"To sail! To leave Ryde! Oh, don't you think my uncle would wait a day if I begged him?" cried Bessie in acute dismay.

"No, miss—not if he has given orders and the wind keeps fair. If I was in your place, miss, I should not ask him. And as for the telegram, I should not name it. It would put Mr. Frederick out, and do no good."

Bessie did not name it. Mrs. Betts's speculation proved correct. The yacht sailed away in the afternoon. About the time when Mrs. Carnegie was hurriedly dressing to drive with her husband to Hampton over-night, to ensure not missing the mail-boat to Ryde in the morning, that gay and pleasant town was fast receding from Bessie's view. At dawn the island was out of sight, and when Mr. Carnegie, landing on the pier, sought a boat to carry him and his wife to the Foam, a boatman looked up at him and said, "The Foam, sir? You'll have much ado to overtake her. She's halfway to Hastings by this time. She sailed yesterday soon after five o'clock."

Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie turned away in silence. They had nothing to do but sorrowfully to repair home again. They were more grieved at heart by this disappointment than by any that had preceded it; and all the more did they try to cheer one another.

"Don't fret, Jane: it hurts me to see you fret," said the doctor. "It was a nice thought in Bessie, but the chance was a poor one."

"We have lost her, Thomas; I fear we have lost her," said his wife. "It is unnatural to pass by our very door, so to speak, and not let us see her. But I don't blame her."

"No, no, Bessie is not to blame: Harry Musgrave can tell us better than that. It is Mr. Fairfax—his orders. He forbade her coming, or it might have been managed easily. It is a mistake. He will never win her heart so; and as for ruling her except through her affections, he will have a task. I'm sorry, for the child will not be happy."

When Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie arrived at home they found Bessie's letter that had come by post—an abrupt, warm little letter that comforted them for themselves, but troubled them for her exceedingly. "God bless her, dear child!" said her mother. "I am afraid she will cry sadly, Thomas, and nobody to say a loving word to her or give her a kiss."

"It is a pity; she will have her share of vexations. But she is young and can bear them, with all her life before her. We will answer that pretty letter, that she may have something to encourage her when she gets amongst her grand relations. I suppose it may be a week or ten days first. We have done what we could, Jane, so cheer up, and let it rest."



CHAPTER XVII.

BESSIE'S BRINGING HOME.

When Bessie Fairfax realized that the yacht was sailing away from Ryde not to return, and carrying her quite out of reach of pursuit, her spirits sank to zero. It was a perfect evening, and the light on the water was lovely, but to her it was a most melancholy view—when she could see it for the mist that obscured her vision. All her heart desired was being left farther and farther behind, and attraction there was none in Woldshire to which she was going. She looked at her uncle Frederick, silent, absent, sad; she remembered her grandfather, cold, sarcastic, severe; and every ensuing day she experienced fits of dejection or fits of terror and repulsion, to which even the most healthy young creatures are liable when they find themselves cut adrift from what is dear and familiar. Happily, these fits were intermittent, and at their worst easily diverted by what interested her on the voyage; and she did not encourage the murky humor: she always tried to shake it off and feel brave, and especially she made the effort as the yacht drew towards its haven. It was her nature to struggle against gloom and pain for a clear outlook at her horizon, and Madame Fournier had not failed to supply her with moral precepts for sustenance when cast on the shore of a strange and indifferent society.

The Foam touched at Hastings, at Dover, at semi-Dutch Harwich, and then no more until it put into Scarcliffe Bay. Here Bessie's sea-adventures ended. She went ashore and walked with her uncle on the bridge, gazing about with frank, unsophisticated eyes. The scenery and the weather were beautiful. Mr. Frederick Fairfax had many friends now at Scarcliffe, the favorite sea-resort of the county people. Greetings met him on every hand, and Bessie was taken note of. "My niece Elizabeth." Her history was known, kindness had been bespoken for her, her prospects were anticipated by a prescient few.

