'Exactly; and Miss Pew unburdened her mind to him.'

'Did he think me a dreadful creature?'

'He thinks you charming, but that I ought to have gone to the hall-door when I courted you; as I should have done, dearest, only I wanted to be sure of you first. He was all kindness, and will marry us quietly at nine o'clock to-morrow, just after Matins, when there will be nobody about to stare at us; and he has promised to say nothing about our marriage until we give him leave to make the fact public.'

'I am glad of that,' said Ida, looking at her shabby gown. 'Do you think it will matter much—will you be very much ashamed of me, if I am married in this threadbare old cashmere?'

She had a faint hope that he would exclaim, 'My love, I have brought you a wedding dress from Regent Street; come and see it.' But he only smiled at her tenderly, and said—

'The gown does not matter a jot; you are lovelier in your shabby frock than any other bride in satin and pearls. And some of these days you shall have smart frocks.'

He said it hopefully, but as if it were a remote contingency.

He spoke very much as her impecunious father might have spoken. He, the master of Wendover Abbey, to whom the possession of things that money could buy must needs be a dead certainty. But it was evidently a part of his character to make light of his wealth; assuredly a pleasant idiosyncrasy.

They dawdled about on the bank for half an hour or so, talking somewhat listlessly, for Ida was depressed and frightened by the idea of that fateful event, giving a new colour to all her life to come, which was so soon to happen. Brian was very kind, very good to her; she wished with all her heart that she had loved him better; yet it seemed to her that she did love him—a little. Surely this feeling was love, this keen sense of obligation, this warm admiration for his generous and loyal conduct. Yes, this must be love. And why, loving him, should she feel this profound melancholy at the idea of a marriage which satisfied her loftiest ambition?

Perhaps the cause of her depression lay in the strangeness of this sudden union, its semi-clandestine character, her loneliness at a crisis in life when most girls are surrounded by friends. Often in her reckless talk with Bessie Wendover she had imagined her marriage. She would marry for money. Yes, the soap-boiler, the candlestick maker—anybody. It should be a splendid wedding—a dozen of the prettiest girls at Mauleverer for her bridesmaids, bells ringing, flowers strewn upon her pathway, carriage and four, postilions in blue jackets and white favours, all the world and his wife looking on and wondering at her high fortune. This is how fancy had painted the picture when Ida discoursed of her future in the butterfly-room at Mauleverer; Miss Rylance listening and making sarcastic comments; Bessie in fits of smothered laughter at all the comic touches in the description; for did not true-hearted Bessie know that the thing was a joke, and that her noble Ida would never so degrade herself as to marry for money? And now Ida was going to do this thing, scarcely knowing why she did it, not at all secure in her own mind of future happiness; not with unalloyed pride in her conquest, but yielding to her lover because he was the first who had ever asked her; because he was warm and true when all else in life seemed cold and false; and because the alternative—return to the poor home—was so dreary.

The conversation flagged as the lovers walked in the twilight. The sun was sinking behind the low hedge of yonder level meadow. Far away in mountainous regions the same orb was setting in rocky amphitheatres, distant, unapproachable. Here in this level land he seemed to be going down into a grave behind that furthest hedge.

It was a lovely evening—orange and rosy lights reflected on the glassy river, willows stirred with a murmurous movement by faintest zephyrs—a wind no louder than a sigh. Brian proposed that they should go on the river; his boat was there ready, it was only to step into the light skiff, and drift lazily with the stream.

They got into the Abbey river, among water-lilies whose flowers had all died long ago, face downwards. The season of golden flowers, buttercup, marsh-mallow, was over. The fields were grayish-green, with ruddy tinges here and there. The year was fading.

Ida sat in dead silence watching the declining light, one listless hand dipping in the river.

Brian was thoughtful, more thoughtful than she had known him in any period of their acquaintance.

'Where shall we go for our honeymoon? he asked abruptly, jingling some loose coins in his pocket.

'Oh, that is for you to decide. I—I know what I should like best,' faltered Ida.

'What is that?'

'I should like you to take me to Dieppe, where we could see my father, and explain everything to him.'

'Did you write to him to-day?'

'No; I thought I would tell him nothing till after our marriage. You might change your mind at the last.'

'Cautious young party,' said Brian, laughing. 'There is no fear of that. I am too far gone in love for that. For good or ill I am your faithful slave. Yes, we will go to Dieppe if you like. It is late in the year for a place of that kind; but what do we care for seasons? Do you think your father and I will be able to get on?'

'My father is the soul of good nature. He would get on with anyone who is a gentleman, and I am sure he will like you very much. My stepmother is—well, she is rather vulgar. But I hope you won't mind that. She is very warm-hearted.'

'Vulgarians generally are, I believe,' answered Brian lightly. 'At least, one is always told as much. It is hard that the educated classes should monopolize all the cold hearts. Vulgar but warm-hearted—misplaces her aspirates—but affectionate! That is the kind of thing one is told when Achilles marries a housemaid. Never mind, Ida, dearest, I feel sure I shall like your father; and for his sake I will try to make myself agreeable to his wife. And your little brother is perfection. I have heard enough about him from those dear lips of yours.'

'He is a darling little fellow, and I long to see him again. How I wish they could all be with me to-morrow!'

'It would make our wedding more domestic, but don't you think it would vulgarize it a little?' said Brian. 'There is something so sweet to me in the idea of you and me alone in that little church, with no witnesses but the clerk and the pew-opener.'

'And God!' said Ida, looking upward.

'Did you ever read the discourses of Colonel Bob Ingersoll?' asked Brian, smiling at her.

'No; what has that to do with it?'

'He has curious ideas of omnipotence; and I fancy he would say that the Infinite Being who made every shining star is hardly likely to be on the look-out for our wedding.'

'He cares for the lilies and the sparrows.'

'That's a gospel notion. Colonel Bob is not exactly a gospel teacher,'

'Then don't you learn of him, Brian,' said Ida, earnestly.



CHAPTER IX.

A SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.

The sun shone upon Ida's wedding morn. She was dressed and down before seven—her shabby cashmere gown carefully brushed, her splendid hair neatly arranged, her linen collar and cuffs spotlessly clean. This was all she could do in the way of costume in honour of this solemn day. She had not even a new pair of gloves. Mrs. Topman, who was to go to church with her in a fly from Chertsey, was gorgeous in purple silk and a summer bonnet—a grand institution, worn only on Sundays. Breakfast was ready in the neat little parlour, but Ida would only take a cup of tea. She wandered out to the river-side, and looked at the weir and the little green island round which the shining blue water twined itself like a caress. All things looked lovely in the pure freshness of morning.

'What a sweet spot it is!' said Ida to Mrs. Topman, who stood at her gate, watching for the fly, which was not due for half an hour; 'I should almost like to spend my life here.'

'Almost, but not quite,' answered the matron. 'Young folks like you wants change. But I hope you and Mr. Wendover will come here sometimes in the boating season, in memory of old times.'

'We'll come often,' said Ida; 'I hope I shall always remember how kind you have been to me.'

A distant church clock struck the half hour.

'Only half-past seven,' exclaimed Mrs. Topman, 'and Simmons's fly is not to be here till eight. Well, we are early.'

Ida strolled a little way along the bank, glad to be alone. It was an awful business, this marriage, when she came to the very threshold of Hymen's temple. Yesterday it had seemed to her that she and Brian Wendover were familiar friends; to-day she thought of him almost as a stranger.

'How little we know of each other, and yet we are going to take the most solemn vow that ever was vowed,' she thought, as she read the marriage service in a Prayer-book which Mrs. Topman had lent her for that purpose.

'It's as well to read it over and understand what you're going to bind yourself to,' said the matron; 'I did before I married Topman. It made me feel more comfortable in my mind to know what I was doing. But I must say it's high time there was a change made in the service. It never can have been intended by Providence for all the obedience to be on the wife's side, or God Almighty wouldn't have made husbands such fools. If Topman hadn't obeyed me he'd have died in a workhouse; and if I'd obeyed his I shouldn't have a stick of furniture belonging to me.'

Ida was not deeply interested in the late Mr. Topman's idiosyncrasies, but she was interested in the marriage bond, which seemed to her a very solemn league and covenant, as she read the service beside the quietly flowing river.

'For better for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.'

Yes, those were awful words—words to be pronounced by her presently, binding her for the rest of her life. She who was marrying a rich man for the sake of his wealth was to swear to be true to him in poverty. She who was marrying youth and good spirits was to swear to be true to sickness and feeble age. A terrible covenant! And of this man for whom she was to undertake so much she knew so little.

