"Hubert, go away at once!" said Laura's shaking but imperious voice. "I prefer that Mr. Helbeck should help me."

She had risen and was clinging to the rail of the dog-cart, while her face drooped so that Helbeck could not see it.

Mason stepped back with another oath, caught his foot in the reins, which he had carelessly left hanging, and fell on his knees on the gravel.

"No matter," said Helbeck, seeing that Laura paused in terror. "Give me your hand, Miss Fountain."

She slipped on the step in the darkness, and Helbeck caught her and set her on her feet.

"Go in, please. I will look after him."

She ran up the steps, then turned to look.

Mason, still swearing and muttering, had some difficulty in getting up. Helbeck stood by till he had risen and disentangled the reins.

"If you don't drive carefully down the park in the fog you'll come to harm," he said, shortly, as Mason mounted to his seat.

"That's none of your business," said Mason sulkily. "I brought my cousin all right—I suppose I can take myself. Now, come up, will you!"

He struck the pony savagely on the back with the reins. The tired animal started forward; the cart swayed again from side to side. Helbeck held his breath as it passed the gate-posts; but it shaved through, and soon nothing but the gallop of retreating hoofs could be heard through the night.

He mounted the steps, and shut and barred the outer door. When he entered the hall, Laura was sitting by the oak table, one hand supporting and hiding her face, the other hanging listlessly beside her.

She struggled to her feet as he came in. The hood of her blue cloak had fallen backwards, and her hair was in confusion round her face and neck. Her cheeks were very white, and there were tears in her eyes. She had never seemed to him so small, so childish, or so lovely.

He took no notice of her agitation or of her efforts to speak. He went to a tray of wine and biscuits that had been left by his orders on a side-table, and poured out some wine.

"No, I don't want it," she said, waving it away. "I don't know what to say——"

"You would do best to take it," he said, interrupting her.

His quiet insistence overcame her, and she drank it. It gave her back her voice and a little colour. She bit her lip, and looked after Helbeck as he walked away to the farther end of the hall to light a candle for her.

"Mr. Helbeck," she began as he came near. Then she gathered force. "You must—you ought to let me apologise."

"For what? I am afraid you had a disagreeable and dangerous drive home. Would you like me to wake one of the servants—Ellen, perhaps—and tell her to come to you?"

"Oh! you won't let me say what I ought to say," she exclaimed in despair. "That my cousin should have behaved like this—should have insulted you——"

"No! no!" he said with some peremptoriness. "Your cousin insulted you by daring to drive with you in such a state. That is all that matters to me—or should, I think, matter to you. Will you have your candle, and shall I call anyone?"

She shook her head and moved towards the staircase, he accompanying her. When he saw how feebly she walked, he was on the point of asking her to take his arm and let him help her to her room; but he refrained.

At the foot of the stairs she paused. Her "good-night" died in her throat as she offered her hand. Her dejection, her girlish shame, made her inexpressibly attractive to him; it was the first time he had ever seen her with all her arms thrown down. But he said nothing. He bade her good-night with a cheerful courtesy, and, returning to the hall fire, he stood beside it till he heard the distant shutting of her door.

Then he sank back into his chair and sat motionless, with knitted brows, for nearly an hour, staring into the caverns of the fire.



CHAPTER II

Laura awoke very early the following morning, but though the sun was bright outside, it brought no gaiety to her. The night before she had hurried her undressing, that she might bury herself in her pillow as quickly as possible, and force sleep to come to her. It was her natural instinct in the face of pain or humiliation. To escape from it by any summary method was always her first thought. "I will, I must go to sleep!" she had said to herself, in a miserable fury with herself and fate; and by the help of an intense exhaustion sleep came.

But in the morning she could do herself no more violence. Memory took its course, and a very disquieting course it was. She sat up in bed, with her hands round her knees, thinking not only of all the wretched and untoward incidents connected with the ball, but of the whole three weeks that had gone before it. What had she been doing, how had she been behaving, that this odious youth should have dared to treat her in such a way?

Fricka jumped up beside her, and Laura held the dog's nose against her cheek for comfort, while she confessed herself. Oh! what a fool she had been. Why, pray, had she been paying all these visits to the farm, and spending all these hours in this young fellow's company? Her quick intelligence unravelled all the doubtful skein. Yearning towards her kindred?—yes, there had been something of that. Recoil from the Bannisdale ways, an angry eagerness to scout them and fly them?—yes, that there had always been in plenty. But she dived deeper into her self-disgust, and brought up the real bottom truth, disagreeable and hateful as it was: mere excitement about a young man, as a young man—mere love of power over a great hulking fellow whom other people found unmanageable! Aye, there it was, in spite of all the glosses she had put upon it in her letters to Molly Friedland. All through, she had known perfectly well that Hubert Mason was not her equal; that on a number of subjects he had vulgar habits and vulgar ideas; that he often expressed his admiration for her in a way she ought to have resented. There were whole sides of him, indeed, that she shrank from exploring—that she wanted, nay, was determined, to know nothing about.

On the other hand, her young daring, for want of any better prey, had taken pleasure from the beginning in bringing him under her yoke. With her second visit to the farm she saw that she could make him her slave—that she had only to show him a little flattery, a little encouragement, and he would be as submissive and obedient to her as he was truculent and ill-tempered towards the rest of the world. And her vanity had actually plumed itself on so poor a prey! One excuse—yes, there was the one excuse! With her he had shown the side that she alone of his kindred could appreciate. But for the fear of Cousin Elizabeth she could have kept him hanging over the piano hour after hour while she played, in a passion of delight. Here was common ground. Nay, in native power he was her superior, though she, with her better musical training, could help and correct him in a thousand ways. She had the woman's passion for influence; and he seemed like wax in her hands. Why not help him to education and refinement, to the cultivation of the best that was in him? She would persuade Cousin Elizabeth—alter and amend his life for him—and Mr. Helbeck should see that there were better ways of dealing with people than by looking down upon them and despising them.

And now the very thought of these vain and silly dreams set her face aflame. Power over him? Let her only remember the humiliations, through which she had been dragged! All the dance came back upon her—the strange people, the strange young men, the strange, raftered room, with the noise of the mill-stream and the weir vibrating through it, and mingling with the chatter of the fiddles. But she had been determined to enjoy it, to give herself no airs, to forget with all her might that she was anyway different from these dale-folk, whose blood was hers. And with the older people all had been easy. With the elderly women especially, in their dark gowns and large Sunday collars, she had felt herself at home; again and again she had put herself under their wing, while in their silent way they turned their shrewd motherly eyes upon her, and took stock of her and every detail of her dress. And the old men, with their patriarchal manners and their broad speech—it had been all sweet and pleasant to her. "Noo, Miss, they tell ma as yo'.are Stephen Fountain's dowter. An I mut meak bold ter cum an speak to thee, for a knew 'un when he was a lile lad." Or "Yo'll gee ma your hand, Miss Fountain, for we're pleased and proud to git, yo' here. Yer fadther an mea gaed to skule togedther. My worrd, but he was parlish cliver! An I daursay as you teak afther him." Kind folk! with all the signs of their hard and simple life about them.

But the young men—how she had hated them!—whether they were shy, or whether they were bold; whether they romped with their sweethearts, and laughed at their own jokes like bulls of Bashan, or whether they wore their best clothes as though the garments burnt them, and danced the polka in a perspiring and anguished silence! No; she was not of their class, thank Heaven! She never wished to be. One man had asked her to put a pin in his collar; another had spilt a cup of coffee over her white dress; a third had confided to her that his young lady was "that luvin" to him in public, he had been fair obliged to bid her "keep hersel to hersel afore foak." The only partner with whom it had given her the smallest pleasure to dance had been the schoolmaster and principal host of the evening, a tall, sickly young man, who wore spectacles and talked through his nose. But he talked of things she understood, and he danced tolerably. Alas! there had come the rub. Hubert Mason had stood sentinel beside her during the early part of the evening. He had assumed the proudest and most exclusive airs with regard to her, and his chief aim seemed to be to impress upon her the prestige he enjoyed among his fellows as a football player and an athlete. In the end his patronage and his boasting had become insupportable to a girl of any spirit. And his dancing! It seemed to her that he held her before him like a shield, and then charged the room with her. She had found herself the centre of all eyes, her pretty dress torn, her hair about her ears. So that she had shaken him off—with too much impatience, no doubt, and too little consideration for the touchiness of his temper. And then, what stormy looks, what mutterings, what disappearances into the refreshment-room—and, finally, what, fierce jealousy of the schoolmaster! Laura awoke at last to the disagreeable fact that she had to drive home with him—and he had already made her ridiculous. Even Polly—the bedizened Polly—looked grave, and there had been angry conferences between her and her brother.

Then came the departure, Laura by this time full of terrors, but not knowing what to do, nor how else she was to get home. And, oh! that grinning band of youths round the door—Mason's triumphant leap into the cart and boisterous farewell to his friends—and that first perilous moment, when the pony had almost backed into the mill stream, and was only set right again by half a dozen stalwart arms, amid the laughter of the street!

As for the wild drive through the dark, she shivered again, half with anger, half with terror, as she thought of it. How had they ever got home? She could not tell. He was drunk, of course. He seemed to her to have driven into everything and over everything, abusing the schoolmaster and Mr. Helbeck and his mother all the time, and turning upon her when she answered him, or showed any terror of what might happen to them, now with fury, and now with attempts at love-making which it had taken all her power over him to quell.

