"Mary, what has come to you? I never knew you quite like this before. I dislike this extraordinary flippancy of tone very much."

"I beg your pardon," said Lady Mary; make allowance for me this once. I learnt ten minutes ago that my boy was going to the war. I must either laugh or—or cry, and you wouldn't like me to do that; but it's a way women have when their hearts are half broken."

"I don't understand you," he said helplessly.

Lady Mary looked at him as though she had awakened, frightened, to the consciousness of her own temerity.

"I don't quite understand myself, I think," she said, in a subdued voice. "I won't torment you any more, Timothy; I will be as calm and collected—as you wish. Only let me go."

"Will you not listen to my reason for wishing you to remain at home?" he said sternly. "It is an important one."

"I had forgotten," she said indifferently. "How can there be any business in the world half so important to me as seeing my boy once more before he sails?"

The colour of Sir Timothy's ruddy face deepened almost to purple, his grey eyes glowered sullen resentment at his wife.

"Since you desire to have your way in opposition to my wishes, go!" he thundered. "I will not hinder you further."

But his sonorous wrath was too familiar to be impressive.

Lady Mary's expression scarcely changed when Sir Timothy raised his voice. She turned, however, at the foot of the staircase, and spoke to him again.

"Let me just go and give the order for my things to be packed, Timothy, and tell Ash to go and find out about the trains, and I will return and listen to whatever you wish—I will, indeed. I could not pay proper attention to anything until I knew that was being done."

Sir Timothy did not trust himself to speak. He bowed his head, and the slender figure passed swiftly up the stairs.

Sir Timothy walked twice deliberately up and down the empty hall, and felt his pulse. The slow, steady throb reassured him. He opened the door of the study.

"John," said Sir Timothy, "would you kindly come out here and speak to me for a moment? Dr. Blundell, would you have the goodness to await me a little longer? You will find the London papers there."

"I have them," said Dr. Blundell, from the armchair by the study fire.

John Crewys closed the door behind him, and looked rather anxiously at his cousin. It struck him that Sir Timothy had lost some of his ruddy colour, and that his face looked drawn and old.

But the squire placed himself with his back to the log fire, and made an effort to speak in his voice of everyday. His slightly pompous, patronizing manner returned upon him.

"You are doubtless accustomed, John, in the course of your professional work," he said, "to advise in difficult matters. You come among us a stranger—and unprejudiced. Will you—er—give me the benefit of your opinion?"

"To the best of my ability," said John. He paused, and added gently, "I am sorry for this fresh trouble that has come upon you."

"That is the subject on which I mean to consult you. Do you consider that—that her husband or her child should stand first in a woman's eyes?"

"Her husband, undoubtedly," said John, readily, "but—"

"But what?" said Sir Timothy, impatiently. A gleam of satisfaction had broken over his heavy face at his cousin's reply.

"I speak from a man's point of view," said John. "Woman—and possibly Nature—may speak differently."

"Your judgment, however, coincides with mine, which is all that matters," said Sir Timothy. He did not perceive the twinkle in John's eyes at this reply. "In my opinion there are only two ways of looking at every question—the right way and the wrong way."

"My profession teaches me," said John, "that there are as many different points of view as there are parties to a case."

"Then—from my point of view," said Sir Timothy, with an air of waving all other points of view away as irrelevant, "since my wife, very naturally, desires to see her son again before he sails, am I justified in allowing her to set off in ignorance of the ordeal that awaits me?"

"Good heavens, no!" cried John. "Should the operation prove unsuccessful, you would be entailing upon her a lifelong remorse."

"I did not look upon it in that light," said Sir Timothy, rather stiffly. "The propriety or the impropriety of her going remains in any, case the same, whether the operation succeeds or fails. I feared that it would be the wrong thing to allow her to go at all; that it might cause comment were she absent from my side at such a critical juncture."

"I see," said John. His mobile, expressive face and bright hazel eyes seemed to light up for one instant with scorn and wonder; then he recollected himself. "It is natural you should wish for her sustaining presence, no doubt," he said.

"I trust you do not suppose that I should be selfishly considering my own personal feelings at such a time," said Sir Timothy, in a lofty tone of reproof. "I am only desirous of doing what is right in the matter. I am asking your advice because I feel that my self-command has been shaken considerably by this unexpected blow. I am less sure of my judgment than usual in consequence. However, if you think my wife ought to be told"—John nodded very decidedly—"let her be told. I am bound to say Dr. Blundell thought so too, though his opinion is neither here nor there in such a matter, but so long as you understand that my only desire is that both she and I should do what is most correct and proper." He came closer to John. "It is of vital importance for me to preserve my composure," said Sir Timothy. "I am not fitted for—for any kind of scene just now. Will you undertake for me the task of explaining to—to my dear wife the situation in which I am placed?"

"I will do my best," said John. He was touched by the note of piteous anxiety which had crept into the squire's harsh voice.

"Thank you," said Sir Timothy. "Will you await her here? She is returning immediately. Break it to her as gently as you can. I shall rest and compose myself by a talk with Dr. Blundell."

He went slowly to the study, leaving John Crewys alone.



CHAPTER VI

"Is that you, Cousin John?" said Lady Mary. "Is Sir Timothy gone? I have not been away more than a few minutes, have I?"

She spoke quite brightly. Her cheeks were flushed, and her blue eyes were sparkling with excitement.

John looked at her, and found himself wishing that her soft, brown hair were not strained so tightly from her forehead, nor brushed so closely to her head; the fashion would have been trying to a younger face, and fatal to features less regularly delicate and correct. He also wished she were not dressed like a Quaker's wife. The stiff, grey poplin fitted like a glove the pretty curves of Lady Mary's slender figure, but it lacked distinction, and appropriateness, to John's fastidious eye. Then he reproached himself vehemently for allowing his thoughts to dwell on such trifles at such a moment.

"Will you forgive me for going away the very day you come?" said Lady Mary.

How quickly, how surprisingly, she recovered her spirits! She had looked so weary and sad as she came down the stairs an hour ago. Now she was almost gay. A feverish and unnatural gaiety, no doubt; but those flushed cheeks, and glittering blue eyes—how they restored the youthful loveliness of the face he had once thought the most beautiful he ever saw!

"I am going to see the last of my boy. You'll understand, won't you? You were an only son too. And your mother would have gone to the ends of the earth to look upon your face once more, wouldn't she? Mothers are made like that."

"Some mothers," said John; and he turned away his head.

"Not yours? I'm sorry," said Lady Mary, simply.

"Oh, well—you know, she was a good deal—in the world," he said, repenting himself.

"I use to wish so much to live in the world too," said Lady Mary, dreamily; "but ever since I was fifteen I've lived in this out-of-the-way place."

"Don't be too sorry for that," said John; "you don't know what a revelation this out-of-the-way place may be to a tired worker like me, who lives always amid the unlovely sights and sounds of a city."

"Ah! but that's just it," she said quickly. "You see I'm not tired—yet; and I've done no work."

"That is why it's such a rest to look at you," said John, smiling. "Flowers have their place in creation as vegetables have theirs. But we only ask the flowers to bloom peacefully in sheltered gardens; we don't insist on popping them into the soup with the onions and carrots."

Lady Mary laughed as though she had not a care in the world.

"It is quite refreshing to find that a big-wig like you can talk just as much nonsense as a little-wig like me," she said; "but you don't know, for all that, what the silence and monotony of life here can be. The very voice of a stranger falls like music on one's ears. I was so glad to see you, and you were so kind and sympathetic about—my boy. And then, all in a moment, my joy was turned into mourning, wasn't it? And Peter is going to the war, and it's all like a dreadful dream; except that I know I shall wake up every morning only to realize more strongly that it's true."

John remembered that he was dallying with his mission, instead of fulfilling it.

"Sir Timothy cannot go to see his son off? That must be a grief to him," he said.

"No; he isn't coming. He has business, I believe," said Lady Mary, a little coldly. "There has been a dispute over some Crown lands, which march with ours. Officials are often very dilatory and difficult to deal with. Probably, however, you know more about it than I do. I am going alone. I have just been giving the necessary orders. I shall take a servant with me, as well as my maid, for I am such an inexperienced traveller—though it seems absurd, at my age—that I am quite frightened of getting into the wrong trains. I dread a journey by myself. Even such a little journey as that. But, of course, nothing would keep me at home."

"Only one thing," said John, in a low voice, "if I have judged your character rightly in so short a time."

"What is that?"

"Duty."

She looked at him with sweet, puzzled eyes, like a child.

"Are you pleading Sir Timothy's cause, Cousin John?" she said, with a little touch of offence in her tone that was only charming.

"I am pleading Sir Timothy's cause," said John, seriously.

"Love is stronger than duty, isn't it?" said Lady Mary.

"I hope not," said John, very simply.

"You mean my husband doesn't wish me to go?"

"Don't think me too presuming," he said pleadingly.

"I couldn't," said Lady Mary, naively. "You are older than I am, you know," she laughed, "and a Q.C. And you know you would be my trustee and my boy's guardian if anything ever happened to Sir Timothy. He told me so long ago. And he reminded me of it to-day most solemnly. I suppose he was afraid I shouldn't treat you with proper respect."

"He has honoured me very highly," said John. "In that case, it would be almost my—my duty to advise you in any difficulty that might arise, wouldn't it?"

"That means you want to advise me now?"

"Frankly, it does."

"And are you going to tell me that I ought to stay at home, and let my only boy leave England without bidding him God-speed?" said Lady Mary incredulously. "If so, I warn you that you will never convince me of that, argue as you may."

"No one is ever convinced by argument," said John. "But stern facts sometimes command even a woman's attention."

"When backed by such powers of persuasion as yours, perhaps."