The fly drove along the towing-path, and drew up in front of Mrs. Topman's garden gate as the Chertsey clocks struck the hour, and Mrs. Topman and her charge took their places in that vehicle, and were jolted off at a jog-trot pace towards the town, and then on by a dusty high road towards that new church in the fields at which the Mauleverer girls deemed it such a privilege to worship.

It was about forty minutes' drive from the lock to the church, and Matins were only just over when the fly drew up at the Gothic door.

The incumbent was hovering near in his surplice, and the pew-opener was all in a fluster at the idea of a runaway marriage. Brian came out of the dusky background—the daylight being tempered by small painted windows in heavy stone mullions—as Ida entered the church. Everything was ready. Before she knew how it came to pass, she was standing before the altar, and the fatal words were being spoken.

'Brian Walford, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?'

'Brian Walford!' she heard the words as in a dream. Surely Walford was the second name of Bessie's other cousin, the poor cousin! Ida had heard Bessie so distinguish him from the master of the Abbey. But no doubt Walford was some old family name borne by both cousins.

Brian Walford! She had not much time to think about this, when the same solemn question was asked of her.

And then in a low and quiet voice the priest read the rest of the time-hallowed ceremonial, and Brian and Ida, glorified by a broad ray of morning sunshine streaming through an open window, stood up side by side man and wife.

Then came the signing of the register in the snug little vestry, Mrs. Topman figuring largely as witness.

'I did not know your name was Walford,' said Ida, looking over her husband's shoulder as he wrote.

'Didn't you? Second names are of so little use to a man, unless he has the misfortune to be Smith or Jones, and wants to borrow dignity from a prefix. Wendover is good enough for me.'

The young couple bade Mrs. Topman good-bye at the churchdoor. The fly was to take them straight to the station, on the first stage of their honeymoon trip.

'You know where to send my luggage,' Brian said to his landlady at parting.

'Yes, sir, I've got the address all right;' and the fly drove along another dusty high road, still within sight of the river, till it turned at right angles into a bye road leading to the station.

At that uncongenial place they had to wait a quarter of an hour, walking up and down the windy platform, where the porter abandoned himself to the contemplation of occasional rooks, and was sometimes surprised by the arrival of a train for which he had waited so long as to have become sceptical as to the existence of such things as trains in the scheme of the universe. The station was a terminus, and the line was a loop, for which very few people appeared to have any necessity.

'Would you mind telling me where we are going, Brian?' Ida asked her husband presently, when they had discussed the characteristics of the station, and Brian had been mildly facetious about the porter.

She had grown curiously shy since the ceremonial. Her lover seemed to her transformed into another person by those fateful words. He was now the custodian of her life, the master of her destiny.

'Would I mind telling you, my dearest? What a question! You proposed Dieppe for our honeymoon, and we are going to Dieppe.'

'Does this train go to Newhaven?'

'Not exactly. Nothing in this life is so convenient as that. This train will deposit us at Waterloo Station. The train for Newhaven leaves London Bridge at seven, in time for the midnight boat. We will go to my chambers and have some lunch.'

'Chambers!' exclaimed Ida, wonderingly. 'Have you really chambers in London?'

'Yes.'

'What a strange man you are!'

'That hardly indicates strangeness. But here at last is our train.'

A train had come slowly in and deposited its handful of passengers about ten minutes ago, and the same train was now ready to start in the opposite direction.

Ida and her husband got into an empty first-class compartment and the train moved slowly off. And now that they were alone, as it were within four walls, she summoned up courage to say something that had been on her mind for the last quarter of an hour—a very hard thing for a bride of an hour old to say, yet which must be said somehow.

'Would you mind giving me a little money, while we are in London, to buy some clothes?' she began hesitatingly. 'It is a dreadful thing to have to ask you, when, if I were not like the beggar girl in the ballad, I should have a trousseau. But I don't know when I may get my box from Mauleverer, and when I do most of the things in it are too shabby for your wife; and in the meantime I have nothing, and I should not like to disgrace you, to make you feel ashamed of me while we are on our honeymoon tour.'

She sat with downcast eyes and flaming cheeks, deeply humiliated by her position, hating her poverty more than she had ever hated it in her life before. She felt that this rich husband of hers had not been altogether kind to her—that he might by a little forethought have spared her this shame. He must have known that she had neither clothes nor money. He who had such large means had done nothing to sweeten her poverty. On this her wedding morning he had brought her no gift save the ring which the law prescribed. He had not brought her so much as a flower by way of greeting; yet she knew by the gossip of her schoolfellows that it was the custom for a lover to ratify his engagement by some splendid ring, which was ever afterwards his betrothed's choicest jewel. The girls had talked of their elder sisters' engagement-rings: how one had diamonds, another rubies, another catseyes, more distinguished and artistic than either.

And now she sat with drooping eyelids, expecting her lover-husband to break into an outburst of self-reproach, then pour a shower of gold into her lap. But he did neither. He rattled some loose coins in his pocket, just as he had done yesterday when he talked of the honeymoon; and he answered hesitatingly, with evident embarrassment.

'Yes, you'll want some new clothes, I daresay. All girls do when they marry, don't they? It's a kind of unwritten law—new husband, new gowns. But I'm sure you can't look better than you do in that gray gown, and it looks to me just the right thing for travelling. And for any other little things you may want for the moment, if a couple of sovereigns will do'—producing those coins—'you can get anything you like as we drive to my chambers. We could stop at a draper's on our way.'

Ida was stricken dumb by this reply. Her cheeks changed from crimson to pale. Her wealthy husband—the man whose fortune was to give her all those good things she had ever pictured to herself in the airy visions of a splendid future—offered her, with a half-reluctant air, as if offering his life's blood, two sovereigns with which to purchase a travelling outfit. What could she buy for two sovereigns? Not all the economy of her girlhood could screw half the things she wanted out of that pitiful sum.

She thought of all those descriptions of weddings which were so eagerly devoured at Mauleverer, whenever a fashionable newspaper fell in the way of those eager neophytes. She recalled the wonderful gifts which the bridegroom and the bridegroom's friends showered on the bride—the glorious gown and bonnet in which the bride departed on her honeymoon journey. And she was offered two sovereigns, wherewith to supply herself with all things needful for comfort and respectability.

Pride gave her strength to refuse the sordid boon. She had the contents of her small travelling bag, and she was going to her father's house, where her step-mother would, perhaps, contrive to provide what was absolutely necessary. Anything was better than to be under an obligation to this rich husband who so little understood her needs.

Could she have married that most detestable of all monsters, a miser? No, she could hardly believe that. It was not in a Wendover to be mean. And all that she had observed hitherto of Brian's way of acting and thinking rather indicated a recklessness about money than an undue care of pounds, shillings, and pence.

'If you don't object to this gown and hat, I can manage very well till we get to my father's house,' she said quietly.

'I adore you in that hat and gown,' replied Brian, eagerly, dropping the sovereigns back into his pocket; and so the question was settled.

An elderly lady came into the carriage at the next station, and there was no renewal of confidences between bride and bridegroom till they came to Waterloo, nor even then, for there is not much opportunity for confidential utterances in a hansom, and it was that convenient vehicle which carried Brian and his bride to the Temple.

They alighted at a gate on the Embankment, and made their way by a garden to a row of grave old houses, with a fine view of the river. Brian led his wife into one of these houses and up the uncarpeted stair to the third floor, where he ushered her into a room with two old-fashioned windows looking out upon grass, and trees, and old-fashioned buildings, all grave and gray, and having an air of sober peacefulness, as of a collegiate or monastic seclusion, while beyond the broad green lawn shone the broad blue river.

'What a nice old place!' said Ida, looking down at the garden. 'How quiet, how grave, how learned-looking! I don't wonder you like this pied-a-terre in London, as a change from your grand old Abbey.'

Brian gave a little nervous cough, as if something were choking him. He came to the window, and put his arm round his wife's waist.

'Ida,' he began, somewhat huskily, 'I am going to tell you a secret.'

'What is that?' she asked, turning and looking at him.

'The Abbey does not belong to me!'

'What?' she cried, with wide-open eyes.

'You have been rather fond of talking about the Abbey; but I hope your heart is not too much set upon it. You told me the other day, you know, that you did not value me upon account of the Abbey or my position as its owner. I hope that was the truth, Ida; for Wendover Abbey belongs to my cousin. You have married the poor Brian and not the rich one!'