Their rush up the park had been like the ride of the wild horseman. Every moment she had expected to be in the river. And with the approach of the house he had grown wilder and more unmanageable than before. "Dang it! let's wake up the old Papist!" he had said to her when she had tried to stop his singing. "What harm'll it do?"

As for the shame of their arrival, the very thought of Mr. Helbeck standing silent on the steps as they approached, of Hubert's behaviour, of her host's manner to her in the hall, made her shut her eyes and hide her red face against Fricka for sympathy. How was she ever to meet Mr. Helbeck again, to hold her own against him any more!

* * * * *

An hour later Laura, very carefully dressed, and holding herself very erect, entered Augustina's room.

"Oh, Laura!" cried Mrs. Fountain, as the door opened. She was very flushed, and she stared from her bed at her stepdaughter in an agitated silence.

Laura stopped short.

"Well, what is it, Augustina? What have you heard?"

"Laura! how can you do such things!"

And Augustina, who already had her breakfast beside her, raised her handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry. Laura threw up her head and walked away to a far window, where she turned and confronted Mrs. Fountain.

"Well, he has been quick in telling you," she said, in a low but fierce voice.

"He? What do you mean? My brother? As if he had said a word! I don't believe he ever would. But Mrs. Denton heard it all."

"Mrs. Denton?" said Laura. "Mrs. Denton? What on earth had she to do with it?"

"She heard you drive up. You know her room looks on the front."

"And she listened? sly old creature!" said Laura, recovering herself. "Well, it can't be helped. If she heard, she heard, and whatever I may feel, I'm not going to apologise to Mrs. Denton."

"But, Laura—Laura—was he——"

Augustina could not finish the odious question.

"I suppose he was," said Laura bitterly. "It seems to be the natural thing for young men of that sort."

"Laura, do come here."

Laura came unwillingly, and Augustina took her hands and looked up at her.

"And, Laura, he was abominably rude to Alan!"

"Yes, he was, and I'm very sorry," said the girl slowly. "But it can't be helped, and it's no good making yourself miserable, Augustina."

"Miserable? I? It's you, Laura, who look miserable. I never saw you look so white and dragged. You must never, never see him again."

The girl's obstinacy awoke in a moment.

"I don't know that I shall promise that, Augustina."

"Oh, Laura! as if you could wish to," said Augustina, in tears.

"I can't give up my father's people," said the girl stiffly. "But he shall never annoy Mr. Helbeck again, I promise you that, Augustina."

"Oh! you did look so nice, Laura, and your dress was so pretty!"

Laura laughed, rather grimly.

"There's not much of it left this morning," she said. "However, as one of the gentlemen who kindly helped to ruin it said last night, 'Lor, bless yer, it'll wesh!'"

* * * * *

After breakfast Laura found herself in the drawing-room, looking through an open window at the spring green in a very strained and irritable mood.

"I would not begin if I could not go on," she said to herself with disdain. But her lip trembled.

So Mr. Helbeck had taken offence, after all. Hardly a word at breakfast, except such as the briefest, barest civility required. And he was going away, it appeared, for three days, perhaps a week, on business. If he had given her the slightest opening, she had meant to master her pride sufficiently to renew her apologies and ask his advice, subject, of course, to her own final judgment as to what kindred and kindness might require of her. But he had given her no opening, and the subject was not, apparently, to be renewed between them.

She might have asked him, too, to curb Mrs. Denton's tongue. But no, it was not to be. Very well. The girl drew her small frame together and prepared, as no one thought for or befriended her, to think for and befriend herself.

She passed the next few days in some depression. Mr. Helbeck was absent. Augustina was very ailing and querulous, and Laura was made to feel that it was her fault. Not a word of regret or apology came from Browhead Farm.

Meanwhile Mrs. Denton had apparently made her niece understand that there was to be no more dallying with Miss Fountain. Whenever she and Laura met, Ellen lowered her head and ran. Laura found that the girl was not allowed to wait upon her personally any more. Meanwhile the housekeeper herself passed Miss Fountain with a manner and a silence which were in themselves an insult.

And two days after Helbeck's departure, Laura was crossing the hall towards tea-time, when she saw Mrs. Denton admitting one of the Sisters from the orphanage. It was the Reverend Mother herself, the portly shrewd-faced woman who had wished Mr. Helbeck a good wife. Laura passed her, and the nun saluted her coldly. "Dear me!—you shall have Augustina to yourself, my good friend," thought Miss Fountain. "Don't be afraid." And she turned into the garden.

An hour later she came back. As she opened the door in the old wall she saw the Sister on the steps, talking with Mrs. Denton. At sight of her they parted. The nun drew her long black cloak about her, ran down the steps, and hurried away.

And indoors, Laura could not imagine what had happened to her stepmother. Augustina was clearly excited, yet she would say nothing. Her restlessness was incessant, and at intervals there were furtive tears. Once or twice she looked at Laura with the most tragic eyes, but as soon as Laura approached her she would hastily bury herself in her newspaper, or begin counting the stitches of her knitting.

At last, after luncheon, Mrs. Fountain suddenly threw down her work with a sigh that shook her small person from top to toe.

"I wish I knew what was wrong with you," said Laura, coming up behind her, and dropping a pair of soft hands on her shoulders. "Shall I get you your new tonic?"

"No!" said Augustina pettishly; then, with a rush of words that she could not repress:

"Laura, you must—you positively must give up that young man."

Laura came round and seated herself on the fender stool in front of her stepmother.

"Oh! so that's it. Has anybody else been gossiping?"

"I do wish you wouldn't—you wouldn't take things so coolly!" cried Augustina. "I tell you, the least trifle is enough to do a young girl of your age harm. Your father would have been so annoyed."

"I don't think so," said Laura quietly. "But who is it now? The Reverend Mother?"

Augustina hesitated. She had been recommended to keep things to herself. But she had no will to set against Laura's, and she was, in fact, bursting with suppressed remonstrance.

"It doesn't matter, my dear. One never knows where a story of that kind will go to. That's just what girls don't remember."

"Who told a story, and what? I didn't see the Reverend Mother at the dance."

"Laura! But you never thought, my dear—you never knew—that there was a cousin of Father Bowles' there—the man who keeps that little Catholic shop in Market Street. That's what comes, you see, of going to parties with people beneath you."

"Oh! a cousin of Father Bowles was there?" said Laura slowly. "Well, did he make a pretty tale?"

"Laura! you are the most provoking—You don't the least understand what people think. How could you go with him when everybody remonstrated?"

"Nobody remonstrated," said the girl sharply.

"His sister begged you not to go."

"His sister did nothing of the kind. She was staying the night in the village, and there was literally nothing for me to do but come home with Hubert or to throw myself on some stranger."

"And such stories as one hears about this dreadful young man!" cried Augustina.

"I dare say. There are always stories."

"I couldn't even tell you what they are about!" said Augustina. "Your father would certainly have forbidden it altogether."

There was a silence. Laura held her head as high as ever. She was, in fact, in a fever of contradiction and resentment, and the interference of people like Mrs. Denton and the Sisters was fast bringing about Mason's forgiveness. Naturally, she was likely to hear the worst of him in that house. What Helbeck, or what dependent on a Helbeck, would give him the benefit of any doubt?

Augustina knitted with all her might for a few minutes, and then looked up.

"Don't you think," she said, with a timid change of tone—"don't you think, dear, you might go to Cambridge for a few weeks? I am sure the Friedlands would take you in. You would come in for all the parties, and—and you needn't trouble about me. Sister Angela's niece could come and stay here for a few weeks. The Reverend Mother told me so."

Laura rose.

"Sister Angela suggested that? Thank you, I won't have my plans settled for me by Sister Angela. If you and Mr. Helbeck want to turn me out, why, of course I shall go."

Augustina held out her hands in terror at the girl's attitude and voice.

"Laura, don't say such things! As if you weren't an angel to me! As if I could bear the thought of anybody else!"

A quiver ran through Laura's features. "Well, then, don't bear it," she said, kneeling down again beside her stepmother. "You look quite ill and excited, Augustina. I think we'll keep the Reverend Mother out in future. Won't you lie down and let me cover you up?"

So it ended for the time—with physical weakness on Augustina's part, and caresses on Laura's.

But when she was alone, Miss Fountain sat down and tried to think things out.

"What are the Sisters meddling for? Do they find me in their way? I'm flattered! I wish I was. Well!—is drunkenness the worst thing in the world?" she asked herself deliberately. "Of course, if it goes beyond a certain point it is like madness—you must keep out of its way, for your own sake. But papa used to say there were many things a great deal worse. So there are!—meanness, and shuffling with truth for the sake of your soul. As for the other tales, I don't believe them. But if I did, I am not going to marry him!"

She felt herself very wise. In truth, as Stephen Fountain had realised with some anxiety before his death, among Laura's many ignorances, none was so complete or so dangerous as her ignorance of all the ugly ground facts that are strewn round us, for the stumbling of mankind. She was as determined not to know them, as he was invincibly shy of telling them.

For the rest, her reflections represented, no doubt, many dicta that in the course of her young life she had heard from her father. To Stephen Fountain the whole Christian doctrine of sin was "the enemy"; and the mystical hatred of certain actions and habits, as such, was the fount of half the world's unreason.

The following day it was Father Bowles' turn. He came over in what seemed to be his softest and most catlike mood, rubbing his hands over his chest in a constant glee at his own jokes. He was amiability itself to Laura. But he, too, had his twenty minutes alone with Augustina; and afterwards Mrs. Fountain ventured once more to speak to Laura of change and amusement. Miss Fountain smiled, and replied as before—that, in the first place she had no invitations, and in the next, she had no dresses. But again, as before, if Mr. Helbeck should express a wish that her visit to Bannisdale should come to an end, that would be another matter.

