"I was in hopes that the bazaar would have blown over, but the Bishop has been demanding of Fuller and his churchwardens how soon they mean to put the building in hand, and this seems to be their only notion of raising money."

"I am very glad of this opportunity of asking what you think I had better do about it. Your wife takes no part in it?"

"Certainly not; but I doubt whether that need be a precedent for you. I am answerable for her, and you could hardly keep out of it without making a divided household."

"I see the difference, and perhaps I have made myself quite unpleasant enough already."

"As the opposition?"

"And Camilla has been very kind in giving me much more freedom than I expected, and pacifying papa. She let me go every Friday evening to help Lady Susan Strangeways at her mothers' meeting."

"Lady Susan Strangeways! I have heard of her."

"She has been my comforter and help all this time. She is all kindness and heartiness,—elbow-deep in everything good. She got up at five o'clock to finish the decorations at St. Maurice's, and to- day she is taking five hundred school-children to Windsor forest."

"Is she the mother of the young man at Backsworth?"

"Yes," said Eleonora, in rather a different tone. "Perhaps she goes rather far; and he has flown into the opposite extreme, though they say he is improving, and has given up the turf, and all that sort of thing."

"Was he at home? I heard he was on leave."

"He was said to be at home, but I hardly ever saw him. He was always out with his own friends when I was there."

"I should not suppose Lady Susan's pursuits were much in his line. Is not one of the daughters a Sister?"

"Yes, at St. Faith's. She was my great friend. The younger ones are nice girls, but have not much in them. Camilla is going to have them down for the bazaar."

"What, do they patronize bazaars?"

"Everything that is doing they patronize. I have known them be everywhere, from the Drawing-room to a Guild-meeting in a back slum, and all with equal appetite. That is one reason why I fear I shall not see much of your mother; they are never tired, and I shall never get out alone. The house is to be full of people, and we are to be very gay."

She spoke with a tone that betrayed how little pleasure she expected, though it strove to be uncomplaining; and Julius, who had learnt something of poor Frank's state of jealous misery, heartily wished the Strangeways family further, regarding the intimacy as a manoeuvre of Lady Tyrrell's, and doubting how far all Eleonora's evident struggles would keep her out of the net; and though while talking to her he had not the slightest doubt of her sincerity, he had not long set her down at the lodge before he remembered that she was a Vivian.

Meantime Rosamond, carrying some medicament to old Betty Reynolds, found the whole clan in excitement at the appearance of Joe in all his buttons, looking quite as honest and innocent, though a good deal more civilized, than when he was first discovered among the swine.

"Only to think," said his great-grandmother, "that up in London all they could gie to he was a bad penny."

"It is the bronze medal, my lady," said Joshua, with a blush; "the second prize for crayons in our section."

"Indeed," cried Rosamond. "You are a genius, Joe, worthy of your namesake. There are many that would be proud to have the grandson you have, Betty."

"Tubby sure," added an aunt-in-law, "'tis cheap come by. Such things to make a young lad draught. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, they did oughter. Shut it up, Josh; don't be showing it to the lady—'tis nothing but the bare back of a sweep."

"My lady and Miss Vivian have seen it," said Joshua, blushing. "'Tis torso, my lady, from a cast from the museum."

"A black-looking draught," repeated the grandmother. "I tells Joe if he drawed like King Geaarge's head up at Wil'sbro' on the sign, with cheeks like apples, and a gould crown atop, he'd arn his bread."

"All in good time, Betty. He can't colour till he can draw. I'm glad to see him looking so well."

"Yes, my lady, he do have his health torrablish, though he lives in a underground sort of a place; and they fine servants puts upon he shameful."

"Granny!" muttered Joshua, in expostulation.

"He's a brave boy, and does not mind roughing it, so he can get on," said Rosamond.

"And the ladies are very good to me," said the boy.

"Show Lady Rosamond the draught you did of Miss Vivian, like a hangel," suggested the aunt.

The rising artist coloured, saying, "Please, my lady, don't name it to no one. I would not have shown it, but little Bess, she pulled down all my things on the floor when I was not looking. It is from memory, my lady, as she looks when she's doing anything for Sir Harry."

It was a very lovely sketch—imperfect but full of genius, and wonderfully catching, the tender, wistful look which was often on Eleonora's face, as she waited on her father. Rosamond longed that Frank should see it; but the page was very shy about it, and his grandmother contrasted it with the performances of the painter 'who had draughted all the farmers' wives in gould frames for five pound a head; but satin gownds and gold chains was extry.'

But Joe had brought her a pound of tea, and an 'image' for her mantelpiece, which quite satisfied her, though the image, being a Parian angel of Thorwaldsen's, better suited his taste than its surroundings.

The whole scene served Rosamond for a narrative in her most lively style for Mrs. Poynsett's amusement that evening. There was the further excitement of a letter from Miles, and the assurance that he would be at home in November. Anne had become far less chary of communications from his letters than she had at first been, but of this one she kept back so large a portion in public, that the instant Mrs. Poynsett had bidden them good night and been wheeled away, Rosamond put a hand on each shoulder, and looking into her face, said, "Now, Anne, let us hear! Miles has found Archie Douglas. It is no use pretending. Fie, Mrs. Anne, why can't you tell me?"

"I was not to tell any one but Julius."

"Well, I'm Julius. Besides, wasn't I at the very bottom of the tracing him out? Haven't I the best right to know whether it is bad or good?"

"Not bad, I am sure," said Julius, quickly and anxiously.

"Oh, no, not bad," answered Anne. "He has seen him—had him on board for a night."

"Where?"

"Off Durban. But this whole sheet about it is marked 'Private—only for Julius,' so I could say nothing about it before your mother. I have hardly glanced at it myself as yet, but I think he says Mr. Douglas made him promise not to tell her or Joanna Bowater."

"Not tell Jenny!" cried Rosamond. "And you said it was not bad. He must have gone and married!"

"I do not think that is it," said Anne; "but you shall hear. Miles says:—'I have at last seen our poor Cousin Archie. I told you I was following up your brother Sandie's hint about the agents for the hunters; and at last I fell in with a merchant, who, on my inquiry, showed me an invoice that I could have sworn to as in Archie's hand, and described his white hair. It seems he has been acting as manager on an ostrich farm for the last three years, far up the country. So I lost no time in sending up a note to him, telling him, if he had not forgotten old times, to come down and see me while I was lying off Durban Bay. I heard no more for ten days, and had got in the stores and was to sail the next day, thinking he had given us all up, when a boat hailed us just come over the bar. I saw Archie's white head, and in ten minutes I had him on deck. 'For Heaven's sake—am I cleared, Miles?' was the first thing he said; and when I could not say that he was, it went to my heart to see how the eager look sank away, and he was like a worn-down man of fifty. Poor fellow, I found he had ridden two hundred miles, with the hope that I had brought him news that his innocence was proved, and the revulsion was almost more than he could bear. You see, he had no notion that we thought him dead, and so he took the entire absence of any effort to trace him as acquiescence in his guilt; and when he found out how it was, he laid me under the strongest injunctions to disclose to no one that he is living—not that he fears any results, but that he says it would only disturb every one and make them wretched—"

"He must have gone and married. The wretch!" broke in Rosamond.

"No, oh no!" cried Anne. "Only hear the rest. 'I told him that I could not see that at all, and that there was a very warm and tender remembrance of him among us all, and he nearly broke down and said, 'For Heaven's sake then, Miles, let them rest in that! There's more peace for them so.' I suppose I looked—I am sure I did not speak— as though I were a little staggered as to whether he were ashamed to be known; for he drew himself up in the old way I should have known anywhere, and told me there was no reason I should fear to shake hands with him; however his name might be blasted at home, he had done nothing to make himself unworthy of his mother and Jenny—and there was a sob again. So I let him know that up to my last letters from home Jenny was unmarried. I even remembered those descriptive words of yours, Nannie, 'living in patient peacefulness and cheerfulness on his memory.'"

"I was called on deck just then, so I gave him my home photograph- book, and left him with it. I found him crying like a child over it when I came back; I was obliged to strip it of all my best for him, for I could not move him. We went through the whole of the old story, to see if there were any hope; and when he found that Tom Vivian was dead, and George Proudfoot too, without a word about him, he seemed to think it hopeless. He believes that Proudfoot at least, if not Moy, was deeply in debt to Vivian, though not to that extent, and that Vivian probably incited them to 'borrow' from my mother's letter. He was very likely to undertake to get the draft cashed for them, and not to account for the difference. It may have helped to hasten his catastrophe. Moy I never should have suspected; Archie says he should once have done so as little; but he was a plausible fellow, and would do things on the sly, while all along appearing to old Proudfoot as a mentor to George. Archie seemed to feel his prosperity the bitterest pill of all—reigning like one of the squirearchy at Proudfoot Lawn—a magistrate forsooth, with his daughter figuring as an heiress. One thing worth note—Archie says, that when it was too late, he remembered that the under-clerk, Gadley, might not have gone home, and might have heard him explain that the letter had turned up.'"

"Gadley? Why that's the landlord of the 'Three Pigeons!'" exclaimed Rosamond. "It is Mr. Moy's house, and he supports him through thick and thin."

"Yes," said Julius, "the magistrates have been on the point of taking away his license, but Moy always stands up for him. There is something suspicious in that."