'What?' she cried. 'You have lied to me all this time—you have fooled and deluded me!'

She turned and faced him with eyes that flamed indignant fire, lips that quivered with unrestrained passion.

'It was not my doing,' he faltered, shrinking before her like the veriest craven; 'it was the girls—Urania and Bessie—who started the notion as a practical joke, just to see what you would think of me, believing me to be my cousin. And when you seemed to like me—a little—Bessie, who is fond of me and who adores you, urged me to follow up my advantage.'

'But not to cheat me into a marriage. No; it is not in Bessie to suggest such falsehood.'

'She hardly contemplated an immediate marriage. I was to win your heart, and when I was sure of that—'

'You were to tell me the truth,' said Ida, looking him straight in the eyes.

His head drooped upon his breast.

'And you did not tell me. You knew that I saw in you Brian Wendover, the head of the family, the owner of a great estate; that I was proud of being loved and sought by a man who stooped from such a high position to love me, who renounced the chance of a brilliant marriage to marry me, a penniless body! You knew that it was in that character I admired you and respected you, and was grateful to you! Not as the briefless barrister—the man without means or position!'

'You harped a good deal upon the Abbey. But I had some right to suppose you liked me for my own sake, and that you would forgive me for a stratagem which was prompted by my love for you. How could I know that you looked upon marriage as a matter of exchange and barter?'

'No,' said Ida, bitterly. 'You are right. You could not know how mean I am. I did not know it myself till now. And now,' she pursued, with flashing eyes, with a look in her splendid face that seemed to blight and wither him, with all her beauty, all her womanhood, up in arms against him, 'and now to punish you for having kept the truth from me, I will tell you the truth—plainly. I have never cared one straw for you. I thought I did while I still believed you Brian Wendover of the Abbey. I was dazzled by your position; I was grateful in advance for all the good things that your wealth was to bring me. I tried to delude myself into the belief that I really loved you; but the voice of my conscience told me that it was not so, that I was, in sober truth, the basest of creatures—a woman who marries for money. And now, standing here before you, I know what a wretch I seem—what a wretch I am.'

'You are my wife,' said Brian, trying to take her hand; 'and we must both make the best of a bad bargain.'

'Your wife?' she echoed, in a mocking voice.

'Yes, my very wife, Ida. The knot that was tied to-day can only be loosened by death—or dishonour.'

'You have married me under a false name.'

'No, I have not. You married Brian Walford Wendover. There is no other man of that name.'

'You have cheated me into a miserable marriage. I will never forgive that cheat. I will never acknowledge you as my husband. I will never bear your name, or be anything to you but a stranger, except that I shall hate you all the days of my life. That will be the only bond between us,' she added, with a bitter laugh.

'Come, Ida,' said Brian, soothingly, feeling himself quite able to face the situation now the first shock was over, 'I was prepared for you to be disappointed—to be angry, even; but you are carrying matters a little too far. Even your natural disappointment can hardly excuse such language as this. I am the same man I was yesterday morning when I asked you to marry me.'

'No, you are not. I saw you in a false light—glorified by attributes that never belonged to you.'

'In plain words, you thought me the owner of a big house and a fine income. I am neither; but I am the same Brian Wendover, for all that—a briefless barrister, but with some talent; not without friends; and with as fair a chance of success as most young men of my rank.'

'You are an idler—I have heard that from your uncle—self-indulgent, fond of trivial pleasures. Such men never succeed in life. But if you were certain to be Lord Chancellor—if you could this moment prove yourself possessed of a splendid fortune—my feelings would be unchanged. You have lied to me as no gentleman would have lied. I will own no husband who is not a gentleman.'

'You carry things with a high hand,' said Brian, with sullen wrath; and then love prevailed over anger, and he flung himself on his knees at her feet, clasping her reluctant hands, urging every impassioned argument which young lips could frame; but to all such prayers she was marble. 'You are my wife,' he pleaded; 'you are my snared bird; your wings are netted, darling. Do you think I will let you go? Yes, I was false, but it was love made me deceive you. I loved you so well that I dared not risk losing you.'

'You have lost me for ever,' she cried, breaking from him and moving towards the door; 'perhaps, had you been loyal and true, you might have taught me to love you for your own sake. Women are easier won by truth than falsehood.'

'It seems to me they are easier won by houses and lands,' answered Brian, with a sneer.

And then he followed her to the door, caught her in his arms, and held her against his passionately beating heart, covering her angry face with kisses.

'Let me go!' she cried, tearing herself from his arms, with a shriek of horror; 'your kisses are poison to me. I hate you—I hate you!'

He recoiled a few paces, and stood looking at her with a countenance in which the passionate love of a moment ago gave place to gloomy anger.

'So be it,' he said; 'if we cannot be friends we must be enemies. You reveal your character with an admirable candour. You did not mind marrying a man who was absolutely repulsive to you—whose kisses are poison—so long as you thought he was rich. But directly you are told he is poor you inform him of your real sentiments with a delightful frankness. Suppose this confession of mine were a hoax, and that I really were the wealthy Brian after all—playing off a practical joke to test your feelings—what a sorry figure you would cut!'

'Despicable,' said Ida, with her hand on the handle of the door. 'Yes, I know that. I despise and loathe myself as much as I despise and loathe you. I have drained the cup of poverty to the dregs, and I languished for the elixir of wealth. When you asked me to marry you, I thought Fate had thrown prosperity in my way—that it would be to lose the golden chance of a lifetime if I refused you.'

'Not much gold about it,' said Brian, lightly.

He had one of those shallow natures to which the tragedy of life is impossible. He was disappointed—angry at the turn which affairs had taken; but he was not reduced to despair. To take things easily had been his complete code of morals and philosophy from earliest boyhood. He was not going to break his heart for any woman, were she the loveliest, the cleverest, the noblest that ever the gods endowed with their choicest gifts. She might be ever so fair, but if she were not fair for him she was, in a manner, non-existent. Life, in his philosophy, was too short to be wasted in following phantoms.

'You must have thought me a mean cad this morning, when I offered you a couple of sovereigns,' he said; 'yet they constituted a third of my worldly possessions, and I was sorely puzzled how we were to get to Dieppe on less than four pounds. I have been living from hand to mouth ever since I left the university, picking up a few pounds now and then by literature, writing criticisms for a theatrical journal, and so on—by no means a brilliant living. Perhaps, after all, it is as well you take things so severely,' he added, with a sneer. 'If we had been well disposed towards each other, we must have starved.'

'I could have lived upon a crust with a husband whom I loved and respected; but not with a man who could act a lie, as you did,' said Ida.

She took her bag from the chair where Brian had thrown it as they entered the room, and went out on the landing.

'Good-bye, Mrs. Wendover,' he called after her; 'let me know if I can ever be of any use to you.'

She was going downstairs by this time, and he was looking down at her across the heavy old banister rail.

'I suppose you are going straight to your father's?'

'Yes.'

'Hadn't you better stop and have some lunch? The train doesn't go for hours.'

'No, thanks.'

The gray gown fluttered against the sombre brown panelling as his wife turned the corner of the lower landing and disappeared from his view—perhaps for ever.

Brian went back to his room, and stood in the middle of it, looking round him with a contemplative air. It was a pleasant room, arranged with rather a dandified air—pipes, walking-sticks, old engravings, bric-a-brac—the relics of his college life.

'Well, if she had been more agreeable, I should have had to get new rooms, and that would have been a bore,' he said to himself; and then he sank into a chair, gave a laugh that was half a sob, and wiped a mist of tears from his eyes.

'What fools we have both been!' he muttered to himself, 'I knew she was in love with the Abbey; but I don't believe a word she says about hating me!'

And yet—and yet—she had seemed very much in earnest when she tore herself from his arms with that agonized shriek.



CHAPTER X.

A BAD PENNY.

Ida made her way back to the Embankment somehow, hardly knowing where she was going or what she was going to do. The airy castle which she had built for herself had fallen about her ears, and she was left standing amidst the ruins. Wendover Abbey, wealth, position, independence, the world's respect, were all as far from her as they had been a month ago. Her sense of disappointment was keen, but not so keen as the sense of her self-abasement. Her own character stood revealed, to herself in all its meanness—its sordid longing for worldly wealth—its willingness to stoop to falsehood in the pursuit of a woman's lowest aim, a good establishment. Seen in the light of abject failure, the scheme of her life seemed utterly detestable. Success would have gilded everything. As the wife of the rich Brian she would have done her duty in all wifely meekness and obedience, and would have gone down to the grave under the comforting delusion that she had in no wise forfeited honour or self-respect. Cheated, duped, degraded, she now felt all the infamy implied in her willingness to marry a man for whom she cared not a straw.