* * * * *

Next morning Laura was taking a walk in the park when a letter was brought to her by old Wilson, the groom, cowman, and general factotum.

She took it to a sheltered nook by the riverside and read it. It was from Hubert Mason, in his best commercial hand, and it ran as follows:

"Dear Miss Fountain,—You would not allow me, I know, to call you Cousin Laura any more, so I don't attempt it. And of course I don't deserve it—nor that you should ever shake hands with me again. I can't get over thinking of what I've done. Mother and Polly will tell you that I have hardly slept at nights—for of course you won't believe me. How I can have been such a blackguard I don't understand. I must have taken too much. All I know is it didn't seem much, and but for the agitation of my mind, I don't believe anything would ever have gone wrong. But I couldn't bear to see you dancing with that man and despising me. And there it is—I can never get over it, and you will never forgive me. I feel I can't stay here any more, and mother has consented at last to let me have some money on the farm. If I could just see you before I go, to say good-bye, and ask your pardon, there would be a better chance for me. I can't come to Mr. Helbeck's house, of course, and I don't suppose you would come here. I shall be coming home from Kirby Whardale fair to-morrow night, and shall be crossing the little bridge in the park—upper end—some time between eight and nine. But I know you won't be there. I can't expect it, and I feel it pretty badly, I can tell you. I did hope I might have become something better through knowing you. Whatever you may think of me I am always

"Your respectful and humble cousin,

"HUBERT MASON."

"Well—upon my word!" said Laura. She threw the letter on to the grass beside her, and sat, with her hands round her knees, staring at the river, in a sparkle of anger and amazement.

What audacity!—to expect her to steal out at night—in the dusk, anyway—to meet him—him! She fed her wrath on the imagination of all the details that would belong to such an escapade. It would be after supper, of course, in the fast lengthening twilight. Helbeck and his sister would be in the drawing-room—for Mr. Helbeck was expected home on the following day—and she might perfectly well leave them, as she often did, to talk their little Catholic gossip by themselves, and then slip out by the chapel passage and door, through the old garden, to the gate in the wall above the river bank, and so to the road that led along the Greet through the upper end of the park. Nothing, of course, could be easier—nothing.

Merely to think of it, for a girl of Laura's temperament, was already bit by bit to incline to it. She began to turn it over, to taste the adventure of it—to talk very fast to Fricka, under her breath, with little gusts of laughter. And no doubt there was something mollifying in the boy's humble expressions. As for his sleepless nights—how salutary! how very salutary! Only the nail must be driven in deeper—must be turned in the wound.

It would need a vast amount of severity, perhaps, to undo the effects of her mere obedience to his call—supposing she made up her mind to obey it. Well! she would be quite equal to severity. She would speak very plain things to him—very plain things indeed. It was her first serious adventure with any of these big, foolish, troublesome creatures of the male sex, and she rose to it much as Helbeck might have risen to the playing of a salmon in the Greet. Yes! he should say good-bye to her, let priests and nuns talk what scandal they pleased. Yes! he should go on his way forgiven and admonished—if he wished it—for kindred's sake.

Her cheek burned, her heart beat fast. He and she were of one blood—both of them ill-regarded by aristocrats and holy Romans. As for him, he was going to ruin at home; and there was in him this strange, artistic gift to be thought for and rescued. He had all the faults of the young cub. Was he to be wholly disowned for that? Was she to cast him off for ever at the mere bidding of the Helbecks and their friends?

He would never, of course, be allowed to enter the Bannisdale drawing-room, and she had no intention at present of going to Browhead Farm. Well, then, under the skies and the clouds! A gracious pardon, an appropriate lecture—and a short farewell.

* * * * *

All that day and the next Laura gave herself to her whim. She was perfectly conscious, meanwhile, that it was a reckless and a wilful thing that she was planning. She liked it none the less for that. In fact, the scheme was the final crystallisation of all that bitterness of mood that had poisoned and tormented her ever since her first coming to Bannisdale. And it gave her for the moment the morbid pleasure that all angry people get from letting loose the angry word or act.

Meanwhile she became more and more conscious of a certain network of blame and discussion that seemed to be closing about her and her actions. It showed itself by a number of small signs. When she went into Whinthorpe to shop for Augustina she fancied that the assistants in the shop, and even the portly draper himself, looked at her with a sly curiosity. The girl's sore pride grew more unmanageable hour by hour. If there was some ill-natured gossip about her, going the round in the town and the neighbourhood, had she—till now—given the least shadow of excuse for it? Not the least shade of a shadow!

* * * * *

Mr. Helbeck, his sister, and Laura were in the drawing-room after supper. Laura had been observing Mrs. Fountain closely.

"She is longing to have her talk with him," thought the girl; "and she shall have it—as much as she likes."

The shutters were not yet closed, and the room, with its crackling logs, was filled with a gentle mingled light. The sun, indeed, was gone, but the west still glowed, and the tall larches in the front enclosure stood black against a golden dome of sky. Laura rose and left the room. As she opened the door she caught Augustina's quick look of relief and the drop of the knitting-needles.

Fricka was safely prisoned upstairs. Laura slipped on a hat and a dark cloak that were hanging in the hall, and ran down the passage leading to the chapel. The heavy seventeenth-century door at the end of it took her some trouble to open without noise, but it was done at last, and she was in the old garden.

Her little figure in its cloak, among the dark yews, was hardly to be seen in the dusk. The garden was silence itself, and the gate in the wall was open. Once on the road beside the river she could hardly restrain herself from running, so keen was the air, so free and wide the evening solitude. All things were at peace; nothing moved but a few birds and the tiniest intermittent breeze. Overhead, great thunderclouds kept the sunset; beneath, the blues of the evening were all interwoven with rose; so, too, were the wood and sky reflections in the gently moving water. In some of the pools the trout were still lazily rising; pigeons and homing rooks were slowly passing through the clear space that lay between the tree-tops and the just emerging stars; and once Laura stopped, holding her breath, thinking that she saw through the dusk the blue flash of a kingfisher making for a nest she knew. Even in this dimmed light the trees had the May magnificence—all but the oaks, which still dreamed of a best to come. Here and there a few tufts of primroses, on the bosom of the crag above the river, lonely and self-sufficing, like all loveliest things, starred the dimness of the rock.

Laura's feet danced beneath her; the evening beauty and her passionate response flowed as it were into each other, made one beating pulse; never, in spite of qualms and angers, had she been more physically happy, more alive. She passed the seat where she and Helbeck had lingered on Easter Sunday; then she struck into a path high above the river, under spreading oaks; and presently a little bridge came in sight, with some steps in the crag leading down to it.

At the near end of the bridge, thrown out into the river a little way for the convenience of fishermen, was a small wooden platform, with a railing, which held a seat. The seat was well hidden under the trees and bank, and Laura settled herself there.

She had hardly waited five minutes, absorbed in the sheer pleasure of the rippling river and the soft air, when she heard steps approaching the bank. Looking up, she saw Mason's figure against the sky. He paused at the top of the rocky staircase, to scan the bridge and its approaches. Not seeing her, he threw up his hand, with some exclamation that she could not hear.

She smiled and rose.

As her small form became visible between the paleness of the wooden platform and a luminous patch in the river, she heard a cry, then a hurrying down the rock steps.

He stopped about a yard from her. She did not offer her hand, and after an instant's pause, during which his eyes tried to search her face in the darkness, he took off his hat and drew his hand across his brow with a deep breath.

"I never thought you'd come," he said huskily.

"Well, certainly you had no business to ask me! And I can only stay a very few minutes. Suppose you sit down there."

She pointed to one of the rock steps, while she settled herself again on the seat, some little distance away from him.

Then there was an awkward silence, which Laura took no trouble to break. Mason broke it at last in desperation.

"You know that I'm an awful hand at saying anything, Miss—Miss Fountain. I can't—so it's no good. But I've got my lesson. I've had a pretty rough time of it, I can tell you, since last week."

"You behaved about as badly as you could—didn't you?" said Laura's soft yet cutting voice out of the dark.

Mason fidgeted.

"I can't make it no better," he said at last. "There's no saying I can, for I can't. And if I did give you excuses, you'd not believe 'em. There was a devil got hold of me that evening—that's the truth on't. And it was only a glass or two I took. Well, there!—I'd have cut my hand off sooner."

His tone of miserable humility began to affect her rather strangely. It was not so easy to drive in the nail.

"You needn't be so repentant," she said, with a little shrinking laugh. "One has to forget—everything—in good time. You've given Whinthorpe people something to talk about at my expense—for which I am not at all obliged to you. You nearly killed me, which doesn't matter. And you behaved disgracefully to Mr. Helbeck. But it's done—and now you've got to make up—somehow."

"Has he made you pay for it—since?" said Mason eagerly.

"He? Mr. Helbeck?" She laughed. Then she added, with all the severity she could muster, "He treated me in a most kind and gentlemanly way—if you want to know. The great pity is that you—and Cousin Elizabeth—understand nothing at all about him."

He groaned. She could hear his feet restlessly moving.

"Well—and now you are going to Froswick," she resumed. "What are you going to do there?"

"There's an uncle of mine in one of the shipbuilding yards there. He's got leave to take me into the fitting department. If I suit he'll get me into the office. It's what I've wanted this two years."

"Well, now you've got it," she said impatiently, "don't be dismal. You have your chance."