She faced him with sparkling eyes. Lady Mary was timid and gentle by nature, but Peter's mother knew no fear. Yet she realized that if John Crewys were moved to put forth his full powers, he might be a difficult man to oppose. She met his glance, and observed that he perfectly understood the spirit which animated her, and that it was not opposition that shone from his bright hazel eyes, as he regarded her steadily through his pince-nez.

"I am going to deal with a hard fact, which your husband is afraid to tell you," said John, "because, in his tenderness for your womanly weakness, he underrates, as I venture to think, your womanly courage. Sir Timothy wants you to be with him here to-morrow because he has to—to fight an unequal battle—"

"With the Crown?"

"With Death."

"What do you mean?" said Lady Mary.

"He has been silently combating a mortal disease for many months past," said John, "and to-morrow morning the issue is to be decided. Every day, every hour of delay, increases the danger. The great surgeon, Dr. Herslett, will be here at eleven o'clock, and on the success of the operation he will perform, hangs the thread of your husband's life."

Lady Mary put up a little trembling hand entreatingly, and John's great heart throbbed with pity. He had chosen his words deliberately to startle her from her absorption in her son; but she looked so fragile, so white, so imploring, that his courage almost failed him. He came to her side, and took the little hand reassuringly in his strong, warm clasp.

"Be brave, my dear," he said, with faltering voice, "and put aside, if you can, the thought of your bitter, terrible disappointment. Only you can cheer, and inspire, and aid your husband to maintain the calmness of spirit which is of such vital importance to his chance of recovery. You can't leave him against his wish at such a moment; not if you are the—the angel I believe you to be," said John, with emotion.

There was a pause, and though he looked away from her, he knew that she was crying.

John released the little hand gently, and walked to the fireplace to give her time to recover herself. Perhaps his eye-glasses were dimmed; he polished them very carefully.

Lady Mary dashed away her tears, and spoke in a hard voice he scarcely recognized as hers.

"I might be all—you think me, John," she said, "if—"

"Ah! don't let there be an if," said John.

"But—"

"Or a but."

"It is that you don't understand the situation," she said; "you talk as though Sir Timothy and I were an ordinary husband and wife, entirely dependent on one another's love and sympathy. Don't you know he stands alone—above all the human follies and weaknesses of a mere woman? Can't you guess," said Lady Mary, passionately, "that it's my boy, my poor faulty, undutiful boy—oh, that I should call him so!—who needs me? that it's his voice that would be calling in my heart whilst I awaited Sir Timothy's pleasure to-morrow?"

"His pleasure?" said John, sternly.

"I am shocking you, and I didn't want to shock you," she cried, almost wildly. "But you don't suppose he needs me—me myself? He only wants to be sure I'm doing the right thing. He wants to give people no chance of saying that Lady Mary Crewys rushed off to see her spoilt boy whilst her husband hovered between life and death. A lay figure would do just as well; if it would only sit in an armchair and hold its handkerchief to its eyes; and if the neighbours, and his sisters, and the servants could be persuaded to think it was I."

"Hush, hush!" said John.

"Do let me speak out; pray let me speak out," she said, breathless and imploring, "and you can think what you like of me afterwards, when I am gone, if only you won't scold now. I am so sick of being scolded," said Lady Mary. "Am I to be a child for ever—I, that am so old, and have lost my boy?"

He thought there was something in her of the child that never grows up; the guilelessness, the charm, the ready tears and smiles, the quick changes of mood.

He rolled an elbow-chair forward, and put her into it tenderly.

"Say what you will," said John.

"This is comfortable," she said, leaning her head wearily on her hand; "to talk to a—a friend who understands, and who will not scold. But you can't understand unless I tell you everything; and Timothy himself, after all, would be the first to explain to you that it isn't my tears nor my kisses, nor my consolation he wants. You didn't think so really, did you?"

John hesitated, remembering Sir Timothy's words, but she did not wait for an answer.

"Yes," she said calmly, "he wishes me to be in my proper place. It would be a scandal if I did such a remarkable thing as to leave home on any pretext at such a moment. Only by being extraordinarily respectable and dignified can we live down the memory of his father's unconventional behaviour. I must remember my position. I must smell my salts, and put my feet up on the sofa, and be moderately overcome during the crisis, and moderately thankful to the Almighty when it's over, so that every one may hear how admirably dear Lady Mary behaved. And when I am reading the Times to him during his convalescence," she cried, wringing her hands, "Peter—Peter will be thousands of miles away, marching over the veldt to his death."

"You make very sure of Peter's death," said John, quietly.

"Oh yes," said Lady Mary, listlessly. "He's an only son. It's always the only sons who die. I've remarked that."

"You make very sure of Sir Timothy's recovery."

"Oh yes," Lady Mary said again. "He's a very strong man."

Something ominous in John's face and voice attracted her attention.

"Why do you look like that?"

"Because," said John, slowly—"you understand I'm treating you as a woman of courage—Dr. Blundell told me just now that—the odds are against him."

She uttered a little cry.

The doctor's voice at the end of the hall made them both start.

"Lady Mary," he said, "you will forgive my interruption. Sir Timothy desired me to join you. He feared this double blow might prove too much for your strength."

"I am quite strong," said Lady Mary.

"He wished me to deliver a message," said the doctor.

"Yes."

"On reflection, Sir Timothy believes that he may be partly influenced by a selfish desire for the consolation of your presence in wishing you to remain with him to-morrow. He was struck, I believe, with something Mr. Crewys said—on this point."

"God bless you, John!" said Lady Mary.

"Hush!" said John, shaking his head.

Dr. Blundell's voice sounded, John thought, as though he were putting force upon himself to speak calmly and steadily. His eyes were bent on the floor, and he never once looked at Lady Mary.

"Sir Timothy desires, consequently," he said, "that you will consider yourself free to follow your own wishes in the matter; being guided, as far as possible, by the advice of Mr. Crewys. He is afraid of further agitation, and therefore asks you to convey to him, as quickly as possible, your final decision. As his physician, may I beg you not to keep him waiting?"

He left them, and returned to the study.

Though it was only a short silence that followed his departure, John had time to learn by heart the aspect of the half-lighted, shadowy hall.

There are some pauses which are illustrated to the day of a man's death, by a vivid impression on his memory of the surroundings.

The heavy, painted beams crossing and re-crossing the lofty roof; the black staircase lighted with wax candles, that made a brilliancy which threw into deeper relief the darkness of every recess and corner; the full-length, Early Victorian portraits of men and women of his own race—inartistic daubs, that were yet horribly lifelike in the semi-illumination; the uncurtained mullioned windows,—all formed a background for the central figure in his thoughts; the slender womanly form in the armchair; the little brown head supported on the white hand; the delicate face, robbed of its youthful freshness, and yet so lovely still.

"John," said Lady Mary, in a voice from which all passion and strength had died away, "tell me what I ought to do."

"Remain with your husband."

"And let my boy go?" said Lady Mary, weeping. "I had thought, when he was leaving me, perhaps for ever, that—that his heart would be touched—that I should get a glimpse once more of the Peter he used to be. Oh, can't you understand? He—he's a little—hard and cold to me sometimes—God forgive me for saying so!—but you—you've been a young man too."

"Yes," John said, rather sadly, "I've been young too."

"It's only his age, you know," she said. "He couldn't always be as gentle and loving as when he was a child. A young man would think that so babyish. He wants, as he says, to be independent, and not tied to a woman's apron-string. But in his heart of hearts he loves me best in the whole world, and he wouldn't have been ashamed to let me see it at such a moment. And I should have had a precious memory of him for ever. You shake your head. Don't you understand me? I thought you seemed to understand," she said wistfully.

"Peter is a boy," said John, "and life is just opening for him. It is a hard saying to you, but his thoughts are full of the world he is entering. There is no room in them just now for the home he is leaving. That is human nature. If he be sick or sorry later on—as I know your loving fancy pictures him—his heart would turn even then, not to the mother he saw waving and weeping on the quay, amid all the confusion of departure, but to the mother of his childhood, of his happy days of long ago. It may be "—John hesitated, and spoke very tenderly—"it may be that his heart will be all the softer then, because he was denied the parting interview he never sought. The young are strangely wayward and impatient. They regret what might have been. They do not, like the old, dwell fondly upon what the gods actually granted them. It is you who will suffer from this sacrifice, not Peter; that will be some consolation to you, I suppose, even if it be also a disappointment."

"Ah, how you understand!" said Peter's mother, sadly.

"Perhaps because, as you said just now, I have been a young man too," he said, forcing a smile. "Oh, forgive me, but let me save you; for I believe that if you deserted your husband to-day, you would sorrow for it to the end of your life."

"And Peter—" she murmured.

He came to her side, and straightened himself, and spoke hopefully.

"Give me your last words and your last gifts—and a letter—for Peter, and send me in your stead to-night. I will deliver them faithfully. I will tell him—for he should be told—of the sore straits in which you find yourself. Set him this noble example of duty, and believe me, it will touch his heart more nearly than even that sacred parting which you desire."

Lady Mary held out her hand to him.

"Tell Sir Timothy that I will stay," she whispered.

John bent down and kissed the little hand in silence, and with profound respect.

Then he went to the study without looking back.

When he was gone, Lady Mary laid her face upon the badly painted miniature of Peter, and cried as one who had lost all hope in life.



CHAPTER VII

"Her didn't make much account on him while him were alive; but now 'ce be dead, 'tis butivul tu zee how her du take on," said Happy Jack.

There was a soft mist of heat; the long-delayed spring coming suddenly, after storms of cold rain and gales of wind had swept the Youle valley. Two days' powerful sunshine had excited the buds to breaking, and drawn up the tender blades of young grass from the soaked earth.

The flowering laurels hung over the shady banks, whereon large families of primroses spent their brief and lovely existence undisturbed. The hawthorn put forth delicate green leaves, and the white buds of the cherry-trees in the orchard were swelling on their leafless boughs.

