"It is going to rain. It will be a wet evening," says Dysart abruptly.

"Oh, my dear fellow! You can hardly be called a weather prophet," says Beauclerk banteringly. "You ought to know that a settled gray sky like that seldom means rain."

No more is said about it then, and no mention is made of it at luncheon. At half-past two precisely, however, a dog cart comes round to the hall door. Joyce running lightly down stairs, habited for a drive, meets Dysart at the foot of the staircase.

"Do not go," says he abruptly.

"Not go—now," with a glance at her costume.

"I didn't believe you would go," says he vehemently. "I didn't believe it possible—or I should have spoken sooner. Nevertheless, at this last moment, I entreat you to give it up."

"Impossible," says she curtly, annoyed by his tone, which is perhaps, unconsciously, a little dictatorial.

"You refuse me?"

"It is not the question. I have said I would go. I see no reason for not going. I decline to make myself foolish in the eyes of everybody by drawing back at the last moment."

"You have forgotten everything then."

"I don't know," coldly, "that there is anything to remember."

"Oh!" bitterly, "not so far as I am concerned. I count for nothing. I allow that. But he—I fancied you had at least read him."

"I think, perhaps, there was nothing to read," says she, lowering her eyes.

"If you can think that, it is useless my saying anything further."

He moves to one side as if to let her pass, but she hesitates. Perhaps she would have said something to soften her decision—but—a rare thing with him, he loses his temper. Seeing her standing there before him, so sweet, so lovely, so indifferent, as he tells himself, his despair overcomes him.

"I have a voice in this matter," says he, frowning heavily. "I forbid you to go with that fellow."

A sharp change crosses Miss Kavanagh's face. All the sudden softness dies out of it. She stoops leisurely, and disengaging the end of the black lace round her throat from an envious banister that would have detained her, without further glance or word for Dysart, she goes up the hall and through the open doorway. Beauclerk, who has been waiting for her outside, comes forward. A little spring seats her in the cart. Beauclerk jumps in beside her. Another moment sees them out of sight.

* * * * *

The vagrant sun, that all day long had been coming and going in fitful fashion, has suddenly sunk behind the thunderous gray cloud that, rising from the sea, now spreads itself o'er hill and vale. The light has died out of the sky; dull muttering sounds come rumbling down from the distant mountains. The vast expanse of barren bog upon the left has become almost obscure. Here and there a glint of its watery wastes may be seen, but indistinctly, giving the eye a mournful impression of "lands forlorn."

A strange hot quiet seems to have fallen upon the trembling earth.

"We often see, against some storm. A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, The bold wind speechless, and the orb below Is hushed as death."

Just now that "boding silence reigns." A sense of fear falls on Joyce, she scarcely knows why, as her companion, with a quick lash of the whip, urges the horse up the steep hill. They are still several miles from their destination, and, though it is only four o'clock, it is no longer day. The heavens are black as ink, the trees are shivering in expectant misery.

"What is it?" says Joyce, and even as she asks the question it is answered. The storm is upon them in all its fury. All at once, without an instant's warning, a violent downpour of rain comes from the bursting clouds, threatening to deluge them.

"We are in for it," says Beauclerk in a sharp, short tone, so unlike his usual dulcet accents that even now, in her sudden discomfort, it startles her. The rain is descending in torrents, a wild wind has arisen. The light has faded, and now the day resembles nothing so much as the dull beginning of a winter's night.

"Have you any idea where we are?" asks Beauclerk presently.

"None. You know I told you I had never been here before. But you—you must have some knowledge of it."

"How should I? These detestable Irish isolations are as yet unknown paths to me."

"But I thought you said—you gave me the impression that you knew Connor's Cross."

"I regret it if I did," shortly. The rain is running down his neck by this time, leaving a cold, drenched collar to add zest to his rising ill temper. "I had heard of Connor's Cross. I never saw it. I devoutly hope," with a snarl, "I never shall."

"I don't think you are likely to," says Joyce, whose own temper is beginning to be ruffled.

"Well, this is a sell," says Beauclerk. He is buttoning up a heavy ulster round his handsome form. He is very particular about the fastening of the last button—that one that goes under the chin—and having satisfactorily accomplished it, and found, by a careful moving backward and forward of his head, that it is comfortably adjusted, it occurs to him to see if his companion is weather-proof.

"Got wraps enough?" asks he. "No, by Jove! Here, put on this," dragging a warm cloak of her own from under the seat and offering it to her with all the air of one making a gift. "What is it? Coat—cloak—ulster? One never knows what women's clothes are meant for."

"To cover them," says Joyce calmly.

"Well, put it on. By Jove, how it pours! All right now?" having carelessly flung it round her, without regard for where her arms ought to go through the sleeves. "Think you can manage the rest by yourself? So beastly difficult to do anything in a storm like this, with this brute tugging at the reins and the rain running up one's sleeve."

"I can manage it very well myself, thank you," says Joyce, giving up the finding of the sleeves as a bad job; after a futile effort to discover their whereabouts she buttons the cloak across her chest and sits beside him, silent but shivering. A little swift, wandering thought of Dysart makes her feel even colder. If he had been there! Would she be thus roughly entreated? Nay, rather would she not have been a mark for tenderest care, a precious charge entrusted to his keeping. A thing beloved and therefore to be cherished.

"Look there," says she, suddenly lifting her head and pointing a little to the right. "Surely, even through this denseness, I see lights. Is it a village?"

"Yes—a village, I should say," grimly. "A hamlet rather. Would you," ungraciously, "suggest our seeking shelter there?"

"I think it must be the village called 'Falling,'" says she, too pleased at her discovery to care about his gruffness, "and if so, the owner of the inn there was an old servant of my father's. She often comes over to see Barbara and the children, and though I have never come here to see her, I know she lives somewhere in this part of the world. A good creature she is. The kindest of women."

"An inn," says Beauclerk, deaf to the virtues of the old servant, the innkeeper, but altogether alive to the fact that she keeps an inn. "What a blessed oasis in our wilderness! And it can't be more than half a mile away. Why," recovering his usual delightful manner, "we shall find ourselves housed in no time. I do hope, my dear girl, you are comfortable! Wrapped up to the chin, eh? Quite right—quite right. After all, the poor driver has the worst of it. He must face the elements, whatever happens. Now you, with your dear little chin so cosily hidden from the wind and rain, and with hardly a suspicion of the blast I am fighting, make a charming picture—really charming! Ah, you girls! you have the best of it beyond doubt! And why not? It is the law of nature—weak woman and strong man! You know those exquisite lines——"

"Can't that horse go faster?" said Miss Kavanagh, breaking in on this little speech in a rather ruthless manner. "Lapped in luxury, as you evidently believe me, I still assure you I should gladly exchange my present condition for a good wholesome kitchen fire."

"Always practical. Your charm—one of them," says Mr. Beauclerk. But he takes the hint, nevertheless, and presently they draw up before a small, dingy place of shelter.

Not a man is to be seen. The village, a collection of fifty houses, when all is told, is swept and garnished. A few geese are stalking up the street, uttering creaking noises. Some ducks are swimming in a glad astonishment down the muddy streams running by the edges of the curbstones. Such a delicious wealth of filthy water has not been seen in Falling for the past three dry months.

"The deserted village with a vengeance," says Beauclerk. He has risen in his seat and placed his whip in the stand with a view of descending and arousing the inhabitants of this Sleepy Hollow, when a shock head is thrust out of the inn ("hotel," rather, as is painted on a huge sign over the door) and being instantly withdrawn again with a muttered "Och-a-yea," is followed by a shriek for:

"Mrs. Connolly—Mrs. Connolly, ma'am! Sure, 'tis yourself that's wanted! Come down, I tell ye! There's ginthry at the door, an' the rain peltin' on em like the divil. Come down, I'm tellin' ye! Or fegs they'll go on to Paddy Sheehan's, an' thin where'll ye be? Och, murdher! Where are ye, at all, at all? 'Tis ruined ye'll be intirely wid the stayin' of ye!"

"Arrah, hould yer whisht, y'omadhaun o' the world," says another voice, and in a second a big, buxom, jolly, hearty-looking woman appears on the threshold, peering a little suspiciously through the gathering gloom at the dog cart outside. First she catches sight of the crest and coronet, and a gleam of pleased intelligence brightens her face. Then, lifting her eyes, she meets those of Joyce, and the sudden pleasure gives way to actual and honest joy.

"It is Mrs. Connolly," says Joyce, in a voice that is supposed to accompany a smile, but has in reality something of tears in it.

Mrs. Connolly, regardless of the pelting rain and her best cap, takes a step forward.



CHAPTER XXIII.

"All is not golde that outward shewith bright."

"I love everything that's old—old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine."

"An' is it you, Miss Joyce? Glory be! What a day to be out! 'Tis drenched y'are, intirely! Oh! come in, me dear—come in, me darlin'! Here, Mikey, Paddy, Jerry!—come here, ivery mother's son o' ye, an' take Mr. Beauclerk's horse from him. Oh! by the laws!—but y'are soaked! Arrah, what misfortune dhrove y'out to-day, of all days, Miss Joyce? Was there niver a man to tell ye that 'twould be a peltin' storm before nightfall?"

There had been one. How earnestly Miss Kavanagh now wishes she had listened to his warning.

"It looked so fine two hours ago," says she, clambering down from the dog cart with such misguided help from the ardent Mrs. Connolly as almost lands her with the ducks in the muddy stream below.

"Och! there's no more depindince to be placed upon the weather than there is upon a man. However, 'tis welcome y'are, any way. Your father's daughter is dear to me—yes, come this way—up these stairs. 'Tis Anne Connolly is proud to be enthertainin' one o' yer blood inside her door."

"Oh! I'm so glad I found you," says Joyce, turning when she has reached Mrs. Connolly's bedroom to imprint upon that buxom widow's cheek a warm kiss. "It was a long way here—long, and so cold and wet."

"An' where were ye goin' at all, if I may ax?" says Mrs. Connolly, taking off the girl's dripping outer garments.

"To see Connor's Cross——"

"Faith, 'twas little ye had to do! A musty ould tomb like that, wid nothin but broken stones around it. Wouldn't the brand-new graveyard below there do ye? Musha! but 'tis quare the ginthry is! Och! me dear, 'tis wet y'are; there isn't a dhry stitch on ye."

"I don't think I'm wet once my coats are off," says Joyce; and indeed, when those invaluable wraps are removed; it is proved beyond doubt—even Mrs. Connolly's doubt, which is strong—that her gown is quite dry.