"I heard Miss Moy, with my own ears, tell Mrs. Duncombe that he was the apple of her father's eye," cried Rosamond.

"He's bribed! he's bribed! Oh, I see it all. Well, go on, Anne. If Archie isn't at home before he is a year older—"

Anne went on. "'He allowed that he would have done more wisely in facing it out and standing his trial; but he said, poor fellow, that he felt as if the earth had given way under him. There was not a soul near who believed him; they brought his father's history against him, and moreover he had been at the races, and had been betting, though in fact he had won, and not lost, and the 201. he had become possessed of was his capital, besides the little he could draw out of the bank

"'If he could only have seen Jenny in London she would have turned him back. Indeed, that first stage was to consult her, but he fancied he saw the face of the Wil'sbro' Superintendent in a cab, and the instinct of avoiding arrest carried him to Southampton, where he got a steerage berth in a sailing vessel, and came out to the Cape. He has lived hard enough, but his Scots blood has stood him in good stead, and he has made something as an ivory-hunter, and now has a partnership in an ostrich farm in the Amatongula country. Still he held to it that it was better he should continue dead to all here, since Mr. Bowater would never forgive him; and the knowledge of his existence would only hinder Jenny's happiness. You should have seen the struggle with which he said that! He left me no choice, indeed; forbade a word to any one, until I suggested that I had a wife, and that my said wife and Julius had put me on the scent. He was immensely struck to find that my sweet Nan came from Glen Fraser. He said the evenings he spent there had done more to renew his home-sickness, and made him half mad after the sight or sound of us, than anything else had done, and I got him to promise to come and see us when we are settled in the bush. What should you say to joining him in ostrich-hatching? or would it be ministering too much to the vanities of the world? However, I'll do something to get him cleared, if it comes to an appeal to old Moy himself, when I come home. Meantime, remember, you are not at liberty to speak a word of this to any one but Julius, and, I suppose, his wife. I hope—' There, Rose, I beg your pardon."

"What does he hope?" asked Rosamond.

"He only hopes she is a cautious woman."

"As cautious as his Nan, eh? Ah, Anne! you're a canny Scot, and maybe think holding your tongue as fine a thing as this Archie does; but I can't bear it. I think it is shocking, just wearing out the heart of the best and sweetest girl in the world."

"At any rate," said Julius, "we must be silent. We have no right to speak, however we may feel."

"You don't expect it will stay a secret, or that he'll go and pluck ostriches like geese, with Miles and Anne, and nobody know it? 'Twould be taking example by their ostriches, indeed!"

"I think so," said Julius, laughing; "but as it stands now, silence is our duty by both Miles and Archie, and Anne herself. We must not make her repent having told us."

"It's lucky I'm not likely to fall in with Jenny just yet," said Rosamond. "Don't leave me alone with her, either of you; if you do, it is at your peril. It is all very well to talk of honour and secrets, but to see the look in her eyes, and know he is alive, seems to me rank cruelty and heartlessness. It is all to let Miles have the pleasure of telling when he comes home."

"Miles is not a woman, nor an Irishwoman," said Julius.

"But he's a sailor, and he's got a feeling heart," said Rosamond; "and if he stands one look of Jenny, why, I'll disown him for the brother-in-law I take him for. By the bye, is not Raymond to know?"

"No," said Anne; "here is a postscript forbidding my telling him or Mrs. Poynsett."

"Indeed! And I suppose Herbert knows nothing?"

"Nothing. He was a boy at school at the time. Say nothing to him, Rose."

"Oh, no; besides, his brain is all run to cricket."

It was but too true. When the sun shone bright in April, and the wickets were set up, Herbert had demonstrated that his influence was a necessity on the village green; and it was true that his goodly and animated presence was as useful morally to the eleven as it was conducive to their triumphs; so his Rector suppressed a few sighs at the frequency of the practices and the endless matches. Compton had played Wil'sbro' and Strawyers, Duddingstone and Woodbury; the choir had played the school, the single the married; and when hay and harvest absorbed the rustic eleven, challenges began among their betters. The officers played the county—Oxonians, Cantabs— Etonians, Harrovians—and wherever a match was proclaimed, that prime bowler, the Reverend Herbert Bowater, was claimed as the indispensable champion of his cause and country.

If his sister had any power to moderate his zeal, she had had little chance of exercising it; for Mrs. Bowater had had a rheumatic fever in March, and continued so much of an invalid all the summer that Jenny seldom went far from home, only saw her brother on his weekly visits to the sick-room, and was, as Rosamond said, unlikely to become a temptation to the warm heart and eager tongue.

* * * * *

The week-day congregation were surprised one August morning at eight o'clock by the entrance of three ladies in the most recent style of fashionable simplicity, and making the most demonstrative tokens of reverence. As the Rector came out he was seized upon at once by the elder lady.

"Mr. Charnock! I must introduce myself; I knew your dear mother so well when we were both girls. I am so delighted to find such a church—quite an oasis; and I want to ascertain the best hour for calling on her. Quite an invalid—I was so shocked to hear it. Will the afternoon suit her? I am only here for three days to deposit these two girls, while I take the other on a round of visits. Three daughters are too great an affliction for one's friends, and Bee and Conny are so delighted to be near their brother and with dear Lena Vivian, that I am very glad above all, since I find there are real church privileges—so different from the Vicar of Wil'sbro'. Poor man; he is a great trial."

All this was said between the church and the lych-gate, and almost took Julius's breath away; but Mrs. Poynsett was prepared to welcome her old friend with some warmth and more curiosity.

Lady Susan Strangeways was a high-bred woman, but even high breeding could not prevent her from being overwhelming, especially as there was a great deal more of her than there had been at the last meeting of the friends, so that she was suggestive of Hawthorne's inquiry, whether a man is bound to so many more pounds of flesh than he originally wedded. However, it was prime condition, and activity was not impeded, but rather received impetus. She had already, since her matutinal walk of more than a mile and back, overhauled the stores for the bazaar, inspected the town-hall, given her advice, walked through the ruins for the church, expressed herself strongly on the horrors of the plan, and begun to organize shilling cards, all before Sir Harry had emerged from his room.

She was most warm-hearted and good-natured, and tears glistened in her honest gray eyes as she saw her old friend's helpless state. "You don't know how much I have improved," said Mrs. Poynsett; "I feel quite at liberty in this chair, all owing to my good daughters- in-law."

"Ah! I have so pitied you for having no girls! My dear daughters have been so entirely one with me—such a blessing in all I have gone through."

Mrs. Poynsett of course declared her complete comfort in her five sons, but Lady Susan was sure that if she had had as many boys, instead of one son and four daughters, she should have been worn out. Lorimer was a dear, affectionate fellow. Those he loved could guide him with a leash of gossamer, but young men in his position were exposed to so many temptations! There ensued a little sighing over the evils of wealth; and to see and hear the two ladies, no one would have thought that Julia Poynsett had married a young man for love—Susan Lorimer an old man for independence.

Possibly with her present principles she would not have done so; but through the vista of a long and prosperous widowhood deficiencies in the courtship were easily forgotten; and perhaps there was the more romance and sentiment now because she had been balked of it in her youth. She had freely allowed her eldest daughter to enter a sisterhood from the purest, most unselfish motives, but there was compensation in talking of her Margaret as a Sister of Mercy.

And ere long she was anxiously inquiring Mrs. Poynsett's opinion of Eleonora Vivian, and making confidences somewhat trying to the mother of the young lady's ardent lover.

She was quite aware that as to fortune there could hardly be a worse match than Miss Vivian; but she was sensible enough to see that her son had a sufficiency, and generous enough to like the idea of redeeming the old estate. Her husband had spent his latter years in a vain search for a faultless property, and his wealth was waiting for Lorimer's settling down. She had always regretted the having no vassals rightfully her own, and had felt the disadvantages of being Lady Bountiful only by tenant right. To save an old estate from entirely passing out of a family, and relieve 'a noble old wreck,' like Sir Harry, seemed to her so grand a prospect that she could not but cast a little glamour over the manner of the shipwreck. Still, to do her justice, her primary consideration was the blessing such a woman as Lenore might be to her son.

She had not fathomed Lady Tyrrell. No woman could do so without knowing her antecedents, but she understood enough to perceive that Eleonora was not happy with her, and this she attributed to the girl's deep nature and religious aspirations. Rockpier was an ecclesiastical paradise to Lady Susan, and a close bond with Lenore, to whom in London she had given all the facilities that lay in her power for persevering in the observances that were alien to the gay household at home. She valued this constancy exceedingly, and enthusiastically dilated on the young lady's goodness, and indifference to the sensation she had created. "Lorimer allows he never saw her equal for grace and dignity."

Allows! Fancy Frank allowing any perfection in his Lenore! Was it not possible that a little passing encomium on unusual beauty was being promoted and magnified by the mother into a serious attachment? But Lady Tyrrell was playing into her hands, and Lenore's ecclesiastical proclivities were throwing her into the arms of the family!

It hardly seemed fair to feign sympathy, yet any adverse hint would be treason, and Mrs. Poynsett only asked innocently whether her friend had seen her son Frank.

"Oh yes, often; the handsomest of all your sons, is he not?"

"Perhaps he is now."