In such summer warmth, and with the concert of building birds above and around, it was strange to see the dead and wintry aspect of the forest trees; still bare and brown, though thickening with the red promise of foliage against the April sky.

John Crewys, climbing the lane next the waterfall, had been hailed by the roadside by the toothless, smiling old rustic.

"I be downright glad to zee 'ee come back, zur; ay, that 'a be. What vur du 'ee go gadding London ways, zays I, when there be zuch a turble lot to zee arter? and the ladyship oop Barracombe ways, her bain't vit var tu du 't, as arl on us du know. Tis butivul tu zee how her takes on," he repeated admiringly.

John glanced uneasily at his companion, who stood with downcast eyes.

"Lard, I doan't take no account on Miss Zairy," said the road-mender, leaning on his hoe and looking sharply from the youthful lady to the middle-aged gentleman. "I've knowed her zince her wur a little maid. I used tu give her lolly-pops. Yu speak up, Miss Zairy, and tell 'un if I didn't."

"To be sure you did, Father Jack," said Sarah, promptly.

"Ah, zo 'a did," said the old man, chuckling. "Zo 'a did, and her ladyship avore yu. I mind her when her was a little maid, and pretty ways her had wi' her, zame as now. None zo ramshacklin' as yu du be, Miss Zairy."

"There's nobody about that he doesn't remember as a child," said Sarah, apologetically. "He's so old, you see. He doesn't remember how old he is, and nobody can tell him. But he knows he was born in the reign of George the Third, because his mother told him so; and he remembers his father coming in with news of the Battle of Waterloo, So I think he must be about ninety."

"Lard, mar like a hunderd year old, I be," said Happy Jack, offended. "And luke how I du wark yit. Yif I'd 'a give up my wark, I shude 'a bin in the churchyard along o' the idlers, that 'a shude." He chuckled and winked. "I du be a turble vunny man," quavered the thin falsetto voice. "They be niver a dune a laughin' along o' my jokes. An' I du remember Zur Timothy's vather zo well as Zur Timothy hisself, though 'ee bin dead nigh sixty year. Lard, 'ee was a bad 'un, was y' ould squire. An old devil. That's what 'ee was."

"He only means Sir Timothy's father had a bad temper," explained Sarah. "It's quite true."

"Ah, was it timper?" said Jack, sarcastically. "I cude tell 'ee zum tales on 'un. There were a right o' way, zur, acrust the mead thereby, as the volk did claim. And 'a zays, 'A'll putt a stop tu 'un,' 'a zays. And him zat on a style, long zide the tharn bush, and 'a took 'ee's gun, and 'a zays, 'A'll shute vust man are maid as cumes acrust thiccy vield,' 'a zays. And us knowed 'un wude du 't tu. And 'un barred the gate, and there t'was."

He laughed till the tears ran down his face, brown as gingerbread, and wrinkled as a monkey's.

"Mr. Crewys is in a hurry, Jack," said Sarah. "He's only just arrived from London, and he's walked all the way from Brawnton."

"'Tain't but a stip vur a vine vellar like 'ee, and wi' a vine maiden like yu du be grown, var tu kip 'ee company," said Happy Jack. "But 'ee'll be in a yurry tu git tu Barracombe, and refresh hisself, in arl this turble yeat. When the zun du search, the rain du voller."

"I dare say you want a glass of beer yourself," said John, producing a coin from his pocket.

"No, zur, I doan't," said the road-mender, unexpectedly. "Beer doan't agree wi' my inzide, an' it gits into my yead, and makes me proper jolly, zo the young volk make game on me. But I cude du wi' a drop o' zider zur; and drink your health and the young lady's, zur, zo 'a cude."

He winked and nodded as he pocketed the coin; and John, half laughing and half vexed, pursued his road with Sarah.

"It seems to me that the old gentleman has become a trifle free and easy with advancing years," he observed.

"He thinks he has a right to be interested in the family," said Sarah, "because of the connection, you see."

"The connection?"

"Didn't you know?" she asked, with wide-open eyes. "Though you were Sir Timothy's own cousin."

"A very distant cousin," said John.

"But every one in the valley knows," said Sarah, "that Sir Timothy's father married his own cook, who was Happy Jack's first cousin. When I was a little girl, and wanted to tease Peter," she added ingenuously, "I always used to allude to it. It is the skeleton in their cupboard. We haven't got a skeleton in our family," she added regretfully; "least of all the skeleton of a cook."

John remembered vaguely that there was a story about the second marriage of Sir Timothy the elder.

"So she was a cook!" he said. "Well, what harm?" and he laughed in spite of himself. "I wonder why there is something so essentially unromantic in the profession of a cook?"

"Her family went to Australia, and they are quite rich people now: no more cooks than you and me," said Sarah, gravely. "But Happy Jack won't leave Youlestone, though he says they tempted him with untold gold. And he wouldn't touch his hat to Sir Timothy, because he was his cousin. That was another skeleton."

"But a very small one," said John, laughing.

"It might seem small to us, but I'm sure it was one reason why Sir Timothy never went outside his own gates if he could help it," said Sarah, shrewdly. "Luckily the cook died when he was born."

"Why luckily, poor thing?" said John, indignantly.

"She wouldn't have had much of a time, would she, do you think, with Sir Timothy's sisters?" asked Sarah, with simplicity. "They were in the schoolroom when their papa married her, or I am sure they would never have allowed it. Their own mother was a most select person; and little thought when she gave the orders for dinner, and all that, who the old gentleman's next wife would be," said Sarah, giggling. "They always talk of her as the Honourable Rachel, since Lady Crewys, you know, might just as well mean the cook. I suppose the old squire got tired of her being so select, and thought he would like a change. He was a character, you know. I often think Peter will be a character when he grows old. He is so disagreeable at times."

"I thought you were so fond of Peter?" said John, looking amusedly down on the little chatterbox beside him.

"Not exactly fond of him. It's just that I'm used to him," said Sarah, colouring all over her clear, fresh face, even to the little tendrils of red hair on her white neck.

She wore a blue cotton frock, and a brown mushroom hat, with a wreath of wild roses which had somewhat too obviously been sewn on in a hurry and crookedly; and she looked far more like a village schoolgirl than a young lady who was shortly to make her debut in London society. But he was struck with the extraordinary brilliancy of her complexion, transparent and pure as it was, in the searching sunlight.

"If she were not so round-shouldered—if the features were better—her expression softer," said John to himself—"if divine colouring were all—she would be beautiful."

But her wide, smiling mouth, short-tipped nose, and cleft chin, conveyed rather the impression of childish audacity than of feminine charm. The glance of those bright, inquisitive eyes was like a wild robin's, half innocent, half bold. Though her round throat were white as milk, and though no careless exposure to sun and wind had yet succeeded in dimming the exquisite fairness of her skin, yet the defects and omissions incidental to extreme youth, country breeding, and lack of discipline, rendered Miss Sarah not wholly pleasing in John's fastidious eyes. Her carriage was slovenly, her ungloved hands were red, her hair touzled, and her deep-toned voice over-loud and confident. Yet her frankness and her trustfulness could not fail to evoke sympathy.

"It is—Lady Mary that I am fond of," said the girl, with a yet more vivid blush.

He was touched. "She will miss you, I am sure, when you go to town," he said kindly.

"If I thought so really, I wouldn't go," said Sarah, vehemently. She winked a tear from her long eyelashes. "But I know it's only your good nature. She thinks of nothing and nobody but Peter. And—and, after all, when I get better manners, and all that, I shall be more of a companion to her. I'm very glad to go, if it wasn't for leaving her. I like Aunt Elizabeth, whereas mamma and I never did get on. She cares most for the boys, which is very natural, no doubt, as I was only an afterthought, and nobody wanted me. And Aunt Elizabeth has always liked me. She says I amuse her with my sharp tongue."

"But you will have to be a little careful of the sharp tongue when you get to London," said John, smiling. He was struck by the half-sly, half-acquiescent look that Sarah stole at him from beneath those long eyelashes. Perhaps her outspokenness was not so involuntary as he had imagined.

"If I had known you were coming to-day, I would have gone up to say good-bye to Lady Mary last night," said Sarah, mournfully. "She won't want me now you are here."

"I have a thousand and one things to look after. I sha'n't be in your way," said John, good-naturedly, "if she is not busy otherwise."

"Busy!" echoed Sarah. "She sits so, with her hands in her lap, looking over the valley. And she has grown, oh, so much thinner and sadder-looking. I thought you would never come."

"I have my own work," said John, hurriedly, "and I thought, besides, she would rather be alone these first few weeks."

Sarah looked up with a flash in her blue eyes, which were so dark, and large-pupilled, and heavily lashed, that they looked almost black. She ground her strong white teeth together.

"If I were Lady Mary," she said, "I would have slammed the old front door behind me the very day after Sir Timothy was buried—and gone away; I would. There she is, like a prisoner, with the old ladies counting every tear she sheds, and adding them up to see if it is enough; and measuring every inch of crape on her gowns; and finding fault with all she does, just as they used when Sir Timothy was alive to back them up. And she is afraid to do anything he didn't like; and she never listens to the doctor, the only person in the world who's ever had the courage to fight her battles."

"The doctor," said John, sharply. "Has she been ill?"

"No, no."

"What has he to do with Lady Mary?" said John.

His displeasure was so great that the colour rose in his clean-shaven face, and did not escape little Sarah's observation, for all her downcast lashes.

"Somebody must go and see her," said Sarah; "and you were away. And the canon is just nobody, always bothering her for subscriptions; though he is very fond of her, like everybody else," she added, with compunction. "Dear me, Mr. Crewys, how fast you are walking!"

John had unconsciously quickened his pace so much that she had some ado to keep up with him without actually running.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

"It is so hot, and the hill is steep, and I am rather fat. I dare say I shall fine down as I get older," said Sarah, apologetically. "It would be dreadful if I grew up like mamma. But I am more like my father, thank goodness, and he is simply a mass of hard muscle. I dare say even I could beat you on the flat. But not up this drive. Doesn't it look pretty in the spring?"