'Oh, it was cruel, iniquitous,' she said to herself, as she hurried along the dusty pavement, impelled by agitated thoughts, 'to trade upon my weakness—my misery—to see me steeped to the lips in odious poverty, and to tempt me with the glitter of wealth. I never pretended to love him—never—thank God for that! I let him tell me that he loved me, and I consented to be his wife; but I pretended no love on my side. Thank God for that! He cannot say that I lied to him.'

She hurried along, citywards, following the stream of people, and found herself presently in broad, busy Queen Victoria Street, with all the traffic hastening by her, staring helplessly at the cabs, and omnibuses, waggons, carriages streaming east and west under the murky London sky, vaguely wondering what she was to do next.

He—her husband—had asked her if she were going back to her father, and she had said 'Yes.' Indeed it was the only course open to her. She must go home and face the situation, and accept any paternal reproof that might be offered her. She had lost a day. No doubt Miss Pew's indictment would have arrived before her; and she would have to explain her conduct to father and step-mother. But the little white-walled house near Dieppe was the only shelter the universe held for her, and she must go there.

'Wendover Abbey!' she repeated to herself. I the mistress of Wendover Abbey! That was too good a joke, 'Why did I not see the folly of such a dream? But it was just like other dreams. When one dreams one is a queen, or that one can fly, there is no consciousness of the absurdity of the thing.'

She stood staring at the omnibuses till the conductor of one that was nearly empty murmured invitingly in her ear, 'London Bridge?'

It was the place to which she wanted to go. She nodded to the man, who opened his door and let her in.

She was at the station at a quarter to four, and the train for Newhaven did not leave till seven—a long dismal stretch of empty time to be lived through. But she could not improve her situation by going anywhere else. The station, with its dingy waiting-rooms and garish refreshment-room, was as good an hotel for her as any other. She was faint for want of food, having taken nothing since her apology for breakfast at seven o'clock.

'Can one get a cup of tea here?' she asked of the dry-as-dust matron in charge of the waiting-room; whereupon the matron good-naturedly offered to fetch her some tea.

'If you would be so kind,' she faltered, too exhausted to speak above a whisper; 'I don't like going into that crowded refreshment-room.'

'No, to be sure—not much used to travelling alone, I daresay. You will be better when you've had a cup of tea.'

The tea, with a roll and butter, revived exhausted nature. Ida paid for this temperate refreshment, went to the booking-office, made some inquiries about her ticket, and bought herself a book at the stall, wherewith to beguile the time and to distract her mind from brooding on its own miseries.

She felt it was a frightful extravagance as she paid away two of Miss Cobb's shillings for Bulwer's 'Caxtons;' but she felt also that to live through those three tedious hours without such aid would be a step on the road to a lunatic asylum.

Armed with her book, she went back to the waiting-room, settled herself in a corner of the sofa, and remained there absorbed, immovable; while travellers came and went, all alike fussy, flurried, and full of their own concerns—not one of them stopping to notice the pale, tired-looking girl reading in the remotest corner of the spacious room.

A somewhat stormy passage brought the boat which carried Ida and her fortunes to straggling, stony, smelly Dieppe, now abandoned to its native population, and deprived of that flavour of fashion which pervades its beach in the brighter months of August and September. The town looked gray, cold, and forbidding in the bleak October morning, when Ida found herself alone amidst its stoniness, the native population only just beginning to bestir itself in the street above the quay, and making believe, by an inordinate splashing and a frantic vehemence in the use of birch-brooms, to be the cleanest population under the sun; an assertion of superiority somewhat belied by an all-pervading odour of decomposed vegetable matter, a small heap of which refuse, including egg-shells and fishy offal—which the town in the matutinal cleansing process offered up to the sun-god as incense upon an altar—lay before every door, to be collected by the local scavenger at his leisure, or to be blown about and disseminated by the winds of heaven.

Alone upon the stony quay, in the freshness and chilliness of early morning, Ida took temporary refuge in the humblest cafe she could find, where a feeble old woman was feebly brooming the floor, and where there was no appearance of any masculine element. Here she expended another of Miss Cobb's shillings upon a cup of coffee and a roll. She had spent five and twenty shillings for her second-class ticket. The debt to Miss Cobb now amounted to a sovereign and a half; and Ida Palliser thought of it with an aching sense of her own helplessness to refund so large a sum. Yesterday morning, believing herself about to become the wife of a rich man, she had thought what fun it would be to send 'Cobby' a five-pound note in the prettiest of ivory purses from one of those shops in the street yonder.

She drank her coffee slowly, not anxious to hasten the hour of a home-coming which could not be altogether pleasant. She was as fond of her father as adverse circumstances had allowed her to be; she adored her half-brother, and was not unkindly disposed towards her step-mother. But to go back to them penniless, threadbare, disgraced—go back to be a burden upon their genteel poverty. That was bitter.

She had made up her mind to walk to Les Fontaines rather than make any further inroad upon Miss Cobb's purse for coach-hire. What was she that she should be idle or luxurious, or spare the labour of her young limbs? She went along the narrow stony street where the shops were only now being opened, past the wide market where the women were setting out their stalls in front of the fine old church, and where Duguesclin, heroic and gigantic, defied the stormy winds that had ruffled his sculptured hair.

Two years and a half ago it had been a treat to her to walk in that market-place, hanging on her father's arm, to stand in the sombre stillness of that solemn cathedral, while the organ rolled its magnificent music along the dusky aisles. They two had chaffered for fruit at those stalls, laughing gaily with the good-tempered countrywomen. They had strolled on the beach and amused themselves economically, from the outside, with the diversions of the etablissement. An afternoon in Dieppe had meant fun and holiday-making. Now she looked at the town with weary eyes, and thought how dull and shabby it had grown.

The walk to Les Fontaines, along a white dusty road, seemed interminable. If she had not been told again and again that it was only four miles from the town to the village, she would have taken the distance for eight—so long, so weary, seemed the way. There were hills in the background, hills right and left of her, orchards, glimpses of woodland—here and there a peep of sea—pretty enough road to be whirled along in a comfortable carriage with a fast horse, but passing flat, stale, and unprofitable to the heavy-hearted pedestrian.

At last the little straggling village, the half-dozen new houses—square white boxes, which seemed to have been dropped accidentally in square enclosures of ragged garden—white-walled penitentiaries on a small scale, deriving an air of forced liveliness from emerald-green shutters, here a tree, and there a patch of rough grass, but never a flower—for the scarlet geraniums in the plaster vases on the wall of the grandest of the mansions had done blooming, and beyond scarlet geraniums on the wall the horticultural taste of Les Fontaines had never risen. The old cottages, with heavy thatched roofs and curious attic windows, with fruit trees sprawling over the walls, and orchards in the rear, were better than the new villas; but even these lacked the neatness and picturesque beauty of an English cottage in a pastoral landscape. There was a shabby dustiness, a barren, comfortless look about everything; and the height of ugliness was attained in the new church, a plastered barn, with a gaudily painted figure of our Blessed Lady in a niche above the door, all red and blue and gold, against the white-washed wall.

Ida thought of Kingthorpe,—the rustic inn with its queer old gables, shining lattices, quaint dovecots, the green, the pond, with its willowy island, the lovely old Gothic church—solid, and grave, and gray—calm amidst the shade of immemorial yews. The country about Les Fontaines was almost as pretty as that hilly region between Winchester and Romsey; but the English village was like a gem set in the English landscape, while the French village was a wart on the face of a smiling land.

'Why call it Les Fontaines?' Ida wondered, in her parched and dusty weariness. 'It is the dryest village I ever saw; and I don't believe there is anything like a fountain within a mile.'

Her father's house was one of the white boxes with green shutters. It enjoyed a dignified seclusion behind a plaster wall, which looked as if anyone might knock it down in very wantonness. The baby-boy had varied the monotony of his solitary sports by picking little bits out of it. There was a green door opening into this walled forecourt or garden, but the door was not fastened, so Ida pushed it open and went in. The baby-boy, now a sturdy vagabond of five years old, was digging an empty flower-bed. He caught sight of his sister, and galloped off into the house before she could take him in her arms, shouting, 'Maman, une dame—une dame! lady, lady, lady!' exercising his lungs upon both those languages which were familiar to his dawning intelligence.