"You see, it was such a sudden rain," says Joyce, "and fortunately we saw the lights in this village almost immediately after it began."

"Fegs, too suddint to be pleasant," says Mrs. Connolly. "'Twas well the early darkness made us light up so quickly, or ye might have missed us, not knowin' yer road. An' how's all wid ye, me dear—Miss Barbara, an' the masther, an' the darling childher? I've a Brammy cock and a hen that I'm thinkin' of takin' down to Masther Tommy this two weeks, but the ould mare is mighty quare on her legs o' late. Are ye all well?"

"Quite well, thank you, Mrs. Connolly."

"Wisha—God keep ye so."

"And how are all of you? When did you hear from America?"

"Last month thin—divil a less; an' the greatest news of all! A letther from Johnny—me eldest boy—wid a five-pound note in it, an' a picther of the girl he's goin' to marry. I declare to ye when that letther came I just fell into a chair an' tuk to laughin' an' cryin' till that ounchal of a girl in the kitchen began to bate me on the back, thinkin' I was bad in a fit. To think, me dear, of little Johnneen I used to nurse on me knee thinkin' of takin' a partner. An' a sthrappin' fine girl too, fegs, wid cheeks like turnips. But there, now, I'll show her to ye by-and-by. She's a raal beauty if them porthraits be thrue, but there's a lot o' lies comes from over the wather. An' what'll ye be takin' now, Miss Joyce dear?"—with a return to her hospitable mood—"a dhrop o' hot punch, now? Whiskey is the finest thing out for givin' the good-bye to the cowld."

"Oh, no, thank you, Mrs. Connolly"—hastily—"if I might have a cup of tea, I——"

"Arrah, bad cess to that tay! What's the good of it at all at all to a frozen stomach? Cowld pison, I calls it. Well, there! Have it yer own way! An' come along down wid me, now, an' give yerself to the enthertainin' of Misther Beauclerk, whilst I wet the pot. Glory! what a man he is!—the size o' the house! A fine man, in airnest. Tell me now," with a shrewd glance at Joyce, "is there anything betwixt you and him?"

"Nothing!" says Joyce, surprised even herself by the amount of vehement denial she throws into this word.

"Oh, well, there's others! An' Mr. Dysart would be more to my fancy. There's a nate man, if ye like, be me fegs!" with a second half sly, wholly kindly, glance at the girl. "If 'twas he, now, I'd give ye me blessin' wid a heart and a half. An' indeed, now, Miss Joyce, 'tis time ye were thinkin' o' settlin'."

"Well, I'm not thinking of it this time," says Joyce, laughing, though a little catch in her throat warns her she is not far from tears. Perhaps Mrs. Connolly hears that little catch, too, for she instantly changes her tactics.

"Faith, an' 'tis right y'are, me dear. There's a deal o' trouble in marriage, an' 'tis too young y'are intirely to undertake the likes of it," says she, veering round with a scandalous disregard for appearances. "My, what hair ye have, Miss Joyce! 'Tis improved, it is; even since last I saw ye. I'm a great admirer of a good head o' hair."

"I wonder when will the rain be over?" asks Joyce, wistfully gazing through the small window at the threatening heavens.

"If it's my opinion y'are askin'," says Mrs. Connolly, "I'd say not till to-morrow morning."

"Oh! Mrs. Connolly!" turning a distressed face to that good creature.

"Well, me dear, what can I say but what I think?" flinging out her ample arms in self-justification. "Would ye have me lie to ye? Why, a sky like that always——"

Here a loud crash of thunder almost shakes the small inn to its foundations.

"The heavens be good to us!" says Mrs. Connolly, crossing herself devoutly. "Did ye iver hear the like o' that?"

"But—it can't last—it is impossible," says Joyce, vehemently. "Is there no covered car in the town? Couldn't a man be persuaded to drive me home if I promised him to——"

"If ye promised him a king's ransom ye couldn't get a covered car to-night," says Mrs. Connolly. "There's only one in the place, an' that belongs to Mike Murphy, an' 'tis off now miles beyant Skibbereen, attindin' the funeral o' Father John Maguire. 'Twon't be home till to-morrow any way, an'-faix, I wouldn't wondher if it wasn't here then, for every mother's son at that wake will be as dhrunk as fiddlers to-night. Father John, ye know, me dear, was greatly respected."

"Are you sure there isn't another car?"

"Quite positive. But why need ye be so unaisy, Miss Joyce, dear? Sure, 'tis safe an' sure y'are wid me."

"But what will they think at home and at the Court?" says Joyce, faltering.

"Arrah! what can they think, miss, but that the rain was altogether too mastherful for ye? Ye know, me dear, we can't (even the best of us) conthrol the illimints!" This incontrovertible fact Mrs. Connolly gives forth with a truly noble air of resignation. "Come down now, and let me get ye that palthry cup o' tay y'are cravin' for."

She leads Joyce downstairs and into a snug little parlor with a roaring fire that is not altogether unacceptable this dreary evening. The smell of stale tobacco smoke that pervades it is a drawback, but, if you think of it, we can't have everything in this world.

Perhaps Joyce has more than she wants. It occurs to her, as Beauclerk turns round from the solitary window, that she could well have dispensed with his society. That lurking distrust of him she had known vaguely, but kept under during all their acquaintance, has taken a permanent place in her mind during her drive with him this afternoon.

"Oh! here you are. Beastly, smoky hole!" he says, taking no notice of Mrs. Connolly, who is doing her best curtsey in the doorway.

"I think it looks very comfortable," says Joyce, with a gracious smile at her hostess, and a certain sore feeling at her heart. Once again her thoughts fly to Dysart. Would that have been his first remark when she appeared after so severe a wetting?

"'Tis just what I've been sayin' to Miss Kavanagh, sir," says Mrs. Connolly, with unabated good humor. "The heavens above is always too much for us. We can't turn off the wather up there as we can the cock in the kitchen sink. Still, there's compinsations always, glory be! An' what will ye plaze have wid yer tay, Miss?" turning to Joyce with great respect in look and tone. In spite of all her familiarity with her upstairs, she now, with a looker-on, proceeds to treat "her young lady" as though she were a stranger and of blood royal.

"Anything you have, Mrs. Connolly," says Joyce; "only don't be long!" There is undoubted entreaty in the request. Mrs. Connolly, glancing at her, concludes it is not so much a desire for what will be brought, as for the bringer that animates the speaker.

"Give me five minutes, Miss, an' I'll be back again," says she pleasantly. Leaving the room, she stands in the passage outside for a moment, and solemnly moves her kindly head from side to side. It takes her but a little time to make up her shrewd Irish mind on several points.

"While this worthy person is getting you your tea I think I'll take a look at the weather from the outside," says Mr. Beauclerk, turning to Joyce. It is evident he is eager to avoid a tete-a-tete, but this does not occur to her.

"Yes—do—do," says she, nevertheless with such a liberal encouragement as puzzles him. Women are kittle cattle, however, he tells himself; better not to question their motives too closely or you will find yourself in queer street. He gets to the door with a cheerful assumption of going to study the heavens that conceals his desire for a cigar and a brandy and soda, but on the threshold Joyce speaks again.

"Is there no chance—would it not be possible to get home?" says she, in a tone that trembles with nervous longing.

"I'm afraid not. I'm just going to see. It is impossible weather for you to be out in."

"But you——? It is clearing a little, isn't it?" with a despairing glance out of the window. "If you could manage to get back and tell them that——"

She is made thoroughly ashamed of her selfishness a moment later.

"But my dear girl, consider! Why should I tempt a severe attack of inflammation of the lungs by driving ten or twelve miles through this unrelenting torrent? We are very well out of it here. This Mrs.—er—Connor—Connolly seems a very respectable person, and is known to you. I shall tell her to make you as comfortable as her 'limited liabilities,'" with quite a laugh at his own wit, "will allow."

"Pray tell her nothing. Do not give yourself so much trouble," says Joyce calmly. "She will do the best she can for me without the intervention of any one."

"As you will, au revoir!" says he, waving her a graceful farewell for the moment.

He is not entirely happy in his mind, as he crosses the tiny hall and makes his way first to the bar and afterward to the open doorway. Like a cat, he hates rain! To drive back through this turmoil of wind and wet for twelve long miles to the Court is more than his pleasure-loving nature can bear to look upon. Yet to remain has its drawbacks, too.

If Miss Maliphant, for example, were to hear of this escapade there might be trouble there. He has not as yet finally made up his mind to give inclination the go by and surrender himself to sordid considerations, but there can be no doubt that the sordid things of this life have, with some natures, a charm hardly to be rivaled successfully by mere beauty.

The heiress is attractive in one sense; Joyce equally so in another. Miss Maliphant's charms are golden—are not Joyce's more golden still? And yet, to give up Miss Maliphant—to break with her finally—to throw away deliberately a good L10,000 a year!

He lights his cigar with an untrembling hand, and, having found it satisfactory, permits his mind to continue its investigations.

Ten thousand pounds a year! A great help to a man; yet he is glad at this moment that he is free to accept or reject it. Nothing definite has been said to the heiress—nothing definite to Joyce either. It strikes him at this moment, as he stands in the dingy doorway of the inn and stares out at the descending rain, that he has shown distinct cleverness in the way in which he has manoeuvred these two girls, without either of them feeling the least suspicion of the other. Last night Joyce had been on the point of a discovery, but he had smoothed away all that. Evidently he was born to be a successful diplomatist, and if that appointment he has been looking for ever comes his way, he will be able to show the world a thing or two.

How charming that little girl in there can look! And never more so than when she allows her temper to overcome her. She had been angry just now. Yes. But he can read between the lines; angry—naturally that he has not come to the point—declared himself—proposed as the saying is. Well, puffing complacently at his cigar, she must wait—she must wait—if the appointment comes off, if Sir Alexander stands to him, she has a very good chance, but if that falls through, why then——

And it won't do to encourage her too much, by Jove! If Miss Maliphant were to hear of this evening's adventure, she is headstrong, stolid enough, to mark out a line for herself and fling him aside without waiting for judge or jury. Much as it might cost her, she would not hesitate to break all ties with him, and any that existed were very slight. He, himself, had kept them so. Perhaps, after all, he had better order the trap round, leave Miss Kavanagh here, and——

And yet to go out in that rain; to feel it beating against his face for two or three intolerable hours. Was anything, even L10,000 a year, worth that? He would be a drowned rat by the time he reached the Court.

