"Why don't you give him the brandy?" she answered impatiently.

"Strong lungs," Benjulia proceeded, sitting down cross-legged by Ovid, and administering the stimulant without hurrying himself. "Some girls would not have been able to speak, after such a run as you have had. I didn't think much of you or your lungs when you were a baby."

"Is he coming to himself?" Carmina asked.

"Do you know what a pump is?" Benjulia rejoined. "Very well; a pump sometimes gets out of order. Give the carpenter time, and he'll put it right again." He let his mighty hand drop on Ovid's breast. "This pump is out of order; and I'm the carpenter. Give me time, and I'll set it right again. You're not a bit like your mother."

Watching eagerly for the slightest signs of recovery in Ovid's face, Carmina detected a faint return of colour. She was so relieved that she was able to listen to the doctor's oddly discursive talk, and even to join in it. "Some of our friends used to think I was like my father," she answered.

"Did they?" said Benjulia—and shut his thin-lipped mouth as if he was determined to drop the subject for ever.

Ovid stirred feebly, and half opened his eyes.

Benjulia got up. "You don't want me any longer," he said. "Now, Mr. Keeper, give me back the monkey." He dismissed the man, and tucked the monkey under one arm as if it had been a bundle. "There are your friends," he resumed, pointing to the end of the walk. "Good-day!"

Carmina stopped him. Too anxious to stand on ceremony, she laid her hand on his arm. He shook it off—not angrily: just brushing it away, as he might have brushed away the ash of his cigar or a splash of mud in the street.

"What does this fainting fit mean?" she asked timidly. "Is Ovid going to be ill?"

"Seriously ill—unless you do the right thing with him, and do it at once." He walked away. She followed him, humbly and yet resolutely. "Tell me, if you please," she said, "what we are to do."

He looked back over his shoulder. "Send him away."

She returned, and knelt down by Ovid—still slowly reviving. With a fond and gentle hand, she wiped the moisture from his forehead.

"Just as we were beginning to understand each other!" she said to herself, with a sad little sigh.



CHAPTER XV.

Two days passed. In spite of the warnings that he had received, Ovid remained in London.

The indisputable authority of Benjulia had no more effect on him than the unanswerable arguments of Mrs. Gallilee. "Recent circumstances" (as his mother expressed it) "had strengthened his infatuated resistance to reason." The dreaded necessity for Teresa's departure had been hastened by a telegram from Italy: Ovid felt for Carmina's distress with sympathies which made her dearer to him than ever. On the second morning after the visit to the Zoological Gardens, her fortitude had been severely tried. She had found the telegram under her pillow, enclosed in a farewell letter. Teresa had gone.

"My Carmina,—I have kissed you, and cried over you, and I am writing good-bye as well as my poor eyes will let me. Oh, my heart's darling, I cannot be cruel enough to wake you, and see you suffer! Forgive me for going away, with only this dumb farewell. I am so fond of you—that is my only excuse. While he still lives, my helpless old man has his claim on me. Write by every post, and trust me to write back—and remember what I said when I spoke of Ovid. Love the good man who loves you; and try to make the best of the others. They cannot surely be cruel to the poor angel who depends on their kindness. Oh, how hard life is—"

The paper was blotted, and the rest was illegible.

The miserable day of Teresa's departure was passed by Carmina in the solitude of her room: gently and firmly, she refused to see anyone. This strange conduct added to Mrs. Gallilee's anxieties. Already absorbed in considering Ovid's obstinacy, and the means of overcoming it, she was now confronted by a resolute side in the character of her niece, which took her by surprise. There might be difficulties to come, in managing Carmina, which she had not foreseen. Meanwhile, she was left to act on her own unaided discretion in the serious matter of her son's failing health. Benjulia had refused to help her; he was too closely occupied in his laboratory to pay or receive visits. "I have already given my advice" (the doctor wrote). "Send him away. When he has had a month's change, let me see his letters; and then, if I have anything more to say, I will tell you what I think of your son."

Left in this position, Mrs. Gallilee's hard self-denial yielded to the one sound conclusion that lay before her. The only influence that could be now used over Ovid, with the smallest chance of success, was the influence of Carmina. Three days after Teresa's departure, she invited her niece to take tea in her own boudoir. Carmina found her reading. "A charming book," she said, as she laid it down, "on a most interesting subject, Geographical Botany. The author divides the earth into twenty-five botanical regions—but, I forget; you are not like Maria; you don't care about these things."

"I am so ignorant," Carmina pleaded. "Perhaps, I may know better when I get older." A book on the table attracted her by its beautiful binding. She took it up. Mrs. Gallilee looked at her with compassionate good humour.

"Science again, my dear," she said facetiously, "inviting you in a pretty dress! You have taken up the 'Curiosities of Coprolites.' That book is one of my distinctions—a presentation copy from the author."

"What are Coprolites?" Carmina asked, trying to inform herself on the subject of her aunt's distinctions.

Still good-humoured, but with an effort that began to appear, Mrs. Gallilee lowered herself to the level of her niece.

"Coprolites," she explained, "are the fossilised indigestions of extinct reptiles. The great philosopher who has written that book has discovered scales, bones, teeth, and shells—the undigested food of those interesting Saurians. What a man! what a field for investigation! Tell me about your own reading. What have you found in the library?"

"Very interesting books—at least to me," Carmina answered. "I have found many volumes of poetry. Do you ever read poetry?"

Mrs. Gallilee laid herself back in her chair, and submitted patiently to her niece's simplicity. "Poetry?" she repeated, in accents of resignation. "Oh, good heavens!"

Unlucky Carmina tried a more promising topic. "What beautiful flowers you have in the drawing-room!" she said.

"Nothing remarkable, my dear. Everybody has flowers in their drawing-rooms—they are part of the furniture."

"Did you arrange them yourself, aunt?"

Mrs. Gallilee still endured it. "The florist's man," she said, "does all that. I sometimes dissect flowers, but I never trouble myself to arrange them. What would be the use of the man if I did?" This view of the question struck Carmina dumb. Mrs. Gallilee went on. "By-the-by, talking of flowers reminds one of other superfluities. Have you tried the piano in your room? Will it do?"

"The tone is quite perfect!" Carmina answered with enthusiasm. "Did you choose it?" Mrs. Gallilee looked as if she was going to say "Good Heavens!" again, and perhaps to endure it no longer. Carmina was too simple to interpret these signs in the right way. Why should her aunt not choose a piano? "Don't you like music?" she asked.

Mrs. Gallilee made a last effort. "When you see a little more of society, my child, you will know that one must like music. So again with pictures—one must go to the Royal Academy Exhibition. So again—"

Before she could mention any more social sacrifices, the servant came in with a letter, and stopped her.

Mrs. Gallilee looked at the address. The weary indifference of her manner changed to vivid interest, the moment she saw the handwriting. "From the Professor!" she exclaimed. "Excuse me, for one minute." She read the letter, and closed it again with a sigh of relief. "I knew it!" she said to herself. "I have always maintained that the albuminoid substance of frog's eggs is insufficient (viewed as nourishment) to transform a tadpole into a frog—and, at last, the Professor owns that I am right. I beg your pardon, Carmina; I am carried away by a subject that I have been working at in my stolen intervals for weeks past. Let me give you some tea. I have asked Miss Minerva to join us. What is keeping her, I wonder? She is usually so punctual. I suppose Zoe has been behaving badly again."

In a few minutes more, the governess herself confirmed this maternal forewarning of the truth. Zo had declined to commit to memory "the political consequences of the granting of Magna Charta"—and now stood reserved for punishment, when her mother "had time to attend to it." Mrs. Gallilee at once disposed of this little responsibility. "Bread and water for tea," she said, and proceeded to the business of the evening.

"I wish to speak to you both," she began, "on the subject of my son."

The two persons addressed waited in silence to hear more. Carmina's head drooped: she looked down. Miss Minerva attentively observed Mrs. Gallilee. "Why am I invited to hear what she has to say about her son?" was the question which occurred to the governess. "Is she afraid that Carmina might tell me about it, if I was not let into the family secrets?"

Admirably reasoned, and correctly guessed!

Mrs. Gallilee had latterly observed that the governess was insinuating herself into the confidence of her niece—that is to say, into the confidence of a young lady, whose father was generally reported to have died in possession of a handsome fortune. Personal influence, once obtained over an heiress, is not infrequently misused. To check the further growth of a friendship of this sort (without openly offending Miss Minerva) was an imperative duty. Mrs. Gallilee saw her way to the discreet accomplishment of that object. Her niece and her governess were interested—diversely interested—in Ovid. If she invited them both together, to consult with her on the delicate subject of her son, there would be every chance of exciting some difference of opinion, sufficiently irritating to begin the process of estrangement, by keeping them apart when they had left the tea-table.

"It is most important that there should be no misunderstanding among us," Mrs. Gallilee proceeded. "Let me set the example of speaking without reserve. We all three know that Ovid persists in remaining in London—"

She paused, on the point of finishing the sentence. Although she had converted a Professor, Mrs. Gallilee was still only a woman. There did enter into her other calculations, the possibility of exciting some accidental betrayal of her governess's passion for her son. On alluding to Ovid, she turned suddenly to Miss Minerva. "I am sure you will excuse my troubling you with family anxieties," she said—"especially when they are connected with the health of my son."