His mother came out at his summons, a pretty, blue-eyed woman with an untidy gown and towzley hair, aged and faded a little since Ida had seen her.

'Oh, Ida,' she said, kissing her step-daughter heartily enough, despite her reproachful tone, 'how could you go on so! We have had such a letter from Miss Pew. Your father is awfully cut up. And we were expecting you all yesterday. He went to Dieppe to meet the afternoon boat. Where have you been since Tuesday?'

'I slept at the lock-house with a nice civil woman, who gave me a night's lodging,' said Ida, somewhat embarrassed by this question.

'But why not have come home at once, dear?' asked the step-mother mildly. She always felt herself a poor creature before her Juno-like daughter.

'I was flurried and worried—hardly knew what I was doing for the first few hours after I left Mauleverer; and I let the time slip by till it was too late to think of travelling yesterday,' answered Ida. 'Old Pew is a demon.'

'She seems to be a nasty, unkind old thing,' said Mrs. Palliser; 'for, after all, the worst she can bring against you is flirting with your friend's cousin. I hope you are engaged to him, dear; for that will silence everybody.'

'No, I am not engaged to him—he is nothing to me,' answered Ida, crimsoning; 'I never saw him, except in Fraeulein's company. Neither you nor my father would like me to marry a man without sixpence.'

'But in Miss Pew's letter she said you declared you were engaged to Mr. Wendover of the Abbey, a gentleman of wealth and position. She was wicked enough to say she did not believe a word you said; but still, Ida, I do hope you were not telling falsehoods.'

'I hardly knew what I said,' replied Ida, feeling the difficulties of her position rising up on every side and hemming her in. She had never contemplated this kind of thing when she repudiated her marriage and turned her face homewards. 'She maddened me by her shameful attack, talking to me as if I were dirt, degrading me before the whole school. If you had been treated as I was you would have been beside yourself.'

'I might have gone into hysterics,' said Mrs. Palliser, 'but I don't think I should have told deliberate falsehoods: and to say that you were engaged to a rich man when you were not engaged, and the man hasn't a sixpence, was going a little too far. But don't fret, dear,' added the step-mother, soothingly, as the tears of shame and anger—anger against fate, life, all things—welled into Ida's lovely eyes. 'Never mind. We'll say no more about it. Come upstairs to your own room—it's Vernie's day-nursery now, but you won't mind that, I know—and take off your hat. Poor thing, how tired and ill you look!'

'I feel as if I was going to be ill and die, and I hope I am,' said Ida, petulantly.

'Don't, dear; it's wicked to say such a thing as that. You needn't be afraid of your poor pa; he takes everything easily.'

'Yes, he is always good. Where is he?'

'Not up yet. He comes down in time for his little dejeuner a la fourchette. Poor fellow, he had to get up so early in India.'

Captain Palliser had for the last seven years been trying to recover those arrears of sleep incurred during his Eastern career. He had been active enough under a tropical sky, when his mind was kept alive by a modicum of hard work and a very wide margin of sport—pig-sticking, peacock-shooting, paper-chases, all the delights of an Indian life. But now, vegetating on a slender pittance in the semi-slumberous idleness of Les Fontaines, he had nothing to do and nothing to think about; and he was glad to shorten his days by dozing away the fresher hours of the morning, while his wife toiled at the preparation of that elaborate meal which he loved to talk about as tiffin.

Poor little Mrs. Palliser made strenuous efforts to keep the sparsely furnished dusty house as clean and trim as it could be kept; but her life was a perpetual conflict with other people's untidiness.

The house was let furnished, and everything was in the third-rate French style—inferior mahogany and cheap gilding, bare floors with gaudy little rugs lying about here and there, tables with flaming tapestry covers, chairs cushioned with red velvet of the commonest kind, sham tortoiseshell clock and candelabra on the dining-room chimney-piece, alabaster clock and candelabra in the drawing-room. There was nothing home-like or comfortable in the house to atone for the smallness of the rooms, which seemed mere cells to Ida after the spaciousness of Mauleverer Manor and The Knoll. She wondered how her father and mother could breathe in such rooms.

That bed-chamber to which Mrs. Palliser introduced her step-daughter was even a shade shabbier than the rest of the house. The boy had run riot here, had built his bricks in one corner, had stabled a headless wooden horse and cart in another, and had scattered traces of his existence everywhere. There were his little Windsor chair, the nurse-girl's rocking chair, a battered old table, a heap of old illustrated newspapers, and torn toy-books.

'You won't mind Vernon's using the room in the day, dear, will you?' said Mrs. Palliser, apologetically. 'It shall be tidied for you at night.'

This meant that in the daytime Ida would have no place for retreat, no nook or corner of the house which she might call her own. She submitted meekly even to this deprivation, feeling that she was an intruder who had no right to be there.

'I should like to see my father soon,' she said, with a trembling lip, stooping down to caress Vernon, who had followed them upstairs.

He was a lovely, fair-haired boy, with big candid blue eyes, a lovable, confiding child, full of life and spirits and friendly feeling towards all mankind and the whole animal creation, down to its very lowest forms.

'You shall have your breakfast with him,' said Mrs. Palliser, feeling that she was conferring a great favour, for the Captain's breakfast was a meal apart. 'I don't say but what he'll be a little cross to you at first; but you must put up with that. He'll come round afterwards.'

'He has not seen me for two years and a half,' said Ida, thinking that fatherly affection ought to count for something under such circumstances.

'Yes, it's only two years and a half,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, 'and you were to have stayed at Mauleverer Manor three years. Miss Pew is a wicked old woman to cheat your father out of six months' board and tuition. He paid her fifty pounds in one lump when he articled you—fifty pounds—a heap of money for people in our position; and here you are, come back to us like a bad penny.'

'I am very sorry,' faltered Ida, reddening at that unflattering comparison. 'But I worked very hard at Mauleverer, and am tolerably experienced in tuition. I must try to get a governess's situation directly, and then I shall be paid a salary, and shall be able to give you back the fifty pounds by degrees.'

'Ah, that's the dreadful part of it all,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, who was very seldom in the open air, and had that despondent view of life common to people who live within four narrow walls. 'Goodness knows how you are ever to get a situation without references. Miss Pew says you are not to refer to her; and who else is there who knows anything of you or your capacity?'

'Yes, there is some one else. Bessie Wendover and her family.'

'The people you went to visit in Hampshire. Ah! there went another five pounds in a lump. You have been a heavy expense to us, Ida. I don't know whether anyone wanting to employ you as a governess would take such a reference as that. People are so particular. But we must hope for the best, and in the meantime you can make yourself useful at home in taking care of Vernon and teaching him his letters. He is dreadfully backward.'

'He is an angel,' said Ida, lifting the cherub in her arms, and letting the fair, curly head nestle upon her shoulder. 'I will wait upon him like a slave. You do love me, don't you, pet?'

'Ess, I love 'oo, but I don't know who 'oo is. Connais pas,' said Vernon, shaking his head vehemently.

'I am your sister, darling, your only sister.'

'My half-sister,' said Vernon. 'Maman said I had a half-sister, and she was naughty. Dites donc, would a whole sister be twice as big as you?'

Thus in his baby language, which may be easier imagined than described, gravely questioned the boy.

'I am your sister, dearest, heart and soul. There is no such thing as half-love or half-sisterhood between us. You should not have talked to him like that, mother,' said Ida, turning her reproachful gaze upon her step-mother, who was melted to tears.

'Your father was so upset by Miss Pew's letter,' she murmured apologetically. 'To pay fifty pounds for you, and for it to end in such humiliation as that. You must own that it was hard for us.'

'It was harder for me,' said Ida; 'I had to stand up and face that wicked woman, who knew that I had done no wrong, and who wreaked her malignity upon me because I am cleverer and better-looking than ever she was in her life.'

'I must go and make your father's omelette,' said the stepmother, 'while you tidy yourself for breakfast. I think there's some water on the washstand, and Vernon shall bring you a clean towel.'

The little fellow trotted out after his mother, and trotted back presently with the towel—one towel, which was about in proportion to the water-jug and basin. Ida shuddered, remembering the plentitude of water and towels at The Knoll. She made her toilet as well as she could, with the scantiest materials, as she might have done on board ship; shook and brushed the shabby gray cashmere—her wedding gown, she thought, with a bitter smile—before she put it on again, and then went down the bare narrow deal staircase, superb in all the freshness of her youth and beauty, which neither care nor poverty could spoil.

