard Tempest, she began to talk to him of the scheme which she had concocted in her energetic mind for the future welfare of the Woodsford property. She was a strong, self-reliant old woman; she wanted no advice about the matter; she had thought out all the details of her desire, and had got her plan cut and dried ready for Richard’s ears.

The welfare of Woodsford lay close to Madam’s heart, closer even, perhaps, than the betterment of her son’s life or of Mr. Tempest’s prospects.

“ You must leave Studholme, Richard, and come here,” she said. “ I only wonder why I never thought of it before. You don’t much like your work in the Bank, and you do like Woodsford. Gilbert wants an agent; he told me so, but I contradicted him. I was wrong; he was right. If the whole place is not to go to wrack and ruin, Gilbert must have a shrewd, practical, energetic man at his elbow to keep him up to his duties. He is being robbed right and left, as people are always robbed if they don’t have energy to attend to their own affairs. I thought work would he good for Gilbert. You may take your horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink. In my old age I begin to see the truth of that proverb. I begin to fear Gilbert won’t drink at my bidding, though he’ll go to the water for peace sake. Poor Gilbert; you’ve known him so long, you will understand: he is fond of you; he is always glad to see you here and loath to let you go, and he is not given to show much feeling nowadays, Richard.”

“ It’s too big a thing, Madam, to be settled in a moment.” Richard’s deep eyes had kindled, his face spoke for him, he liked the suggestion. “ You have taken my breath away. I never dreamed of such a possibility.”

“ No, no more did any of us, and very stupid it was, for the idea is excellent. I’ve thought out every detail. Jenkins is leaving his farm next year; till he leaves you can go there, and learn from him. The agency isn’t much of a billet, but if you take on Jenkins’s farm you won’t starve. You have got a country heart, and you’ve picked up some useful smattering of farming on your father’s place. I’ve been questioning you on the sly the last few days. I know you’ll do.”

“ Madam, I must think.”

“ Yes, yes, but not now. I’ve done enough thought for us both. You will be the right man in the right place. You must back me up. I have spoken to Gilbert; he jumped at the idea. I should rather say he found no fault with the suggestion; he is laisser tiller, and accepts ideas without actually jumping.”

“ But Mrs. Wykeham may not like it.”

“‘Mrs. Wykeham may not like it,’ as you say. This arrangement is Gilbert’s business; it is not hers. Let it be settled before it is talked about; men’s arrangements are best settled before they are discussed with women-folk. The thing is feasible; let the spur of the moment decide it. There is no plan so perfect but holes may be picked in it; let this plan stand, holes and all.”

“ But Mrs. Wykeham will hare a voice in the arrangement.”

“ Arrangements, I repeat, should he concluded first, and talked of later. When women intervene discussion should be avoided. As a matter of fact, Evelyn won’t care tuppence who has the Bed Farm, so long as the rent is paid; she’s a bit of a Jew, is the young lady.”

“ If I should,” began Richard—and then the “ if ” dropped out, and these two conspirators threshed out the future of Woodsford between them, and talked the matter over as though it was settled. They talked to their mutual satisfaction, for their minds were in tune.

Richard had no love for his office stool; he had no alluring prospect of advancement in merchandise, he had no great interest in his work in the Bank, but he had a keen interest in all that pertained to Woodsford, an almost unaccountably deep desire to fall in with Madam’s wishes, and to take up his quarters in the Bed Farm, and to be “ the right man in the right place ” for once in a way.

When Madam went off to bed, he sat like a man in a dream, but his heart beat strong, and his firm lips had taken a half-smile, for the scheme which had been unfolded was such as warmed his heart Heigh-ho! he should never be a rich man, neither on stool nor on farm.

Once he had coveted the things which money could buy; once he had thought that there was hardly a joy which had not its price, but now he knew otherwise.

He was not afraid of poverty; he did not like it, but then he should have enough for his personal need, and he was the only person of whom he had to think.

Howadays he eked out his small income by literary work; his mind was accurate, but not imaginative; fiction was debarred to him.

He could write of what he knew, and such writing was of marketable and of mental value to him.

He liked his pen. With the help of a J nib and an ink-pot, he had got through many a bad hour of his life. His scribbling had taken the place of a wife to him.

During the long half-score of years that had passed by he had now and again seen a face, or heard a voice, or even dived into a mind which he could have loved, for his heart wasyoung and great. But fate had never given him a helping hand; she had driven such faces and voices and minds out of his reach, almost before he had known they were there; and had left him nothing in his heart but the memory of one woman. Fate had decreed that he was to be a bachelor; he fancied that he owed her no heavy grudge for her decision.

For many a day Woodsford had seemed like home to him; though its memories be sad enough, there is no place like home. Home is the house where we are welcome, where we are at ease. Here at Woodsford he was offered work—congenial work. He could not believe in his fortune; it was too good to be true; but even though such a prospect as this was set before him, he could not afford to sit wool-gathering all night about it.

If his pen was his wife, then his wife was as other wives, and had her obligations; she was not likely to flourish under neglect There was a certain article of his which wanted perfecting, and which was due at its editor’s on the following day but one. The manuscript was in its author’s room, and its author roused himself from his dreams, and went up-stairs to fetch it He had intended to finish his work that night, and Richard’s were not the ordinary paving-stone intentions, but were agencies that led him tolerably straight He had been such a regular, such a favorite visitor at Woodsford, that a spare room was known, as his.

A bachelor’s room was called “ Mr. Tempest’s room.”

It was situated close to the nursery; Dick had never objected to nursery disturbances, and under the reign of Phoebe he had gone in and out of her domain in a free and easy, familiar manner which Letice had encouraged.

Eulke’s winnings and whimperings were not attractive ; in fact, his low wailing occasionally got on Mr. Tempest’s nerves. He could not satisfy himself j that weeping could be wholesome. The Woodsford walls were thick; Fulke did not disturb any distant occupant of the house, but Richard often heard him. That night, as Mr. Tempest went up to his room, and passed the nursery door, the boy was crying—the boy was always crying. Poor little chap, people got so accustomed to woe that it soon lost any power of attracting compassion. Mr. Tempest was like most people; he did not relish having his compassion aroused, when he had no possible outlet for that emotion. He was sorry for the child, but he could not do anything to help him. Women understood children’s needs; mothers had a sort of genius for comfort. Why did not some woman or the child’s mother soothe these low, intermittent cries ?

His mind flew back to the past; if Letice had wailed as this boy did, then he could have understood, he could have helped. But from sock and coral days Letice had not been given to tears. Her high spirit -upheld her. He had seen her choke back her sobs, and laugh through her tears when nursery falls, or nursery discipline, or other nursery trials had for a moment overcome her baby fortitude. She was too proud to cry if she could help it. “ Babies cried,” she would say, steadying her drooping lips, and stamping her foot He smiled at the remembrance, and smiling, stopped a moment, as he retraced his way down the first-floor passage, on the nursery threshold. The crying had ceased, and a little treble voice that he recognized was singing a lullaby:

“ I had two pigeons bright and gay,

Bright and gay.

They flew from me the other day,

The other day.

What was the reason they did go?

I cannot tell for I do not know,

I do not know.”

It is ignoble to eavesdrop, but Mr. Tempest deliberately stood, held his breath, and listened.

He knew the pigeon song; Letice had sung it to him before now, but she had no business to be singing it when the clock had struck twelve, and the household were in bed and asleep.

Something was wrong; and Mr. Tempest could let mysterious wrongs slide, with a sigh and a thrusting away of inquiry, like the owner of the pigeons and other folks, in many cases, but not where Letice was concerned. He was ready to run his head into brick walls in her motherless service.

What was she doing here at time time of night ?

Presently the crying ceased, for the pigeon song | was piped most tenderly; a soothing, modulated, motherly lullaby, that rose and fell monotonously.. Gradually the sound died away, and all was still and | quiet. Mr. Tempest found that there was nothing more to listen to.

His curiosity could not quite stoop to the key-hole; ! he would find out what it all meant next day.

So he moved off the mat, and in moving dropped the extinguisher from his candlestick. It rolled off on the boards, and they creaked as he stooped to pick it up. He was not silent in his movements, being a little ashamed of the situation. He was deliberately audible. I

Therefore he was not altogether surprised when the nursery door opened and Letice appeared on the threshold, but her terrified face startled him.

“Why, Letice, what’s the matter? Who has frightened you ?”

“ I am not afraid. I’m hardly at all afraid. It is only you.”

“ Who did you think I was?”

“ I thought you were the ghost, so I came to see. Fulke isn’t frightened; he’s just this moment gone to sleep.”

“ Where is his nurse ?”

“ She’s down-stairs; she goes down-stairs, and when Fulke wakes, he cries, so I come in. She knows I come; she likes me to come; sometimes she fetches me. Fulke is generally good with me. Mamma doesn’t think so, but he is. Ask nurse; do ask nurse.”

She was proud of her power with Fulke, eager to have it recognized,

She smiled at Mr. Tempest; her ruddy color was returning to her cheeks. The ghost would have been a terrible sight. Mr. Tempest’s company was reassuring. This gentleman was a quick thinker, but a cautious actor; he grasped the situation at once. The dialogue had disturbed the sleeper; some, preliminary sounds of waking drew Letice back to her brother’s crib; she stole across the. room, leaving the door ajar. Mr. TempeBt stood without and watched.

Letice was a tall slip of a child, lightly and slightly built.

“ No pat Fulke,” wailed the boy. “ Yook Fulke, Letty.”

Then the little girl dived down among frilled linens and fine embroideries, and took Fulke in her arms. She carried him across to the rocking-chair, staggering a little under her burden, but depositing herself safely in the chair. Steadying herself with her little bare feet, she began to rock gently; meanwhile she sang the song about the pigeons.

Mr. Tempest was at an age when it has become fairly easy to see both sides of a question. But as he watched Fulke and Letice, he did not see any plea at all for the truant nurse; he was ready to charge her with the one unpardonable sin. Indignation vexed him, as a thing that is raw.

By nature he was masterful; fate had allowed him no mastery, save over himself. He was not a pleasant person for a sinner to meet with in a doorway, face to face, when she was, so to speak, caught red-handed. Later, when the nurse stole up from her evening’s recreation, she began to view her defalcation in a new light, illumined by the look in this gentleman’s eyes.

There was a broad view to her side of the question, too, if she could have set it before her accuser.

What right has a woman to expect that service can be bought, which a mother’s love is not capable of bestowing f Mrs. Wykeham imagined—tho wish fathering the thought—that she could buy a devotion to her son, that she herself had not given, nor striven to give.

Such devotion is to be found, all praise to womanhood, but its price is not pounds nor shillings nor pence.

In this case, the capable nurse, with her vast experience and her wage to match, gave her service for money—money service is ample in many cases, but in a nursery it is insufficient; the service there must be the faithful, patient, eternal, long-suffering service of love.

The nurse was a shrewd woman; she had soon discovered that Mrs. Wykeham disliked to be worried about her child; she had a distaste for anxiety concerning him. A manifestation of fidgets would have lost her her place. Little Fulke’s ailments were to he glossed over. His mother was exempt from many of the wearing attributes of motherhood, for she was always eager to believe the best.

She met no nursery troubles half-way; she declined to credit her baby with delicacy. She left everything to nurse. She was wont to boast of this simple faculty, and the male-kind looked upon her with admiration, half wishing their wives had Mrs. Wykeham’s wisdom.

To paid service, sole charge of this ailing child was given: sole charge night and day, week in, week out: sole responsibility night and day, week in, week out. It was a task from which any mortal woman might well shrink. Was it not natural that when, this poor servitor, who served for money, not for love, saw her way to a few free hours and a little male society, she might well steal down from her solitary confinement with a puny baby, and join the world f No one thought of her and of her ease. No one sacrificed themselves on her behalf. Why should she wear herself out over another woman’s child ?

The boy would not get into any harm. His sister was as good as a nurse any day; an hour or two out of her bed would not hurt such a robust child. Be sides, Miss Letice loved the chance of getting into the nursery; she was not likely to'tell her step-mother of these evening visits, for they were the only hours she was allowed to spend with her small brother. All day long she was shut up with the Fraulein, much as nurse and her small charge were confined together; an hour or two off did the woman a deal of good; an hour or two on wouldn’t hurt the little lady.

“ I only went down-stairs for a minute. Flesh and blood can’t stay shut up like a hermit, sirthe nurse addressed Mr. Tempest, for he had not moved off the threshold, and his broad body barred her entrance to her kingdom. He was only a visitor, but she felt as though she had to answer to him for her absence. She was looking at him with appeal. “ It isn’t a natural life, sir; let a lady try it. Flesh and blood can’t stand it.”

“ Flesh and blood can do its duty,” said this Daniel, frowning as he moved aside. The nurse passed through to her domain. A moment later Fulke’s wail broke out afresh, and Letice, at the same instant, came out into the passage.

CHAPTER X

Ah, if beside the dead,

Slumbered the pain!

Ah, if the hearts that bled

Slept with the slain!

If the grief died! but no;

God will not have it so.

—A. Dodson.

“ There is no time like the present,” and “ Strike ‘while the iron is hot,” are a brace of proverbs quoted and credited in youth. Mr. Tempest had not out* grown his belief in them. He heard the sound of wheels on the drive, and taking Letice in his arms, he carried her down to the smoking-room; he had deposited her in her father’s arm-chair, had shut the door, and recovered his breath before the sounds of the return of the revellers reached his ears.

As luck would have it, Mrs. Wykeham, who did not come to the smoking-room once in a decade, elected that night to precede Mr. Wykeham in thither. Flushed, excited, elated by a whole series of small social triumphs, she came humming down the passage and threw the door open with a quick, graceful movement, at which she was an adept.

Her face changed at the sight of Letice, who, with “ Why didn’t you tell me, Letice V* poor mamma cried. “ You should hare told me.”

“ I thought you wouldn’t let me go to him, if you knew,” said Letice, flushing as she spoke, but lifting her eyes full upon Evelyn.

“ It was very wrong of you, Letice.”

“ That is not my way of looking at it.” Easygoing Gilbert spoke in a tone that one of his hearers relished exceedingly. “ Letice, did any one know ' that you went to the boy ?” j “ Nurse knows. Sometimes she fetches me when j she wants to go down-stairs. Eulke’s very good with me.”

“ Does that governess of yours know J”

“ No, she’s always asleep.”

“ Gilbert, I think this examination is an error of judgment”

“ Then errors of judgment are in the air. Will you or shall I go up to your nursery, and tell this woman to be off ? She can’t go till to-morrow, worse luck, but she can pack her things to-night Tom shall have the cart round at cock-crow.”

Poor Mrs. Wykeham ! There was nothing great about her; her plans and her pluck were alike minute.

“ Fulke will die if nurse goes,” she murmured, wringing her hands.

“Then Eulke shall die,” cried her husband; a good-tempered man does not know what to do with a rage. “ If a boy’s own mother does not know how to look after him, no one can. The nurse shall go, and Fulke must take his chance.”

Only Mr. Tempest saw that Letice turned white at these words, and then he struck into the dialogue:

“ You are scaring Letice, Gilbert; she thinks you are in grim earnest Why, PhoBbe will come up and look after the baby; eh, Mrs. Wykeham? And no one will be a penny the worse. Shall I carry Letice up-stairs for you? She can’t walk, naughty child, for she does her nursery-maiding barefoot”

For a man the speaker showed considerable tact; he did more than the lady of the house could do, for he got the pitcher with long ears out of the way, and he ended a most unpleasant conference.

Poor Mrs. Wykeham 1 she was angry with all the world.

Deceitful Letice. Lazy Fraulein. Untrustworthy nurse. Cross husband. Officious guest Yet it was to the officious guest that she turned in her extremity. He was a little sorry for the new mamma, and he spoke kindly.

Ho wonder he was kind; she was looking her best The maize gown and shaded azaleas suited her. Men are generally kind when women look their best Gilbert never seemed to see whether she looked well or ill; he was an unobservant husband; a widower waB dull, heigh-ho! and a step-child was a thorn in the flesh indeed. She sent Letice to her room, and then she turned helplessly to the young man.

“ What shall I say to nurse, Mr. Tempest ? It’s all very well for Gilbert; he sits down-stairs and fumes, but he leaves me to face all the unpleasant scene with nurse. It really is hard in the middle of the night like this.”

It seemed hard on her; she was sore afraid of the sinner, but she dare not face her husband with his orders unexecuted. Hitherto she had never seen Gilbert angry; she had not known that he was capable of speaking with such brutality as he had shown.

“ It is a good thing to get it over, Mrs. Wykeham.” She shrugged her shoulders.

“ That is what mamma used to tell us when we were going to the dentist. It’s the sort of way people philosophize when they are not in the scrape.”

She was close to the nursery door now, and she turned round appealingly.

“ Oh, Mr. Tempest, how shall I put it ?”

“ Straight—put it straight Just the truth; the plain facts put plainly. Ho softenings, no embroideries ; they never make a nasty thing nice.”

She thought over the advice and accepted it; the man was right; people who spoke the truth were the wisest; shb remembered her struggle with Madam. Bah! Madam would crow over her when she heard of this night’s proceedings.

“ Do wait just one moment for me while I interview nurse. Horrid, wicked woman. I had im plicit trust in her.” Mrs. Wykeham’s faith had been of that convenient kind which saves trouble. “ I shall never believe in any one again.”

In the agitation of the moment she, metaphorically speaking, clung to Mr. Tempest; he was pleased to be of service so long as the erring woman was got off the premises. The sight of tired Letice rocking in the nursery-chair, and the patter of her bare feet, and the crying of the boy were fresh in his mind. He awaited his hostess docilely in the passage, even though the interview was protracted and lasted a considerable time. He heard a voice hard at work—a rough voice that drowned his betters. He said to himself that the one plain truth had aroused a legion of plain truths which had overwhelmed it A long time passed before the nursery door opened and Mrs. Wykeham, flushed and indignant, came out therefrom.

“ Impertinent, horrid woman,” she cried. “ She has been rude; she has said unjustifiable things to me. I nearly called to you; I was frightened, but at last Fulke woke up and shrieked; and then she turned to him, and I escaped. She is going; but I had to pay a price for getting rid of her. She said, oh, she said things which I could not repeat.”

Whatever nurse had said took no effect on Mrs. Wykeham; rebukes, to her mind, merely signified a lamentable loss of temper in the speaker; that was the way she took a scolding. She did not wince un der disagreeable home truths; she only despised the utterer of them.

She went off to her room an injured and sorrowful martyr.

Children and servants and husbands were tiresome. Clothes and acquaintances were the only things which were a source of joy. They did not trespass on time and thoughts inconveniently. She had done well to marry; she was an eminently successful woman, but matrimony did not smooth out all the tangles of every-day life; it was not all smooth sailing; the holy state brought with it its own peculiar trials. Thank Heaven, Fulke was her only child; she groaned for her sister Maud and the twins, and the jammy pinafores of the many little ones. She groaned over the continual feast which Maud’s contented mind provided her, and yet the thoughts of Maud’s trials brought her consolation.

She had the modem horror of motherhood strongly developed. Children from first to last handicapped the sort of pleasures which she relished. Sacrifice had never presented itself in an attractive view to the second Mrs. Wykeham. Prosperity did not quite suit her; prosperity is not often a becoming environment to character. It seems as if adversity, with its grim asperity of aspect, is nevertheless easier for humanity to wear with grace and congruily.

Mr. Tempest went down to the smoking-room. That evening was the first time he had ever seen Gil bert Wykeham in a passion. Richard hoped that daring the solitary reflection to which he had been subjected he would have simmered down; and so he had, but the simmering down had been even more complete than Richard had anticipated. He found the master of the house lying on his sofa, looking white, breathing a little fast, and with a look about his eyes such as Richard distrusted, and from which he averted his gaze.

“ Are you ill, Wykeham ?”

“ No, only a bit tired. It has been a long day, the shooting was rough, and the evening long. Is the woman going ?”

“Yes, at cock-crow. It’s all arranged.”

Gilbert got up slowly, walked across to his own fireside chair and sat down; he was looking ill.

“ I’m glad of that,” he said. “ I say,” inquiringly—“ I lost my temper ?”

“ Yes,” said his friend, cheerfully, congratulatorily, heartily, “ you did. Far once in your life, you did lose your temper.”

Gilbert did not respond to this genial manner of treating his outburst.

“ I’m very sorry. I spoke roughly to her. I’d no right to.”

“ A woman, a dog, and a walnut-tree—”

“ No, no, no.”

“ Yes, yes. Women and dogs want breaking. Not broken, they are spoiled. You may spoil good material by letting them have their head all along the road. We are better for the curb. All we threescore and ten mortals go the better for being driven with the curb.”

The speaker had an unrecognized desire that the second Mrs. Wykeham should get her share of curb. He had a disquieting idea that it was posible that the pretty birdlike lady might peck; henpecking puts a male back up, as high as backs will go.

“ You bachelors are wise,” said the Benedict, with a tired smile. “ I don’t know why I lost my temper; it’s knocked me all to pieces. Upon my soul, I thought I was going to faint. Letice is—don’t you see?—she’s got no mother, and all on a sudden I thought of it She’s such a plucky little soul, and I thought I hadn’t done the best I could for her. It’s difficult to judge.”

It is difficult, but judging is a good deal done, nevertheless, by incompetent people. Gilbert did not do it, and he was credulous as he was gentle and kind-hearted. He took the world as he found it nowadays. His companion had more the spirit of a reformer; it was not natural to him to let things go.

“ It is difficult to judge,” he agreed; he had lit his pipe by this time, and was looking thoughtfully at his pale host. “ But I don’t suppose we can say we have done our best until we have got our six foot of earth upon us. When men have given fortune host ages as you have done, they have to be ’ doing ’ all the time. If they don’t do their own share of ‘ doing,’some one else does it for them, and makes a mess of it in nine cases out of ten.”

“Anyhow, the woman’s gone, or going. Erelyn thought her a paragon; she must,” reflectirely, “he easily taken in.”

“ Most people hare to buy experience.”

“ Poor Letty and the boy in this case paid for it”

“ Neighbors always contribute to the expenses of experience.”

To stir up conjugal strife, or, at any rate, conjugal discontent, is not impossible. Notwithstanding the quoting of the well-worn woman and walnut-tree prorerb, Mr. Tempest was no mischief-maker. Few men hare more talent for mischief-making than they hare for tact or tittle-tattle* They may blunder into mischief-making, but it is blundering, not an intentional achievement.

“ My mother tells me I don’t take enough interest in anything, Tempest. She’s been blackguarding me about it lately. There’s something in what she says. Upon my soul, I do my best. It’s not easy when the wind has been knocked out of your sails not to drift with the tide.”

There was a blankness in the roice and in the face of the speaker which quenched any desire to “ blackguard ” in Mr. Tempest’s mind. It struck him that Gilbert had not “ got orer it ” after all; that under the conditions of his life he would never “ get over it.” People got through the tragedies of their life and reached the other side, but they brought the scars of travel with them.

“ Your mother did not blackguard you at all,” he said, a little gruffly, for they were getting close to a confidential wind such as alarms the Briton, “ but she talked to me about you this evening. She thinks you want bolstering up, and she wants me to bolster you. If you really want me, Wykeham, I can come. If I can be of any use to you I will come. You know I’ve got to learn my trade; you know all about me. You can guess I’d rather be here than on a stool at Studholme. Shall I come ?”

“ There’s nothing on earth I should like better,” and Gilbert leaned back again in his chair, staring into the fire, and thinking long and silently.

“ It’s not much of a billet,” he said, suddenly. “ You’re getting on, Tempest; you are only a couple of years younger than I am. You ought to be doing better than you are likely to do here; you ought to be getting married by this time, eh !”

“My dear fellow, stewards always make their fortunes when they have mastered their craft. Till Fve done that, I’ve got a second string to my bow.” He took up a pen from the table,and tapped it expressively. “ By-the-by, there is an article which I must finish to-night. If you lodge, editors will board me.”

“ And the wife ?”

"She’s lodged in the clouds, where’s there no hoarding necessary.”

Then they fell to talking out the details of their coining relationship; neither of them spoke of the past which they shared—the sharing of a past cements human ties as nothing else can do.

Old friendship will stand a strain, for a backbone of memory strengthens it beyond the power of breaking; bnt these two foresaw no strain nor wrench.

Long after Gilbert had gone to bed the younger man sat on at his work; the article had to be written; its author had said so, and he was not good at changing his mind.

He was not quick with his pen, he was not a ready writer. He was observant and accurate, a reproducer, not a creator; he labored at his foolscap.