"It was very different when I left Barracombe," said John.

He looked round with all a Londoner's appreciation.

In the sunny corner next the ivy-clad lodge an early rhododendron had burst into scarlet bloom. The steep drive was warmly walled and sheltered on the side next the hill by horse-chestnuts, witch-elms, tall, flowering shrubs and evergreens, and a variety of tree-azaleas and rhododendrons which promised a blaze of beauty later in the season.

But the other side of the drive lay in full view of the open landscape; rolling grass slopes stretching down to the orchards and the valley. Violets, white and blue, scented the air, and the primroses clustered at the roots of the forest trees.

The gnarled and twisted stems of giant creepers testified to the age of Barracombe House. Before the entrance was a level space, which made a little spring garden, more formal and less varied in its arrangement than the terrace gardens on the south front; but no less gay and bright, with beds of hyacinths, red and white and purple, and daffodils springing amidst their bodyguards of pale, pointed spears.

A wild cherry-tree at the corner of the house had showered snowy petals before the latticed window of the study; the window whence Sir Timothy had taken his last look at the western sky, and from which his watchful gaze had once commanded the approach to his house, and observed almost every human being who ventured up the drive.

On the ridge of the hill above, and in clumps upon the fertile slopes of the side of the little valley, the young larches rose, newly clothed in that light and brilliant foliage which darkens almost before spring gives place to summer.

They found Lady Mary in the drawing-room; the sunshine streamed towards her through the golden rain of a planta-genista, which stood on a table in the western corner of the bow window. She was looking out over the south terrace, and the valley and the river, just as Sarah had said.

He was shocked at her pallor, which was accentuated by her black dress; her sapphire blue eyes looked unnaturally large and clear; the little white hands clasped in her lap were too slender; a few silver threads glistened in the soft, brown hair. Above all, the hopeless expression of the sad and gentle face went to John's heart.

Was the doctor the only man in the world who had the courage to fight her battles for this fading, grieving woman who had been the lovely Mary Setoun; whom John remembered so careless, so laughing, so innocently gay?

He was relieved that she could smile as he approached to greet her.

"I did not guess you would come by the early train," she said, in glad tones. "But, oh—you must have walked all the way from Brawnton! What will James Coachman say?"

"I wanted a walk," said John, "and I knew you would send to meet me if I let you know. My luggage is at the station. James Coachman, as you call him, can fetch that whenever he will."

"And I have come to say good-bye," said Sarah, forlornly.

She watched with jealous eyes their greeting, and Lady Mary's obvious pleasure in John's arrival, and half-oblivion of her own familiar little presence.

When Peter had first gone to school, his mother in her loneliness had almost made a confidante of little Sarah, the odd, intelligent child who followed her about so faithfully, and listened so eagerly to those dreamy, half-uttered confidences. She knew that Lady Mary wept because her boy had left her; but she understood also that when Peter came home for the holidays he brought little joy to his mother. A self-possessed stripling now walked about the old house, and laid down the law to his mamma—instead of that chubby creature in petticoats who had once been Peter.

Lady Mary had dwelt on the far-off days of Peter's babyhood very tenderly when she was alone with little Sarah, who sat and nursed her doll, and liked very much to listen; she often felt awed, as though some one had died; but she did not connect the story much with the Peter of every day, who went fishing and said girls were rather a nuisance.

Sarah, too, had had her troubles. She was periodically banished to distant schools by a mother who disliked romping and hoydenish little girls, as much as she doted on fat and wheezing lap-dogs. But as her father, on the other hand, resented her banishment from home almost as sincerely as Sarah herself, she was also periodically sent for to take up her residence once more beneath the parental roof. Thus her life was full of change and uncertainty; but, through it all, her devotion to Lady Mary never wavered.

She looked at her now with a melancholy air which sat oddly upon her bright, comical face, and which was intended to draw attention to the pathetic fact of her own impending departure.

"I only came to say good-bye," said Sarah, in slightly injured tones.

"Ah! by-the-by, and I have promised not to intrude on the parting," said John, with twinkling eyes.

"It is not an eternal farewell," said Lady Mary, drawing Sarah kindly towards her.

"It may be for years," said Sarah, rather offended. "My aunt Elizabeth is as good as adopting me. Mamma said I was very lucky, and I believe she is glad to be rid of me. But papa says he shall come and see me in London. Aunt Elizabeth is going to take me to Paris and to Scotland, and abroad every winter."

"Oh, Sarah, how you will be changed when you come back!" said Lady Mary; and she laughed a little, with a hand on Sarah's shoulder; but Sarah knew that Lady Mary was not thinking very much about her, all the same.

"There is no fresh news, John?" she asked.

"Nothing since my last telegram," he answered. "But I have arranged with the Exchange Telegraph Company to wire me anything of importance during my stay here."

"You are always so good," she said.

Then he took pity on Sarah's impatience, and left the little worshipper to the interview with her idol which she so earnestly desired.

"I will go and pay my respects to my cousins," said John.

But the banqueting-hall was deserted, and gaps in the row of clogs and goloshes suggested that the old ladies were taking a morning stroll. They had not thought it proper to drive, save in a close carriage, since their brother's death; and on such a warm day of spring weather a close carriage was not inviting to country-bred people.



CHAPTER VIII

John took his hat and stepped out once more upon the drive, and there met Dr. Blundell, who had left his dog-cart at the stables, and was walking up to the house.

He did not pause to analyze the sentiment of slight annoyance which clouded his usual good humour; but Dr. Blundell divined it, with the quickness of an ultra-sensitive nature. He showed no signs that he had done so.

"It was you I came to see," he said, shaking hands with John. "I heard—you know how quickly news spreads here—that you had arrived. I hoped you might spare me a few moments for a little conversation."

"Certainly," said John. "Will you come in, or shall we take a turn?"

"You will be glad of a breath of fresh air after your journey," said the doctor, and he led the way across the south terrace, to a sheltered corner of the level plateau upon which the house was built, which was known as the fountain garden.

It was rather a deserted garden, thickly surrounded and overgrown by shrubs. Through the immense spreading Portuguese laurels which sheltered it from the east, little or no sunshine found its way to the grey, moss-grown basin and the stone figures supporting it; over which a thin stream of water continually flowed with a melancholy rhythm, in perpetual twilight.

A giant ivy grew rankly and thickly about the stone buttresses of this eastern corner of the house, and around a great mullioned window which overlooked the fountain garden, and which was the window of Lady Mary's bedroom.

"These shrubberies want thinning," said John, looking round him rather disgustedly. "This place is reeking with damp. I should like to cut down some of these poisonous laurels, and let in the air and the sunshine, and open out the view of the Brawnton hills."

"And why don't you?" said the doctor, with such energy in his tone that John stopped short in his pacing of the gravel walk, and looked at him.

The two men were almost as unlike in appearance as in character.

The doctor was nervous, irritable, and intense in manner; with deep-set, piercing eyes that glowed like hot coal when he was moved or excited. A tall, gaunt man, lined and wrinkled beyond his years; careless of appearance, so far as his shabby clothes were concerned, yet careful of detail, as was proven by spotless linen and well-preserved, delicate hands.

He was indifferent utterly to the opinion of others, to his own worldly advancement, or to any outer consideration, when in pursuit of the profession he loved; and he knew no other interest in life, save one. He had the face of a fanatic or an enthusiast; but also of a man whose understanding had been so cultivated as to temper enthusiasm with judgment.

He had missed success, and was neither resigned to his disappointment, nor embittered by it.

The gaze of those dark eyes was seldom introspective; rather, as it seemed, did they look out eagerly, sadly, pitifully at the pain and sorrow of the world; a pain he toiled manfully to lessen, so far as his own infinitesimal corner of the universe was concerned.

John Crewys, on the other hand, was, to the most casual observer, a successful man; a man whose personality would never be overlooked.

There was a more telling force in his composure than in the doctor's nervous energy. His clear eyes, his bright, yet steady glance, inspired confidence.

The doctor might have been taken for a poet, but John looked like a philosopher.

He was also, as obviously, in appearance, a man of the world, and a Londoner, as the doctor was evidently a countryman, and a hermit. His advantages over the doctor included his voice, which was as deep and musical as the tones of his companion were harsh.

The manner, no less than the matter of John's speech, had early brought him distinction.

Nature, rather than cultivation, had bestowed on him the faculty of conveying the impression he wished to convey, in tones that charm; and held his auditors, and penetrated ears dulled and fatigued by monotony and indistinctness.

The more impassioned his pleading, the more utterly he held his own emotion in check; the more biting his subtly chosen words, the more courteous his manner; now deadly earnest, now humorously scornful, now graciously argumentative, but always skilfully and designedly convincing.

The doctor, save in the presence of a patient, had no such control over himself as John Crewys carried from the law-courts, into his life of every day.

"Why don't you," he said, in fiery tones, "let in air and life, and a view of the outside world, and as much sunshine as possible into this musty old house? You have the power, if you had only the will."

"You speak figuratively, I notice," said John. "I should be much obliged if you would tell me exactly what you mean."

He would have answered in warmer and more kindly tones had Sarah's words not rung upon his ear.

Was the doctor going to fight Lady Mary's battles now, and with him, of all people in the world? As though there were any one in the world to whom her interests could be dearer than—

John stopped short in his thoughts, and looked attentively at the doctor. His heart smote him. How pallid was that tired face; and the hollow eyes, how sad and tired too! The doctor had been up all night, in a wretched isolated cottage, watching a man die—but John did not know that.

He perceived that this was no meddler, but a man speaking of something very near his heart; no presuming and interfering outsider who deserved a snub, but a man suffering from some deep and hidden cause.

The doctor's secret was known to John long before he had finished what he had to say; but he listened attentively, and gave no sign that this was so.