At length one acquaintance gave her uncle news: "The squire and your brother are both in the town. I fell in with them at the bank less than an hour ago."

"That is good luck: then we will go into the town and find them." And he moved off with alacrity, as if in sight of the end of an irksome duty. Bessie inquired if her uncle was going forward to Abbotsmead, to which he replied that he was not; he was going across to Norway to make the most of the fine weather while it lasted. He might be at horns in the winter, but his movements were always uncertain.

Mr. Fairfax came upon them suddenly out of the library. "Eh! here you are! We heard that the Foam was in," said he, and shook hands with his eldest son as if he had been parted with only yesterday. Then he spoke a few words to Bessie, rather abruptly, but with a critical observance of her: she had outgrown his recollection, and was more of a woman than he had anticipated. He walked on without any attempt at conversation until they met a third, a tall man with a fair beard, whom her grandfather named as "Your uncle Laurence, Elizabeth." And she had seen all her Woldshire kinsmen. For a miracle, she was able to put as cool a face upon her reception as the others did. A warm welcome would have brought her to tears and smiles, but its quiet formality subdued emotion and set her features like a handsome mask. She was too composed. Pride tinged with resentment simulates dignified composure very well for a little while, but only for a little while when there is a heart behind.

They went walking hither and thither about the steep, windy streets. Bessie fell behind. Now and then there was an encounter with other gentlemen, brief, energetic speech, inquiry and answer, sally and rejoinder, all with one common subject of interest—the Norminster election. Scarcliffe is a fine town, and there was much gay company abroad that afternoon, but Bessie was too miserable to be amused. Her uncle Laurence was the one of the party who was so fortunate as to discover this. He turned round on a sudden recollection of his stranger niece, and surprised a most desolate look on her rosy face. Bessie confessed her feelings by the grateful humility of her reply to his considerate proposal that they should turn in at a confectioner's they were passing and have a cup of tea.

"My father is as full of this election as if he were going to contest the city of Norminster himself," said he. "I hope you have a blue bonnet? You will have to play your part. Beautiful ladies are of great service in these affairs."

Bessie had not a blue bonnet; her bonnet was white chip and pink may—the enemy's colors. She must put it by till the end of the war. Tea and thick bread and butter were supplied to the hungry couple, and about four o'clock Mr. Fairfax called for them and hurried them off to the train. Mr. Laurence went on to Norminster, dropping the squire and Elizabeth at Mitford Junction. Thence they had a drive of four miles through a country of long-backed, rounded hills, ripening cornfields, and meadows green with the rich aftermath, and full of cattle. The sky above was high and clear, the air had a crispness that was exhilarating. The sun set in scarlet splendor, and the reflection of its glory was shed over the low levels of lawn, garden, and copse, which, lying on either side of a shallow, devious river, kept still the name of Abbotsmead that had belonged to them before the great monastery at Kirkham was dissolved.

Mr. Fairfax was in good-humor now, and recovered from his momentary loss of self-possession at the sight of his granddaughter so thoroughly grown up. Also, election business at Norminster was going as he would have it, and bowling smoothly along in the quiet, early evening he had time to think of Elizabeth, sitting bolt upright in the carriage beside him. She had a pretty, pensive air, for which he saw no cause—only the excitement of novelty staved off depression—and in his sarcastic vein, with doubtful compliment, he said, "I did not expect to see you grown so tall, Elizabeth. You look as healthy as a milkmaid."

She was very quick and sensitive of feeling. She understood him perfectly, and replied that she was as healthy as a milkmaid. Then she reverted to her wistful contemplation of the landscape, and tried to think of that and not of herself, which was too pathetic.