It was cleverly done, but it laboured under one disadvantage. Miss Minerva had no idea of what the needless apology meant, having no suspicion of the discovery of her secret by her employer. But to feel herself baffled in trying to penetrate Mrs. Gallilee's motives was enough, of itself, to put Mrs. Gallilee's governess on her guard for the rest of the evening.

"You honour me, madam, by admitting me to your confidence"—was what she said. "Trip me up, you cat, if you can!"—was what she thought.

Mrs. Gallilee resumed.

"We know that Ovid persists in remaining in London, when change of air and scene are absolutely necessary to the recovery of his health. And we know why. Carmina, my child, don't think for a moment that I blame you! don't even suppose that I blame my son. You are too charming a person not to excuse, nay even to justify, any man's admiration. But let us (as we hard old people say) look the facts in the face. If Ovid had not seen you, he would be now on the health-giving sea, on his way to Spain and Italy. You are the innocent cause of his obstinate indifference, his most deplorable and dangerous disregard of the duty which he owes to himself. He refuses to listen to his mother, he sets the opinion of his skilled medical colleague at defiance. But one person has any influence over him now." She paused again, and tried to trip up the governess once more. "Miss Minerva, let me appeal to You. I regard you as a member of our family; I have the sincerest admiration of your tact and good sense. Am I exceeding the limits of delicacy, if I say plainly to my niece, Persuade Ovid to go?"

If Carmina had possessed an elder sister, with a plain personal appearance and an easy conscience, not even that sister could have matched the perfect composure with which Miss Minerva replied.

"I don't possess your happy faculty of expressing yourself, Mrs. Gallilee. But, if I had been in your place, I should have said to the best of my poor ability exactly what you have said now." She bent her head with a graceful gesture of respect, and looked at Carmina with a gentle sisterly interest while she stirred her tea.

At the very opening of the skirmish, Mrs. Gallilee was defeated. She had failed to provoke the slightest sign of jealousy, or even of ill-temper. Unquestionably the most crafty and most cruel woman of the two—possessing the most dangerously deceitful manner, and the most mischievous readiness of language—she was, nevertheless, Miss Minerva's inferior in the one supreme capacity of which they both stood in need, the capacity for self-restraint.

She showed this inferiority on expressing her thanks. The underlying malice broke through the smooth surface that was intended to hide it. "I am apt to doubt myself," she said; "and such sound encouragement as yours always relieves me. Of course I don't ask you for more than a word of advice. Of course I don't expect you to persuade Ovid."

"Of course not!" Miss Minerva agreed. "May I ask for a little more sugar in my tea?"

Mrs. Gallilee turned to Carmina.

"Well, my dear? I have spoken to you, as I might have spoken to one of my own daughters, if she had been of your age. Tell me frankly, in return, whether I may count on your help."

Still pale and downcast, Carmina obeyed. "I will do my best, if you wish it. But—"

"Yes? Go on."

She still hesitated. Mrs. Gallilee tried gentle remonstrance. "My child, surely you are not afraid of me?"

She was certainly afraid. But she controlled herself.

"You are Ovid's mother, and I am only his cousin," she resumed. "I don't like to hear you say that my influence over him is greater than yours."

It was far from the poor girl's intention; but there was an implied rebuke in this. In her present state of irritation, Mrs. Gallilee felt it.

"Come! come!" she said. "Don't affect to be ignorant, my dear, of what you know perfectly well."

Carmina lifted her head. For the first time in the experience of the two elder women, this gentle creature showed that she could resent an insult. The fine spirit that was in her fired her eyes, and fixed them firmly on her aunt.

"Do you accuse me of deceit?" she asked.

"Let us call it false modesty," Mrs. Gallilee retorted.

Carmina rose without another word—and walked out of the room.

In the extremity of her surprise, Mrs. Gallilee appealed to Miss Minerva. "Is she in a passion?"

"She didn't bang the door," the governess quietly remarked.

"I am not joking, Miss Minerva."

"I am not joking either, madam."

The tone of that answer implied an uncompromising assertion of equality. You are not to suppose (it said) that a lady drops below your level, because she receives a salary and teaches your children. Mrs. Gallilee was so angry, by this time, that she forgot the importance of preventing a conference between Miss Minerva and her niece. For once, she was the creature of impulse—the overpowering impulse to dismiss her insolent governess from her hospitable table.

"May I offer you another cup of tea?"

"Thank you—no more. May I return to my pupils?"

"By all means!"

Carmina had not been five minutes in her own room before she heard a knock at the door. Had Mrs. Gallilee followed her? "Who is there?" she asked. And a voice outside answered,

"Only Miss Minerva!"



CHAPTER XVI.

"I am afraid I have startled you?" said the governess, carefully closing the door.

"I thought it was my aunt," Carmina answered, as simply as a child.

"Have you been crying?"

"I couldn't help it, Miss Minerva."

"Mrs. Gallilee spoke cruelly to you—I don't wonder at your feeling angry."

Carmina gently shook her head. "I have been crying," she explained, "because I am sorry and ashamed. How can I make it up with my aunt? Shall I go back at once and beg her pardon? I think you are my friend, Miss Minerva. Will you advise me?"

It was so prettily and innocently said that even the governess was touched—for a moment. "Shall I prove to you that I am your friend?" she proposed. "I advise you not to go back yet to your aunt—and I will tell you why. Mrs. Gallilee bears malice; she is a thoroughly unforgiving woman. And I should be the first to feel it, if she knew what I have just said to you."

"Oh, Miss Minerva! you don't think that I would betray your confidence?"

"No, my dear, I don't. I felt attracted towards you, when we first met. You didn't return the feeling—you (very naturally) disliked me. I am ugly and ill-tempered: and, if there is anything good in me, it doesn't show itself on the surface. Yes! yes! I believe you are beginning to understand me. If I can make your life here a little happier, as time goes on, I shall be only too glad to do it." She put her long yellow hands on either side of Carmina's head, and kissed her forehead.

The poor child threw her arms round Miss Minerva's neck, and cried her heart out on the bosom of the woman who was deceiving her. "I have nobody left, now Teresa has gone," she said. "Oh, do try to be kind to me—I feel so friendless and so lonely!"

Miss Minerva neither moved nor spoke. She waited, and let the girl cry.

Her heavy black eyebrows gathered into a frown; her sallow face deepened in colour. She was in a state of rebellion against herself. Through all the hardening influences of the woman's life—through the fortifications against good which watchful evil builds in human hearts—that innocent outburst of trust and grief had broken its way; and had purified for a while the fetid inner darkness with divine light. She had entered the room, with her own base interests to serve. In her small sordid way she, like her employer, was persecuted by debts—miserable debts to sellers of expensive washes, which might render her ugly complexion more passable in Ovid's eyes; to makers of costly gloves, which might show Ovid the shape of her hands, and hide their colour; to skilled workmen in fine leather, who could tempt Ovid to look at her high instep, and her fine ankle—the only beauties that she could reveal to the only man whom she cared to please. For the time, those importunate creditors ceased to threaten her. For the time, what she had heard in the conservatory, while they were reading the Will, lost its tempting influence. She remained in the room for half an hour more—and she left it without having borrowed a farthing.

"Are you easier now?"

"Yes, dear."

Carmina dried her eyes, and looked shyly at Miss Minerva. "I have been treating you as if I had a sister," she said; "you don't think me too familiar, I hope?"

"I wish I was your sister, God knows!"

The words were hardly out of her mouth before she was startled by her own fervour. "Shall I tell you what to do with Mrs. Gallilee?" she said abruptly. "Write her a little note."

"Yes! yes! and you will take it for me?"

Carmina's eyes brightened through her tears, the suggestion was such a relief! In a minute the note was written: "My dear Aunt, I have behaved very badly, and I am very much ashamed of it. May I trust to your kind indulgence to forgive me? I will try to be worthier of your kindness for the future; and I sincerely beg your pardon." She signed her name in breathless haste. "Please take it at once!" she said eagerly.

Miss Minerva smiled. "If I take it," she said, "I shall do harm instead of good—I shall be accused of interfering. Give it to one of the servants. Not yet! When Mrs. Gallilee is angry, she doesn't get over it so soon as you seem to think. Leave her to dabble in science first," said the governess in tones of immeasurable contempt. "When she has half stifled herself with some filthy smell, or dissected some wretched insect or flower, she may be in a better humour. Wait."

Carmina thought of the happy days at home in Italy, when her father used to laugh at her little outbreaks of temper, and good Teresa only shrugged her shoulders. What a change—oh, me, what a change for the worse! She drew from her bosom a locket, hung round her neck by a thin gold chain—and opened it, and kissed the glass over the miniature portraits inside. "Would you like to see them?" she said to Miss Minerva. "My mother's likeness was painted for me by my father; and then he had his photograph taken to match it. I open my portraits and look at them, while I say my prayers. It's almost like having them alive again, sometimes. Oh, if I only had my father to advise me now—!" Her heart swelled—but she kept back the tears: she was learning that self-restraint, poor soul, already! "Perhaps," she went on, "I ought not to want advice. After that fainting-fit in the Gardens, if I can persuade Ovid to leave us, I ought to do it—and I will do it!"