And, after all, couldn't it be arranged without all this bother? He might easily explain it all away to Miss Maliphant, even should some kind friend tell her of it. That was his role. He had quite a talent for explaining away. But he must also make Joyce thoroughly understand. She was a sensible girl. A word to her would be sufficient. Just a word to show that marriage at present was out of the question. Nothing unpleasant; nothing finite; but just some little thing to waken her to the true state of the case. Girls, as a rule, were sentimental, and would expect much of an adventure such as this. But Joyce was proud—he liked that in her. There would be no trouble; she would quite understand.

"Tea is just comin' up, sorr!" says a rough voice behind him. "The misthress tould me to tell ye so!"

The red-headed Abigail who attends on Mrs. Connolly beckons him, with a grimy forefinger, to the repast within. He accepts the invitation.



CHAPTER XXIV.

"It is the mynd that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poore."

As he enters the inn parlor he finds Joyce sitting by the fire, listening to Mrs. Connolly, who, armed with a large tray, is advancing up the room toward the table. Nobody but the "misthress" herself is allowed to wait upon "the young lady."

"An' I hope, Miss Joyce, 'twill be to your liking. An' sorry I am, sir," with a courteous recognition of Beauclerk's entrance, "that 'tis only one poor fowl I can give ye. But thim commercial thravellers are the divil. They'd lave nothing behind 'em if they could help it. Still, Miss," with a loving smile at Joyce, "I do think ye'll like the ham. 'Tis me own curing, an' I brought ye just a taste o' this year's honey; ye'd always a sweet tooth from the time ye were born."

"I could hardly have had a tooth before that," says Joyce, laughing. "Oh, thank you, Mrs. Connolly; it is a lovely tea, and it is very good of you to take all this trouble."

"Who'd be welcome to any trouble if 'twasn't yerself, Miss?" says Mrs. Connolly, bowing and retreating toward the door.

A movement on the part of Joyce checks her. The girl has made an impulsive step as if to follow her, and now, seeing Mrs. Connolly stop short, holds out to her one hand.

"But, Mrs. Connolly," says she, trying to speak naturally, and succeeding very well, so far as careless ears are in question, but the "misthress" marks the false note, "you will stay and pour out tea for us; you will?"

There is an extreme treaty in her tone; the stronger in that it has to be suppressed. Mrs. Connolly, halting midway between the table and the door with the tray in her hands, hears it, and a sudden light comes, not only into her eyes, but her mind.

"Why, if you wish it, Miss," says she directly. She lays down the tray, standing it up against the wall, and coming back to the table lifts the teapot and begins to fill the cups.

"Ye take sugar, sir?" asks she of Beauclerk, who is a little puzzled, but not altogether displeased at the turn affairs have taken. After all, as he has told himself a thousand times, Joyce is a clever girl. She is determined not to betray the anxiety for his society that beyond question she is feeling. And this prudence on her part will relieve him of many small embarrassments. Truly, she is a girl not to be found every day.

He is accordingly most gracious to Mrs. Connolly; praises her ham, extols her tea, says wonderful things about the chicken.

When tea is at an end, he rises gracefully, and expresses his desire to smoke one more cigar and have a last look at the weather.

"You will be able to put us up?" says he.

"Oh yes, sir, sure."

He smiles beautifully, and with a benevolent request to Joyce to take care of herself in his absence, leaves the room.

"He's a dale o' talk," says Mrs. Connolly, the moment his back is turned. She is now sure that Joyce has some private grudge against him, or at all events is not what she herself would call "partial to him."

"Yes," says Joyce. "He is very conversational. How it rains, still."

"Yes, it does," says Mrs. Connolly, comfortably. She is not at all put out by the girl's reserved manner, having lived among the "ginthry" for many years, and being well up to their "quare ways." A thought, however, that had been formulating in her mind for a long time past—ever since, indeed, she found her young lady could not return home until morning—now compels her to give the conversation a fresh turn.

"I've got to apologize to ye, Miss, but since ye must stay the night wid me, I'm bound to tell ye I have no room for ye but a little one leadin' out o' me own."

"Are you so very full, then, Mrs. Connolly? I'm glad to hear that for your sake."

"Full to the chin, me dear. Thim commercials always dhrop down upon one just whin laste wanted."

"Then I suppose I ought to be thankful that you can give me a room at all," says Joyce, laughing. "I'm afraid I shall be a great trouble to you."

"Ne'er a scrap in life, me dear. 'Tis proud I am to be of any sarvice to ye. An' perhaps 'twill make ye aisier in yer mind to know as your undher my protection, and that no gossip can come nigh ye."

The good woman means well, but she has flown rather above Joyce's head, or rather under her feet.

"I'm delighted to be with you," says Miss Kavanagh, with a pretty smile. "But as for protection—well, the Land Leaguers round here are not so bad as that one should fear for one's life in a quiet village like this."

"There's worse than Land Leaguers," says Mrs. Connolly. "There's thim who talk."

"Talk—of what?" asks Joyce, a little vaguely.

"Well now, me dear, sure ye haven't lived so long widout knowin' there's cruel people in the world," says Mrs. Connolly, anxiously. "An' the fact o' you goin' out dhrivin' wid Mr. Beauclerk, an' stayin' out the night wid him, might give rise to the talk I'm fightin' agin. Don't be angry wid me now, Miss Joyce, an' don't fret, but 'tis as well to prepare ye."

Joyce's heart, as she listens, seems to die within her. A kind of sick feeling renders her speechless; she had never thought of that—of—of the idea of impropriety being suggested as part of this most unlucky escapade. Mrs. Connolly, noting the girl's white face, feels as though she ought to have cut her tongue out, rather than have spoken, yet she had done all for the best.

"Miss Joyce, don't think about it," says she, hurriedly. "I'm sorry I said a word, but—An', afther all, I am right, me dear. 'Tis betther for ye when evil tongues are waggin' to have a raal friend like me to yer back to say the needful word. Ye'll sleep wid me to-night, an' I'll take ye back to her ladyship in the morning, an' never leave ye till I see ye in safe hands once more. If ye liked him," pointing to the door through which Beauclerk had gone, "I'd say nothing, for thin all would come right enough. But as it is, I'll take it on meself to be the nurse to ye now that I was when ye were a little creature creeping along the floor."

Joyce smiles at her, but rather faintly. A sense of terror is oppressing her. Lady Baltimore, what will she think? And Freddy and Barbara! They will all be angry with her! Oh! more than angry—they will think she has done something that other girls would not have done. How is she to face them again? The entire party at the Court seems to spread itself before her. Lady Swansdown and Lord Baltimore, they will laugh about it; and the others will laugh and whisper, and——

Felix—Felix Dysart. What will he think? What is he thinking now? To follow out this thought is intolerable to her; she rises abruptly.

"What o'clock is it, Mrs. Connolly?" says she in a hard, strained voice. "I am tired, I should like to go to bed now."

"Just eight, Miss. An' if you are tired there's nothing like the bed. Ye will like to say good-night to Mr. Beauclerk?"

"Oh, no, no!" with frowning sharpness. Then recovering herself. "I need not disturb him. You will tell him that I was chilled—tired."

"I'll tell him all that he ought to know," says Mrs. Connolly. "Come, Miss Joyce, everything, is ready for ye. An' a lie down and a good sleep will be the makin' of ye before morning."

Joyce, to her surprise, is led through a very well-appointed chamber, evidently unused, to a smaller but scarcely less carefully arranged apartment beyond. The first is so plainly a room not in daily use, that she turns involuntarily to her companion.

"Is this your room, Mrs. Connolly?"

"For the night, me dear," says that excellent woman mysteriously.

"You have changed your room to suit me. You mean something," says the girl, growing crimson, and feeling as if her heart were going to burst. "What is it?"

"No, no, Miss! No, indeed!" confusedly. "But, Miss Joyce, I'll say this, that 'tis eight year now since Misther Monkton came here, an' many's the good turn he's done me since he's been me lord's agint. An' that's nothing at all, Miss, to the gratitude I bear toward yer poor father, the ould head o' the house. An' d'ye think when occasion comes I wouldn't stand up an' do the best I could for one o' yer blood? Fegs, I'll take care that it won't be in the power of any one to say a word agin you."

"Against me?"

"You're young, Miss. But there's people ould enough to have sinse an' charity as haven't it. I can see ye couldn't get home to-night through that rain, though I'm not sayin'"—a little spitefully—"but that he might have managed it. Still, faith, 'twas bad thravellin' for man or baste," with a view to softening down her real opinion of Beauclerk's behavior. How can she condemn him safely? Is he not my lady's own brother? Is not my lord the owner of the very ground on which the inn is built, of the farm a mile away, where her cows are chewing the cud by this time in peace and safety?

"You have changed your room to oblige me," says Joyce, still with that strange, miserable look in her eyes.

"Don't think about that, Miss Joyce, now. An' don't fret yerself about anything else, ayther; sure ye can remimber that I'm to yer back always."

She bridles, and draws up her ample figure to its fullest height. Indeed, looking at her, it might suggest itself to any reasonable being that even the forlornest damsel with any such noble support might well defy the world.

But Joyce is not to be so easily consoled. What is support to her? Who can console a torn heart? The day has been too eventful! It has overcome her courage. Not only has she lost faith in her own power to face the angry authorities at home, she has lost faith, too, in one to whom, against her judgment, she had given more of her thoughts than was wise. The fact that she had recovered from that folly does not render the memory of the recovery less painful. The awakening from a troubled dream is full of anguish.

Rising from a sleepless bed, she goes down next morning to find Mrs. Connolly standing on the lowest step of the stairs, as if awaiting her, booted and spurred for the journey.

"I tould him to order the thrap early, me dear, for I knew ye'd be anxious," says the kind woman, squeezing her hand. "An' now," with an anxious glance at her, "I hope ye ate yer breakfast. I guessed ye'd like it in yer room, so I sint it up to ye. Well—come on, dear. Mr. Beauclerk is outside waitin'. I explained it all to him. Said ye were tired, ye know, an' eager to get back. And so all's ready an' the horse impatient."

In spite of the storm yesterday, that seemed to shake earth and heaven, to-day is beautiful. Soft glistening steams are rising from every hill and bog and valley, as the hot sun's rays beat upon them. The world seems wrapped in one vast vaporous mist, most lovely to behold. All the woodland flowers are holding up their heads again, after their past smiting from the cruel rain; the trees are swaying to and fro in the fresh morning breeze, thousands of glittering drops brightening the air, as they swing themselves from side to side. All things speak of a new birth, a resurrection, a joyful waking from a terrifying past. The grass looks greener for its bath, all dust is laid quite low, the very lichens on the walls as they drive past them look washed and glorified.