"Yes, and I don't care a haporth about it," he said, with sudden energy, throwing his head up and bringing his fist down on his knee.

She felt her power, and liked it. But she hurried to answer:

"Oh! yes you do! If you're a man, you must. You'll learn a lot of new things—you'll keep straight, because you'll have plenty to do. Why, it will 'hatch you over again, and hatch, you different,' as somebody said. You'll see."

He looked at her, trying hard to catch her expression in the dusk.

"And if I do come back different, perhaps—perhaps—soom day you'll not be ashamed to be seen wi' me? Look here, Miss Laura. From the first time I set eyes on you—from that day you came up—that Sunday—I haven't been able to settle to a thing. I felt, right enough, I wasn't fit to speak to you. And yet I'm your—well, your kith and kin, doan't you see? There can't be no such tremendous gap atween us as all that. If I can just manage myself a bit, and find the work that suits me, and get away from these fellows here, and this beastly farm——"

"Ah!—have you been quarrelling with Daffady all day?"

She looked for him to fly out. But he only stared, and then turned away.

"O Lord! what's the good of talking?" he said, with an accent that startled her.

She rose from her seat.

"Are you sorry I came to talk to you? You didn't deserve it—did you?"

Her voice was the pearliest, most musical, and yet most distant of things. He rose, too—held by it.

"And now you must just go and make a man of yourself. That's what you have to do—you see? I wish papa was alive. He'd tell you how—I can't. But if you forget your music, it'll be a sin—and if you send me your song to write out for you, I'll do it. And tell Polly I'll come and see her again some day. Now good-night! They'll be locking up if I don't hurry home."

But he stood on the step, barring the way.

"I say, give me something to take with me," he said hoarsely. "What's that in your hat?"

"In my hat?" she said, laughing—(but if there had been light he would have seen that her lips had paled). "Why, a bunch of buttercups. I bought them at Whinthorpe yesterday."

"Give me one," he said.

"Give you a sham buttercup? What nonsense!"

"It's better than nothing," he said doggedly, and he held out his hand.

She hesitated; then she took off her hat and quietly loosened one of the flowers. Her golden hair shone in the dimness. Mason never took his eyes off her little head. He was keeping a grip on himself that was taxing a whole new set of powers—straining the lad's unripe nature in wholly new ways.

She put the flower in his hand.

"There; now we're friends again, aren't we? Let me pass, please—and good-night!"

He moved to one side, blindly fighting with the impulse to throw his powerful arms round her and keep her there, or carry her across the bridge—at his pleasure.

But her light fearlessness mastered him. He let her go; he watched her figure on the steps, against the moonlight between the oaks overhead.

"Good-night!" she dropped again, already far away—far above him.

The young man felt a sob in his throat.

"My God! I shan't ever see her again," he said to himself in a sudden terror. "She is going to that house—to that man!"

For the first time a wild jealousy of Helbeck awoke in him. He rushed across the bridge, dropped on a stone half-way up the further bank, then strained his eyes across the river.

... Yes, there she passed, a swift moving whiteness, among the great trees that stood like watchmen along the high edge of the water. Below him flowed the stream, a gulf of darkness, rent here and there by sheets and jags of silver. And she, that pale wraith—across it—far away—was flitting from his ken.

All the fountains of the youth's nature surged up in one great outcry and confusion. He thought of his boyish loves and sensualities—of the girls who had provoked them—of some of the ugly facts connected with them. A great astonishment, a great sickening, came upon him. He felt the burden of the flesh, the struggle of the spirit. And through it all, the maddest and most covetous yearning!—welling up through schemes and hopes, that like the moonlit ripples on the Greet, dissolved as fast as they took shape.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Laura went quickly home. A new tenderness, a new remorse towards the "cub" was in the girl's mind. Ought she to have gone? Had she been kind? Oh! she would be his friend and good angel—without any nonsense, of course.

She hurried through the trees and along the dimly gleaming path. Suddenly she perceived in the distance the sparkle of a lantern.

How vexatious! Was there no escape for her? She looked in some trouble at the climbing woods above, at the steep bank below.

Ah! well, her hat was large, and hid her face. And her dress was all covered by her cloak. She hastened on.

It was a man—an old man—carrying a bundle and a lantern. He seemed to waver and stop as she approached him, and at the actual moment of her passing him, to her amazement, he suddenly threw himself against one of the trees on the mountain side of the path, and his lantern showed her his face for an instant—a white face, stricken with—fear, was it? or what?

Fright gained upon herself. She ran on, and as she ran it seemed to her that she heard something fall with a clang, and, afterwards, a cry. She looked back. The old man was still there, erect, but his light was gone.

Well, no doubt he had dropped his lantern. Let him light it again. It was no concern, of hers.

Here was the door in the wall. It opened to her touch. She glided in—across the garden—found the chapel door ajar, and in a few more seconds was safe in her own room.



CHAPTER III

Laura was standing before her looking-glass straightening the curls that her rapid walk had disarranged, when her attention was caught by certain unusual sounds in the house. There was a hurrying of distant feet—calls, as though from the kitchen region—and lastly, the deep voice of Mr. Helbeck. Miss Fountain paused, brush in hand, wondering what had happened.

A noise of fluttering skirts, and a cry for "Laura!"—Miss Fountain opened her door, and saw Augustina, who never ran, hurrying as fast as her feebleness would let her, towards her stepdaughter.

"Laura!—where is my sal volatile? You gave me some yesterday, you remember, for my headache. There's somebody ill, downstairs."

She paused for breath.

"Here it is," said Laura, finding the bottle, and bringing it. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, my dear, such an adventure! There's an old man fainted in the kitchen. He came to the back door to ask for a light for his lantern. Mrs. Denton says he was shaking all over when she first saw him, and as white as her apron. He told her he'd seen the ghost! 'I've often heard tell o' the Bannisdale Lady,' he said, 'an now I've seen her!' She asked him to sit down a minute to rest himself, and he fainted straight away. He's that old Scarsbrook, you know, whose wife does our washing. They live in that cottage by the weir, the other end of the park. I must go! Mrs. Denton's giving him some brandy—and Alan's gone down. Isn't it an extraordinary thing?"

"Very," said Laura, accompanying her stepmother along the passage. "What did he see?"

She paused, laying a restraining hand on Augustina's arm—cudgelling her brains the while. Yes! she could remember now a few contemptuous remarks of Mr. Helbeck to Father Leadham on the subject of a ghost story that had sprung up during the Squire's memory in connection with the park and the house—a quite modern story, according to Helbeck, turning on the common motive of a gypsy woman and her curse, started some forty years before this date, with a local success not a little offensive, apparently, to the owner of Bannisdale.

"What did he see?" repeated the girl. "Don't hurry, Augustina; you know the doctor told you not. Shall I take the sal volatile?"

"Oh, no!—they want me." In any matter of doctoring small or great, Augustina had the happiest sense of her own importance. "I don't know what he saw exactly. It was a lady, he says—he knew it was, by the hat and the walk. She was all in black—with 'a Dolly Varden hat'—fancy the old fellow!—that hid her face—and a little white hand, that shot out sparks as he came up to her! Did you ever hear such, a tale? Now, Laura, I'm all right. Let me go. Come when you like."

Augustina hurried off; Laura was left standing pensive in the passage.

"H'm, that's unlucky," she said to herself.

Then she looked down at her right hand. An old-fashioned diamond ring with a large centre stone, which had been her mother's, shone on the third finger. With an involuntary smile, she drew off the ring, and went back to her room.

"What's to be done now?" she thought, as she put the ring in a drawer. "Shall I go down and explain—say I was out for a stroll?"—She shook her head.—"Won't do now—I should have had more presence of mind a minute ago. Augustina would suspect a hundred things. It's really dramatic. Shall I go down? He didn't see my face—no, that I'll answer for! Here's for it!"

She pulled out the golden mass of her hair till it made a denser frame than usual round her brow, looked at her white dress—shook her head dubiously—laughed at her own flushed face in the glass, and calmly went downstairs.

She found an anxious group in the great bare servants' hall. The old man, supported by pillows, was stretched on a wooden settle, with Helbeck, Augustina, and Mrs. Denton standing by. The first things she saw were the old peasant's closed eyes and pallid face—then Helbeck's grave and puzzled countenance above him. The Squire turned at Miss Fountain's step. Did she imagine it—or was there a peculiar sharpness in his swift glance?

Mrs. Denton had just been administering a second dose of brandy, and was apparently in the midst of her own report to her master of Scarsbrook's story.

"'I wor just aboot to pass her,' he said, 'when I nawticed 'at her feet made noa noise. She keaem glidin—an glidin—an my hair stood reet oop—it lifted t'whole top o' my yed. An she gaed passt me like a puff o' wind—as cauld as ice—an I wor mair deed nor alive. An I luked afther her, an she vanisht i' th' varra middle o' t' path. An my leet went oot—an I durstn't ha gane on, if it wor iver so—so I juist crawled back tet hoose——'"

"The door in the wall!" thought Laura. "He didn't know it was there."

She had remained in the background while Mrs. Denton was speaking, but now she approached the settle. Mrs. Denton threw a sour look at her, and flounced out of her way. Helbeck silently made room for her. As she passed him, she felt instinctively that his distant politeness had become something more pronounced. He left her questions to Augustina to answer, and himself thrust his hands into his pockets and moved away.

"Have you sent for anyone?" said Laura to Mrs. Fountain.

"Yes. Wilson's gone in the pony cart for the wife. And if he doesn't come round by the time she gets here—some one will have to go for the doctor, Alan?"

She looked round vaguely.