Captain Palliser was pacing up and down his little dining parlour, looking flurried and anxious. He turned suddenly as Ida entered, and stood staring at her.

'By Jove, how handsome you have grown!' he said, and then he look her in his arms and kissed her. 'But you know, my dear, this is really too bad,' he went on in a fretful tone,' to come back upon us like a bad penny.'

'That is what my step-mother said just now.'

'My dear, how can one help saying it, when it's the truth? After my paying fifty pounds, don't you know, and thinking that you were comfortably disposed of for the next three years, and that at the expiry of the term Miss Pew would place you in a gentleman's family, where you would receive from sixty to a hundred per annum, according to your acquirements—those were her very words—to have you sent back to us like this, in disgrace, and to be told that you had been carrying on in an absurd way with a young man on the bank of a river. It is most humiliating. And now my wife tells me the young man has not a sixpence which makes the whole thing so very culpable.'

'Please let me tell you the extent of my iniquity, father, and then you can judge what right Miss Pew had to expel me.'

Whereupon Ida quietly described her afternoon promenades upon the river-path, with the Fraeulein always in her company, and how her friend's cousin had been permitted to walk up and down with them.

'Nobody supposes there was any actual harm,' replied Captain Palliser, 'but you must have been perfectly aware that you were acting foolishly—that this kind of thing was a violation of the school etiquette. Come, now, you knew Miss Pew would disapprove of such goings on, did you not?'

'Well, yes, no doubt I knew old Pew would be horrified. Perhaps it was the idea of that which gave a zest to the thing.'

'Precisely! and you never thought of my fifty pounds, and you ran this risk for the sake of a young man without a penny, who never could be your husband.'

Ida grew scarlet and then deadly pale.

'There, don't look so distressed, child. I must try to forget my fifty pounds, and to think of your future career. It is a deuced awkward business—here come the omelette and the coffee—an escapade of this kind is always cropping up against a girl in after life—sit down and make yourself comfortable—capital dish of kidneys—the world is so small; and of course every pupil at Mauleverer Manor will gabble about this business. No mushrooms!—what is the little woman thinking about?'

Captain Palliser seated himself, and arranged his napkin under his chin, French fashion. His features were of that aquiline type which seems to have been invented on purpose for army men. His eyes were light blue, like his boy's—Ida's dark eyes were a maternal inheritance—his hair was auburn, sprinkled with gray, his moustache straw-colour and with a carefully trained cavalry droop. His clothes and boots were perfect of their kind, albeit they had seen good wear. He had been heard to declare that he had rather wear feathers and war-paint, like a red Indian, than a coat made by a third-rate tailor. He was tall and inclining to stoutness, broad-shouldered, and with an easy carriage and a nonchalant air, which were not without their charm. He had what most people called a patrician look—that is to say the air of never having done anything useful in the whole course of his existence—not such a patrician as a Palmerston, a Russell, a Derby, or a Salisbury, but the ideal lotus-eating aristocrat, who dresses, drives, and dines and gossips through a languid existence.

The Captain's career in the East had not been particularly brilliant. His lines had not lain in great battles or stirring campaigns. Except during the awful episode of the Mutiny, when he was still a young man, he had seen little active service. His life, since his return from India, had been a blank.

His mind, never vigorous, had rusted slowly in the slow monotony of his days. He had come to accept the rhythmical ebb and flow of life's river as all-sufficient for content. Breakfast and dinner were the chief events of his life—if it was well with these it was well with him.

There was a rustic tavern where in summer a good many people came to dine, either in the house or the garden, and in a room adjoining the kitchen there was a small French billiard-table with very big balls. Here the Captain played of an evening with the habitues of the place, and was much looked up to for his superior skill. An occasional drive into Dieppe on the banquette of the diligence, and a saunter by the sea, was his only other amusement.

His daughter poured out his coffee, and ministered to his various wants as he breakfasted, eating with but little appetite herself, albeit the fare was excellent.

Captain Palliser talked in a desultory way as he ate, not often looking up from his plate, but meandering on. Happily for Ida, who had been reduced to the lowest stage of self-abasement by her welcome, he said no more about Miss Pew or his daughter's gloomy prospects. It was not without a considerable mental effort that he was able to bring his thoughts to bear upon other people's business. He had strained his mind a good deal during the last twenty-four hours, and he was very glad to relax the tension of the bow.

'Rather a dull kind of life for a man who has been used to society—eh, Ida?' he murmured, as he ate his omelette; 'but we contrive to rub on somehow. Your step-mother likes it, and the boy likes it—wonderful healthy air, don't you know—no smoke—no fogs—only three miles from the sea, as the crow flies. It suits them, and it's cheap—a paramount consideration with a poor devil on half-pay; and in the season there are some of the best people in Europe to be seen at the etablissement.'

'I suppose you go to Dieppe often in the season, father?' said Ida, pleased to find he had dropped Miss Pew and the governess question.

'Well, yes; I wander in almost every fine day.'

'You don't walk?' exclaimed Ida, surprised at such activity in a man of his languid temper.

'Oh, no; I never walk. I just wander in—on the diligence-or in, a return fly. I wander in and look about me a little, and perhaps take a cup of coffee with a friend at the Hotel des Bains. There is generally some one I know at the Bains or the Royal. Ah, by-the-bye whom, do you think I saw there a fortnight ago?'

'I haven't the least idea,' answered Ida; 'I know so few of your friends.'

'No, of course not. You never saw Sir Vernon Palliser, but you've heard me talk about him.'

'Your rich brother, the wicked old baronet in Sussex, who never did you a kindness in his life?'

'My dear, old Sir Vernon has been dead two years.'

'I never heard of his death.'

'No, by-the-bye. It wasn't worth while worrying you about it, especially as we could not afford to go into mourning. Your step-mother fretted about that dreadfully, poor little woman; as if it could matter to her, when she had never seen the man in her life. She said if one had a baronet in one's family one ought to go into mourning for him. I can't understand the passion some women have for mourning. They are eager to smother themselves in crape at the slightest provocation, and for a mean old beggar like Vernon, who never gave me a sixpence. But as I was saying, these two young fellows turned up the other day in front of the Hotel des Bains.'

'Which two young fellows, my dear father? I haven't the faintest idea of whom you are talking,' protested Ida, who found her father's conversation very difficult to follow.

'Why, Sir Vernon, of course—the present Sir Vernon and his brother Peter: ugly name, isn't it, Ida? but there has always been a Peter in the family; and as a rule,' added Captain Palliser, growing slower and dreamier of speech as he fell into reminiscences of the past—'as a rule the Peter Pallisers have gone to the dogs. There was Major Palliser—fought in the Peninsula—knew George the Fourth—married a very pretty woman and beat her—died in the Bench.'

'Tell me about the present Sir Vernon,' asked Ida, more interested in the moving, breathing life of to-day than in memories of the unknown dead. 'Is he nice?'

'He is a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow—seven or eight and twenty. No, not handsome—my brother Vernon was never distinguished for beauty, though he had all the markings of race. There is nothing like race, Ida; you see it in a man's walk; you hear it in every tone of a man's voice.'

'Dear father, I was asking about this particular Sir Vernon,' urged Ida, with a touch of impatience, unaccustomed to this slow meandering talk.

'And I was telling you about him,' answered the Captain, slightly offended. His little low-born wife never hurried and hustled his thoughts in this way. She was content to sit at his feet, and let him meander on for hours. True that she did not often listen, but she was always respectful. 'I was remarking that Sir Vernon is a fine young fellow, and likely to live to see himself a great-grandfather. His brother, too, is nearly as big and healthy—healthy to a degree. The breakfast I saw those two young men devour at the hotel would have made your hair stand on end. But, thank heaven, I have never been the kind of man to wait for dead men's shoes.'

'I see,' said Ida. 'If these boys had been sickly and had died young, you would have succeeded to the baronetcy.'

'To the baronetcy and to the estate in Sussex, which is a very fine estate, worth eight thousand a year.'

'Then, of course, they are strong, and likely to live to the age of Methuselah!' exclaimed Ida, with a laugh of passing bitterness. 'Who ever heard of luck coming our way? It is not in our race to be fortunate.'

The shame and agony of her own failure to win fortune were still strong upon her.