The sun is flooding the sky with gorgeous light; there are "sweete smels al arownd." The birds in the woods on either side of the roadway are singing high carols in praise of this glorious day. All nature seems joyous. Joyce alone is silent, unappreciative, unhappy.

The nearer she gets to the Court the more perturbed she grows in mind. How will they receive her there? Barbara had said that Lady Baltimore would not be likely to encourage an attachment between her and Beauclerk, and now, though the attachment is impossible, what will she think of this unfortunate adventure? She is so depressed that speech seems impossible to her, and to all Mr. Beauclerk's sallies she scarcely returns an answer.

His sallies are many. Never has he appeared in gayer spirits. The fact that the girl beside him is in unmistakably low spirits has either escaped him, or he has decided on taking no notice of it. Last night, over that final cigar, he had made up his mind that it would be wise to say to her some little thing that would unmistakably awaken her to the fact that there was nothing between him and her of any serious importance. Now, having covered half the distance that lies between them and the Court, he feels will be a good time to say that little thing. She is too distrait to please him. She is evidently brooding over something. If she thinks——Better crush all such hopes at once.

"I wonder what they are thinking about us at home?" he says presently, with quite a cheerful laugh, suggestive of amusement.

No answer.

"I daresay," with a second edition of the laugh, full now of a wider amusement, as though the comical fancy that has caught hold of him has grown to completion, "I shouldn't wonder, indeed, if they were thinking we had eloped." This graceful speech he makes with the easiest air in the world.

"They may be thinking you have eloped, certainly," says Miss Kavanagh calmly. "One's own people, as a rule, know one very thoroughly, and are quite alive to one's little failings; but that they should think it of me is quite out of the question."

"Well, after all, I daresay you are right. I don't suppose it lies in the possibilities. They could hardly think it of me either," says Beauclerk, with a careless yawn, so extraordinarily careless indeed as to be worthy of note. "I'm too poor for amusement of that kind."

"One couldn't be too poor for that kind of amusement, surely. Romance and history have both taught us that it is only the impecunious who ever indulge in that folly."

"I am not so learned as you are, but——Well, I'm an 'impecunious one,' in all conscience. I couldn't carry it out. I only wish," tenderly, "I could."

"With whom?" icily. As she asks the question she turns deliberately and looks him steadily in the eyes. Something in her regard disconcerts him, and compels him to think that the following up of the "little thing" is likely to prove difficult.

"How can you ask me?" demands he with an assumption of reproachful fondness that is rather overdone.

"I do, nevertheless."

"With you, then—if I must put it in words," says he, lowering his tone to the softest whisper. It is an eminently lover-like whisper; it is a distinctly careful one, too. It is quite impossible for Mrs. Connolly, sitting behind, to hear it, however carefully she may be attending.

"It is well you cannot put your fortune to the touch," says Joyce quietly; "if you could, disappointment alone would await you."

"You mean——?" ask he, somewhat sharply.

"That were it possible for me to commit such a vulgarity as to run away with any one, you, certainly, would not be that one. You are the very last man on earth I should choose for so mistaken an adventure. Let me also add," says she, turning upon him with flashing eyes, though still her voice is determinately low and calm, "that you forget yourself strangely when you talk in this fashion to me." The scorn and indignation in her charming face is so apparent that it is now impossible to ignore it. Being thus compelled to acknowledge it he grows angry. Beauclerk angry is not nice.

"To do myself justice, I seldom do that!" says he, with a rather nasty laugh. "To forget myself is not part of my calculations. I can generally remember No. One."

"You will remember me, too, if you please, so long as I am with you," says Joyce, with a grave and very gentle dignity, but with a certain determination that makes itself felt. Beauclerk, conscious of being somewhat cowed, is bully enough to make one more thrust.

"After all, Dysart was right," says he. "He prophesied there would be rain. He advised you not to undertake our ill-starred journey of—yesterday." There is distinct and very malicious meaning in the emphasis he throws into the last word.

"I begin to think Mr. Dysart is always right," says Joyce, bravely, though her heart has begun to beat furiously. That terrible fear of what they will say to her when she gets back—of their anger—their courteous anger—their condemnation—has been suddenly presented to her again and her courage dies within her. Dysart, what will he say? It strikes even herself as strange that his view of her conduct is the one that most disturbs her.

"Only, beginning to think it? Why, I always understood Dysart was immaculate—the 'couldn't err' sort of person one reads of but never sees. You have been slow, surely, to gauge his merits. I confess I have been even slower. I haven't gauged them yet. But then—Dysart and I were never much in sympathy with each other."

"No. One can understand that," says she.

"One can, naturally," with the utmost self-complaisance. "I confess, indeed," with a sudden slight burst of vindictiveness, "that I never liked Dysart; idiotic sort of fool in my estimation, self-opinionated like all fools, and deucedly impertinent in that silent way of his. I believe," with a contemptuous laugh, "he has given it as his opinion that there is very little to like in me either."

"Has he? We were saying just now he is always right," says Miss Kavanagh, absently, and in a tone so low that Beauclerk may be excused for scarcely believing his ears.

"Eh?" says he. But there is no answer, and presently both fall into a silent mood—Joyce because conversation is terrible to her, and he because anger is consuming him.

He had kept up a lively converse all through the earlier part of their drive, ignoring the depression that only too plainly was crushing upon his companion, with a view to putting an end to sentimentality of any sort. Her discomfort, her unhappiness, was as nothing to him—he thought only of himself. Few men, under the circumstances, would have so acted, for most men, in spite of all the old maids who so generously abuse them, are chivalrous and have kindly hearts; and indeed it is only a melancholy specimen here and there who will fail to feel pity for a woman in distress. Beauclerk is a "melancholy specimen."



CHAPTER XXV.

"Man, false man, smiling, destructive man."

"Who breathes, must suffer, and who thinks, most mourn; And he alone is bless'd who ne'er was born."

"Oh! my dear girl, is it you at last?" cries Lady Baltimore, running out into the hall as Joyce enters it. "We have been so frightened! Such a storm, and Baltimore says that mare you had is very uncertain. Where did you get shelter?"

The very warmth and kindliness of her welcome, the utter absence of disapproval in it of any sort, so unnerves Joyce that she can make no reply; can only cling to her kindly hostess, and hide her face on her shoulder.

"Is that you, Mrs. Connolly?" says Lady Baltimore, smiling at mine hostess of the Baltimore Arms, over the girl's shoulder.

"Yes, my lady," with a curtsey so low that one wonders how she ever comes up again. "I made so bould, my lady, as to bring ye home Miss Joyce myself. I know Misther Beauclerk to be a good support in himself, but I thought it would be a raisonable thing to give her the company of one of her own women folk besides."

"Quite right. Quite," says Lady Baltimore.

"Oh! she has been so kind to me," says Joyce, raising now a pale face to turn a glance of gratitude on Mrs. Connolly.

"Why, indeed, my lady, I wish I might ha' bin able to do more for her; an' I'm sorry to say I'd to put her up in a small, most inconvenient room, just inside o' me own."

"How was that?" asks Lady Baltimore, kindly. "The inn so full then?"

"Fegs 'twas that was the matther wid it," says Mrs. Connolly, with a beaming smile. "Crammed from cellar to garret."

"Ah! the wet night, I suppose."

"Just so, my lady," composedly, and with another deep curtsey.

Lady Baltimore having given Mrs. Connolly into the care of the housekeeper, who is an old friend of hers, leads Joyce upstairs.

"You are not angry with me?" says Joyce, turning on the threshold of her room.

"With you, my dear child? No, indeed. With Norman, very! He should have turned back the moment he saw the first symptom of a storm. A short wetting would have done neither of you any harm."

"There was no warning; the storm was on us almost immediately, and we were then very close to Falling."

"Then, having placed you once safely in Mrs. Connolly's care, he should have returned himself, at all hazards."

"It rained very hard," says Joyce in a cold, clear tone. Her eyes are on the ground. She is compelling herself to be strictly just to Beauclerk, but the effort is too much for her. She fails to do it naturally, and so gives a false impression to her listener. Lady Baltimore casts a quick glance at her.

"Rain, what is rain?" says she.

"There was storm, too, a violent storm; you must have felt it here."

"No storm should have prevented his return. He should have thought only of you."

A little bitter smile curls the girl's lips: it seems a farce to suggest that he should have thought of her. He! Now with her eyes effectually opened, a certain scorn of herself, in that he should have been able so easily to close them, takes possession of her. Is his sister blind still to his defects, that she expects so much from him; has she not read him rightly yet? Has she yet to learn that he will never consider any one, where his own interests, comforts, position, clash with theirs?

"You look distressed, tired. I believe you are fretting about this," says Lady Baltimore, with a little kindly bantering laugh. "Don't be a silly child. Nobody has said or thought anything that has not been kindly of you. Did you sleep last night? No. I can see you didn't. There, lie down, and get a little rest before luncheon. I shall send you up a glass of champagne and a biscuit; don't refuse it."

She pulls down the blinds, and goes softly out of the room to her boudoir, where she finds Beauclerk awaiting her.

He is lounging comfortably on a satin fauteuil, looking the very beau ideal of pleasant, careless life. He makes his sister a present of a beaming smile as she enters.

"Ah! good morning, Isabel. I am afraid we gave you rather a fright; but you see it couldn't be helped. What an evening and night it turned out! By Jove! I thought the water works above were turned on for good at last and for ever. We felt like the Babes in the Wood—abandoned, lost. Poor, dear Miss Kavanagh! I felt so sorry for her! You have seen her, I hope," his face has now taken the correct lines of decorous concern. "She is not over fatigued?"

"She looks tired! depressed!" says Lady Baltimore, regarding him seriously. "I wish, Norman, you had come home last evening."

"What! and bring Miss Kavanagh through all that storm!"

"No, you could have left her at Falling. I wish you had come home."

"Why?" with an amused laugh. "Are you afraid I have compromised myself?"

"I was not thinking of you. I am more afraid," with a touch of cold displeasure, "of your having compromised Miss Kavanagh. There are such things as gossips in this curious world. You should have left Joyce in Mrs. Connolly's safe keeping, and come straight back here."

"To be laid up with rheumatism during the whole of the coming winter! Oh! most unnatural sister, what is it you would have desired of me?"