"Of course. Wilson must go on," said Helbeck from the distance. "Or I'll go myself."

"But he is coming round," said Laura, pointing.

"If yo'll nobbut move oot o' t' way, Miss, we'll be able to get at 'im," said Mrs. Denton sharply. Laura hastily obeyed her. The housekeeper brought more brandy; then signs of returning force grew stronger, and by the time the wife appeared the old fellow was feebly beginning to move and look about him.

Amid the torrent of lamentations, questions, and hypotheses that the wife poured forth, Laura withdrew into the background. But she could not prevail on herself to go. Daring or excitement held her there, till the old man should be quite himself again.

He struggled to his feet at last, and said, with a long sigh that was still half a shudder, "Aye—noo I'll goa home—Lisbeth."

He was a piteous spectacle as he stood there, still trembling through all his stunted frame, his wrinkled face drawn and bloodless, his grey hair in a tragic confusion. Suddenly, as he looked at his wife, he said with a clear solemnity, "Lisbeth—I ha' got my death warrant!"

"Don't say any such thing, Scarsbrook," said Helbeck, coming forward to support him. "You know I don't believe in this ghost business—and never did. You saw some stranger in the park—and she passed you too quickly for you to see where she went to. You may be sure that'll turn out to be the truth. You remember—it's a public path—anybody might be there. Just try and take that view of it—and don't fret, for your wife's sake. We'll make inquiries, and I'll come and see you to-morrow. And as for death warrants, we're all in God's care, you know—don't forget that."

He smiled with a kindly concern and pity on the old man. But Scarsbrook shook his head.

"It wur t' Bannisdale Lady," he repeated; "I've often heerd on her—often—and noo I've seen her."

"Well, to-morrow you'll be quite proud of it," said Helbeck cheerfully. "Come, and let me put you into the cart. I think, if we make a comfortable seat for you, you'll be fit to drive home now."

Supported by the Squire's strong arm on one side, and his wife on the other, Scarsbrook managed to hobble down the long passage leading to the door in the inner courtyard, where the pony cart was standing. It was evident that his perceptions were still wholly dazed. He had not recognised or spoken to anyone in the room but the Squire—not even to his old crony Mrs. Denton.

Laura drew a long breath.

"Augustina, do go to bed," she said, going up to her stepmother—"or you'll be ill next."

Augustina allowed herself to be led upstairs. But it was long before she would let her stepdaughter leave her. She was full of supernatural terrors and excitements, and must talk about all the former appearances of the ghost—the stories that used to be told in her childhood—the new or startling details in the old man's version, and so forth. "What could he have meant by the light on the hand?" she said wondering. "I never heard of that before. And she used always to be in grey; and now he says that she had a black dress from top to toe."

"Their wardrobes are so limited—poor damp, sloppy things!" said Laura flippantly, as she brushed her stepmother's hair. "Do you suppose this nonsense will be all over the country-side to-morrow, Augustina?"

"What do you really think he saw, Laura?" cried Mrs. Fountain, wavering between doubt and belief.

"Goodness!—don't ask me." Miss Fountain shrugged her small shoulders. "I don't keep a family ghost."

* * * * *

When at last Augustina had been settled in bed, and persuaded to take some of her sleeping medicine, Laura was bidding her good-night, when Mrs. Fountain said, "Oh! I forgot, Laura—there was a letter brought in for you from the post-office, by Wilson this afternoon—he gave it to Mrs. Denton, and she forgot it till after dinner——"

"Of course—because it was mine," said Laura vindictively. "Where is it?"

"On the drawing-room chimney-piece."

"All right. I'll go for it. But I shall be disturbing Mr. Helbeck."

"Oh! no—it's much too late. Alan will have gone to his study."

Miss Fountain stood a moment outside her stepmother's door, consulting her watch.

For she was anxious to get her letter, and not at all anxious to fall in with Mr. Helbeck. At least, so she would have explained herself had anyone questioned her. In fact, her wishes and intentions were in tumultuous confusion. All the time that she was waiting on Augustina, her brain, her pulse was racing. In the added touch of stiffness which she had observed in Helbeck's manner, she easily divined the result of that conversation he had no doubt held with Augustina after dinner, while she was by the river. Did he think even worse of her than he had before? Well!—if he and Augustina could do without her, let them send her away—by all manner of means! She had her own friends, her own money, was in all respects her own mistress, and only asked to be allowed to lead her life as she pleased.

Nevertheless—as she crossed the darkness of the hall, with her candle in her hand—Laura Fountain was very near indeed to a fit of wild weeping. During the months following her father's death, these agonies of crying had come upon her night after night—unseen by any human being. She felt now the approach of an old enemy and struggled with it. "One mustn't have this excitement every night!" she said to herself, half mocking. "No nerves would stand it."

A light under the library door. Well and good. How—she wondered—did he occupy himself there, through so many solitary hours? Once or twice she had heard him come upstairs to bed, and never before one or two o'clock.

Suddenly she stood abashed. She had thrown open the drawing-room door, and the room lay before her, almost in darkness. One dim lamp still burned at the further end, and in the middle of the room stood Mr. Helbeck, arrested in his walk to and fro, and the picture of astonishment.

Laura drew back in real discomfiture. "Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Helbeck! I had no notion that anyone was still here."

"Is there anything I can do for you?" he said advancing.

"Augustina told me there was a letter for me this evening."

"Of course. It is here on the mantelpiece. I ought to have remembered it."

He took up the letter and held it towards her. Then suddenly he paused, and sharply withdrawing it, he placed it on a table beside him, and laid his hand upon it. She saw a flash of quick resolution in his face, and her own pulses gave a throb.

"Miss Fountain, will you excuse my detaining you for a moment? I have been thinking much about this old man's story, and the possible explanation of it. It struck me in a very singular way. As you know, I have never paid much attention to the ghost story here—we have never before had a testimony so direct. Is it possible—that you might throw some light upon it? You left us, you remember, after dinner. Did you by chance go into the garden?—the evening was tempting, I think. If so, your memory might possibly recall to you some—slight thing."

"Yes," she said, after a moment's hesitation, "I did go into the garden."

His eye gleamed. He came a step nearer.

"Did you see or hear anything—to explain what happened?"

She did not answer for a moment. She made a vague movement, as though to recover her letter—looked curiously into a glass case that stood beside her, containing a few Stuart relics and autographs. Then, with absolute self-possession, she turned and confronted him, one hand resting on the glass case.

"Yes; I can explain it all. I was the ghost!"

There was a moment's silence. A smile—a smile that she winced under, showed itself on Helbeck's lip.

"I imagined as much," he said quietly.

She stood there, torn by different impulses. Then a passion of annoyance with herself, and anger with him, descended on her.

"Now perhaps you would like to know why I concealed it?" she said, with all the dignity she could command. "Simply, because I had gone out to meet and say good-bye to a person—who is my relation—whom I cannot meet in this house, and against whom there is here an unreasonable—" She hesitated; then resumed, leaning obstinately on the words—"Yes! take it all in all, it is an unreasonable prejudice."

"You mean Mr. Hubert Mason?"

She nodded.

"You think it an unreasonable prejudice after what happened the other night?"

She wavered.

"I don't want to defend what happened the other night," she said, while her voice shook.

Helbeck observed her carefully. There was a great decision in his manner, and at the same time a fine courtesy.

"You knew, then, that he was to be in the park? Forgive my questions. They are not mere curiosity."

"Perhaps not," she said indifferently. "But I think I have told you all that needs to be told. May I have my letter?"

She stepped forward.

"One moment. I wonder, Miss Fountain,"—he chose his words slowly—"if I could make you understand my position. It is this. My sister brings a young lady, her stepdaughter, to stay under my roof. That young lady happens to be connected with a family in this neighbourhood, which is already well known to me. For some of its members I have nothing but respect—about one I happen to have a strong opinion. I have reasons, for my opinion. I imagine that very few people of any way of thinking would hold me either unreasonable or prejudiced in the matter. Naturally, it gives me some concern that a young lady towards whom I feel a certain responsibility should be much seen with this young man. He is not her equal socially, and—pardon me—she knows nothing at all about the type to which he belongs. Indirectly I try to warn her. I speak to my sister as gently as I can. But from the first she rejects all I have to say—she gives me credit for no good intention—and she will have none of my advice. At last a disagreeable incident happens—and unfortunately the knowledge of it is not confined to ourselves——"

Laura threw him a flashing look.

"No!—there are people who have taken care of that!" she said.

Helbeck took no notice.

"It is known not only to ourselves," he repeated steadily. "It starts gossip. My sister is troubled. She asks you to put an end to this state of things, and she consults me, feeling that indeed we are all in some way concerned."

"Oh, say at once that I have brought scandal on you all!" cried Laura. "That of course is what Sister Angela and Father Bowles have been saying to Augustina. They are pleased to show the greatest anxiety about me—so much so, that they most kindly wish to relieve me of the charge of Augustina.—So I understand! But I fear I am neither docile nor grateful!—that I never shall be grateful——"

Helbeck interrupted.

"Let us come to that presently. I should like to finish my story. While my sister and I are consulting, trying to think of all that can be done to stop a foolish talk and undo an unlucky incident, this same young lady"—his voice took a cold clearness—"steals out by night to keep an appointment with this man, who has already done her so great a disservice. Now I should like to ask her, if all this is kind—is reasonable—is generous towards the persons with whom she is at present living—if such conduct is not"—he paused—"unwise towards herself—unjust towards others."

His words came out with a strong and vibrating emphasis. Laura confronted him with crimson cheeks.