This country was not so lovely as the Forest. It had only the beauty of high culture. Human habitations were too wide-scattered, and the trees—there were no very great trees, nor any blue glimpses of the sea. Nevertheless, when the carriage turned into the domain at a pretty rustic lodge, the overarching gloom of an avenue of limes won Bessie's admiration, and a few fir trees standing in single grace near the ruins of the abbey, which they had to pass on their way to the house, she found almost worthy to be compared with the centenarians of the Forest. The western sun was still upon the house itself. The dusk-tiled mansard roof, pierced by two rows of twinkling dormers, and crowned by solid chimney-stacks, bulked vast and shapely against the primrose sky, and the stone-shafted lower windows caught many a fiery reflection in their blackness. Through a porch broad and deep, and furnished with oaken seats, Bessie preceded her grandfather into a lofty and spacious hall, where the foot rang on the bare, polished boards, and ten generations of Fairfaxes, successive dwellers in the grand old house, looked down from the walls. It was not lighted except by the sunset, which filled it with a warm and solemn glow.

Numerous servants appeared, amongst them a plump functionary in blue satinette and a towering cap, who curtseyed to Elizabeth and spoke some words of real welcome: "I'm right glad to see you back, Miss Fairfax; these arms were the first that held you." Bessie's impulse was to fall on the neck of this kindly personage with kisses and tears, but her grandfather's cool tone intervening maintained her reserve:

"Your young mistress will be pleased to go to her room, Macky. Your reminiscences will keep till to-morrow."

Macky, instantly obedient, begged Miss Fairfax to "come this way," and conducted her through a double-leaved door that stood open to the inner hall, carpeted with crimson pile, like the wide shallow stairs that went up to the gallery surrounding the greater hall. On this gallery opened many doors of chambers long silent and deserted.

"The master ordered you the white suite," announced Macky, ushering Elizabeth into the room so called. "It has pretty prospects, and the rooms are not such wildernesses as the other state-apartments. The eldest unmarried lady of the family always occupied the white suite."

A narrow ante-room, a sitting-room, a bed-room, and off it a sleeping-closet for her maid,—this was the private lodging accorded to the new daughter of the house. Bessie gazed about, taking in a general impression of faded, delicate richness, of white and gold and sparse color, in elegant, antiquated taste, like a boudoir in an old Norman chateau that she had visited.

"Mrs. Betts was so thoughtful as to come on by an earlier train to get unpacked and warn us to be prepared," Macky observed in a respectful explanatory tone; and then she went on to offer her good wishes to the young lady she had nursed, in the manner of an old and trusted dependant of the family. "It is fine weather and a fine time of year, and we hope and pray all of us, Miss Fairfax, as this will be a blessed bringing-home for you and our dear master. Most of us was here servants when Mr. Geoffry, your father, went south. A cheerful, pleasant gentleman he was, and your mamma as pleasant a lady. And here is Mrs. Betts to wait on you."

Bessie thanked the old woman, and would have bidden her remain and talk on about her forgotten parents, but Macky with another curtsey retired, and Mrs. Betts, calm and peremptory, proceeded to array her young lady in her prize-day muslin dress, and sent her hastily down stairs under the guidance of a little page who loitered in the gallery. At the foot of the stairs a lean, gray-headed man in black received her, and ushered her into a beautiful octagon-shaped room, all garnished with books and brilliant with light, where her grandfather was waiting to conduct her to dinner. So much ceremony made Bessie feel as if she was acting a part in a play. Since Macky's kind greeting her spirits had risen, and her countenance had cleared marvellously.

Mr. Fairfax was standing opposite the door when she appeared. "Good God! it is Dolly!" he exclaimed, visibly startled. Dolly was his sister Dorothy, long since dead. Not only in face and figure, but in a certain lightness of movement and a buoyant swift way of stepping towards him, Elizabeth recalled her. Perhaps there was something in the simplicity of her dress too: there on the wall was a pretty miniature of her great-aunt in blue and white and golden flowing hair to witness the resemblance. Mr. Fairfax pointed it out to his granddaughter, and then they went to dinner.