"You showed her great attention all this summer," says Lady Baltimore.

"I hope I showed a proper attention to all your guests."

"You were very specially attentive to her."

"To Miss Kavanagh, do you mean?" with a puzzled air. "Ah! well, yes. Perhaps I did give more of my time to her and to Miss Maliphant than to the others."

"Ah! Miss Maliphant! one can understand that," says his sister, with an intonation that is not entirely complimentary.

"Can one? Here is one who can't, at all events. I confess I tried very hard to bring myself to the point there, but I failed. Nature was too strong for me. Good girl, you know, but—er—awful!"

"We were not discussing Miss Maliphant, we were talking of Joyce," icily.

"Ah, true!" as if just awakening to a delightful fact. "And a far more charming subject for discussion, it must be allowed. Well, and what of Joyce—you call her Joyce?"

"Be human, Norman!" says Lady Baltimore, with a sudden suspicion of fire in her tone. "Forget to pose once in a way. And this time it is important. Let me hear the truth from you. She seems unhappy, uncertain, nervous. I like her. There is something real, genuine, about her. I would gladly think, that——Do you know," she leans towards him, "I have sometimes thought you were in love with her."

"Have you? Do you know, so have I," with a frankness very admirable. "She is one of the most agreeable girls of my acquaintance. There is something very special about her. I'm not surprised that both you and I fell into a conclusion of that sort."

"Am I to understand by that——?"

"Just one thing. I am too poor to marry."

"With that knowledge in your mind, you should not have acted towards her as you did yesterday. It was a mistake, believe me. You should have come home alone, or else brought her back as your promised wife."

"Ah! what a delightful vista you open up before me, but what an unkind one, too," says Mr. Beauclerk, with a little reproachful uplifting of his hands and brows. "Have you no bowels of compassion? You know how the charms of domestic life have always attracted me. And to be able to enjoy them with such an admirable companion as Miss Kavanagh! Are you soulless, utterly without mercy, Isabel, that you open up to me a glorious vision such as that merely to taunt and disappoint me?"

"I am neither Joyce nor Miss Maliphant," says Lady Baltimore, with ill-suppressed contempt. "I wish you would try to remember that, Norman; it would spare time and trouble. You speak of Joyce as if she were the woman you love, and yet—would you subject the woman you love to unkind comment? If you cared you would not have treated her as——"

"Ah, if I did care for her," interrupts he.

"Well, don't you?" sternly.

She has risen, and is looking down at him from the full height of her tall, slender figure, that now looks taller than usual.

"Oh, immensely!" declares Mr. Beauclerk, airily. "My dear girl, you can't have studied me not to know that; as I have told you, I think her charming. Quite out of the common—quite."

"That will do," shortly.

"You condemn me," says he, in an aggrieved tone that has got something of amused surprise in it. "Yet you know—you of all others—how poor a devil I am! So poor, that I do not even permit the idea of marriage in my head."

"Perhaps, however, you have permitted it to enter into hers!" says Lady Baltimore.

"Oh, my dear Isabel!" with a light laugh and a protesting glance. "Do you think she would thank you for that suggestion?"

"You should think. You should think," says Lady Baltimore, with some agitation. "She is a very young girl. She has lived entirely in the country. She knows nothing—nothing," throwing out her hand. "She is not awake to all the intriguing, lying, falsity," with a rush of bitter disgust, "that belongs to the bigger world beyond—the terrible world outside her own quiet one here."

"She is quiet here, isn't she?" says Beauclerk, with admirable appreciation. "Pity to take her out of it. Eh? And yet, so far as I can see, that is the cruel task you would impose on me."

"Norman," says his sister, turning suddenly and for the first time directly toward him.

"Well, my dear. What?" throwing one leg negligently over the other. "It really comes to this, doesn't it? That you want me to marry a certain somebody, and that I think I cannot afford to marry her. Then it lies in the proverbial nutshell."

"The man who cannot afford to marry should not afford himself the pleasures of flirtations," says Lady Baltimore, with decision.

"No? Is that your final opinion? Good heavens! Isabel, what a brow! What a terrible glance! If," smiling, "you favor Baltimore with this style of thing whenever you disapprove of his smallest action I don't wonder he jibs so often at the matrimonial collar. You advised me to think just now; think yourself, my good Isabel, now and then, and probably you will find life easier."

He is still smiling delightfully. He flings out this cruel gibe indeed in the most careless manner possible.

"Ah! forget me," says she in a manner as careless as his own. If she has quivered beneath that thrust of his, at all events she has had strength enough to suppress all signs of it. "Think—not of her—I daresay she will outlive it—but of yourself."

"What would you have me do then?" demands he, rising here and confronting her. There is a good deal of venom in his handsome face, but Lady Baltimore braves it.

"I would have you act as an honorable man," says she, in a clear, if icy tone.

"You go pretty far, Isabel, very far, even for a sister," says he presently, his face now white with rage. "A moment ago I gave you some sound advice. I give you more now. Attend to your own affairs, which by all account require looking after, and let mine alone."

He is evidently furious. His sister makes a little gesture towards the door.

"Your taking it like this does not mend matters," she says calmly, "it only makes them, if possible, worse. Leave me!"



CHAPTER XXVI.

"AT SIXES AND SEVENS."

Pol.—"What do you read, my lord?"

Ham.—"Words, words, words."

She sighs heavily, as the door closes on her brother. A sense of weakness, of powerlessness oppresses her. She has fought so long, and for what? Is there nothing to be gained; no truth to be defended anywhere, no standard of right and wrong. Are all men—all—base, selfish, cowardly, dishonorable? Her whole being seems aflame with the indignation that is consuming her, when a knock sounds at the door. There is only one person in the house who knocks at her boudoir door. To every one, servants, guests, child, it is a free land; to her husband alone it is forbidden ground.

"Come in," says she, in a cold, reluctant tone.

"I know I shall be terribly in your way," says Baltimore, entering, "but I must beg you to give me five minutes. I hear Beauclerk has returned, and that you have seen him. What kept him?"

Now Lady Baltimore—who a moment ago had condemned her brother heartily to his face—feels, as her husband addresses her, a perverse desire to openly contradict all that her honest judgment had led her to say to Beauclerk. That sense of indignation that was burning so hotly in her breast as Baltimore knocked at her door still stirs within her, but now its fire is directed against this latest comer. Who is he, that he should dare to question the honor of any man; and that there is annoyance and condemnation now in Baltimore's eyes is not to be denied.

"The weather," returns she shortly.

"By your tone I judge you deem that an adequate excuse for keeping Miss Kavanagh from her home for half a day and a night."

"There was a terrible storm," says. Lady Baltimore calmly; "the worst we have had for months."

"If it had been ten times as bad he should, in my opinion, have come home."

The words seem a mere repetition to Lady Baltimore. She had, indeed, used them to Beauclerk herself, or some such, a few minutes ago. Yet she seems to repudiate all sympathy with them now.

"On such a night as that? I hardly see why. Joyce was with an old friend. Mrs. Connolly was once a servant of her father's, and he——"

"Should have left her with the old friend and come home."

Again her own argument, and again perversity drives her to take the opposite side—the side against her conscience.

"Society must be in a very bad state if a man must perforce encounter thunder, rain, lightning; in fact, a chance of death from cold and exposure, all because he dare not spend one night beneath the roof of a respectable woman like Mrs. Connolly, with a girl friend, without bringing down on him the censures of his entire world."

"You can, it appears, be a most eloquent advocate for the supposed follies of any one but your husband. Nevertheless, I must persist in my opinion that it was, to put it very charitably indeed, inconsiderate of your brother to study his own comfort at the expense of his—girl friend. I believe that is your way of putting it, isn't it?"

"Yes," immovably. She has so far given way to movement, however, that she has taken up a feather fan lying near, and now so holds it between her and Baltimore that he cannot distinctly see her face.

"As for the world you speak of—it will not judge him as leniently as you do. It can talk. No one," bitterly, "is as good a witness of that as I am."

"But seldom," coldly, "without reason."

"And no one is a better witness of that than you are! That is what you would say, isn't it? Put down that fan, can't you?" with a touch of savage impatience. "Are you ashamed to carry out your argument with me face to face?"

"Ashamed!" Lady Baltimore has sprung suddenly to her feet, and sent the fan with a little crash to the ground. "Oh! shame on you to mention such a word."

"Am I to be forever your one scapegoat? Now take another one, I beseech you," says Baltimore with that old, queer, devilish mockery on his face that was never seen there until gossiping tongues divided him from his wife. "Here is your brother, actually thrown to you, as it were. Surely he will be a proof that I am not the only vile one among all the herd. If nothing else, acknowledge him selfish. A man who thought more of a dry coat than a young, a very young, girl's reputation. Is that nothing? Oh! consider, I beseech you!" his bantering manner, in which there is so much misery that it should have reached her but does not, grows stronger every instant "Even a big chill from the heavens above would not have killed him, whereas we all know how a little breath from the world below can kill many a——"

"Oh I you can talk, talk, talk," says she, that late unusual burst of passion showing some hot embers still. "But can words alter facts?" She pauses; a sudden chill seems to enwrap her. As if horrified by her late descent into passion she gathers herself together, and defies him once again with a cold look. "Why say anything more about it?" she says. "We do not agree."

"On this subject, at least, we should," says he hotly. "I think your brother should not have left us in ignorance of Miss Kavanagh's safety for so many hours. And you," with a sneer, "who are such a martinet for propriety, should certainly be prepared to acknowledge that he should not have so regulated his conduct as to make her a subject for unkind comment to the County. Badly," looking at her deliberately, "as you think of me, I should not have done it."

"No?" says she. It is a cruel—an unmistakable insulting monosyllable. And, bearing no other word with it—is the more detestable to the hearer.

"No," says he loudly. "Sneer as you will—my conscience is at rest there, so I can defy your suspicions."

"Ah! there!" says she.

"My dear creature," says he, "we all know there is but one villain in the world, and you are the proud possessor of him—as a husband. Permit me to observe, however, that a man of your code of honor, and of mine for the matter of that—but I forget that honor and I have no cousinship in your estimation—would have chosen to be wet to the skin rather than imperil the fair name of the girl he loved."

"Has he told you he loved her?"

"Not in so many words."

"Then from what do you argue?"

"My dear, I have told you that you are too much for me in argument! I, a simple on-looker, have judged merely from an every-day observance of little unobtrusive facts. If your brother is not in love with Miss Kavanagh, I think he ought to be. I speak ignorantly, I allow. I am not, like you, a deep student of human nature. If, too, he did not feel it his duty to bring her home last night, or else to leave her at Falling and return here himself, I fail to sympathize with him. I should not have so failed her."