Miss Minerva crossed the room, and looked out of window. Carmina had roused the dormant jealousy; Carmina had fatally weakened the good influences which she had herself produced. The sudden silence of her new friend perplexed her. She too went to the window. "Do you think it would be taking a liberty?" she asked.

"No."

A short answer—and still looking out of window! Carmina tried again. "Besides, there are my aunt's wishes to consider. After my bad behaviour—"

Miss Minerva turned round from the window sharply. "Of course! There can't be a doubt of it." Her tone softened a little. "You are young, Carmina—I suppose I may call you by your name—you are young and simple. Do those innocent eyes of yours ever see below the surface?"

"I don't quite understand you."

"Do you think your aunt's only motive in wishing Mr. Ovid Vere to leave London is anxiety about his health? Do you feel no suspicion that she wants to keep him away from You?"

Carmina toyed with her locket, in an embarrassment which she was quite unable to disguise. "Are you afraid to trust me?" Miss Minerva asked. That reproach opened the girl's lips instantly.

"I am afraid to tell you how foolish I am," she answered. "Perhaps, I still feel a little strangeness between us? It seems to be so formal to call you Miss Minerva. I don't know what your Christian name is. Will you tell me?"

Miss Minerva replied rather unwillingly. "My name is Frances. Don't call me Fanny!"

"Why not?"

"Because it's too absurd to be endured! What does the mere sound of Fanny suggest? A flirting, dancing creature—plump and fair, and playful and pretty!" She went to the looking-glass, and pointed disdainfully to the reflection of herself. "Sickening to think of," she said, "when you look at that. Call me Frances—a man's name, with only the difference between an i and an e. No sentiment in it; hard, like me. Well, what was it you didn't like to say of yourself?"

Carmina dropped her voice to a whisper. "It's no use asking me what I do see, or don't see, in my aunt," she answered. "I am afraid we shall never be—what we ought to be to each other. When she came to that concert, and sat by me and looked at me—" She stopped, and shuddered over the recollection of it.

Miss Minerva urged her to go on—first, by a gesture; then by a suggestion: "They said you fainted under the heat."

"I didn't feel the heat. I felt a horrid creeping all over me. Before I looked at her, mind!—when I only knew that somebody was sitting next to me. And then, I did look round. Her eyes and my eyes flashed into each other. In that one moment, I lost all sense of myself as if I was dead. I can only tell you of it in that way. It was a dreadful surprise to me to remember it—and a dreadful pain—when they brought me to myself again. Though I do look so little and so weak, I am stronger than people think; I never fainted before. My aunt is—how can I say it properly?—hard to get on with since that time. Is there something wicked in my nature? I do believe she feels in the same way towards me. Yes; I dare say it's imagination, but it's as bad as reality for all that. Oh, I am sure you are right—she does want to keep Ovid out of my way!"

"Because she doesn't like you?" said Miss Minerva. "Is that the only reason you can think of?"

"What other reason can there be?"

The governess summoned her utmost power of self-restraint. She needed it, even to speak of the bare possibility of Carmina's marriage to Ovid, as if it was only a matter of speculative interest to herself.

"Some people object to marriages between cousins," she said. "You are cousins. Some people object to marriages between Catholics and Protestants. You are a Catholic—" No! She could not trust herself to refer to him directly; she went on to the next sentence. "And there might be some other reason," she resumed.

"Do you know what that is?" Carmina asked.

"No more than you do—thus far."

She spoke the plain truth. Thanks to the dog's interruption, and to the necessity of saving herself from discovery, the last clauses of the Will had been read in her absence.

"Can't you even guess what it is?" Carmina persisted.

"Mrs. Gallilee is very ambitious," the governess replied: "and her son has a fortune of his own. She may wish him to marry a lady of high rank. But—no—she is always in need of money. In some way, money may be concerned in it."

"In what way?" Carmina asked.

"I have already told you," Miss Minerva answered, "that I don't know."

Before the conversation could proceed, they were interrupted by the appearance of Mrs. Gallilee's maid, with a message from the schoolroom. Miss Maria wanted a little help in her Latin lesson. Noticing Carmina's letter, as she advanced to the door, it struck Miss Minerva that the woman might deliver it. "Is Mrs. Gallilee at home?" she asked. Mrs. Gallilee had just gone out. "One of her scientific lectures, I suppose," said Miss Minerva to Carmina. "Your note must wait till she comes back."

The door closed on the governess—and the lady's-maid took a liberty. She remained in the room; and produced a morsel of folded paper, hitherto concealed from view. Smirking and smiling, she handed the paper to Carmina.

"From Mr. Ovid, Miss."



CHAPTER XVII.

"Pray come to me; I am waiting for you in the garden of the Square."

In those two lines, Ovid's note began and ended. Mrs. Gallilee's maid—deeply interested in an appointment which was not without precedent in her own experience—ventured on an expression of sympathy, before she returned to the servants' hall. "Please to excuse me, Miss; I hope Mr. Ovid isn't ill? He looked sadly pale, I thought. Allow me to give you your hat." Carmina thanked her, and hurried downstairs.

Ovid was waiting at the gate of the Square—and he did indeed look wretchedly ill.

It was useless to make inquiries; they only seemed to irritate him. "I am better already, now you have come to me." He said that, and led the way to a sheltered seat among the trees. In the later evening-time the Square was almost empty. Two middle-aged ladies, walking up and down (who considerately remembered their own youth, and kept out of the way), and a boy rigging a model yacht (who was too closely occupied to notice them), were the only persons in the enclosure besides themselves.

"Does my mother know that you have come here?" Ovid asked.

"Mrs. Gallilee has gone out. I didn't stop to think of it, when I got your letter. Am I doing wrong?"

Ovid took her hand. "Is it doing wrong to relieve me of anxieties that I have no courage to endure? When we meet in the house either my mother or her obedient servant, Miss Minerva, is sure to interrupt us. At last, my darling, I have got you to myself! You know that I love you. Why can't I look into your heart, and see what secrets it is keeping from me? I try to hope; but I want some little encouragement. Carmina! shall I ever hear you say that you love me?"

She trembled, and turned away her head. Her own words to the governess were in her mind; her own conviction of the want of all sympathy between his mother and herself made her shrink from answering him.

"I understand your silence." With those words he dropped her hand, and looked at her no more.

It was sadly, not bitterly spoken. She attempted to find excuses; she showed but too plainly how she pitied him. "If I only had myself to think of—" Her voice failed her. A new life came into his eyes, the colour rose in his haggard face: even those few faltering words had encouraged him!

She tried again to make him understand her. "I am so afraid of distressing you, Ovid; and I am so anxious not to make mischief between you and your mother—"

"What has my mother to do with it?"

She went on, without noticing the interruption. "You won't think me ungrateful? We had better speak of something else. Only this evening, your mother sent for me, and—don't be angry!—I am afraid she might be vexed if she knew what you have been saying to me. Perhaps I am wrong? Perhaps she only thinks I am too young. Oh, Ovid, how you look at me! Your mother hasn't said in so many words—"

"What has she said?"

In that question she saw the chance of speaking to him of other interests than the interests of love.

"You must go away to another climate," she said; "and your mother tells me I must persuade you to do it. I obey her with a heavy heart. Dear Ovid, you know how I shall miss you; you know what a loss it will be to me, when you say good-bye—but there is only one way to get well again. I entreat you to take that way! Your mother thinks I have some influence over you. Have I any influence?"

"Judge for yourself," he answered. "You wish me to leave you?"

"For your own sake. Only for your own sake."

"Do you wish me to come back again?"

"It's cruel to ask the question!"

"It rests with you, Carmina. Send me away when you like, and where you like. But, before I go, give me my one reason for making the sacrifice. No change will do anything for me, no climate will restore my health—unless you give me your love. I am old enough to know myself; I have thought of it by day and by night. Am I cruel to press you in this way? I will only say one word more. It doesn't matter what becomes of me—if you refuse to be my wife."

Without experience, without advice—with her own heart protesting against her silence—the restraint that she had laid on herself grew harder and harder to endure. The tears rose in her eyes. He saw them; they embittered his mind against his mother. With a darkening face he rose, and walked up and down before her, struggling with himself.

"This is my mother's doing," he said.

His tone terrified her. The dread, present to her mind all through the interview, of making herself a cause of estrangement between mother and son, so completely overcame her that she even made an attempt to defend Mrs. Gallilee! At the first words, he sat down by her again. For a moment, he scrutinised her face without mercy—and then repented of his own severity.

"My poor child," he said, "you are afraid to tell me what has happened. I won't press you to speak against your own inclinations. It would be cruel and needless—I have got at the truth at last. In the one hope of my life, my mother is my enemy. She is bent on separating us; she shall not succeed. I won't leave you."