“ He ought to be doing better by this time,” his new employer had said.

His future, with all its want of fortune, looked fair enough just now to the modified vision of the man. He knew that:

“ The common problem, yours, mine, end every one's,

Is not to fancy what were fair in life,

Provided it could be—but finding first

What may be, then find how to make it fair

Provided it could be—but finding first

Up to our means—a very different thing.”

He set his full lips, and his dark brows met over his grave, bright eyes. He thought that he had con quered the visionary age, that no more fancies of what were fair in life could ever assail him; he thought that he would be content with:

“ Finding first what may be ” before “ he tried to make it fair up to his means.”

When his work that night was done, he went upstairs two Bteps at a time, with his heart beating like a boy’s, and with no sense of age or moderation about him. And he was only two years younger than his host, and before now he had told himself that- all vestige of his youth was gone.

CHAPTER XI

I see her in the dewy flowers,

I see her sweet and lair;

I hear her in the tuneful birds,

I hear her charm the air.

It befell that on a certain 18th of June, Woodsford was en fête. The arrangements for an al fresco entertainment could not be said to beautify the gardens, but they certainly lent a gala, festive air to the bright scene.

In the shade of the acacias on the lawn a great marquee was pitched; it did not encroach on the tennis courts or the croquet ground, where the green turf was shorn close as a Newgate prisoner. Wherever a patch of shade could be found, there lounge-chairs and little tables were to be found also. The beds of June roses scented the hot, fresh air. Though the sun streamed down from a cloudless sky, yet in June heat is never oppressive, for June air is not too languid to stir and rustle the young foliage of the trees, it is not too exhausted to do its refreshing duty to the world for which it lives.

The cool, fragrant pinks grew in thousands on the broad border, where the big peonies, grown pale un der cultivation, flourished among their green notched leaves.

The syringas, the wygerias, the rhododendrons, and many another flowering shrub were at their best; they were bright in the height of their beauty. Another day of sunshine like the present and the folds of their blossom must loosen, their gearing must fail them— and then, alas for them, the sooner the end came the better; broom and wheelbarrow have small respect for gaudy petals, and the flowers had little but color to recommend them, no fruit to find among their branches when petals fell.

Beautiful flowers, the sun was their life as it would be their death. They bear no fruit, it is true, but we don’t turn our backs upon them on that account; petals will fall, but we covet them nevertheless. Useful grass, shady trees are all very well in their homely way, but it is the short-lived flowers that tempt us.

Beyond the Woodsford gardens, divided therefrom by a low paling, lay a dozen acres or so of meadow-land which ran down to the river, and which was flanked by the Woodsford woods, where the bluebells grew, and where the rooks built. These meadows were, at the present moment, down for hay. The ripe grass had been cut three days back, and grilled since then by a scorching sun, and the fragrance had been sucked out of it, so that above and below all the spring scents the air was full of the smell of hay for scores of acres round.

A great wagon, drawn by fat, sleepy horses, their harness jingling as they and the flies had their summer disputes, moved slowly, intermittently, along the line of haycocks. The crop was being carried, and groups of haymakers were tossing the hay on their pitchforks in overflowing oads into the cart.

These rustic laborers, with the sweat on their brows, and the muscles of toil ridging their rough arms, worked with a will. The sight of labor is oppressive, but not labor such as this; monotony of toil is oppressive; there is an exhilarating variety about this picturesque garnering, which is part of the attraction of a hay-field.

Taller than his fellows, a lean, sinewy, hroad figure of different cut and calibre tban they, but with every whit as much strength, dexterity, and doggedness as the professional toilers, worked with tho throng.

They wanted hands, the many “ hands which make quick work and easy,” for Mr. Tempest, the agent, mistrusted the climate of his motherland; she had bestowed her three proverbial fine days upon her children; the proverbial thunder-storm was to follow, no doubt Happy those who prepare themselves and their crops for the deluge!

In technical language, there was a lot of “ carrying ” to be done between then and nightfall: if the prospective risks had been Mr. Tempest’s very own, this just steward could not have labored with keener zest on their behalf.

Following at Mr. Tempest’s heels, with a rake in his hand, a listless hoy, in white flannels, made believe to make hay too. His face was scarlet with his unwonted exertions; he was a thin, small child, looking far younger than his years, and obviously languid and delicate.

“ Fulke, get on the wagon and ride down to the farm. You look tired.”

The hoy sat down on a haycock.

“ It’s too stuffy on the cart,” he said. Fulke seldom said “ no ” direct, but he managed, boy-like, to evade unpleasant commands.

Mr. Tempest took his watch out and looked at it.

“It’s three o’clock, Fulke; the people are coming at four. You had better go in.”

“ They will fetch me when they want me. I ”— ingenuously—“ shall only be in the way.”

“ Fulke ! Fulke ! Fulke !”

The call was vigorous; it seemed to stir the scented air all round. Mr. Tempest looked up, pausing from his work, but Fulke sat still. He sat still unrebuked.

“ I’m here,” he raised his childish voice. “ You can come, if you want me.”

He was still motionless and unrebuked.

The just steward struck his pitchfork in the baked ground with a sharp gesture; he tilted his hat over his eyes, and looked from its shadow towards the house.

For ten years Mr. Tempest had been steward at Woodsford; for ten years he had been domiciled at the Bed Farm, a stone’s throw from his master’s gates. In ten years a great deal may happen; ten years is a long time.

Be was not young; he was some years the wrong side of forty. His thick hair was iron-gray. He was not given overmuch to laughter, and there were but few crow’s-feet round his eyes. The casement of his eyes time had worn, nevertheless the eyes themselves had lost none of their vigor, but were keen or kind, fiery or fierce as the mood took him, much in the same superlative degree as they had been in his early manhood. In repose his mouth had contradictory lines about it, but he had grown a mustache which concealed the tell-tale feature. This appendage altered him, people said: he looked younger than he had done half a dozen years ago; he had certainly changed in appearance.

In some ways he told himself that he had not changed, and would never change. He himself was conscious, just lately, of having grown younger. His age did not weigh on him. He was surprised at his own gray hairs when he saw them in the glass. What business had they there ? His life had but just begun. Aye, it had but just begun, although the girl whom he stood and watched as she came through the hay-field towards him was a woman now, a woman grown. And she was his godchild, Letice, young enough to be his daughter, but fair enough “ to make an old man young.”

“ Oh, browner than the berry,

Oh, ruddier than the cherry.”

Letice fitted those lines still, and she fitted others, too. No matter what song he heard, what verse he read, what thought ran in his mind, she fitted to its beauty, it spoke of her.

It was because Letice had changed, he told himself, that he had also changed, if change there was. It was not his fault; it was the inevitable. He had his dark moments when common-sense rose in her cold strength and warned him to be off; but common-sense has little power with passion, except just now and again, when, relying upon the encouragement she has received in the past, she whispered to Mr. Tempest persistently of pros and cons.

He had talked once to Letice of his leaving Woodsford. He had told her he should go. Tears had come into her eyes, and she had taken one of his sinewy hands in hers.

“ It wouldn’t be home without you,” she had said. “ Dad would break his heart, and I should break mine. I know mamma is rude sometimes, but she does not mean it. You must not mind.”

She thought he was going because mamma had, at one time, obviously wished him to do so. Mamma always wished something very much, but lately her wishes about Mr. Tempest had seemed to be modifying. Letice was tender of other people’s wishes, but not ^discriminatingly so.

Letice had been for many a year the chief object of Mr. Tempest’s thoughts. Her happiness, her welfare, her prosperity had been dear to him before any sort of personal feeling had crept into the affair. He • had always been a fool about Letice—only the foolishness had taken a leap just lately and turned to madness.

He might perchance have strangled all this tumult of feeling in its birth, but he had a friend who made it her business not to let sleeping dogs lie, but to stir them up and to let them loose.

There was no harm, as the saying goes, save inordinate vanity in the second Mrs. Wykeham, the ill-weed vanity that grows apace. As Mr. Tempest had once expressed it, “ if a man won’t do his own work, some one else will do it for him, and in nine cases out of ten make a hash of it.” If a man does not make love to his own wife, if he does not fulfil all the many little obligations of his position, it is often found that some one else will do it for him. Mrs. Wykeham provided herself, by degrees, with a succession of somebodies in some such chivalrous capacity. She acquired a drunkard’s thirst for admiration, and Letice was a rival. The admiration Evelyn coveted was but a mild admiration, mildly given. All her capacities, alike for good and evil, were limited.

Letice, from her childhood, had always been a gêne in the house, in her womanhood she was worse than that. She interfered, unconsciously it is true, but still she did interfere with her mamma, at every point and period of daily life.

And she had not married'; for two years she had been persistently taken out; she had been on show in the matrimonial market, and nothing had come of it. Mrs. Wykeham had not been hard to please; every fish that came to the net she had exerted herself to land. Any husband for Letice was better than no husband. Letice saw how hard mamma tried to find her a husband, and the sight was not altogether gratifying.

The girl was never reserved, nor proud, nor headstrong with Mr. Tempest. With the lynx eyes of partiality he knew her best of all. With him she was high-spirited; but she showed her warm heart, her gentleness and truth to him.

Mamma had never liked Mr. Tempest, but now she began to praise him—his looks, his manners, his clothes, and his faithful heart It was wiser not to despise any true feeling. Old—not old? Forty something was in the very prime of life; and if it should he accounted age, why, the proverb knew all about it, “ ’twas better to be a middle-aged man’s darling than a young one’s slave.”

Letice had blushed. She was ready to be a slave, if she could find a worthy master. To be a mere “ darling ” was not to her mind. Yet she had blushed.

Mamma was essentially a woman, and long before Mr. Tempest had known it she had known he was head over ears in love with Letice. Then mamma went to headquarters, and rallied the man himself on his conquest; and talked of how oddly girls chose mates, and of Letice’s ardent lovers, and of her fastidiousness, and of her pride. She did more than hint, for men are dull of comprehension; she spoke broadly, and the man listened gladly, half believing. Men are green.

“ For men are fire, and women are tow,

When some one cormes and begins to blow.”

Why should he not love her f he argued with himself thus. He was not a hoy; he could keep it to himself—unless—unless; he broke that thought off and started on another. He would die sooner than hurt a hair of her head, but he should have to die in good sooth before he ceased loving her.

Why should he not love her ? He had not done it deliberately; it had come upon him unawares; he could not help it. Why should he help it ? No one could love her more than he did. As long as he held his tongue it did no harm.

Till a few months ago he had been a quiet, mature, long-headed, shrewd, indefatigable agent, sure of himself, with no over-long thoughts or strong desires. He ought to have gone then; of course it had been his duty to go—only—only—here She came.

Slowly, bareheaded, with a parasol, red like a poppy, held np to shelter her face, she came smiling across the scented hay in the sunshine towards him. Liquid brown eyes, dewy red lips, ruddy cheeks, little head, curved, reedy, swaying figure, clad all in gossamer white, fine and light as a lace cobweb, she came over to him; to—him.

Ah, if she had been a beggar-maid and he a King Cophetua, if he had a crown to lay at her feet 1 Half his life was gone; he had not even that to offer her. His humility of mind was not betrayed by his kindling eyes, or by his broad, strong figure, as he leaned on his fork and smiled at her. His greeting was quite commonplace; he might let his feelings run amuck, but he was master of his speech.

“ So that is the new gown,” he said; “ it’s very pretty.”

“ Mamma thinks I am too dark to wear white, except at night.”

“ No woman looks so well as in white. I should dress even the nigger ladies in white, if I’d my way, or a word to say about it”

“ I came for you, Fulke; the people will be here in half an hour.”

“ Who minds the people ? I’m tired.”

She did not contradict or argue with him but held out her hand..

“Come, dear,” she said, “you shall rest later,” and gentle Fulke got up. He was not in awe of Letice ; she loved him passionately, but her form of loving was not wholly indulgent; some people don’t relish such affection, but Fulke did; he was very fond of his step-sister.

Woodsford was not a merry household, and Letice had not much of the spontaneous gayety of youth about her. She had a regal air, holding her brown head with unconscious dignity. Her voice was attractive, being low-toned though not monotonous, but full of cadence and varying in expression.

Though she was gentle in manner she was not placid; quick feeling, if it was touched upon, flashed out suddenly, taking the uninitiated in great surprise. Her eyes, her mouth, her chin were not the features of a passive, indifferent woman; and, when she was angry, she had once or twice betrayed a boldness and strength such, as seemed strange to find in Gilbert Wykeham’s daughter.

“You must come, too, Mr. Tempest,” she said; she had not grand ways with him, nor with any one. She was natural in manner; it was only when her pride was roused that she became unconsciously lofty; and the husband-hunting to which she was sometimes exposed was not, as has been said before, exactly gratifying to one of her character. “Mamma has been waiting you all the time.” Mamma was in the habit of encroaching on Mr. Tempest’s time, and of using him as though he were an upper servant.

An agent, to her mind, was responsible for every failure within and without his employer’s establishment: for a stale egg, for a lame horse, for a bad harvest, for a reduced rent, for a thriftless tenant ; she had been accustomed, till recently, to grumble at Mr. Tempest whenever she was annoyed at anything. Her husband bore it patiently; his patience was one of his attributes over which his daughter pondered with knitted brow. Patience implied sufferance, endurance. She thought she could suffer and endure, but she could not be patient; she was not sure that she altogether wanted to be patient.

“ There were trails of wild roses and honeysuckle to be got for the tent table, and mamma wanted you and me to go off in the cart and to get them. I begged you off, and sent Macqueen. He is as sulky as a bear; while he was away we robbed him of half his roses. I ”—she held out a tanned hand, a wellshaped, capable little hand, with a big thorn embedded in the index finger, to be inspected—“ I have got this horrid thorn well into my finger. Can you get it out, Mr. Tempest ?”

“ I’ve nothing to get it out with, Letice.”

“ Come into the house and I’ll find you a needle.” After he had given some directions to the men, he went with Fulke and the girl into the house, but he excused himself from anything to do with the thorn. He had been working too long in the heat, his hands were not steady, and the thorn was deep.

“ You have been working too hard,” she said, looking rather anxiously into his face. “ You look tired, Mr. Tempest; you are pale.”

He smiled; he was the happiest man in the country-side.

“ I am not tired. Do you think I am made of sugar, like Fulke here ?”

“ Sugar f No. You are tireless; you never rest. You are as hard as nails, even harder, for I don’t believe you’d bend if I hammered you.”

“ My head might come oil,” laughing. He laughed like a boy, from sheer lightness of heart.

“ That is better than bending,” she laughed, too. “ Now come with us, with Fulke and me, and let us have a great look round before the people come.”

The vision of syllabubs and junkets, bowls upon bowls of roses, iced drinks and bonbons, cake and fruit and cream attracted Fulke towards the tables and the tents; his elders sauntered through the rose walk by the pinks.

From behind the blind in her room, while sho straggled with her gloves, Fulke’s mother watchod Miss Wykeham, turning the girl’s prospects over in her mind, somewhat after this fashion:

Her companion was not much in the way of a match; Letice was undeniably handsome; she ought to do better; but beautiful girls do not marry so early as their less favored sisters; they have a knack of loitering on the matrimonial threshold, expecting more than fate offers them.

Should Letice hang on another half-dozen years, how terrible that would be.

Fortunately the foolish girl was falling in love with poor Mr. Tempest, for want of a more suitable lover.

Lovers, by reason of things, turned into husbands; husbands soon grew dull and unpicturesque; money was.the factor that alone marked difference in married life.

Poor Mr. Tempest was not without admirers; he was popular far and near, with men and women alike. Mrs. Wykeham never understood why. Kate had been quite foolish about him, and had been rallied about her interest in him. Mrs. Wykeham, not liking the man, half wished he could marry Kate; she thought Kate as a wife would do him good. But he would not look at Kate, and he never took his eyes off Letice.

As soon as this rose-walk courtship was more advanced, Mrs. Wykeham decided that she would mention the subject to Gilbert; she anticipated his opposition to the match; opposition, of course, would clinch the business.

Heigh-ho ! When Letice was married, life would be far pleasanter.

The gloves were on at last, and then Mrs. Wykeham took a last long look at her lilac gown and her lilac hat, mourning a little as she did so for her waning youth. Then she rustled quickly down-stairs and out through the garden to the rose walk.

“ Letice, dear child,” her head was on one side, like that of an arch bird, “ you have forgotten the time again. Mr. Tempest, I shall scold you. Letice always forgets the time when she is with you.”

Was it true f Could'it be true ? Letice drooped a little; her eyes fell on the ground. He held his head up, but he was dumb. Mrs. Wykeham’s strategy was effective.

“ You must go now. I don’t want to be cruel; you will meet again. But I hear wheels; some one is coming. Get your hat on, Letice. Oh, Fulke, Fulke, you have stained yourself with strawberries, and your coat is green.”

Yes, Letice had forgotten Fulke, and this time his mother was very naturally anhoyed. The brother and sister fled; there was no time now to get out tho thorn; it would have to stay where it was for many an hour. It hurt a little, but Letice forgot it; there was so much to be done, so much to be said, so much to be thought of when Woodsford was en fête.

CHAPTER XII

O, my Lore’s like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprang in June:

O, my Lore’s like a melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear.

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

I will lore thee still, my dear,

While the sands of life shall ran.

And fare thee well, my only Lore:

And fare thee well a while.

It has been said that there is a sameness about garden-parties, and if a thing he said often enough, there will always he found some one sufficiently credulous to believe it.

The herd of brightly clad folk, who presently spread themselves out according to their several tastes and several stations in the Woodsford gardens, and even straggled off by two and three into the hay, were most of them familiar objects enough at the garden-parties in this particular vale of Devon. The “ best ” people were still mostly in London, but the second-best people were many in number, and their frocks were untossed, their freshness undefiled by a London debut The second-best people enjoyed themselves more demonstratively than the first Mrs. Wykeham, as a rule, ignored the second bests; only her latest admirer was a second-best person, and she had consequently socially unbent somewhat.

The strawberry feast and hay-party combined had been a yearly function of late at Woodsford, and it was a popular fete. From far and near, every one who had been invited made an effort to be there; odd vehicles, with quaint inmates, mixed with more up-to-date equipages, filed in a long procession up the drive.

Mr. Tempest blamed the weather, the thunder in the air, the electricity that made his heart beat and his head light; the excitement of a garden-party was not usually so feverish.

There was a dearth of the male sex, and Mr. Tempest calmed down after an hour’s physical labor with tea, coffee, and ices.

Letice was hospitably busy, too; she was working hard; the work in the sun paled even her ruddy cheeks. She looked at Mr. Tempest and laughed over a pile of strawberries. She wore a hat like a Rubens picture, soft white feathers curling over the broad brim. He thought she was the most beautiful' woman in the world, but that her beauty was but the least of her charms.

He wanted to get away by himself to think, but such unsociability was not permitted him. A voice, sharp, short-breathed, but with a tone in- it that sometimes struck him as pathetic, addressed him.

Miss Bradshaw was his fate; he was forever finding her at his side. He was no coxcomb; he had no idea there could be a design that shaped the coincidence. If she did not set his teeth on edge by the acidity of her remarks, she amused him. There was something nice about her he had said once or twice to Letice, and Letice thought the niceness must be her preference for him. No doubt that had something to do with it.

“ Is Gilbert going to stand for this division ?” she asked. “ This gathering of Evelyn’s looks like it; it looks,” she sniffed a little, “ political.”

“ I can’t imagine Wykeham in Parliament.”

“ Can’t you ? .Oh, I could. He would be one of the multitude who

“ ‘Always voted at their party’s call.

And never thought of thinking for themselves at all.’ ”

“ Poor Gilbert I look a him now. Mr. Northford has button-holed him.”

The master of Woodsford, aged by the past ten years, his great shoulders bent, his mustache grizzled, all his smartness gone, stood talking, or rather listening listlessly to the discourse of a garrulous acquaintance.

Mr. Tempest’s eyes shadowed at the sight.

“ Evelyn doesn’t see how Gilbert ages. I should be ashamed if my husband went to pieces like that; I should be afraid people would say nasty things.”

Evelyn was not in sight; she was down in the kitchen-garden with Mr. Hoggins, looking at the pease.

“ Good gracious, Mr. Tempest! Here are the Wigrams. Buth and Betty don’t look respectable! I thought they were in London.”

“ They are down this week for the Agricultural Show.”

“ Letice has seen them—that is all right. She has rather pretty ways—when she likes it. What a noise Lady Wigram always makes; she reminds me of the parrot-house at the Zoo. Who is that man with her ? I never saw him before. Letice has pounced on him at once. I am sure I don’t wonder. He is the bestlooking person I’ve ever seen in my life; he takes the political flavor away from the party. Evelyn says she has scoured three counties ineffectually for Letice. I should think she’s a girl who will see after herself. Yes, I will have another ice, Mr. Tempest; they are at any rate cold; they have little else to recommend them.”

But Miss Bradshaw did not get her ice, and she lost her squire. He went off to the marquee for the ice, and he forgot it and his manners; some time was to elapse before he again came across the lady.

The Wigrams were the very best people, but the very best people have not always a good effect on the manners of the second bests. There were sundry complex reasons for Mr. Tempest’s lapse of memory and manner.

It was not that he was annoyed, but he saw that the Wigrams’ male importation had bad taste. He was a good-looking man, certainly, this connection of the Wigrams. Letice had met him the preceding day at the Show; she had mentioned him by name to Mr. Tempest.

“ Sir Wilmot Kirwan, who is staying at Wigram, is showing a polo pony,” she had said; “it is a beautiful pony, and it would have had first prize if the judges had known what they were about”

A man who made any woman conspicuous ought to be— This man was making Miss Wykeham conspicuous ; from the moment he had arrived until now —now when the people were going, or beginning to —he had hardly left her side. He looked like a prince, but he was a boor. Letice did not understand ; she was young, she had no mother, she did not realize etiquette demanded that she should forbear such company even though she found it to her mind.

There was no electricity in the heavy air now.

The conspicuous pair had played a set of tennis as partners; they had been in the hay-field and had stood a long, long while watching the piling of tho rick. They had come leisurely back to the lawn at length and now they were pottering in the rose walk, side by side. Other people were there, but other people looked and smiled at this pair of loiterers. Mr. Tempest saw them doing so and he went into the rose walk too, and joined Letice. He was introduced to the Apollo, and remembering the polo pony, he talked of that Sir Wilmot was very good to look upon; a stalwart Saxon, fair and dean-featured, with bold blue eyes that met your own unflinchingly.

He was a popular person; he had a knack of attaching himself to the fairest woman present, and the fairest woman generally liked it. He talked pleasantly; his easy, gracious manners abetted his good looks; though he was not a great party, yet there were few houses, even among the most exclusive, where he was not .welcome; his social qualities were invaluable. Letice had attracted his attention at the Show. Letice, in the Bubens hat and the gossamer gown, was even fairer than he had remembered her to be. He made the moet of his afternoon; he was going to Ascot to-morrow; he certainly had made the most of his one afternoon, and now this man, this family friend sort of man, came and stuck at his side like a leech, and wanted more shaking off than was credible.

“ Lady Wigram is going,” said the gauche family friend suggestively.

“ That won’t do at all.” Sir Wilmot turned his shoulder upon the speaker, and addressed Letice. “ You have promised me a drive in the wagon before I go. No hay-party was ever complete without a drive to the ricks. We must be off this very instant or we shall be caught.”

Like a pair of happy children they hurried away:

Mr. Tempest stood and watched them. When a man really loves a woman he does not make her conspicuous. A man who is worth calling a man never indulges in tactics in his own interests; he has a candid male habit, and does not look pleased unless he feels pleased.

“ Mr. Tempest!” The sharp voice which now addressed him had that pathetic note in it. Again he observed it. “ I want to talk to you about Snell. He is drinking.”

Miss Bradshaw caught his attention; she intended to do so. Snell was the shepherd, and when the shearing was over and easy times came, Snell annually fell to drinking, and his master and he fell out.

“ Snell’s making hay to-day.” ,

“ He’s drinking hard.” j “ I thought he was sober when I saw him.”

“ His wife told me. A wife generally knows.”

Mr. Tempest tried to think about Snell. He tried to pull himself together. He was not going to keep watching that splendid young pair of figures as though he was a spy. He took Miss Bradshaw down to the kitchen-garden, out of sight of the hay-field; he talked to her, he listened to her. He found himself pitying her for her physical weakness; he felt full of pity. Life struck him anew as a pathetic drama.