"I think that will do, Mr. Helbeck!" she cried. "You have had your say.—Now just let me say this,—these people were my relations—I have no other kith and kin in the world."

He made a quick step forward as though in distress. But she put up her hand.

"I want very much to say this, please. I knew perfectly well when I came here that you couldn't like the Masons—for many reasons." Her voice broke again. "You never liked Augustina's marriage—you weren't likely to want to see anything of papa's people. I didn't ask you to see them. All my standards and theirs are different from yours. But I prefer theirs—not yours! I have nothing to do with yours. I was brought up—well, to hate yours—if one must tell the truth."

She paused, half suffocated, her chest heaving. Helbeck's glance enveloped her—took in the contrast between her violent words and the shrinking delicacy of her small form. A great melting stole over the man's dark face. But he spoke dryly enough.

"I imagine the standards of Protestants and Catholics are pretty much alike in matters of this kind. But don't let us waste time any more over what has already happened. I should like, I confess, to plead with you as to the future."

He looked at her kindly, even entreatingly. All through this scene she had been unwittingly, angrily conscious of his personal dignity and charm—a dignity that seemed to emerge in moments of heightened action or feeling, and to slip out of sight again under the absent hermit-manner of his ordinary life. She was smarting under his words—ready to concentrate a double passion of resentment upon them, as soon as she should be alone and free to recall them. And yet——

"As to the future," she said coldly. "That is simple enough as far as one person is concerned. Hubert Mason is going to Froswick immediately, into business."

"I am glad to hear it—it will be very much for his good."

He stopped a moment, searching for the word of persuasion and conciliation.

"Miss Fountain!—if you imagine that certain incidents which happened here long before you came into this neighbourhood had anything to do with what I have been saying now, let me assure you—most earnestly—that it is not so! I recognise fully that with regard to a certain case—of which you may have heard—the Masons and their friends honestly believed that wrong and injustice had been done. They attempted personal violence. I can hardly be expected to think it argument! But I bear them no malice. I say this because you may have heard of something that happened three or four years ago—a row in the streets, when Father Bowles and I were set upon. It has never weighed with me in the slightest, and I could have shaken hands with old Mason—who was in the crowd, and refused to stop the stone throwing—the day after. As for Mrs. Mason"—he looked up with a smile—"if she could possibly have persuaded herself to come with her daughter and see you here, my welcome would not have been wanting. But, you know, she would as soon visit Gehenna! Nobody could be more conscious than I, Miss Fountain, that this is a dreary house for a young lady to live in—and——"

The colour mounted into his face, but he did not shrink from what he meant to say.

"And you have made us all feel that you regard the practices and observances by which we try to fill and inspire our lives, as mere hateful folly and superstition!" He checked himself. "Is that too strong?" he added, with a sudden eagerness. "If so, I apologise for and withdraw it!"

Laura, for a moment, was speechless. Then she gathered her forces, and said, with a voice she in vain tried to compose:

"I think you exaggerate, Mr. Helbeck; at any rate, I hope you do. But the fact is, I—I ought not to have tried to bear it. Considering all that had happened at home—it was more than I had strength for! And perhaps—no good will come of going on with it—and it had better cease. Mr. Helbeck!—if your Superior can really find a good nurse and companion at once, will you kindly communicate with her? I will go to Cambridge immediately, as soon as I can arrange with my friends. Augustina, no doubt, will come and stay with me somewhere at the sea, later on in the year."

Helbeck had been listening to her—to the sharp determination of her voice—in total silence. He was leaning against the high mantelpiece, and his face was hidden from her. As she ceased to speak, he turned, and his mere aspect beat down the girl's anger in a moment. He shook his head sadly.

"Dr. MacBride stopped me on the bridge yesterday, as he was coming away from the house."

Laura drew back. Her eyes fastened upon him.

"He thinks her in a serious state. We are not to alarm her, or interfere with her daily habits. There is valvular disease—as I think you know—and it has advanced. Neither he nor anyone can forecast."

The girl's head fell. She recognised that the contest was over. She could not go; she could not leave Augustina; and the inference was clear. There had not been a word of menace, but she understood. Mr. Helbeck's will must prevail. She had brought this humiliating half-hour on herself—and she would have to bear the consequences of it. She moved towards Helbeck.

"Well then, I must stay," she said huskily, "and I must try to—to remember where I am in future. I ought to be able to hide everything I feel—of course! But that unfortunately is what I never learnt. And—there are some ways of life—that—that are too far apart. However!"—she raised her hand to her brow, frowned, and thought a little—"I can't make any promise about my cousins, Mr. Helbeck. I know perfectly well—whatever may be said—that I have done nothing whatever to be ashamed of. I have wanted to—to help my cousin. He is worth helping—in spite of everything—and I will help him, if I can! But if I am to remain your guest, I see that I must consult your wishes——"

Helbeck tried again to stop her with a gesture, but she hurried on.

"As far as this house and neighbourhood are concerned, no one shall have any reason—to talk."

Then she threw her head back with a sudden flush.

"Of course, if people are born to say and think ill-natured things!—like Mrs. Denton——"

Helbeck exclaimed.

"I will see to that," he said. "You shall have no reason to complain, there."

Laura shrugged her shoulders.

"Will you kindly give me my letter?"

As he handed it to her, she made him a little bow, walked to the door before he could open it for her, and was gone.

Helbeck turned back, with a smothered exclamation. He put the lamps out, and went slowly to his study.

* * * * *

As the master of Bannisdale closed the door of his library behind him, the familiar room produced upon him a sharp and singular impression. The most sacred and the most critical hours of his life had been passed within its walls. As he entered it now, it seemed to repulse him, to be no longer his.

The room was not large. It was the old library of the house, and the Helbecks in their palmiest days had never been a literary race. There was a little seventeenth century theology; and a few English classics. There were the French books of Helbeck's grandmother—"Madame," as she was always known at Bannisdale; and amongst them the worn brown volumes of St. Francois de Sales, with the yellowish paper slips that Madame had put in to mark her favourite passages, somewhere in the days of the First Empire. Near by were some stray military volumes, treatises on tactics and fortification, that had belonged to a dashing young officer in the Dillon Regiment, close to some "Epitres Amoureux," a translation of "Daphnis and Chloe," and the like—all now sunk together into the same dusty neglect.

On the wall above Helbeck's writing-table were ranged the books that had been his mother's, together with those that he himself habitually used. Here every volume was an old friend, a familiar tool. Alan Helbeck was neither a student nor a man of letters; but he had certain passionate prejudices, instincts, emotions, of which some books were the source and sustenance.

For the rest—during some years he had been a member of the Third Order of St. Francis, and in its other features the room was almost the room of a religious. A priedieu stood against the inner wall, and a crucifix hung above it. A little further on was a small altar of St. Joseph with its pictures, its statuette, and its candles; and a poor lithograph of Pio Nono looked down from the mantelpiece. The floor was almost bare, save for a few pieces of old matting here and there. The worn Turkey carpet that had formerly covered it had been removed to make the drawing-room comfortable for Augustina; so had most of the chairs. Those left were of the straightest and hardest.

In that dingy room, however, Helbeck had known the most blessed, the most intimate moments of the spiritual life. To-night he entered it with a strange sense of wrench—of mortal discouragement. Mechanically he went to his writing-table, and, sitting down before it, he took a key from his watch-chain and opened a large locked note-book that lay upon it.

The book contained a number of written meditations, a collection of passages and thoughts, together with some faded photographs of his mother, and of his earliest Jesuit teachers at Stonyhurst.

On the last page was a paragraph that only the night before he had copied from one of his habitual books of devotion—copying it as a spiritual exercise—making himself dwell upon every word of it.

"When shall I desire Thee alone—feed on Thee alone—O my Delight, my only good! O my loving and almighty Lord! free now this wretched heart from every attachment, from every earthly affection; adorn it with Thy holy virtues, and with a pure intention of doing all things to please Thee, that so I may open it to Thee, and with gentle violence compel Thee to come in, that Thou, O Lord, mayest work therein without resistance all those effects which from all Eternity Thou hast desired to produce in me."

He lingered a little on the words, his face buried in his hands. Then slowly he turned back to an earlier page—

"Man must use creatures as being in themselves indifferent. He must not be under their power, but use them for his own purpose, his own first and chiefest purpose, the salvation of his soul."

A shudder passed through him. He rose hastily from his seat, and began to pace the room. He had already passed through a wrestle of the same kind, and had gone away to fight down temptation. To-night the struggle was harder. The waves of rising passion broke through him.

"Little pale, angry face! I gave her a scolding like a child—what joy to have forgiven her like a child!—to have asked her pardon in return—to have felt the soft head against my breast. She was very fierce with me—she hates me, I suppose. And yet—she is not indifferent to me!—she knows when I am there. Downstairs she was conscious of me all through—I knew it. Her secret was in her face. I guessed it—foolish child—from the first moment. Strange, stormy nature!—I see it all—her passion for her father, and for these peasants as belonging to him—her hatred of me and of our faith, because her father hated us—her feeling for Augustina—that rigid sense, of obligation she has, just on the two or three points—points of natural affection. It is this sense, perhaps, that makes the soul of her struggle with this house—with me. How she loathes all that we love—humility, patience, obedience! She would sooner die than obey. Unless she loved! Then what an art, what an enchantment to command her! It would tax a lover's power, a lover's heart, to the utmost. Ah!"