"My girls rave about his beautiful brown eyes, just as you used to do, Julia, five-and-thirty years ago."

Mrs. Poynsett was sure that whatever she had thought of Miles Charnock's eyes five-and-thirty years ago, she had never raved about them to Susan Lorimer, but she only said, "All my boys are like their father except Charlie."

"But Master Frank has no eyes for any one but Miss Vivian. Oh yes, I see the little jealousies; I am sorry for him; but you see it would be a shocking bad thing for a younger son like him; whereas Lory could afford it, and it would be the making of him."

Mrs. Poynsett held her peace, and was not sorry that her visitor was called away while she was still deliberating whether to give a hint of the state of the case.

Lady Susan was, however, more aware of it than she knew; Lady Tyrrell had 'candidly' given her a hint that there had been 'some nonsense about Frank Charnock,' but that he could never afford such a marriage, even if his mother would allow it, all which she never would. Besides, he had not fallen into a satisfactory set in London—why, it was not needful to tell.

When, after the drive, Lady Tyrrell, fairly tired out by her visitor's unfailing conversation and superabundant energy, had gone to lie down and recruit for the evening, Lady Susan pressed on Eleonora a warm invitation to the house in Yorkshire which she was renting, and where Lorimer would get as much shooting as his colonel would permit. The mention of him made Lenore blush to the ears, and say, "Dear Lady Susan, you are always so kind to me that I ought to be open with you. Don't fancy—"

"I understand, I understand, my dear," broke in Lady Susan. "You shall not be teased. Do not the girls and I care for you for your own sake?"

"I hope so."

The elder lady sprang up and embraced her. Affection was very pleasant to the reserved nature that could do so little to evoke caresses. Yet Eleonora clasped her Rockpier charm in her hand, and added, "I must tell you that so far as I can without disobedience, I hold myself engaged to Frank Charnock."

"To Frank Charnock?" repeated Lady Susan, startled at this positive statement. "My dear, are you quite sure of his ways?—since he has been in town I mean."

"I know him, and I trust him."

"I'm sure he is a fine-looking young man, and very clever, they say; dear Julia Poynsett's son too, and they have all turned out so well," said honest Lady Susan; "but though you have been used to it all your life, my dear, a taste for horses is very dangerous in a young man who can't afford to lose now and then, you know."

"I have seriously made up my mind never to marry a man who has anything to do with the turf," said Eleonora.

"Ah, my poor dear, I can understand that," said Lady Susan, aware how ill this told for her Lory. "May I ask, does he know it?"

"It would insult him to say it. None of the Charnocks ever meddle with those things. Ah! I know your son saw him on the Derby-day; but he went down with his eldest brother and his wife—and that is a very different thing! I stayed at home, you remember—papa had a fit of the gout."

"My dear, I don't want to accuse him. Don't bristle up; only I am sorry, both for my own little plan of having you for my very own, and because I fear there is trouble in store for you. It can't be palatable." Here Eleonora shook her head, and her worn, wearied look went to the good-natured heart. "Dear child, you have gone through a great deal. You shan't be worried or fretted about anybody or anything at Revelrig."

"I should be very glad," said Lenore, who had no fears of Lory personally, though she could not be invited on false pretences.

"You had better come when Bee and Conny meet me. Let me see—will the retreat be over by that time? Are you going to it? You are an associate of St. Faith."

"Yes, but I don't see how I could go to the retreat. Oh, what a relief it would be to have such a week!"

"Exactly what I feel," said Lady Susan, somewhat to her surprise. "It strengthens and sets me right for the year. Dr. Easterby conducts this one. Do you not know him? Is not Rood House near Backsworth?"

"Yes on the other side, but he is utterly out of my reach. Julius Charnock looks up to him so much; but his name—even more than St. Faith's—would horrify my father."

"You could not go direct there," said Lady Susan; "but when once you are with me you are my charge, and I could take you."

She considered a little. Both she and her friend knew that all her religious habits were alien to Sir Harry, and that what he had freely permitted, sometimes shared at Rockpier, was now only winked at, and that if he had guessed the full extent of her observances he would have stormily issued a prohibition. Could it be wrong to spend part of her visit to Lady Susan with her hostess in a sisterhood, when she had no doubt as to attending services which he absolutely never dreamt of, and therefore did not forbid? The sacred atmosphere and holy meditations, without external strife and constant watchfulness, seemed to the poor girl like water to the thirsty; and she thought, after all the harass and whirl of the bazaar and race week, she might thus recruit her much-needed strength for the decisive conflicts her majority would bring.

Lady Susan had no doubts. The 'grand old wreck' was in his present aspect a hoary old persecutor, and charming Lady Tyrrell a worldly, scheming elder sister. It was as much an act of charity to give their victim an opportunity of devotion and support as if she had been the child of abandoned parents in a back court in East London. Reserve to prevent a prohibition was not in such cases treachery or disobedience; and she felt herself doing a mother's part, as she told her daughters, with some enjoyment of the mystery. Eleonora made no promise, hoping to clear her mind by consideration, or to get Julius's opinion. He and his wife dined at Sirenwood, and found Joe Reynolds's drawings laid out for inspection, while Lady Susan was advising that, instead of selling them, there should be an industrial exhibition of all curiosities of art and nature to be collected in the neighbourhood, and promising her own set of foreign photographs and coloured costumes, which had served such purposes many and many a time.

After dinner the good dame tried to talk to Rosamond on what she deemed the most congenial subjects; but my Lady Rose had no notion of 'shop' at a dinner-party, so she made languid answer that she 'left all that to the curates,' and escaped to a frivolous young matron on the other side of the room, looking on while her husband was penned in and examined on his services, and his choir, and his system, and his decorations, and his classes, and his schools, for all or any of which Lady Susan pressed on him the aid of the two daughters she was leaving at Sirenwood; and on his hint that this was beyond his parish, she repeated her strong disapproval of the Vicar of Wil'sbro', whom she had met at dinner the night before, and besides, the school there had numerous Sunday teachers.

Julius assented, for he had no redundance of the article, and his senior curate had just started on a vacation ramble with a brother; but a sort of misgiving crossed him as he heard Herbert Bowater's last comic song pealing out, and beheld the pleasingly plain face of a Miss Strangeways on either side of him. Had he not fought the Eton and Harrow match over again with one of them at dinner? and had not a lawn tennis challenge already passed?

For Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Charnock Poynsett were to have garden- parties on alternate Wednesdays, and the whole neighbourhood soon followed suit.

"You'll find nobody at home, Jenny," said Julius, coming out of a cottage opposite, as she rode up to Mrs. Hornblower's, on one of the last days of August. "Nobody—that is, but my mother. Can you come up and see her?"

"With all my heart; but I must get down here; I'm sent for one of Herbert's shirts. The good boy lets mamma and aunty manage them still! I believe their hearts would break outright if he took to shop ones, like the rest of them. Hush, Tartar, for shame! don't you know me? Where's your master?"

"At a garden-party at Duddingstone. Your mother is better, I see."

"Yes, thank you—out driving with papa. Good Rollo!" as the dignified animal rose from the hearthrug to greet her, waving his handsome tail, and calmly expelled a large tabby cat from the easy- chair, to make room for his friends. "Well done, old Roll! Fancy a cat in such company."

"Herbert's dogs partake his good-nature."

"Mungo seems to be absent too."

"Gone with him no doubt. He is the great favourite with one of the Miss Strangeways."

"Which—Herbert or Mungo?"

"Both! I might say, I know the young ladies best by one being rapturous about Tartar and the other about Mungo. Rollo treats both with equally sublime and indifferent politeness, rather as Raymond does."

"What sort of girls are they? Herbert calls them 'awfully jolly.'"

"I'm sorry to say I never can think of any other epithet for them. For once it is really descriptive."

"Is it either of them in particular?"

"Confess, Joan, that's what brought you over."

"Perhaps so. Edith heard some nonsense at Backsworth, and mamma could not rest till she had sent me over to see about it; but would there be any great harm in it if it were true? Is not Lady Susan a super-excellent woman?"

"You've hit it again, Jenny. Couple the two descriptions."

"I gather that you don't think the danger great."

"Not at present. The fascination is dual, and is at least a counteraction to the great enchantress."

"That is well! It was not wholesome!"

"Whereas, these two are hearty, honest, well-principled girls, quite genuine."

"Yet you don't say it with all your heart."

"I own I should like to find something they had left undone."

"What, to reduce them to human nature's daily food?"

"Daily indeed! There's just no escaping them. There they are at matins and evensong."

"How shocking! What, gossip afterwards?"

"Ask Rollo whether Mungo and Tartar don't stand at the lych-gate, and if he finds it easy to put an end to the game at play."

"Oh! and he said they never missed a Sunday service, or the school. Do they distract him?"

"Whom would it not distract to see two figures walking in with hunches on their backs like camels, and high-heeled shoes, and hats on the back of their heads, and chains and things clattering all over them?"

"Aren't they lady-like?"

"Oh! they are quite that. Rose says it is all the pink of fashion— only coming it strong—I declare they are infectious!"

"I believe so. I never heard so many nibbles at slang from any of you five, as from the Rector of Compton in the last five minutes. I gather that he is slightly bothered."