Poor Hate, with feminine intuition, half under stood why he paced up and down, up and down by the herbaceous border, till her legs ached. In truth he wanted to find that the Wigram party had been safely despatched before he returned to the house. Kate hoped that Evelyn knew where she was, and in whose company; she trusted that Evelyn would not understand the situation.

This tête-à-tête might imply much, though, alas, it signified worse than nothing. Kate had no objection to being made conspicuous.

It was little Fulke, at last, who invaded the kitchen-garden and disturbed this pair of people. His white face was whiter than usual, his eyes dilated; he was too breathless with the pace at which he had come to speak except in gasps.

“ Mr. Tempest, you are wanted—there’s been an accident.”

“An accident! What do you mean? Who is hurt?”

Of course the hearer’s mind was only capable of grasping one idea that afternoon. Whatever the accident might be, it did not matter so long as Letice escaped free.

“ The big man Letty was with.”

“ Ah 1 What has happened to him ?”

“ They got up on the hay-cart; it was full of hay. Letty went first, and the big man was following her. He’d got a foot on the wheel, and Snell hit the horses, and they started off at such a pace, and the big man got his leg in the spoke, and it’s broken badly. Letice called out for you, so I came.”

The “ big man ” behaved with great pluck. You would not have known, from his manner, that a broken leg was any more connected with physical suffering than is a broken stick. Fortunately, among the remnants of the garden-party, a doctor guest still remained, and under his guidance Sir Wilmot was carried into the house; his leg was set; he was established in the best spare room, and a nurse from Exeter was telegraphed for.

The sufferer neither cursed nor swore, neither grumbled nor groaned. He set his teeth under his fair mustache, and his lips were white, but he said nothing, save an occasional “Thank you.” Mr. Tempest could not avoid recognizing these admirable qualities of his; there must be good in a man who knew how to bear pain. Mr. Tempest hoped that he wanted to find good in the fellow. Fate, no doubt, knew what she was about when she picturesquely placed this Adonis under the Woodsford roof.

Mr. Tempest tried to put a good face on a sharper pain which was of another kind, and he, too, on his part succeeded, though he got no credit, even personal credit, for the feat.

As Wilmot had elected to break his leg, Lady Wigram was glad that he had done so at Woodsford instead of at Wigram. They, the Wigrams, were going back to London next day, and she would have no qualms about leaving Wilmot and his leg in the Wykehams’ care.

Of course it was horribly unfortunate, and she was more distressed than she could say. Haymakers always got drunk, only Wilmot didn’t know it, or he would have been more careful. She would write to Wilmot’s sisters; he had no nearer relations than a couple of married sisters, who were both in London just now. Lady Wigram did not think it would be possible for them to get down to Woodsford to see him. A broken leg was tedious, but not an anxiety.

“ Letice,” and Lady Wigram turned to the daughter of the house, who sat silent, listening with a serious mouth and eyes a little sunken from all this long June day’s excitement to Lady Wigram’s remarks, “will have to look after Wilmot a little. He’ll want cheering, poor fellow; he isn’t used to being tied by the leg! The carriage has been waiting an hour. We must go. Come, Betty. I will send all his things over this evening. I am so distressed. It is such a trouble for you all. You are too kind, dear Mrs. Wykeham.”

“ I cannot but be thankful he wasn’t more hurt. We ourselves feel guilty; don’t we, Gilbert ? If that' horrid man of ours had been sober it wouldn’t have happened.”

Mrs. Wykeham was accompanying her distinguished guest into the hall.

“ Ton must look after that pretty girl of yours, my dear. So many women are silly abont Wilmot He’s a cousin of mine, bnt I don’t know so very much of him. I don’t know if he is a marrying man.”

Lady Wigram meant this well. Betty knew it, and Letice ought to know it. Wilmot had not qnite finished sowing his wild oats, by all accounts. In Lady Wigram’s set there was always an epoch set aside for this disposal of grain. Men sowed, and later the womenkind had no objection to sharing in the disastrous takings of harvest.

Mrs. Wykeham looked over her shoulder; Betty and Letice, arm in arm, were following their elders.

“ Letice looks after herself. She isn’t susceptible.”

“ That’s all the more dangerous. Ahem! Come, Betty. Good-bye, Letice; you ought to be very grateful to me. I’ve left yon a charming young man, and he can’t get away from yon. Ha, ha! You must make the most of your time.”

“ If all women were like Lady Wigram,” remarked Miss Letice, coming back to the drawing-room, where Gilbert was talking to his agent, and speaking with her head held unusually high, “ I would rather be a man than a woman.”

“ Of course he must go, Tempest . You have overlooked it more often than enough.”

“ I’ve told him so. He’s sober now. It is a lesson.”

“ Poor Mrs. Snell,” said Letice.

“ If a woman chooses to marry a weak fellow like Snell,” chimed in Mrs. Wykeham, “ she has to take the consequences.”

“ Poor Mrs. Snell,” said Letice, again.

“ She will be up to see me this evening,” Mr. Tempest said, looking at the last speaker. “ She’s a proud sort of woman, hut she has half a dozen children, and she won’t let them starve if she can help it.”

“What a lot of consequences Mrs. Snell has to take,” Letice spoke quickly, “ poor thing!”

“ It would be a great error of judgment to overlook this,” said the mistress of the house; “ it would be an encouragement to drunkenness among the laborers. Mr. Tempest, dinner is ready; you will stay and dine with us ? Everybody and everything is at sixes and sevens, but my husband tells me you won’t mind. Dr. Marshall is coming back presently to see if the poor young man is comfortable; he says there is nothing to be done now hut to leave him quiet How thankful I feel it is no worse. It might have been his head, but it is only one leg, after all, that was hurt”

Whatever outward misfortune befell Mrs. Wykeham, she was always volubly thankful it was no worse. A thankful attitude was a favorite one of hers; mourning of any sort was distasteful.

Once she had not turned her back on a Bouse of mourning, but since those days she had changed. Perhaps she had had more experience of the Lamentations of Jeremiah than she had bargained for. Nowadays she certainly gave “ affliction ” as wide a berth as .was feasible. She would see nothing but the bright side of existence, and overdoing this cheerful aspect of things drove her companions, as is the law of nature, to the other extreme.

Gilbert was not much interested in the invalid one way or the other; he was the only member of the family dinner-party who had no latent air of excitement.

Mrs. Wykeham’s tongue, which had gathered strength from the passing years, as the tongues of her sex are too prone to do, wagged incessantly. Letice listened; she was not hungry, and she did very little else but listen. Mr. Tempest talked; he talked politics, crops, party; he talked of many things, but he avoided Sir Wilmot’s name. He found that Gilbert always answered him. Letice and her step-mother were not attending.

He had to go back to the Bed Farm early; the Snell business must be settled before the morrow, and there were other things to be done. So, soon after dinner was ended, Mr. Tempest left his host to his claret and his tobacco, and he went into the drawingroom to make his adieus to the ladies.

Letice was there, sitting on the window-seat, with her head against the window-frame, and her hands in her lap; she was alone. The window was open and the blind up ; the night air was fresh and fragrant.

She rose when Mr. Tempest came in, and walked towards him.

“ I tried to work,” she said; she was a busy pemon, with fingers cunning at needlework, and she never sat idle, “ bnt this thorn hurts me. I can do nothing.”

A few honrs will sometimes put a new complexion upon life, and will steady poises, so that they flag and faint where they leaped before.

“ Come over to the lamp,” said Mr. Tempest; “ I can’t see here.”

She came into the light, holding np her finger. The thorn was deeply rooted and obstinate, and he dug deep, bnt deftly, before he got it out.

“ I hurt you, I’m afraid his hand was even steadier than hers.

“ The thorn hurt.”

“ It was in so deep.”

“ I was dragging at a rose that was ont of reach, and my hand slipped.”

He looked at her as if he was going to moralize, but he forbore.

“ Dr. Marshall is here,” she went on. “ Mamma has gone up to hear how Sir Wilmot Kirwan is now. The nurse has come.”

“ Really. I must go and interview the Snells.”

“ I don’t believe he was drunk; I think it was just an accident.”

“ Oh, Letice, you never think people mean harm. It is very nice of you to believe in all the world, but it’s dangerous.”

“ Give him another trial.”

*

“ Don’t you remember the broken leg ?”

' “Yes.”

“ Is no one to be punished ?”

“ He will be so sorry himself; that’s punishment , enough.”

“ Not quite. It isn’t the sin but its consequences that inculcate amendment as well as repentance.”

“ You are talking like a book.” She was still concerned with the index finger, and her eyes were on the injury. I don’t suppose Snell will ever quite amend, but he has got to be helped through his life somehow.”

“ You heard what your father said ?”

“ Dad won’t mind. You know quite well that he leaves everything to you. You are the responsible person.”

The responsible person sighed; the weight of responsibility is oppressive. Some one deserved a stinging punishment for the broken leg. He could not quite understand the girl, no doubt because she did not quite understand herself.

“ Yes, I am the responsible person. Mrs. Wykeham has already told me that I am guilty of the whole business.”

“There’s mamma,” she said, turning suddenly.

“ I hear her.” She had gone some steps towards the door; then she turned back, and again addressed him. “ You are kind, and you are so wise; whatever you do, I know it will be right, Mr. Tempest.”

Her words were good in his ears; she was true as steel, and her mind was just, with no feminine turns nor twists nor blind alleys to confound those who loved her.

God bless her. He had been fay of late. He had forgotten the lessons he had learned. He had struggled himself free of misgivings; nature had helped him. Nature is strong. She does not learn of experience, nor of caution. Nature is female; she has turns, twists, blind alleys to confound those who follow her.

It would not take him long to get wisdom this time. Even now, on his way home, ho fancied that he was not feeling young any more.

And the lines, which had helped him in the past, came stealing back into his mind, and tried to comfort him now.

“ The common problem, yours, mine, and every one’s

Is not to fancy what were fair in life,

Provided it could be—but finding first

What may be, and then find how to make it fair

Up to one’s means—a very different thing.”

He would be content to work out this common problem in the common way; he would he content —for himself—but not for Letice, not for her.

Let her fancy what “ were fair in life/’ and get it tcxv This love of his was a true love, and therefore a thing of tears and prayers and sacrifice. For love is of God, and the divine thread runs through it; let those who run read.

Just then it was difficult to make life fair, specially so for poor Mrs. Snell, whom Mr. Tempest found awaiting him at the Bed Farm.

“ Tou are kind, and you are so wise.” Letice had spoken these fair-sounding words.

Kindness was in his own hands, but wisdom, like health, is but partially optional.

Mrs. Snell was closeted with Mr. Tempest at the Bed Farm for more than an hour. She was begging hard for the one more chance, which Mr. Tempest was ill inclined to give. Snell was waiting for her in the lane; he had soaked away some of his senses, but he had wit enough to be spending a very unpleasant evening.

“ God bless you, sir,” said Mrs. Snell, wiping her eyes. She had not shed a tear till now, but when Bhe rose to go, when she had got her “one more ' chance,” she thought of the children. “ You have a heart, sir, and hearts do more than heads any day.”

“ Then you do think I’m a fool for trying Snell again,” and Mr. Tempest laughed dryly. “ Goodnight, Mrs. Snell, and mind you tell your husband what I say.”

“ I’ll tell him as much, and more than that, sir.”

“ Remember, if you’ve got to hit, hit hard, and hit seldom. You women don’t understand that.”

“ We women understand more than you think, sir; and if we are driven to nag, ’tis because the flesh is weak.”

“ You are right enough, the flesh is weak; and if Snell never does quite amend, he’s got to be helped through his life somehow.”

“ It will be better for us all, sir, when the children grow up.”

“ To be sure, the good times are always—coming. Tell Snell to be round here at nine sharp to-morrow. Good-night.”

CHAPTER XIII

If all the world and lore were young,

And truth In every shepherd’s tongue,

These pretty pleasures might me more

TTo live with thee, and be thy love.

If youth could last and love still breed,

Had joys no date, nor age no need;

Then these delights my mind might move,

To live with thee, and be thy love.

Sir Wilmot Kikwah excelled in the social accomplishment, adaptability. He accepted his broken leg with a gracious politeness that was admirable; he eschewed all mention of pain or discomfort. During the month that he and his nurse were shut up in the big spare room at Woodsford, he made the best of the situation. He read novels, he wrote letters, he received visitors and fruit and flowers gratefully.

His leg mended as fast as the best intentioned young limb could do, but it was a tedious business. He did what he could to pass the time and to amuse himself.

He found that he was as popular as an invalid as in all other walks of life. No doubt his beautiful face helped him, as did his charming voice and his ready tongue; but it was his pluck and his patience which people talked about Phoebe had been with him while the leg had been set, and she was always ready to relieve guard when the professional nurse took her walks abroad.

“ The devil’s in the man,” Macqueen said. “ The women folk are crazed about him. I can’t keep a flower in my place. It always begins with flowers, Phoebe. Begins with flowers and fruits; ’tis a good deal later it comes to vegetables. Lord knows whether this business ever will come to vegetables at all. London is a funny place—the gentleman’s a Londoner, by the look of him. A fine fellow he is by all accounts. Maidens, like moths, go to the glare.”

“Maidens don’t go till they are asked,”said Phoebe, magnificently; “ and you should keep a civil tongue in your head, and a decent one. Women ain’t such fools as men think them, and can see into a brick wall as far as a Scotchman any day.”

The whispering tongues at Woodsford just now did not please Mrs. Macqueen.

Newsing, in Devon lingo, was not to Phoebe’s taste; “ newsing ” about her sacred Miss Letice was intolerable.

If the ladies of the house were much with their invalid, there was nothing to talk about in so natural a circumstance.

If they had tea in the sick-room, and lingered there till the dressing gong sounded, were they not on charity intent?

Mrs. Wykeham certainly kept Letice ministering upon Sir Wilmot, and would send her to his door with a new novel, or a ripe peach, or a question, or a message, many times during his lonely days.

That afternoon Sir Wilmot’s nurse was out, and Letice was late for tea; Mrs. Wykeham had had to call her up to hand the poor man his cup and to wait upon him. He lay on his couch by the window, looking out of place on his pillow, with his manly face, his keen eyes, and his broad shoulders.

“ Sir Wilmot is to be allowed to move to-morrow, Letice.” Sir Wilmot was rather less talkative than usual, so the hostess did duty for him. “ Dr. Marshall is bringing crutches. His leg will be hung, or swung, I didn’t quite understand, so that he can walk. Of course, your father never allows us to use your poor mother’s sitting-room, or how convenient that would be—such a nice distance for him to walk, and there is a lovely view from the window. I wish, Letice, you would suggest this to your father.”

Letice was sitting at the window; she wore a blue linen dress of not unimpeachable cut; her face was flushed; Fulke was ailing, and she had been down to the lodge to get some fruit that he wanted, and she had hurried home in that little boy’s service.

She did not quite understand what she had done to annoy Sir Wilmot; she sat silent, turning over in her mind all that she'had said and done; he was certainly displeased; she felt that he was out of tune.

Letice did not know that saying and doing would not move this young man either to pleasure or displeasure. She might leave her mind and soul out of the question. Sir Wilmot merely required that a woman should look; appearance was what signified.

She might do what she chose, or say what she chose, it did not matter a fig so long as she pleased his eye and forbore to wear blue, which color suited her vilely. Moreover, the girl's ruddy cheeks did not bear any accession of color; flushing sadly disfigured her.

Sir Wilmot was faintly relieved to see her cheeks gradually grow pale, as she sat in the breeze by the window. A screw of an inch or two in the waist-belt would have improved the line of her figure; nevertheless, she was unusually graceful, and a slender foot that dangled in sight, clad in an unimpeachable shoe, pleased his taste.

Letice felt that he was looking critically at her; it was not his usual way; no wonder she paled beneath his disapprovaL

“ I don’t understand,” said he. “ What room are you talking about?”

“ The room across the passage, opposite to this. It was my mother’s sitting-room, and since she died my father has not had it altered at all; no one but the housemaid ever goes in there.”

“ Gilbert never goes near the place, and no one likes to ask him anything about it. I think Letice, perhaps, could suggest to him that poor Sir Wilmot might hobble in there to-morrow, just for a change.”

“ I would rather not.”

Letice shirked the discussion. Mr. Tempest talked to her about her mother—it was holy ground.

“ And I would far rather Mr. Wykeham was not asked,” said the invalid. Letice was quite pale now. Meeting her velvet eyes he saw the gentle wistfulness in them that he had aroused; the blue frock could not dim the beauty. Brown eyes are not always easy to read, and just now the liquid depth of color was half shaded by the long, downcast lashes.

He knew her eyes by heart; they shone or laughed, glowed, burned, melted, and flashed in quick answer to his mood; he had taught them this accomplishment as he lay idly here upon his couch.

His was a master hand at this art.

“ And I would far rather Mr. Wykeham was not asked,” he had said. Then Letice had lifted her eyes and had smiled;,she smiled like a child, with eyes, lips, and dimpled cheeks.

“ Do you know the first duty of woman f” asked he, smiling too. Sir Wilmot was relenting. Letice was ignorant, perhaps, not intentionally careless of her duties.

“ You said the other day that a woman’s first duty was to know a good dinner, and to take care she provided it. You said that to me when cook forgot your Reform cutlets.”

She laughed, a little, soft, infectious laugh; the girl was full of charm, even when she was in blue.

“ That was a wife’s first duty, I said. Wives’duties are things of themselves. You soon get to know them; eh, Mrs. Wykeham !”

The matron sighed.

“ You had better teach her a wife’s duties,” archly. “ It might he a warning.”

There was just a moment’s pause.

“I’ll teach her the wider ones first”; his eyes were on Letice; she looked at him bravely. “ Never wear blue, Miss Wykeham. Never be persuaded to wear blue. It doesn’t suit you. Your first duty is to dress well. If you won’t wear white— white is the only color to my mind for—for some women—wear a dress like a ripe cornfield, not maize, but sun-tanned com. I’ve seen a dark woman at a dance in a tanned sort of frock, with a lot of cherries somewhere about it. I wish you’d get a dress like that.”

“ But you told me that ever so long ago, Sir Wilmot.

“ ’ Oh, ruddier than the cherry,

Oh, riper than the berry,’ ”

hummed Letice. She was happy again, though she hardly knew the reason why.

“ That’s a pretty song; the words suit you down to the ground.”

“ So Mr. Tempest said.”

“ He doesn’t say much, so it is as well he should speak to the point.”

“ He’s a dull companion,” chimed in Mrs. Wykeham, “ and, like all dull people, so obstinate. I have talked to him sometimes for an hour, and I have fancied I have persuaded him to think as I think, and later I find him unconvinced. I have an idea he doesn’t listen. He has no manners.”

“ Oh, mamma.”

“Well, he keeps his ears and his manners for Letice. At one time Letice and he were inseparable.”

Letice changed color, and Sir Wilmot watched her. For a moment she lapsed into thought, and drew her dark eyebrows together.

Were she and Mr. Tempest inseparable? It was many a day since she had been for any long consecutive hours by his side. It was not her fault . No, for he was always busy now, and she—she, too, found the short days raced by, and left her no superfluity of leisure.

Just then the dressing gong sounded, and she got up at once to go. '

“ Are we going to play piquet to-night, Mis. Wykeham ?”

“ Of course we are,” said tie hostess. “ You are not a free man yet. You cannot escape me. My husband only plays occasionally; he doesn’t care for cards.”

“ And Miss Wykeham will score ?”

Of course Miss Wykeham would score. For the last three weeks she had scored for the piquet players nightly.

But, as it turned out, upon this evening, for once, Letice could not score.

Fulke had a headache, and Fulke’s headaches were not apologies for ill-humor or for fatigue, but were genuine aches that wrung his sister’s heart.

Mrs. Wykeham had by degrees put together a most elaborate and dramatic account of a certain fiend in her service, who by a forged character had forced her way into Fulke’s nursery, and by drugs and neglect ruined the unfortunate boy’s constitution.

His mother congratulated herself on Fulke’s survival, which showed what a splendid physique the child must have originally possessed. It was only a marvel he had lived to grow up.

He certainly had not grown up very big, and he had run through all childish ailments in no time, adding thereunto various strange ailments which pus-zled the doctors and tormented the person who loved him best.

If Fulke had a headache it meant that Fulke wanted Letice, and Letice was the sort of woman who is not wanted in vain—she was dependable.

So it came to pass that the piquet players had to score for themselves that night, and one of them did not like it, and he watched the door. Once or twice Sir Wilmot wished that he had a sound leg, and that he could use it, too.

What game was Letice playing? She did not come. She knew he could not come and look for her. Women were all the same; full of wile. No doubt she wanted to pique him by a show of indifference. He was piqued and he knew it. But this new attitude, this new game of hers, did not deceive him; he saw through it.

The game which Letice was, in fact, playing, was by no means new to her, but just as old as Fulke himself.

A heavy-handed fate had set her little brother’s feet in rough places, and she was helping him through his difficulties. She was about his bed, bathing his burning head, fanning the hot July night air about him, soothing him, singing him his old childish lullaby, and never considering the question of leaving him, though she had not forgotten the piquet, nor tried to forget it. His little room led out of her own; it was past midnight before the child got to sleep, and then with one ear open she, too, put her head on her pillow and fell asleep.

Sir Wilmot, in one path of learning, did not lack experience, and he had come to the conclusion that women were as alike as clover, the four-leafed among them being scarce and hard to find, and when found, except for the piquancy of rarity, undesirable. He admired Letice, and he did not like to be done out of her society. All the next morning she absented herself; no peaches nor lilies came his way. He had seen his doctor, and had got his crutches, and was even preparing for his first walk before she came near him.

He was not impressionable, nor susceptible, nor emotional, and yet his anger—and he had been conscious of anger—faded and died as soon as he set his appreciative eyes upon her.

She was a clever girl. Last night she had piqued him and to-day she had piqued him, and now she came across his threshold with an easy, unconscious beauty, and stood smiling before him as though she was innocent of all guile.

“ There,” she said; “ do you like it? I was ordering some new things, so I got what you suggested.”

Letice was alluding to her gown, a tan-colored, flimsy, muslin gown, and to a vastly becoming tan hat, whereon ruddy ripe cherries were cunningly embedded.

“ Yes.”

He liked it so much that he said nothing more. He was alone, his nurse had gone out, Mr. Wykeham had just left him, but the former would be back in a minute or two, and his tête-à-tête with Letice would be ended. He did not want it ended; he intended to prolong it. The girl was efficiently chaperoned; he hardly ever saw her alone; he wanted to have her all to himself just for once. His feelings were not so finely formed as his features. Her beauty sharpened his wits.

“ I wish,” he said, and he knew his wishes had weight, “that we could get off to the room Mrs. Wykeham spoke of. I could walk as far as that.” Letice looked at him quickly; the liquid eyes and the steely blue eyes met.

“ I—I should like to go there—with you.”

These words of his struck some unknown chord— a deep harmonious chord in her heart The sacred room—he wanted to go there. Women are “ curious fools,” we have been told. Letice, because of this gentleman’s godlike head and eagle eyes, because of his voice and his manner, clothed him all through, within as well as without, with godlike attributes and noble propensities.

“ I will get the key,” she said, “ and I will take you there.”

’Twas no harm; she knew where the key of the room was kept. She fetched it Poor empty room. It would be well to people it, so that when Letice went again among the faded chintz and empty chairs she would no longer find the spot desolate, nor its Badness lonely.

The floor creaked as they entered; the blinds were drawn down and they flapped against the open casement of the bay-window, before which the couch stood, whither Letice helped her comrade to direct his measured steps.

“ Sit down here,” she said, in a constrained, odd voice. “ I will pull np the blinds for you.”

He misread her voice; though Adonis was beside her, she was not thinking wholly of him. The poor room, with its odd, dead look, touched her to the quick. The unused chairs, the dumb harp, the silent piano, the unfamiliar photographs, the empty vases, the unopened hooks, the work-box and the thimble, and the roll of unfinished work. She thought that he was thinking as she thought, and a wave of feeling drove great tears into her eyes, which overflowed and wetted her warm cheeks.

She was reaching high to pull up the blind, when Sir Wilmot stretched put his hand and laid it gently upon hers. Then she turned towards him, forgetting her wet eyes.

“Don’t cry,” he said, very softly; “though you look beautiful when you cry, Letice.”

He drew her towards him, and there in the sunshine by the window he kissed her tears away.

“ I love you.”

A score of times he said this, “ Letice, dear Letice, I love you.”