He stood still, and with an effort of iron resolution put from him the fancies that were thronging on the brain. If it were possible for him to conquer her, conceivable that he might win her—such a dream was forbidden to him, Alan Helbeck, a thousandfold! Such a marriage would be the destruction of innumerable schemes for the good of the Church, for the perfecting of his own life. It would be the betrayal of great trusts, the abandonment of great opportunities. "My life would centre in her. She would come first—the Church second. Her nature would work on mine—not mine on hers. Could I ever speak to her even of what I believe?—the very alphabet of it is unknown to her. I shrink from proselytism. God forgive me!—it is her wild pagan self that I love—that I desire——"

The blast of human longing, human pain, was hard to meet—hard to subdue. But the Catholic fought—and conquered.

"I am not my own—I have taken tasks upon me that no honest man could betray. There are vows on me also, that bind me specially to our Lord—to his Church. The Church frowns on such a love—such marriages. She does not forbid them—but they pain her heart. I have accepted her judgment till now, without difficulty, without conflict. Now to obey is hard. But I can obey—we are not asked impossibilities."

He walked to the crucifix, and threw himself down before it. A midnight stillness brooded over the house.

* * * * *

But far away, in an upper room, Laura Fountain had cried herself to sleep—only to wake again and again, with the tears flooding her cheeks. Was it merely a disagreeable and exciting scene she had gone through? What was this new invasion of her life?—this new presence to the inward eye of a form and look that at once drew her and repulsed her. A hundred alien forces were threatening and pressing upon her—and out from the very heart of them came this strange drawing—this magnetism—this troubling misery.

To be prisoned in Bannisdale—under Mr. Helbeck's roof—for months and months longer—this thought was maddening to her.

But when she imagined herself free to go—and far away once more from this old and melancholy house—among congenial friends and scenes—she was no happier than before. A little moan of anger and pain came, that she stifled against her pillow, calling passionately on the sleep that would, that must, chase all these phantoms of fatigue or excitement—and give her back her old free self.



BOOK III



CHAPTER I

"We shall get there in capital time—that's nice!" said Polly Mason, putting down the little railway guide she had just purchased at Marsland Station, with a general rustle of satisfaction.

Polly indeed shone with good temper and new clothes. Her fringe—even halved—was prodigious. Her cheap lemon-coloured gloves were cracking on her large hands; and round her beflowered hat she had tied clouds on clouds of white tulle, which to some extent softened the tans and crimsons of her complexion. Her dress was of a stiff white cotton stuff, that fell into the most startling folds and angles; and at every movement of it, the starch rattled.

On the opposite seat of the railway carriage was Laura Fountain—an open book upon her knee that she was not reading. She made no answer, however, to Polly's remark; the impression left by her attitude was that she took no interest in it. Miss Fountain herself hardly seemed to have profited much by that Westmoreland air whereof the qualities were to do so much for Augustina. It was now June, the end of June, and Laura was certainly paler, less blooming, than she had been in March. She seemed more conscious; she was certainly less radiant. Whether her prettiness had gained by the slight change, might be debated. Polly's eyes, indeed, as they sped along, paid her cousin one long covetous tribute. The difficulty that she always had in putting on her own clothes, and softening her own physical points, made her the more conscious of Laura's delicate ease, of all the yielding and graceful lines into which the little black and white muslin frock fell so readily, of all that natural kinship between Laura and her hats, Laura and her gloves, which poor Polly fully perceived, knowing well and sadly that she herself could never attain to it.

Nevertheless—pretty, Miss Fountain might be; elegant she certainly was; but Polly did not find her the best of companions for a festal day. They were going to Froswick—the big town on the coast—to meet Hubert and another young man, one Mr. Seaton, foreman in a large engineering concern, whose name Polly had not been able to mention without bridling, for some time past.

It was more than a fortnight since the sister, driven by Hubert's incessant letters, had proposed to Laura that they two should spend a summer day at Froswick and see the great steel works on which the fame of that place depended, escorted and entertained by the two young men. Laura at first had turned a deaf ear. Then all at once—a very flare of eagerness and acceptance!—a sudden choosing of day and train. And now that they were actually on their way, with everything arranged, and a glorious June sun above their heads, Laura was so silent, so reluctant, so irritable—you might have thought——

Well!—Polly really did not know what to think. She was not quite happy herself. From time to time, as her look dwelt on Laura, she was conscious of certain guilty reserves and concealments in her own breast. She wished Hubert had more sense—she hoped to goodness it would all go off nicely! But of course it would. Polly was an optimist and took all things simply. Her anxieties for Laura did not long resist the mere pleasure of the journey and the trip, the flatteries of expectation. What a very respectable and, on the whole, good-looking young man was Mr. Seaton! Polly had met him first at the Browhead dance; so that what was a mere black and ugly spot in Laura's memory shone rosy-red in her cousin's.

Meanwhile Laura, mainly to avoid Polly's conversation, was looking hard out of window. They were running along the southern shore of a great estuary. Behind the loitering train rose the hills they had just left, the hills that sheltered the stream and the woods of Bannisdale. That rich, dark patch beneath the further brow was the wood in which the house stood. To the north, across the bay, ran the line of high mountains, a dim paradise of sunny slopes and steeps, under the keenest and brightest of skies—blue ramparts from which the gently opening valleys flowed downwards, one beside the other, to the estuary and the sea.

Not that the great plunging sea itself was much to be seen as yet. Immediately beyond the railway line stretched leagues of firm reddish sand, pierced by the innumerable channels of the Greet. The sun lay hot and dazzling on the wide flat surfaces, on the flocks of gulls, on the pools of clear water. The window was open, and through the June heat swept a sharp, salt breath. Laura, however, felt none of the physical exhilaration that as a rule overflowed in her so readily. Was it because the Bannisdale Woods were still visible? What made the significance of that dark patch to the girl's restless eye? She came back to it again and again. It was like a flag, round which a hundred warring thoughts had come to gather.

Why?

Were not she and Mr. Helbeck on the best of terms? Was not Augustina quite pleased—quite content? "I always knew, my dear Laura, that you and Alan would get on, in time. Why, anyone could get on with Alan—he's so kind!" When these things were said, Laura generally laughed. She did not remind Mrs. Fountain that she, at one time of her existence, had not found it particularly easy and simple to "get on with Alan"; but the girl did once allow herself the retort—"It's not so easy to quarrel, is it, when you don't see a person from week's end to week's end?" "Week's end to week's end?" Mrs. Fountain repeated vaguely. "Yes—Alan is away a great deal—people trust him so much—he has so much business."

Laura was of opinion that his first business might very well have been to see a little more of his widowed sister! She and Augustina spent days and days alone, while Mr. Helbeck pursued the affairs of the Church. One precious attempt indeed had been made to break the dulness of Bannisdale. Miss Fountain's cheeks burned when she thought of it. There had been an afternoon party! though Augustina's widowhood was barely a year old! Mrs. Fountain had been sent about the country delivering notes and cards. And the result:—oh, such a party!—such an interminable afternoon! Where had the people come from?—who were they? If Polly, full of curiosity, asked for some details, Laura would toss her head and reply that she knew nothing at all about it; that Mrs. Denton had provided bad tea and worse cakes, and the guests had "filled their chairs," and there was nothing else to say. Mr. Helbeck's shyness and efforts; the glances of appeal he threw every now and then towards his sister; his evident depression when the thing was done—these things were not told to Polly. There was a place for them in the girl's sore mind; but they did not come to speech. Anyway she believed—nay, was quite sure—that Bannisdale would not be so tried a second time. For whose benefit was it done?—whose!

One evening——

As the train crossed the bridge of the estuary, from one stretch of hot sand to another, Laura, staring at the view, saw really nothing but an image of the mind, felt nothing except what came through the magic of memory.

The hall of Bannisdale, with the lingering daylight of the north still coming in at ten o'clock through the uncurtained oriel windows—herself at the piano, Augustina on the settle—a scent of night and flowers spreading through the dim place from the open windows of the drawing-room beyond. One candle is beside her—and there are strange glints of moonlight here and there on the panelling. A tall figure enters from the chapel passage. Augustina makes room on the settle—the Squire leans back and listens. And the girl at the piano plays; the stillness and the night seem to lay releasing hands upon her; bonds that have been stifling and cramping the soul break down; she plays with all her self, as she might have talked or wept to a friend—to her father.... And at last, in a pause, the Squire puts a new candle beside her, and his deep shy voice commends her, asks her to go on playing. Afterwards, there is a pleasant and gentle talk for half an hour—Augustina can hardly be made to go to bed—and when at last she rises, the girl's small hand slips into the man's, is lost there, feels a new lingering touch, from which both withdraw in almost equal haste. And the night, for the girl, is broken with restlessness, with wild efforts to draw the old fetters tight again, to clamp and prison something that flutters—that struggles.

Then next morning, there is an empty chair at the breakfast table. "The Squire left early on business." Without any warning—any courteous message? One evening at home, after a long absence, and then—off again! A good Catholic, it seems, lives in the train, and makes himself the catspaw of all who wish to use him for their own ends!

... As to that old peasant, Scarsbrook, what could be more arbitrary, more absurd, than Mr. Helbeck's behaviour? The matter turns out to be serious. Fright blanches the old fellow's beard and hair; he takes to his bed, and the doctor talks of severe "nervous shock"—very serious, often deadly, at the patient's age. Why not confess everything at once, set things straight, free the poor shaken mind from its oppression? Who's afraid?—what harm is there in an after-dinner stroll?