'Who knows what might happen?' said the Captain, with amiable listlessness. 'I have never allowed my thoughts to dwell upon the possibilities of the future; yet it is a fact that, so long as those young men remain unmarried, there are only two lives between me and wealth. They feel the position themselves; for when Sir Vernon came over here to lunch, he patted my boy on the head and said, in his joking way, "If Peter and I had fallen down a crevasse the other day in the Oberland, this little chap would have been heir to Wimperfield."'

'No doubt Sir Vernon and his brother will marry and set up nurseries of their own within the next two or three years,' said Ida, carelessly. Eager as she had been to be rich during those two and a half bitter years in which she had so keenly felt the sting of poverty, she was not capable of seeing her way to fortune through the dark gate of death.

'Yes, I daresay they will both marry,' replied Captain Palliser, gravely, folding his napkin and whisking an accidental crumb off his waistcoat. 'Young men always get drifted into matrimony. If they are rich all the women are after them, If they are poor—well, there is generally some woman weak enough to prefer dual starvation to bread and cheese and solitude. Vernon told me he had no idea of marriage. He and his brother are both rovers—fond of mountain-climbing, yachting, every open-air amusement.'

'Did you see much of them while they were at Dieppe ?'

'They only stayed three days. They walked over here to lunch, put the poor little woman in a fluster—although they were very pleasant and easy about everything—invited me to dinner, tipped the boy munificently, and went off by the night-boat, bound straight for Wimperfield and the partridges. Very fine partridge shooting at Wimperfield! Vernon asked me to go across with him and stay at the old place for a week or two; but my sporting days are over. I can't get up early; and I can't walk in shooting-boots. Besides, the little woman would have fretted if I had left her alone so long.'

'But the change would have done you good, father.'

'No, my dear; any change of habits would worry me. I have dropped into my groove and I must stay in it. What a pity you were not here when your cousins called! Who knows what might have happened? Vernon might have fallen over head and ears in love with you.'

'Don't, father!' cried Ida, with absolute pain in her voice. 'Don't talk about marrying for money. There is nothing in life so revolting, so degrading. Be sure, it is a sin which always brings its own punishment.'

'My dear,' said the Captain, gravely, 'there are so many love-matches which bring their own punishment, that I am inclined to believe that marrying for money is a virtue which ought to ensure its own reward. You may depend, if we could get statistics upon the subject, one would find that after ten years' marriage the couples who were drawn together by prudential motives are just as fond of each other as those more romantic pairs who wedded for love. A decade of matrimony rounds a good many sharp angles, and dispels a good many illusions.'



CHAPTER XI.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AT A DISCOUNT.

Now began for Ida a life of supreme dullness—an empty, almost hopeless, life, waiting upon fortune. Her father was kind to her in his easy-going, lymphatic way, liking well enough to have her about him, pleased with her affection for his boy, proud of her beauty and her talents, but with no earnest care for her welfare in the present or the future. What was to become of wife, son and daughter when he was dead and gone, was a question which Captain Palliser dared not ask himself. For the widow there would be a pittance, for son and daughter nothing. It was therefore vital that Ida should either marry well or become a money-earning personage. Of marriage at Les Fontaines there seemed not the faintest probability, since the experiences of the past afford so few instances of wandering swains caught and won by a face at a window, or the casual appearance of a beautiful girl on a country road.

Of friends or acquaintance, in his present abode, Captain Palliser had none. The only people he had ever cared for were the men and women he had known in India; and he had lost sight of those since his marriage. They were scattered; and he was too proud to expose his fallen fortunes to those who had known him in his happier days, those days when the careless expenditure of his modest capital had given him a false air of easy circumstances.

His life at Les Fontaines suited him well enough, individually. It was a kind of hibernation. He slept a good deal, and ate a good deal, and smoked incessantly, and took very little exercise. For all that is best and noblest in life, Captain Palliser might just as well have been dead. He had outlived hope and ambition, thought, invention. He exercised no influence upon the lives of others, except upon the little homely wife, who was a slave to him. He was no possible good in the world. Yet his daughter was fond of him, and pleased to bear him company when he would have her; and under her influence his sluggish intellect brightened a little.

For the first few weeks of her residence at Les Fontaines, Ida was tortured by a continually recurring fear of Brian Wendover's pursuit. He had let her go coolly enough; but what if he were to change his mind and follow and claim her? She belonged to him. She was his goods, his chattels—to have and to hold till death did them part. Her life was no longer her own to dispose of as she pleased. Would he let her alone?—he who had held her in his arms with passionate force, who had entreated her to stay with him, and had surrendered her reluctantly in sullen anger.

What if anger, which had been stronger with him than love at that last moment, should urge him to denounce her—to tell the world how base a thing she was—a woman who had been eager to marry a rich man and had been trapped by a pauper! She glanced with a sickening dread at every letter which her father received, lest it should be from Brian, telling her shameful story. She counted the days as they went by, saying to herself, 'A fortnight since we were married; surely if he had meant to claim me he would have come before now.' 'Three weeks! now I must be safe!' And then came the dull November morning which completed the calendar month since her wedding-day, and her husband had made no sign. She began to feel easier, to believe that he repented his marriage as deeply as she did, and that he was very glad to be free from its bondage.

And now she was able to think more seriously of her future. She had answered a great many advertisements in the Times, wherein paragons were demanded for the tuition of youth or the companionship of age; but as she saw the papers only on the day after their publication, other paragons, on the spot, were beforehand with her. She did not receive a single answer to those carefully written letters, setting forth her qualifications and her willingness to work hard.

'I shall waste a small fortune in postage-stamps, father,' she said at last, 'and shall be no nearer the mark. My only chance is to advertise. Will you give me the money for an advertisement? I am sorry to ask you, but—'

'My dear, you are always asking me for money,' replied Captain Palliser, peevishly; which was hardly fair, as she had asked him nothing since her return, except the sum of thirty shillings, being the exact amount of which she stood indebted to kind-hearted Miss Cobb. 'However, I suppose you must have it.' He produced a half sovereign from his meagrely-furnished purse. 'It is only right you should do something; indeed, anything is better than wasting your life in such a hole as this. But what if you do get any answers to your advertisement? Who is to give you a character, since that old witch at Mauleverer Manor has chosen to put up her back against you?'

'That must be managed somehow,' answered Ida, moodily. 'Will it not be enough for the people to know who you are, and that I have never been in a situation before? Why should they apply to the schoolmistress who finished my education?'

'People are so suspicious,' said the Captain, 'and the handsomer a girl is the more questions they ask. They seem to think she has no right to be so handsome. However you must risk it'

Ida wrote her advertisement, an unvarnished statement of her qualifications as a teacher, and of her willingness to be useful; not a word about references. The advertisement appeared a few days later, and the little family at Les Fontaines anxiously awaited the result, even little Vernon eagerly expressing himself on the subject, his youthful ears being open to every topic discussed in his presence, and his youthful mind quick to form opinions.

'You shan't go away!' he exclaimed. 'Ma, she shan't go, shall she? lady shan't have her; I want her always; you mustn't go, sissie,' all in baby language, with a curious perversion of consonants. He had climbed on her knee, and had his arms round her neck—energetic young arms which almost throttled her. She had been his chief companion and playfellow for the last five weeks, had read him all his favourite fairy-tales over and over again, had sat with him of an evening till he fell asleep, an invincible defence against bogies and vague fears of darkness. She had taken him for long rural rambles, over breezy downs towards the sea, had dug and delved with him on the lonely beach below the great white lighthouse, warmly coated and shawled, and working hard in the November wind; and now, just when he had grown fonder of her than anyone else in the world, she was going to leave him. He lifted up his head and howled, and refused all comfort from mother or father. Ida cried with him. 'My pet, I can't bear to leave you, but I must; my darling, I shall come back,' she protested, clasping him to her breast, kissing his fair tearful face, soft round cheeks, lovely blue eyes swimming in tears.

'To-morrow?' inquired Vernon, with a strangled sob.

'No, darling, not to-morrow; there would be no use in my going just for one day; but I am not going yet—I don't know when I am going—Vernon must not cry. See how unhappy he is making poor mamma.'

Mrs. Palliser put her hands before her face, and made a bohooing noise to keep up the illusion; whereupon the affectionate little fellow slipped off his sister's knee, and ran to his mother to administer comfort.

'I am not going away yet, Vernon; indeed, I hardly know whether I am ever going at all. I have come back like a bad penny, and I seem likely to be as difficult to get rid of as other bad pennies,' said Ida, despondingly, for three posts had gone by since the insertion of her advertisement, and had brought her nothing. The market was evidently overstocked with young ladies knowing French and German, able to play and sing, and willing to be useful.

