From her window, Maude Falconer, now attired in a simple but exquisitely effective morning frock, could see him. After watching him for a minute or two, she went to her writing-table and wrote two or three notes quickly, and, with these in her pocket, went down-stairs and through the hall to the stable court-yard. Pottinger was still finishing off Adonis, and he drew himself up and saluted as she entered the stables. As a rule her manner to the servants and her inferiors was cold and haughty, but, as Stafford had discovered last night, she could be soft and gentle when she chose, and she smiled now at Pottinger and the horse in a fashion that almost dazzled that ingenuous youth. At the same time her eye had noted Pottinger's coat and waistcoat which hung on a hook at the stall-post with the saddle-wallet slung over them. The coat was an old one with gaping pockets, and there was no sign of a letter in them, or in the waistcoat. Instinctively, she knew that it was in the wallet.

"What splendid condition that horse is in, Pottinger," she said. "His coat is like satin. I suppose you were in the army?"

Of course Pottinger was flattered, and answered in the negative very reluctantly.

"Not but what Mr. Stafford, miss, isn't as particular as any army gent could be. I should be sorry to turn out a badly groomed 'oss for Mr. Stafford's eyes to rest on, miss. He's as kind-hearted a master as a man could desire to have, but that's about the one thing Mr. Stafford wouldn't stand, miss."

"I suppose not," she said. "Are you going to ride into Bryndermere this morning, Pottinger? If so, I should be glad if you would take these notes to the linen draper's and the chemist's, and bring me back the things I have written for."

"Certainly, miss," said Pottinger; then he remembered Stafford's order, and looked anything but certain. "Would it do late in the morning, miss? I have to go somewhere first."

"Oh, yes," she replied, "where shall I put the letters—in this wallet?"

Pottinger answered in the affirmative and thanked her, and she unfastened the wallet, talking to him as she did so. "Is that a swelling on that near fore leg, Pottinger?" she said, suddenly, pointing to Adonis.

Pottinger started and regarded her with a look of horror, and, of course, instantly knelt down to examine the suspected member. Long before he had come up again with a breath of relief and a smiling "No, miss, there is nothing the matter with it," she had looked into the wallet and seen Stafford's letter.

"Oh, I thought there was," she said. "Have you finished your horses?"

"No, miss," he replied. "I have the master's hunter and the mare you ride to do yet."

She nodded and went out of the stable, humming one of her songs; but she did not go very far. In five minutes she back again.

"Oh, Pottinger, don't trouble about those letters. I will ride into Bryndermere myself."

Pottinger was in the mare's stall, and Mause stopped him as he was coming forward, by saying:

"Don't trouble; I'll take the letters from the wallet."

With Stafford's letter amongst her own in her pocket, she went quickly, and yet without apparent hurry, to her own room, sent away her maid on an errand, and slipped the bolt in the door. Rapidly she lit her silver spirit-lamp and heated the water almost to boiling-point, and held the envelope of Stafford's letter over it until the gum was melted and the flap came open. Then she took out the letter, and, throwing herself back in an easy-chair, read it slowly.

At first, as she read, her face burned, then it grew pale, and still paler; every word of the bitter farewell, of the renunciation, written as if with a man's heart's blood, stabbed her and tortured her with the pangs of jealousy. Once she started to her feet, her hands clenched, her head thrown back her eyes flashing; a superb figure—the tigress aroused. At that instant she was minded to take the letter and fling it in Stafford's face, and with it fling back the pledge which he had given her the night before; then she collapsed, as it were, and sank into a chair, dropping the letter and covering her face with her hands. She could not. The strength of her love made her weak as water where that love was concerned. Though her pride called upon her to surrender Stafford, she could not respond to it.

Swaying to and fro, with her eyes covered as if to hide her shame, she tried to tell herself that Stafford's was only a transient fancy for this girl, that it was mere flirtation, a vulgar liaison that she would teach him to forget.

"He shall, he shall!" she cried behind her hands, as if the words were wrung from her in her anguish of wounded pride and rejected love. "I will teach him! There is no art that woman ever used that I will not use—they say I am beautiful: if I am, my beauty shall minister to him as no woman's beauty has ever ministered before. Cold to all the rest of the world, I will be to him a fire which shall warm his life and make it a heaven—It is only because he saw her first: if he had seen me—Oh, curse her, curse her! Last night, while he was talking to me, even while he was kissing me, he was thinking of her. But she shall not have him! She has lost and I have won and I will keep him!"

She dashed her hand across her eyes, though there were no tears in them, and stood upright, holding herself tensely as if she were battling for calm; then she replaced the poignant note in its envelope, and went back to the stables. Again she met no one, for those who were down were in at breakfast.

"I have changed my mind, Pottinger," she said; "and will be glad if you will take the notes, please. See, I have pat them back in the wallet."

"Certainly, miss!" said Pottinger, and he touched his forehead two or three times, and coloured and smiled awkwardly and looked at her with a new and vivid interest. One of the maids had run into the stable, during Maud's absence, and had told him the news that his master was engaged to Miss Maude Falconer; for the servants, who are so quick to discover all our little secrets, had already learnt this one, and the servants' hall was buzzing with it.



CHAPTER XXV.

That morning Ida came down-stairs singing, not loudly, but in the soft undertone which a girl uses when she is supremely happy and she has hopes of seeing the cause of her happiness very soon. All through breakfast, while Mr. Heron read his letters, opening them and reading them stealthily as usual, her heart was singing its love-song to her, and she was wondering whether she would meet Stafford by the stream or among the hills. That she should meet him she felt quite sure, for he had never failed to leave the gay party at the Villa to come over to her every day.

Perhaps he had spoken to his father, and, in the wonderful way men have, had swept aside all the obstacles which stood against their union. He was so strong, so self-reliant, so masterful—though so gentle with her—that surely no obstacles could stand against him. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she almost started when Jason appeared and, looking from her to Mr. Heron, announced that Mr. Wordley, the family lawyer, was in the library.

Mr. Heron flushed and scrambled his letters and papers together as he rose.

"Won't Mr. Wordley come in and have some breakfast?" suggested Ida. But her father, shaking his head impatiently, said that Mr. Wordley was sure to have had his breakfast, and shuffled out of the room.

A few minutes after he had gone, Jessie came in for the day's orders, and Ida dragged her thoughts away from the all-absorbing subject and plunged into housekeeping. It was not a lengthy or a very elaborate business, alas! but when it was over Jessie lingered and began collecting the breakfast things, glancing shyly at Ida, as she always did when she wanted to gossip.

"There was fine doings up at the Villa last night, Miss Ida!" she began, rather timidly, for Ida seldom encouraged her chatter. "There was a ball there. Such a tremendous grand affair! There hasn't been anything like it ever known in this country. Williams was up there this morning, and Susie told him that it was like fairyland, what with the beautiful rooms and the music and the ladies' rich dresses and jewels. She got a peep through one of the open doors, and she says it quite took her breath away."

Ida smiled. She was not envious; for would not Stafford come over presently and tell her all about it: who was there, with whom he had danced, and how all the time he had been longing to be by her side?

"Susie says that the ladies was beautiful, Miss Ida, and that the most beautiful of them all was Miss Falconer. Susie says she had the most lovely dress, like a cloud of smoke, with diamonds sparkling all over it like stars."

"That sounds very pretty and poetical, Jessie," said Ida.

What would he care for a dress like a cloud, or the diamonds that shone like stars on it? Did she not know that he loved the little rain-washed habit which a certain rustic country girl wore, better than the choicest production of Worth?

"Yes, miss," Jessie went on, "and Susie says that Mr. Stafford, the lord's son"—the simple dale folk as often called Sir Stephen "my lord" as "sir"—"danced ever so many times with her, and the servants was saying that he was making love to her, and that they shouldn't be surprised to hear that Mr. Stafford was going to marry Miss Falconer."

Ida could not prevent the colour rising to her face, but she laughed unforcedly, and with no misgiving; for she had looked into Stafford's eyes and read his soul through them. He was hers, let all the women in the world be beautiful and decked in silks and satins.

She ran upstairs to put on her habit, leaving Jessie rather disappointed at the effect of her news, and she sang while she tied the little scarlet sailor's knot, and presently came down the stairs with a step as light as her heart. As she was mounting and talking to Jason about the last lot of steers, Mr. Wordley came out of the house to get his horse, and hurried to her, bare-headed, in the good old way.

"No, I can't stay," he said in answer to her invitation. "I have to be back at the office; but I'll ride a little way with you, if I may. It isn't often I get the chance of riding with the prettiest girl in the county. There now, I've made you blush, as I used to when you sat upon my knee, and I told you that little girls had no right to stars for eyes."

Ida laughed.