It was a very formal ceremonial, and rather tedious to the newly-emancipated school-girl. Jonquil served his master when he was alone, but this evening he was reinforced by a footman in blue and silver, by way of honor to the young lady. Elizabeth faced her grandfather across a round table. A bowl-shaped chandelier holding twelve wax-lights hung from the groined ceiling above the rose-decked epergne, making a bright oasis in the centre of a room gloomy rather from the darkness of its fittings than from the insufficiency of illumination. Under the soft lustre the plate, precious for its antique beauty, the quaint cut glass, and old blue china enriched with gold were displayed to perfection. Bessie had a taste, her eye was gratified, there was repose in all this splendor. But still she felt that odd sensation of acting in a comedy which would be over as soon as the lights were out. Suddenly she recollected the bare board in the Rue St. Jean, the coarse white platters, the hunches of sour bread, the lenten soup, the flavorless bouilli, and sighed—sighed audibly, and when her grandfather asked her why that mournful sound, she told him. Her courage never forsook her long.

"It has done you no harm to sup your share of Spartan broth; hard living is good for us young," was the squire's comment. "You never complained—your dry little letters always confessed to excellent health. When I was at school we fed roughly. The joints were cut into lumps which had all their names, and we were in honor bound not to pick and choose, but to strike with the fork and take what came up."

"Of course," said Bessie, pricked in her pride and conscience lest she should seem to be weakly complaining now—"of course we had treats sometimes. On madame's birthday we had a glass of white wine at dinner, which was roast veal and pancakes. And on our own birthdays we might have galette with sugar, if we liked to give Margotin the money."

"I trust the whole school had galette with sugar on your birthday, Elizabeth?" said her grandfather, quietly amused. He was relieved to find her younger, more child-like in her ideas, than her first appearance gave him hopes of. His manner relaxed, his tone became indulgent. When she smiled with a blush, she was his sweet sister Dolly; when her countenance fell grave again, she was the shy, touchy, uncertain little girl who had gone to Fairfield on their first acquaintance so sorely against her inclination. After Jonquil and his assistant retired, Elizabeth was invited to tell how the time had passed on board the Foam.

"Pleasantly, on the whole," she said. "The weather was so fine that we were on deck from morning till night, and often far on into the night when the moon shone. It was delightful cruising off the Isle of Wight; only I had an immense disappointment there."

"What was that?" Mr. Fairfax asked, though he had a shrewd guess.

"I did not remember how easy it is to send a letter—not being used to write without leave—and I trusted Mr. Wiley, whom I met on Ryde pier going straight back to Beechhurst, with a message to them at home, which he forgot to deliver. And though I did write after, it was too late, for we left Ryde the same day. So I lost the opportunity of seeing my father and mother. It was a pity, because we were so near; and I was all the more sorry because it was my own fault."

Mr. Fairfax was silent for a few minutes after this bold confession. He had interdicted any communication with the Forest, as Mr. Carnegie prevised. He did not, however, consider it necessary to provoke Bessie's ire by telling her that he was responsible for her immense disappointment. He let that pass, and when he spoke again it was to draw her out on the more important subject of what progress Mr. Cecil Burleigh had made in her interest. It was truly vexatious, but as Bessie told her simple tale she was conscious that her color rose and deepened slowly to a burning blush. Why? She vehemently assured herself that she did not care a straw for Mr. Cecil Burleigh, that she disliked him rather than otherwise, yet at the mere sound of his name she blushed. Perhaps it was because she dreaded lest anybody should suspect the mistake her vanity had made before. Her grandfather gave her one acute glance, and was satisfied that this business also went well.

"Mr. Cecil Burleigh left the yacht at Ryde. It was the first day of the regatta when we anchored there, and we landed and saw the town," was all Bessie said in words, but her self-betrayal was eloquent.

"We—what do you mean by we? Did your uncle Frederick land?" asked the squire, not caring in the least to know.