But there!—truth apparently is what no one wants, what no one will have—least of all, Mr. Helbeck. She sees a meeting in the park, under the oaks—the same tall man and the girl—the girl bound impetuously for confession, and the soothing of old Scarsbrook's terrors once for all—the man standing in the way, as tough and prickly as one of his own hawthorns. Courtesy, of course! there is no one can make courtesy so galling; and then such a shooting out of will and personality, so sudden, so volcanic a heat of remonstrance! And a woman is such a poor ill-strung creature, even the boldest of them! She yields when she should have pressed forward—goes home to rage, when she should have stayed to wrestle.

Afterwards, another absence—the old house silent as the grave—and Augustina so fretful, so wearisome! But she is better, much better. How unscrupulous are doctors, and those other persons who make them say exactly what suits the moment!

The dulness seems to grow with the June heat. Soon it becomes intolerable. Nobody comes, nobody speaks; no mind offers itself to yours for confidence and sympathy. Well, but change and excitement of some sort one must have!—who is to blame, if you get it where you can?

A day in Froswick with Hubert Mason? Yes—why not? Polly proposes it—has proposed it once or twice before to no purpose. For two months now the young man has been in training. Polly writes to him often; Laura sometimes wonders whether the cross-examinations through which Polly puts her may not partly be for Hubert's benefit. She herself has written twice to him in answer to some half-dozen letters, has corrected his song for him—has played altogether a very moral and sisterly part. Is the youth really in love? Perhaps. Will it do him any harm?

Augustina of course dislikes the prospect of the Froswick day. But, really, Augustina must put up with it! The Reverend Mother will come for the afternoon, and keep her company. Such civility of late on the part of all the Catholic friends of Bannisdale towards Miss Fountain!—a civility always on the watch, week by week, day by day—that never yields itself for an instant, has never a human impulse, an unguarded tone. Father Leadham is there one day—he makes a point of talking with Miss Fountain. He leads the conversation to Cambridge, to her father—his keen glance upon her all the time, the hidden life of the convert and the mystic leaping every now and then to the surface, and driven down again by a will that makes itself felt—even by so cool a listener—as a living tyrannous thing, developed out of all proportion to, nay at the cruel expense of, the rest of the personality. Yet it is no will of the man's own—it is the will of his order, of his faith. And why these repeated stray references to Bannisdale—to its owner—to the owner's goings and comings? They are hardly questions, but they might easily have done the work of questions had the person addressed been willing. Laura laughs to think of it.

Ah! well—but discretion to-day, discretion to-morrow, discretion always, is not the most amusing of diets. How dumb, how tame, has she become! There is no one to fight with, nothing whereon to let loose the sharp-edged words and sayings that lie so close behind the girl's shut lips. How amazing that one should positively miss those fuller activities in the chapel that depend on the Squire's presence! Father Bowles says Mass there twice a week; the light still burns before the altar; several times a day Augustina disappears within the heavy doors. But when Mr. Helbeck is at home, the place becomes, as it were, the strong heart of the house. It beats through the whole organism; so that no one can ignore or forget it.

What is it that makes the difference when he returns? Unwillingly, the mind shapes its reply. A sense of unity and law comes back into the house—a hidden dignity and poetry. The Squire's black head carries with it stern reminders, reminders that challenge or provoke; but "he nothing common does nor mean," and smaller mortals, as the weeks go by, begin to feel their hot angers and criticisms driven back upon themselves, to realise the strange persistency and force of the religious life.

Inhuman force! But force of any kind tends to draw, to conquer. More than once Laura sees herself at night, almost on the steps of the chapel, in the dark shadows of the passage—following Augustina. But she has never yet mounted the steps—never passed the door. Once or twice she has angrily snatched herself from listening to the distant voice.

... Mr. Helbeck makes very little comment on the Froswick plan. One swift involuntary look at breakfast, as who might say—"Our compact?" But there was no compact. And go she will.

And at last all opposition clears away. It must be Mr. Helbeck who has silenced Augustina—for even she complains no more. Trains are looked out; arrangements are made to fetch Polly from a half-way village; a fly is ordered to meet the 9.10 train at night. Why does one feel a culprit all through? Absurdity! Is one to be mewed up all one's life, to throw over all fun and frolic at Mr. Helbeck's bidding—Mr. Helbeck, who now scarcely sets foot in Bannisdale, who seems to have turned his back upon his own house, since that precise moment when his sister and her stepdaughter came to inhabit it? Never till this year was he restless in this way—so says Mrs. Denton, whose temper grows shorter and shorter.

Oh—as to fun and frolic! The girl yawns as she looks out of window. What a long hot day it is going to be—and how foolish are all expeditions, all formal pleasures! 9.10 at Marsland—about seven, she supposes, at Froswick? Already her thoughts are busy, hungrily busy with the evening, and the return.

* * * * *

The train sped along. They passed a little watering-place under the steep wooded hills—a furnace of sun on this hot June day, in winter a soft and sheltered refuge from the north. Further on rose the ruins of a great Cistercian abbey, great ribs and arches of red sandstone, that still, in ruin, made the soul and beauty of a quiet valley; then a few busy towns with mills and factories, the fringe of that industrial district which lies on the southern and western border of the Lake Country; more wide valleys sweeping back into blue mountains; a wealth of June leaf and blossoming tree; and at last docks and buildings, warehouses and "works," a network of spreading railway lines, and all the other signs of an important and growing town. The train stopped amid a crowd, and Polly hurried to the door.

"Why, Hubert!—Mr. Seaton!—Here we are!"

She beckoned wildly, and not a few passers-by turned to look at the nodding clouds of tulle.

"We shall find them, Polly—don't shout," said Laura behind her, in some disgust.

Shout and beckon, however, Polly did and would, till the two young men were finally secured.

"Why, Hubert, you never towd me what a big place 'twas," said Polly joyously. "Lor, Mr. Seaton, doant fash yoursel. This is Miss Fountain—my cousin. You'll remember her, I knaw."

Mr. Seaton began a polite and stilted speech while possessing himself of Polly's shawl and bag. He was a very superior young man of the clerk or foreman type, somewhat ill put together at the waist, with a flat back to his head, and a cadaverous countenance. Laura gave him a rapid look. But her chief curiosity was for Hubert. And at her first glance she saw the signs of that strong and silent process perpetually going on amongst us that tames the countryman to the life and habits of the town. It was only a couple of months since the young athlete from the fells had been brought within its sway, and already the marks of it were evident in dress, speech, and manner. The dialect was almost gone; the black Sunday coat was of the most fashionable cut that Froswick could provide; and as they walked along, Laura detected more than once in the downcast eyes of her companion, a stealthy anxiety as to the knees of his new grey trousers. So far the change was not an embellishment. The first loss of freedom and rough strength is never that. But it roused the girl's notice, and a sort of secret sympathy. She too had felt the curb of an alien life!—she could almost have held out her hand to him as to a comrade in captivity.

Outside the station, to Laura's surprise—considering the object of the expedition—Hubert made a sign to his sister, and they two dropped behind a little.

"What's the matter with her?" said Hubert abruptly, as soon as he judged that they were out of hearing of the couple in front.

"Who do you mean? Laura? Why, she's well enoof!"

"Then she don't look it. She's fretting. What's wrong with her?"

As Hubert looked down upon his sister, Polly was startled by the impatient annoyance of look and manner. And how red-rimmed and weary were the lad's eyes! You might have thought he had not slept for a week. Polly's mind ran through a series of conjectures; and she broke out with Westmoreland plainness—

"Hubert, I do wish tha wouldn't be sich a fool! I've towd tha so times and times."

"Aye, and you may tell me so till kingdom come—I shan't mind you," he said doggedly. "There's something between her and the Squire, I know there is. I know it by the look of her."

Polly laughed.

"How you jump! I tell tha she never says a word aboot him."

Hubert looked moodily at Laura's little figure in front.

"All the more reason!" he said between his teeth. "She'd talk about him when she first came. But I'll find out—never fear."

"For goodness' sake, Hubert, let her be!" said Polly, entreating. "Sich wild stuff as thoo's been writin me! Yan might ha thowt yo'd be fer cuttin yor throat, if yo' didn't get her doon here.—What art tha thinkin of, lad? She'll never marry tha! She doan't belong to us—and there's noa undoin it."

Hubert made no reply, but unconsciously his muscular frame took a passionate rigidity; his face became set and obstinate.

"Well, you keep watch," he said. "You'll see—I'll make it worth your while."

Polly looked up—half laughing. She understood his reference to herself and her new sweetheart. Hubert would play her game if she would play his. Well—she had no objection whatever to help him to the sight of Laura when she could. Polly's moral sense was not over-delicate, and as to the upshot and issues of things, her imagination moved but slowly. She did not like to let herself think of what might have been Hubert's relations to women—to one or two wild girls about Whinthorpe for instance. But Laura—Laura who was so much their social better, whose manners and self-possession awed them both, what smallest harm could ever come to her from any act or word of Hubert's? For this rustic Westmoreland girl, Laura Fountain stood on a pedestal robed and sceptred like a little queen. Hubert was a fool to fret himself—a fool to go courting some one too high for him. What else was there to say or think about it?

At the next street corner Laura made a resolute stop. Polly should not any longer be defrauded of her Mr. Seaton. Besides she, Laura, wished to talk to Hubert. Mr. Beaton's long words, and way of mouthing his highly correct phrases, had already seemed to take the savour out of the morning.

When the exchange was made—Mr. Seaton alas! showing less eagerness than might have been expected—Laura quietly examined her companion. It seemed to her that he was taller than ever; surely she was not much higher than his elbow! Hubert, conscious that he was being scrutinised, turned red, looked away, coughed, and apparently could find nothing to say.