"Oh but you!" says his wife, with a little contemptuous smile. "You who are such a paragon of virtue. It would not be expected of you that you should make such a mistake!"

She has sent forth her dart impulsively, sharply, out of the overflowing fullness of her angry heart—and when too late, when it has sped past recall—perhaps repents the speeding!

Such repentances, when felt too late, bring vices in their train; the desire for good, when chilled, turns to evil. The mind, never idle, if debarred from the best, leans inevitably toward the worst. Angry with herself, her very soul embittered within her, Lady Baltimore feels more and more a sense of passionate wrong against the man who had wooed and won her, and sown the seeds of gnawing distrust within her bosom.

Baltimore's face has whitened. His brow contracts.

"What a devilish unforgiving thing is a good woman," says he, with a reckless laugh. "That's a compliment, my lady—take it as you will. What! are your sneers to outlast life itself? Is that old supposed sin of mine never to be condoned? Why—say it was a real thing, instead of being the myth it is. Even so, a woman all prayers, all holiness, such as you are, might manage to pardon it!"

Lady Baltimore, rising, walks deliberately toward the door. It is her, usual method of putting an end to all discussions of this sort between them—of terminating any allusions to what she believes to be his unfaithful past—that past that has wrecked her life.

As a rule, Baltimore makes no attempt to prolong the argument. He has always let her go, with a sneering word, perhaps, or a muttered exclamation; but to-day he follows her, and stepping between her and the door, bars her departure.

"By heavens! you shall hear me," says he, his face dark with anger. "I will not submit any longer, in silence, to your insolent treatment of me. You condemn me, but I tell you it is I who should condemn. Do you think I believe in your present attitude toward me? Pretend as you will, even to yourself, in your soul it is impossible that you should give credence to that old story, false as it is old. No! you cling to it to mask the feet you have tired of me."

"Let me pass."

"Not until you have heard me!" With a light, but determined grasp of her arm, he presses her back into the chair she has just quitted.

"That story was a lie, I tell you. Before our marriage, I confess, there were some things—not creditable—to which I plead guilty, but——"

"Oh! be silent!" cries she, putting up her hand impulsively to check him. There is open disgust and horror on her pale, severe face.

"Before, before our marriage," persists he passionately.

"What! do you think there is no temptation—no sin—no falling away from the stern path of virtue in this life? Are you so mad or so ignorant as to believe that every man you meet could show a perfectly clean record of——"

"I cannot—I will not listen," interposes she, springing to her feet, white and indignant.

"There is nothing to hear. I am not going to pollute your ears," says he, with a curl of his lip. "Pray be reassured. What I only wish to say is that if you condemn me for a few past sins you should condemn also half your acquaintances. That, however, you do not do. For me alone, for your husband, you reserve all your resentment."

"What are the others to me?"

"What am I to you, for the matter of that?" with a bitter laugh, "if they are nothing I am less than nothing. You deliberately flung me aside all because——Why, look here!" moving toward her in uncontrollable agitation, "say I had sinned above the Galileans—say that lie was true—say I had out-Heroded Herod in evil courses, still am I past the pale of forgiveness? Saint as you are, have you no pity for me? In all your histories of love and peace and perfection is there never a case of a poor devil of a sinner like me being taken back into grace—absolved—pardoned?"

"To rave like this is useless. There is no good to be got from it. You know what I think, what I believe. You deceived—wronged——Let me go, Cecil!"

"Before—before," repeats he, obstinately. "What that woman told you since, I swear to you, was a most damned lie."

"I refuse to go into it again."

She is deadly pale now. Her bloodless lips almost refuse to let the words go through them.

"You mean by that, that in spite of my oath you still cling to your belief that I am lying to you?"

His face is livid. There is something almost dangerous about it, but Lady Baltimore has come of too old and good a race to be frightened into submission. Raising one small, slender hand, she lays it upon his breast, and, with a little haughty upturning of her shapely head, pushes him from her.

"I have told you I refuse to go into it," says she, with superb self-control. "How long do you intend to keep me here? When may I be allowed to leave the room?"

There is distinct defiance in the clear glance she casts at him.

Baltimore draws a long breath, and then bursts into a strange laugh.

"Why, when you will," says he, shrugging his shoulders. He makes a graceful motion of his hand toward the door. "Shall I open it for you? But a word still let me say—if you are not in too great a hurry! Christianity, now, my fair saint, so far as ever I could hear or read, has been made up of mercy. Now, you are merciless! Would you mind letting me know how you reconcile one——"

"You perversely mistake me—I am no saint. I do not"—coldly—"profess to be one. I am no such earnest seeker after righteousness as you maliciously represent me. All I desire is honesty of purpose, and a decent sense of honor—honor that makes decency. That is all. For the rest, I am only a poor woman who loved once, and was—how many times deceived? That probably I shall never know."

Her sad, sad eyes, looking at him, grow suddenly full of tears.

"Isabel! My meeting with that woman—that time"—vehemently—"in town was accidental! I——It was the merest chance——"

"Don't!" says she, raising her hand, with such a painful repression of her voice as to render it almost a whisper; "I have told you it is useless. I have heard too much to believe anything now. I shall never, I think," very sadly, "believe in any one again. You have murdered faith in me. Tell this tale of yours to some one else—some one willing to believe—to"—with a terrible touch of scorn—"Lady Swansdown, for example."

"Why do you bring her into the discussion?" asks he, turning quickly to her. Has she heard anything? That scene in the garden that now seems to fill him with self-contempt. What a betise it was! And what did it amount to? Nothing! Lady Swansdown, he is honestly convinced, cares as little for him as he for her. And at this moment it is borne in upon him that he would give the embraces of a thousand such as she for one kind glance from the woman before him.

"I merely mentioned her as a possible person who might listen to you," with a slight lifting of her shoulders. "A mere idle suggestion. You will pardon me saying that this has been an idle discussion altogether. You began by denouncing my brother to me, and now——"

"You have ended by denouncing your husband to me! As idle a beginning as an end, surely. Still, to go back to Beauclerk. I persist in saying he has behaved scandalously in this affair. He has imperilled that poor child's good name."

"You can imperil names, too!" says she, turning almost fiercely on him.

"Lady Swansdown again, I suppose," says he, with a bored uplifting of his brows. "The old grievance is not sufficient, then; you must have a new one. I am afraid I must disappoint you. Lady Swansdown, I assure you, cares nothing at all for me, and I care just the same amount for her."

"Since when?"

"Since the world began—if you want a long date!"

"What a liar you are, Baltimore!" says his wife, turning to him with a sudden breaking out of all the pent-up passion within her. Involuntarily her hands clench themselves. She is pale no longer. A swift, hot flush has dyed her cheeks. Like an outraged, insulted queen, she holds him a moment with her eyes, then sweeps out of the room.



CHAPTER XXVII.

'Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways; Thou hast no part in all my nights and days. Lie still—sleep on—be glad. As such things be Thou couldst not watch with me."

Luncheon has gone off very pleasantly. Joyce, persuaded by Lady Baltimore, had gone down to it, feeling a little shy, and conscious of a growing headache. But everybody had been charming to her, and Baltimore, in especial, had been very careful in his manner of treating her, saying little nice things to her, and insisting on her sitting next to him, a seat hitherto Lady Swansdown's own.

The latter had taken this so perfectly, that one might be pardoned for thinking it had been arranged beforehand between her and her host. At all events Lady Swansdown was very sympathetic, and indeed everybody seemed bent on treating her as a heroine of the highest order.

Joyce herself felt dull—nerveless. Words did not seem to come easily to her. She was tired, she thought, and of course she was, having spent a sleepless night. One little matter gave her cause for thankfulness. Dysart was absent from luncheon. He had gone on a long walking expedition, Lady Baltimore said, that would prevent his returning home until dinner hour—until quite 8 o'clock. Joyce told herself she was glad of this—though why she did not tell herself. At all events the news left her very silent.

But her silence was not noticed. It could not be, indeed, so great and so animated was the flow of Beauclerk's eloquence. Without addressing anybody in particular, he seemed to address everybody. He kept the whole table alive. He treated yesterday's adventure as a tremendously amusing affair, and invited everyone to look upon it as he did. He insisted on describing Miss Kavanagh and himself in the same light as he had described them earlier to his sister, as the modern Babes in the Wood, Mrs. Connolly being the Robin. He made several of the people who had dropped in to luncheon roar with laughter over his description of that excellent inn keeper. Her sayings—her appearance—her stern notions of morality that induced her to bring them home, "personally conducted"—the size of her waist—and her heart—and many other things. He was extremely funny. The fact that his sister smiled only when she felt she must to avoid comment, and that his host refused to smile at all, and that Miss Kavanagh was evidently on thorns all the time did not for an instant damp his overflowing spirits.

* * * * *

It is now seven, o'clock; Miss Kavanagh, on her way upstairs to dress for dinner, suddenly remembering that there is a book in the library, left by her early in the afternoon on the central table, turns aside to fetch it.

She forgets, however, what she has come for when, having entered the room, she sees Dysart standing before the fire, staring apparently at nothing. To her chagrin, she is conscious that the unmistakable start she had made on seeing him is known to him.

"I didn't know you had returned," says she awkwardly, yet made a courageous effort to appear as natural as usual.

"No? I knew you had returned," says he slowly.

"It is very late to say good-morning," says she with a poor little attempt at a laugh, but still advancing toward him and holding out her hand.

"Too late!" replied he, ignoring the hand. Joyce, as if struck by some cruel blow, draws back a step or two.

"You are not tired, I hope?" asks Dysart courteously.

"Oh, no." She feels stifled; choked. A desire to get to the door, and escape—lose sight of him forever—is the one strong longing that possesses her; but to move requires strength, and she feels that her limbs are trembling beneath her.

"It was a long drive, however. And the storm was severe. I fear you must have suffered in some way."

"I have not suffered," says she, in a dull, emotionless way. Indeed, she hardly knows what she says, a repetition of his own words seems the easiest thing to bar, so she adopts it.

"No?"

There is a considerable pause, and then——

"No! It is true! It is I only who have suffered," says Dysart with an uncontrollable abandonment to the misery that is destroying him. "I alone."