"But I'm a big girl now," she said, "and too old for compliments; besides, lawyers should always speak the truth."

"For goodness sake! don't spread that theory, my dear, or we shall all have to put our shutters up," he retorted, with mock alarm.

He got on his old red-roan rather stiffly, and they rode out of the court-yard and on to the road, where, be sure, Ida's "star-like" eyes swept the hills and the valleys lest perchance a young man should be riding there. They rode in silence for a few minutes, during which the old lawyer seemed very thoughtful, and glanced at her sideways, as if he were trying to make up his mind about something. At last he said, with an affectation of casualness:

"Father been pretty well of late, my dear?"

Ida hesitated for a moment. She could not bring herself to tell even Mr. Wordley of her father's painful habit of walking in his sleep.

"Yes," she said, "fairly well. Sometimes he is rather restless and irritable as if he were worried. Has he anything to worry him, Mr. Wordley—I mean anything more than usual?"

He did not answer, and she looked at him as if waiting for his reply.

"I was thinking of what you just said: that you were a big girl. So you are, though you always seem to me like the little child I used to nurse. But the world rolls on and you have grown into a woman and I ought to tell you the truth," he said, at last.

"The truth!" she echoed, with a quick glance.

"Yes," he said, nodding gravely. "Does your father ever talk to you of business, my dear? I know that you manage the house and the farm; ay, and manage them well, but I don't know whether he ever tells you anything about the business of the estate. I ask because I am in rather an awkward position. When your father dismissed his steward I thought he would consult me on the matters which the steward used to manage; but he has not done so, and I am really more ignorant about his affairs than anyone would credit, seeing that I have been the Herons' family lawyer—I and mine—since, well, say, since the Flood." "No; my father tells me nothing," said Ida. "Is there anything the matter, is there anything I should know?"

He looked at her gravely, compassionately.

"My dear, I think there is," he said. "If you had a brother or any relative near you I would not worry you, would not tell you. But you have none, you are quite alone, you see."

"Quite alone," she echoed. And then she blushed, as she remembered Stafford, and that she was no longer alone in the world.

"And so I think you ought to be told that your father's affairs are—are not as satisfactory as they should be."

"I know that we are very poor," said Ida in a low voice.

"Ah, yes," he said. "And so are a great many of the landed gentry nowadays; but they still struggle on, and I had hope that by some stroke of good luck I might have helped your father to struggle on and perhaps save something, make some provision, for you. But, my dear—See now! I am going to treat you as if you were indeed a woman; and you will be brave, I know, for you are a Heron, and a Heron—it sounds like a paradox!—has never shown the white feather—your father's affairs have been growing worse lately, I am afraid. You know that the estate is encumbered, that the entail was cut off so that you might inherit; but advantage has been taken of the cutting off the entail to raise fresh loans since the steward was dismissed and I have been ignorant of your father's business matters. I came to-day to tell him that the interest of the heaviest mortgage was long overdue, and that the mortgagee, who says that he has applied several times, is threatening foreclosure. I felt quite sure that I should get the money from your father this morning, but he has put me off and makes some difficulty. He made a rambling statement, almost incoherent, which I did not understand, though, to be sure, I listened very intently, and from a word or two he incautiously let drop, I am afraid that—"

He stopped and frowned and puckered his lips as if reluctant to continue. Ida looked at him steadily with her deep grey eyes.

"Go on." she said. "Do not be afraid to tell me the truth. I can bear it. I would rather know the worst, know what I have to face. For some time past I have feared my father was in trouble. Do you think I am afraid? Please tell me all."

"In a word, then, my dear," said the old lawyer, with a sigh, "I am afraid your father has been speculating, and, like ninety-nine out of a hundred that do so, has been losing. It is like playing against the bank at Monte Carlo; one man may break it, but the advantage is on the bank's side, and for the one who wins thousands lose. Can you tell me if there are any grounds for my apprehension?"

Ida was silent for a moment as she recalled her father's manner of late, his habit of shutting himself up in the library, of keeping his letters from her, of secreting papers, and, above all, the furtive glances which she had now and again seen him cast at her.

"I am afraid that it is only too true," she said. "My poor father! What is to be done, Mr. Wordley? Can I do anything?"

The old man shook his head. He knew too well that once a man has really taken to gambling, whether it be on the Stock Exchange, or at a green table, or on the turf, there is very little hope of saving him.

"I fear you can do nothing," he replied, sadly. "A Heron never yet brooked interference even by his nearest and dearest. No, you must say nothing about it. Even I must be careful how I approach him; for this morning he was testy and irritable and resented the few questions I ventured to put to him. Don't make yourself unhappy about it. I will try and arrange about the mortgage, and I will come over again as soon as possible and try and persuade your father to confide in me as he used to do. Now, come, remember! You are not to worry yourself, my dear, but to leave it entirely to me. Things are rarely as bad as they seem, and there is always a gleam of light in the darkest sky. Perhaps, some day, we shall see Heron Hall and the good old family in all its old glory; and when that day comes, my little girl with the star eyes will queen it in the dale like one of the Heron ladies of the past."

He patted her hand as he held it, patted and stroked it and looked at her with a tender and encouraging smile, which made Ida's eyes grow moist.

She rode down the dale gravely and sadly for some minutes: then the thought flashed through her mind, warming her heart, that she was not alone, but there was one who loved her and to whom she could by for consolation and encouragement. Yes, it was only right that she should tell Stafford all; there should be no concealment from him.

She rode down the dale looking for him, but he was nowhere to be seen. When she came to the opening by the lake she saw the large, white Villa gleaming in the sunlight; a launch was patting off from the landing-place with men and women on board, and the could almost fancy that she heard the sound of laughter. The contrast of the prosperity typified by the great white place and the poverty of Heron Hall smote her sharply. She was poorer even than she had thought: what would the great, the rich Sir Stephen say to such a daughter-in-law? She watched the launch dreamily as it shot across the lake, and wondered whether Stafford was on board, laughing and talking perhaps with the beautiful Miss Falconer. In this moment of her trouble the thought was not pleasant, but there was no jealousy in it, for in her assurance of his love he was free to talk and jest with whom he pleased. She turned, and after making her usual circuit, rode home-wards. As she reached the cross-road she heard the sound of a horse coming from the Hall, and she pulled up, her heart beating fast; then it sank with disappointment, for the horseman came round the bend and she saw that it was a groom. He touched his hat as he passed, and rode on at a sharp trot in the direction of Bryndremere. Ida wondered why he had been to the Hall, but concluded that he had gone there with some message about the farm produce.

When she rode into the stable-yard, she saw Jessie and Jason standing by the small hall door and talking eagerly, and Jessie came forward, and taking a letter from under her apron, held it out with a smile.

"It's just come from the Villa, Miss Ida," she said. "And oh, miss, what I told you this morning—it's quite true. It was Mr. Stafford's own groom as brought the note, and he says that his master is engaged to Miss Falconer, and that the whole place is in excitement over it. He was as proud as Punch, Miss Ida; for he says that his new mistress is terrible rich as well as beautiful, and that there'll be the grandest of grand doings up there."

The blood rushed to Ida's face for a moment, then faded, and she slipped the note into the pocket of her habit and laughed. For it sounded too ridiculous, too incredible to cause her even a shadow of annoyance. She gave one or two orders to Jason, then went into the hall, took the note from her pocket and looked at the address lovingly, lingeringly: for instinctively she knew whose hand had written it. It was the first letter she had received from him; what would it say to her? No doubt it was to tell her why he had not been able to meet her that morning, to ask her to meet him later in the day. With a blush of maidenly shame she lifted the envelope to her lips and kissed each written word.

Then she opened it, slowly, as lingeringly as she had looked at it, spinning out the pleasure, the delight which lay before her in the perusal of her first love-letter. With her foot upon the old-fashioned fender, her head drooping as if there was someone present to see her blushes, she read the letter; and it is not too much to say that at first she failed utterly to grasp its meaning. With knit brows and quaking heart, she read it again and again, until its significance was, so to speak, forced upon her; then the letter dropped from her hand, her arms fell limply to her sides, and she looked straight before her in a dazed, benumbed fashion, every word burning itself upon her brain and searing her heart.

The blow had fallen so suddenly, so unexpectedly, like a bolt from the blue, smiting the happiness of her young life as a sapling is smitten by summer lightning, that for the moment she felt no pain, nothing but the benumbing of all her faculties; so that she did not see the portrait of the dead and gone Heron upon which her eyes rested, did not hear her father's voice calling to her from the library, was conscious of nothing but those terrible words which were dinning through her brain like the booming of a great bell. Presently she uttered a low cry and clasped her head with her hand, as if to shut out the sound of the words that tortured her.