Carmina looked at him. His eyes dropped before her, in confusion and shame.

"Are you angry with me?" she asked.

No reproaches could have touched his heart as that question touched it. "Angry with you? Oh, my darling, if you only knew how angry I am with myself! It cuts me to the heart to see how I have distressed you. I am a miserable selfish wretch; I don't deserve your love. Forgive me, and forget me. I will make the best atonement I can, Carmina. I will go away to-morrow."

Under hard trial, she had preserved her self-control. She had resisted him; she had resisted herself. His sudden submission disarmed her in an instant. With a low cry of love and fear she threw her arms round his neck, and laid her burning cheek against his face. "I can't help it," she whispered; "oh, Ovid, don't despise me!" His arms closed round her; his lips were pressed to hers. "Kiss me," he said. She kissed him, trembling in his embrace. That innocent self-abandonment did not plead with him in vain. He released her—and only held her hand. There was silence between them; long, happy silence.

He was the first to speak again. "How can I go away now?" he said.

She only smiled at that reckless forgetfulness of the promise, by which he had bound himself a few minutes since. "What did you tell me," she asked playfully, "when you called yourself by hard names, and said you didn't deserve my love?" Her smile vanished softly, and left only a look of tender entreaty in its place. "Set me an example of firmness, Ovid—don't leave it all to me! Remember what you have made me say. Remember"—she only hesitated for a moment—"remember what an interest I have in you now. I love you, Ovid. Say you will go."

He said it gratefully. "My life is yours; my will is yours. Decide for me, and I will begin my journey."

She was so impressed by her sense of this new responsibility, that she answered him as gravely as if she had been his wife. "I must give you time to pack up," she said.

"Say time to be with You!"

She fell into thought. He asked if she was still considering when to send him away. "No," she said; "it isn't that. I was wondering at myself. What is it that makes a great man like you so fond of me?"

His arm stole round her waist. He could just see her in the darkening twilight under the trees; the murmuring of the leaves was the only sound near them—his kisses lingered on her face. She sighed softly. "Don't make it too hard for me to send you away!" she whispered. He raised her, and put her arm in his. "Come," he said, "we will walk a little in the cool air."

They returned to the subject of his departure. It was still early in the week. She inquired if Saturday would be too soon to begin his journey. No: he felt it, too—the longer they delayed, the harder the parting would be.

"Have you thought yet where you will go?" she asked.

"I must begin with a sea-voyage," he replied. "Long railway journeys, in my present state, will only do me harm. The difficulty is where to go to. I have been to America; India is too hot; Australia is too far. Benjulia has suggested Canada."

As he mentioned the doctor's name, her hand mechanically pressed his arm.

"That strange man!" she said. "Even his name startles one; I hardly know what to think of him. He seemed to have more feeling for the monkey than for you or me. It was certainly kind of him to take the poor creature home, and try what he could do with it. Are you sure he is a great chemist?"

Ovid stopped. Such a question, from Carmina, sounded strange to him. "What makes you doubt it?" he said.

"You won't laugh at me, Ovid?"

"You know I won't!"

"Now you shall hear. We knew a famous Italian chemist at Rome—such a nice old man! He and my father used to play piquet; and I looked at them, and tried to learn—and I was too stupid. But I had plenty of opportunities of noticing our old friend's hands. They were covered with stains; and he caught me looking at them. He was not in the least offended; he told me his experiments had spotted his skin in that way, and nothing would clean off the stains. I saw Doctor Benjulia's great big hands, while he was giving you the brandy—and I remembered afterwards that there were no stains on them. I seem to surprise you."

"You do indeed surprise me. After knowing Benjulia for years, I have never noticed, what you have discovered on first seeing him."

"Perhaps he has some way of cleaning the stains off his hands."

Ovid agreed to this, as the readiest means of dismissing the subject. Carmina had really startled him. Some irrational connection between the great chemist's attention to the monkey, and the perplexing purity of his hands, persisted in vaguely asserting itself in Ovid's mind. His unacknowledged doubts of Benjulia troubled him as they had never troubled him yet. He turned to Carmina for relief.

"Still thinking, my love?"

"Thinking of you," she answered. "I want you to promise me something—and I am afraid to ask it."

"Afraid? You don't love me, after all!"

"Then I will say it at once! How long do you expect to be away?"

"For two or three months, perhaps."

"Promise to wait till you return, before you tell your mother—"

"That we are engaged?"

"Yes."

"You have my promise, Carmina; but you make me uneasy."

"Why?"

"In my absence, you will be under my mother's care. And you don't like my mother."

Few words and plain words—and they sorely troubled her.

If she owned that he was right, what would the consequence be? He might refuse to leave her. Even assuming that he controlled himself, he would take his departure harassed by anxieties, which might exercise the worst possible influence over the good effect of the journey. To prevaricate with herself or with him was out of the question. That very evening she had quarrelled with his mother; and she had yet to discover whether Mrs. Gallilee had forgiven her. In her heart of hearts she hated deceit—and in her heart of hearts she longed to set his mind at ease. In that embarrassing position, which was the right way out? Satan persuaded Eve; and Love persuaded Carmina. Love asked if she was cruel enough to make her heart's darling miserable when he was so fond of her? Before she could realise it, she had begun to deceive him. Poor humanity! poor Carmina!

"You are almost as hard on me as if you were Doctor Benjulia himself!" she said. "I feel your mother's superiority—and you tell me I don't like her. Haven't you seen how good she has been to me?"

She thought this way of putting it irresistible. Ovid resisted, nevertheless. Carmina plunged into lower depths of deceit immediately.

"Haven't you seen my pretty rooms—my piano—my pictures—my china—my flowers? I should be the most insensible creature living if I didn't feel grateful to your mother."

"And yet, you are afraid of her."

She shook his arm impatiently. "I say, No!"

He was as obstinate as ever. "I say, Yes! If you're not afraid, why do you wish to keep our engagement from my mother's knowledge?"

His reasoning was unanswerable. But where is the woman to be found who is not supple enough to slip through the stiff fingers of Reason? She sheltered herself from his logic behind his language.

"Must I remind you again of the time when you were angry?" she rejoined. "You said your mother was bent on separating us. If I don't want her to know of our engagement just yet—isn't that a good reason?" She rested her head caressingly on his shoulder. "Tell me," she went on, thinking of one of Miss Minerva's suggestions, "doesn't my aunt look to a higher marriage for you than a marriage with me?"

It was impossible to deny that Mrs. Gallilee's views might justify that inquiry. Had she not more than once advised him to wait a few years—in other words, to wait until he had won the highest honours of his profession—before he thought of marrying at all? But Carmina was too precious to him to be humiliated by comparisons with other women, no matter what their rank might be. He paid her a compliment, instead of giving her an answer.

"My mother can't look higher than you," he said. "I wish I could feel sure, Carmina—in leaving you with her—that I am leaving you with a friend whom you trust and love."

There was a sadness in his tone that grieved her. "Wait till you come back," she replied, speaking as gaily as she could. "You will be ashamed to remember your own misgivings. And don't forget, dear, that I have another friend besides your mother—the best and kindest of friends—to take care of me."

Ovid heard this with some surprise. "A friend in my mother's house?" he asked.

"Certainly!"

"Who is it?"

"Miss Minerva."

"What!" His tone expressed such immeasurable amazement, that Carmina's sense of justice was roused in defence of her new friend.

"If I began by wronging Miss Minerva, I had the excuse of being a stranger," she said, warmly. "You have known her for years, and you ought to have found out her good qualities long since! Are all men alike, I wonder? Even my kind dear father used to call ugly women the inexcusable mistakes of Nature. Poor Miss Minerva says herself she is ugly, and expects everybody to misjudge her accordingly. I don't misjudge her, for one. Teresa has left me; and you are going away next. A miserable prospect, Ovid, but not quite without hope. Frances—yes, I call her by her Christian name, and she calls me by mine!—Frances will console me, and make my life as happy as it can be till you come back."

Excepting bad temper, and merciless cultivation of the minds of children, Ovid knew of nothing that justified his prejudice against the governess. Still, Carmina's sudden conversion inspired him with something like alarm. "I suppose you have good reasons for what you tell me," he said.

"The best reasons," she replied, in the most positive manner.

He considered for a moment how he could most delicately inquire what those reasons might be. But valuable opportunities may be lost, even in a moment. "Will you help me to do justice to Miss Minerva?" he cautiously began.

"Hush!" Carmina interposed. "Surely, I heard somebody calling to me?"

They paused, and listened. A voice hailed them from the outer side of the garden. They started guiltily. It was the voice of Mrs. Gallilee.



CHAPTER XVIII.

"Carmina! are you in the Square?"

"Leave it to me," Ovid whispered. "We will come to you directly," he called back.

Mrs. Gallilee was waiting for them at the gate. Ovid spoke, the moment they were within sight of each other. "You will have no more cause to complain of me," he said cheerfully; "I am going away at the end of the week."