"No—only Mr. Cecil Burleigh and myself. We went to the house of some friends of his where we had lunch; and afterward Mrs. Gardiner and one of the young ladies took me to the Arcade. My uncle never landed at all from the day we left Caen till we arrived at Scarcliffe. Mrs. Betts went into Harwich with me. That is a very quaint old town, but nothing in England looks so battered and decayed as the French cities do."

Mr. Fairfax knew all about Miss Julia Gardiner, and Elizabeth's information that Mr. Cecil Burleigh had called on the family in Ryde caused him to reflect. It was very imprudent to take Elizabeth with him—very imprudent indeed; of course, the squire could not know how little he was to blame. To take her mind off the incident that seriously annoyed himself, he asked what troubles Caen had seen, and Bessie, thankful to discourse of something not confusing, answered him like a book:

"Oh, many. It is very impoverished and dilapidated. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes ruined its trade. Its principal merchants were Huguenots: there are still amongst the best families some of the Reformed religion. Then in the great Revolution it suffered again; the churches were desecrated, and turned to all manner of common uses; some are being restored, but I myself have seen straw hoisted in at a church window, beautiful with flamboyant tracery in the arch, the shafts below being partly broken away."

Mr. Fairfax remarked that France was too prone to violent remedies; then reverting to the subjects uppermost in his thoughts, he said, "Elections and politics cannot have much interest for you yet, Elizabeth, but probably you have heard that Mr. Cecil Burleigh is going to stand for Norminster?"

"Yes; he spoke of it to my uncle Frederick. He is a very liberal Conservative, from what I heard him say. There was a famous contest for Hampton when I was not more than twelve years old: we went to see the members chaired. My father was orange—the Carnegies are almost radicals; they supported Mr. Hiloe—and we wore orange rosettes."

"A most unbecoming color! You must take up with blue now; blue is the only wear for a Fairfax. Most men might wear motley for a sign of their convictions. Let us return to the octagon parlor; it is cheerful with a fire after dinner. At Abbotsmead there are not many evenings when a fire is not acceptable at dusk."

The fire was very acceptable; it was very composing and pleasant. Bright flashes of flame kindled and reddened the fragrant dry pine chips and played about the lightly-piled logs. Mr. Fairfax took his own commodious chair on one side of the hearth, facing the uncurtained windows; a low seat confronted him for Bessie. Both were inclined to be silent, for both were full of thought. The rich color and gilding of the volumes that filled the dwarf bookcases caught the glow, as did innumerable pretty objects besides—water-color drawings on the walls, mirrors that reflected the landscape outside, statuettes in shrines of crimson fluted silk—but the prettiest object by far in this dainty lady's chamber was still Bessie Fairfax, in her white raiment and rippled, shining hair.

This was her grandfather's reflection, and again that impulse to love her that he had felt at Beechhurst long ago began to sway his feelings. It was on the cards that he might become to her a most indulgent, fond old man; but then Elizabeth must be submissive, and do his will in great things if he allowed her to rule in small. Bessie had dropt her mask and showed her bright face, at peace for the moment; but it was shadowed again by the resurrection of all her wrongs when her grandfather said on bidding her good-night, "Perhaps, Elizabeth, the assurance that will tend most to promote your comfort at Abbotsmead, to begin with, is that you have a perfect right to be here."

Her astonishment was too genuine to be hidden. Did her grandfather imagine that she was flattered by her domicile in his grand house? It was exile to her quite as much as the old school at Caen. Nothing had ever occurred to shake her original conviction that she was cruelly used in being separated from her friends in the Forest. They were her family—not these strangers. Bessie dropped him her embarrassed school-girl's curtsey, and said, "Good-night, sir"—not even a Thank you! Mr. Fairfax thought her manner abrupt, but he did not know the depth and tenacity of her resentment, or he would have recognized the blunder he had committed in bringing her into Woldshire with unsatisfied longings after old, familiar scenes.