It could not be true—it could not be true! Stafford had not written it. It was some cruel jest, a very cruel jest, perpetrated by someone who hated them both, and who wantonly inflicted pain. Yes; that was it! That could be the only explanation. Someone had written in his name; it was a forgery; she would meet Stafford presently, and they would laugh at it together. He would be very angry, would want to punish the person who had done it; but he and she would laugh together, and he would take her in his arms and kiss her in one of the many ways in which he had made a kiss an ecstasy of delight, and they would laugh together as he whispered that nothing should ever separate them.

She laughed now as she pictured the scene that would be enacted. But suddenly the laugh died on her lips, as there flashed across her mind the words Jessie had said. Stafford was engaged to Maude Falconer, the girl up at the Villa, whose beauty and grace and wealth all the dale was talking of.

Oh, God! Was there any truth in it, was there any truth in it? Had Stafford, indeed, written that cruel letter? Had he left her forever, forever, forever? Should she never see him again, never again hear him tell her that he loved her, would always love her?

The room spun round with her, she suddenly felt sick and faint, and, reeling, caught at the carved mantel-shelf to prevent herself from falling. Then gradually the death-like faintness passed, and she became conscious that her father's voice was calling to her, and she clasped her head again and swept the hair from her forehead, and clenched her hands in the effort to gain her presence of mind and self-command.

She picked up the letter, and, with a shudder, thrust it in her bosom, as Cleopatra might have thrust the asp which was to destroy her; then with leaden feet, she crossed the hall and opened the library door, and saw her father standing by the table clutching some papers in one hand, and gesticulating wildly with the other. Dizzily, for there seemed to be a mist before her eyes, she went to him and laid a hand upon his arm.

"What is it, father?" she said, "Are you ill? What is the matter?"

He gazed at her vacantly and struck his hand on the table, after the manner of a child in a senseless passion.

"Lost! Lost! All lost!" he mumbled, jumbling the words together almost incoherently.

"What is lost, father?" she asked.

"Everything, everything!" he cried, in the same manner. "I can't remember, can't remember! It's ruin, utter ruin! My head—I can't think, can't remember! Lost, lost!"

In her terror, she put her young arm round him as a mother encircles her child in the delirium of fever.

"Try and tell me, father!" she implored him. "Try and be calm, dearest! Tell me, and I will help you. What is lost?"

He tried to struggle from her arms, tried to push her from him.

"You know!" he mumbled. "You've watched me—you know the truth! Everything is lost! I am ruined! The mortgage! Herondale will pass away! I am a poor man, a very poor man! Have pity on me, have pity on me!"

He slipped, by their weight, from her arms and fell into the chair. She sank on to her knees, her arms still round him, and stroked and caressed his withered hand that twitched and shook; and to her horror his stony eyes grew more vacant, his jaw dropped, and he sank still lower in the chair. "Jessie! Jason!" she called, and they rushed in. For a space they stood aghast and unhelpful from fright, then Jason tried to lift his master from the heap into which he had collapsed. The old man's eyes closed, he straggled for breath, and when he had gained it, he looked from one to the other with a smile, a senile smile, which added to Ida's grief and terror.

"It's all right!" he whispered, huskily, pantingly. "It's all right; they don't know. They don't guess!" Then his manner changed to one of intense alarm and dismay. "Lost! Lost!" he gasped. "I'm ruined, rained! Herondale has gone, gone—all is gone! My poor child—Ida!"

"Father!" broke from Ida's white lips. "Father, I am here. Look at me, speak to me. I am here—everything is not lost. I am here, and all is well."

His lips twisted into a smile, a smile of cunning, almost of glee; then he groaned, and the cry rose again:

"I can't remember—all is lost! Ruined! My poor child! Have pity on my child!"

As she clung to him, supporting him as she clung, she felt a shudder run through him, and he fell a lifeless heap upon her shoulder.

The minutes—were they minutes or years?—passed, and were broken into fragments by a cry from Jessie.

"Miss Ida! Miss Ida! He's—the master's dead!'"

Ida raised her father's head from her shoulder and looked into his face, and knew that the girl had spoken the truth.

He was dead. She had lost both father and lover in one day!



CHAPTER XXVI.

Ida sat in the library on the morning of the funeral. A pelting rain beat upon the windows, over which the blinds had been drawn; the great silence which reigned in the chamber above, in which the dead master of Heron lay, brooded over the whole house, and seemed in no part of it more intense than in this great, book-lined room, in which Godfrey Heron had spent so much of his life.

Ida lay back in the great arm-chair in which he had sat, her small brown hands lying limply in her lap, her eyes fixed absently upon the open book which lay on the table as he had left it. The pallor of her face, increased by her sorrow, was accentuated by the black dress, almost as plainly made as that which the red-eyed Jessie wore in her kitchen. Though nearly a week had elapsed since her father had died in her young arms, and notwithstanding her capacity for self-reliance, Ida had not yet recovered from the stupor of the shock.

She was scarcely thinking as she lay back in his chair and looked at the table over which he had bent for so many monotonous years; she scarcely realised that he had passed out of her life, and that she was alone in the world; and she was only vaguely conscious that her sorrow had, so to speak, a double edge; that she had lost not only her father, but the man to whom she had given her heart, the man who should have been standing beside her now, shielding her with his strong arms, comforting her with words of pity and love. The double blow had fallen so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that the pain of it had been dulled and blunted. The capacity of human nature for suffering is, after all not unlimited. God says to physical pain and mental anguish, "Thus far and no farther;" and this limitation saved Ida from utter collapse.

Then, again, she was not free to indulge in idle grief, in the luxury of woe; the great house had still to be run, she had to bury her beloved dead, the mourning which seems such a hopeless mockery when the heart is racked with misery, had to be seen to; and she did it, and went through it all, with outward calm, sustained by that Heron spirit which may be described as the religion of her class—noblesse oblige. Jessie had wept loudly through the house ever since the death, and could weep as loudly now; but if Ida shed any tears she wept in the silence and darkness of her own room, and no one heard her utter a moan. "To suffer in silence and be strong" was the badge of all her tribe, and she wore it with quiet stoicism.

Godfrey Heron's death had happened so suddenly that the news of it scarcely got beyond the radius of the estate before the following morning, and Stafford had gone to London in ignorance of this second blow with which Fate had followed up the one he had dealt Ida: and when the neighbours—the Vaynes, the Bannerdales, and the Avorys—came quickly and readily enough to offer their sympathy and help, they could do nothing. The girl solitary and lonely in her grief as she had been solitary and lonely through her life, would see no one but the doctor and Mr. Wordley, and the people who had once been warm and intimate friends of the family left reluctantly and sully, to talk over the melancholy circumstance, and to wonder what would become of the daughter of the eccentric man who had lived the life of a recluse. Mr. Wordley would have liked to have persuaded her to see some of the women who had hastened to comfort her; but he knew that any attempt at persuasion would have been in vain, that he would not have been able to break down the barrier of reserve which the girl had instinctively and reservedly erected between her suffering soul and the world. His heart ached for her, and he did all that a man could do to lighten the burden of her trouble; but there was very little that he could do beyond superintending the necessary arrangements for the funeral.

His first thought was of the relatives; but, somewhat to his own dismay, he found that the only one whom he could trace was a certain cousin, a more than middle-aged man who, though he bore the name of Heron, was quite unknown to Ida, and, so far as Mr. Wordley was aware, had not crossed the threshold of the Hall for many years. He was a certain John Heron, a retired barrister, who had gone in for religion, not in the form of either of the Established Churches, but of that of one of the least known sects, the members of which called themselves some kind of brothers, were supposed to be very strict observers of the Scriptural law, and were considered by those who did not belong to them both narrow-minded and uncharitable.

Mr. John Heron was a prominent member of this little sect, and was famous in its small circles for his extreme sanctity and his eloquence as a lay preacher. Mr. Wordley, with much misgiving, had invited this, the only relative he could find, to the funeral, and Ida was now awaiting this gentleman's arrival.

The stealthy footsteps which belong to those who minister to the dead passed up and down the great house, Jason was setting out the simple "funeral baked meats" which are considered appropriate to the occasion, and Mr. Wordley paced up and down the hall with his hands behind his back, listening to the undertaker's men upstairs, and glancing through the window in expectation of the carriage which had been sent for Mr. John Heron. Presently he saw it rounding a bend of the drive, and went into the library to prepare Ida.

She raised her head but not her eyes as he entered, and looked at him with that dull apathy which denotes the benumbed heart, the mind crushed under its heavy weight of sorrow.

"I came in to tell you, my dear, that Mr. John Heron is coming," he said. "The carriage is just turning the bend of the drive." "I will come," she said, rising and supporting herself by the heavy, carved arm of the great chair.