Mrs. Gallilee's answer was addressed to Carmina instead of to her son. "Thank you, my dear," she said, and pressed her niece's hand.

It was too dark to see more of faces than their shadowy outline. The learned lady's tone was the perfection of amiability. She sent Ovid across the road to knock at the house-door, and took Carmina's arm confidentially. "You little goose!" she whispered, "how could you suppose I was angry with you? I can't even regret your mistake, you have written such a charming note."

Ovid was waiting for them in the hall. They went into the library. Mrs. Gallilee enfolded her son in a fervent motherly embrace.

"This completes the enjoyment of a most delightful evening," she said. "First a perfect lecture—and then the relief of overpowering anxiety about my son. I suppose your professional studies, Ovid, have never taken you as high as the Interspacial Regions? We were an immense audience to-night, to hear the Professor on that subject, and I really haven't recovered it yet. Fifty miles above us—only fifty miles—there is an atmosphere of cold that would freeze the whole human family to death in a second of time. Moist matter, in that terrific emptiness, would explode, and become stone; and—listen to this, Carmina—the explosion itself would be frozen, and produce no sound. Think of serious people looking up in that dreadful direction, and talking of going to Heaven. Oh, the insignificance of man, except—I am going to make a joke, Ovid—except when he pleases his old mother by going away for the benefit of his health! And where are you going? Has sensible Carmina advised you? I agree with her beforehand, whatever she has said."

Ovid informed his mother of Benjulia's suggestion, and asked her what she thought of it.

Mrs. Gallilee's overflowing geniality instantly flooded the absent doctor. He was rude, he was ugly; but what an inestimable friend! what admirable advice! In Ovid's state of health he must not write letters; his mother would write and thank the doctor, and ask for introductions to local grandees who occupied a position in colonial society. She seized the newspaper: a steamer for Canada sailed from Liverpool on Saturday. Ovid could secure his cabin the next morning ("amidships, my dear, if you can possibly get it"), and could leave London by Friday's train. In her eagerness to facilitate his departure, she proposed to superintend the shutting up of his house, in his absence, and to arrange the disposal of the servants, if he considered it worth while to keep them. She even thought of the cat. The easiest way to provide for the creature would be of course to have her poisoned; but Ovid was so eccentric in some things, that practical suggestions were thrown away on him. "Sixpence a week for cat's meat isn't much," cried Mrs. Gallilee in an outburst of generosity. "We will receive the cat!"

Ovid made his acknowledgments resignedly. Carmina could see that Mrs. Gallilee's overpowering vitality was beginning to oppress her son.

"I needn't trouble you, mother," he said. "My domestic affairs were all settled when I first felt the necessity of getting rest. My manservant travels with me. My housemaid and kitchenmaid will go to their friends in the country; the cook will look after the house; and her nephew, the little page, is almost as fond of the cat as I am. If you will send for a cab, I think I will go home. Like other people in my wretched state, I feel fatigued towards night-time."

His lips just touched Carmina's delicate little ear, while his mother turned away to ring the bell. "Expect me to-morrow," he whispered. "I love you!—love you!—love you!" He seemed to find the perfection of luxury in the reiteration of those words.

When Ovid had left them, Carmina expected to hear something of her aunt's discovery in the Square.

Mrs. Gallilee's innocence was impenetrable. Not finding her niece in the house, she had thought of the Square. What could be more natural than that the cousins should take an evening walk, in one of the prettiest enclosures in London? Her anticipation of Ovid's recovery, and her admiration of Carmina's powers of persuasion appeared, for the time, to be the only active ideas in that comprehensive mind. When the servant brought in the tray, with the claret and soda-water, she sent for Miss Minerva to join them, and hear the good news; completely ignoring the interruption of their friendly relations, earlier in the evening. She became festive and facetious at the sight of the soda-water. "Let us imitate the men, Miss Minerva, and drink a toast before we go to bed. Be cheerful, Carmina, and share half a bottle of soda-water with me. A pleasant journey to Ovid, and a safe return!" Cheered by the influences of conviviality, the friend of Professors, the tender nurse of half-developed tadpoles, lapsed into learning again. Mrs. Gallilee improvised an appropriate little lecture on Canada—on the botany of the Dominion; on the geology of the Dominion; on the number of gallons of water wasted every hour by the falls of Niagara. "Science will set it all right, my dears; we shall make that idle water work for us, one of these days. Good-night, Miss Minerva! Dear Carmina, pleasant dreams!"

Safe in the solitude of her bedroom, the governess ominously knitted her heavy eyebrows.

"In all my experience," she thought, "I never saw Mrs. Gallilee in such spirits before. What mischief is she meditating, when she has got rid of her son?"



CHAPTER XIX.

The lapse of a few hours exercised no deteriorating influence on Mrs. Gallilee's amiability.

On the next day, thanks to his mother's interference, Ovid was left in the undisturbed enjoyment of Carmina's society. Not only Miss Minerva, but even Mr. Gallilee and the children, were kept out of the way with a delicately-exercised dexterity, which defied the readiest suspicion to take offence. In one word, all that sympathy and indulgence could do to invite Ovid's confidence, was unobtrusively and modestly done. Never had the mistress of domestic diplomacy reached her ends with finer art.

In the afternoon, a messenger delivered Benjulia's reply to Mrs. Gallilee's announcement of her son's contemplated journey—despatched by the morning's post. The doctor was confined to the house by an attack of gout. If Ovid wanted information on the subject of Canada, Ovid must go to him, and get it. That was all.

"Have you ever been to Doctor Benjulia's house?" Carmina asked.

"Never."

"Then all you have told me about him is mere report? Now you will find out the truth! Of course you will go?"

Ovid felt no desire to make a voyage of exploration to Benjulia's house—and said so plainly. Carmina used all her powers of persuasion to induce him to change his mind. Mrs. Gallilee (superior to the influence of girlish curiosity) felt the importance of obtaining introductions to Canadian society, and agreed with her niece. "I shall order the carriage," she said, assuming a playfully despotic tone; "and, if you don't go to the doctor—Carmina and I will pay him a visit in your place."

Threatened, if he remained obstinate, with such a result as this, Ovid had no alternative but to submit.

The one order that could be given to the coachman was to drive to the village of Hendon, on the north-western side of London, and to trust to inquiries for the rest of the way. Between Hendon and Willesden, there are pastoral solitudes within an hour's drive of Oxford Street—wooded lanes and wild-flowers, farms and cornfields, still unprofaned by the devastating brickwork of the builder of modern times. Following winding ways, under shadowing trees, the coachman made his last inquiry at a roadside public-house. Hearing that Benjulia's place of abode was now within half a mile of him, Ovid set forth on foot; leaving the driver and the horses to take their ease at their inn.

He arrived at an iron gate, opening out of a lonely lane.

There, in the middle of a barren little field, he saw Benjulia's house—a hideous square building of yellow brick, with a slate roof. A low wall surrounded the place, having another iron gate at the entrance. The enclosure within was as barren as the field without: not even an attempt at flower-garden or kitchen-garden was visible. At a distance of some two hundred yards from the house stood a second and smaller building, with a skylight in the roof, which Ovid recognised (from description) as the famous laboratory. Behind it was the hedge which parted Benjulia's morsel of land from the land of his neighbour. Here, the trees rose again, and the fields beyond were cultivated. No dwellings, and no living creatures appeared. So near to London—and yet, in its loneliness, so far away—there was something unnatural in the solitude of the place.

Led by a feeling of curiosity, which was fast degenerating into suspicion, Ovid approached the laboratory, without showing himself in front of the house. No watch-dog barked; no servant appeared on the look-out for a visitor. He was ashamed of himself as he did it, but (so strongly had he been impressed by Carmina's observation of the doctor) he even tried the locked door of the laboratory, and waited and listened! It was a breezy summer-day; the leaves of the trees near him rustled cheerfully. Was there another sound audible? Yes—low and faint, there rose through the sweet woodland melody a moaning cry. It paused; it was repeated; it stopped. He looked round him, not quite sure whether the sound proceeded from the outside or the inside of the building. He shook the door. Nothing happened. The suffering creature (if it was a suffering creature) was silent or dead. Had chemical experiment accidentally injured some living thing? Or—?

He recoiled from pursuing that second inquiry. The laboratory had, by this time, become an object of horror to him. He returned to the dwelling-house.

He put his hand on the latch of the gate, and looked back at the laboratory. He hesitated.

That moaning cry, so piteous and so short-lived, haunted his ears. The idea of approaching Benjulia became repellent to him. What he might afterwards think of himself—what his mother and Carmina might think of him—if he returned without having entered the doctors' house, were considerations which had no influence over his mind, in its present mood. The impulse of the moment was the one power that swayed him. He put the latch back in the socket. "I won't go in," he said to himself.

It was too late. As he turned from the house a manservant appeared at the door—crossed the enclosure—and threw the gate open for Ovid, without uttering a word.