"There's so much of it. We are forced to have them to all the meals on Sunday, and their lectures on functions have nearly scared poor Anne to the Pilgrim level again. They have set upon me to get up a choir-concert and a harvest-feast; but happily no one has time for the first at this season, and as to the other, I doubted whether to make this first start after such a rainy summer, and they decide me against it. To have them decorating the church!"

"Awfully jolly," suggested Jenny.

"Even so. They are, if you understand me, technically reverent; they have startled the whole place with their curtsies and crossings in church; but they gabble up to the very porch; and the familiarity with which they discuss High Mass, as they are pleased to call it! I was obliged to silence them, and I must say they took it nicely."

"How do they suit Lena?"

"She likes them. Lady Susan was a great help to her in London, and she feels the comfort of their honesty. They brought her to church with them one or two mornings, but it knocked her up to walk so early. Insensibly, I think they do Lady Tyrrell's work in shutting her up from any of us."

"Spite of croquet, which seems perpetual."

"Chronic and sporadic parties make it so. There are few days without that or something else. Cricket or the band at the barracks."

"People say the neighbourhood has never been so gay since Camilla Vivian's marriage. I sometimes wonder whether anything can be going to happen," said Jenny with a sigh, not guessing at what Julius was thinking of; then changing her tone: "Surely Herbert does not go to it all, and leave you alone? O, Julius! you should not let him."

"Never mind, Jenny, there's no more work now in the holidays than I am sufficient for; and for him, it is quite as guileless play as ever he had twenty years ago. It will soon be over, or I should take it more seriously."

"But it is at such a time!"

"Yes, that is the worst of it. I have thought it over; but while he is in this mood, the making him feel victimized and interfered with has a worse effect than the letting him have his swing."

"What is he doing now, I wonder? Here's his sermon-paper on the table, and a Greek Testament, and Hints on Decorating Churches, with 'Constance Strangeways' on the first leaf—no other book. How long will this saturnalia last?"

"Up to the Ordination, I fear. You know the good people have contrived to put bazaar, races, and ball, all into the Ember Week, and they are the great object of the young ladies' visit. Could you have him home for a quiet week first?"

"It would not be a quiet week; Edith is in the way of most of these affairs; besides, to open fire about these young ladies might just be putting nonsense into an innocent head. Now, I've not seen your Rectory!"

The said Rectory was in a decided state of fresh, not to say raw, novelty outside, though the old trees and garden a little softened its hard grays and strong reds; but it promised to look well when crumbling and weather-stain had done their work. At the door they met the pretty young nurse, with a delicate sea-green embroidered cashmere bundle in her arms.

"Little Lady Green Mantle," exclaimed Jenny.

"Erin-go-bragh," said Julius. "Rose clung to her colours in spite of all predictions about 'the good people.' Asleep of course," as Jenny took her and uncovered her face. "She won't exhibit her eyes, but they are quite proper coloured."

"Yes, I see she is like Raymond!"

"Do you? They all say she is a perfect Charnock, though how they know I can't guess. There," after a little more baby-worship, "you may take her Emma."

"Is that the under-nurse?" asked Jenny, rather surprised by her juvenility.

"The sole one. My mother and Susan are rather concerned, but Rose asserts that experience in that department is always associated with gin; and she fell in love with this girl—a daughter of John Gadley's, who is much more respectable than he of the 'Three Pigeons.' I suppose it is not in the nature of things for two women to have the same view of nursery matters, unless one have brought up the other."

"Or even if she have. Witness mamma's sighs over Mary's nurses."

"I thought it was the common lot. You've not seen the dining-room." And the full honours were done. They were pleasant rooms, still unpapered, and the furniture chiefly of amber-coloured varnished deal; the drawing-room, chiefly with green furniture, with only a few brighter dashes here and there, and a sociable amount of comfortable litter already. The study was full of new shelves and old books, and across the window-sill lay a gray figure, with a book and a sheet of paper.

"You here, Terry! I thought you were gone with Rose," said Julius, as the boy rose to greet Miss Bowater.

"She said I need not, and I hate those garden-parties," said Terry; and they relieved him of their presence as soon as Jenny had paid her respects to the favourite prints and photographs on the walls.

"He has a passion for the history of Poland just now," said Julius. "Sobieski is better company than he would meet at Duddingstone, I suspect—poor fellow! Lord Rathforlane has been so much excited by hearing of Driver's successes as a coach, as to desire Terry to read with him for the Royal Engineers. The boys must get off his hands as soon as possible, he says, and Terry, being cleverest, must do so soonest; but the boy has seen the dullest side of soldiering, and hates it. His whole soul is set on scholarship. I am afraid it is a great mistake."

"Can't you persuade him?"

"We have both written; but Rose has no great hopes of the result. I wish he could follow his bent."

"Yes," said Jenny, lingering as she looked towards Church-house, "the young instinct ought not to be repressed."

Julius knew that she was recollecting how Archie Douglas had entreated to go to sea, and the desire had been quashed because he was an only son. His inclination to speak was as perilous as if he had been Rosamond herself, and he did not feel it unfortunate that Jenny found she must no longer stay away from home.



CHAPTER XXII Times Out of Joint

Alte der Meere, Komm und hore; Meine Frau, die Ilsebill, Will nicht als ich will!

Life at Compton Poynsett was different from what it had been when the two youngest sons had been at home, and Julius and Rosamond in the house. The family circle had grown much more stiff and quiet, and the chief difference caused by Mrs. Poynsett's presence was that Raymond was deprived of his refuge in her room. Cecil had taken a line of polite contempt. There was always a certain languid amount of indifferent conversation, 'from the teeth outward,' as Rosamond said. Every home engagement was submitted to the elder lady with elaborate scrupulousness, almost like irony. Visitors in the house or invitations out of it, were welcome breaks, and the whirl of society which vaguely alarmed Joanna Bowater was a relief to the inhabitants of the Hall.

Anne's companionship was not lively for her mother-in-law, but she was brightening in the near prospect of Miles's return, and they had established habits that carried them well through the evening. Anne covered screens and made scrap-books, and did other work for the bazaar; and Mrs. Poynsett cut out pictures, made suggestions, and had associations of her own with the combinations of which Anne had little notion. Or she dictated letters which Anne wrote, and through all these was a kindly, peaceful spirit, most unlike the dreary alienation in which Cecil persevered.

To Cecil this seemed the anxious desire for her lawful rights. She had been used to spend the greater part of the evening at the piano, but her awakened eyes perceived that this was a cover to Raymond's conversations at his mother's sofa; so she sat tying knots in stiff thread at her macrame lace pillow, making the bazaar a plea for nothing but work. Raymond used to arm himself with the newspapers as the safest point d'appui, and the talk was happiest when it only languished, for it could do much worse.

"Shall you be at Sirenwood to-morrow, Cecil?" asked Mrs. Poynsett, as she was wheeled to her station by the fire after dinner. "Will you kindly take charge of a little parcel for me? One of the Miss Strangeways asked me to look for some old franks, so Anne and I have been turning out my drawers."

"Are they for sale?" asked Raymond.

"Yes," said Cecil. "Bee Strangeways is collecting; she will pay for all that are new to her, and sell any duplicates."

"Has she many?" asked Mrs. Poynsett, glad of this safe subject.

"Quantities; and very valuable ones. Her grandfather knew everybody, and was in the Ministry."

"Was he?" said Raymond, surprised.

"Lord Lorimer?" said Mrs. Poynsett. "Not when I knew them. He was an old-fashioned Whig, with some peculiar crotchets, and never could work with any Cabinet."

"Beatrice told me he was," said Cecil, stiffly.

"I rather think he was Master of the Buckhounds for a little while in the Grey Ministry," said Mrs. Poynsett, "but he gave it up because he would not vote with ministers on the poor laws."

"I knew I was not mistaken in saying he was in the Ministry," said Cecil.

"The Master of the Buckhounds is not in the Cabinet, Cecil," said her husband.

"I never said he was. I said he was in office," returned the infallible lady.

Mrs. Poynsett thought it well to interrupt by handing in an envelope franked by Sir Robert Peel; but Cecil at once declared that the writing was different from that which Bee already owned.

"Perhaps it is not the same Sir Robert," said Mrs. Poynsett.

"She got it from the Queen, and they are all authenticated. The Queen newspaper, of course" (rather petulantly).

"Indisputable," said Raymond; "but this frank contained a letter from the second Sir Robert to my father."

Mrs. Poynsett made a sign of acquiescence, and Cecil pouted in her dignified way, though Mrs. Poynsett tried to improve matters by saying, "Then it appears that Miss Strangeways will have a series of Peel autographs, all in fact but the first generation."

Common sense showed she was right, but Cecil still felt discontented, for she knew she had been resisted and confuted, and she believed it was all Mrs. Poynsett's doing instead of Raymond's.

And she became as mute as Anne for the next half-hour, nor did either Raymond or his mother venture on starting any fresh topic, lest there might be fresh jarring.

Only Anne presently came up to Mrs. Poynsett and tenderly purred with her over some little preparation for Miles.