"No, no" he said. "Sit down and wait here." He did not want her to hear the stealthy tread of the undertaker's men, to meet the coffin which they were going to bring downstairs and place in the hall. "I will bring him in here. Is there anything you would like me to say to him, my dear?" he asked, and spoke with a certain hesitancy; for as yet he had not spoken of her future, feeling that her grief was too recent, too sacred, to permit of the obtrusion of material and worldly matters.

"To say to him?" she repeated, in a low, dull voice, as if she did not understand.

"Yes," he said. "I did not know whether you had formed any plan, whether"—he hesitated again, "you had thought of going—of paying a visit—to these relations of yours. He lives in the north of London, and has a wife and son and daughter, as you know."

Ida passed her hand across her brow, trying to remember.

"Ah, yes," she said at last, "I remember you told me about them. I never heard of them before—until now. Why should I go to them? Do they want me? Have they asked me?"

Mr. Wordley coughed discreetly. They certainly had not asked her, but he felt quite assured that an individual whose reputation for sanctity stood so high could not be so deficient in charity as to refuse a home to his orphan cousin.

"They have not sent you any definite invitation yet, but they will be sure to want you to go and stay with them, for a time, at any rate; and I think you ought to go."

"I do not think I should like it," said Ida, but indifferently, as if the question were of no moment. "I would rather stay here"

Mr. Wordley polished his glasses very intently.

"I am afraid you'd find it very lonely at the Hall, my dear," he said. "In fact, I don't think you could remain here by yourself," he added, evading the direct gaze of the great, sad eyes.

"I should feel lonely anywhere," she said. "More lonely with people I don't know, probably, than I should feel here, with Jessie and Jason—and—and the dogs."

"Well, well, we can't discuss the question now, and will endeavour to act for the best, my dear," said the old man, still intent upon his glasses. "I hear the carriage. I will bring Mr. John in." He returned in a minute or two, accompanied by a tall and gaunt individual, who, in his black clothes and white necktie, looked a cross between a superior undertaker and a Methodist preacher. His features were strongly marked, and the expression of his countenance was both severe and melancholy, and, judging by his expression and his voice, which was harsh and lachrymose, his particular form of religion did not appear to afford him either amusement or consolation.

"This is your cousin, Mr. John Heron," said poor Mr. Wordley, who was evidently suffering from the effects of his few minutes' conversation with that gentleman.

Mr. John Heron surveyed the slight figure and white face with its sad, star-like eyes—surveyed it with a grim kind of severity, which was probably intended for sympathy, and extending a cold, damp hand, which resembled an extremely bony shoulder of mutton, said, in a rasping, melancholy voice:

"How do you do, Ida? I trust you are bearing your burden as becomes a Christian. We are born to sorrow. The train was three-quarters of an hour late."

"I am sorry," said Ida in her low voice, leaving him to judge whether she expressed regret for our birthright of misery or the lateness of the train. "Will you have some lunch—some wine?" she asked, a dull, vague wonder rising in her mind that this grim, middle-class man should be of kith and kin with her dead father.

"Thank you; no. I had an abernethy biscuit at the station." He drew back from, and waved away, the tray of wine which Jason at this moment brought in. "I never touch wine. I, and all mine, are total abstainers. Those who fly to the wine-cup in moments of tribulation and grief rely on a broken reed which shall pierce their hand. I trust you do not drink, Cousin Ida?"

"No—yes; sometimes; not much," she replied, vaguely, and regarding him with a dull wonder; for she had never seen this kind of man before.

Mr. Wordley poured out a glass of wine, and, in silent indignation, handed it to her; and, unconscious of the heavy scowl with which Mr. John Heron regarded her, she put her lips to it.

"A glass of wine is not a bad thing at any time," said the old lawyer; "especially when one is weakened and prostrated by trouble. Try and drink a little more, my dear."

"It is a matter of opinion, of conviction, of principle," said Mr. John Heron, grimly, as if he were in the pulpit. "We must be guided by the light of our consciences; we must not yield to the seductive in fineness of creature comfort. We are told that strong drink is raging—" This was rather more than Mr. Wordley could stand, and, very red in the face, he invited Mr. John Heron to go up to the room which had been prepared for him.

When that gentleman had stalked out, the old lawyer looked at Ida with a mixture of dismay and commiseration.

"Not a—er—particularly cheerful and genial person, my dear; but no doubt Mr. John Heron is extremely conscientious and—er—good-hearted."

"I daresay," assented Ida, apathetically. "It does not matter. It was very kind of him to come so far to—to the funeral," she added. "He might have stayed away, for I don't think my father knew him, and I never heard of him. Is it not time yet?" she asked, in a low voice.

As she spoke, Jessie came in and took her upstairs to her room to put on the thick black cloak, the bonnet with its long crape veil, in which Ida was to follow her father to the grave; for in spite of Mr. Wordley's remonstrances, she had remained firm in her resolve to go to the church-yard.

Presently the procession started. Only a few carriages followed the hearse which bore Godfrey Heron to his last resting-place; but when the vehicles cradled beyond the boundary of the grounds, across which the dead man had not set foot for thirty years, the cavalcade was swelled by a number of tenants, labourers, and dalesmen who had come to pay their last respects to Heron of Herondale; and marching in threes, which appears to be the regulation number for a funeral, they made a long and winding tail to the crawling coaches, quite filled the little church, and stood, a black-garbed crowd, in the pelting rain round the oblong hole which would suffice for the last bed of this one of the last of the lords of the dale.

But though all were present to show respect to the deceased squire, the attention of every man and woman was fixed upon the slight, girlish figure standing by the side of the grave, her head bent, her great mournful eye fixed upon the coffin, her hands clenched tightly as they held together the thick mourning cloak. She looked so young, so almost child-like in the desolation of her solitude, that many of the women cried silently, and the rough men set their lips hard and looked sternly and grimly at the ground.

The old clergyman who had christened her and every Sunday had cast glances of interest and affection at her as she sat in the great "loose box" of a pew, found it very difficult to read the solemn service without breaking down, and his old thin voice quavered as he spoke the words of hope and consolation which the storm of wind and rain caught up and swept across the narrow church-yard and down the dale of which the Herons had been so long masters.

Mr. John Heron stood grim and gaunt opposite Ida, as if he were a figure carved out of wood, and showed no sign of animation until the end of the service, when he looked round with a sudden eagerness, and opened his large square lips as if he were going to "improve the occasion" by an address; but Mr. Wordley, who suspected him of such intention, nipped it in the bud by saying:

"Will you give your arm to Miss Ida, Mr. Heron? I want to get her back to the Hall as soon as possible."

Ida was led to the carriage, passing through a lane of sympathisers amongst whom were representatives of all the great dale families; and all bent their heads with a respectful pity and sympathy as the young girl made her way down the narrow path. About half a dozen persons had been asked to go to the Hall for the funeral lunch, at which Mr. John Heron, as representative of the family, presided. It was a melancholy meal; for most of those present were thinking of the orphan girl in her room above. They spoke in lowered voices of the dead man and of the great family from which he had sprung, and recalled stories of the wealth and lavishness of past Herons; and when the meal was over, there suddenly fell a silence, and all eyes were turned upon Mr. Wordley; for the moment had arrived for the reading and expounding of the will.

Mr. Wordley rose, coughed, and wiped his eye-glasses, and looked round gravely.

"As the legal adviser of my late client, Mr. Godfrey Heron, I have to inform you, gentlemen, that there is no will. My client died intestate."

The listeners exchanged glances, and looked grave and concerned.

"No will?" said Lord Bannerdale, anxiously; then his kindly face cleared. "But of course everything goes to his daughter; the estate is not entailed?"

Mr. Wordley inclined his head.

"The estate is not entailed, as you observed, Lord Bannerdale; and my client, Miss Ida Heron, inherits everything."

They drew a breath of relief, and nodded assentingly; and presently they made a general movement of departure. Lord Bannerdale lingered behind the others. "I won't ask the poor child to see me, Mr. Wordley," he said. "Will you therefore be good enough to give her Lady Bannerdale's love, and to tell her that, as Lady Bannerdale has written to her, we shall be more than pleased if she will come to us at the Court. She is to consider it her home for just as long as she should please; and we shall feel it a pleasure and an honour to have her amongst us as one of our own. Of course she cannot remain alone here, in this great place."

The old lawyer bowed.

"I will give her your kind message, for which I thank you on her behalf, Lord Bannerdale. I do not know what she will do, or where she will go; at present she is not in a condition to discuss any plans for her future, though to-day she expressed a desire to remain at the Hall." He paused for a moment before he added: "I do not know whether she can do so."

"My cousin is young, and a mere child, and she must follow the advice of her elders and her guardian. The future of even the sparrow is in higher hands than ours, and we know not what a day may bring forth," said Mr. John Heron, grimly, and with an uplifting of his heavy brows.