The wonder of it turned her dumb. He loved her, her thousand faults, her needs, her lacks, her wants; spite of these he loved her. What had Letice done, or thought, or hoped, or longed, that Heaven should bless her thus! He, this great king, stooped from his eminence to love her.

They had been in that empty room together but a minute, only a minute—the minute was of a sort through which Sir Wilmot’s watch ticked away a patient hour of ordinary time—when Letice came to, mentally, and remembered that her tan gown and cherry hat were due at the Vicarage garden that afternoon.

“ What time is it !” she asked.

“ Not late, sweet; only five.”

“ I forgot; we are going to a garden-party at the Vicarage.”

“ I did not forget.”

“ No, you must not keep me now. Mamma went early; Mrs. Bradshaw wanted her. I was to be fetched. Really—really—Wilmot, I must go.”

Aye, and before long Sir Wilmot, tod, must go-farther'than the Vicarage. A tan frock, the bunch of cherries, and a brace of tears had been too much for him. His nature was not impulsive, his heart not out of hand, but he had been laid on his back in a sick-room; he had been sent a playfellow fair to see, and warm-hearted; up to a certain point these advantages had been providential; providence must look , out for consequences.

The consequences might be awkward, but they should not be fatal; they should not include the chains of matrimony.

That morning this young gentleman had received three letters, severally addressing a “ Dearest Wil mot.” In numbers lay freedom—lay safety. If he should ever intrust his welfare to chains, they must be gilded.

The responsibilities of matrimony would not have awed him had either one of his favorite women had enough money to make things generally comfortable. Sir Wilmot raced a good deal, and the backers of horses require in their turn substantial backing.

Letice lingered on her way to the Vicarage. Sir Wilmot’s had not been the only voice which had said: " I love you.”

“ A bold spirit in a loyal breast,” is not afraid of owning what it feels, and Letice had not been silent when he had asked her to speak. “ I love you,” she, too, had said.

Under a cloudless sky, through the broiling July air, the hot dry turf under her feet, she dawdled slowly on to her destination, in the paradise which comes to those who love much and who believe much. Which comes to those who are brave, strong, young, guileless, and who know no fear of fate.

She was young enough not to be surprised or awed by her own happiness; happiness was the lot of the world. All the world, save a few solitary exceptions, were married. Not that actual marriage, with its obvious advantages for womankind, seemed a perfect institution or universal bliss. But the married people had found some one to live for, or to die for. Some one who wanted them all their lives long. I In some degree they felt as she now felt.

To her lot had fallen a prince, a peer among men. % Ah, if she had been but more worthy of his love. She would sweep and garnish her soul, so that it 'i» should he fit for this man’s shrine. She knew of the beauty of holiness; such beauty alone, the highest in beauty, was meet for him.

This love of hers, too, was a thing of tears and prayers.

“ Let her cleanse herself, that, loving such a man,

She may not do it with such unworthy love;

He cannot stoop and take it.”

For a proud young. person Letice was humble enough now, her pride cast out by its arch enemy.

The Vicarage garden-party had been in full swing an hour and more when Letice arrived, so some reproaches fell to the share of this recreant guest.

"Here you are at last, Letice,” said her father.

“ What have you been doing!”

“ Mr. Tempest has been to look for you. I sent him,” explained Evelyn. Her voice was plaintive; Mr. Hoggins was not on duty, and Kate, in intervals of entertaining, had been making herself disagreeable. Indeed, it was to annoy Kate that Mr. Tempest had been sent in search of Letice.

“ I was with Sir Wilmot, mamma. I did not know it was so late.”

BEQUEATHED

Mrs. Wykeham was amused.

“ Poor Mr. Tempest, he rode off on his bicycle and was back in no time; he could not find you. He was—” She crossed her fingers, tittering—“ No wonder.” Letice winced. “ Look at the poor man; he is looking as if he would like to murder Kate. Mr. Tempest, Mr. Tempest,” she chirped, fluttering across the turf to where he was standing. “ Here is the truant. Here is Letice, blushing all manner of colors because you have found her out.”

“ No doubt the truant wants her tea,” said he, smiling; if he was out of humor, he had talent for concealing such a fact with grace.

“ Come off to the tent, Letice. Peaches, or ices, or tea, or what! You are a little bit late for the fair.”

She went gladly; he had a knack of knowing her wishes before she knew them herself. A friend of the family, a friend such as he, was a rich possession. Later he found her a seat in the shade, and he sat beside her; he did not notice that she was rather silent and absent; he talked a great deal; he had plenty to say for himself.

It was unusual for him to stay beside her for long when they were in public, but that afternoon he hardly left her.

People’s tongues will wag, like a mandarin’s head at a touch; and like a mandarin’s head when set a-wagging, not know how to stop.

That day Letice’s beauty was brilliant; every one was struck by it; it made her conspicuous, and Mr. Tempest absorbed her whole attention.

“ He is old enough to be her father,” laughed Mrs. Wykeham, in answer to a gentle female insinuation. “ Poor Letice; do you think a girl with that face,” she was addressing a plain damsel, “would marry her grandfather ?”

“I would rather marry a grandfather than a widower, Evelyn,” said Kate, genially; “you never know what comparisons your husband may be making, and step-children are an infliction. Oh, dear me, what a long party this has been. Are the people never going ?”

CHAPTER XIV

A good driver turns in a small space.

—Proverb.

The master of Woodsford and his steward had waylaid Dr. Marshall in the hall, on his way from the house, where he had been paying a last visit to Sir Wilmot Kirwan, and Mr. Tempest was cross-questioning him about his patient, as though it was the steward’s place to speed the parting guests of his employer.

“ How soon will he be able to travel ?”

“ Any day now. He’s anxious to be off; no doubt he feels he has trespassed on Wykeham’s hospitality long enough. I’ve just given him leave to go tomorrow ; he wants to get to Goodwood if possible. He’s done well—wonderfully well; I don’t think he will feel any single bad effect from the accident”

“ I’m glad of that,” said Gilbert “ If Sir Wilmot had had a smash across country, it wouldn’t have been the same thing as being chucked out of a hay-cart, which was not an heroic way of coming to grief.”

“ He took it very well,” said the doctor, who had fallen somewhat under the spell of his patient’s attractiveness. Gilbert had done the same, and Gil bert was now the most indifferent of men, who lived, as his wife said, “in a groove,” and living “in a groove” is an unpardonable offence to most people. But Mr. Wykeham had come out of his groove, his groove ” is an unpardonable offence to most people, times on purpose to seek the society of his guest, and Gilbert had been induced to talk quite cheerily of subjects foreign to his groove in the effort to interest the invalid. Sick-room visiting is not usually a popular form of recreation, but circumstances alter cases.

“ He’s a nice young fellow, and as for trespassing on hospitality, Marshall, he must know better than that. He mustn’t leave us on that account. We shall all be sorry to lose him.”

“ To be sure,” said the doctor, hurrying away. He had caught a glimpse of an advancing figure, and his time was as short as this special female tongue was long, so he beat a retreat at the double.

Mrs. Wykeham was not in a good temper; people who, in this precarious, uncertain world, are given to planning, are irritable people for the most part, being of necessity flurried and fluttered and bothered by the unexpected turns of a thwarted fate. To make a plan is one thing, but to force the plan into action is another, and Mrs. Wykeham’s present plans were not by any means in a satisfactory condition.

She had thought for several weeks that die was a special favorite with Sir Wilmot; he led most people to the same ingratiating conclusion by a cordial trick of maimer that unconsciously served him in good stead. She had enjoyed playing duenna in the sickroom ; she could recall to her memory many instances of men who, loving one woman who was inaccessible, married another.

But of late, ever since the crutches had arrived, and Sir Wilmot had been on the prowl and totter, she had felt herself neglected. She could not flatter herself that her inaccessibility was altogether in fault, for when she had felt specially accessible, Sir Wilmot had not availed himself of her amiability. In fact, for some days now she had been “out of it”; her position as chaperon had been emphasized, for Sir Wilmot had had eyes and ears only for Letice, and Letice had taken her favors as a matter of course. No one had been attentive to Mrs. Wykeham; she had talked, but it was obvious that no one had been at all interested in her conversation; the answers had been short and inapt.

It was the sort of thing a wretched chaperon had to put up with in a matrimonial cause; but in no other cause at all did Mrs. Wykeham intend to put up with it. She was getting impatient, and fretted at the delay; matrimony seemed as far off as ever.

If Sir Wilmot was ever going to speak—it was time he did so—he could not be afraid of his answer; any fool could see through Letice now.

She was a thousand times better looking than she had ever been in her life, and if she let this chance slip through her fingers, she would be accounted so clumsy as to deserve her fate.

That the chance was thus slipping, Gilbert’s words foretold, for he turned and said, pleasantly—for an unobservant, callous man, no husband ever could be Gilbert’s equal—

“ I hear Sir Wilmot is off to-morrow. Marshall has given him leave to go, and he wants to get to Goodwood.”

“ It is high time ”—emphatically—“ that he went, Gilbert.”

“ Poor fellow I Evelyn, you are not over-hospitable.”

“ I hope we are neither of us over-hospitable, but I am a little afraid that some member of your household is over-hospitable,, as you call it.”

“ You speak in riddles.”

“Letice and Sir Wilmot are at this moment on their way to the woods. I met them, as usual, with all their books and paraphernalia. I don’t fancy they read much when they get there, but I must toil down there after them, I suppose, and do my duty.”

Gilbert was grave, and listening uneasily. He looked up with a questioning glance at Mr. Tempest, but he saw nothing reassuring in that inscrutable face.

“He seems a charming young fellow, Evelyn. You have praised him to the skies.”

“One is naturally not on the outlook for short coming. Remember that we know nothing about him. Lady Wigram was here last week. She says he’s a—rip; she said it good-naturedly, but she did say it. She used that word. She says that he spends a lot of money, and that Madeline Mansell, who dances so prettily, and is inteviewed, is a friend of his. She says that he’s got rather a name, a reputation, in fact, for—for—fascination. Altogether, she wasn’t quite nice about him. I thought she might be giving me a hint.”

Gilbert always wanted rousing; he half understood that Evelyn had to exaggerate facts and embroider tales to catch his attention, but he was attentive now. His wife did not know his face, as the friend of the family knew it, and she went chirping on on her one note, like the maddening song of a canary.

“ He knows all the smartest people everywhere. Letice is only an ordinary, pretty, fresh young girl; it is hardly likely he would want to marry her. Girls nowadays make themselves so cheap. If she had much money it would be different, then—”

“ Hush, hush, that is enough, Evelyn. Ton stand to Letice in the place of her mother—”

There was a sound; it was Mr. Tempest crossing the hall; he was going out of ear-shot; his face was not genial, but it was not as pale as that of the speaker.

“ —And yon are a woman. I think you should be the last person in the world to speak as you have done of Letice.”

“ I don't think you are justified in scolding me like this. I am not blaming Letice, only I should like to rescue her from a silly flirtation, which will lead to nothing. All girls are the same; she is no vainer than her neighbors.”

All girls the same ? The hearer knew 'twas a vile traducement; Gilbert knew this, because there had been a girl once, a girl long, long dead and gone, whose memory from afar set a halo round the head of all her sex. So gentle, so pure, so wise, so good, so dear was she.

Mrs. Wykeham was not an admirer of her own sex; she was given to fouling her own nest, and to spreading out for her husband’s scrutiny all the foibles of womenkind; it was her diplomatic way of letting her father see the flaws in his daughter. By generalities, not personalities, she had almost succeeded in lowering Letice in Gilbert’s estimation.

He did not know that it had been done. He was not on his guard; continual dropping will wear a stone, and he had begun to tell himself that Letice was not like her mother, that she was no better than the rest of the world, that she could not be set in a niche and be worshipped, but must trail her skirts about the dusty world in the ordinary way.

“ A silly flirtation.”

Odious expression, which when used about a daughter, by the hard, cold voice of an unimpassioned onlooker, might well goad a male parent to violence.

“ If all girls are the same,” he said, with a great gust of anger, “ then you should know how to guard them from folly. You, Evelyn, have not acted a mother’s part.”

It was not exactly what he said, but the way in which he said it, that drove Mrs. Wykeham to tears. Gilbert could not bear the sight of tears; they melted him to repentance and to amendment at once, and so his wife knew to her advantage.

There was a scene; she refused to be comforted, so that at last, when sho was composed, he said no more about Letice, but he went off into his room. There Mr. Tempest found him, an hour later, lying on the sofa, white to the lips, and with new lines of pain and weariness on his face, which did not seem to have been there even at breakfast-time that morning.

“ What’s wrong, Wykeham ?”

“ Agitation doesn’t suit me nowadays. I lost my temper, and it set my heart beating. My wife was talking about this young fellow and Letice. Women have a different way of looking at things to men. I mean things that annoy us, they take as a matter of course. But Kirwan, after all, is going to-morrow, so there’s an end of the business. I don’t mean to think anything more about it.”

Would to Heaven Mr. Tempest could follow this example. Gilbert had a knack of thrusting thought out, and keeping a blank mind in his listless body. It was the easiest way, he found, of getting through a life which had grown to be a little wearisome to him. But some men have no such knack, and any lack of control over their mind confounds them. Mr. Tempest was one of this latter type, and just now hot, keen thoughts ran night and day through his brain and gave him no rest—no peace. He did not avoid Letice; on the contrary, he sought her out, and he was always ready with aid for Sir Wilmot, as that young man took his walks abroad. In fact, he often made a third when Sir Wilmot and Letice were together. It was evident he was interested in Sir Wilmot, and would talk to him more than to Letice. Sir Wilmot was not easily drawn out; he was difficult to know, Letice thought, and she was ready to stake her soul that all his hoarded reserve of character was king-like in kind.

Gilbert had said, and he had not meant the speech as a compliment, “ that women have a different way of looking at things to men.” The difference is, no doubt, there, but it cuts two ways.

Down in the wood beyond the river, sitting on the fallen trunk of a tree, in the shade of the thick fullblown foliage of a beech, Letice and her squire were tête-à-tête.

They were both engaged in looking at one subject, but from different ways. His arm had been round her waist, and her hand had been in his—he would have liked to have the slender waist and the delicate hand in possession still, bnt she had moved just beyond his reach. Her ways were not the same as his. Even her lips were white, her hands trembled, her eyes dilated. Her white muslin bodice disclosed her uneven, difficult breathing. He was not agitated, but he was uncomfortable. Men do not like a scene —a scene, too, which can only end in one way. He was a fool to have spoken; he ought to have written —he usually wrote, but she was so green, she would have let the cat out of the bag; if he had not warned her. She had seemed to take it for granted that he had asked her to marry him—the fact being that he had merely said that “ he loved her.”

Could she imagine that he could marry every woman whom he had loved ? He seldom saw much of any pretty woman without loving her.

She had heard he was to leave Woodsford to-morrow, and she had said:

“ Shall you tell my father before you go, Wilmot t” He thought she wanted to force his hand; he thought—he was not a very intelligent Adonis—that she seriously intended to bring him to book. For a second he shivered, as though matrimony itself had crossed his path.

“ I don’t know what you mean, Letice.”

She had been leaning her cheek against his broad shoulder, with the confiding sense of the rest of home; at his voice she raised her eyes—they were loving, happy eyes—to his face; in the act of raising their expression changed.

“ I meant, I should like them to know.”

“Know what?” His eyes were keen and cold; they met and chilled her own.

“ About you and me.”

That kind of knowledge was not of the sort which parents and guardians approve. She was green.

“ But, Letice, why should they know ? There is nothing for them to know. I am such a poor chap. I’ve no money, or that sort of thing. I can’t marry, you see. I love you most awfully—you know that, don’t you, my sweet one! So the quicker I go the better. The longer I stay, the worse‘it will be to part. I’m dreading to-morrow. I am, upon my soul!”

Directly he put his own construction on the situation and showed it to her clearly, she understood. He saw she was the kind of girl who takes punishment quietly. She sat very still for a moment, just beyond his reach; once her sight got dim and she thought she might cry, but pride is a good substitute for strength, and she did not break down. She was trying all the time to put up her idol that had fallen; it was the crash of all her youthful ideals that she had unfairly crammed into her love, not the sick pain of her personal repulse that she fought against. She did not want to lose past and future all at onee. She tried to think clearly; a sort of mental blindness, a bewilderment of thought, confounded her.

Sir Wilmot generally filled a long pause by a caress. He attempted to take her again in his arms, but she was not responsive, and he changed his intention.

“ It’s hard luck, Letice. I love you.”

“ I suppose you really do like me?” There was a timbre like a fibre of steel in her voice.

He protested that he did so, she listening, her eyes upon him.

“ Love takes such different forms,” she said, rising suddenly to her feet. “ I did not understand.”

Her idol began to comprehend that he wanted propping if he was to maintain his position.

“ Forgive me, Letice. I couldn’t help loving you; you are just the sort of girl I admire. I ought to have held my tongue; I oughtn’t to have let you know, but it was such a temptation. Don’t be angry. Are you angry?”

Though she assured him that she was not angry, yet by an odd change of manner she seemed somehow to have got out of his reach. The long-drawn-out farewell, which he had anticipated, did not come off.

“ Letice, you are angry. Is it not as bad for me as for you ?”

“ I think,” slowly, “ it is worse for you than for me.” She rose to her feet, picking up a book as she did so. “ It will take you some time to get to the house. Had not we better start ?”

It was hard, Sir Wilmot thought, to walk beside this girl, who was, as he had said, just the sort of woman whom he admired, and to feel that he dare not assume the very slightest of a lover’s privileges. She held her head like a young princess, and her eyes were clear and steady. An hour ago she had been his; she had surrendered herself to him. She had answered his kisses by her own. She had been meek and womanly; he had liked her well; but her method of meeting this crisis moved him to an even more genuine admiration. He had known some members of her sex who could scold, and sneer, and weep, and whine, and whimper, without the self-control of a two-years’ child, under less provocation than Letice had received.

If she had only had some money he would have stretched a point, overcome any little prejudice against matrimony, and would have made Letice his wife.

During a rather silent lunch she was pleasant and talkative; later, when Mr. Wykeham suggested that the leg and its owner should drive, in lieu of loitering in woods or garden, Letice did not cry off making a third in the landau.

She did not avoid Sir Wilmot; by-and-by he began to wish that she would do so. His vanity was galled to find that she cast off his fetters with a wriggle.

Till now he had relished his sense of power over this attractive maiden, and he was a masterful man, who liked to feel a giant’s strength, aye, and to use it as a giant.

For many an agreeable day her thoughts and words and eyes and mind had been his, his only. It was hard, at a moment’s notice, to give up so many possessions gracefully.

He spent much pains upon making sundry opportunities for seeking Letice alone during the evening ; and when he was successful, and he found himself face to face with her, she baffled him at every point. There were to be no prolonged explanations, no confidence, no softnesses and sighing. She met his sadness with smiles; she laughed when he became tragic. She would not quarrel, neither could she be induced to melt.

Adonis was not patient; he was not long-suffering —when things went wrong with him he got sulky. Sulky is an unromantic expression; no one but an unprejudiced biographer would dream of using such a word in connection with Sir Wilmot, who drew his fine brows over his splendid eyes, closed his lips under his fair mustache, and went off early to his room. But kings sulk as well as clowns.

Mr. Tempest had been dining at Woodsford; he and his host were late sitters, and the family were presumedly asleep when he bade Gilbert good-night, and walked softly down the smoking-room into the ball; and yet he was hardly surprised to meet Letice, hardly surprised to see that sho tried to avoid him.

“ Letice.”

She changed her mind, came into the dim light of the solitary lamp, and turned her face to his. There was a something almost defiant in her gesture; it was a challenge; he looked back at her with kind eyes that did not seem to see the scars and sears and stains of tears.

“ You are up late.”

She had a letter in her hand; she held it loosely.

“ I couldn’t sleep; I came down for a book.”

“ But you have no book.”

“ It was so dark I couldn’t find it.”

“ Shall I help you ?”

She did not answer; he saw she could not; in tho silence she caught her breath like a sob, but she swiftly recovered herself and put her cold right hand into his.

“You help me in everything,” she Baid, gently, “everything. But the book doesn’t matter; it has gone. Good-night.”

“ Good-night, Letice. God bless you.”

A beautiful face lay at ease in a sweet sleep in the best spare-room. The rest of Adonis was not disturbed, it was not rendered a whit less refreshing because of the scars, the sears, the stains of tears which he had caused; he did not see them; he would take care of that. And so far he heard nothing of Tempest, a man twenty years his senior, who kept a vigil till the day broke, cursing the young gentleman from the bottom of a vigorous soul.

But next morning he did come across this cantankerous friend of the family—things went wrong. Sir Wilmot had sent a note to Letice late the preceding evening; it had petitioned “ dearest Letice” to meet him, just to say one kind word, just one goodbye, just to forgive him in the woods.

She had not answered, neither with words nor looks; yet he had expected her to come, and had made his way early to the trysting tree.

She had failed him. He waited, listening; there were footsteps to be heard behind him. He cried out somewhat prematurely in his pleasure.

“ At last, Letice, darling, at last.”

He had given himself away, for the footsteps were not hers, but belonged to Mr. Tempest, who heard the lover’s greeting, and took upon himself to answer it.

The interview under the beech-trees was not to bo such as Sir Wilmot had anticipated; it was time he shook Woodsford dust from his feet.

“ You are going to marry Miss Wykeham ?” said the intruder, bluntly, curtly; he spoke like a savage; he was white to the lips.

Sir Wilmot smiled; for a moment he was taken aback; this old-fashioned family friend was going to ask his intentions, as though they lived in the forties.

“ I beg your pardon.”

" Are you going to marry Miss Wykeham ?”

The speaker looked capable of flying at the throat of Adonis.

“ I cannot afford to marry. I can’t marry on debt, or on credit, however fond I am of Letice.”

The young man was no coward, but he moved uneasily.

"Fond!” repeated Tempest, hoarsely. "Fond! And you come to a man’s house, eat of his salt, accept his hospitality, and get fond, fond, as you say, of his daughter; your fondness entails a revelation of anguish to her—you! There are no duels now; such men as you are safe; we have no check on you. If I shot you dead where you stand, I should do the world a service. But you can go. If a slur is to be cast, the women cast it at woman. For her sake, you can go.”

“ I don’t know what you mean. She is as innocent as—”

" Curse you!” he thundered out, upon the heels of Sir Wilmot’s explanation. " Do you think I want you to tell me that? Is it not enough that you tell me you can’t marry. Did you tell her this before you kissed her? Did you tell her this when you became her lover ? Did you tell her this before you set yourself to win her fresh, deep love, and waste it ? This sort of thing is a good deal done. In these days honor is of small account. You might sin more, sir, and yet do less evil”

Sir Wilmot kept his temper. None of his emotions were quick, and a brawl with this Puritan, whose grave exterior had never betrayed his volcanic temperament, would have been a bad ending to the Woodsford episode. But he was relieved when Mr. Tempest turned on bis heel and the tête-à-têe was over; it had not been pleasant to stand silent and be talked to as if he were a blackguard. In Sir Wilmot’s experience hearts did not take much mending. His lot fell with people bo busy with the business of the world that time to feel much about anything was more or less of an impossibility.

He liked Mr. Tempest’s expression, “ fresh, deep love ”; it gratified his vanity to find that Letice had been hard hit, though she had withdrawn her claims upon him so airily. He liked her spirit, and a week or two even after he had left Devonshire he found himself dreaming of an inaccessible Letice, whom he followed in the light and shadows of a wood, but who frowned and would have none of him, saying:

“ You might sin more, sir, and yet do less evil.”

CHAPTER XV

—would not leave her desolate,

But with her went along, a faithful mate

Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard:

Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward.

And when she waked, he waited diligent,

With humble service to her will prepared;

From her fair eyes he took commanddment,

And ever by her looks conceived her intent.

Evebybody knew that Letice Wykeham had been left in the lurch. Mrs. Wykeham could only keep her own secrets. She was not discreet where Letice was concerned. To her taste the things best worth discussing were the private affairs of other people. She liked to know everything—everything at least that had any savor of unpleasantness about it. She particularly liked to know unsavory things of which her neighbors were unaware, and to impart this knowledge. This partiality for news, not newspaper news by any means, of a particular sort, is a partiality which grows with feeding. It becomes a passion, a rank passion, that contaminates the whole parent nature, and turns what should be a gentle, kindly woman, softened by experience, charitable and merciful through suffering, into what is familiarly termed an “old cat.”