Certainly Anne was the most improved in looks of all the three brides, who had arrived just a year ago. The thin, scraggy Scotch girl, with the flabby, washed-out look alternating with angular rigidity was gone, but the softening and opening of her expression, the light that had come into her eyes, and had made them a lovely blue instead of pale gray; the rose-tint on her cheeks, the delicate rounded contour of her face, the improved carriage of her really fine figure, the traces of style in the braiding of her profuse flaxen hair, and the taste that was beginning to conquer in the dress, were all due to the thought that the Salamanca might soon be in harbour. She sat among them still as a creature whose heart and spirit were not with them.

That some change must come was felt as inevitable by each woman, and it was Mrs. Poynsett who began, one forenoon when her son had brought a lease for her to sign. "Raymond," said she, "you know Church-house is to be vacant at Michaelmas. I wish you would look at it, and see what repairs it wants, and if the drawing-room windows could be made to open on the lawn."

"Are you hoping to tempt Miles to settle there?"

"No, I fear there is no hope of that; but I do not think an old broken-backed invalid ought to engross this great house."

"Mother, I cannot hear you say so! This is your own house!"

"So is the other," she said, trying to smile, "and much fitter for my needs, with Susan and Jenkins to look after me."

"There is no fit place for you but this. You said that once."

"Under very different circumstances. All the younger boys were still under my wing, and needed the home, and I was strong and vigorous. It would not have been acting right by them to have given up the place; but now they are all out in the world, and I am laid by, my stay here only interferes with what can be much better managed without me or my old servants."

"I do not see that. If any one moves, it should be ourselves."

"You are wanted on the spot continually. If Sirenwood were in the market, that might not be so much amiss."

"I do not think that likely. They will delay the sale in the hope of Eleonora's marrying a rich man; besides, Mr. Charnock has set his mind upon Swanslea. I hope this is from nothing Cecil has said or done!"

"Cecil wishes to part then? She has said nothing to me, but I see she has to you. Don't be annoyed, Raymond; it is in the nature of things."

"I believe it is all Lady Tyrrell's doing. The mischief such a woman can do in the neighbourhood!"

"Perhaps it is only what any friend of Cecil would advise."

"It is the very reverse of what I intended," said Raymond, shading his face.

"My dear Raymond, I know what you meant, and what you wish; but I am also certain it is for no one's happiness to go on in this way."

He groaned.

"And the wife's right comes first."

"Not to this house."

"But to this man. Indeed I see more hope of your happiness now than I did last year."

"What, because she has delivered herself over bound hand and foot to Camilla Vivian?"

"No, because she is altered. Last year she was merely vexed at my position in the house. Now she is vexed at my position with you."

"Very unjustly."

"Hardly so. I should not have liked your father to be so much devoted to his mother. Remember, jealousy is a smoke that cannot exist without some warmth."

"If she had any proper feeling for me, she would show it by her treatment of you."

"That would be asking too much when she thinks I engross you."

"Mother, while you show such marvellous candour and generosity, and she—"

"Hush! Raymond, leave it unsaid! We cannot expect her to see more than her own side of the question. She has been put into an avowedly trying position, and does not deserve hard judgment for not being happy in it. All that remains is to relieve her. Whether by my moving or yours is the question. I prefer the Church-house plan."

"Either way is shame and misery to me," broke out Raymond in a choked voice.

"Nonsense," said his mother, trying to be cheerful. "You made an impracticable experiment, that's all. Give Cecil free scope, let her feel that she has her due, and all will come right."

"Nothing can be done till after the Wil'sbro' business," said Raymond, glad of the reprieve. He could not bear the prospect of banishment for his mother or himself from the home to which both were rooted; and the sentence of detachment from her was especially painful when she seemed his only consolation for his wife's perverseness. Yet he was aware that he had been guilty of the original error, and was bound to give such compensation to his wife as was offered by his mother's voluntary sacrifice. He was slow to broach the subject, but only the next morning came a question about an invitation to a dull house.

"But," said Cecil, "it is better than home." She spoke on purpose.

"I am sorry to hear you say so."

"I can't call it home where I am but a guest."

"Well, Cecil, my mother offers to leave the home of her life and retire into Church-house."

Cecil felt as if the screw she had been long working had come off in her hands. She frowned, she gazed, collecting her senses, while Raymond added, "It is to my intense grief and mortification, but I suppose you are gratified."

"Uh, it would never do!" she exclaimed, to his surprise and pleasure.

"Quite right," he returned. "Just what I felt. Nothing can make me so glad as to see that you think the idea as socking as I do."

"Our going to Swanslea would be much better—far more natural, and no one could object. We could refurnish, and make it perfect; whereas nothing can be done to this place, so inconveniently built and buried in trees. I should feel much freer in a place of my own."

"So that is what you meant when I thought you were thinking of my mother?"

"I am obliged to take thought for myself when you take heed to no one but her," said Cecil; and as the carriage was at that moment announced, she left him. Which was the most sick at heart it would be hard to say, the wife with the sense that she was postponed in everything to the mother, the husband at the alienation that had never before been so fully expressed. Cecil's errand was a council about the bazaar; and driving round by Sirenwood, Lady Tyrrell became her companion in the carriage. The quick eyes soon perceived that something had taken place, and confidence was soon drawn forth.

"The ice is broken; and by whom do you think?"

"By la belle mere? Skilful strategy to know when the position is not tenable."

"She wants to retreat to Church-house."

"Don't consent to that."

"I said I should prefer Swanslea for ourselves."

"Hold to that, whatever you do. If she moves to the village you will have all the odium and none of the advantages. There will be the same daily haunt; and as to your freedom of action, there are no spies like the abdicated and their dependents. A very clever plan, but don't be led away by it."

"No," said Cecil, resolutely; but after a moment: "It would be inconvenient to Raymond to live so far away from the property."

"Swanslea will be property too, and a ride over on business is not like strolling in constantly."

"I know I shall never feel like my own mistress in a house of hers."

"Still less with her close by, with the Rectory family running in and out to exchange remarks. No, no, hold fast to insisting that she must not leave the ancestral halls. That you can do dutifully and gracefully."

Cecil knew she had been betrayed into the contrary; but they were by this time in the High Street, bowing to others of the committee on their way to the town-hall, a structure of parti-coloured brick in harlequin patterns, with a peaked roof, all over little sham domes, which went far to justify its title of the Rat-house, since nothing larger could well use them. The facade was thus somewhat imposing; of the rear the less said the better; and as to the interior, it was at present one expanse of dust, impeded by scaffold-poles, and all the windows had large blotches of paint upon them.

It required a lively imagination to devise situations for the stalls; but Mrs. Duncombe valiantly tripped about, instructing her attendant carpenter with little assistance except from the well- experienced Miss Strangeways. The other ladies had enough to do in keeping their plumage unsoiled. Lady Tyrrell kept on a little peninsula of encaustic tile, Cecil hopped across bird-like and unsoiled, Miss Slater held her carmelite high and dry, but poor Miss Fuller's pale blue and drab, trailing at every step, became constantly more blended!

The dust induced thirst. Lady Tyrrell lamented that the Wil'sbro' confectioner was so far off and his ices doubtful, and Miss Slater suggested that she had been making a temperance effort by setting up an excellent widow in the lane that opened opposite to them in a shop with raspberry vinegar, ginger-beer, and the like mild compounds, and Mrs. Duncombe caught at the opportunity of exhibiting the sparkling water of the well which supplied this same lane. The widow lived in one of the tenements which Pettitt had renovated under her guidance, and on a loan advanced by Cecil, and she was proud of her work.

"Clio Tallboys would view this as a triumph," said Mrs. Duncombe, as, standing on the steps of the town-hall, she surveyed the four tenements at the corner of the alley. "Not a man would stir in the business except Pettitt, who left it all to me."

"Taking example by the Professor," said Lady Tyrrell.

"It is strange," said Miss Slater, "how much illness there has been ever since the people went into those houses. They are in my district, you know."

"You should make them open their windows," said Mrs. Duncombe.

"They lay it on the draughts."

"And stuff up my ventilators. That is always the way they begin."

The excellent widow herself had a bad finger, which was a great impediment in administering the cooling beverages, but these were so excellent as to suggest the furnishing of a stall therewith for the thirsty, as something sure to be popular and at small expense. Therewith the committee broke up, all having been present but Miss Moy, whose absence was not regretted, though apologized for by Mrs. Duncombe. "I could not get her away from the stables," she said. "She and Bob would contemplate Dark Hag day and night, I believe."

"I wouldn't allow it," said Lady Tyrrell.

Mrs. Duncombe shrugged her shoulders and laughed. "That's Mr. Moy's look-out," she said.

"You don't choose to interfere with her emancipation," said Lady Tyrrell.

"Clio would tell you she could take care of herself at the stables as well as anywhere else."

"Query?" said Lady Tyrrell. "Don't get into a scrape, Bessie. Does your Captain report on the flirtation with young Simmonds?"

"Who is he?" asked Cecil

"The trainer's son," said Bessie. "It is only a bit of imitation of Aurora Floyd."

"You know she's an heiress," said Lady Tyrrell. "You had better take care how you put such a temptation in his way."

"I don't suppose the Moys are anybody," said Cecil.

"Not in your sense, my dear," said Lady Tyrrell, laughing; "but from another level there's a wide gap between the heiress of Proudfoot Lawn and the heir of the training stables."

"Cecil looks simply disgusted," said Bessie. "She can't bear the Moys betwixt the wind and her nobility."

"They are the great drawback to Swansea, I confess," said Cecil.