"Quite so," said Lord Bannerdale, who had taken a great dislike for the sanctimonious speaker, and who could scarcely repress a shudder as he shook Mr. John Heron's cold and clammy hand.

When they had all gone, Mr. Wordley said:

"We had better go into the library and talk matters over. I will send for Miss Ida. It seems cruel to disturb her at such a moment, but there is no help for it."

"You speak as if you had bad tidings, Mr. Wordley, to give us," said John Heron.

"I am afraid I have," responded the old lawyer, shaking his grey head sadly.



CHAPTER XXVII.

When Ida came down, he led her to a chair beside the fire which he had ordered to be lit, and laid his hand gently and tenderly on her shoulder by way of preparation and encouragement.

"Your cousin and I want to talk to you about the future, Ida," he said. "You will have to be told some time or other exactly how your father's affairs stood, and I have come to the conclusion that it is better you should know at once than that you should be permitted to remain in ignorance of the gravity of the situation. I have gone over your father's papers and looked into his affairs very carefully and closely, and I am sorry to say that they are in a very unsatisfactory condition. As I told you the other day, the estate has been encumbered and very seriously embarrassed for some time past, and the encumbrance has been increased of late, notwithstanding the admirable way in which you have managed the estate and the household affairs."

Ida raised her eyes to his and tried to regard him calmly and bravely, but her lips quivered and she checked a sigh.

Mr. Wordley coughed and frowned, as a man does when he is engaged in a disagreeable and painful task.

"The principal mortgagee has given me notice of foreclosure, and the amount of the debt is so large that I am afraid—it would be cruel and useless to conceal the truth from you—I know that the property sold would not be sufficient to meet it. Of ready money there appears to be none—"

Mr. John Heron groaned and raised his melancholy eyes to the ceiling with an expression of reprobation. Ida appeared unconscious of his presence and kept her sad eyes steadily fixed on the lawyer's kind and mournful face.

—"In a word, my dear child, your poor father appears to have left absolutely no effects behind him."

Ida drew a long breath and was silent for a moment, as she tried to realise the significance of his words.

"Do you mean that I am quite penniless?" she said, in a low voice.

Mr. Wordley blew his nose and coughed two or three times, as if he found it difficult to reply; at last he said, in a voice almost as low as hers:

"Put shortly, I am afraid, my dear, that is what I must tell you. I had no idea that the position was so grave. I thought that there would be something left; sufficient, at any rate, to render you independent; but, as I told you, I have been kept in ignorance of your father's affairs for some years past, and I did not know how things were going. I am surprised as well as grieved, deeply grieved; and I must confess that I can only account for the deplorable confusion and loss by the theory that I suggested to you the other day. I cannot but think that your poor father must have engaged in some disastrous speculation."

Mr. Heron groaned again, and shook his head.

"The prevailing vice of this most wicked of ages," he said. "The love of money, the gambling on the race-course and the Stock Exchange, are the root of all evil."

Ida seemed not to hear him, and Mr. Wordley ignored the comment.

"It now remains for you, my dear child, to decide what to do. I do not think you could possibly live on here; you have not the means to do so, though you should be as economical as you have been in the past; the house must pass away from you in six months' time or little more, and there would be nothing gained by your lingering hopelessly here for that period."

"I must go, then," said Ida, as if there were a stab in every word.

Mr. Wordley bent his head, and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Yes, I fear you must go," he assented. "But, thank God, you are not without friends, many friends. Lord Bannerdale charges me to tell you what his good wife has already written you—that a home awaits you at the Court, where you will be received gladly and lovingly; and I am quite sure that the door of every house in the dale is wide open for you."

Ida shrank in her chair. Clothe the offer as kindly as he might, it spelt Charity, not cold charity, but charity still: and what Heron had ever tamely accepted charity from mere friends and strangers? Mr. Wordley saw the shrinking, the little shudder, and understood.

"I understand, my dear!" he said, in a low voice. "But there is another offer, another home which you can accept without humiliation or compunction. Your cousin, Mr. John Heron here, will, I am sure, be only too glad, too delighted to—to—"

He waited and glanced at Mr. Heron impatiently, and at last that gentleman rose, but not too eagerly, to the occasion.

"I need scarcely say," he said, slowly and solemnly, "that I should not approve of my cousin's accepting these offers of charity, which, though no doubt kindly meant, appear to me somewhat—er—obtrusive. I am not a wealthy man; my simple home cannot compare in size and grandeur with Heron Hall and the estate which my late unfortunate cousin appears to have squandered, but such as it is, Ida will be welcome in it. I am not one to turn a deaf ear to the cry of the orphan and fatherless."

Mr. Wordley frowned and reddened, and cut in before Mr. John Heron could finish his sentence even more offensively, and so rouse Ida's spirit, and render his offer impossible of acceptance.

"Quite so, quite so, my dear sir," he said. "I am quite sure you will feel only too delighted and honoured at the prospect of taking this dear child into your family."

"Yes," said Mr. Heron, unctuously, "we will take her in as a lamb gathered into the fold, as a brand is plucked from the burning."

Ida looked at him half stupefied, and it is to be feared some doubts of his sanity arose in her mind.

"Quite so, quite so," interrupted Mr. Wordley again. "Then I think the sooner Miss Ida joins you the better; and I would suggest that she goes with you to-morrow. I will close the house and leave Jessie, the maid-servant, and Jason in charge. You and Miss Ida can depend on my guarding her interests as jealously as if they were my own. I will have a sale of the stock and other things which we are free to sell, and, meanwhile, Miss Ida must permit me to advance her some money on account of the proceeds."

He handed her an envelope in which he had already placed some bank-notes; but Ida looked at him and slowly shook her head.

"No, no, my dear!" he said. "I should not be guilty of such presumption. Though you are leaving Heron Hall, though it may be passing away from you forever, you are still, in my eyes, Miss Heron of Herondale, and I should not presume to offer you—" His voice broke, and his eyes filled with tears. "The money is yours, and you can take it without any loss of the pride which is your rightful heritage. If I have not offered you a home where you would indeed be an honoured guest, it is because I know that it would not be fitting for me to offer it, or you to accept it. Mr. John Heron is your natural guardian; but though that is so, I will ask you to remember that I claim the privilege of being your father's friend and yours, and that in any trouble you will be but honouring that privilege when you come to me for advice and assistance."

His voice was almost inaudible before he had finished, and Ida, down whose cheek tears were running for the first time, extended both hands in mute but eloquent gratitude. They had both forgotten Mr. John Heron's presence but were reminded of it by something between a cough and a sniff from him; and at a glance from Mr. Wordley, Ida turned to the gaunt figure and held out her hand.

"Thank you," she said in a low voice, "I will come with you and stay with you until—until—I can find something to do, something at which I can earn my own living. Surely there must be something I can do?" She turned to Mr. Wordley with a little anxious, eager gesture. "I am strong—very strong; I have managed Herondale—I can ride, and—and understand a farm. I am never tired. Surely there is something I can do!"

Her voice broke, she began to tremble, and the tears started to her eyes again.

"Yes, yes; no doubt, no doubt, my child!" said Mr. Wordley, whose own eyes were moist. "We will think about all that later on. You must go now and rest; you are tired."

He drew her arm within his, and patting her hand tenderly and encouragingly, led her out of the room; and stood in the hall watching her as she slowly went up the great stairs; such a girlish, mournful figure in her plain black dress.

Ida lay awake that night listening to the wind and the rain. She was familiar enough with the dale storms, but never had their wild music wailed so mournful an accompaniment to her own thoughts. Compared with her other losses, that of her home, dearly as she loved it, weighed but little; it was but, an added pang to the anguish of her bereavement; and behind that, the principal cause of her grief, loomed the desertion of her lover. She tried not to think of Stafford; for every thought bestowed on him seemed to rob her dead father and to be disloyal to his memory; but, alas! the human heart is despotic; and as she lay awake and listened to the wailing of the wind and the rain as it drove against the window, Stafford's voice penetrated that of the storm; and, scarcely consciously, her lips were forming some of the passionate words of endearment which he had whispered to her by the stream and on the hill-side. Though she knew every word by heart of the letter he had written her, she did not yet understand or comprehend why he had broken his solemn engagement to her. She understood that something had risen between them, something had happened which had separated them, but she could form no idea as to what it was. He had spoken of "unworthiness," of something which he had discovered that had rendered him unfit to be her husband; but she could not guess what it was; but confused and bewildered as she was, there was at present, at any rate, no resentment in her heart.