What form of female is more odious than the “ cat ” ? And the claws of the “ cats ” do harm, irreparable harm, cruel harm. Though the “cats” themselves cling together, they are a marked denomination, distrusted, disliked, defied, execrated by the uncatlike community, and yet their claws do hurt and scar, they cannot be wholly ignored. Old cats cannot be exterminated wholesale, like other vermin harmful to humanity.

So the Devonshire cats struck their claws into Letice. Not that they bore the girl any special malice; only claws have to be kept spick and span, and to be kept in serviceable condition they need sharpening; they cannot be left to rust from disuse. Letice served their purpose, and they fell upon her.

If a young man breaks a leg, and is thrown into a young woman’s way, tongues would wag about the couple, whether there is foundation for talk or no.

In this case Mrs. Wykeham laid the foundation-stone for gossip herself. She confided in her special friends that Letice had been deceived. That Sir Wilmot had loved and had ridden away, while Letice had loved and had been left behind.

The girl herself half understood that she had become notorious in the neighborhood for the time being, and that the notoriety was not of a gratifying kind. Her pride, poor child, was her best friend, she thought. She listened to its promptings. Every one knew she had been “badly treated”; humiliating, maddening; hardening fact She had been “ badly treated no one but herself quite knew how badly, for no one but herself knew what the riding away had meant Iron had entered into her soul as iron has entered souls since the days of old.

Everything at Woodsford went on precisely as of yore, only the joy of it all was gone. “ All the tomorrows would be as to-day.” Her pride, her passionate nature, her youth were all against Letice. If she took her punishment silently, she took it hard. It did her no good; it did her harm. It was now that her want df a mother made itself felt; a mother would have understood—love would have found out a way to heal the smarting hurt, and to set Letice upon her feet, with her face turned the right way, the softer, not the harder, for her first experience of a blind alley.

A face like hers turned the wrong way is dangerous. A defiant face like hers may work for evil, though its owner is good at heart Letice did not turn her back on the world; on the contrary, in a small way, she plunged into its midst, and made what she could of its diversions. She had learned that it does not matter what a woman does, or says, so much as it matters how she looks.

Letice took care to look well. The ruddiness failed a little, and her sweet dark eyes grew a shade bigger, and her lips lost the sudden sunshine of their smile, and took to laughing. But her waist shrunk elegantly, and she spent more on her frocks, and she considered the fashioning of them deeply. She found that she could attract men, and she laid herself out to do this. It was play to her, but she did not care whether she hurt at her play or no. She had not been spared, and she did not spare.

People began to forget, as she intended they should do, that she had been badly treated, and the cats changed their tactics of war, and talked of Letice’s heartlessness, of her hardness, her want of womanliness, her love of admiration. She formed the subject of many whispering conferences. She knew that this was so, she did not mind. She laughed at the women in her sleeve. She knew just how hard, how heartless, she was, and what these omissions had cost her. She was proud, and she was proudest of all with her old friend, Mr. Tempest He was patient, but wretched enough at the change in her manner towards him. The confidence which had always existed between them was over; she practised none of her new graces upon him, but she avoided him; her face changed when her eyes met him; she was ill at ease beside him.

It was hard for him to find that he was no help to her, no more good than the sun that shone upon her, but which could not reach to warm her heart It was hard, but experience has advantage; gray hairs and crow’s-feet have consolation; they have learned a thing or two of life. They do not live altogether in the present, they can look forward, they can afford to wait. He possessed his soul in patience, though he would have given that soul gladly had the patience not been needed, could he have saved Letice a sting or a smart or an ache that fate had sent her.

He fell in with her mood; he did not force her confidence, nor let his sympathy appear in any way. Once or twice he had been grave and quiet over some flirtation which she had flaunted at the public; once, only once, he had spoken of such escapades, and though Letice had laughed at the time, she had not laughed later.

Indeed, to stop the crisis with the gentleman of whom Mr. Tempest had disapproved, Letice had left Woodsford; she paid visits in Norfolk with the Nigels, and then she went off to Oakley Gardens to stay with Madam; there was no spy, there were no grave understanding eyes upon her there.

Tet he was the only person in the whole world that cared; Mr. Tempest alone understood. She could not quite forgive him his intelligence; she grudged it to him. Later on, perhaps, she might feel differently. Time had passed; she was struggling out of the mill now; she began to feel that her life was notat an end, though she had plumbed a considerable depth of pain. Later on, perhaps, she would not want to shun her kindest friend, her favorite comrade, without whom she was solitary indeed.

Letice had grown somewhat apart from Gilbert; she was always ready and eager to be with him, but he seldom wanted her; he lived his own life; if he had wants and hopes he kept them to himself. Evelyn was jealous; Gilbert must show no preferences; the man was for peace at any price, and the price he paid was isolation.

Nothing mattered; Letice did as well without as with him.

He liked her pretty ways; he would have liked her constantly about him; but Evelyn, when she was annoyed, became so remarkably difficult to propitiate, that he forbore Letice’s cbmpany, as he would have forborne most things for peace, nowadays.

Fulke had gone to school, and his sister missed him sorely; she missed all his inroads upon her time. There was so little to do at Woodsford, without Fulke, except the sort of work which Satan finds for idle hands.

Hay-time had come round again, and again the annual garden-party was to be held at Woodsford.

Letice had been, and still was, in London with Madam, and had heard one or two wholesome, vigorous home-truths from her grannie’s lips; truths at which she had laughed at the time, but of which she had thought later on, when she was alone.

Every one nowadays has been informed “ that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”; and, though Madam was not a modern woman, she appreciated the strength of the hand, and though she left tho ruling of the world to a power beyond that even of motherhood, she had great ideas about the duties of her sex.

Letice wished to be presented, and she was presented ; she wished to “ go out,” and she did go out. She got caught up in the London vortex of gayety, and when the time came for her return to Devonshire, she shook her head and refused to return.

“ Gran, I am enjoying myself so much. I don’t want to go home.”

Then Madam had risen to her feet and had fallen upon Letice.

“ You’ve no mother,” she said. People always began to lecture Letice in this way; young Mrs. Wykeham invariably began a scolding thus: “ You have no mother to tell you, so—”

No mother? Other girls seemed to get on remarkably badly with their mothers, so she was not to be pitied overmuch; she hardened her heart Pitied ?— nay, she was envied. She had a string .of admirers wherever she appeared—a far longer string than most girls—and some of the admirers had been, or were, in grim earnest, and had “ meant ” everything that a man does mean when he lays himself in the dust to be trampled upon.

She never trampled; she laughed and passed them by. She did as she had been done by.

“ You have no mother,” Madam repeated, meeting her granddaughter’s eyes, “ and you have your moth er’s charm. No one has taught you how to use it. You will waste the best gift a woman has. You have a thirst for admiration, a thirst which is every bit as destructive as that of a drunkard’s for brandy. My dear, it will kill everything that is good and pure and womanly about you.”

“ My dear gran, what have I done?”

“ If you showed any heart or preference, my dear, I should not grumble at all these flowers, and notes, and invitations, and visitors. But you don’t care. I have watched you carefully; you have a purposeless, objectless restlessness about you which I can’t bear to see. It’s such a pity, Letice, to be frivolous. You seem to think frivolity is a feather in your cap. I don’t believe you are genuinely frivolous; I don’t believe you are thoroughly enjoying yourself.”

“ I know who put these ideas into your head.”

“ Do you give me credit for no ideas of my own ?”

“ Not for these, grannie. Last night Mr. Tempest was talking to you and he was looking at me, and you both shook your heads, and then you nodded them in unison. I guessed I was the subject upon which you were agreed.”

It happened that Mr. Tempest was in London, too. He had come up to town the preceding afternoon to buy Mrs. Wykeham a victoria. He did all Mr. Wykeham’s work; all the trouble that possession entails Gilbert shunted onto his agent’s broad shoulders; but the agent did not grumble at this journey to town.

He managed everything at Woodsford, and he managed it so creditably that Madam had never a fault to find when she came to Woodsford on her annual tour of inspection, which spoke well for Mr. Tempest’s efficiency as agent.

He was so great a favorite with her, in consequence of this efficiency, that when he came on his rare business visits to town he made Madam’s house his headquarters. He was doing so now, and was even taking a holiday to see a day’s cricket at Lord’s, whither Letice was going with him. She had suggested this arrangement herself, and he had fallen in with it.

She was awaiting him even now, while Madam lectured her, in the cool drawing-room, waiting restlessly, for she had respected his punctuality, and had came down in her pretty, smart frock, looking as beautiful as a flower, at the time he had mentioned, on purpose to please him. She had not seen him for such a long time that she was glad to do so, and had half forgotten her reserve. In the whirl in which sho had lately lived the finer feelings get blunted, and her reserve had not been caprice.

“ Here you are at last,” said she, when presently the door opened. She was not nowadays unconscious of her beauty; it was a stock-in-trade, the power of which occasionally surprised her. It was pleasant to remember that if Sir Wilmot Kirwan had not cared, other men could be made to care. It gratified her that this was so. She cast her velvet eyes into Mr. Tempest’s face, and shook her dainty head at him.

But her wiles were lost upon him; in a moment she recognized that this was the case, and her manner changed to the one he knew best.

“ What’s the matter ? Why are you late ?”

“ I was waiting for a telegram.”

“ Oh, a telegram. Anything special ?”

“ It is about—Fulke.”

“ What about Fulke?”

“ I heard from your father this morning that Fulke had come home ill. I telegraphed to know how he was.”

“And—?”

“ Here is the telegram. It has just come.”

She opened it quickly, and read the following message:

“The hoy seems no better.—Wykeham.”

Letice’s frivolity dropped from her like a mantle. She stood quite still and silent for a minute in thought.

“ There will be time to catch the 12.40 from Waterloo,” she said. “ Gran, dear, you’ll forgive me, but I must get home to Fulke. There’s not much time to spare. I’ll run up-stairs and pack.”

“From your father’s letter I judge that there seems no cause for anxiety.”

“ I’m always anxious about Fulke. He ought never to have gone to school. Mamma will not realize that he is different to other boys; she won’t face it But he is; he hasn’t got the strength of a baby.”

“ My dear, you have a great many engagements," said her grannie, with a faint “ I told you so ” sort of smile about her lips.

Letice consulted a tiny watch which she wore in a bracelet round her wrist “ I’ve time to write the necessary notes and make my excuses.” It was good to see her put her power and energy, of which she had a prodigal store, into a channel at which the on-lookers might approve. It was good to see her at the bureau, writing quickly and steadily note after note. She knew just what she meant to say, and in a few words she said it; all her new-born airs and graces peeled off her now, and she was the Letice of old.

Mr. Tempest had gone out of the room almost as soon as Letice began to write. He was not a boy; he had gained from his acquaintance the character of being a sensible man, with a business head; he had a business heart, too, a heart for other people’s business,' and a heart for his own. Old though he was, yet at this moment there seemed to be a danger of losing his head. He wanted to speak the truth to Letice. Hot words were on his lips.

By the time her packing was done, and she was ready to start, he, too, was in travelling trim; his portmanteau came down to the hall before hers.

He had joyfully cast off hiis London clothes, and stood, looking like a bit of the Red Farm, on the pavement of Oakley Gardens.

Madam was there too.

“How cool it will be in the country,” she said, with a sigh. It was a marvel to her how any one could come to London when they might be at Woodsford. She was an old lady now, and she lived chiefly in the past; sometimes she hardly remembered that this city of people and pavement was her home.

“ You’ll be coming to us next month, grannie ?”

“ Evelyn hasn’t written yet to ask me.”

“ It’s understood, gran.”

“No, no; these understood things get misunderstood.”

“Get in, Letice.” Mr. Tempest was an over-punctual traveller.

“ Are you coming, too?

“ Of course. I was going home to-morrow. I go home a day sooner, for the sake of company.”

She got into the four-wheeler with a smile. She was glad that Mr. Tempest was coming with her; he was a stand-by in all things. If Fulke was going to be ill, neither she nor the boy could get through their bad times without Mr. Tempest; hitherto he had helped her with all her troubles—all the troubles that she faced as trouble. There was one great absorbent evil—an evil that had swallowed up a pitiful amount of good—in which he had np hand. But evil and good alike, when they come to us, come mostly to our solitary selves, and we must face them, for our better or for our worse, as we face our death—alone.

Mr. Tempest and Letice hardly spoke on their way to the station; they knew each other well enough to keep an inoffensive silence if it suited them so to do.

Four-wheelers have changed their habits with their tires, and the cab sped along so briskly that the travellers reached Waterloo with a full twenty minutes’ interval before the starting of their train.

This world of ours is round and small; Letice, out of tune with the hustling crowd on the platform, made her way to the bookstall, and taking up her station by the daily papers, found that she jostled the very elbow of a man whom she knew well—that she stood cheek by jowl with Sir Wilmot Kirwan.

Mr. Tempest had a simple taste, and Letice’s blue serge gown and blue-ribboned hat did, to his eye, suit her admirably. Sir Wilmot thought otherwise; she wore no veil; a woman out-of-doors unveiled was incapable of a good appearance, and yet he started when he saw her and his face changed.

She was almost perfectly possessed, and did her part of the greeting well.

Though Sir Wilmot had no time to spare, he did not hurry off; he looked at her, remembering the “ fresh, deep love,” and the rest of the Woodsford visit. Other women might have softer hearts, hut they had less attractive ways.

A hundred times during her London visit she had gone out wondering whether she should see him; she had not been thinking of him just lately, and here he was, speaking to her.

Involuntarily she looked round for her escort. He was far off, standing back to her in a vortex of boxes and bustle.

“ How do you do ?” said the voice of her dreams.

Sir Wilmot was just the same, debonair and wonderfully handsome to look upon. He took her hand, and held it with empressment, just a moment longer than was customary.

“ I am very well, thanks.” Her odious voice whisr pered and trembled; she could not quite master it.

“ Are you going out of London ?”

“ Yes.”

“ Only this morning I heard you were up. Lady Wigram told me. You have been some time in Oakley Gardens!”

“ Six weeks.”

“ Have you had a good time ?”

"Excellent”

" Where are you off to now ?”

" To Woodsford.”

“Dear Woodsford,” said he, gently. "Are you going alone?”

"No; Mr. Tempest”—she was looking at him; she had not once averted her eyes from his—“ is here with me.”

She saw him smile, a cold, slight smile, that by its nature gave her back her self-control.

“ My small brother is ill,” said she,“ so I am going home to look after him, poor boy. London is so hot. I love London all the year round, but it is hot in Oakley Gardens. You don’t get the country freshness in the morning. You come down, and the air is even hotter than when you went to bed. I think the furnace of kitchen fires does it; one lives over red-hot craters, if you come to think of it.”

“ Fresh, deep love” was talking his head off again, and that in an airy, easy manner. Though Letice had no veil over her face—and no woman, to Sir Wilmot’s taste, was capable of looking well out-of-doors without a veil—though she did not look her best, yet she was —Letice—no woman was just like her. She had paled when he had accosted her; he had observed her closely, and now she had shaken off any embarrassment, and was on her high horse, making conversation and putting Adonis in his place.

“I am coming down to Wigram this autumn. Wigram has asked me to shoot.”

Even the abruptness of this important news did not shake her recovered composure. She was polite, but not cordial.

“ Then it is only good-bye till the autumn,” said she, with a little gesture of dismissal; “ no doubt we shall meet then. Now I am afraid I must go. I must not miss this train. Good-bye, Sir Wilmot”

“ Don’t let me detain yon.”

Adonis raised his hat; he was not quite pleased; he only wanted time, of course—and he really did want to find the necessary time—to get back into the old, easy, Woodsford ways with Miss Wykeham. It was hard on a man to find he could not afford everything, that some pleasures were unattainable.

“ Don’t let me detain you. I hope you will find your—ahem! father better.”

The civil wish it would have been wiser to have left unsaid; the mistake rankled.

But Mr. Tempest had not forgotten whose illness had summoned Letice home; they discussed the boy on the journey, and Letice warmed to her subject, not dropping off into one of those day-dreams to which Mr. Tempest always felt a hot aversion.

When at Salisbury Mr. Tempest left her and went off to smoke in an adjacent carriage she was sorry; there was a calm strength about him that seemed to be catching; it was a rest, a peace, to find herself beside him; it was even more than this—he brought a home-like atmosphere with him—there is no place like home.

For twelve months Letice had been trying her wings; though they had been wounded, nevertheless she had used them bravely. But her flights had tired them; she had no merry heart to go all the day. By nature there was no artifice about her, and she had been living an artificial life at high pressure. The strain of it all had left her with a general feeling of weariness.

Kicking is not the best way to treat pricks, but then we have all to learn that lesson for ourselves.

She found that though she had met Sir Wilmot she did not feel like the heroine of a tragedy. She felt no resentment against Mr. Tempest, though he had passed Sir Wilmot on the platform at Waterloo—she had watched him do it—and had cut him dead.

She did not much care; that was the extraordinary part of it. She only wanted Mr. Tempest to stop smoking and to come back into her carriage. When at Taunton he did return, with a handful of literature, she smiled her welcome.

“ You look tired, Letice,” he said.

“ I have an accumulation of stale fatigue to get rid of. I have been tired for weeks, but as long as one is on the go one forgets it.”

“ You are on the go now.”

“ It is a different sort of go. There is no excitement about it.”

It was not in human nature, however patient, to relish this remark.

“ You like excitement ? That is new, Letice.”

“ I can’t get on without it.”

“ Letice, you’ll get through life better by facing it as it is, rather than by slurring over its facts.”

“What,” with the scorn of unhappy youth— “ what are the facts of life ?”

“ Good and bad. Yes, I know—I know just what you think. You think bad predominates. When we first find out the evil we would swear it dominates the world. It is everywhere; within, without; it scares us.”

She nodded quickly.

“ It’s not so, Letice. Good has the best of it. You don’t believe me now, but you will some day. Good has the best of it, but it wants looking for; it doesn’t intrude; it must be searched for.”

“ You are lecturing me. And the good, what sort is it ? I don’t understand what you mean.”

“ Your sort of good,” very gently; “ pluck and truth, and sundry more sorts, Letice, which I won’t flatter you by naming.”

“ Don’t flatter me,” with a faint smile. “ But I expect you to praise me—you always have, you know. I used to love it as a child. Poor mamma scolded, and then I always went for comfort to you.”

“ Don’t leave it off ”; the words were so quick and soft she hardly heard them. She looked at him, but he was opening a new page of his Field, and did not meet her eyes.

CHAPTER XVI

“ Is it well with the child?

And she said, “ It is well.”

—Old Testatment.

Mrs. Wykeham was not pleased at Letice’s unexpected arrival. It was ridiculous to rush home merely because Fulke was “ run down,” and to break through any matrimonial chance that was on the London tapis. Mrs. Wykeham was not interested in marriage, but just now she lived for Letice’s settlement in life; she had made up her mind that this visit to Oakley Gardens would accomplish the end she had in view.

Letice had ruined everything by coming away from the land of men.

Every one who had anything to do with Fulke— school-master, doctor, father, sister, servants—took an absurd alarmist view of his health.

It had been useless to tell his mother that her boy was unfit for school-life. She would not listen to reason. She vociferated that Fulke was coddled at home; that it would be better for him that he should be thrown among his fellows and find his own level. Mr. Hoggins said that a little knocking about did a boy good. Fulke never got any knocking about at Woodsford. Even his grandfather, Mr. Bradshaw, who had tutored him for some years, was full of excuses for the little lad’s deficiencies, and had belief in the everlasting headaches and toothaches which intervened between gentle Fulke and his education.

Gilbert, in the green way he had, believed what he was told, and when Evelyn declared that Fulke was fretting at being deprived of the rights of his sex, and that he pined to do as other boys did and to go to school, the father was willing that Fulke should have his wish.

So a preparatory school at Ottermouth was selected, and thither Gilbert went, staying a week in the fishing village to accomplish arrangements, which Mrs. Wykeham could have done in a day-

“ Constant sea-air would make a new boy of him,” his mother told him as he hid her good-bye. But Fulke did not get the constant sea-air after all, for in a few weeks he found his level to be lamentably low. So low, indeed, that the boy could not hold up his own head, but laid it down one Sunday morning upon his small neighbor’s shoulder, during the sermon, and could not raise it again for all the nudges and pinches and whispers bestowed upon him.

So Fulke was deprived of the glorious privileges of his age, and it was decided, much against his master’s pecuniary advantage, that little Wykeham, for the eventual credit of the school, had better be sent home.

It was but a short journey of five-and-twenty miles from Ottermouth to Woodsford, but its accomplishment took a great deal out of Fulke physically, and the school-matron, who personally conducted him to Woodsford Station, was thankful to get him safe home, and to deliver him into his mother’s charge.

Mrs. Wykeham had not, fortunately for herself, though not, perhaps, equally fortunate for her dependents, a nervous temperament. She was never anxious until there was no loophole of escape from anxiety; so she met Fulke in the two-wheel pony-cart, and jolted him home over the rough Devon roads without a qualm. Air always did good; the boy wanted air; he was as pale as a little East-ender. All London boys were pale; pallor meant nothing. Fulke closed his eyes once or twice; she whipped up the pony, and pretended not to notice this little, affected trick. She was as strong as a cob herself, and had small sympathy for any sort of manifestations of bodily weakness. Health was always a mere question of giving way; if she once gave way she could soon be as delicate as Kate or as Fulke. Only she knew better.

The boy’s father had been much disturbed over the school-master’s letter and Fulke’s return. He had suggested going himself to the station to meet him, but, after all, the boy’s mother was the right person to go if she wished to do so, and she did so wish.

“ I should like to come, too,” said Gilbert.

“ Now, don’t, dear. Why should you ? The boy will fancy he is very bad if we make a fuss over him.”

“ By all accounts it won’t be fancy, Evelyn.”

These Ottermouth people are terrible alarmists. I was told so by some one, I remember, long ago. A fictitional some one was used to corroborate Mrs. Wykeham’s story. “ And you, Gilbert, you are always on the lookout for the black side. It’s such a mistake. I know you can’t help it. No doubt the circumstances of your early life fostered the tendency.”

She was very much given to scolding Gilbert, and then to making excuses for him by a killing allusion to the very old days—the buried, sacred days, of which he himself never spoke at all, the “holy ground ” upon which he never trod in company.

Perhaps the circumstances of his early life had not increased Gilbert’s faculty for seeing the bright side of things.

He chose, risking the chance of rebuke, to be at the porch-door when his son arrived. No one could blame him, for as it turned out he was badly wanted. Poor Fulke was tired after his journey; he was so absurdly tired that he could not stand.

“ Please carry me, father,” he said, and Gilbert took the lean little man in his arms, kissing him a very tender welcome, and bearing him off through the cool hall to the boy’s own familiar room. The quietness, the comfort, the peace of home, how he had fretted for it all.

Here was Phoebe, too. Phoebe who, invited or not invited, had a knack of turning up in any Woodsford emergency where she might be wanted. He smiled at her, but he looked behind her and around her; his languid eyes searched the room.

“ Where’s Letty ? I do want to see Letty.”

His voice was so feeble that the hearers answered the sound, not the sense thereof. Gilbert nodded at Phoebe and went away. When he returned he brought brandy with him, and they poured some new fiery life down tired Fulke’s throat.

He revived presently and began to talk, so that when his mother came in Bhe laughed at Phoebe, who suggested that Master Fulke shonld go to bed.

“ Nonsense, Phoebe. He will come and sit down in the drawing-room with us. You and my husband between you would make any one ill. You stare and fuss, you poor things; you will really kill yourselves with fears. I should be anxious, too, if I saw a cause.”

And she went off, leading Fulke by the hand, her husband following, leaving a trail of her bell-like voice and rippling laughter behind her.

“ Would you be anxious ?” said Phoebe, taking a seat at Fulke’s window with an air of not intending to move. “ No, no, I think not. There .would never be a cause for fear in your mind till there was cause for a coffin. So you’d save yourself a deal of feeling in the end.”

Phoebe forgave Fulke his mother; she could not help being fond of the boy. He was so good, so gentie, so unlike the riotous, aggressive, troublesome youth of his sex. Other envious parents called his virtues pathological piety; Fulke’s unnatural goodness was, they declared, only a sign of delicacy. Nevertheless, he was a most lovable child; every one in the house was ready to wait on the boy.

In a shorter time than even Phoebe had anticipated,. Fulke was brought back in his father’s arms, more dead than alive, to be put to bed.

“ He must be kept very quiet, Phoebe.”

“ To be sure, sir; the strongest wants rest after a journey. I wish ”—she looked hard at her master— "Miss Letice was at home; she understands every hair on her brother’s head, and he looks to her as if she were his mother.”