"Oh! are you thinking of Swanslea?" cried Mrs Duncombe.

"Yes," said Lady Tyrrell, "she is one to be congratulated on emancipation."

"Well can I do so," said Mrs. Duncombe. "Don't I know what mothers- in-law are? Mine is the most wonderful old Goody, with exactly the notions of your meek Mrs. Miles."

"Incompatibility decidedly," said Lady Tyrrell.

"Only she was the Spartan mother combined with it," continued Mrs. Duncombe. "When Bob was a little urchin, he once, in anticipation of his future tastes, committed the enormity of riding on a stick on Sunday; so she locked him up till he had learnt six verses of one of Watts's hymns about going to church being like a little heaven below, isn't it?"

"Increasing his longing that way," said Lady Tyrrell.

"She doesn't even light the drawing-room fire on Sunday, for fear people should not sit in their rooms and meditate," continued Mrs. Duncombe. "Bob manages to be fond of her through all; but she regularly hates me."

"Not very wonderful," said Lady Tyrrell, laughing. "I suppose there is a charming reciprocity of feeling."

"I think I can afford to pity her," said Mrs. Duncombe, lightly. "Just fancy what I must have been to her! You know I was brought up in a convent at Paris. The very bosom of the scarlet woman."

"But," interrupted Cecil, "you were never a Roman Catholic, Bessie!"

"Oh dear, no; the Protestant boarders were let entirely alone. There were only two of us, and we lay in bed while the others went to mass, and played while they went to confession, that was all. I was an orphan; never remember my mother, and my father died abroad. Luckily for me, Bob was done for by my first ball. Very odd he should have liked a little red-haired thing like me; but every one is ticketed, I believe. My uncle was glad enough to get rid of me, and poor old Mrs. Duncombe was unsuspecting till we went home—and then!"

"And then?"

"Cecil may have some faint idea."

"Of what you underwent?"

"She wanted to begin on me as if I were a wild savage heathen, you know! I believe she nearly had a fit when I declined a prayer- meeting, and as to my walking out with Bob on Sunday evening!"

"Did she make you learn Watts's hymns?"

"No! but she did what was much worse to poor Bob. She told him she had spent the time in prayer and humiliation, and the poor fellow very nearly cried."

"Ah, those mothers have such an advantage over their sons," said Lady Tyrrell.

"I determined I would never go near her again after that," said Mrs. Duncombe. "Bob goes; he is really fond of her; but I knew we should keep the peace better apart. I let her have the children now and then, when it is convenient, and oddly enough they like it; but I shall soon have to stop that, for I won't have them think me a reprobate; and she has thought me ten times worse ever since I found out that I had brains and could use them."

"Quite true," said Camilla; "there's no peacemaker like absence."

"The only pity is that Swanslea is no further off," returned Bessie.

And so it was that Cecil, backed by her two counsellors, held her purpose, and Raymond sadly spoke of the plan of separation to Julius. Both thought Mrs. Poynsett's own plan the best, though they could not bear the idea of her leaving her own house. Raymond was much displeased.

"At least," he said, "there is a reprieve till this frantic fortnight is over. I envy your exemption from the turmoil."

"I wish you would exempt yourself from the races," said Julius. "The mischief they have done in these villages is incalculable! The very men-servants are solicited to put into sweepstakes, whenever they go into Wil'sbro'; and only this morning Mrs. Hornblower has been to me about her son."

"I thought he was the great feather in Herbert Bowater's cap."

"Showing the direction of the wind only too well. Since Herbert has been infected with the general insanity, poor Harry Hornblower has lapsed into his old ways, and is always hanging about the 'Three Pigeons' with some of the swarm of locusts who have come down already to brawl round the training stables. This has come to Truelove's ears, and he has notice of dismissal. At the mother's desire I spoke to Truelove, but he told me that at last year's races the lad had gambled at a great rate, and had only been saved from dishonesty by detection in time. He was so penitent that Truelove gave him another trial, on condition that he kept out of temptation; but now he has gone back to it, Mr. Truelove thinks it the only way of saving him from some fresh act of dishonesty. 'It is all up with them,' he says, 'when once they take that turn.'"

"You need not speak as if I were accountable for all the blackguardism."

"Every man is accountable who lends his name and position to bolster up a field of vice."

"Come, come, Julius. Remember what men have been on the turf."

"If those men had withheld their support, fashion would not have led so many to their ruin."

"Hundreds are present without damage. It is a hearty out-of-doors country amusement, and one of the few general holidays that bring all ranks together."

"You speak of racing as it has been or might be in some golden age," said Julius. "Of course there is no harm in trying one horse's speed against another; but look at the facts and say whether it is right to support an amusement that becomes such an occasion of evil."

"Because a set of rascals choose to bring their villainies there you would have the sport of the whole neighbourhood given up. 'No cakes and ale' with a vengeance!"

"The cakes and ale that make a brother offend ought to be given up."

"That sentences all public amusements."

"Not necessarily. The question is of degree. Other amusements may have evil incidentally connected with them, and may lead to temptation, but it is not their chief excitement. The play or the opera is the prime interest, and often a refined and elevated one, but at races the whole excitement depends upon the horses, and is so fictitious that it needs to be enhanced by this betting system. No better faculty is called into play. Some few men may understand the merits of the horse; many more, and most of the ladies, simply like the meeting in numbers; but there is no higher faculty called out, and in many cases the whole attraction is the gambling, and the fouler wickedness in the background."

"Which would be ten thousand times worse if all gentlemen stood aloof."

"What good do these gentlemen do beyond keeping the contest honourable and the betting in which they are concerned? Do not they make themselves decoys to the young men on the border-land who would stay away if the turf were left to the mere vulgar? Why should they not leave it to drop like bull-baiting or cock-fighting?"

"Well done, Julius!" said Raymond. "You will head a clerical crusade against the turf, but I do not think it just to compare it with those ferocious sports which were demoralizing in themselves; while this is to large numbers simply a harmless holiday and excuse for an outing, not to speak of the benefit to the breed of horses."

"I do not say that all competitions of speed are necessarily wrong, but I do say that the present way of managing races makes them so mischievous that no one ought to encourage them."

"I wonder what Backsworth and Wil'sbro' would say to you! It is their great harvest. Lodgings for those three days pay a quarter's rent; and where so many interests are concerned, a custom cannot lightly be dropped."

"Well," said Raymond with a sigh, "it is not pleasure that takes me. I shall look on with impartial eyes, if that is what you wish."

Poor Raymond! it was plain that he had little liking for anything that autumn. He rode over to Swanslea with Cecil, and when he said it was six miles off, she called it four; what he termed bare, marshy, and dreary, was in her eyes open and free; his swamp was her lake; and she ran about discovering charms and capabilities where he saw nothing but damp and dry rot, and, above all, banishment.

Would she have her will? Clio would have thought her lecture had taken effect, and mayhap, it added something to the general temper of self-assertion, but in fact Cecil had little time to think, so thickly did gaieties and preparations crowd upon her. It was the full glory and importance of the Member's wife, her favourite ideal, but all the time her satisfaction was marred by secret heartache as she saw how wearily and formally her husband dragged through whatever fell to his lot, saw how jaded and depressed he looked, and heard him laugh his company laugh without any heart in it. She thought it all his mother's fault, and meant to make up for everything when she had him to herself.

Julius had his troubles. When Rosamond found that races were what she called his pet aversion, she resisted with all her might. Her home associations were all on fire again. She would not condemn the pleasures she had shared with her parents, by abstinence from them, any more than she would deviate from Lady Rathforlane's nursery management to please Mrs. Poynsett and Susan. A bonnet, which Julius trusted never to see in church, was purchased in the face of his remark that every woman who carried her gay attire to the stand made herself an additional feather on the hook of evil. At first she laughed, and then grew tearfully passionate in protests that nothing should induce her to let her brothers see what their own father did turned into a crime; and if they went without her to take care of them, and fell into mischief, whose fault would that be?

It was vain to hint that Tom was gone back to school, and Terry cared more for the Olympic dust than that of Backsworth. She had persuaded herself that his absence would be high treason to her father, whom she respected far more at a distance than when she had been struggling with his ramshackle, easy-going ways. Even now, she was remonstrating with him about poor Terry's present misery. His last half year had been spent under the head-master, who had cultivated his historical and poetical intelligence, whereas Mr. Driver was nothing but an able crammer; and the moment the lad became interested and diverged from routine, he was choked off because such things would not 'tell.' If the 'coach' had any enthusiasm it was for mathematics, and thitherwards Terry's brain was undeveloped. With misplaced ingenuity, he argued that sums came right by chance and that Euclid was best learnt by heart, for 'the pictures' simply confused him; and when Julius, amazed at finding so clever a boy in the novel position of dunce, tried to find out what he did know of arithmetic, his ignorance and inappreciation were so unfathomable that Julius doubted whether the power or the will was at fault. At any rate he was wretched in the present, and dismal as to the future, and looked on his brother-in-law as in league with the oppressors for trying to rouse his sense of duty.

Remonstrance seemed blunted and ineffective everywhere. When Herbert Bowater tried to reclaim Harry Hornblower into giving up his notorious comrades, he received the dogged reply, "Why should not a chap take his pleasure as well as you?" With the authority at once of clergyman and squire's son, he said, "Harry, you forget yourself. I am not going to discuss my occupations with you."