"You mean something," says Joyce. It is by a terrible effort that she speaks. She feels thoroughly unnerved—unstrung. Conscious that the nervous shaking of her hands will betray her, she clasps them behind her tightly. "You meant something just now when you refused to take my hand. But what? What?"

"You said it was too late," replies he. "And I—agreed with you."

"That was not it!" says she feverishly. "There was more—much more! Tell me"—passionately—"what you meant. Why would you not touch me? What am I to understand——"

"That from henceforth you are free from the persecution of my love," says Dysart deliberately. "I was mad ever to hope that you could care for me—still—I did hope. That has been my undoing. But now——"

"Well?" demands she faintly. Her whole being seems stunned. Something of all this she had anticipated, but the reality is far worse than any anticipation had been. She had seen him in her thoughts, angry, indignant, miserable, but that he should thus coldly set her aside—bid her an everlasting adieu—be able to make up his mind deliberately to forget her—this—had never occurred to her as being even probable.

"Now you are to understand that the idiotic farce played between us two the day before yesterday is at an end? The curtain is down. It is over. It was a failure—neither you, nor I, nor the public will ever hear of it again."

"Is this—because I did not come home last evening in the rain and storm?" Some small spark of courage has come back to her now. She lifts her head and looks at him.

"Oh! be honest with me here, in our last hour together," cries he vehemently. "You have cheated me all through—be true to yourself for once. Why pretend it is my fault that we part? Yesterday I implored you not to go for that drive with him, and yet—you went. What was I—or my love for you in comparison with a few hours' drive with that lying scoundrel?"

"It was only the drive I thought of," says she piteously. "I—there was nothing else, indeed. And you; if"—raising her hand to her throat as if suffocating—"if you had not spoken so roughly—so——"

"Pshaw!" says Dysart, turning from her as if disgusted. To him, in his present furious mood, her grief, her fear, her shrinkings, are all so many movements in the game of coquette, at which she is a past mistress. "Will you think me a fool to the end?" says he. "See here," turning his angry eyes to hers. "I don't care what you say, I know you now. Too late, indeed—but still I know you! To the very core of your heart you are one mass of deceit."

A little spasm crosses her face. She leans back heavily against the table behind her. "Oh, no, no," she says in a voice so low as to be almost unheard.

"You will deny, of course," says he mercilessly. "You would even have me believe that you regret the past—but you, and such as you never regret. Man is your prey! So many scalps to your belt is all you think about. Why," with an accent of passion, "what am I to you? Just the filling up of so many hours' amusement—no more! Do you think all my eloquence would have any chance against one of his cursed words? I might kneel at your feet from morning until night, and still I should be to you a thing of naught in comparison with him."

She holds out her hands to him in a little dumb fashion. Her tongue seems frozen. But he repulses this last attempt at reconciliation.

"It is no good. None! I have no belief in you left, so you can no longer cajole me. I know that I am nothing to you. Nothing! If," drawing a deep breath through his closed teeth, "if a thousand years were to go by I should still be nothing to you if he were near. I give it up. The battle was too strong for me. I am defeated, lost, ruined."

"You have so arranged it," says she in a low tone, singularly clear. The violence of his agitation had subdued hers, and rendered her comparatively calm.

"You must permit me to contradict you. The arrangement is all your own."

"Was it so great a crime to stay last night at Falling?" "There is no crime anywhere. That you should have made a decision between two men is not a crime."

"No! I acknowledge I made a decision—but——"

"When did you make it?"

"Last evening—and though you——"

"Oh! no excuses," says he with a frown. "Do you think I desire them?"

He hesitates for a minute or so, and now turns to her abruptly. "Are you engaged to him finally?"

"No."

"No!" In accents suggestive of surprise so intense as to almost enlarge into disbelief. "You refused him then?"

"No," says she again. Her heart seems to die within her. Oh, the sense of shame that overpowers her. A sudden wild, terrible hatred of Beauclerk takes her into possession. Why, why, had he not given her the choice of saying yes, instead of no, to that last searching question?

"You mean—that he——" He stops dead short as if not knowing how to proceed. Then, suddenly, his wrath breaks forth. "And for that scoundrel, that fellow without a heart, you have sacrificed the best of you—your own heart! For him, whose word is as light as his oath, you have flung behind you a love that would have surrounded you to your dying day. Good heavens! What are women made of? But——" He sobers himself at once, as if smitten by some sharp remembrance, and, pale with shame and remorse, looks at her. "Of course," says he, "it is only one heartbroken, as I am, who would have dared thus to address you. And it is plain to me now that there are reasons why he should not have spoken before this. For one thing, you were alone with him; for another, you are tired, exhausted. No doubt to-morrow he——"

"How dare you?" says she in a voice that startles him, a very low voice, but vibrating with outraged pride. "How dare you thus insult me? You seem to think—to think—that because—last night—he and I were kept from our home by the storm——" She pauses; that old, first odd sensation of choking now again oppresses her. She lays her hand upon the back of a chair near her, and presses heavily upon it. "You think I have disgraced myself," says she, the words coming in a little gasp from her parched lips. "That is why you speak of things being at an end between us. Oh——"

"You wrong me there," says the young man, who has grown ghastly. "Whatever I may have said, I——"

"You meant it!" says she. She draws herself up to the full height of her young, slender figure, and, turning abruptly, moves toward the door. As she reaches it, she looks back at him. "You are a coward!" she says, in a low, distinct tone alive with scorn. "A coward!"



CHAPTER XXVIII.

"I have seen the desire of mine eyes, The beginning of love, The season of kisses and sighs, And the end thereof."

Miss Kavanagh put in no appearance at dinner. "A chill," whispered Lady Baltimore to everybody, in her kindly, sympathetic way, caught during that miserable drive yesterday. She hoped it would be nothing, but thought it better to induce Joyce to remain quiet in her own room for the rest of the evening, safe from draughts and the dangers attendant on the baring of her neck and arms. She told her small story beautifully, but omitted to add that Joyce had refused to come downstairs, and that she had seemed so wretchedly low-spirited that at last her hostess had ceased to urge her.

She had, however, spent a good deal of time arguing with her on another subject—the girl's fixed determination to go home—"to go back to Barbara"—next day. Lady Baltimore had striven very diligently to turn her from this purpose, but all to no avail. She had even gone so far as to point out to Joyce that the fact of her thus leaving the Court before the expiration of her visit might suggest itself to some people in a very unpleasant light. They might say she had come to the end of her welcome there—been given her conge, in fact—on account of that luckless adventure with her hostess' brother.

Joyce was deaf to all such open hints. She remained obstinately determined not to stay a moment longer there than could be helped. Was it because of Norman she was going? No; she shook her head with such a look of contemptuous indifference that Lady Baltimore found it impossible to doubt her, and felt her heart thereby lightened. Was it Felix?

Miss Kavanagh had evidently resented that question at first, but finally had broken into a passionate fit of tears, and when Lady Baltimore placed her arms round her had not repulsed her.

"But, dear Joyce, he himself is leaving to-morrow."

"Oh, let me go home. Do not ask me to stay. I am more unhappy than I can tell you," said the girl brokenly.

"You have had a quarrel with him?"

Joyce bowed her head in a little quick, impatient way.

"It is Felix then, Joyce; not Norman? Let me say I am glad—for your sake; though that is a hard thing for a sister to say of her brother. But Norman is selfish. It is his worst fault, perhaps, but a bad one. As for this little misunderstanding with Felix, it will not last. He loves you, dearest, most honestly. You will make up this tiny——"

"Never!" said Joyce, interrupting her and releasing herself from her embrace. Her young face looked hard and unforgiving, and Lady Baltimore, with a sigh, decided on saying no more just then. So she went downstairs and told her little tale about Joyce's indisposition, and was believed by nobody. They all said they were sorry, as in duty bound, and perhaps they were, taking their own view of her absence; but dinner went off extremely well, nevertheless, and was considered quite a success.

Dysart was present, and was apparently in very high spirits; so high, indeed, that at odd moments his hostess, knowing a good deal, stared at him. He, who was usually so silent a member, to-night outshone even the versatile Beauclerk in the lightness and persistency of his conversation.

This sudden burst of animation lasted him throughout the evening, carrying him triumphantly across the hour and a half of drawing-room small talk, and even lasting till the more careless hours in the smoking-room have come to an end, and one by one the men have yawned themselves off to bed.

Then it died. So entirely, so forlornly as to prove it had been only a mere passing and enforced exhilaration after all. They were all gone: there was no need now to keep up the miserable farce—to seek to prevent their coupling her name with his, and therefore discovering the secret of her sad seclusion.

As Dysart found himself almost the last man in the room, he too rose, reluctantly, as though unwilling to give himself up to the solitary musings that he knew lay before him; the self-upbraidings, the vague remorse, the terrible dread lest he had been too severe, that he knows will be his all through the silent darkness. For what have sleep and he to do with each other to-night?

He bade his host good-night and, with a pretense of going upstairs, turned aside into the deserted library, and, choosing a book, flung himself into a chair, determined, if possible, to read his brain into a state of coma.

* * * * *

Twelve o'clock has struck, slowly, painfully, as if the old timekeeper is sleepy, too, and is nodding over his work. And now one—as slowly, truly, but with the startling brevity that prevents one's dwelling on its drowsy note. Dysart, with a tired groan, flings down his book, and, rising to his feet, stretches his arms above his head in an utter abandonment to sleepless fatigue that is even more mental than bodily. Once the subject of that book had been of an enthralling interest to him. To-night it bores him. He has found himself unequal to the solving of the abstruse arguments it contains. One thought seems to have dulled all others. He is leaving to-morrow! He is leaving her to-morrow! Oh! surely it is more than that curt pronoun can contain. He is leaving, in a few short hours, his life, his hope, his one small chance of heaven upon earth. How much she had been to him, how strong his hoping even against hope had been, he never knew till now, when all is swept out of his path forever.

The increasing stillness of the house seems to weigh upon him, rendering even gloomier his melancholy thoughts. How intolerably quiet the night is, not even a breath of wind is playing in the trees outside. On such a night as this ghosts might walk and demons work their will. There is something ghastly in this unnatural cessation of all sound, all movement.

"What a strange power," says Emerson, "there is in silence." An old idea, yet always new. Who is there who has not been affected by it—has not known that curious, senseless dread of spirits present from some unknown world that very young children often feel? "Fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake," says Job in one of his most dismal moments; and now to Dysart this strange, unaccountable chill feeling comes. Insensibly, born of the hour and the silence only, and with no smallest dread of things intangible.