When the telegram came to announce that Letice and Mr. Tempest were actually on their way home, there was great rejoicing in the sick-room. But, as I have said before,.Mrs. Wykeham was not pleased, and Letice saw she was in disgrace as soon as she and her luggage had been deposited at Woodsford.

Mrs. Wykeham came out into the hall to greet her.

“ How is Fulke ?” cried the traveller in her most impetuous manner.

“A little out of sorts. Please come into the drawing-room and have some tea. My mother and Kate are there. I suppose,” suggestively, “ that this rushing home does not mean anything ?”

“ Mean anything ? What do you mean ?”

“ You may have wanted an excuse to leave London. I am really quite capable of looking after Fulke: he only wants rest and feeding up. He’s dainty; he would not eat at Ottermouth; he didn’t relish school-boy fare.”

“ It is nice to he at home, mamma,” graciously. “ When there is illness about one likes to be on the spot.”

Then Letice, obediently, swallowing her desire for Fulke, followed mamma to the drawing-room. They found Kate unusually acid, and her mother, Mrs. Bradshaw, silent and constrained.

Letice had formed the subject of discussion till her arrival, and the latter woman had a guilty feeling of discomfort in her traduced presence.

“ What a hot journey it must have been, my dear,” said Mrs. Bradshaw. “I am sure if you were Fulke’s own sister you couldn’t do more for him. So I often say—don’t I, Kate ?” .

“ You say it whenever Letice is mentioned; it is a household word at the Vicarage.”

“ Any more broken hearts, Letice—or,” laughing, “ broken legs?”

“ I can never see anything,” intervened Mrs. Wykeham, “ to joke about in that abominable young man,

Kate. He has done a great deal of harm, and has made a great deal of unpleasant talk in our neighborhood.”

“ I saw Sir Wilmot to-day at Waterloo, mamma. He is coming to Wigram to shoot later on.”

“ He will not come here. His dangling about means nothing. It is a disadvantage,” said Mrs. Wykeham, addressing her relations, “to Letice; though, of course, a girl will not allow it to be talked about.”

“ Young people can’t always consider what is advantageous, Evelyn,” murmured Mrs. Bradshaw, who was looking kindly at the hot face opposite. “And gossip is inevitable, if girls marry or don’t marry; if they are successful or unsuccessful in lifo they are so sure to form the subject of conversation occasionally. People want something to talk about.”

“ Where would society be if, as mother suggests, we talked of birds and flowers ?” laughed Kate; and Letice laughed too, and held her tongue.

Later on, when she got off to Fulke’s room and had received his welcome, and had seen Phoebe’s face, and had judged for herself of the boy’s condition, Letice was glad to be at home.

Mr. Tempest came later and stayed some time in the sick-room. Fulke lay with his hand in his sister’s and a smile on his face. Very weird and wan and pinched he looked, but Letice had seen that pa tbetic look in bis eyes before; she tried not to let it frighten her overmuch.

Kate Bradshaw came in, too, to see the invalid; and when she had gone away Letice talked with animation to Mr. Tempest.

“ Oh,” she said, and her eyes blazed, “ nothing exasperates me so much as a cat; all women have a tendency to become cats, and cat-like propensities are infectious. I feel it, Mr. Tempest, I, too, shall become a cat.”

“ Never,” he said, bravely. She shook her head.

“ I hate my sex when I hear their tongues at work. They detract from everything; they can’t see the sun for the sports. They depreciate, they lower, they make life vile. Men are never cattish, Mr. Tempest; they don’t tittle-tattle and hurt and maul and scratch every one.”

“ Fulke and I are glad to hear that, Letice.”

“ Don’t laugh. Women’s tongues depress me. I am angry and frightened when I hear them. If a woman is a cat she ought to be destroyed as vermin; she does enough mischief to deserve her fate.”

“ But don’t you like kittens ?” asked a little voice from the bed, soothingly. Then the girl smiled, and the man and the boy beside her were glad that her anger was gone; they neither of them could bear to see a cloud on the face they liked best in all the world.

The day after Letice had returned Fulke became worse; there was cause for anxiety now, and Mrs.

Wykeham for the time forgot that she had even called her daughter “ fussy.”

Those who loved her best and who had believed in her, even when she had tried their faith, looked proudly at Letice nowadays. For she put out her strength on Fulke’s behalf; she fought for his life; she got between him and death; she would keep him anyhow; she could not let him go.

Such strength, such a power of endurance manifested itself in this frivolous girl as was a refuge, a solace, to the others whose duly brought them about poor little Fulke, such as they could not help appreciating. They stared in wonder at a responsible sick-nurse who was never tired, who was always cheerful, whose resouces were never exhausted.

While the crisis lasted Woodsford and its inhabitants, figuratively speaking, were in the hollow of her hands. Then Fulke began to get better; he began to improve; the tension relaxed, and Letice’s importance diminished; she resumed her rightful place.

Mrs. Wykeham, now that she understood that her son and heir, was not to be deprived of his distinctive earthly inheritance, by a promotion the honors of which were without distinction, grudged all the anxious forebodings which of late she had freely expended, all the needless watchings and heart-burnings.

She urged Fulke’s slow convalescence forward. She emphasized, nay, she did more, she invented, im provements in his strength; she refused to discuss his health. She had become used to his condition; eventually he was going to get better; it was not likely that she was going to he tied to his apron-string for the rest of her life. It was bad for the boy. Tho doctor said there was nothing organic the matter.

Letice held her tongue and set her teeth, remaining at her post by the little lad, saying little of the future, content with the painless present.

Death is an obstinate enemy. Maybe he will yield to a fierce fight, he turned from his path by an implacable foe, but he has a way of returning to the combat, driven off for a time but not defeated.

The gossips let Letice alone now. Jealousy is promoter of evil speaking, and no one is jealous of the domestic slave.. Letice, they allowed, had been perhaps the most superficially attractive girl in the neighborhood; she was now reduced to the pitiable condition of a dog who has had its day. Though she had a face like a flower, none went a-courting to Woodsford nowadays; her 6tep-mother ought to know. She would probably fall back on Mr. Tempest as a husband, though he was poor as a rat; but it was hinted he had got over his infatuation, and had been effectually cured by the Wilmot episode.

It was hard to credit that a girl such as Letice spent her time with a sick child because she liked to do so. It was difficult to understand that, from her point of view, no other course than hers was possible.

Hired care is good, but it is not the best, and Letice meant Fulke to have the best of all good if she could give it him.

“ Love is a great thing, a great good indeed, which alone makes light all that is burdensome, and bears with even mind all that is uneven.

“For it carries a burden without being burdened—

“ Nothing is sweeter than love: nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing broader,

“ Nothing fuller or better in heaven or in earth, for love is of God—”

The harvesting had begun, and Fulke was still said to be getting better. He was out and about. Propped on cushions in the little pony-cart, he went crawling through the lanes on the country-side. He was to be out all day, but he was never to be tired, he was never to be sad, he was never to be worried. Letice had hard work, head and hands and heart full, to fulfil the doctor’s orders and to keep her strict outlook on her enemy.

That autumn afternoon Fulke was out of spirits. Pepper, the pony, had frisked, and the reapers in the fields, by which Letice had halted the cart, had been too busy to speak to the little invalid; this dual offence had emphasized the boy’s condition.

“I suppose it is getting well so fast, Letty”— Fulke was quoting his mother—“ that makes me tired. I’m always and always tired.”

“Oh, Letty, stop them, shout to them; they are running away.”

She heard a muffled thunder of hoofs on the moss, a jingling of heavy harness half drowning the noise of wheels, which for a moment, with sheer terror, turned Letice into stone.

Behind them, close upon them, an empty wagon, driverless, came pounding through the narrow lane towards the little cart This great swaying wagon was drawn by a pair of huge cart-horses, which dashed along at a wild pace, scattering the stones beneath their hoofs.

Letice had but a moment for thought, a moment for action; the wagon was close upon them.

She took the whip in her hand, and, standing up, she leaned over the back of the cart.

When the leader of the runaways got within her reach, she slashed at him with all her force; the whip cut him across the neck; he swerved away from her towards the hedge. She slashed again, again he swerved. Then she caught Fulke in her arms, and the crash came.

Pepper was not hurt, but he was frightened beyond all control. He got off with the shafts and a wheel of the splintered cart, and he tore away in the rear of the rocking wagon, making for home at any cost.

They saw him at the cross-roads from the four-acre barley-field, and the harvesting stopped, and the workers came running along Summer Lane to find out what was wrong, to see what was to be seen.

Letice was there, kneeling on the ground by her little boy; the dandelion leaves and the penny-pies were strewed about them.

“ He isn’t hurt—he isn’t hurt,” she kept saying, with tears streaming down her face, but she would not let them touch him till his father came and the rest of the household were there.

He was not hurt; there was no scar or blemish to be found on the child; he was not hurt, but he was dead.

The crash, the shock, the fling -on the road had ended all the nursing and tending. The anxiety at Woodsford was at an end. Now that the fighting was over, Letice looked with softer eyes at her victorious enemy.

Her love was so “ great a thing ” that she could not find it in her heart to grudge Fulke his rest. She had fought like a tiger against the “ something coming when it had come she bore it well—it had brought peace to her boy.

In the first blank moment of her grief she had cried, hardly knowing what she said:

“He is not hurt! He is not hurt! He is not hurt!”

Later, when she was quiet, and understood what had befallen her, the same words still comforted her. In his short life Fulke had been hurt so much—from hie babyhood she had been close to him, and had known of all his woes, of his pains, and of the weariness of his ill-health. While he had wanted help she had been there, ready to his dear hand; now that he had gone, and the suffering was all over, she was ready to say, as the messenger of old:

“ Is it well with the child ?”

And she said, “ It is well”

CHAPTER XVII

The autumn time has come;

On woods that dream of bloom.

And over purple Tines,

The low sun fainter shines.

The aster bloom is failing;

The hazel’s gold is paling;

Yet overhead more near

The eternal stars appear.

Providence was not the power whom Mrs. Wykeham blamed for the loss of her son. Censure was a palliative to her grief; a scapegoat was essential; Mr. Tempest was selected for the post.

Against his employer’s wishes he had chosen to retain the services of the wretched laborer Snell, and it was Snell who had caused Fulke’s tragic death.

Snell, miserable, drunken Snell, had fallen off the wagon under his charge, when his horses had taken fright at a motor-car, and had left them driverless to dash down Summer Lane, and to wreck all the hopes and happiness at Woodsford, laying its future master dead upon the mossy lane.

And the worst of it was that Snell could not be punished, for he had broken his neck in the fall.

Nothing could be done to him; neither could Gilbert be induced to turn his widow off the place. Nevertheless, some one should be made to suffer—justice should be done somewhere. Evelyn would see to that. She would see that Mr. Tempest did not go scot-free.

During the first weeks of bereavement Mrs. Wykeham could not bear to be left alone. Letice’s companionship was better than none, and the two were constantly together. It was useless to try and get hold of Gilbert; he was no good at all He mooned about, or sat with his head in a book, more spiritless than ever, no help to any one.

His wife would hear him talking to his agent, bnt he never spoke to her. She was dead sick of Mr. Tempest; be was a nuisance; nothing could be done without him; when she wanted Letice, once or twice, nay, three times, when she had particularly wanted Letice, the girl had been found in the rose-garden with Mr. Tempest. He was getting on Mrs. Wykeham’s nerves—a most fatal position for any gentleman. He did not seem to recognize his offence, though he had robbed her of her son.

While Evelyn wept bitterly for Fulke, Letice, gentle, patient, untiring, had done what she could to comfort the mother, the poor mother, who had sat drooping, with dull eyes, like a sick bird, mourning for her only child.

Acute as the grief was, in a wondrously short time it lightened, expending itself in talking, oozing out in expression. Putting her feelings into words, Evelyn so exposed them that their color faded, and the keen edge blunted, and the sorrow passed.

Then Mrs. Wykeham began to replan her future. Death had frustrated all the intricate schemes which she had lain downfor herself and her son. Fulke was to have been everything which his father was not.

His death had changed her position; she was no longer mother of the heir. The heirship was small, but she had highly valued it.

It would be well, under the altered circumstances, that Letice should remain single, and it was desirable that she and her step-mother should be on- friendly terms.

Letice wanted understanding, but just lately she had been less difficult to manage. She was, Evelyn reflected, one of the sort of girls who wanted crushing, being like a scented verbena leaf in that respect. Any sweetness lurking in her might be got out by a hard hand or a heavy heel.

Mrs. Wykeham was writing to her dressmaker, ordering a dress with the new sleeves: she had not thought of what was becoming two months ago, but that afternoon during her drive with Letice they had met Mr. Hoggins, and Mrs. Wykeham had felt badly dressed. It would be interesting to get the. new dress; life was deadly dull “ Where are you going to, Letice ?”

She asked this question sharply, for it was nearly tea-time, and Letice had come into the drawing-room in her hat and coat, as though she was going to cut the cosey meal which would be ready shortly; it would be vastly inconsiderate of Letice if Evelyn were left to have her tea alone.

“ I’m going to see Mrs. Snell; she is ill again, and so is the baby.”

“ Don’t go just now; it’s getting late.”

“ Mr. Tempest promised her that I’d be there today. She expects me.”

“ Mr. Tempest! I’m sick of that man’s name; he thinks we are all at his beck and calL”

“ Oh, but, mamma.” .

“ There is no ‘ but ’ at all, Letice. If you were a mother you would understand; as it is, I can’t explain to you what I feel about. Mr. Tempest. I lie awake at night and shudder when I think of him. He will drive me off my head.”

“ I don’t understand.”

“ If you chose you could understand. Ton could understand that I feel he was responsible for my boy’s death.”

“Mamma!”

“ He didn’t mean it—of course he didn’t mean it, or he would be hanged—but he kept Snell on.— I said ‘ send Snell away.’ Your father said the same. The man had done harm enough then; he had set the whole country talking about you, he had broken that horrid Sir Wilmot’s bones, and thrown yon two together. Still, Mr. Tempest would not dismiss him. He mustn’t go; though he drank he must stay; and why, forsooth ? Because the man had a dozen children. More shame to him. And he killed my only one.”

“ Mamma, don’t cry.”

The speaker was very pale.

“ But I must ciy. Who could help it ? Is it possible for me to be calm when I think of it ? The very thought of Mr. Tempest upsets me. The sight of him is intolerable to me.”

“ There is no reason.”

“ Don’t talk of reason. Your father is infatuated, and you, Letice, are little better. From a child you have followed Mr. Tempest about like a dog. Oh, I know he is old enough to be your father, but he is not your father, and girls cannot be too careful.”

“ I am very late.”

“ Of course you don’t like to hear what does not please you. I didn’t at your age. You forget that your position is changed; every one now will be wanting to marry you, Letice. Money just makes the difference. I had none, and I felt it. No woman hangs fire who is substantially loaded.”

Though Letice had been crushed like the verbena leaf, yet she was not wholly sweet, for the door shut sharply at this moment; she had escaped, and Mrs. Wykeham was left with her tongue tipped with wise saws she had intended to say.

It was not civil of Letice to behave thus, and Mrs. Wykeham rose in wrath to make her way to the den behind the library, which was her husband’s sanctum. Gilbert would listen; she could finish her discourse to his courteous ears. Though he did no more, yet he always listened; he never argued with, or contradicted, or gainsaid his wife, nor indeed—and here it was that his courtesy galled her—did he argue with, or contradict, or gainsay any one with whom he and his opinions came in contact.

Meanwhile the offender, Letice, went off on her charitable visit with but a small portion of charity within her. The crisp October air, through which she walked so quickly, warmed her cheeks, and did not cool her hot heart; she was outraged by Evelyn’s wisdom, full of apprehension and disquietude. She knew a thin edge of a wedge when she felt it; she knew the tottery tenement described as “ being on nerves.” Would Mr. Tempest eventually be driven from the Red Farm ? She had been trying so very hard to be good and to find good, and she could do neither.

“ If it be possible, so much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”

The saint had found it hard to be docile, and Letice found it hard. On such an afternoon and at such a moment a tactful man, who understood the sex, would not have elected to approach Miss Wykeham; but Sir Wilmot Kirwan knew nothing of all this; he only knew that he wanted to see Letice, and that an opportunity for his doing so had been arranged for him.

Letice had walked three hundred yards from Woodsford; she had reached the big elms by the beginning of the rhododendron hedge, when she heard the sound of horse’s hoofs upon the drive, and looking inquiringly ahead she saw a man on horseback riding at a walk towards her.

It was dusky under the trees, and she was preoccupied, but she knew this gentleman in a moment. In a moment she knew why he had come. Yes, he was a splendid man to look upon. She saw the strong face, the keen eyes, the Saxon fairness. She was not surprised nor startled. She made a step or two forward, with a little motion of her hand, and stopped him. She would shirk nothing.

“ I heard you were at the Wigrams. You told me you were coming,” she said. “ How do you do ?”

Sir Wilmot had been at Wigram ten days, and he and his cousin, Lady Wigram, had talked Woodsford affairs through and through several times. Sir Wilmot had been racketing hard for the last two years, and his cousin seriously thought he should draw in a bit. For his own salvation there came a time when a man must needs marry and settle.

In the year of grace during which Sir Wilmot had hurt his leg, he had been hard hit.

“ If he had been a marrying man,” he had allowed hold her tongue. She would not talk at breakfast; she would not overdo laughter or tears. Seen under the auspices of heiress-ship, Letice became irresistibly attractive; and Lady Wigram’s note was written, and then Adonis mounted a horse and rode off with it to Woodsford.

Good-fortune dogged the courtier’s steps, as usual, for here, alone upon the drive, he met the girl. Under the dusky trees she stopped him. He jumped off his trusty steed and laughed, taking, her hand bravely in his.

What eyes she had; great, soft, clear, fearless. He did not know that they shone so large from recent tears. In this light they looked black—they rested full on his.

He had forgotten how beautiful she was. He had forgotten her points; face, head, hands, throat, lithe figure and sweet mouth, all were good. How had he come to leave her ? Heaven only knew.

“Oh, Letice,”'he said; he half fancied she had known all his thoughts, and would meet him here, half-way down the road to matrimony. But she did not do so. He saw by her face he had made a false start, and he began again.

“ I’ve been about here for ages,” he said, watching her, “ but I did not like to come through the gate; I always hoped I should meet you somewhere. I have brought a note from Flora for your jnother. It was a chance of seeing you. How arc you, Letice !”

“ I’m very well, thanks.”

“ I’ve been so sorry,” he said, pressing the slim hand that lay in his, and which had made no effort to free itself until now, when Letice, with an unexpected gentle gesture, regained possession of it. “ I have thought so much of you.”

“ Ah.”

“ You are looking awfully well, though;” his eyes kindled. “ I had—had forgotten—”

“ So you are riding Bupert; that’s a privilege.” This manner was not what Lady Wigram had led the suitor to expect; but no doubt she was acting her part; no woman ever yet blamed a man for expedition. He was for getting to his point. Ho wonder Letice was unapproachable; she could not know, by instinct, whither the propitious fates were hurrying her—he must speak out.

“ And how’s the Wigram shooting, this year ?” genially. She was talkative; her voice was bracing.

“ Roughish. Down in this soft - faced. country things don’t go smoothly. You are rough on me.”

“ Rough,” she repeated. “ Rough—such a word is incongruous in connection with you.”

“ I’m glad to hear it. Letice, you have forgotten the old times. You have forgotten me. God knows I’ve not forgotten them. Sometimes I’d give my life to forget.”

“ Would you ? How extravagant that sounds.”

“ Ah. I knew you had forgotten. Have you forgotten, Letice ?”

“ No, I have not. I don’t want to. Of course we live in the present to a great degree, but the past is instructive.”

“Letice.”

“ And you have not forgotten my Christian name, either, Sir Wilmot.” He distrusted her smile.

“ No, it is the prettiest, freshest country name; a garden name. I can’t think of you by any other.”

“ A green, crisp cabbage-lettuce, that wants dressing,” she laughed; “it’s not more romantic than beanstalk, after all.”

“ Letice, you say you don’t forget. No more do I. I remember. That is not the way you used to talk to me.”

Their faces were so near—so near; those ruddy lips and small white teeth so near.

He bent his head; it would be no new thing; and yet he hesitated—the look in her dear eyes was new enough to puzzle him.

“ Why are you so angry with me ?”

Piqued by her manner, inspired by her beauty, he was hurrying on to his fate. She might talk at breakfast, she might take life seriously, she might even keep a bad cook; he was ready to swallow all these drawbacks.

“ Angry?” she repeated. “ I’m not angry. Why should I be angry with you ?”

“Because, because”—he made the plunge—“I was too hard up to do more than love you, Letice.”

“ It was gratifying, surely, that you did as much as that.”

“ Don’t laugh; I am serious: it’s deadly serious to me. I mayn’t be what you like, but I love you, Letice. I want you. I want you to marry me.”

The lips were nearer now. The face so fair, so proud, so unabashed, so cold. It must be his again; he must, at however great a cost, regain his own.

“ You have changed to me, Letice.”

“ Yes. I have—changed.”

“ No, no. I don’t believe it” His well-tried heart was in the matter now; it roused to action, and, throbbing, shook his voice; she heard it shake. “ You don’t change like other women. You are another sort I’d stake my soul on your good faith. Forgive me, Letice; don’t be too proud to forgive me. We were happy here that summer; let us live it through again. Lift your face, my sweet, my own. Don’t don’t; you are not afraid I”

She began to walk slowly along the drive towards the gate; he walked beside her, leading Rupert by the rein.

“ I have changed,” she repeated; her clear, cold tones could not but convey meaning plainly. “ I am like other women, no doubt, for I have changed. You and I misunderstood each other before; do not let us misunderstand again.”

“ You don’t misunderstand now.”

“ No, I understand.”

“ Then, Letice—”

“Wait; I understand—you. If there had been the faith and truth you talk about, I should, perhaps, have gone on mis-understariding all my life, but I have not done so. I was like my namesake, only green and fresh once; a lettuce can only be used once for salad!”

Sir Wilmot had been rated before now; he had been rated and subsequently forgiven.

“ It isn’t altogether my fault,” he said, “ if you thought me a better chap than I am.”

He paused; this effective sentence had been used before, and had never failed to make its mark. Ah, she, too, winced at it; her eyes sank, her mouth relaxed, her lips gave a faint quiver.

“I am very sorry,” she said. “I know that I ought not to be angry at what you ask—at first I did feel angry.”

“ You are not angry now ? You have forgiven me? You will listen to me ?”

But she was not to be led into sentiment.

“ I have listened. Nothing you could say would change me now. I could not,” with a sudden gust of vehemence, “ marry you. I could not marry you to savo my soul”

Was this credible? And yet he believed it; he could not choose but believe it.

“ Then I am to go ?”

“ If you please.”

“ I can never make you care ?”

“ I am afraid not.”

" Then there is some one else,” he said. “ You need not bear me a grudge. I did you no harm. Good-bye.”

“ You did not give me your note,” she said.

He handed it to her.

“ Thanks. Good-bye.”

Then he swung into the saddle, and looked down, physically, from his exalted position, upon the slim grace of the figure under the trees. Hitherto he had had the best of it.

“ There is an end of it,” he said; there was a little scuffle of hoofs, an innocent flank had been made to sympathize with Sir Wilmot. Horse and rider went prancing out of sight; they were soon gone in the half-light.

Letice stood and watched them; then she wrung her hands and kicked the fallen leaves aside. The fresh air dried the tears on her cheeks as she hurried on to the village to fulfil her errand.

As Sir Wilmot rode home he was glad to reflect that he had made his mark on that independent maiden at Woodsford. He had been her first love, and it had been his privilege to inflict her first heartache upon her. No second love, however good it might be, could ever quite efface the scars he had given her.

He knew it and she knew it. The new man, whoever he might he, could never play first-fiddle in her life, and a lover was greedy to get at that superior instrument; none other would wholly satisfy such a musician. Certainly Sir Wilmot had made his mark.

He had been refused, he had been repulsed by the only woman whom he had ever wished to marry; and though there was some pain in the wound inflicted on his vanity, there was relief in his mind.

Matrimony was difficult and dull. Women and wives hardly belonged to the same category. The former were pleasing; the latter too often proved exacting; explosive comrades, who are .bores if domestic, and anxieties if frivolous.

Late that night Lady Wigram called the young man aside to inquire for the result of his expedition.

“Well, Wilmot, did you do any good to-day? Did you see Letice ?”