"You know better," rudely interrupted the lad. "Racketing about all over the country, and coming home late at night. You'd best not speak of other folks!"

As a matter of fact, Herbert had never been later than was required by a walk home from a dinner, or a very moderate cricket supper; and his conscience was clear as to the quality of his amusements; but instead of, as hitherto, speaking as youth to youth, he used the language of the minister to the insulting parishioner. "I am sorry I have disturbed Mrs. Hornblower, but the case is not parallel. Innocent amusement is one thing—it is quite another to run into haunts that have already proved dangerous to your principles."

Harry Hornblower laughed. "It's no go coming the parson over me, Mr. Bowater! It's well known what black coats are, and how they never cry out so loud upon other folks as when they've had a jolly lark among themselves. No concealment now, we're up to a thing or two, and parsons, and capitalists, and squires will have to look sharp."

This oration, smacking of 'The Three Pigeons,' was delivered so loud as to bring the mother on the scene. "O, Harry, Harry, you aren't never speaking like that to Mr. Bowater!"

"When folks jaw me about what's nothing to them I always give them as good as they bring. That's my principle," said Harry, flinging out of the house, while the curate tried to console the weeping mother, and soon after betook himself to his Rector with no mild comments on the lad's insolence.

"Another warning how needful it is for us to avoid all occasion for misconstruction," said Julius.

"We do, all of us," said Herbert. "Even that wretched decoction, Fuller, and that mere dictionary, Driver, never gave cause for imputations like these. What has the fellow got hold of?"

"Stories of the last century 'two-bottle men,'" said Julius, "trumped up by unionists now against us in these days. The truth is that the world triumphs and boasts whenever it catches the ministry on its own ground. Its ideal is as exacting as the saintly one."

"I say Rector," exclaimed the curate, after due pause, "you'll be at Evensong on Saturday? The ladies at Sirenwood want me to go to Backsworth with them to hear the band."

"Cannot young Strangeways take care of his sisters?"

"I would not ask it, sir, but they have set their heart on seeing Rood House, and want me to go with them because of knowing Dr. Easterby. Then I'm to dine with them, and that's the very last of it for me. There's no more croquet after this week."

"I am thankful to hear it," said Julius, suppressing his distaste that the man he most reverenced, and the place which was his haven of rest, should be a mere lion for Bee and Conny, a slight pastime before the regimental band!



CHAPTER XXIII The Apple of Ate

Oh mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest of us all?—The Three Bears

"I do really think Terry has found the secret of happiness, for a little while at least," said Rosamond, entering Mrs. Poynsett's room. "That funny little man in the loan museum has asked him to help in the arrangement."

"Who is it?"

"The little watchmaker, or watch cobbler, in the old curiosity shop."

"Yes; Terry calls him a descendant of the Genoese Frescobaldi, and I'm sure his black eyes were never made for an English head. Terry has always haunted those uncanny wares of his, and has pursued them to the museum. ''Tis not every young gentleman I would wish to see there,' says the old man, 'but the Honourable Mr. De Lancey has the soul of an antiquarian.'"

"They say the old man is really very clever and well read."

"He looks like an old magician, with his white cap and spectacles, and he had need to have a wand to bring order out of that awful chaos. Everybody all round has gone and cleared out their rubbish- closet. Upon my word, it looks so. There are pictures all one network of cracks, and iron caps and gauntlets out of all the halls in every stage of rust, and pots and pans and broken crocks, and baskets of coin all verdigris and tarnish!—Pah!"

"Are Miles's birds safe?"

"Oh yes, with a swordfish's sword and a sawfish's saw making a trophy on the top. Terry is in the library, hunting material for a dissertation upon the ancient unicorn, which ought to conclude with the battle royal witnessed by Alice in Wonderland. The stuffed department is numerous but in a bad way as to hair, and chiefly consists of everybody's grandmother's old parrots and squirrels and white rats. Then, every boy, who ever had a fit of birds' eggs or butterflies, has sent in a collection, chiefly minus the lower wings, and with volunteer specimens of moth; but luckily some give leave to do what they please with them, so the magician is making composition animals with the debris."

"Not really!"

"I made a feeble attempt with an admiral's wings and an orange tip, but I was scouted. About four dilapidated ones make up a proper specimen, and I can't think how it is all to be done in the time; but really something fit to be seen is emerging. Terry is sorting the coins, a pretty job, I should say; but felicity to him. But oh! the industrial articles! There are all the regalia, carved out of cherry-stones, and a patchwork quilt of 5000 bits of silk each no bigger than a shilling. And a calculation of the middle verse in the Bible, and the longest verse, and the shortest verse, and the like edifying Scriptural researches, all copied out like flies' legs, in writing no one can see but Julius with his spectacles off, and set in a brooch as big as the top of a thimble, all done by a one-legged sergeant of marines. So that the line might not be out done, I offered my sergeant-major's banner-screen, but I am sorry to say they declined it, which made me jealous."

"Are there any drawings of the Reynolds' boy?"

"Yes, Lenore Vivian brought them down, and very good they are. Every one says he has the making of a genius, but he does not look as if it agreed with him; he is grown tall, and thin, and white, and I should not wonder if those good-for-nothing servants bullied him."

"Did you see anything of Eleonora?"

"Nothing so impossible. I meet her every day, but she is always beset with the Strangeways, and I think she avoids me."

"I can hardly think so."

"I don't like it! That man is always hanging about Sirenwood, and Lenore never stirs an inch without one of those girls. I wish Frank could see for himself, poor fellow."

"He does hope to run down next week. I have just heard from him in high spirits. One of his seniors has come into some property, another is out of health and retires, so there is some promotion in view."

"I wish it would make haste then. I don't like the look of things."

"I can hardly disbelieve in the dear girl herself; yet I do feel as if it were against nature for it to succeed. Did you hear anything of Mrs. Bowater to-day?"

"Yes, she is much better, and Edith is coming to go into the gallery with me on Tuesday when they inaugurate the Rat-house. Oh! did you hear of the debate about it? You know there's to be a procession— all the Volunteers, and all the Odd Fellows, and all the Good Templars, and all the school-children of all denominations—whatever can walk behind a flag. Our choir boys grew emulous, and asked Herbert to ask the Rector to let them have our lovely banner with the lilies on it; but he declined, though there's no choice but to give the holiday that will be taken."

"Was that the debate?"

"Oh no! that was among the higher powers—where the procession should start from. The precedent was an opening that began with going to church, and having a sermon from the Bishop; but then there's no church, and after that spur the Bishop gave them they can't ask him without one; besides, the mayor dissents, and so do a good many more of them. So they are to meet at the Market Cross, and Mr. Fuller, in the famous black gown, supported by Mr. Driver, is to head them. I'm not sure that Julius and Herbert were not in the programme, but Mr. Truelove spoke up, and declared that Mr. Flynn the Wesleyan Methodist, and Mr. Howler the Primitive Methodist, and Mr. Riffell the Baptist, had quite as good a right to walk in the foreground and to hold forth, and Mr. Moy supported him."

"Popularity hunting against Raymond."

"Precisely. But Howler, Flynn, and Co. were too much for Mr. Fuller, so he seceded, and the religious ceremonies are now to be confined to his saying grace at the dinner. Raymond thinks it as well, for the inaugural speech would only have been solemn mockery; but Julius thinks it a sad beginning for the place to have no blessing because of our unhappy divisions. Isn't that like Julius?"

"Exactly, though I see it more from Raymond's point of view. So you are going to the dinner?"

"Oh yes. Happily my Rector has nothing to say against that, and I am sure he owes me something for keeping me out of the bazaar. In fact, having avoided the trouble, I couldn't take the pleasure! and he must set that against the races."

"My dear, though I am not set against races like Julius, I think, considering his strong feelings on the subject—"

"My dear Mrs. Poynsett, it would be very bad for Julius to give in to his fancies. The next thing would be to set baby up in a little hood and veil like a nun!"

Rosamond's winsome nonsense could not but gain a smile. No doubt she was a pleasant daughter-in-law, though, for substantial care, Anne was the strength and reliance. Even Anne was much engrossed by preparations for the bazaar. It had been a great perplexity to her that the one thing she thought not worldly should be condemned by Julius, and he had not tried to prevent her from assisting Cecil, thinking, as he had told Eleonora, that the question of right and wrong was not so trenchant as to divide households.

The banquet and inauguration went off fairly well. There was nothing in it worth recording, except that Rosamond pronounced that Raymond only wanted a particle of Irish fluency to be a perfect speaker; but every one was observing how ill and depressed he looked. Even Cecil began to see it herself, and to ask Lady Tyrrell with some anxiety whether she thought him altered.

"Men always look worn after a Session," said Lady Tyrrell.

"If this really makes him unhappy!"

"My dear Cecil, that's the very proof of the necessity. If it makes him unhappy to go five miles away with his wife, it ought not. You should wean him from such dependence."

Cecil had tears in her eyes as she said, "I don't know! When I hear him sighing in his sleep, I long to give it up and tell him I will try to be happy here."

"My dear child, don't be weak. If you give way now, you will rue it all your life."

"If I could have taken to his mother, I think he would have cared more for me."