"She will die," said Blundell, "if this goes on;" and he neither mentioned any name, nor did John Crewys require him to do so.

The doctor's words came hurrying out incoherently from the depths of his anxiety and earnestness.

"She will die if this goes on. There were few hopes and little enough pleasure in her life before; but what is left to her now? De mortuis nil nisi bonum. But just picture to yourself for a moment, man, what her life has been."

He stopped and drew breath, and strove to speak calmly and dispassionately.

"I was born in the valley of the Youle," he said. "My people live in a cottage—they call it a house, but it's just a farm—on the river,—Cullacott. I was a raw medical student when she came here as a child. Her father was killed in the Afghan War. He had quarrelled with his uncle, they said, who afterwards succeeded to the earldom; so she was left to the guardianship of Sir Timothy, a distant cousin. Every one was sorry for her, because Sir Timothy was her guardian, and because she was a little young thing to be left to the tender mercies of the two old ladies, who were old even then. If you will excuse my speaking frankly about the family"—John nodded—"they bullied their brother always; what with their superiority of birth, and his being so much younger, and so on. Their bringing-up made him what he was, I am sure. He went nowhere; he always fancied people were laughing at him. His feeling about his—his mother's lowly origin seemed to pervade his whole life. He exaggerated the importance of birth till it became almost a mania. If you hadn't known the man, you couldn't have believed a human being—one of the million crawling units on the earth—could be so absurdly inflated with self-importance. It was pitiful. He went nowhere, and saw no one. I believe he thought that Providence had sent a wife of high rank to his very door to enable him partially to wipe out his reproach. She looked like a child when she came, but she shot up very suddenly into womanhood. If you ask me if she was unhappy, I declare I don't think so. She had never realized, I should think, what it was to be snubbed or found fault with in her life. She was a motherless child, and had lived with her old grandfather and her young father, and had been very much spoilt. And they were both snatched away from her, as it were, in a breath; and she alone in the world, with an uncle who was only glad to get rid of her to her stranger guardian. Well,—she was too young and too bright and too gay to be much downcast for all the old women could do. She laughed at their scolding, and when they tried severity she appealed to Sir Timothy. The old doctor who was my predecessor here told me at the time that he thought she had bewitched Sir Timothy; but afterwards he said that he believed it was only that Sir Timothy had made up his mind even then to quarter the Setoun arms with his own. Anyway, he went against his sisters for the first and only time in his life, and they learnt that Lady Mary was not to be interfered with. Whether it was gratitude or just the childish satisfaction of triumphing over her two enemies, I can't tell, but she married him in less than two years after she came to live at Barracombe. The old ladies didn't know whether to be angry or pleased. They wanted him to marry, and they wanted his wife to be well-born, no doubt; but to have a mere child set over them! Well, the marriage took place in London."

"I was present," said John.

"The people here said things about it that may have got round to Sir Timothy; but I don't know. He never came down to the village, except to church, where he sat away from everybody, in the gallery curtained off. Anyway, he wouldn't have the wedding down here. He invited all her relatives, and none of them had a word to say. It wasn't as if she were an heiress. I believe she had next to nothing. She was just like a child, laughing, and pleased at getting married, and with all her finery, perhaps,—or at getting rid of her lessons with the old women may be,—and the thought of babies of her own. Who knows what a girl thinks of?" said the doctor, harshly. "I didn't see her again for a long time after. But then I came down; the Brawnton doctor was getting old, and it was a question whether I should succeed him or go on in London, where I was doing well enough. And—and I came here," said the doctor, abruptly.

John nodded again. He filled in the gaps of the doctor's narrative for himself, and understood.

"She had changed very much. All the gaiety and laughter gone. But she was wrapt up in the child as I never saw any woman wrapt up in a brat before or since; and I've known some that were pretty ridiculous in that way," said the doctor, and his voice shook more than ever. "It was—touching, for she was but a child herself; and Peter, between you and me, was an unpromising doll for a child to play with. He was ugly and ill-tempered, and he wouldn't be caressed, or dressed up, or made much of, from the first minute he had a will of his own. As he grew bigger he was for ever having rows with his father, and his mother was for ever interceding for him. He was idle at school; but he was a manly boy enough over games and sport, and a capital shot. Anyway, she managed to be proud of him, God knows how. I shouldn't wonder if this war was the making of him, though, poor chap, if he's spared to see the end of it all."

"I have no doubt the discipline will do him a great deal of good," said John, dryly.

It cannot be said that his brief interview at Southampton had impressed John with a favourable opinion of the sulky and irresponsive youth, who had there listened to his mother's messages with lowering brow and downcast eye. Peter had betrayed no sign of emotion, and almost none of gratitude for John's hurried and uncomfortable journey to convey that message.

"A few hard knocks will do you no harm, my young friend; and I almost wish you may get them," John had said to himself on his homeward journey; dreading, yet expecting, the news that awaited him at Peter's home, and for which he had done his best to prepare the boy.

"Too much consideration hitherto has ruined him," said the doctor, shortly. "But it's not of Peter I'm thinking, one way or the other. From the time he went first to school, she's had to depend entirely on her own resources—and what are they?"

He paused, as though to gather strength and energy for his indictment.

"From the time she was brought here—except for that one outing and a change to Torquay, I believe, after Peter's birth—she has scarce set foot outside Barracombe. Sir Timothy would not, so he was resolved she should not. His sisters, who have as much cultivation as that stone figure, disapproved of novel-reading—or of any other reading, I should fancy—and he followed suit. Books are almost unknown in this house. The library bookcases were locked. Sir Timothy opened them once in a while, and his sisters dusted the books with their own hands; it was against tradition to handle such valuable bindings. He hated music, and the piano was not to be played in his presence. Have you ever tried it? I'm told you're musical. It belonged to Lady Belstone's mother, the Honourable Rachel. That is her harp which stands in the corner of the hall. Her daughter once tinkled a little, I believe; but the prejudices of the ruling monarch were religiously obeyed. Music was taboo at Barracombe. Dancing was against their principles, and theatres they regard with horror, and have never been inside one in their lives. Nothing took Sir Timothy to London but business; and if it were possible to have the business brought to Barracombe, his solicitor, Mr. Crawley, visited him here."

The doctor spoke in lower tones, as he recurred to his first theme.

"I don't think she found out for years, or realized what a prisoner she was. They caught and pinned her down so young. There are no very near neighbours—I mean, not the sort of people they would recognize as neighbours—except the Hewels. Youlestone is such an out-of-the-way place, and Sir Timothy was never on intimate terms with any one. Mrs. Hewel is a fool—there was only little Sarah whom Lady Mary made a pet of—but she had no friends. Sir Timothy and his sisters made visiting such a stiff and formal business, that it was no wonder she hated paying calls; the more especially as it could lead to nothing. He would not entertain; he grudged the expense. I was present at a scene he once made because a large party drove over from a distant house and stayed to tea. He said he could not entertain the county. She dared ask no one to her house—she, who was so formed and fitted by nature to charm and attract, and enjoy social intercourse." His voice faltered. "They stole her youth," he said.

"What do you want me to do?" said John, though he was vaguely conscious that he understood for what the doctor was pleading.

He sat down by the fountain; and the doctor, resting a mended boot on the end of the bench, leant on his bony knee, and looked down wistfully at John's thoughtful face, broad brow, and bright, intent eyes.

"You are a very clever man, Mr. Crewys," he said humbly. "A man of the world, successful, accomplished, and, I believe, honest"—he spoke with a simplicity that disarmed offence—"or I should not have ventured as I have ventured. Somehow you inspire me with confidence. I believe you can save her. I believe you could find a way to bring back her peace of mind; the interest in life—the gaiety of heart—that is natural to her. If I were in your place, not the two old women—not Sir Timothy's ghost—not that poor conceited slip of a lad who may be shot to-morrow—would stand in my way. I would bring back the colour to her cheek, and the light to her eye, and the music to her voice—"

"Whilst her boy is in danger?" John asked, almost scornfully. He thought he knew Lady Mary better than the doctor did, after all.

"I tell you nothing would stop me," said Blundell, vehemently. "Before I would let her fret herself to death—afraid to break the spells that have been woven round her, bound as she is, hand and foot, with the prejudices of the dead—I would—I would—take her to South Africa myself," he said brilliantly. "The voyage would bring her back to life."

John got up. "That is an idea," he said. He paused and looked at the doctor. "You have known her longer than I. Have you said nothing to her of all this?"

The doctor smiled grimly. "Mr. Crewys," he said, "some time since I spoke my mind—a thing I am over-apt to do—of Peter, and to him. The lad has forgiven me; he is a man, you see, with all his faults. But Lady Mary, though she has all the virtues of a woman, is also a mother. A woman often forgives; a mother, never. Don't forget."

"I will not," said John.

"And you'll do it—"

"Use the unlimited authority that has been placed in my hands, by improving this tumble-down, overgrown place?" said John, slowly. "Let in light, air, and sunshine to Barracombe, and do my best to brighten Lady Mary's life, without reference to any one's prejudices, past or present?"

"You've got the idea," said the doctor, joyfully. "Will you carry it out?"

"Yes," said John.



CHAPTER IX

The new moon brightened above the rim of the opposite hill, and touched the river below with silver reflections. On the grass banks sloping away beneath the terrace gardens, sheets of bluebells shone almost whitely on the grass. The silent house rose against the dark woods, whitened also here and there by the blossom of wild cherry-trees.

Lady Mary stepped from the open French windows of the drawing-room into the still, scented air of the April night. She stood leaning against the stone balcony, and gazing at the wonderful panorama of the valley and overlapping hills; where the little river threaded its untroubled course between daisied meadows and old orchards and red crumbling banks.

A broad-shouldered figure appeared in the window, and a man's step crunched the gravel of the path which Lady Mary had crossed.