Bessie was of a thoroughly healthy nature and warmly affectionate. She felt very lonely and unfriended; she wished that her grandfather had said he was glad to have her at Abbotsmead, instead of telling her that she had a right to be there; but she was also very tired, and sleep soon prevailed over both sweet and bitter fancies. Premature resolutions she made none; she had been warned against them by Madame Fournier as mischievous impediments to making the best of life, which is so much less often "what we could wish than what we must even put up with."



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE NEXT MORNING.

Perplexities and distressed feelings notwithstanding, Bessie Fairfax awoke at an early hour perfectly rested and refreshed. In the east the sun was rising in glory. A soft, bluish haze hung about the woods, a thick dew whitened the grass. She rose to look out of the window.

"It is going to be a lovely day," she said, and coiled herself in a cushioned chair to watch the dawn advancing.

All the world was hushed and silent yet. Slowly the light spread over the gardens, over the meadows and cornfields, chasing away the shadows and revealing the hues of shrub and flower. A reach of the river stole into view, and the red roof of an old mill on its banks. Then there was a musical, monotonous, reiterated call not far off which roused the cattle, and brought them wending leisurely towards the milking-shed. The crowing of cocks near and more remote, the chirping of little birds under the eaves, began and increased. A laborer, then another, on their way to work, passed within sight along a field-path leading to the mill; a troop of reapers came by the same road. Then there was the pleasant sound of sharpening a scythe, and Bessie saw a gardener on the lawn stoop to his task.

She returned to her pillow, and slept again until she was awakened by somebody coming to her bedside. It was Mrs. Betts, bearing in her hands one of those elegant china services for a solitary cup of tea which have popularized that indulgence amongst ladies.

"What is it?" Bessie asked, gazing with a puzzled air at the tiny turquoise-blue vessels. "Tea? I am going to get up to breakfast."

"Certainly, miss, I hope so. But it is a custom with many young ladies to have a cup of tea before dressing."

"I will touch my bell if I want anything. No—no tea, thank you," responded Bessie; and the waiting-woman felt herself dismissed. Bessie chose to make and unmake her toilette alone. It was easy to see that her education had not been that of a young lady of quality, for she was quite independent of her maid; but Mrs. Betts was a woman of experience and made allowance for her, convinced that, give her time, she would be helpless and exacting enough.

Mr. Fairfax and his granddaughter met in the inner hall with a polite "Good-morning." Elizabeth looked shyly proud, but sweet as a dewy rose. The door of communication with the great hall was thrown wide open. It was all in cool shade, redolent of fresh air and the perfume of flowers. Jonquil waited to usher them to breakfast, which was laid in the room where they had dined last night.

Mr. Fairfax was never a talker, but he made an effort on behalf of Bessie, with whom it was apparently good manners not to speak until she was spoken to. "What will you do, Elizabeth, by way of making acquaintance with your home? Will you have Macky with her legends of family history and go over the house, or will you take a turn outside with me and visit the stables?"

Bessie knew which it was her duty to prefer, and fortunately her duty tallied with her inclination; her countenance beamed, and she said, "I will go out with you, if you please."

"You ride, I know. There is a nice little filly breaking in for you: you must name her, as she is to be yours."

"May I call her Janey?"

"Janey! Was that the name of Mr. Carnegie's little mare?"

"No; she was Miss Hoyden. Janey was the name of my first friend at school. She went away soon, and I have never heard of her since. But I shall: I often think of her."

"You have a constant memory, Elizabeth—not the best memory for your happiness. What are you eating? Only bread and butter. Will you have no sardines, bacon, eggs, honey? Nothing! A very abstemious young lady! You have done with school, and may wean yourself from school-fare."

Breakfast over, Mrs. Betts brought her young lady's leghorn hat and a pair of new Limerick gauntlet-gloves—nice enough for Sunday in Bessie's modest opinion, but as they were presented for common wear she put them on and said nothing. Mr. Fairfax conducted his granddaughter to his private room, which had a lobby and porch into the garden, and twenty paces along the wall a door into the stable-yard. The groom who had the nice little filly in charge to train was just bringing her out of her stable.