They entered the passage. The speechless manservant opened a door on the right, and made a bow, inviting the visitor to enter. Ovid found himself in a room as barren as the field outside. There were the plastered walls, there was the bare floor, left exactly as the builders had left them when the house was finished. After a short absence, the man appeared again. He might be depressed in spirits, or crabbed in temper: the fact remained that, even now, he had nothing to say. He opened a door on the opposite side of the passage—made another bow—and vanished.

"Don't come near me!" cried Benjulia, the moment Ovid showed himself.

The doctor was seated in an inner corner of the room; robed in a long black dressing-gown, buttoned round his throat, which hid every part of him below his fleshless face, except his big hands, and his tortured gouty foot. Rage and pain glared in his gloomy gray eyes, and shook his clenched fists, resting on the arms of an easy chair. "Ten thousand red-hot devils are boring ten thousand holes through my foot," he said. "If you touch the pillow on my stool, I shall fly at your throat." He poured some cooling lotion from a bottle into a small watering-pot, and irrigated his foot as if it had been a bed of flowers. By way of further relief to the pain, he swore ferociously; addressing his oaths to himself, in thunderous undertones which made the glasses ring on the sideboard.

Relieved, in his present frame of mind, to have escaped the necessity of shaking hands, Ovid took a chair, and looked about him. Even here he discovered but little furniture, and that little of the heavy old-fashioned sort. Besides the sideboard, he perceived a dining-table, six chairs, and a dingy brown carpet. There were no curtains on the window, and no pictures or prints on the drab-coloured walls. The empty grate showed its bleak black cavity undisguised; and the mantelpiece had nothing on it but the doctor's dirty and strong-smelling pipe. Benjulia set down his watering-pot, as a sign that the paroxysm of pain had passed away. "A dull place to live in, isn't it?" In those words he welcomed the visitor to his house.

Irritated by the accident which had forced him into the repellent presence of Benjulia, Ovid answered in a tone which matched the doctor on his own hard ground.

"It's your own fault if the place is dull. Why haven't you planted trees, and laid out a garden?"

"I dare say I shall surprise you," Benjulia quietly rejoined; "but I have a habit of speaking my mind. I don't object to a dull place; and I don't care about trees and gardens."

"You don't seem to care about furniture either," said Ovid.

Now that he was out of pain for awhile, the doctor's innate insensibility to what other people might think of him, or might say to him, resumed its customary torpor in its own strangely unconscious way. He seemed only to understand that Ovid's curiosity was in search of information about trifles. Well, there would be less trouble in giving him his information, than in investigating his motives. So Benjulia talked of his furniture.

"I dare say you're right," he said. "My sister-in-law—did you know I had a relation of that sort?—my sister-in-law got the tables and chairs, and beds and basins. Buying things at shops doesn't interest me. I gave her a cheque; and I told her to furnish a room for me to eat in, and a room for me to sleep in—and not to forget the kitchen and the garrets for the servants. What more do I want?"

His intolerable composure only added to his guest's irritability.

"A selfish way of putting it," Ovid broke out. "Have you nobody to think of but yourself?"

"Nobody—I am happy to say."

"That's downright cynicism, Benjulia!"

The doctor reflected. "Is it?" he said. "Perhaps you may be right again. I think it's only indifference, myself. Curiously enough my brother looks at it from your point of view—he even used the same word that you used just now. I suppose he found my cynicism beyond the reach of reform. At any rate, he left off coming here. I got rid of him on easy terms. What do you say? That inhuman way of talking is unworthy of me? Really I don't think so. I'm not a downright savage. It's only indifference."

"Does your brother return your indifference? You must be a nice pair, if he does!"

Benjulia seemed to find a certain dreary amusement in considering the question that Ovid had proposed. He decided on doing justice to his absent relative.

"My brother's intelligence is perhaps equal to such a small effort as you suggest," he said. "He has just brains enough to keep himself out of an asylum for idiots. Shall I tell you what he is in two words? A stupid sensualist—that's what he is. I let his wife come here sometimes, and cry. It doesn't trouble me; and it seems to relieve her. More of my indifference—eh? Well, I don't know. I gave her the change out of the furniture-cheque, to buy a new bonnet with. You might call that indifference, and you might be right once more. I don't care about money. Will you have a drink? You see I can't move. Please ring for the man."

Ovid refused the drink, and changed the subject. "Your servant is a remarkably silent person," he said.

"That's his merit," Benjulia answered; "the women-servants have quarrelled with every other man I've had. They can't quarrel with this man. I have raised his wages in grateful acknowledgment of his usefulness to me. I hate noise."

"Is that the reason why you don't keep a watch-dog?"

"I don't like dogs. They bark."

He had apparently some other disagreeable association with dogs, which he was not disposed to communicate. His hollow eyes stared gloomily into vacancy. Ovid's presence in the room seemed to have become, for the time being, an impression erased from his mind. He recovered himself, with the customary vehement rubbing of his head, and turned the talk to the object of Ovid's visit.

"So you have taken my advice," he said. "You're going to Canada, and you want to get at what I can tell you before you start. Here's my journal. It will jog my memory, and help us both."

His writing materials were placed on a movable table, screwed to his chair. Near them lay a shabby-looking book, guarded by a lock. Ten minutes after he had opened his journal, and had looked here and there through the pages, his hard intellect had grasped all that it required. Steadily and copiously his mind emptied its information into Ovid's mind; without a single digression from beginning to end, and with the most mercilessly direct reference to the traveller's practical wants. Not a word escaped him, relating to national character or to the beauties of Nature. Mrs. Gallilee had criticized the Falls of Niagara as a reservoir of wasted power. Doctor Benjulia's scientific superiority over the woman asserted itself with magnificent ease. Niagara being nothing but useless water, he never mentioned Niagara at all.

"Have I served your purpose as a guide?" he asked. "Never mind thanking me. Yes or no will do. Very good. I have got a line of writing to give you next." He mended his quill pen, and made an observation. "Have you ever noticed that women have one pleasure which lasts to the end of their lives?" he said. "Young and old, they have the same inexhaustible enjoyment of society; and, young and old, they are all alike incapable of understanding a man, when he says he doesn't care to go to a party. Even your clever mother thinks you want to go to parties in Canada." He tried his pen, and found it would do—and began his letter.

Seeing his hands at work, Ovid was again reminded of Carmina's discovery. His eyes wandered a little aside, towards the corner formed by the pillar of the chimney-piece and the wall of the room. The big bamboo-stick rested there. A handle was attached to it, made of light-coloured horn, and on that handle there were some stains. Ovid looked at them with a surgeon's practised eye. They were dry stains of blood. (Had he washed his hands on the last occasion when he used his stick? And had he forgotten that the handle wanted washing too?)

Benjulia finished his letter, and wrote the address. He took up the envelope, to give it to Ovid—and stopped, as if some doubt tempted him to change his mind. The hesitation was only momentary. He persisted in his first intention, and gave Ovid the letter. It was addressed to a doctor at Montreal.

"That man won't introduce you to society," Benjulia announced, "and won't worry your brains with medical talk. Keep off one subject on your side. A mad bull is nothing to my friend if you speak of Vivisection."

Ovid looked at him steadily, when he uttered the last word. Benjulia looked back, just as steadily at Ovid.

At the moment of that reciprocal scrutiny, did the two men suspect each other? Ovid, on his side, determined not to leave the house without putting his suspicions to the test.

"I thank you for the letter," he began; "and I will not forget the warning."

The doctor's capacity for the exercise of the social virtues had its limits. His reserves of hospitality were by this time near their end.

"Is there anything more I can do for you?" he interposed.

"You can answer a simple question," Ovid replied. "My cousin Carmina—"

Benjulia interrupted him again: "Don't you think we said enough about your cousin in the Gardens?" he suggested.

Ovid acknowledged the hint with a neatness of retort almost worthy of his mother. "You have your own merciful disposition to blame, if I return to the subject," he replied. "My cousin cannot forget your kindness to the monkey."

"The sooner she forgets my kindness the better. The monkey is dead."

"I am glad to hear it."

"Why?"

"I thought the creature was living in pain."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I heard a moaning—"

"Where?"

"In the building behind your house."

"You heard the wind in the trees."

"Nothing of the sort. Are your chemical experiments ever made on animals?"

The doctor parried that direct attack, without giving ground by so much as a hair's breadth.

"What did I say when I gave you your letter of introduction?" he asked. "I said, A mad bull is nothing to my friend, if you speak to him of Vivisection. Now I have something more to tell you. I am like my friend." He waited a little. "Will that do?" he asked.

"Yes," said Ovid; "that will do."

They were as near to an open quarrel as two men could be: Ovid took up his hat to go. Even at that critical moment, Benjulia's strange jealousy of his young colleague—as a possible rival in some field of discovery which he claimed as his own—showed itself once more. There was no change in his tone; he still spoke like a judicious friend.

"A last word of advice," he said. "You are travelling for your health; don't let inquisitive strangers lead you into talk. Some of them might be physiologists."

"And might suggest new ideas," Ovid rejoined, determined to make him speak out this time.

Benjulia nodded, in perfect agreement with his guest's view.

"Are you afraid of new ideas?" Ovid went on.