"For once I have escaped, you see," she said, without turning round. "They will not venture into the night air. Sometimes I think they will drive me mad—Isabella and Georgina."

"Mary!" cried a shrill voice from the drawing-room, "how can you be so imprudent! John, how can you allow her!"

John stepped back to the window. "It is very mild," he said. "Lady Mary likes the air."

There was a note of authority in his tone which somehow impressed Lady Belstone, who withdrew, muttering to herself, into the warm lamplight of the drawing-room.

Perhaps the two old ladies were to be pitied, too, as they sat together, but forlorn, sincerely shocked and uneasy at their sister-in-law's behaviour.

"Dear Timothy not dead three months, and she sitting out there in the night air, as he would never have permitted, talking and laughing; yes, I actually hear her laughing—with John."

"There is no telling what she may do now," said Miss Crewys, gloomily.

"I declare it is a judgment, Georgina. Why did Timothy choose to trust a perfect stranger—even though John is a cousin—with the care of his wife and son, and his estate, rather than his own sisters?"

"It was a gentleman's work," said Miss Crewys.

"Gentleman's fiddlesticks! Couldn't old Crawley have done it? I should hope he is as good a lawyer as young John any day," said Lady Belstone, tossing her head. "But I have often noticed that people will trust any chance stranger with the property they leave behind, rather than those they know best."

"Isabella," said Miss Crewys, "blame not the dead, and especially on a moonlight night. It makes my blood run cold."

"I am blaming nobody, Georgina; but I will say that if poor Timothy thought proper to leave everything else in the hands of young John, he might have considered that you and I had a better right to the Dower House than poor dear Mary, who, of course, must live with her son."

"I am far from wishing or intending to leave my home here, Isabella," said Miss Crewys. "It is very different in your case. You forfeited the position of daughter of the house when you married. But I have always occupied my old place, and my old room."

This was a sore subject. On Lady Belstone's return as a widow, to the home of her fathers, she had been torn with anxiety and indecision regarding her choice of a sleeping apartment. Sentiment dictated her return to her former bedroom; but she was convinced that the married state required a domicile on the first floor. Etiquette prevailed, and she descended; but the eighty-year-old legs of Miss Crewys still climbed the nursery staircase, and she revenged herself for her inferior status by insisting, in defiance of old associations, that her maid should occupy the room next to her own, which her sister had abandoned.

"For my part, I can sleep in one room as well as another, provided it be comfortable and appropriate," said Lady Belstone, with dignity. "There are very pleasant rooms in the Dower House, and our great-aunts managed to live there in comfort, and yet keep an eye on their nephew here, as I have always been told. I don't know why we should object to doing the same. You have never tried being mistress of your own house, Georgina, but I can assure you it has its advantages; and I found them out as a married woman."

"A married woman has her husband to look after her," said Miss Crewys. "It is very different for a widow."

"You are for ever throwing my widowhood in my teeth, Georgina," said Lady Belstone, plaintively. "It is not my fault that I am a widow. I did not murder the admiral."

"I don't say you did, Isabella," said Georgina, grimly; "but he only survived his marriage six months."

"It is nice to be silent sometimes," said Lady Mary.

"Does that mean that I am to go away?" said John, "or merely that I am not to speak to you?"

She laughed a little. "Neither. It means that I am tired of being scolded."

"I have wondered now and then," said John, deliberately, "why you put up with it?"

"I suppose—because I can't help it," she said, startled.

"You are a free agent."

"You mean that I could go away?" she said, in a low voice. "But there is only one place I should care to go to now."

"To South Africa?"

"You always understand," she said gratefully.

"Supposing this—this ghastly war should not be over as soon as we all hope," he said, rather huskily, "I could escort you myself, in a few weeks' time, to the Cape. Or—or arrange for your going earlier if you desired, and if I could not get away. Probably you would get no further than Cape Town; but it might be easier for you waiting there—than here."

"I shall thank you, and bless you always, for thinking of it," she interrupted, softly; "but there is something—that I never told anybody."

He waited.

"After Peter had the news of his father's death," said Lady Mary, with a sob in her throat, "you did not know that he—he telegraphed to me, from Madeira. He foresaw immediately, I suppose, whither my foolish impulses would lead me; and he asked me—I should rather say he ordered me—under no circumstances whatever to follow him out to South Africa."

John remembered the doctor's warning, and said nothing.

"So, you see—I can't go," said Lady Mary.

There was a pause.

"I am bound to say," said John, presently, "that, in Peter's place, I should not have liked my mother, or any woman I loved, to come out to the seat of war. He showed only a proper care for you in forbidding it. Perhaps I am less courageous than he, in thinking more of the present benefit you would derive from the voyage and the change of scene, than of the perils and discomforts which might await you, for aught we can foretell now, at the end of it. Peter certainly showed judgment in telegraphing to you."

"Do you really think so? That it was care for me that made him do it?" she asked. A distant doubtful joy sounded in her voice. "Somehow I never thought of that. I remembered his old dislike of being followed about, or taken care of, or—or spied upon, as he used to call it."

"Boys just turning into men are often sensitive on those points," said John, heedful always of the doctor's warning.

"It is odd I did not see the telegram in that light," said poor Lady Mary. "I must read it again."

She spoke as hopefully as though she had not read it already a hundred times over, trying to read loving meanings, that were not there, between the curt and peremptory lines.

"It is not odd," thought John to himself; "it is because you knew him too well;" and he wondered whether his explanation of Peter's action were charitable, or merely unscrupulous.

But Lady Mary was not really deceived; only very grateful to the man who was so tender of heart, so tactful of speech, as to make it seem even faintly possible that she had misjudged her boy.

She said to herself that parents were often unreasonable, expecting impossibilities, in their wild desire for perfection in their offspring. An outsider, being unprejudiced by anxiety, could judge more fairly. John found that the telegram, which had almost broken her heart, was reasonable and justified; nay, even that it displayed a dutiful regard for her safety and comfort, of which no one but a stranger could possibly have suspected Peter. She was grateful to John. It was a relief and joy to feel that it was she who was to blame, and not Peter, whose heart was in the right place, after all. And yet, though John was so clever and had such an experience of human nature, it was the doctor who had put the key into his hands, which presently unlocked Lady Mary's confidence.

"You mustn't think, John, that I don't understand what it will be like later, when Peter comes of age. Of course this house will be his, and he is not the kind of young man to be tied to his mother's apron-string. He always wanted to be independent."

"It is human nature," said John.

"I am not blind to his faults," said Lady Mary, humbly, "though they all think so. It is of little use to try and hide them from you, who will see them for yourself directly my darling comes back. I pray God it may be soon. Of course he is spoilt; but I am to blame, because I made him my idol."

"An only son is always more or less spoilt," said John. He remembered his own boyhood, and smiled sardonically in the darkness. "He will grow out of it. He will come back a man after this experience."

"Yes, yes, and he will want to live his life, and I—I shall have to learn to do without him, I know," she said. "I must learn while he is away to—to depend on myself. It is not likely that—that a woman of my age should have much in common with a manly boy like Peter. Sometimes I wonder whether I really understand my boy at all."

"It is my belief," said John, "that no generation is in perfect touch with another. Each stands on a different rung of the ladder of Time. You may stoop to lend a helping hand to the younger, or reach upwards to take a farewell of the older. But there must be a looking down or a looking up. No face-to-face talk is possible except upon the same level. No real and true comradeship. The very word implies a marching together, under the same circumstances, to a common goal; and how can we, who have to be the commanding officers of the young, be their true companions?" he said, lightly and cheerfully.

"I dare say I have expected impossibilities," said Lady Mary, as though reproaching herself. "It comforts me to think so. But I have had time to reflect on many things since—February." She paused. "I don't deny I have tried to make plans for the future. But there are these days to be lived through first—until he comes home."

"I was going to propose," said John, "that, if agreeable to you, I should spend my summer and autumn holiday here, instead of going, as usual, to Switzerland."

"I should be only too glad," she said, in tones of awakened interest. "But surely—it would be very dull for you?"

"Not at all. There is a great deal to be done, and in accordance with my trust I am bound to set about it," said John. "I propose to spend the next few days in examining the reports of the surveys that have already been made, and in judging of their accuracy for myself. When I return here later, I could have the work begun, and then for some time I could superintend matters personally, which is always a good thing."

"Do you mean—the woods?" she asked. "I know they have been neglected. Sir Timothy would never have a tree cut down; but they are so wild and beautiful."

"There are hundreds of pounds' worth of timber perishing for want of attention. I am responsible for it all until Peter comes of age," said John, "as I am for the rest of his inheritance. It is part of my trust to hand over to him his house and property in the best order I can, according to my own judgment. I know something of forestry," he added, simply; "you know I was not bred a Cockney. I was to have been a Hertfordshire squire, on a small scale, had not circumstances necessitated the letting of my father's house when he died."

"But it will be yours again some day?"

"No," said John, quietly; "it had to be sold—afterwards."

He gave no further explanation, but Lady Mary recollected instantly the abuse that had been showered on his mother, by her sisters-in-law, when John was reported to have sacrificed his patrimony to pay her debts.

"I rather agree with you about the woods," she said. "It vexes me always to see a beautiful young tree, that should be straight and strong, turned into a twisted dwarf, in the shade of the overgrowth and the overcrowding. The woodman will be delighted; he is always grumbling."

"It is not only the woods. There is the house."

"I suppose it wants repairing?" said Lady Mary. "Hadn't that better be put off till Peter comes home?"

"I cannot neglect my trust," said John, gravely; "besides," he added, "the state of the roof is simply appalling. Many of the beams are actually rotten. Then there are the drains; they are on a system that should not be tolerated in these days. Nothing has been done for over sixty years, and I can hardly say how long before."

"Won't it all cost a great deal of money?" said Lady Mary.