The small clock on the mantel-piece sends forth a tiny chime, so delicate that in broad daylight, with broader views in the listeners, it might have gone unheard. Now it strikes upon the motionless air as loudly as though it were the crack of doom. Poor little clock! struggling to be acknowledged for twelve long years of nights and days, now is your revenge—the fruition of all your small ambitious desires.

Dysart starts violently at the sound of it. It is of importance, this little clock. It has wakened him to real life again. He has taken a step toward the door and the bed, the very idea of which up to this has been treated by him with ignominy, when—a sound in the hall outside stays him.

An unmistakable step, but so light as to suggest the idea of burglars. Dysart's spirits rise. The melancholy of a moment since deserts him. He looks round for the poker—that national, universal mode of defence when our castles are invaded by the "masked man."

He has not time, however, to reach it before the handle of the door is slowly turned—before the door is as slowly opened, and——

"What is this?"

For a second Dysart's heart seems to stop beating. He can only gaze spellbound at this figure, clad all in white, that walks deliberately into the room, and seemingly directly toward him. It is Joyce! Joyce!



CHAPTER XXIX.

"Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive."

Is she dead or still living? Dysart, calmed now, indeed, gazes at her with a heart contracted. Great heaven! how like death she looks, and yet—he knows she is still in the flesh. How strangely her eyes gleam. A dull gleam and so passionless. Her brown hair—not altogether fallen down her back, but loosened from its hairpins, and hanging in a soft heavy knot behind her head—gives an additional pallor to her already too white face. The open eyes are looking straight before them, unseeing. Her step is slow, mechanical, unearthly. It is only indeed when she lays the candle she holds upon the edge of the table, the extreme edge, that he knows she is asleep, and walking in a dreamland that to waking mortals is inaccessible.

Silently, and always with that methodical step, she moves toward the fireplace, and still a little further, until she stands on that eventful spot where he had given up all claim to her, and thrown her back upon herself. There is the very square on the carpet where she stood some hours ago. There she stands now. To her right is the chair on which she had leaned in great bitterness of spirit, trying to evoke help and strength from the dead oak. Now, in her dreams, as if remembering that past scene, she puts out her hands a little vaguely, a little blindly, and, the chair not being where in her vision she believes it to be, she gropes vaguely for it in a troubled fashion, the little trembling hands moving nervously from side to side. It is a very, sad sight, the sadder for, the mournful change that crosses the face of the sleeping girl. The lips take a melancholy curve: the long lashes droop over the sightless eyes, a long, sad sigh escapes her.

Dysart, his heart beating wildly, makes a movement toward her. Whether the sound of his impetuous footstep disturbs her dream, or whether the coming of her fingers in sudden contact with the edge of the table does it, who can tell; she starts and wakens.

At first she stands as if not understanding, and then, with a terrified expression in her now sentient eyes, looks hurriedly around her. Her eyes meet Dysart's.

"Don't be frightened," begins he quickly.

"How did I come here?" interrupts she, in a voice panic-stricken. "I was upstairs; I remember nothing. It was only a moment since that I——Was I asleep?"

She gives a hasty furtive glance at the pretty loose white garment that enfolds her.

"I suppose so," says Dysart. "You must have had some disturbing dream, and it drove you down here. It is nothing. Many people walk in their sleep."

"But I never. Oh! what is it?" says she, as if appealing to him to explain herself to herself. "Was," faintly flushing, "any one else here? Did any one see me?"

"No one. They are in bed; all asleep."

"And you?" doubtfully.

"I couldn't sleep," returns he slowly, gazing fixedly at her.

"I must go," says she feverishly. She moves rapidly toward the door; her one thought seems to be to get back to her own room. She looks ill, unstrung, frightened. This new phase in her has alarmed her. What if, for the future, she cannot even depend upon herself?—cannot know where her mind will carry her when deadly sleep has fallen upon her? It is a hateful thought. And to bring her here. Where he was. What power has he over her? Oh! the sense of relief in thinking that she will be at home to-morrow—safe with Barbara.

Her hand is on the door. She is going.

"Joyce," says Dysart suddenly, sharply. All his soul is in his voice. So keenly it rings, that involuntarily she turns to him. Great agony must make itself felt, and to Dysart, seeing her on the point of leaving him forever, it seems as though his life is being torn from him. In truth she is his life, the entire happiness of it—if she goes through that door unforgiving, she will carry with her all that makes it bearable.

She is looking at him. Her eyes are brilliant with nervous excitement; her face pale. Her very lips have lost their color.

"Yes?" says she interrogatively, impatiently.

"I am going away to-morrow—I shall not——"

"Yes, yes—I know. I am going, too."

"I shall not see you again?"

"I hope not—I think not."

She makes another step forward. Opening the door with a little light touch, she places one hand before the candle and peers timidly into the dark hall outside.

"Don't let that be your last word to me," says the young man, passionately. "Joyce, hear me! There must be some excuse for me."

"Excuse?" says she, looking back at him over her shoulder, her lovely face full of curious wonder.

"Yes—yes! I was mad! I didn't mean a word I said—I swear it! I——Joyce, forgive me!"

The words, though whispered, burst from him with a despairing vehemence. He would have caught her hand but that she lifts her eyes to his—such eyes!

There is a little pause, and then:

"Oh, no! Never—never!" says she.

Her tone is very low and clear—not angry, not even hasty or reproachful. Only very sad and certain. It kills all hope.

She goes quickly through the open doorway, closing it behind her. The faint, ghostly sound of her footfalls can be heard as she crosses the hall. After a moment even this light sound ceases. She is indeed gone! It is all over!

* * * * *

With a kind of desire to hide herself, Joyce has crept into her bed, sore at heart, angry, miserable. No hope that sleep will again visit her has led her to this step, and, indeed, would sleep be desirable? What a treacherous part it had played when last it fell on her!

How grieved he looked—how white! He was evidently most honestly sorry for all the unkind things he had said to her. Not that he had said many, indeed, only—he had looked them. And she, she had been very hard—oh! too hard. However, there was an end to it. To-morrow would place more miles between them, in every way, than would ever be recrossed. He would not come here again until he had forgotten her—married, probably. They would not meet. There should have been comfort in that certainty, but, alas! when she sought for it, it eluded her—it was not there.

In spite of the trick Somnus had just played her, she would now gladly have courted him again, if only to escape from ever growing regret. But though she turns from side to side in a vain endeavor to secure him, that cruel god persistently denies her, and with mournful memories and tired eyes, she lies, watching, waiting for the tender breaking of the dawn upon the purple hills.

Slowly, slowly comes up the sun. Coldly, and with a tremulous lingering, the light shines on land and sea. Then sounds the bursting chants of birds, the rush of streams, the gentle sighings of the winds through herb and foliage.

Joyce, thankful for the blessed daylight, flings the clothes aside, and with languid step, and eyes, sad always, but grown weary, too, with sleeplessness and thoughts unkind, moves lightly to the window.

Throwing wide the casement, she lets the cool morning air flow in.

A new day has arisen. What will it bring her? What can it bring, save disappointment only and a vain regret? Oh! why must she, of all people, be thus unblessed upon this blessed morn? Never has the sun seemed brighter—the whole earth a greater glow of glory.

"Welcome, the lord of light and lamp of day: Welcome, fosterer of tender herbis green; Welcome, quickener of flourish'd flowers' sheen. Welcome depainter of the bloomit meads; Welcome, the life of everything that spreads!"

Yet to Joyce welcome to the rising sun seems impossible. What is the good of day when hope is dead? In another hour or two she must rise, go downstairs, talk, laugh, and appear interested in all that is being said—and with a heart at variance with joy—a poor heart, heavy as lead.

A kind of despairing rage against her crooked fortune moves her. Why has she been thus unlucky? Why at first should a foolish, vagrant feeling have led her to think so strongly of one unworthy and now hateful to her as to prejudice her in the mind of the one really worthy. What madness possessed her? Surely she is the most unfortunate girl alive? A sense of injustice bring the tears into her eyes, and blots out the slowly widening landscape from her view.

"How happy some o'er other some can be!"

Her thoughts run to Barbara and Monkton. They are happy in spite of many frowns from fortune. They are poor—as society counts poverty—but the want of money is not a cardinal evil. They love each other; and the children are things to be loved as well—darling children! well grown, and strong, and healthy, though terrible little Turks at times—God bless them! Oh! that she could count herself as blessed as Barbara, whose greatest trouble is to deny herself this and that, to be able to pay for the other thing. No! to be poor is not to be unhappy. "Our happiness in this world," says a writer, "depends on the affections we are able to inspire." Truly she—Joyce—has not been successful in her quest. For if he had loved her, would he ever have doubted her? "Perfect love," says the oldest, grandest testimony of all, "casteth out fear." And he had feared. Sitting here in the dawning daylight, the tears ran softly down her cheeks.

It is a strange thing, but true, that never once during this whole night's dreary vigil do her thoughts once turn to Beauclerk.



CHAPTER XXX.

"Oh, there's stony a leaf in Atholl wood, And mony a bird in its breast, And mony a pain may the heart sustain Ere it sab itsel' to rest."

Barbara meets her on the threshold and draws her with loving arms into the dining-room.

"I knew you would be here at this hour. Lady Baltimore wrote me word about it. And I have sent the chicks away to play in the garden, as I thought you would like to have a comfortable chat just at first."

"Lady Baltimore wrote?"

"Yes, dear. Just to say you were distressed about that unfortunate affair—that drive, you know—and that you felt you wanted to come back to me. I was glad you wanted that, darling."

"You are not angry with me, Barbara?" asks the girl, loosening her sister's arms the better to see her face.

"Angry! No, how could I be angry?" says Mrs. Monkton, the more vehemently in that she knows she had been very angry just at first. "It was the merest chance. It might have happened to anybody. One can't control storms!"

"No—that's what Mrs. Connolly said, only she called it 'the ilimints,'" says Joyce, with quite a little ghost of a smile.

"Well, now you are home again, and it's all behind you. And there is really nothing in it. And you must not think so much about it," says Barbara, fondling her hand. "Lady Baltimore said you were too unhappy about it."

"Did she say that? What else did she say?" asks the girl, regarding her sister with searching, eyes. What had Lady Baltimore told her? That impulsive admission to the latter last night had been troubling Joyce ever since, and now to have to lay bare her heart again, to acknowledge her seeming fickleness, to receive Barbara's congratulation on it, only to declare that this second lover has, too, been placed by Fate outside her life, seems too bitter to her. Oh, no—she cannot tell Barbara.