“ There is nothing to whisper about ”—he was a temperate person, but that night he had tried to drive a pair of great velvety eyes out of his mind; he had tried to drown Letice in champagne—“ she has clean forgotten all about me.”

“ Humph 1 that is what I feared.”

“ It wasn’t nice of you to send me on a fool’s errand. Who’s the man 1”

“ They would have been married years ago if you hadn’t spoiled sport.”

“ Who is the man ?”

“ Surely you know ?”

“ You don’t mean Tempest? —him!”

“ Wilmot! Don’t use bad language. It is all your own fault; you have kept him out of a wife long enough; you might have kept him so altogether if you had behaved as you should have done. Upon my word, you deserve what you have got.”

“ You shouldn’t kick me when I’m down.”

“ You are not right down. You made an excellent dinner. I watched you.”

“ I don’t doubt you watched me. I only wonder any man ever gets married when there is a petticoat near. They see an end before there is a beginning. They chaff, and watch, and talk, and handle the preliminaries so roughly that they get all the bloom off the situation; they spoil the whole show.”

“ You are in a bad temper, Wilmot.”

“ No, not very. But it isn’t nice to have eaten your cake, and not to have it.”

CHAPTER XVIII

The toad beneath the harrow knows

Exactly where each tooth-point goes,

The butterfly upon the road

Preaches contentment to that toad.

I do not think there is any sight in the world that annoys a woman more than the sight of a man who is not master of his house, and in his house. A wife may do what she can to worst her husband’s will, and to get her own way, bnt whether she win or whether she lose her cause, she has not any patience with her neighbor’s husband if he should allow himself to be governed by a petticoat.

The sight of a henpecked man drives any ordinary woman crazy. She finds them out, though the peckers have different methods; some guide with a padded beak, some lead with a strut, some propel their lords softly, imperceptibly, towards the desired goal. In days of yore Mrs. Wykeham had padded her beak, and had had a decent wifely demeanor of guidance, but nothing nowadays was to be gained by decency. Gilbert wanted rousing, he wanted a firm hand, he wanted a woman’s tongue to get him on his feet. He would have wasted his life in his library chair if his wife had not used force to oust him therefrom and to make him do his duty in the world.

It was his duty just now to prevent his daughter from making a bad match. Hitherto it had been his duty to marry her to any possible husband who had come in her way. His former duty he had ignored, but this latter paramount one should be enforced.

Mrs. Wykeham went into the library with her handkerchief to her eyes. Gilbert’s iron-gray head was bending over his writing-table; there were papers spread before him; he was preoccupied, and he rather nervously gathered his papers together, putting them in a drawer out of sight as the door opened.

“ Well, my dear,” he said, ignoring the handkerchief, “ is tea ready! I am just coming.”

She answered with a sob which demanded attention.

“ What’s wrong, Evelyn ! Aren’t you well!”

“ I am not an exacting woman, Gilbert, but I can’t bear my life as it is. Either Mr. Tempest or I must leave Woodsford. You must choose between us.”

If it had been in truth merely a matter of choice, even Gilbert would not have been long about deciding But there is only one irrevocable choice in matrimony, and he had made his.

“ Is it come to that, Evelyn! How long has it come to that ?”

“ I have been patient. I have put up with being a mere cipher here for years, bnt I owe a duly to myself. As your wife I have a certain position. I will bear it no longer. Any other husband would not submit a woman to continual impertinence from a—a dependent."

“ I don’t understand.”

“ You won’t understand. You moon about, Gilbert, until your brain is muddled. I see you; you think I don’t see you, but I do. I watch you feeling your pulse and holding your side, and imagining all sorts of valetudinarian fancies. You should rouse yourself and think of something or somebody bnt yourself.”

He looked at her with a sort of fear in his mild eyes. Years and years ago Evelyn had said these sort of things, and—and Madam had gone. She had gone of her free will, as Tempest would go. This little woman with the clear sweet voice of a bell—the monotonous clang of a bell—had a knack of getting her way. It was a cursed way. He, Gilbert Wykeham, was sick of it Without Tempest, without his friend, his help, his consolation, what would he do with the fag-end of his life ?

This woman would get her way—of course she would. She would get it whatever he did, whether he flared out—and an explosion would cost him dear, as time had taught him. It was not his way to lose his temper with his wife. For the sake of one wom an all the sex were sacred to him. Evelyn thought that her husband was an oyster; he shut himself up, there was no getting at him, he showed no feelings; she thought he had none. If his enclosing shells were rent apart he would manifest no more feeling than his prototype; he would lose his life, of course, but he would do so without remonstrance.

“ I have not been quite the thing lately, dear.”

“ You eat and sleep well, Gilbert; you only want exercise. If you had a little more to do you would be a different man.”

“ Should I ?” absently.

“ Yes. There is not enough to occupy you here. You don’t want an agent. Mr. Tempest is an unnecessary expense; you haven’t a big place. It was Madam who got that man here. Madam never understood you. For your own sake, as well as for mine, it would be better for him to go.”

“ Evelyn, Mr. Tempest cannot go; I cannot part with him. You must allow me to judge for myself. This is my affair.”

“ Is not my happiness your affair ? I am miserable.”

He put his hand to his head.

“ I’m very sorry, Evelyn. I—I have hoped, I have always hoped, that I made you happy.”

“ Pshaw!” said she—her heart was thumping in her throat with anger and it shook her voice—“ you have never considered my happiness from the first— about the eyes and lined round the mouth, the wearing and the lines had been to good purpose. The oyes themselves were steadfast, full of fire and energy, and looked straight at the world; the lines round the mouth were patient, firm, and kind. His broad shoulders, his stalwart frame, were young enough still; they had strength and to spare. His dark head was just sprinkled at the temples with a leaven of gray.

He was quite unconscious of his sins, and came into the room with the quietness and confidence of one who was as sure of a welcome as he was of himself. For a moment he had not seen Evelyn.

“ Did you say that you were talking of me ?” he said, with a smile; his friends loved his sudden smiles and watched for them, for his face had sometimes a trick of sadness in repose. “ I heard something about youth and money; surely I was not connected with these things, Mrs. Wykeham.”

It is rash to apply the proverb about the wisdom of “ taking the bull by the horns ” to a cow. The sexes want different methods of treatment. Mr. Tempest felt that of late he had got, he knew not how, into this lady’s black books, and with the good-nature of indifference had accepted,the position, though it was occasionally galling enough to be argued with, and openly criticised, and to be put everlastingly in the wrong, as though he were no better than the lady’s husband.

He would not quarrel with her, he would never be tempted into a disagreement; ao he turned her sallies into fun where he could, and never took her seriously.

Of late, just of late, she had failed to annoy him— nothing in fafct had power to annoy him. He was in a fool’s paradise, living royally from hour to hour, faring sumptuously on a smile, or a word, or a blush, as though he were a boy again, with his capacity for feeling untouched, untainted, unaltered by the passing of a score and more of years.

“Indirectly connected only, Mr. Tempest,” said his enemy. “ I am very sorry, but listeners are seldom flattered.”

His smile faded; how unpleasant she was. He looked with a covert look of sympathy upon his friend, poor Gilbert; how many years he had endured already, and the worst was to come, for age would not improve this specimeu of womanhood. Things not good are little bettered by keeping I

His glance of passive sympathy turned into active concern when his eyes reached Gilbert.

“ Wykeham, what’s wrong ? Are you ill ?”

Gilbert’s face was paling, turning gray, with odd shadows creeping about the half-closed eyes and open mouth. Through his white lips the breath came irregularly, growing momentarily shorter, louder, and more labored. Suddenly he raised his hand to his side and groaned.

“ It will soon go off now,” said his wife, flurried but consoling; “it never lasts long when the pain comes. He has these sort of attacks sometimes in the night. Ton had better ring for brandy, Mr. Tempest. He says a doctor told him to take brandy.”

Mr. Tempest got brandy, and laid the poor master ef the house on the floor, and fanned him, speaking words of encouragement, but with a faint and sick heart to back them up, while Mrs. Wykeham bustled off on a lengthy search for eau de cologne and smelling-salts. Gilbert’s color was more natural and his breath less painful when his wife returned.

“ That’s all right, dear; it has gone off now,” said Evelyn, with no air of great concern in her voice, though she looked mysteriously at Mr. Tempest, contracting her beak-like lips, with anger in her eyes. “ Get on to the sofa in the drawing-room, Gilbert, and keep very quiet. The least agitation brings on this alarming faintness,” addressing Mr. Tempest “ It is cruel to agitate Gilbert nowadays. The pain lasts for hours and make him fit for nothing.”

The hearer hardly wanted these facts brought homo to him. Any sane person could see at a glance that Gilbert was “fit for nothing.” Indeed, he hardly seemed fit to be moved to the drawing-room, whither he was passively led and established upon the chesterfield by the bureau.

He lay there with dint lids and parted lips. Mr. Tempest, who had never taken his eyes off Gilbert’s face, now left the room softly. He returned some minutes later, and was relieved to find Gilbert seemed to be reviving.

He did not seem affected by Evelyn’s tongue—she was talking in emphatic whispers—but was looking past her into the room, and he smiled when he met his old friend’s eyes.

“ I am afraid,” said Mrs. Wykeham, raising her voice, “ that we must banish even Mr. Tempest; Gilbert must be kept quiet, absolutely quiet.” She laid her fan upon the bureau and approached the intruder. “ If you have anything that is necessary to say to my husband, please tell me what it is, and as soon as he is well enough to be worried, I can repeat it to him.”

“ I want Tempest now.”

“No, not now, Gilbert; I’ll come again. Mrs. Wykeham knows best. I will be off now. I shall hope to hear a better account before long.”

He was not to escape. Evelyn preceded him from the room, leading him into the library, the door of which she closed behind her.

He knew he was in disgrace; she held her head on one side, and puffed herself out like an angry bird. Anger is sometimes catching; this little lady had power to harass his daily life; he put a firm hold on himself. One emotion makes many; the emotion anger dogs the heels of the emotions of fear and pity and of love. Mr. Tempest’s temper was a big thing to lose; though he was master, yet he treated the servant respectfully.

“ I slipped ont and sent Davy on Don for the doctor.”

It had not struck him till he saw her face that he had been an officious son of Levi.

“ A heart,” he added, sternly, “ is not a thing to be trifled with.”

“ Do you think I am likely to trifle ?” He made a polite but evasive murmur. “ Gilbert has seen a doctor about these little attacks of his. In times past I have urged him to consult all sorts of people and he has refused. He was angry with me for fussing him. He makes nothing of the faintness; he begged me to mention it to no one. He will be dreadfully put out when he finds you have sent for the doctor.”

“ I have heard, Mrs. Wykeham, that when a man is seriously ill he is apt to make light of his illness; I would rather trust to a doctor just now than to your husband’s opinion.”

“ I have every confidence in Mr. Wykeham’s judgment. If the cause of his attacks were removed, I have no doubt he would Boon be perfectly himself.”

“The cause?”—startled. “You know it? It is curable ?”

“ It is, of course, curable, up to a certain point Trouble, worry, annoyance, any agitation, in fact, are the direct causes of the illness.”

“ I don’t think he has at all an anxious temperament, Mrs. Wykeham.”

“ There I cannot agree with you. He worries more than you know. Many things worry him !”

“ But of late everything has gone fairly smoothly.”

“ Smoothly?” and she took a turn backwards and forwards across the room wringing her hands. “ Have you forgotten that we have lost our only son ? Our heir? His death has altered both our present and the whole future of life. Gilbert cannot get over it; and the life was thrown away; he cannot forget it; he finds it hard to forgive. It is hardly a subject which I dare mention to you, but you drive me to it.”

“ Drive you ?” bewildered; “ I don’t understand.”

“ You don’t understand a parent’s feelings. We, he and I, cannot help looking back; we cannot help seeking causes. If Snell had been dismissed, as we wished, the accident would not have happened. You must forgive us, but, justly or unjustly, the mere thought of this upsets us cruelly.”

She had struck home now; he was taking her seriously.

“ Mrs. Wykeham,” he cried, “ does Gilbert blame me?”

“I fear he does. He may not own it. He is generosity itself, and you are an old friend. Bnt how is he to avoid feeling it? We were talking together just now. I was telling him that this place would be quite manageable, if I helped him when he wanted any little help; he wants employment; there is not enough for you both to do.” Her manner now turned from tragedy to comedy, her voice going a tone higher, and her thin lips parting in a smile. “ So you get into mischief, Mr. Tempest; you do damage. I could hardly count on the fingers of both my hands the damsels with whom your name has been coupled, the hopes you have raised, which you have not fulfilled.” There was that in his face at which she might well have taken alarm, but she was too intent on gaining her own ends, at all price, to be turned from her path. It wasn't pleasant to say these horrid things to a nice-looking man, hut some one must do it. Gilbert was no good, and Mrs. Gilbert had to look closely after family interest; she could not have done more than this for Letice had she been the girl's own mother.

“ The last year or two, no doubt, you have not been bo bad, but at one time you were shocking; even your gray hairs have not quite sobered you. I mentioned to Gilbert, I thought it my duty to mention to him, that you—you have been most attentive to Letice of late. It is rather unfair on the poor girl, who has already been treated shamefully by Sir Wilmot Kir-wan ; it is rather unfair, Mr. Tempest, for hearts are proverbially easy to catch on the rebound. With your prospects, and at your age, I tell you candidly that you should not take advantage of your intimate position in this house to pay court to—to—”

But she had no opportunity of finishing her candid sentence; she was going to have put it quite plainly: hints and innuendoes were lost on Mr. Tempest; she knew this of old. She would have spoken out, but at this moment the poor girl, who had already been so shamefully treated, came into the room, with her brown head held high, her eyes shining like stars, her beautiful shoulders erect, her step light and quick and graceful. There was no crushed, forlorn appearance about her, no apprehension in her face. Strong and sweet and pure she looked, none the worse because the first blush of ignorant, innocent youth had passed her by, and some knowledge, some experience, lay behind the intellect and beauty of her eyes.

Mrs. Wykeham was observant of her own sex, and she covered Letice with her keenest outlook. There was no mistaking it, Letice was not any longer indifferent to Mr. Tempest; she had the audacity to pale —and paling was fifty times a worse symptom than blushing—when she saw him; she hadn’t expected to see him, and she had the indelicacy to turn color; her ruddy cheeks grew faintly whiter as her eyes met his. What fools girls were, always athirst for lovers; if they couldn’t get Dick, Tom would do; if Tom failed, there, was Harry in the background. Mrs. Wykeham had no respect for sentiment, though on her own account she toyed a good deal with it. A love of admiration she owned and respected, but that sort of thing did not hurt, it was only skin deep. She had at one time feared that the Dick in Letice’s case would prove fatal; now that her hopes were revolutionized, she was fiercely angry with her step-daughter for owning unwittingly to a Tom.

The lamps on the table gave a poor light; just for a moment Letice saw the familiar figures before the unfamiliar expression of their faces made itself manifest. With her eyes, wandering from one face to the other she waited for the explanation that was coming; she was not alarmed, though there was an incomprehensible coil about. A storm was brewing; thunder on the kind face above her, rain hovering near the small one below, lightning in the air. When she wanted him, when she had need of him, for the first time in her memory—and her memory stretched through her very babyhood till now—Mr. Tempest turned his back on her necessity.

He ignored her, he looked past her into the dark corners of the room, then without a word he made a movement forward, and passed both the silent women; the door closed sharply behind him; he was gone.

Alone with her step-mother, without the disturbing presence of a third, Letice instantly became on guard.

“ Is there anything the matter, mamma ?* The whole world was concerned when Mr. Tempest had left her without a glance or a word, without a mere show of civility.

“ Matter ? Everything is the matter. I have been goaded into speaking my mind to that ill-tempered, ill-mannered man, who is old enough to know better.” “ Why is he in disgrace ?”

“For many reasons, Letice. One of which, at least, would be indelicate to repeat to you.”

“ Nowadays nothing is too indelicate to talk about, mamma.”

“ You say dreadful things, Letice, but at least you are frank, so I, too, will be frank with you. Tour father would not bestir himself were the earth to open before his foet. He never looks forward—in fact, I am not sure that he ever looks anywhere at alL He is like one of those Bible people who have eyes and see not.”

“ What has father done ?”

“ He has just been very faint and ill.”

“Where is he?”

“ He is asleep on the drawing-room sofa. You are not to disturb him. He will be disturbed soon enough. Without my leave, or your father’s leave, indeed, against poor Gilbert’s express wish, Mr. Tempest has sent off for Dr. Barber. Mr. Tempest has just gone a step too far this time, even for your father. There is no one Gilbert dislikes as much as a doctor.”

“ Mr. Tempest must have been frightened, mamma, or he would not have done it.”

“ Mr. Tempest can do no wrong.”

There was certainly thunder in the air.

“ He is hardly to be blamed for over-anxiety.”

“ He is most assuredly to be blamed for officionshess. I blame him there, as I blame him elsewhere.

He seems to consider himself master at Woodsford. Gilbert’s master—and your master, Letice.”

“ Mamma!”

“ Yes, dear, your master; and very foolish it is of you. He will be an old man before you are middle-aged. No, don’t go away. I will say to you what I have already said to your father, what I should say to you were you my own daughter. Since your position has been changed by poor Fulke’s death, Mr. Tempest has appeared to be absolutely and boyishly devoted to you. My sister, who is of a suitable age, and to wHom, hitherto, he has shown attention, has been left in the lurch. He should not have raised expectations which he could not afford to fulfil.”

“ I do not think, mamma—”

“ We all know girls do not think , Letice; they merely feel. You have felt, as we will call it, before this. You are, I fear, quick to feel. No, no, don’t go. I sha’n’t rest till I have spoken out. You must not be hurt if you are told that you are not attractive to men. You are, of course, nice-looking; up to a certain point men seem to like you, then they draw back.

I don’t know why this is; it is a mystery to me, but it is a fact. You must face the truth. Until your position was changed, you had not shown any power of attraction. It is strange. I repeat it is odd that now, after so many years, Mr. Tempest should mani fest feeling for you. I have said this to your father, and I fear I have upset him. I have said this to Mr. Tempest, and you see the sort of way in which he took it. I say it to you. I can do no more.”

“ Dr. Barber has come, m’m. I have shown him into the drawing-room.”

Mrs. Wykeham, having shot her arrows into the air, arrows which she hoped, in the orthodox fashion, to find in the hearts of her friends, welcomed the doctor’s arrival as just the break necessary to emphasize her remarks.

Letice looked as though she wanted to speak, but the lady gave her no opportunity; she bustled off to be present, if possible, at the coming interview with the doctor, to have her say, and to give Dr. Barber information, before he should be allowed to form his opinion of the condition of the master of the house.

CHAPTER XIX

Rain, rain and sunt a rainbow in the sky !

A young man will be wiser by-and-by.

Rain, rain and sunt a rainbow on the lea!

And troth is this to me, and that to thee.

And troth or clothed or naked let it be—

Rain, sun and rain I and the free blossom blows.

Gilbert had been left upon the drawing-room sofa. By the doctor’s orders he was to lie still. He was never to be agitated or worried; he was to take things quietly. Perhaps in the past he had not been to blame over-much for a universal indifference that annoyed people. This languid indifference to his surroundings might have arisen from a preservative instinct. Physically, it was easier for him to be mentally slothful. Usually he felt inclined to be quiet, and to divert his mind from any source of annoyance, but now to-day, to-night, it was not so.

Ether and brandy, angry words, grave looks, the doctor’s warning, with those new thoughts that had preceded the fuss, had all combined to effectually stir the lassitude, the languor of brain into which Gilbert had drifted. Dr. Barber had gone, his wife had gone, he was alone. Though shaky and unnerved by his attack, he felt wholly alive, with no dull accept ance of the facts of life such as he was wont to feel, with no dread of the stirring of memory, with no fear of awakening the past, with no desire to let sleeping dogs lie.

He was roused. Pain such as he used to feel a score of years before that day racked his nerves, swelled in his heart. He was ready to swear that this pain was better, far better, than the sort of contentment which had been his.

But the pain set his heart beating; the heart that was now unfit for its labor, incapacitated for work. Broken, the poets call that form of heart, which the doctors treat for less sentimental evil.

He could not breathe lying prone. He rose softly, he could not be quiet now; to-morrow he would be as quiet as they wished. The room in which he had been ensconced was distasteful to him. The wrong people lived in his drawing-room. He wanted to get off to his sanctum—the little room beyond the library knew him best, it understood him best.

He was undisturbed them No frou-frou of skirts, no bell-like voice, no feminine laughter intermixed with gossip and slander, no plannings and revilings, no “ much ado about nothing.”

“ Let me alone.”

The cry of the child and the cry of the man is much the same when things have gone wrong with them.

“ Let me alone,” had been Gilbert’s petition for many a day; he was not surly, nor dogged; he wanted to be let alone. He mostly had got what he wanted in that den of his, whither he stole, creeping like a rebel over the muffling carpets, treading lightly, because if his mutiny should be found out he would not get his way. His way was never accorded to him, because it was his way. No one cared to give him his will. If he fought openly for it he would not get it; he was not spoiled nowadays.

His tall lamp was lit in his little room, and set on the table in the window. At yonder side of the light, by the curtain, standing back to him with averted head, there was the figure of a girl. He held his breath and looked. Her shadow fell on the dark bookcase beyond. He knew the pose of head, the turn of neck, the soft shoulders, the slender waist.

He stretched out his arms towards her, stammering, staring.

“ My darling, my own, my love.” .

“Father, father.”

His passion died in a moment; he laughed a laugh that ended in a sob.

“ Here, in this bad light, with all the brandy they have given me, I couldn't see. I thought—God knows why I thought it, but I thought you were my dead wife, your mother, Letice.”

She came over to him quickly, put her arm round him, her lips to his cheek.

“ I never saw the likeness before, Letice. I have looked for it often enough, but I have never found it.”

“ Phoebe says I am like her, father.”

“ Well, yes, yes, you are. You must be, or how could I have mistaken you?”

His daughter was looking anxiously, tenderly into his face; he had never before spoken to her of her mother.

“ You look pale, Letice. Nothing wrong, I hope ?”

“ Nothing, dad. I’m a little tired. Sha’n’t we sit down?”

He seated himself in the leather chair by the fireside, still holding her hand tightly, as she knelt before him. His eyes were restless and uneasy.

“ Evelyn has been talking to me, Letice—women are not always quite accurate. She talks a great deal and her memory is treacherous; so, in consequence, I am afraid I’m sometimes not quite attentive when she tells me things. She has a great dislike to Tempest. Don’t let her send him away.” There was a long pause, then he lowered his voice. “ Can you,” he looked round and sunk his voice to a whisper, “ keep a secret, Letice? Could you keep a secret for me?”

She thought for a moment.

“ Yes,” she said, her eyes looking into his; they were wet with tears.

“ I’ve known it a long while, but I couldn’t stand a fuss. I’ve kept it to myself.” He put his disengaged hand on his side. “ There is something wrong here, Letice, something gone so altogether wrong here in my—heart, that I—I have nearly come to j the end of my tether.” |

Her head came nearer, nearer; she hid her face against his shoulder; his hand came up, and was laid ; on her hair.

In the silence she gave a sob.

“ It is a secret, Letice.”

“ Yes.”

“ As long as it lasts”; he still spoke very softly,his hand wandering over her hair. “ I can’t lose Tempest; I must have him here. I’ve a fancy to have him with me at the end. He knew her; he came to me then. He’s a splendid fellow, Letice.”

“ Yes.” '

“ He’d have taken it better than I did. For her sake he’d have bucked up and made something of his life. She was always doing—doing something for somebody. I was a lazy fellow; even then I wanted her to keep me going. I’ve not done any'harm to any one, Letice,” looking wistfully at her. “ Do you know what she said to me last thing ?”

“ No. I never heard.”

“ It was at the very last, close to the end, just before she died; we were only waiting; there was no hope. You were a little infant, a week old; you were lying on the bed. In the worst of the pain she always asked for you. She never forgot you. She was quiet; we thought she was asleep; her eyes were shut. Then you, you poor little girl, you began to whimper, and she heard you. She looked up at me— I was close by. ‘ Gilbert, Gilbert, take her,’ she said, speaking so we all could hear; ‘take her; don’t let her cry.’ I took you, Letice, and you stopped crying, and—and—she was—dead.”

There is comfort in human touch; Letice felt the hand tremble on her head.