The lover had been taken from her just as her father and her home had been. There was no help for it, there was no appeal from the decrees of Fate. Fate had decreed that she should love Stafford and lose him; and she could only go on living her grey and dreary life, made all the greyer and drearier by her short spell of joy and happiness. Sorrow's crown of sorrow is still the remembrance of happier things; and she would have to wear that crown in place of the crown of his love, wear it through all her days; for, young as she was, she knew that she had given her heart once and for all, that though she might never see Stafford again, she would love him to the end.

A mist hung over the dale on this, the day of her departure from the Hall, and all the hills over which she had so loved to ride and walk were shrouded as if in tears.

She stood and looked at them from the hall window with vacant eyes, as if she did not yet realise that she was leaving them, perhaps forever; but she had not long for gazing, for Mr. Heron and she were going by an early train, and the moment for farewell came swiftly upon her.

With Donald and Bess close at her heels, as if they were aware of their coming loss, she went round to say good-bye. She crossed the lawn and went to the spot under the tree where she had met Stafford that never-to-be-forgotten night, and from thence walked to the corner of the terrace where they had stood and watched her father coming, in his sleep, from the ruined chapel. Then she went to the stable to say good-bye to Rupert, who whinnied as he heard her approaching footstep, and thrust his soft, velvety nose into her neck. She had to fight hard against the tears at this point, and she hid her face against that of the big horse, with her arms thrown round his neck, as she murmured her last good-bye.

But the tears would not be kept back when it came to saying farewell to the two faithful souls, Jessie and Jason, with whom she had grown up from a girl all legs and wings, and whom she had learnt to regard rather as devoted friends than servants. Jason broke down completely and hurried away, his old and feeble frame shaking like an autumn leaf; and Jessie, her arms thrown round her young mistress, and with sobs and ejaculations, implored her to take her faithful Jessie with her.

Perhaps the parting with the two dogs was as bitter as any, for, as if they knew quite well that she was going, they clung closely to her, and when she hugged them and kissed them on the forehead, they had to be dragged off by Jason, and locked up in the stables lest they should follow the carriage which was to bear their beloved mistress away.

That carriage came all too soon, though Mr. John Heron had awaited its arrival impatiently and with watch in hand. He seemed grimmer and gaunter than ever that morning, and as he looked around the great Hall, he shook his head at its faded grandeur reprehensively, as if he could, if time permitted, deliver a sermon on the prodigality, the wicked wastefulness, which had brought ruin on the house, and rendered it necessary for him to extend his charity to the penniless orphan.

Mr. Wordley was there to say good-bye to Ida and put her into the carriage; but it proved a difficult good-bye to say, and for once the usually fluent old lawyer was bereft of the power of speech as he held Ida's small hand, and looked through tear-dimmed eyes at the white and sorrowful face. He had intended to say all sorts of kind and encouraging things, but he could only manage the two words, "Good-bye;" and they were almost inaudible.

She sank back into the carriage as it drove away from the Hall, and closed her eyes that she might not see the familiar trees in the avenue, the cattle, everyone of which she knew by name, grazing in the meadow, the pale and woe-begone faces of the servants who stood by the steps to catch the last glimpse of their beloved; and for some time her eyes remained closed; but they opened as she came to the clearing by the lake, from which one could see the long stretching facade of Sir Stephen Orme's white villa. She opened them then and looked at the house, wondering whether Stafford was there, wondering why he had not come to her, despite the promise she had exacted from him; wondering whether he knew that her father was dead, and that she was left penniless.

She was not capable of any more tears, and a dull apathy crushed down upon her, so that she did not notice that at the station Mr. John Heron improved the occasion, as he would have put it, by distributing tracts to the station-master and porters. The journey to London passed as if it were made in a dream; and wearied in mind and body and soul, she found herself, late in the evening, standing in the centre of the Heron's dreary drawing-room, awaiting her reception by the Heron family.

She had been told by her cousin, as they drove in a four-wheeled cab through the depressing streets of a London suburb, that the family consisted of his wife and a son and a daughter; that the son's name was Joseph and the daughter's Isabel; that Joseph was a clerk in the city, and that Isabel was about the same age as Ida.

"We are a very quiet family," Mr. Heron had said, "and you will no doubt miss the space and grandeur of Heron Hall, but I trust we are contented and happy, and that though our means are limited, our sphere of usefulness is wider than that of some wealthier people. My wife is, unfortunately, an invalid, and requires constant care and attention; but I have no doubt she will find strength to bear any fresh burden which Providence may see fit to put upon her. Though our circumstances are comfortable, we are not surrounded by the luxuries which so often prove a stumbling-block to weaker brethren. I trust you may be happy in our humble home, and that you may find some opportunity of usefulness in this new state of life to which you are called."

Ida tried to remember all this as she stood in the centre of the drawing-room and looked round upon the modern but heavy and ugly objects with which it was furnished.

The room was seedy and shabby, but with a different seediness and shabbiness from that of Heron Hall; for there was an attempt to conceal its loss of freshness with antimacassars, large in size and hideous of pattern. A grim and ugly portrait of Mr. John Heron occupied a great portion of one of the walls, and was confronted by a portrait, of a similar size, of his wife, a middle-class woman of faded aspect and languishing expression. The other pictures were of the type that one usually sees in such houses; engravings printed from wornout plates, and third-class lithographs. There was a large sofa covered with dirty cretonne, and with a hollow in the middle showing that the spring had "gone;" the centre-table was adorned by several well-known religious books arranged at regular intervals. A cage containing a canary hung between the curtains in the window, and the bird, a wretched-looking animal—it was moulting—woke up at their entrance and shrilled in the hateful manner peculiar to canaries. This depressing room was lit by one gas-burner, which only permitted Ida to take in all that had been described but vaguely and dimly.

She looked round aghast and with a sinking of the heart. She had never been in any room like this before, and its lack of comfort, its vulgarity, struck upon her strained nerves like a loud discordant note in music; but its owner looked round complacently and turned the gas a little higher, as he said:

"I will go and fetch your cousin. Won't you sit down?"

As he spoke, the door opened and the original of the portrait on the wall entered, followed by her daughter Isabel. Ida rose from the bumpy sofa and saw a thin, harassed-looking woman, more faded even than the portrait, and a tall and rather a good-looking girl whose face and figure resembled, in a vague, indefinite way, those of both her father and mother; but though she was not bad-looking, there was a touch of vulgarity in her widely opened eyes, with a curious stare for the newcomer, and in her rather coarse mouth, which appalled and repelled poor Ida; and she stood looking from one to the other, trying to keep her surprise and wonder and disapproval from revealing themselves through her eyes. She did not know that these two ladies, being the wife and daughter of a professional man, considered themselves very much the superior of their friends and neighbours, who were mostly retired trades-people or "something in the city;" and that Mrs. Heron was extremely proud of her husband's connection with the Herons of Herondale, and was firmly convinced that she and her family possessed all the taste and refinement which belong to "the aristocracy."

A simpler and a homelier woman would have put her arm round the girl's neck and drawn her towards her with a few loving words of greeting and welcome; but Mrs. Heron only extended a hand, held at the latest fashionable angle, and murmured in a languid and lackadaisical voice:

"So you have come at last, my dear Miss Heron! Your train must have been very late, John; we have been expecting you for the last hour, and I am afraid the dinner is quite spoilt. But anyway, I am glad to see you."

"Thank you," said poor Ida.

It was Isabel's turn, and she now came forward with a smile that extended her mouth from ear to ear, and in a gushing manner said, in staccato sentences:

"Yes, we are so glad to see you! How tired you must be! One always feels so dirty and tumbled after a long journey. You'll be glad of a wash, Miss Heron. But there! I mustn't call you that; it sounds so cold and formal! I must call you Ida, mustn't I? 'Ida!' It sounds such an odd name; but I suppose I shall get used to it in time."

"I hope so," said poor Ida, trying to smile and speak cheerfully and amiably, as Miss Isabel's rather large hand enclosed round hers; but she looked from one to the other with an appalling sensation of strangeness and aloofness, and a lump rose in her throat which rendered the smile and any further speech on her part impossible; and as she looked from the simpering, lackadaisical mother to the vulgar daughter with meaningless smile, she asked herself whether she was really awake, whether this room was indeed to be her future home, and these strange people her daily companions, or whether she was only asleep and dreaming, and would wake to find the honest face of Jessie bending over her, and to see the familiar objects of her own room at Heron Hall.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

When Ida went upstairs for the wash, the need for which Miss Isabel had so kindly informed her of, she found that her room was clean and fairly comfortable, though its appearance seemed strange after the huge and old-fashioned one at the Hall. The furniture was cheap and unsubstantial, the towels were small and thin; in place of pictures, aggressively illuminated texts scarred the walls like freshly made wounds, and the place had a bare, homeless look which made Ida shudder.