After this Vernon would hardly let his sister out of his sight. He had a suspicion that she would leave him unawares—slip out of the door some day, and be gone without a moment's warning. That is how joy flees.

'My pet, be reasonable,' said Ida; 'I can't go away without my trunk.'

This comforted him a little, and he made a point of sitting upon one of Ida's trunks, when they two were alone in that barely furnished chamber which served for her bed-room and his day-nursery.

She contrived to tell him fairy-tales, and to keep him amused; albeit she was now busy at carefully overhauling, patching, and repairing her scanty wardrobe—trying to make neat mending do duty for new clothes, and getting ready against any sudden summons. She could not bring herself to ask her father for money, sadly as she wanted new garments. He had given her five pounds in August, and two sovereigns since her return, and the way he had doled out those sums indicated the low state of his funds. No, the gown that had been new at The Knoll must still be her best gown. Last winter's jacket, albeit threadbare in places, must do duty for this winter. Before the next summer she might be in the receipt of a salary and able to clothe herself decently, and to send presents to this beloved boy, who was not much better clad than herself.

But the days wore on, and brought no answer to her advertisement.

'I shouldn't wonder if it were the foreign address,' said Captain Palliser, when they were all speculating upon the cause of this dismal silence. 'People are suspicious of anyone living abroad. If you had been able to advertise from a rectory in Lincolnshire, or even an obscure street at the west end of London, they'd have thought better of you. But Boulogne, Calais, Dieppe, they all hint at impecuniosity and enforced exile. It's very unlucky.'

The postman stopped at the little green gate next morning, and Ida flew to receive his packet. It was a letter for her—a bulky letter—in a hand she knew well, and her heart seemed to stop beating as she looked at the address.

The hand was Bessie Wendover's. Who could tell what new trouble the letter might announce? Brian might have told his family the whole history of his marriage and her unworthy conduct. Oh, what shame, what agony, if this were so! And how was she to face her father when he asked her the contents of the letter? She ran out into the garden—the little bare, joyless garden—to read her letter alone, and to gain time.

This is how the dreaded epistle ran:—

'My dear darling, ill-used, cruel thing,—

'However could you treat me so badly? What is friendship worth, if you set no higher value upon it than this? I don't believe you know what friendship means, or you never could act so. How miserable you have made me! how wretched you must have been yourself! you proud, noble-minded darling—under the sting of such vile treatment.

'I wrote to you three times last month, and could not imagine why my letters were unanswered. Brian had told me that you were perfectly well, and looking splendid when he saw you in October, so I did not think it could be illness that kept you silent; and at last I began to feel angry, and to fancy you had forgotten me, and were ungrateful. No, I don't mean that, dearest. What reason had you for gratitude? The obligation was all on my side.

'Towards the end of October I wrote to Brian, telling him of your silence, and asking if he could find out if you were well. He answered with one of his short, unsatisfactory scrawls that he had reason to know you were quite well. After this I felt really offended; for I thought you must have deceived me all along, and that you had never cared a straw about me; so I coiled myself up in my dignity, and, although I felt very unhappy, I resolved never to write you another line till you wrote to me. I was very miserable, but still I felt that I owed a duty to my own self-respect, don't you know; and just at thistimall went to Bournemouth, where we were very gay. Father and mother knew no end of people there, and I began to feel what it really is to be out, which no girl ever could at Kingthorpe, where there are about three parties in a twelvemonth.

'Well, darling, so I went on leading a frivolous life among people I did not care twopence for, and hardening my heart against my dearest friend, when, on the day we came home, I happened to take up the Times in the railway carriage. I hate newspapers in a common way, but one reads such things when one is travelling, and out of mere idleness I amused myself skimming the advertisements, which I found ever so much more interesting than the leading articles. What should my eye light upon but an advertisement from a young lady wanting to go out as a governess—address I.P., Le Rosier, Les Fontaines, near Dieppe—and the whole murder was out. You must have left old Pew's and be living with your father. I was horribly indignant with you—as, indeed, I am still—for not having told me anything about it; but directly I got home I telegraphed to Polly Cobb, as the best-natured girl I knew at Mauleverer, asking where you were, and why you had left. I had such a letter from her next day—spelling bad, but full of kind feeling—giving me a full account of the row, and old Pew's detestable conduct. She told me that Fraeulein vouched for your having behaved with the most perfect propriety, and never having seen Brian out of her presence; but Brian's meanness in not having told me about the trouble he had brought upon you is more than I can understand.

'Well, darling, I went off to Aunt Betsy, who is always my confidante in all delicate matters, because she's ever so much cleverer than dear warm-hearted mother, who never could keep a secret in her life, sweet soul, and is no better than a speaking-tube for conveying information to the Colonel. I told Aunt Betsy everything—how it was all Brian's fault, and how I adore you, and how miserable I felt about you, and how you were trying to get a situation as governess, in spite of that malignant old Pew—she must be a lineal descendant of the wicked fairy—having said she would give you no certificate of character or ability.

'Now, what do you think that sweetest and best of aunties said? "Let her come to me," she said; "I am getting old and dull, and I want something bright and clever about me, to cheer me and rouse me when I feel depressed. Let her come to me as a companion and amanuensis, help me to look after my cottagers, who are getting too much for me, and play to me of an evening. I like that girl, and I should like to have her in my house."

'I was enchanted at the thought of your being always near us, and I fancied you wouldn't altogether dislike it; although Kingthorpe certainly is the dullest, sleepiest old hole in the universe. So I begged Aunt Betsy to write to you instanter; said I knew you would be charmed to accept such a situation, and that she would secure a treasure; and, in all probability, you'll have a letter from her to-morrow.

'And now, dear, I must repeat that you have treated me shamefully. Why did you not write to me directly you left Mauleverer? Could you think that I could believe you had really done wrong—that I could possibly be influenced by the judgment of that old monster, Pew? If you could think so, you are not worthy to be loved as I love you. However, come to us, sweetest, directly you get auntie's letter, and all shall be forgiven and forgotten, as the advertisements say.'

Ida kissed the loving letter. So far, therefore, Brian had not betrayed her; and, having kept her secret so long, it might be supposed he would keep it for all time.

Poor little warm-hearted Bessie! Was not she by her foolish falsification—a piece of mild jocosity, no doubt—the prime author of all the evil that had followed? And yet Ida could not feel angry with her, any more than she could have been angry with Vernon for some piece of sportive mischief.

'Thank God, he has kept our wretched secret,' she thought, as she folded Bessie's long letter, and went back to the house. 'I am grateful to him for that.'

She went in radiant, gladdened at the thought of being able to relieve her father and step-mother of the burden of her maintenance; for the fact that she was a burden had not been hidden from her. They had been kind; they had given her to eat and to drink of their best, and had admired her talents and accomplishments; but they had let her know at the same time that she was a failure, and that her future was a dark problem still far from solution—a problem which troubled them in the silent watches of the night. Nor did they forget to remind her from time to time that by her imprudence—pardonable although that imprudence might be—she had forfeited six months' board and lodging, together with those educational advantages the Captain's fifty pounds had been intended to purchase for her. These facts had been reiterated, not altogether unkindly, but in a manner that made life intolerable; and she felt that were she to continue at Les Fontaines for the natural term of her existence, the same theme would still furnish the subject for parental harpings.

'Father,' she said, going behind Captain Palliser's chair, as he smoked his after-breakfast cigar, and read yesterday's Times, 'I want you to read this letter. It is a foolish schoolgirl letter, perhaps; but it will show you that my friends are not going to discard me on account of Miss Pew.'

The Captain laid down his paper, and slowly made his way through Bessie's lengthy epistle, which, although prettily written, with a good deal of grace in the slopes and curves of the penmanship, gave him considerable trouble to decipher. It was only when he had discovered that all the B's looked like H's, and that all the G's were K's, and all the L's S's, and had, as it were, made a system for himself, that he was able to get on comfortably.

'Bless my soul,' he murmured, 'why cannot girls write legibly?'

'It is the real Mauleverer hand, papa, and is generally thought very pretty,' said Ida.

'Pretty, yes; you might have a zigzag pattern over the paper that would be just as pretty. One wants to be able to read a letter. This is almost as bad as Arabic. However, the girl seems a good, warm-hearted creature, and very fond of you; and I should think you could not do better than accept her aunt's offer. It will be a beginning.'