“God forgive me, Letice, for all I have left undone. I have made a poor thing of my life. She will know, but she will understand. I have forgotten, I mean I have let it all sleep. I have been glad to forget my thoughts about her—she will understand—she always understood; she was never angry. Even though I could not feel towards you as though you had cost me nothing, she will not blame me; it wasn’t her way to blame.”

Letice could not speak; he went on speaking gently, with less excitement than hitherto.

“ Love is strange, Letice. Through all the deadly mystery and pain of life I believe in the Love of God; because I loved her—because I loved your mother, Letice—because of the year we had together. She left me, bless her, with the knowledge of the Love of God.”

“ Oh, father! I have never understood.”

The cry from her soul escaped poor Letice.

If she had only understood. If we had but understood. If it were not too late and we had understood. Ah, then, the patient charity, the tender forbearance, the loving kindness we would have shown. Ah, then we should not be upon our knees with the bitter prayer.

“ For all I have left undone, my God and my brother forgive me.”

Gilbert was going on speaking.

“ Evelyn has had her way; I don’t think she has been unhappy. I’ve done what I could? Do you think I have done what I could? Well, well, I’m sorry. But just in this matter of Tempest. It isn’t reasonable. The man has done nothing; he wouldn’t hurt a fly. It isn’t kind of her to try and separate me from Tempest.”

“ He won’t go, father. He won’t leave you.”

“ You think not ? Cherchez les femmes with a faint smile. “ Friends get parted. Evelyn generally gets what she wants. Her will is firm. Women don’t know what to do with a strong will; they get tyrannical.”

“ Are you talking too much, father ?” He was so white she was alarmed. “ Won’t you rest a little? Couldn’t I draw up this chair for your feet, and let you lie here by the fire ?”

He allowed himself to be settled more at his ease, but his eyes were still restless, and showed no sign of repose.

“ I want to see Tempest. I don’t know what Evelyn will say to him. He is not a fellow who would stand too much. A year or so ago he talked of leaving me; be was fidgety to be off. There’s some cousin of his with a lot of land, who wants an agent, and who offered him the berth—a better thing, no doubt, than this. Bnt I wouldn’t have it; I persuaded him to stay. To please me, he stayed. Don’t let him go, Letice; it won’t bo long, but he must see me through. I think I’ll go down to the Bed Farm and have a talk to him myself; it isn’t far. I can’t rest, dear, with this idea on my mind. Evelyn will see him, and then—then the mischief is done.” The hearer knew that Evelyn had seen him, and had done her worst, and her worst was bad indeed. Yet Letice thought it no sin to assert that Mr. Tempest had gone home, and that Mr. Wykeham would undoubtedly see him himself first thing in the morning.

“ The morning is a long while off, Letice.”

An hour ago Letice would have offered to send for Mr. Tempest without a qualm. Evelyn had done her own cause harm; she had brought things to a crisis; she had hurried forward the inevitable end.

“ Couldn’t you write Tempest a line, dear ?”

Of course she could do so—she must do so. Her father was agitated and ill; it was necessary to quiet him. Mr. Tempest alone could do this. Her dependence on this man was impressed suddenly, deeply upon her.

What would life be without him? And he had spoken of a new billet, of a better thing—better than the Red Farm—better than Woodsford; how easily it could be that Poor Letice, it had been told her frankly that at one time Mr. Tempest had fidgeted to be off.

Life without him, what would it bet She could not clamor to be seen through it by this steadfast friend, as her father clamored. What had Evelyn said ? What horrors had she not asserted ? Horrors which were true, true. No one cared, no one whose care was worth the having. Small wonder either; she was humble now, and.not worthy of the care she coveted.

“Yes, father, I will write. Yes, now, at once. Just rest, will you, please, while I do it.”

“ Send it at once. Ask him to dine. Put dinner off. I won’t have Tempest treated cavalierly in my house.”

So Letice sat and wrote:

“ DEAR MR. TEMPEST,—

“Father is not well; he is worrying to see yon. He wants you to dine here. Dinner is at 8.30. Do come, if possible; he is not well.

“Yours,

“——”

A long pause: what should it be? It might be only that, and not far wrong. She left it there, and signed her initials hurriedly beside it, where the “ sincerely ” should rightly stand.

Evelyn had done much by her tongue, more than the hearer dreamed.

Gilbert had rung the bell; the servant was waiting at the open door.

“ Take this note, John; send it at once to the Bed Farm. Let Sirs. Wykeham know, and tell the cook that dinner is put off for half an hour.”

“ Dinner is just going up, sir.”

But these conspirators were not awed by their offence.

“ Father, do you mind my leaving you? I must go and dress.”

“ Of course you must; no, I don't mind. Do you think he’ll come f”

“ You’ll lie here, won’t you? Shut your eyes; it is one’s eyes that fidget one. Please shut them. I don’t know, father, bnt—bnt perhaps he’ll come.”

Bnt he did not come, and dinner had been postponed and ruined for a whim, for mere wantonness.

Letice sat through a terrible meal, and in troublous times meals can be truly terrible, when the repast is shared with the wrong person, when the strife and the ox are to the fore.

Evelyn had an idea that her frankness had laid the foundation for a conflagration. She had noted Mr. Tempest’s face; she now looked critically at Letice. Great burning eyes were to be seen, pale cheeks, and the girl had no appetite, no conversation. Of course Gilbert’s illness had worried his daughter, but a father’s fainting fit did not account for the changing emotions on that beautiful young face.

“ No wonder you eat nothing, Letice; dinner isn’t fit to eat. Good servants make bad masters. Mr. Tempest is riding a high horse; he has not even answered your invitation.”

Truth, grim as the cutlet on her plate, which she made a feint of eating, and as unpalatable.

John was concerned; he went backwards and forwards with diverse delicacies to the master of the house, but he, too, ate nothing.

“Mr. Wykeham declines everything, m’m,” he murmured in Mrs. Wykeham’s car at length. He had faith in the efficacy of food, under all circumstances, at all hours.

“ People who are ill are never hungry.” Evelyn addressed Letice. “ A good dinner would do Gilbert more harm than good. He is always faddy about his food.”

“ What did the doctor say ?”

“ Nothing new. Just what we all knew before. Gilbert has had a dozen such attacks. Until Mr. Tempest alarmed him he made nothing of them. He is a nervous man; it is merely a nervous ailment”

At last dinner was over; nowadays ’twas a long, ceremonious function, spun out with all dinner-party proprieties, but at last it ended; and then there were footsteps to be heard crossing the hall, and a faint rustle of arrival. Both ladies listened.

. “ He has come at last,” said Evelyn. “ I suppose he will sit smoking till the small hours as usual. I daren’t suggest his leaving early or your father will jump down my throat. Men never take health precautions.”

When they were alone, Letice had fallen* into an amiable way of playing b&dque with Mrs. Wykeham. But that evening the latter was huffy, and the huffiness took its ancient form of headache, and disinclination for all things but reflection.

“ If you don’t care for cards, mamma, shall I play ? We have had lio music for several evenings.”

“ My head is distracting. If just for this one night you would not mind being quiet, I should be grateful.”

There is little recreation in sulking alone, and Mrs. Wykeham was freshly vexed when Letice left her to solitary possession alike of headache and of drawingroom.

The younger lady walked boldly from the room. She had of late been good, a painstaking Christian; her patience was an acquired not a natural adornment; that night it failed her.

Her spirits were not much to boast of as she made her way up the stairs; she was not given to the shedding of tears, but now her lashes were wet.

She was alone—so strangely, so completely alone. There was no one in the whole world to whom she could open her mind.

Life of late had been difficult; this last day of life had been full, packed full of pain. The tears, she thought, were for her father, the cold weight at her heart for him.

She paused by a cupboard on the landing; she took a key off a nail where it hung; she lit a candle, and treading softly, she made her way up the stairs to the end of the second-floor passage, and unlocking a door there, went noiselessly into the room whither it led.

Evelyn’s tongue had done some effectual work upon that most eventful day.

The door remained on the jar; there was a hitch about the creaking lock which, unknown to Letice, did not catch. Her candle shone on the dusty whitewashed attic, and on the odd spindle-legged and ancient furniture stored there.

The cabinet of Dresden china, the writing-table, the odd chair or two, along with a few hundred pounds, had come into the girl’s possession through her great-aunt, Miss Mildmay, a score of years ago.

Poor Miss Mildmay, poor thing; she had left a letter behind her, tod, a letter to Letice, which Madam had given to its owner some time ago, and which Letice had read, and had put back again into the inlaid box, whence it had come. The box was stored in a drawer of the cabinet among the coral and socks and baby shoes.

Letice, half impatient, in the heyday of youth, at the sadness of the words, had read her letter; now she had remembered it with a quick desire to see those words again.

The writer had lived and she had died Miss Mildmay—only Miss—year in, year out, no change at all—Miss Mildmay.

Ah! They are mostly matrons who look placidly upon the old maids’ gentle lives, without those pangs —half pity, half apprehension.

CHAPTER XX

And steel and fire have done their part,

And the prize falls on the finder's heart.

Letice's head was bent; she stood by the cabinet, reading. An inlaid box was upon the table at her side, close to the candle. A drawer was pulled open, a pale string of coral and a little pair of tiny shoes were in sight A tear splashed down on the letter she was reading; there was a pathetic droop about the reader’s mouth.

“ I don’t want to sadden you,” she read.“ You will think it sad to read a faded letter, written by a woman dead as many years as you have lived. Fading to you is sad; you will love the bright pristine color; to us, dear, who are old, the fading is welcome; if the full light shines it dazzles us.

“ Death to you is sad, aye, and to me too, for in death there is separation. You, my babe, as you now are, you are the only being whom I grieve to leave; you little know your loss; some day you will learn how great it is, and you would have come to me—to me, who understand.

“ Only I, in all the world, know fully what your loss has been, for I knew her, your dear mother. I knew her great heart, her great love; you might bless God for-”

“ Letice.” At the living voice the letter fell rustling to the ground.

“ You frightened me,” she said.

“Iam sorry.”

“ Why have you come ? Do you want me !”

“ Yes.”

“ Is father worse ?”

“ No, better; he is asleep.”

“ You might have come—before.”

“ I could not. I did not get your message. I was out.”

“ Have you had—dinner ?”

“ No. I want—none.”

Her eyes sank to the ground; she was trembling; her heart throbbed in her side and shook her breath.

Evelyn had done this, had made her conscious, had made her—something which was overpowering her. She struggled to be easy, natural, to be anything but—this.

“ I was reading a—letter,” she faltered. “ I did . read it once, years ago. I showed it to you then. It is very sad.”

He stooped down, picked it from the dust, and put it back into the place whence it had come; in doing this he came closer to Letice.

“ Why did you come here, Letice?” He left her no time to answer, but went on gently. “ Did you come for comfort, Letice ?”

"Yes”

“ Don’t come to the dead to comfort you. Come to—me.”

A silence—she looked up at him.

“ Come to me. I have been patient. I have held my tongue so long—too long. I shall speak now. You know it all. You know I love you, Letice.”

She just moved her head.

“ Do you believe I love you ?”

“ I—don’t—know.”

“ You do know—you must know—you shall know. Think—think of the years that are gone.”

She smiled a slow, faint smile; he caught her hand and held it with a firm grasp that seemed to indicate he would never loose his hold.

“ Let me have it, Letice—so. I want to tell an old story that you have never heard, that no one in the world has ever heard or known, but you and L It is a long story, longer than your life, my sweet, but you are through it nearly all the way, and mixed with it, so I could not disentangle you from it though I might try. Years ago—a score and more of years ago—I fell in love, gave all I had to give—it wasn’t much—to a woman. I held my tongue, I kept it to myself, and I looked on in silence when she chose your father and married him, and came here and —died here—and left chaos and blank misery and— you—you, one poor little motherless child behind her. I can hardly tell when the present grew till it absorbed the world, absorbed it all, past and present and future, and you were all in all—I have loved you a long while, Letice.”

Her dear eyes had darkened and drooped as he spoke; her face was very pale, paler than his. He paused, watching her. He could put passion in the background and smother the fire within, but it betrayed itself in eyes find face and voice; it shook the man; repression disciplined but had not weakened such feeling.

“ Letice, I want truth, nothing but truth, between us now. I have lived for you, I have thought for you, planned for you, worked for you, borne with your father’s wife, lost all ambition, welcomed the pain my love for you entailed—for you—for you. I love nothing on earth but you. Look at me, Letice; look at me.”

She looked at him, her unsteady mouth and swimming eyes calmed him; he went on speaking with less fire and passion.

“ When your bad time came, and some one got between us, when some one nearly robbed me of you, still I lived on for you. It is true; it is the truth. You may be told, as I to-day was told, that I want Woodsford, that I want the money you may have, that I, old and unsuitable and ill-favored,that I want a wife to keep me, so that I may get my second foot luxuriously down into my grave. We have been told this, you and I, to-day. But you and I know better. You know that I want nothing on earth or in heaven but you. You with your dark eyes and your sweet lips. You, with your truth, your wiseness, Letice, your womanliness, your greatness.”

“Hush.”

“ I want you as you are, sweet. Give me what I want; let me guard you, keep you, love you, cherish you in spite of tongues and schemes, in spite of white hairs and poverty, in spite of all the world but you; let me be happy, Letice.”

Another smile, faint and uncertain, but a smile, fired him anew.

“ I have little to give you, but it is enough. No man can love you as I do; I have loved you all your life. I can read the turn of your mind; I can feel as you feel, follow your mood and guard you at each turn. I can make you happy. Old, gray, poor, obscure as I am, you shall marry me. Nothing but death shall come between us. You shall love me as I love you; you shall love me and we will live together till we die.”

There was a silence: in a changed voice, strained and low, with the passion gone, he whispered:

“ Letice, answer me. I am sick at heart.”

She went very near him, putting her head back against his shoulder; she could not be afraid of him, even in the strangeness of it all. She could not be afraid her fear made him sick at heart She leaned against him, repeating his last words in a whisper that he stooped his head to hear:

“I love you, and we will live together till—we die.”

“ And did you love me always ? Did you not leave off then—”

“ Never; it was always. Even when that leg got broken, and something else was nearly broken too. Ah, we can laugh now, sweet, but then there was not much laughter in it I knew what it meant; I knew what you had to get through bit by bit, inch by inch. When I could not save you a turn on the rack, when I could not ease a grind of the mill, when to efface myself, to be blind and deaf and dull was the best thing I could do for you, I lived in hell, active hell— I get the heat of it back when I think of it even now. Thank God we don’t all get a chance of breaking the sixth commandment when we’re in the mood for murder.”

“ Were you angry with me ?”

“ Not angry.”

“ Do you despise me ? I—I am fickle.”

“ You are human.”

“ I have changed. You know how—first you, then him ”—her manner and her eyes were anxious— “now you again. I have changed. How do you know I may not change again ?”

“ I’ll risk it,” laughing in her face. “ I have got you. It is my business to keep you. 'I am not afraid.”

These brave words made her eyes shine.

“ I want to tell you something, Mr. Tempest.”

“ I am listening, Miss Wykeham.”

“ Something which, perhaps, I should not telL”

“ Keep it to yourself.”

“ I want you to know.”

“ I am listening.”

“ It is a secret, but you ought to know, because—I can’t tell why, only I want you—to know.”

“ You talk in riddles.”

“ I feel in riddles and think in riddles, too, sometimes.”

“ When you beat so about the bush you frighten me.”

“ To-day I saw Sir Wilmot Kirwan. Now I knew you’d frown, but I can’t help it. I saw him,” and Letice was looking mischievous, “ and we talked together. He made the amende honorable, as it is called.”

“ He asked you to marry him ?”

“ Yes.”

“ And you said no ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Why; what reason did you give ?”

“ I said no, because I felt no.”

“ Because of me ?”

“ Because of you. But if there had been no you, I should have said the same.”

For a long minute there was a silence, then he said:

“ I understand.”

“ You always understand; that is one reason why,” her brown head leaned against him as though his broad shoulder was its natural prop; “I cannot do without you.”

Poor Mrs. Wykeham! Fate checkmated her at every turn; that evening when this ill-assorted pair came into the drawing-room, she looked into their faces and knew all about it in a moment. They were so busy with each other that they hardly saw her.

At such a time as the present, with Gilbert far from well, with her own wise warning still about their ears, it was hardly credible that they had taken affairs out of her hands; but such was the fact.

Opposition had done it. For once in her life Mrs. Wykeham blamed herself; her judgment had erred, and she knew it.

Anxiety about her father had done the rest for Letice: illness, parting, trouble, a death even, any unwonted agitation was often such a fillip to lurking emotion as to guide an attachment into an entanglement—an idle fancy into the business arrangement— matrimony.

“ They were going to be married;” their condition was instantly betrayed to her intelligent outlook.

Her tongue did not often fail her, but it did so now. The blow was terrible.

“ Letice, I have been alone for hours.”

Without waiting for an answer, Evelyn rose and moved with great dignity from the room, turning at the door to say:

“ On such a night, with your father ill and alone, I had looked for help. I have found none.”

The guilty pair loo ked soberly enough at each other.

“I have tried,” Letice said, and sighed; “I am sorry for mamma; it is difficult for her, and she can’t help it. It is no sinecure to be a step-mother, is it?”

“Good-night, Letice.”

“ You don’t love her. You know she wants you gone; she has a knack of getting her way, but you won’t go. Now, why are you shaking your head!

I don’t understand the reason why.”

“ I am going. I am going soon, and I shall take you with me. We must get away, Letice, to begin this new life of ours alone.”

“ But why ? You like your work here and father wants you. He can’t do without you.”

“ What, Letice, tears ? Tears again, and now ?’

“I had half forgotten father; we mustn’t forget him. He wants you.”

“ Not very much.”

“ Nes, very much; more than anything.”

“ It would be unwise, Letice.”

“ No doubt. Do you think I don’t know that you are not a fool. Do you think I don’t know that it would be easier for us quite alone. I don’t want to influence you; I hate women who influence men. I like women to be mastered. I don’t want to be the sort of woman who must have her way. But just in this one thing I do want to have it Think of father, and of all the years you have helped him. The position is hateful for you; we shall both be pinpricked into passions sometimes, but—there, you are smiling; you will stay, you will not mind staying; I see you won’t”

For a girl who repudiated a wish to influence Mr. Tempest, Letice spoke vehemently.

Because she could not help being happy now, yet she was not going to forget her interview with her father; because her own personal happiness flooded the world with sunshine, she had still an eye for the shadows out of which she had so lately come.

“ You can write here, can’t you? As you have written before? I love your writings; they are all saturated with Devon. You can’t want to leave it;

I know you love it as much as I do myself ?”

"Yes, he liked it very much—almost as much as—”

“ Father told me that you had been offered a better thing, but we don’t care about being rich, do we ? I know you won’t disappoint me, and that for father’s sake you will stay. Have I counted the cost ? Yes,

I have counted the cost, and I’m sure, between us, we can pay it. Can’t we pay it ? Do say ‘ yes.’ ”

Of course Mr. Tempest said yes, and as he was this importunate young person’s lover he found extravagant virtue in her mere request.

The end of it was that the Red Farm was made smart, the spindle-legged furniture from the attic was taken there and helped to beautify the charming quarters of the bride, and the brave bridegroom settled down to “ live on his young wife ” within the daily reach of the strife of tongues.

If a trouble, a fear, an annoyance, or even the trial of a disagreeable relative is shared by two people who understand each other, the dreariness of the sufferers’ position dwindles to nothing. Mr. and Mrs. Tempest never took Evelyn’s attack au grand sérieux, except just now and again where Mr. Wykeham’s welfare was concerned.

He, poor man, so far as outsiders could judge, kept fairly well through the summer.

But there came a morning when he took no heed of a knock upon his door. He slept with his blind pulled up, and the sunshine streamed on his face as he lay on his bed. Since the day dawned he had lain thus; he did not stir for the rap of the knuckles on the panels of his door.

He was never a good sleeper, and the servant moved off noiselessly, glad that the master should sleep when he could.

Later the man came back and listened. The room was still; he knocked again, again, and then, with some intentional clamor, opened the door.

A cry rang through the quiet room. Not a cry of Gilbert’s, for he smiled on, lying still, but a cry that roused the household and warned Woodsford that there was something wrong in the morning routine of their lives.

The master of the house had died in his sleep, had died as he had chiefly lived, alone.

Mrs. Wykeham had slumbered peacefully in an adjacent room on that eventful night. At one time her sleep had been disturbed by her husband’s fainting fits, and the doctor had forbidden her to risk any injury to her health by useless vigils beside him.

So he had died alone; the room was undisturbed, the bedclothes unruffled, the pillow smooth.

The tears and mourning round his bed seemed out of place, because so much at variance with the great calm and peace of Gilbert’s face.

Poor widow! her only child and her husband both dead. Her affliction opened every good heart towards her, and they are not scarce; sympathy and loving kindness were lavished upon her.

When the first burst of grief was over she took the whole world into her confidence. “ She did not blame any one,” she said. “ Heaven knew that she was the last woman in the world to blame the dead, but she was grievously afflicted.” A curse had fallen on Woodsford, at which she hardly wondered.

Like father, like son; her poor husband had done as his father before him. It was, it was indeed, a little hard upon her. Woodsford had been left to Letice, out and out to Letice, while a mere jointure was all his widow had between her and the work-house.

No jewels, no house, no money, nothing for Mrs. Wykeham, except during her life.

This evil came of marrying a widower. Evelyn strongly advised her sister, and all her unmarried friends, to abstain from widowers.

Her sister resented the warning.

“You should not grumble, Evelyn. If he had left you a lot of money, some one would have married you for it; no doubt poor Gilbert had thought of that.”

“ He must have ”—she sighed, but hardly looked displeased—“been a little jealous, Kate. He was reserved and did.not show it—much.”

“ Gilbert jealous ? Pshaw! He had no spirit in him. He got smashed up when Letice’s mother died, we all knew that; you must have seen it for yourself. I should not grumble, my dear. You have income enough to smooth the path to a second husband, if yon want one, but not sufficient to attract a fortune-hunter. We can’t all get just what we want, though,” and she looked across the country-side to where the red gables of the Tempests’ farm showed through a clump of elms. “No doubt Mr. Tempest, in this case, had got precisely what he bargained for.”

It was true. Mr. Tempest had done this, and even more than this. He stood apart, as it were, sometimes, and looked at his own happiness—thankful, wondering, amazed.

Disparity of years and of means, he had seen those danger-signals of matrimony waring in their path; they were both there, but they did not interfere with the active happiness at the Red Farm. And Letice, with her possessions of money, youth, and heauty, was quite old-fashionedly domestic, uninterestingly serene. She wanted little which was not to be found in the narrow limits of home.

A happy couple are humdrum; they afford no scope for comment; there was really nothing to be said about the Tempests.

Gay maidens and rackety matrons confessed to their disappointment in Letice Tempest; they thought she would have been an acquisition, but she was wrapped up “ at home,” and lived “ in a groove.”

The husband looked after her, and no mistake. No doubt he knew what he was about.

There were kindred spirits of the Tempests who did not think Letice had deteriorated or was dull, and who were on intimate terms of friendship with these latest owners of Woodsford.

A well-known face and stately figure had reappear ed in the neighborhood. Doubtless older, but barely a whit less energetic, Madam had, at the Tempests’ invitation, established herself at the vacant Red Farm.

The elder Mrs. Wykeham confessed to Mr. Tempest that until she had left Oakley Gardens she never realized how she had hated London.

According to modem fashion, she made nothing of her eighty-odd years; though she, pathetically, would remark on. certain occasions that she “had come home to die,” there was many a year of pleasant life before her still, among her dear, congenial surroundings.

“ Letice has turned out well,” the old lady smiled at Letice’s husband, Letice being present when this speech was made, and smiling too. “ Upon my word, that time she stayed so long and behaved so badly in Oakley Gardens, I hardly knew what was to be done with the girl. But a woman wants work and children and a master to keep her at her best. Give a woman her head, and it’s seldom she knows what to do with it”

“ You imply, Madam, that I bully my wife.”

“ I imply nothing; I say what I mean.”

Mr. Tempest held his tongue. It was an accomplishment of his that had been very useful to him at one time of his existence. Even in these sunny paths of life he found occasional silence a factor not to be despised in the successful guidance of the matrimonial wheels.

A happy life is never a quite spontaneous growth. As a lily from a bulb needs cultivation, the flower of happiness must have some form of gardening to bring it to perfection.

The Tempests understood this, and they tilled their fruitful soil, as it is ordained the human race should do, not impatient of the inevitable briars or the necessary stones.

And the Golden Age came again to Woodsford.

THE END