"There is your Janey, Elizabeth," said her grandfather.

"Oh, what a darling!" cried Bessie in a voice that pleased him, as the pretty creature began to dance and prance and sidle and show off her restive caprices, making the groom's mounting her for some minutes impracticable.

"It is only her play, miss—she ain't no vice at all," the man said, pleading her excuses. "She'll be as dossil as dossil can be when I've give her a gallop. But this is her of a morning—so fresh there's no holding her."

Another groom had come to aid, and at length the first was seated firm in the saddle, with a flowing skirt to mimic the lady that Janey was to carry. And with a good deal of manoeuvring they got safe out of the yard.

"You would like to follow and see? Come, then," said the squire, and led Bessie by a short cut across the gardens to the park. Janey was flying like the wind over the level turf, but she was well under guidance, and when her rider brought her round to the spot where Mr. Fairfax and the young lady stood to watch, she quite bore out his encomium on her docility. She allowed Bessie to stroke her neck, and even took from her hand an apple which the groom produced from a private store of encouragement and reward in his pocket.

"It will be well to give her a good breathing before Miss Fairfax mounts her, Ranby," said his master, walking round her approvingly. Then to Bessie he said, "Do you know enough of horses not to count rashness courage, Elizabeth?"

"I am ready to take your word or Ranby's for what is venturesome," was Bessie's moderate reply. "My father taught me to ride as soon as I could sit, so that I have no fear. But I am out of practice, for I have never ridden since I went to Caen."

"You must have a new habit: you shall have a heavy one for the winter, and ride to the meet with me occasionally. I suppose you have never done that?"

"Mr. Musgrave once took me to see the hounds throw off. I rode Harry's pony that day. I was staying at Brook for a week."

Mr. Fairfax knew who "Mr. Musgrave" was and who "Harry" was, but Bessie did not recollect that he knew. However, as he asked no explanation of them, she volunteered none, and they returned to the gardens.

The cultivated grounds of Abbotsmead extended round three sides of the house. On the west, where the principal entrance was, an outer semicircle of lime trees, formed by the extension of the avenue, enclosed a belt of evergreens, and in the middle of the drive rose a mound over which spread a magnificent cedar. The great hall was the central portion of the building, lighted by two lofty, square-headed windows on either side of the door; the advanced wings that flanked it had corresponding bays of exquisite proportions, which were the end-windows of the great drawing-room and the old banqueting-room. The former was continued along the south, with one bay very wide and deep, and on either side of it a smaller bay, all preserving their dim glazing after the old Venetian pattern. Beyond the drawing-room was the modern adaptation of the wing which contained the octagon parlor and dining-room: from the outside the harmony of construction was not disturbed. The library adjoined the banqueting-room on the north, and overlooked a fine expanse where the naturalization of American trees and shrubs had been the hobby of the Fairfaxes for more than one generation. The flower-garden was formed in terraces on the south, and was a mixture of Italian and old English taste. The walls were a mingled tapestry of roses, jessamine, sweet clematis, and all climbing plants hardy enough to bear the rigors of the northern winter. Trimmed in though ever so closely in the fall of the year, in the summer it bushed and blossomed out into a wantonly luxuriant, delicious variety of color and fragrance. If here and there a bit of gray stone showed through the mass, it seemed only to enhance the loveliness of the leaf and flower-work.

Bessie Fairfax stood to admire its glowing intricacy, and with a remarkable effort of candor exclaimed, "I think this is as pretty as anything in the Forest—as pretty as Fairfield or the manor-house at Brook;" which amused her grandfather, for the south front of the old mansion-house of Abbotsmead was one of the most grandly picturesque specimens of domestic architecture to be found in the kingdom.