"No. The moment her jealousy was excited she would have resumed him, and you would have been the more shut out in the cold. A little firmness now, and the fresh start is before you."

Cecil sighed, feeling that she was paying a heavy price for that fresh start, but her hands were too full for much thought. Guests came to dinner, Mrs. Poynsett kept more to her own room, and Raymond exerted himself to talk, so that the blank of the evenings was less apparent. The days were spent at the town-hall, where the stalls were raised early enough for all the ladies, their maids and footmen, to buzz about them all day, decking them out.

Mrs. Duncombe was as usual the guiding spirit, contriving all with a cleverness that made the deficiencies of her household the more remarkable. Conny and Bee Strangeways were the best workers, having plenty of experience and resource, and being ready to do anything, however hard, dusty, or disagreeable; and to drudge contentedly, with plenty of chatter indeed, but quite as freely to a female as to a male companion; whereas Miss Moy had a knot of men constantly about her, and made a noise which was a sore trial to Cecil's heavy spirit all the first day, exclusive of the offence to her native fastidiousness. She even called upon Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Duncombe to hold a council whether all gentlemen should not be excluded the next day, as spoiling the ladies' work, and of no use themselves; but there were one or two who really did toil, and so well that they could not be dispensed with, and Mrs. Duncombe added that it would not do to give offence.

There was a harassed look about Mrs. Duncombe herself, for much depended on the success of her husband's filly, Dark Hag. The Captain had hitherto been cautious, and had secured himself against heavy loss, so as to make the turf a tolerable speculation, on but the wonderful perfections of this animal had led him to stake much more on her than had been his wont; and though his wife was assured of being a rich woman in another week, she was not sorry for the multiplicity of occupations which hindered her mind from dwelling too much on the chances.

"How calm you look,—how I envy you!" she said, as she came to borrow some tape of Eleonora Vivian, who was fastening the pendent articles to the drapery of her sister's stall. Eleonora gave a constrained smile, feeling how little truth there was in her apparent peace, wearied out as she was with the long conflict and constant distrust. She was the more anxious to be with Lady Susan, whose every word she could believe, and she finally promised to leave home with Bee and Conny the day after the ball, and to meet their mother in London. They knew there was no chance for Lorimer, but they took her on her own terms, hoping something perhaps, and at any rate glad to be a comfort to one whom they really loved, while Lady Tyrrell was delighted to promote the visit, seeing that the family did more for Lorimer's cause than he did for himself; and in his own home who could guess the result, especially after certain other manoeuvres of her ladyship had taken effect?

Lady Tyrrell did not know, nor indeed did Conny or Bee, that, though they would meet their mother in London, she would not at once go into Yorkshire with them, but would send them to their uncle's, while she repaired to the retreat at St. Faith's. The harass of these last few weeks, especially the endeavour to make her go to the races, had removed all scruples from Lenore's mind as to leaving her home in ignorance of her intentions. To her mind, the circumstances of her brother's death had made a race-course no place for any of the family, especially that of Backsworth; gout coming opportunely to disable her father in London, and one or two other little accidents, had prevented the matter from coming to an issue while she had been in London, and the avowal of her intention to keep away had filled her father with passion at her for her absurd scruples and pretences at being better than other people. It had been Lady Tyrrell who pacified him with assurances that she would soon do better; no one wished to force her conscience, and Lenore, always on the watch, began to wonder whether her sister had any reason for wishing to keep her away, and longed the more for the house of truth and peace.

So came on the bazaar day, which Mrs. Poynsett spent in solitude, except for visits from the Rectory, and one from Joanna Bowater, who looked in while Julius was sitting with her, and amused them by her account of herself as an emissary from home with ten pounds to be got rid of from her father and mother for good neighbourhood's sake. She brought Mrs. Poynsett a beautiful bouquet, for the elderly spinsters, she said, sat on the stairs and kept up a constant supply; and she had also some exquisite Genoese wire ornaments from Cecil's counter, and a set of studs from a tray of polished pebbles sent up from Vivian's favourite lapidary at Rockpier. She had been amused to find the Miss Strangeways hunting over it to match that very simple-looking charm which Lena wore on to her watch, for, as she said, "the attraction must either be the simplicity of it, or the general Lena-worship in which those girls indulge."

"How does that dear child look?"

"Fagged, I think, but so does every one, and it was not easy to keep order, Mrs. Duncombe's counter was such a rendezvous for noisy people, and Miss Moy was perfectly dreadful, running about forcing things on people and refusing change."

"And how is poor Anne enduring?"

"Like Christian in Vanity Fair as long as she did endure, for she retired to the spinsters on the back stairs. I offered to bring her home, and she accepted with delight, but I dropped her in the village to bestow her presents. I was determined to come on here; we go on Monday."

"Shall you be at the Ordination?"

"I trust so. If mamma is pretty well, we shall both go."

"Is Edith going to the ball on Thursday?"

"No, she has given it up. It seems as if we at least ought to recollect our Ember days, though I am ashamed to think we never did till this time last year."

"I confess that I never heard of them," said Mrs. Poynsett. "Don't look shocked, my dear; such things were not taught in my time."

Julius showed her the rubric and the prayer from the book in his pocket, knowing that the one endeared to her by association was one of the Prayer-books made easy by omission of all not needed at the barest Sunday service.

"I see," she said, "it seems quite right. I wish you had told me before you were ordained, my dear."

"You kept your Ember days for me by instinct, dear mother."

"Don't be too sure, Julius. One learns many things when one is laid on one's back."

"Think of Herbert now," whispered Jenny. "I am glad he is sheltered from all this hubbub by being at the palace. I suppose you cannot go to the Cathedral, Julius?"

"No, Bindon will not come back till his brother's holiday is over, nor do I even know where to write to him. Oh! here comes Anne. Now for her impressions."

Anne had brought her little gift for Mrs. Poynsett, and displayed her presents for Glen Fraser, but as to what she had seen it made her shudder and say, "You were right, Julius, I did not know people could go on so! And with all those poor people ill close by. Miss Slater, who sat on the stairs just below me tying up flowers, is much grieved about a lad who was at work there till a fortnight ago, and now is dying of a fever, and harassed by all the rattling of the carriages."

"What! close by! Nothing infectious, I hope?"

"The doctor called it gastric fever, but no one was to hear of it lest there should be an alarm; and it was too late to change the place of the bazaar, though it is so sad to have all that gaiety close at hand."

If these were the impressions of Anne and Joanna early in the day, what were they later, when, in those not sustained by excitement, spirit and energy began to flag? Cecil's counter, with her excellent and expensive wares, and her own dignified propriety, was far less popular than those where the goods were cheaper and the saleswomen less inaccessible, and she was not only disappointed at her failure, but vexed when told that the articles must be raffled for. She could not object, but it seemed an unworthy end for what had cost her so much money and pains to procure, and it was not pleasant to see Mrs. Duncombe and Miss Moy hawking the tickets about, like regular touters, nor the most beautiful things drawn by the most vulgar and tasteless people.

Miss Moy had around her a court of 'horsey' men who were lounging away the day before the races, and who had excited her spirits to a pitch of boisterousness such as dismayed Mrs. Duncombe herself when her attempts at repression were only laughed at.

Somehow, among these adherents, there arose a proposal for the election of a queen of beauty, each gentleman paying half-a-crown for the right of voting. Miss Moy bridled and tried to blush. She was a tall, highly-coloured, flashing-eyed brunette, to whom a triumph would be immense over the refined, statuesque, severe Miss Vivian, and an apple-blossom innocent-looking girl who was also present, and though Lady Tyrrell was incontestably the handsomest person in the room, her age and standing had probably prevented her occurring to the propounders of the scheme.

The design was taking shape when young Strangeways, who was willing to exchange chaff with Gussie Moy, but was gentleman enough to feel the indecorum of the whole thing, moved across to his sister, and muttered, "I say, Con, they are getting up that stupid trick of election of a queen of beauty. Does Lady Tyrrell know it?"

"Wouldn't it be rather fun?"

"Horrid bad form, downright impudence. Mother would squash it at once. Go and warn one of them," signing with his head.

Constance made her way to Eleonora, who had already been perplexed and angered by more than one critical stare, as one and another man loitered past and gazed intrepidly at her. She hurried at once to her sister, who was sitting passively behind her counter as if wearied out, and who would not be stirred to interference. "Never mind, Lenore, it can't be helped. It is all for the cause, and to stop it would be worse taste, fitting on the cap as an acknowledged beauty, and to that I'm not equal."

"It is an insult."

"Never fear, they'll never choose you while you look so forbidding, though perhaps it is rather becoming. They have not the taste."

Eleonora said no more, but went over to the window where Raymond was keeping his guard, with his old-fashioned sense of protection. She had no sooner told him than he started into incredulous indignation, in which he was joined by his wife who only wished him to dash forward to prevent the scheme before he would believe it real.

However, when the ballot-box came his way, and a simpering youth presented him with a card, begging for his opinion, he spoke so as to be heard by all, "No, thank you, sir. I am requested by the ladies present to state that such competition was never contemplated by their committee and would be repugnant to all their sentiments. They beg that the election may be at once dropped and the money returned."

Mr. Charnock Poynsett had a weight that no one resisted. There was a moment's silence, a little murmur, apologetic and remonstrant, but the deed was done.