"A good deal; but there is a very large sum of money lying idle, which, as the will directs, may be applied to the general improvement of the house and estate during Peter's minority; but over which he is to have no control, should it remain unspent, until he comes of age. That is to say, it will then—or what is left of it—be invested with the rest of his capital, which is all strictly tied up. So, as old Crawley says, it will relieve Peter's income in the future, if we spend what is necessary now, according to our powers, in putting his house and estate in order. It would have to be done sooner or later, most assuredly. Sir Timothy, as you must know," said John, gently, "did not spend above a third of his actual income; and, so far as Mr. Crawley knows, spent nothing at all on repairs, beyond jobs to the village carpenter and mason."

"I did not know," said Lady Mary. "He always told me we were very badly off—for our position. I know nothing of business. I did not attend much to Mr. Crawley's explanations at the time."

"You were unable to attend to him then," said John; "but now, I think, you should understand the exact position of affairs. Surely my cousins must have talked it over?"

"Isabella and Georgina never talk business before me. You forget I am still a child in their eyes," she said, smiling. "I gathered that they were disappointed poor Timothy had left them nothing, and that they thought I had too much; that is all."

"Their way of looking at it is scarcely in accordance with justice," said John, shrugging his shoulders. "They each have ten thousand pounds left to them by their father in settlement. This was to return to the estate if they died unmarried or childless. You have two thousand a year and the Dower House for your life; but you forfeit both if you re-marry."

"Of course," said Lady Mary, indifferently. "I suppose that is the usual thing?"

"Not quite, especially when your personal property is so small."

"I didn't know I had any personal property."

"About five hundred pounds a year; perhaps a little more."

"From the Setouns!" she cried.

"From your father. Surely you must have known?"

Lady Mary was silent a moment. "No; I didn't know," she said presently. "It doesn't matter now, but Timothy never told me. I thought I hadn't a farthing in the world. He never mentioned money matters to me at all." Then she laughed faintly. "I could have lived all by myself in a cottage in Scotland, without being beholden to anybody—on five hundred pounds a year, couldn't I?"

"There is no reason you should not have a cottage in Scotland now, if you fancy one," said John, cheerfully.

"The only memories I have in the world, outside my life in this place, are of my childhood at home," she said.

John suddenly realized how very, very limited her experiences had been, and wondered less at the almost childish simplicity which characterized her, and which in no way marred her natural graciousness and dignity. Lady Mary did not observe his silence, because her own thoughts were busy with a scene which memory had painted for her, and far away from the moonlit valley of the Youle. She saw a tall, narrow, turreted building against a ruddy sunset sky; a bare ridge of hills crowned sparsely with ragged Scotch firs; a sea of heather which had seemed boundless to a childish imagination.

"I could not go back to Scotland now," she said, with that little wistful-sounding, patient sob which moved John to such pity that he could scarce contain himself; "but some day, when I am free—when nobody wants me."

"London is the only place worth living in just now, whilst we are in such terrible anxiety," he said boldly. "At least there are the papers and telegrams all day long, and none of this dreary, long waiting between the posts; and there are other things—to distract one's attention, and keep up one's courage."

"I do not know what Isabella and Georgina would say," said Lady Mary.

"But you—would you not care to come?"

"Oh!" she said, half sobbing, "it is because I am afraid of caring too much. Life seems to call so loudly to me now and then; as though I were tired of sitting alone, and looking up the valley and down the valley. I know it all by heart. It would be fresh life; the stir, the movement; other people, fresh ideas, beautiful new things to see. But, indeed, you must not tempt me." There was an accent of yearning in her tone, a hint of eager anticipation, as of a good time coming; a dream postponed, which she would nevertheless be willing one day to enjoy. "I mustn't go anywhere; I couldn't—until my boy comes home, if he ever comes home," she added, under her breath.

"But when he comes home safe and sound, as please God he may," said John, cheerfully, "why, then you have a great deal of lost time to make up."

"Ah, yes!" said Lady Mary, and again that wistful note of longing sounded. "I have thought sometimes I would not like to die before I have seen my birthplace once more. And there is—Italy," she said, as though the one word conveyed every vision of earthly beauty which mortal could desire to behold—as, indeed, it does. And again she added, "But I don't know what my sisters-in-law would say. It would be against all the traditions."

"Surely Lady Belstone, at least, must be less absurdly narrow-minded," said John, almost impatiently.

"Shall I tell you the history of her marriage?" said Lady Mary.

Her pretty laugh rang out softly in the darkness, and thrilled John's heart, and shocked yet further the old ladies who sat within, straining their ears for the sound of returning footsteps.

"It took place about forty years ago or less. A cousin of her mother's, Sir William Belstone, came to spend a few days here. I believe the poor man invited himself, because he happened to be staying in the neighbourhood. He was a gallant old sailor, and very polite to both his cousins; and one day Isabella interpreted his compliments into a proposal of marriage. Georgina has given me to understand that no one was ever more astounded and terrified than the admiral when he found himself engaged to Isabella. But apparently he was a chivalrous old gentleman, and would not disappoint her. It is really rather a sad little story, because he died of heart disease very soon after the marriage. Old Mrs. Ash, the housekeeper, always declares her mistress came home even more old-maidish in her ways than she went away, and that she quarrelled with the poor admiral from morning till night. Perhaps that is why she has never lightened her garb of woe. And she makes my life a burden to me because I won't wear a cap. Ah! how heartless it all sounds, and yet how ridiculous! Dear Cousin John, haven't I bored you? Let us go in."

With characteristic energy John Crewys set in hand the repairs which he had declared to be so necessary.

The late squire had apparently been as well aware of the neglected state of his ancestral halls as of his tangled and overgrown woods; but he had also, it seemed, been unable to make up his mind to take any steps towards amending the condition of either—or to part with his ever-increasing balance at his bankers'.

Sir Timothy had carried both his obstinacy and his dullness into his business affairs.

The family solicitor, Mr. Crawley, backed up the new administrator with all his might.

"Over sixty thousand pounds uninvested, and lying idle at the bank," he said, lifting his hands and eyes, "and one long, miserable grumbling over the expense of keeping up Barracombe. One good tenant after another lost because the landlord would keep nothing in repair; gardener after gardener leaving for want of a shilling increase in weekly wages. In case Sir Peter should turn out to resemble his father, we had best not let the grass grow under our feet, Mr. Crewys," said the shrewd gentleman, chuckling, "but take full advantage of the powers entrusted to you for the next two years and a quarter. Sir Peter, luckily, does not come of age until October, 1902."

"That is just what I intend to do," said John.

"Odd, isn't it," said the lawyer, confidentially, "how often a man will put unlimited power into the hands of a comparative stranger, and leave his own son tied hand and foot? Not a penny of all this capital will Sir Peter ever have the handling of. Perhaps a good job too. Oh, dear! when I look at the state of his affairs in general, I feel positively guilty, and ashamed to have had even the nominal management of them. But what could a man do under the circumstances? He paid for my advice, and then acted directly contrary to it, and thought he had done a clever thing, and outwitted his own lawyer. But now we shall get things a bit straight, I hope. What about buying Speccot Farm, Mr. Crewys? It's been our Naboth's vineyard for many a day; but we haggled over the price, and couldn't make up our minds to give what the farmer wants. He'll have to sell in the end, you know; but I suppose he could hold out a few years longer if we don't give way."

"He's been to me already," said John. "The price he asked is no doubt a bit above its proper value; but it's accommodation land, and it would be disappointing if it slipped through our fingers. I propose to offer him pretty nearly what he asks."

"He'll take it," said Mr. Crawley, with satisfaction. "I could never make Sir Timothy see that it wouldn't pay the fellow to turn out unless he got something over and above the value of his mortgages."

"The next thing I want you to arrange is the purchase of those twenty acres of rough pasture and gorse, right in the centre of the property," said John, "rented by the man who lives outside Youlestone, at what they call Pott's farm, for his wretched, half-starved beasts to graze upon. He's saved us the trouble of exterminating the rabbits there, I notice."

"He's an inveterate poacher. A good thing to give him no further excuse to hang about the place. What do you propose to do?"

"Compensate him, burn the gorse, cut the bracken, and plant larch. There are enough picturesque commons on the top of the hill, where the soil is poor, and land is cheap. We don't want them in the valley. Now I propose to give our minds to the restoration of the house, the drains, the stables, and the home farm. Here are my estimates."

Though Mr. Crawley was so loyal a supporter of the regent of Barracombe, yet John's projected improvements were far too thorough-going to gain the approval of the pottering old retainers of the Crewys family, though they were unable to question his knowledge or his judgment.

"I telled 'im tu du things by the littles," said the woodman, who was kept at work marking trees and saplings as he had never worked before; though John was generous of help, and liberal of pay. "But lard, he bain't one tu covet nobody's gude advice. I was vair terrified tu zee arl he knowed about the drees. The squoire 'ee wur like a babe unbarn beside 'un. He lukes me straight in the eyes, and 'Luke,' sezzee, 'us 'a' got tu git the place in vamous arder vur young Zur Peter,' sezzee, 'An' I be responsible, and danged but what 'a'll du't,' 'ee zays. An' I touched my yead, zo, and I zays, 'Very gude, zur,' 'a zays. 'An' zo 'twill be, yu may depend on't.'"

Perhaps the unwonted stir and bustle, the coming and going of John Crewys, the confusion of workmen, the novel interest of renovating and restoring the old house, helped to brace and fortify Lady Mary during the months which followed; months, nevertheless, of suspense and anxiety, which reduced her almost to a shadow of her former self.

For Peter's career in South Africa proved an adventurous one.

He had the good luck to distinguish himself in a skirmish almost immediately after his arrival, and to win not only the approval of his noble relative and commander, but his commission. His next exploit, however, ended rather disastrously, and Peter found himself a prisoner in the now historic bird-cage at Pretoria, where he spent a dreary, restless, and perhaps not wholly unprofitable time, in the society of men greatly his superior in soldierly and other qualities.