The dining-room, when she went down to it, did not impress her any more favourably; for here, too, the furniture was new and shiny with a sticky kind of shininess, as if the treacly varnish had not yet dried; there was not a comfortable chair in the room; the pictures were the most gruesome ones of Dore's, and there was a text over the mantel-piece as aggressive and as hideous in colouring as those in her room. A lukewarm leg of mutton, very underdone, was on the table, the cloth of which was by no means clean; the dishes, which contained quite cold vegetables, were cracked and did not match; the bread was of the commonest kind, that which is called "household;" the knives were badly cleaned, and the plate was worn off the forks and spoons. It was considered inelegant to have gas in the dining-room, therefore a cheap paraffin-lamp was in the centre of the table, and was more liberal of scent than light. The curtains to the window were of that annoying red which shrieks down any other colour near it; they made Ida's tired eyes ache.

While she was trying to eat the slice of gory mutton, Mrs. Heron and Isabel watched her, as if she were some aboriginal from a wild and distant country, and they shot glances at each other, uneasy, half-jealous, half-envious glances, as they noted the beauty of the face, and the grace of the figure in its black dress, which, plain as it was, seemed to make theirs still more dowdy and vulgar. In the midst of this lugubrious account of the annoyances and worries of the journey, Mr. Heron broke off to ask:

"Where is Joseph? He is late to-night."

"He is kept at the office," replied his mother. "Poor boy! I hope he is not working too hard; he has been kept nearly every night this week."

Isabel smiled at Ida, for what reason Ida could not guess; and while she was wondering, there came a knock at the outer door, and presently Joseph entered.

He was an unprepossessing young man with small eyes and thick lips, over which it would have been wise of him to wear a big moustache; but it was the fashion in the city to be clean-shaven, and Mr. Joseph considered himself the pink of fashion. His clothes fitted him too tightly, he wore cheap neckties, and ready-made boots, of course, of patent leather. His dark hair was plastered on the low, retreating forehead; his face was flushed instead of being, as one would expect, pale from overwork.

Ida disliked him at the first glance, and disliked him still more at the second, as she caught his shifty eyes fixed on her with a curious and half-insolently admiring expression.

He came round and shook hands—his were damp and cold like his father's—as Mr. Heron introduced them, and in a voice which unpleasantly matched his face, said that he was glad to see her.

"Tired, Joseph, dear?" murmured his mother, regarding him with a mixture of pride and commiseration.

"Oh, I'm worn out, that's what I am," he said, as he sank into a chair and regarded the certainly untempting food with an eye of disfavour. "Been hard at it all the evening"—he spoke with a Cockney, city accent, and was rather uncertain about his aspirates—"I work like a nigger."

"Labour is prayer," remarked his father, as if he were enunciating something strikingly original. "Nothing is accomplished without toil, my dear Joseph."

My dear Joseph regarded his father with very much the same expression he had bestowed upon the mutton.

"And how do you like London, Cousin Ida?" he asked.

He hesitated before the "Cousin Ida," and got it out rather defiantly, for there was something in the dignity of this pale, refined face which awed him. It was perhaps the first time in his life Mr. Joseph had sat at the same table with a lady; for Mr. John Heron had married beneath him, and for money; and in retiring from the bar, at which he had been an obvious failure, had sunk down to the society of his wife's class.

"I have seen so little of it," replied Ida. "I have only passed through London twice, on my way from France to Herondale, and from Herondale here." Mr. Joseph was duly impressed by the sound of Herondale.

"Oh, you must tell me all about your old home," he said, with an air of overconfidence to conceal his nervousness; "and we must show you about London a bit; it's a tidy little place."

He grinned with an air of knowingness, and seemed rather disconcerted that Ida did not return his smile.

"Shall I give you some water, Ida?" said Mr. Heron. "I regret that I cannot offer you any wine. We have no intoxicants in the house. We are all total abstainers, on principle."

The other members of the family looked down uncomfortably, and, to Ida's surprise, as if they were ashamed.

"Thank you," she said; "I do not care for wine."

"I am afraid there are a great many things you will miss here," said Mr. Heron. "We are a plain, but I trust, Godfearing family, and we are content with the interest which springs from the daily round, the common task. You will find no excitements at Laburnum Villa."

Ida, as she glanced at the family, could not help feeling that they were indeed plain, but she made haste to say that she did not need any excitements and that her life had hitherto been devoid of them. They seemed to think that it was the proper thing to sit round the table while she was making her pretence of a meal; but when it was finished, Mr. Joseph stretched himself out in what was erroneously called an easy-chair, and proceeded to monopolise the conversation.

"Regular busy time in the city," he remarked to his father. "Never saw such a hum. It's all over this boom in South Africa. They're floating that new company I was telling you about, and the Stock Exchange is half wild about it. They say the shares will run to a hundred per cent. premium before the week's out; and if you've got any money to spare, guv'nor, I should recommend you to have a little flutter; for it's a certainty."

Mr. Heron seemed to prick up his ears with an amount of worldly interest which scarcely harmonised with his saintly character.

"What company is that?" he asked Joseph.

"The company started to work Sir Stephen Orme's," replied Joseph, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, and stretching out his legs still farther so that he could admire his large, patent-leather clad feet. "It's about the biggest thing on record, and is going to sweep the market. All the big 'uns are in it, Griffenberg and Wirsch and the Beltons. They say Sir Stephen has made half a million of money out of it already, and that he will make a couple of millions before he has done with it. There was a rumour in the city to-day that he was to get a peerage; for it's a kind of national affair, you see."

Ida was sitting beyond the radius of the light from the evil-smelling lamp, so that the others did not perceive the sudden pallor of her face. It seemed to her a cruel fate that she could not escape, even here, so many miles away from Herondale, from the reminder of the man she had loved and lost. The name struck on her heart like a stroke causing actual physical pain. She sat perfectly still, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, as the wave of misery swept over her.

"Here is an instance of toil rewarded," said Mr. Heron, promptly improving the occasion. "The labourer is worthy of his hire; and no doubt Sir Stephen Orme, by bringing vast tracts under the beneficent influence of civilisation, merits the approval of his sovereign and a substantial reward at the hands of his fellow-subjects. Let us trust that he will use his wealth and high position for the welfare of the heathen who rage in the land which he has—er—"

"Collared," put in Mr. Joseph, in an undertone and with a grin.

—"Added to the queen's dominions," said Mr. Heron. "I will consider about the shares. I do not approve of speculation—the pursuit of Mammon—but as I should use the money for charitable purposes, I may on this occasion—"

"Better make up your mind pretty soon," remarked Joseph, with a yawn. "There's a rush for them already."

"Now that the gentlemen have got on to business, my dear, I think we had better retire to the drawing-room," said Mrs. Heron, with an attempt at the "grand lady."

They returned to that apartment—Mr. Joseph did not open the door for them—and Mrs. Heron and Isabel at once started on a series of questions calculated to elicit all the details of Ida's past life, her father's death and her present deplorable condition. Women can be much more merciless than men in this kind of inquisition; and Ida, weary in mind and body and spirit, suffered acutely under the ordeal. The two women did not intend to be unkind—they were really sorry for the homeless orphan; they were prepared to like her; they reluctantly and grudgingly admired her beauty and her grace, and had a sneaking kind of awe of her higher social position, of which they were reminded by every word she spoke, the high-bred accent, and that indescribable air of delicacy and refinement which indicate good birth; but they were devoured by curiosity as to her mode of life and her friends, a curiosity which they were too vulgar, too inconsiderate to restrain. So poor Ida had to describe the Hall, and the servants, and the way she managed the farm, and the way in which she rode about Herondale.

They were very much impressed, specially so when she mentioned Lord and Lady Bannerdale's kind offer, and they exchanged glances as the titles left Ida's lips "quite as naturally as if they were common names," as Mrs. Heron afterwards remarked to Isabel.

"I'm afraid you'll find it very dull here, Ida," said Mrs. Heron, with a sniff. "You won't find any society in Woodgreen; they're nearly all city people, and there aren't many large houses—this is as large as most—and John is very strict." She sighed; and it was evident to Ida that though her cousin John's "religion" might be some amusement to him, it was rather a bugbear and nuisance to his family. "But we must get Joseph to take you about; and perhaps you and Isabel might go to a matinee or two; but John mustn't know anything about it."

Ida made haste to assure them that she did not need any amusement, that she preferred to be quiet, and that she hoped her cousin Joseph would not take any trouble on her account. At this point Mr. Heron and his elegant son came in, a bell was rung, and the two servants came up for family prayers. Ida noticed that both the maids looked bored and discontented, and that the "parlour maid," a mere bit of a girl, appeared to be tired out. Mr. Heron read a portion of Scripture and offered up a long prayer in a harsh and rasping voice, with the manner of a judge pronouncing a sentence of seven years; and as the servants were leaving the room, called them back, and remarked sternly:

"I notice in the housekeeping book that a larger quantity of candles than usual has been used during the past week, and I fear that there has been grievous waste of this useful article. Do not let it occur again."