"Perhaps I am—in your head." He made that admission, without hesitation or embarrassment. "Good-bye!" he resumed. "My sensitive foot feels noises: don't bang the door."

Getting out into the lane again, Ovid looked at his letter to the doctor at Montreal. His first impulse was to destroy it.

As Benjulia had hesitated before giving him the letter, so he now hesitated before tearing it up.

Contrary to the usual practice in such cases, the envelope was closed. Under those circumstances, Ovid's pride decided him on using the introduction. Time was still to pass, before events opened his eyes to the importance of his decision. To the end of his life he remembered that Benjulia had been near to keeping back the letter, and that he had been near to tearing it up.



CHAPTER XX.

The wise ancient who asserted that "Time flies," must have made that remarkable discovery while he was in a state of preparation for a journey. When are we most acutely sensible of the shortness of life? When do we consult our watches in perpetual dread of the result? When does the night steal on us unawares, and the morning take us by surprise? When we are going on a journey.

The remaining days of the week went by with a rush. Ovid had hardly time to ask himself if Friday had really come, before the hours of his life at home were already numbered.

He had still a little time to spare when he presented himself at Fairfield Gardens late in the afternoon. Finding no one in the library, he went up to the drawing-room. His mother was alone, reading.

"Have you anything to say to me, before I tell Carmina that you are here?" Mrs. Gallilee put that question quietly, so far as her voice was concerned. But she still kept her eyes on her book. Ovid knew that she was offering him his first and last chance of speaking plainly, before he went away. In Carmina's interests he spoke.

"Mother," he said, "I am leaving the one person in the world who is most precious to me, under your care."

"Do you mean," Mrs. Gallilee asked, "that you and Carmina are engaged to be married?"

"I mean that; and I am not sure that you approve of the engagement. Will you be plainer with me than you were on the last occasion when we spoke on this subject?"

"When was that?" Mrs. Gallilee inquired.

"When you and I were alone for a few minutes, on the morning when I breakfasted here. You said it was quite natural that Carmina should have attracted me; but you were careful not to encourage the idea of a marriage between us. I understood that you disapproved of it—but you didn't plainly tell me why."

"Can women always give their reason?"

"Yes—when they are women like you."

"Thank you, my dear, for a pretty compliment. I can trust my memory. I think I hinted at the obvious objections to an engagement. You and Carmina are cousins; and you belong to different religious communities. I may add that a man with your brilliant prospects has, in my opinion, no reason to marry unless his wife is in a position to increase his influence and celebrity. I had looked forward to seeing my clever son rise more nearly to a level with persons of rank, who are members of our family. There is my confession, Ovid. If I did hesitate on the occasion to which you have referred, I have now, I think, told you why."

"Am I to understand that you hesitate still?" Ovid asked.

"No." With that brief reply she rose to put away her book.

Ovid followed her to the bookcase. "Has Carmina conquered you?" he said.

She put her book back in its place. "Carmina has conquered me," she answered.

"You say it coldly."

"What does that matter, if I say it truly?"

The struggle in him between hope and fear burst its way out. "Oh, mother, no words can tell you how fond I am of Carmina! For God's sake take care of her, and be kind to her!"

"For your sake," said Mrs. Gallilee, gently correcting the language of her excitable son, from her own protoplastic point of view. "You do me an injustice if you feel anxious about Carmina, when you leave her here. My dead brother's child, is my child. You may be sure of that." She took his hand, and drew him to her, and kissed his forehead with dignity and deliberation. If Mr. Mool had been present, during the registration of that solemn pledge, he would have been irresistibly reminded of the other ceremony, which is called signing a deed.

"Have you any instructions to give me?" Mrs. Gallilee proceeded. "For instance, do you object to my taking Carmina to parties? I mean, of course, parties which will improve her mind."

He fell sadly below his mother's level in replying to this. "Do everything you can to make her life happy while I am away." Those were his only instructions.

But Mrs. Gallilee had not done with him yet. "With regard to visitors," she went on, "I presume you wish me to be careful, if I find young men calling here oftener than usual?"

Ovid actually laughed at this. "Do you think I doubt her?" he asked. "The earth doesn't hold a truer girl than my little Carmina!" A thought struck him while he said it. The brightness faded out of his face; his voice lost its gaiety. "There is one person who may call on you," he said, "whom I don't wish her to see."

"Who is he?"

"Unfortunately, he is a man who has excited her curiosity. I mean Benjulia."

It was now Mrs. Gallilee's turn to be amused. Her laugh was not one of her foremost fascinations. It was hard in tone, and limited in range—it opened her mouth, but it failed to kindle any light in her eyes. "Jealous of the ugly doctor!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Ovid, what next?"

"You never made a greater mistake in your life," her son answered sharply.

"Then what is the objection to him?" Mrs. Gallilee rejoined.

It was not easy to meet that question with a plain reply. If Ovid asserted that Benjulia's chemical experiments were assumed—for some reason known only to himself—as a cloak to cover the atrocities of the Savage Science, he would only raise the doctor in his mother's estimation. If, on the other hand, he described what had passed between them when they met in the Zoological Gardens, Mrs. Gallilee might summon Benjulia to explain the slur which he had indirectly cast on the memory of Carmina's mother—and might find, in the reply, some plausible reason for objecting to her son's marriage. Having rashly placed himself in this dilemma, Ovid unwisely escaped from it by the easiest way. "I don't think Benjulia a fit person," he said, "to be in the company of a young girl."

Mrs. Gallilee accepted this expression of opinion with a readiness, which would have told a more suspicious man that he had made a mistake. Ovid had roused the curiosity—perhaps awakened the distrust—of his clever mother.

"You know best," Mrs. Gallilee replied; "I will bear in mind what you say." She rang the bell for Carmina, and left the room. Ovid found the minutes passing slowly, for the first time since the day had been fixed for his departure. He attributed this impression to his natural impatience for the appearance of his cousin—until the plain evidence of the clock pointed to a delay of five endless minutes, and more. As he approached the door to make inquiries, it opened at last. Hurrying to meet Carmina, he found himself face to face with Miss Minerva!

She came in hastily, and held out her hand without looking at him.

"Forgive me for intruding on you," she said, with a rapidity of utterance and a timidity of manner strangely unlike herself. "I'm obliged to prepare the children's lessons for to-morrow; and this is my only opportunity of bidding you good-bye. You have my best wishes—my heartfelt wishes—for your safety and your health, and—and your enjoyment of the journey. Good-bye! good-bye!"

After holding his hand for a moment, she hastened back to the door. There she stopped, turned towards him again, and looked at him for the first time. "I have one thing more to say," she broke out. "I will do all I can to make Carmina's life pleasant in your absence." Before he could thank her, she was gone.

In another minute Carmina came in, and found Ovid looking perplexed and annoyed. She had passed Frances on the stairs—had there been any misunderstanding between Ovid and the governess?

"Have you seen Miss Minerva?" she asked.

He put his arm round her, and seated her by him on the sofa. "I don't understand Miss Minerva," he said. "How is it that she came here, when I was expecting You?"

"She asked me, as a favour, to let her see you first; and she seemed to be so anxious about it that I gave way. I didn't do wrong, Ovid—did I?"

"My darling, you are always kind, and always right! But why couldn't she say good-bye (with the others) downstairs? Do you understand this curious woman?"

"I think I do." She paused, and toyed with the hair over Ovid's forehead. "Miss Minerva is fond of you, poor thing," she said innocently.

"Fond of me?"

The surprise which his tone expressed, failed to attract her attention. She quietly varied the phrase that she had just used.

"Miss Minerva has a true regard for you—and knows that you don't return it," she explained, still playing with Ovid's hair. "I want to see how it looks," she went on, "when it's parted in the middle. No! it looks better as you always wear it. How handsome you are, Ovid! Don't you wish I was beautiful, too? Everybody in the house loves you; and everybody is sorry you are going away. I like Miss Minerva, I like everybody, for being so fond of my dear, dear hero. Oh, what shall I do when day after day passes, and only takes you farther and farther away from me? No! I won't cry. You shan't go away with a heavy heart, my dear one, if I can help it. Where is your photograph? You promised me your photograph. Let me look at it. Yes! it's like you, and yet not like you. It will do to think over, when I am alone. My love, it has copied your eyes, but it has not copied the divine kindness and goodness that I see in them!" She paused, and laid her head on his bosom. "I shall cry, in spite of my resolution, if I look at you any longer. We won't look—we won't talk—I can feel your arm round me—I can hear your heart. Silence is best. I have been told of people dying happily; and I never understood it before. I think I could die happily now." She put her hand over his lips before he could reprove her, and nestled closer to him. "Hush!" she said softly; "hush!"

They neither moved nor spoke: that silent happiness was the best happiness, while it lasted. Mrs. Gallilee broke the charm. She suddenly opened the door, pointed to the clock, and went away again.

The cruel time had come. They made their last promises; shared their last kisses; held each other in the last embrace. She threw herself on the sofa, as he left her—with a gesture which entreated him to go, while she could still control herself. Once, he looked round, when he reached the door—and then it was over.