John feared that his mother's resolution not to follow her boy must inevitably be broken when the news of his capture reached Barracombe; but perhaps Peter's letters had repeated the peremptory injunctions of his telegram, for she never proposed to take the journey to South Africa.

The wave of relief and thankfulness that swept over the country, when the release of the imprisoned officers became known, restored not a little of Lady Mary's natural courage and spirits. She became more hopeful about her son, and more interested daily in the beautifying and restoration of his house.

She said little in her letters to Peter of the work at Barracombe, for John advised her that the boy would probably hardly understand the necessity for it, and she herself was doubtful of Peter's approval even if he had understood. She had too much intelligence to be doubtful of John's wisdom, or of Mr. Crawley's zeal for his interest.

The letters she received were few and scanty, for Peter was but a poor correspondent, and he made little comment on the explanatory letter regarding his father's will which John and Mr. Crawley thought proper to send him. The solicitor was justly indignant at Sir Peter's neglect to reply to this carefully thought-out and faultlessly indited epistle.

"He is just a chip of the old block," said Mr. Crawley.

But his mother divined that Peter was partly offended at his own utter exclusion from any share of responsibility, and partly too much occupied to give much attention to any matter outside his soldiering. She said to herself that he was really too young to be troubled with business; and she began to believe, as the work at Barracombe advanced, that the results of so much planning and forethought must please him, after all. The consolation of working in his interests was delightful to her. Her days were filling almost miraculously, as it seemed to her, with new occupations, fresh hopes, and happier ideas, than the idle dreaming which was all that had hitherto been permitted to her. John desired her help, or her suggestions, at every turn, and constantly consulted her taste. Her artistic instinct for decoration was hardly less strong than his own, though infinitely less cultivated. He sent her the most engrossing and delightful books to repair the omission, and he brought her plans and drawings, which he begged her to copy for him. The days which had hung so heavily on her hands were scarcely long enough.

The careful restoration of the banqueting-hall necessitated new curtains and chair-covers. Lady Mary looked doubtfully at John when this matter had been decided, and then at the upholstery of the drawing-rooms facing the south terrace.

The faded magenta silk, tarnished gilded mirrors, and gold-starred wall-paper which decorated these apartments had offended her eye for years. John laughed at her hesitation, and advised her to consult her sisters-in-law on the subject; and this settled the question.

"They would choose bottle-green" she said, in horror; and she salved her conscience by paying for the redecoration of the drawing-rooms out of her own pocket.

John discovered that Lady Mary had never drawn a cheque in her life, and that Mr. Crawley's lessons in the management of her own affairs filled her with as much awe as amusement.

* * * * *

So the old order changed and gave place to the new at Barracombe; and the summer grew to winter, and winter to summer again; and Peter did not return, as he might, with the corps in which he had the honour to serve.

Want of energy was not one of his defects; he was a strong, hardy young man, a fine horseman and a good shot, and eager to gain distinction for himself. He passed into a fresh corps of newly raised Yeomanry, and went through the Winter Campaign of 1901, from April to September, without a scratch. His mother implored him to come home; but Peter's letters were contemptuous of danger. If he were to be shot, plenty of better fellows than he had been done for, he wrote; and coming home to go to Oxford, or whatever his guardian might be pleased to order him to do, was not at all in his line, when he was really wanted elsewhere.

To do him justice, he had no idea how boastfully his letters read; he had not the art of expressing himself on paper, and he was always in a hurry. The moments when he was moved by a vague affection for his home, or his mother, were seldom the actual moments which he devoted to correspondence; and the passing ideas of the moment were all Peter knew how to convey.

Lady Mary could not but be aware of her son's complete independence of her, but the realization of it no longer filled her with such dismay as formerly. Her outlook upon life was widening insensibly. The young soldier's luck deserted him at last. Barely six weeks before the declaration of peace, Peter was wounded at Rooiwal. The War Office, and the account of the action in the newspapers, reported his injuries as severe; but a telegram from Peter himself brought relief, and even rejoicing, to Barracombe—

"Shot in the arm. Doing splendidly. Invalided home. Sailing as soon as doctor allows."



CHAPTER X

"I never complain, Canon Birch," said Lady Belstone, resignedly; "but it is a great relief, as I cannot deny, to open my mind to you, who know so well what this place used to be like in my dear brother's time."

The canon had been absent from Youlestone on a long holiday, and on his return found that the workmen, who had reigned over Barracombe for nearly two years, had at length departed.

The inhabitants had been hunted from one part of the house to another as the work proceeded; but now the usual living-rooms had been restored to their occupants, and peace and order prevailed, where all had been noise and confusion.

"I should not have known the place," said the canon, gazing round him.

"Nor I. We make a point of saying nothing," said Miss Crewys, pathetically, "but it's almost impossible not to look now and then."

"Speak for yourself, Georgina," said her sister, with asperity. "One can't look furniture out of one room and into another."

The old ladies sat forlornly in their corner by the great open hearth, whereon the logs were piled in readiness for a fire, because they often found the early June evenings chilly. But the sofa with broken springs, which they specially affected, had been mended, and recovered; and was no longer, they sadly agreed, near so comfortable as in its crippled past.

The banqueting-hall, which was the very heart of Barracombe House, had been carefully and skilfully restored to its ancient dignity.

The paint and graining, which had disfigured its mighty beams and solid panelling, had been removed; and the freshly polished oak shone forth in its noble age, shorn of all tawdry disguise.

The spaces of wall and roof between the beams, and above the panels, were now of a creamy tint not far removed, as the two indignant critics pointed out, from common whitewash. A great screen of Spanish leather sheltered the door from the vestibule, and secured somewhat more privacy for the hall as a sitting-room.

The Vandyck commanded the staircase, attracting immediate attention, as it faced the principal entry. In the wide space between the two great windows were two portraits of equal size; the famous Sir Peter Crewys, by Lely, painted to resemble, as nearly as possible, his royal master, in dress and attitude; and his brother Timothy, by Kneller.

Farmer Timothy's small, shrewd, grey eyes appeared to follow the gazer all over the hall; and his sober wearing apparel, a plain green coat without collar or cape, contrasted effectively with the cavalier's laced doublet and feathered hat.

Gone were the Early Victorian portraits; gone the big glass cases of stuffed birds and weasels; gone the round mahogany table, the waxen bouquets, and the horsehair chairs. The ancient tapestry beside the carven balustrade of the staircase remained, but it had been cleaned, and even mended.

An oak dresser, black with age, and laden with blue and white china, lurked in a shadowy corner. Comfortable easy-chairs and odd, old-fashioned settees furnished the hall. In the oriel window stood a spinning-wheel and a grandfather's chair. A great bowl of roses stood on the broad window-seat. There were roses, indeed, everywhere, and books on every table. But the crowning grievance of all was the cottage piano which John had sent to Lady Mary. The case had been specially made of hand-carven oak to match the room as nearly as might be. It was open, and beside it was a heap of music, and on it another bowl of roses.

"Ay, you may well look horrified," said Miss Crewys to the canon, whose admiration and delight were very plainly depicted on his rubicund countenance. "Where are our cloaks and umbrellas? That's what I say to Isabella. Where are our goloshes? Where is anything, indeed, that one would expect to find in a gentleman's hall? Not so much as a walking-stick. Everything to be kept in the outer hall, where tramps could as easily step in and help themselves; but our poor foolish Mary fancies that Peter will be delighted to find his old home turned upside down."

"My belief is," said Lady Belstone, "that Peter will just insist on all this wooden rubbish trotting back to the attics, where my dear granny, not being accustomed to wooden furniture, very properly hid it away. If you will believe me, canon, that dresser was brought up from the kitchen, and every single pot and pan that decorates it used to be kept in the housekeeper's room. That lumbering old chest was in the harness-room. Pretty ornaments for a gentleman's sitting-room! If Peter has grown up anything like my poor brother, he won't put up with it at all."

"I suppose, in one sense, it's Peter's house, or will be very shortly?" said the canon.

"In every sense it's Peter's house," cried Lady Belstone; "and he comes of age, thank Heaven, in October."

"I had hoped to hear he had sailed," said the canon. "No news is good news, I hope."

"The last telegram said his wound was doing well, but did not give any date for his return. Young John says we may expect him any time. I do not know what he knows about it more than any one else, however," said Miss Crewys.

"His letters give no details about himself," said Lady Belstone; "he makes no fuss about his wounded arm. He is a thorough Crewys, not given to making a to-do about trifles."

"He could only write a few words with his left hand," said Miss Crewys; "more could not have been expected of him. Yet poor Mary was quite put out, as I plainly saw, though she said nothing, because the boy had not written at greater length."

"I find they've made a good many preparations for his welcome down in the village," said the canon, "in case he should take us by surprise. So many of the officers have got passages at the last moment, unexpectedly. And we shall turn out to receive him en masse. Mr. Crewys has given us carte blanche for fireworks and flags; and they are to have a fine bean-feast."

"Our cousin John takes a great deal upon himself, and has made uncommonly free with Peter's money," said Lady Belstone, shaking her head. "I wish he may not find himself pretty nigh ruined when he comes to look into his own affairs. In my opinion, Fred Crawley is little better than a fool."

"He is most devoted to Peter's interests, my dear lady," said the canon, warmly, "and he informed me that Mr. John Crewys had done wonders in the past two years."

"He has turned the whole place topsy-turvy in two years, in my opinion," said Miss Crewys. "I don't deny that he is a rising young man, and that his manners are very taking. But what can a Cockney lawyer know, about timber, pray?"

"No man on earth, lawyer or no lawyer," said Lady Belstone, emphatically, "will ever convince me that one can be better than well."

"My sister alludes to the drains. It is a sore point, canon," said Miss Crewys. "In my opinion, it is all this modern drainage that sets up typhoid fever, and nothing else."