The servants went out suddenly, and Mrs. Heron suggested, much to Ida's relief, that Ida would no doubt like to go to bed.

While Ida was brushing her hair and fighting against the natural fit of depression caused by her introduction to this cheerful household, there came a knock at the door, and she admitted Mrs. Heron. That lady was in a soiled dressing-gown, bought at a sale and quite two sizes too large for her, and with a nervous flush, she took from under this capacious garment a small decanter of wine.

"I thought you might like a little, my dear," she said, as Ida eyed it with astonishment. "Of course we are all total abstainers here, but we keep a little in the house for medicinal purposes, unknown to John; and it's a great comfort sometimes when you're tired and in low spirits. Let me give you a glass."

Ida would have liked to have accepted it, and was sorry that her refusal seemed to disappoint Mrs. Heron, who retired as nervously as she had entered. A few minutes afterwards, before Ida had got over her astonishment at the incident, there came another knock at the door, and Isabel entered in a dressing-gown which was own sister to Mrs. Heron's.

"I thought there might be something you wanted," she said, her bold eyes wandering over Ida curiously, and then roaming to the contents of Ida's dressing-bag which glittered and shone on the dressing-table.

"What long hair you have! Do you brush it every night? I don't mine, not every night; it's too much trouble. Are the tops of all those things real silver? What a lot of money they must have cost! What a pretty peignoir you have on: is it real lace? Yes, I see it is. You have nice things!" with an envious sigh. "Don't you ever have more colour than you've got now? Or perhaps it's because you're tired. You must be quite knocked up, when I come to think of it." She dropped her voice and glanced round cautiously. "Would you like to have a little brandy-and-water? I've got same in my room—of course the rest don't know anything about it, father's teetotal mad—but I keep a little for when I'm tired and down in the mouth; and when I run out I get some from Joseph's room. Of course, he isn't a total abstainer. I daresay you guessed that directly you saw him to-night, and weren't taken in by his 'late at the office' business?"

Ida looked at her in amazement, and Isabel laughed knowingly.

"Joseph goes to the theatre and plays billiards," she said, with sisterly candour. "He works it very cleverly; he's artful, Joseph is, and he takes father and mother in nicely; but sometimes I find a theatre programme in his pocket, and marks of chalk on his coat. Oh, I don't blame him! The life we lead in this house would make a cat sick. It's like being on a tread-mill; nothing happens; it's just one dreary round, with mother always whining and father always preaching. You heard what he said to the servants to-night? I wonder they stand it. I should go out of my mind myself if I didn't get a little amusement going up to the shops and sneaking into a matinee on the sly. I'm sure I don't know how you'll stand it, after the life you've led. What do you use for your hair? It's so soft and silky. I wish I had black hair like yours. Do you put anything on your hands? They're rather brown; but that's because you've lived in the open air so much, I suppose. I'll lend you some stuff I use, if you like."

Ida declined the brandy and the infallible preparation for whitening the hands; and not at all discouraged, Isabel went on:

"Were there any young men at Herondale? You didn't say anything about them down-stairs, but I thought perhaps you would like to tell me when we were alone. I suppose there was someone you were sorry to part from?" she added, with an inviting smile.

Ida repressed a shudder and plied her brush vigorously, so that her hair hid the scarlet which suffused her face.

"I knew so few of the people," she said. "As I told you down-stairs, my father and I led the most secluded of lives, and saw scarcely anyone."

Isabel eyed Ida sharply and suspiciously.

"Oh, well, of course, if you don't like to tell me," she said, with a little toss of her head; "but perhaps it's too soon; when we know each other better you'll be more open. I'm sure I shall be glad of someone to tell things to."

She sighed, and looked down with a sentimental air; but Ida did not rise to the occasion; and with a sigh of disappointment, and a last look round, so that nothing should escape her, Isabel took her departure, and Ida was left in peace.

Tired as she was, it was some time before she could get to sleep. The change in her life had come so suddenly that she felt confused and bewildered. It had not needed Joseph Heron's mention of Sir Stephen Orme's name to bring Stafford to her mind; for he was always present there; and she lay, with wide-open eyes and aching heart, repeating to herself the letter he had sent her, and wondering why he who, she had thought, loved her so passionately, had left her. Compared with this sorrow, and that of her father's death, the smaller miseries of her present condition counted as naught.



CHAPTER XXIX.

As Isabel had intimated, life at Laburnum Villa was not altogether hilarious. The environs of London are undeniably pretty, prettier than those of any other capital in Europe, but there is no shirking the fact that the Northern suburbs of our great metropolis are somewhat grim and soul-depressing. Laburnum Villa was in a long street, which resembled the other streets as one tree resembles another; and you had to traverse a great many of these streets before you got into the open country, that is, away from the red-bricked and stucco villas, and still smaller and uglier houses, which had been run up by the enterprising jerry-builder.

But Ida would have been glad enough to have gone through this purgatory to the paradise of country lanes which lay beyond, if she could only have gone alone; but Mrs. Heron and Isabel never left her alone; they seemed to consider it their duty to "keep her company," and they could not understand her desire for the open air, much less her craving for solitude. Until Ida's arrival, Isabel had never taken a walk for a walk's sake, and for the life of her she could not comprehend Ida's love of "trapesing" about the dusty lanes, and over the commons where there was always a wind, Isabel declared, to blow her hair about. If she went out, she liked to go up to London, and saunter about the hot streets, gazing in at the shop windows, or staring enviously at the "carriage people" as they drove by.

Ida didn't care for London, took very little interest in the shops, and none whatever in the carriage folks. She was always pining for the fresh air, the breezy common, the green trees; and on the occasions when she could persuade Isabel to a country ramble, she walked with dreamy eyes that saw not the cut-and-dry rusticity of Woodgreen and Whetstone, but the wild dales and the broad extant of the Cumberland hills.

She was, indeed, living in the past, and it was the present that seemed a dream to her. Of course she missed the great house, where she had ruled as mistress, her horses and her cows and dogs; but what she missed more than all else was her freedom of motion.

It was the routine, the dull, common routine, of Laburnum Villa which irked so badly. Neither Mrs. Heron nor Isabel had any resources in themselves; they had few friends, and they were of the most commonplace, not to say vulgar type; and a "Tea" at Laburnum Villa tried Ida almost beyond endurance; for the visitors talked little else but scandal, and talked it clumsily. Most of Isabel's time was spent in constructing garments by the aid of paper-patterns which were given away by some periodical; admirable patterns, which, in skilful hands, no doubt, produced the most useful results; but Isabel was too stupid to avail herself of their valuable aid, and must always add something which rendered the garment outre and vulgar.

Mrs. Heron subscribed to a library, and she and Isabel read the latest six-shilling novels with avidity, stuffing them under the sofa cushion at the sound of Mr. Heron's approaching footsteps. They always chose the worst books, and forgot one as soon as they took up another. Ida examined one and dropped it with disgust; for it happened to be a problem novel of the most virulent type, a novel which was selling by scores of thousands, and one which Isabel had recommended to Ida as "delicious."

Of all the days, Ida found Sunday the worst; for on that day they went twice to a little chapel at which Mr. Heron "ministered." It was a tin chapel, which by its construction and position struck a chill to one's very bones. Here Mr. Heron ranted and growled to his heart's content; and Ida learnt from his sanctimonious lips that only a small portion of mankind, his own sect, to wit, was bound for heaven, and that the rest of the world was doomed to another place, the horrors of which he appeared to revel in. As she sat in the uncomfortable pew, Ida often wondered whether her cousin really believed what he preached, or whether he was a hypocrite of the first water.

All this was very hard to bear; but a burden still heavier was provided for her in the conduct of her cousin Joseph. On the evening of her arrival he had been gracious enough to bestow upon her an admiration of which she was then unconscious; but his admiration grew, and he began to pay her what persons of his class call "attentions." He came in much earlier of an evening than he did before, and he sat beside her, and, with his small eyes fixed on her pale and downcast face, told her anecdotes of the office and his fellow-clerks. He was under the impression that he possessed a voice, and with a certain amount of artfulness he got her to play his accompaniments, bestowing killing looks at her as he sang the "Maid of Athens," or "My Pretty June"—with a false note in every third bar. Sometimes he came home to lunch, explaining to them that there was nothing doing in the city, and went with Ida and Isabel on one of their walks. On these occasions he was got up in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, and enjoyed the flattering conviction that he looked like a country gentleman. He addressed his conversation exclusively to Ida, and endeavoured, as he would have said, to make himself agreeable.