Alone on the landing, he dashed the tears away from his eyes. Suffering and sorrow tried hard to get the better of his manhood: they had shaken, but had not conquered him. He was calm, when he joined the members of the family, waiting in the library.

Perpetually setting an example, Mrs. Gallilee ascended her domestic pedestal as usual. She favoured her son with one more kiss, and reminded him of the railway. "We understand each other, Ovid—you have only five minutes to spare. Write, when you get to Quebec. Now, Maria! say good-bye."

Maria presented herself to her brother with a grace which did honour to the family dancing-master. Her short farewell speech was a model of its kind.

"Dear Ovid, I am only a child; but I feel truly anxious for the recovery of your health. At this favourable season you may look forward to a pleasant voyage. Please accept my best wishes." She offered her cheek to be kissed—and looked like a young person who had done her duty, and knew it.

Mr. Gallilee—modestly secluded behind the window curtains—appeared, at a sign from his wife. One of his plump red hands held a bundle of cigars. The other clutched an enormous new travelling-flask—the giant of its tribe.

"My dear boy, it's possible there may be good brandy and cigars on board; but that's not my experience of steamers—is it yours?" He stopped to consult his wife. "My dear, is it yours?" Mrs. Gallilee held up the "Railway Guide," and shook it significantly. Mr. Gallilee went on in a hurry. "There's some of the right stuff in this flask, Ovid, if you will accept it. Five-and-forty years old—would you like to taste it? Would you like to taste it, my dear?" Mrs. Gallilee seized the "Railway Guide" again, with a terrible look. Her husband crammed the big flask into one of Ovid's pockets, and the cigars into the other. "You'll find them a comfort when you're away from us. God bless you, my son! You don't mind my calling you my son? I couldn't be fonder of you, if I really was your father. Let's part as cheerfully as we can," said poor Mr. Gallilee, with the tears rolling undisguisedly over his fat cheeks. "We can write to each other—can't we? Oh dear! dear! I wish I could take it as easy as Maria does. Zo! come and give him a kiss, poor fellow. Where's Zo?"

Mrs. Gallilee made the discovery—she dragged Zo into view, from under the table. Ovid took his little sister on his knee, and asked why she had hidden herself.

"Because I don't want to say good-bye!" cried the child, giving her reason with a passionate outbreak of sorrow that shook her from head to foot. "Take me with you, Ovid, take me with you!" He did his best to console her, under adverse circumstances. Mrs. Gallilee's warning voice sounded like a knell—"Time! time!" Zo's shrill treble rang out louder still. Zo was determined to write to Ovid, if she was not allowed to go with him. "Pa's going to write to you—why shouldn't I?" she screamed through her tears. "Dear Zoe, you are too young," Maria remarked. "Damned nonsense!" sobbed Mr. Gallilee; "she shall write!" "Time, time!" Mrs. Gallilee reiterated. Taking no part in the dispute, Ovid directed two envelopes for Zo, and quieted her in that way. He hurried into the hall; he glanced at the stairs that led to the drawing-room. Carmina was on the landing, waiting for a farewell look at him. On the higher flight of stairs, invisible from the hall, Miss Minerva was watching the scene of departure. Reckless of railways and steamers, Ovid ran up to Carmina. Another and another kiss; and then away to the house-door, with Zo at his heels, trying to get into the cab with him. A last kind word to the child, as they carried her back to the house; a last look at the familiar faces in the doorway; a last effort to resist that foretaste of death which embitters all human partings—and Ovid was gone!

VOLUME TWO



CHAPTER XXI.

On the afternoon of the day that followed Ovid's departure, the three ladies of the household were in a state of retirement—each in her own room.

The writing-table in Mrs. Gallilee's boudoir was covered with letters. Her banker's pass-book and her cheque-book were on the desk; Mr. Gallilee's affairs having been long since left as completely in the hands of his wife, as if Mr. Gallilee had been dead. A sheet of paper lay near the cheque-book, covered with calculations divided into two columns. The figures in the right-hand column were contained in one line at the top of the page. The figures in the left-hand column filled the page from top to bottom. With her fan in her hand, and her pen in the ink-bottle, Mrs. Gallilee waited, steadily thinking.

It was the hottest day of the season. All the fat women in London fanned themselves on that sultry afternoon; and Mrs. Gallilee followed the general example. When she looked to the right, her calculations showed the balance at the bank. When she looked to the left, her calculations showed her debts: some partially paid, some not paid at all. If she wearied of the prospect thus presented, and turned for relief to her letters, she was confronted by polite requests for money; from tradespeople in the first place, and from secretaries of fashionable Charities in the second. Here and there, by way of variety, were invitations to parties, representing more pecuniary liabilities, incurred for new dresses, and for hospitalities acknowledged by dinners and conversaziones at her own house. Money that she owed, money that she must spend; nothing but outlay of money—and where was it to come from?

So far as her pecuniary resources were concerned, she was equally removed from hope and fear. Twice a year the same income flowed in regularly from the same investments. What she could pay at any future time was far more plainly revealed to her than what she might owe. With tact and management it would be possible to partially satisfy creditors, and keep up appearances for six months more. To that conclusion her reflections led her, and left her to write cheques.

And after the six months—what then?

Having first completed her correspondence with the tradespeople, and having next decided on her contributions to the Charities, this iron matron took up her fan again, cooled herself, and met the question of the future face to face.

Ovid was the central figure in the prospect.

If he lived devoted to his profession, and lived unmarried, there was a last resource always left to Mrs. Gallilee. For years past, his professional gains had added largely to the income which he had inherited from his father. Unembarrassed by expensive tastes, he had some thousands of pounds put by—for the simple reason that he was at a loss what else to do with them. Thus far, her brother's generosity had spared Mrs. Gallilee the hard necessity of making a confession to her son. As things were now, she must submit to tell the humiliating truth; and Ovid (with no wife to check his liberal instincts) would do what Ovid's uncle (with no wife living to check his liberal instincts) had done already.

There was the prospect, if her son remained a bachelor. But her son had resolved to marry Carmina. What would be the result if she was weak enough to allow it?

There would be, not one result, but three results. Natural; Legal; Pecuniary.

The natural result would be—children.

The legal result (if only one of those children lived) would be the loss to Mrs. Gallilee and her daughters of the splendid fortune reserved for them in the Will, if Carmina died without leaving offspring.

The pecuniary result would be (adding the husband's income to the wife's) about eight thousand a year for the young married people.

And how much for a loan, applicable to the mother-in-law's creditors? Judging Carmina by the standard of herself—by what other standard do we really judge our fellow-creatures, no matter how clever we may be?—Mrs. Gallilee decided that not one farthing would be left to help her to pay debts, which were steadily increasing with every new concession that she made to the claims of society. Young Mrs. Ovid Vere, at the head of a household, would have the grand example of her other aunt before her eyes. Although her place of residence might not be a palace, she would be a poor creature indeed, if she failed to spend eight thousand a year, in the effort to be worthy of the social position of Lady Northlake. Add to these results of Ovid's contemplated marriage the loss of a thousand a year, secured to the guardian by the Will, while the ward remained under her care—and the statement of disaster would be complete. "We must leave this house, and submit to be Lady Northlake's poor relations—there is the price I pay for it, if Ovid and Carmina become man and wife."

She quietly laid aside her fan, as the thought in her completed itself in this form.

The trivial action, and the look which accompanied it, had a sinister meaning of their own, beyond the reach of words. And Ovid was already on the sea. And Teresa was far away in Italy.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck five; the punctual parlour-maid appeared with her mistress's customary cup of tea. Mrs. Gallilee asked for the governess. The servant answered that Miss Minerva was in her room.

"Where are the young ladies?"

"My master has taken them out for a walk."

"Have they had their music lesson?"

"Not yet, ma'am. Mr. Le Frank left word yesterday that he would come at six this evening."

"Does Mr. Gallilee know that?"

"I heard Miss Minerva tell my master, while I was helping the young ladies to get ready."

"Very well. Ask Miss Minerva to come here, and speak to me."

Miss Minerva sat at the open window of her bedroom, looking out vacantly at the backs of houses, in the street behind Fairfield Gardens.

The evil spirit was the dominant spirit in her again. She, too, was thinking of Ovid and Carmina. Her memory was busy with the parting scene on the previous day.

The more she thought of all that had happened in that short space of time, the more bitterly she reproached herself. Her one besetting weakness had openly degraded her, without so much as an attempt at resistance on her part. The fear of betraying herself if she took leave of the man she secretly loved, in the presence of his family, had forced her to ask a favour of Carmina, and to ask it under circumstances which might have led her rival to suspect the truth. Admitted to a private interview with Ovid, she had failed to control her agitation; and, worse still, in her ungovernable eagerness to produce a favourable impression on him at parting, she had promised—honestly promised, in that moment of impulse—to make Carmina's happiness her own peculiar care! Carmina, who had destroyed in a day the hope of years! Carmina, who had taken him away from her; who had clung round him when he ran upstairs, and had kissed him—fervently, shamelessly kissed him—before the servants in the hall!