In such perambulations time slips away fast. The squire looked at his watch. It was eleven o'clock; at half-past he was due at a magistrate's meeting two miles off; he must leave Bessie to amuse herself until luncheon at two. Bessie was contented to be left. She replied that she would now go indoors and write to her mother. Her grandfather paused an instant on her answer, then nodded acquiescence and went away in haste. Was he disappointed that she said nothing spontaneous? Bessie did not give that a thought, but she said in her letter, "I do believe that my grandfather wishes me to be happy here"—a possibility which had not struck her until she took a pen in her hand, and set about reflecting what news she had to communicate to her dear friends at Beechhurst. This brilliant era of her vicissitudes was undoubtedly begun with a little aversion.

In the absence of her young lady, Mrs. Betts had unpacked and carefully disposed of Bessie's limited possessions.

"Your wardrobe will not give me much trouble, miss," said the waiting-woman, with sly, good-humored allusion to the extent of it.

"No," answered Bessie, misunderstanding her in perfect simplicity. "You will find all in order. At school we mended our clothes and darned our stockings punctually every week."

"Did you really do this beautiful darning, miss? It is the finest darning I ever met with—not to say it was lace." Mrs. Betts spoke more seriously, as she held up to view a pair of filmy Lille thread stockings which had sustained considerable dilapidation and repair.

"Yes. They were not worth the trouble. Mademoiselle Adelaide made us wear Lille thread on dancing-days that we might never want stockings to mend. She had a passion for darning. She taught us to graft also: you will find one pair of black silk grafted toe and heel. I have thought them much too precious ever to wear since. I keep them for a curiosity."

On the tables in Bessie's sitting-room were set out her humble appliances for work, for writing—an enamelled white box with cut-steel ornaments, much scratched; a capacious oval basket with a quilted red silk cover, much faded; a limp Russia-leather blotting-book wrapped in silver paper (Harry Musgrave had presented it to Bessie on her going into exile, and she had cherished it too dearly to expose it to the risk of blots at school). "I think," said she, "I shall begin to use it now."

She released it from its envelope, smelt it, and laid it down comfortably in front of the Sevres china inkstand. All the permanent furniture of the writing-table was of Sevres china. Bessie thought it grotesque, and had no notion of the value of it.

"The big basket may be put aside?" suggested Mrs. Betts, and her young lady did not gainsay her. But when the shabby little white enamelled box was threatened, she commanded that that should be left—she had had it so long she could not bear to part with it. It had been the joint-gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie on her twelfth birthday.

Released, at length, from Mrs. Betts's respectful, observant presence, Bessie began to look about her and consider her new habitation. A sense of exaltation and a sense of bondage possessed her. These pretty, quaint rooms were hers, then? It was not a day-dream—it was real. She was at Abbotsmead—at Kirkham. Her true home-nest under the eaves at Beechhurst was hundreds of miles away: farther still was the melancholy garden in the Rue St. Jean.

Opposite the parlor window was the fireplace, the lofty mantelshelf being surmounted by a circular mirror, so inclined as to reflect the landscape outside. Upon the panelled walls hung numerous specimens of the elegant industry of Bessie's predecessors—groups of flowers embroidered on tarnished white satin; shepherds and shepherdesses with shell-pink painted faces and raiment of needlework in many colors; pallid sketches of scenery; crayon portraits of youths and maidens of past generations, none younger than fifty years ago. There was a bookcase of white wood ruled with gold lines, like the spindly chairs and tables, and here Bessie could study, if she pleased, the literary tastes of ancient ladies, matrons and virgins, long since departed this life in the odor of gentility and sanctity. The volumes were in bindings rich and solid, and the purchase or presentation of each had probably been an event. Bessie took down here and there one. Those ladies who spent their graceful leisure at embroidery-frames were students of rather stiff books. Locke On the Conduct of the Human Understanding and Paley's Evidences of the Christian Religion Bessie took down and promptly restored; also the Sermons of Dr. Barrow and the Essays of Dr. Goldsmith. The Letters of Mrs. Katherine Talbot and Mrs. Elizabeth Carter engaged her only a few minutes, and the novels of Miss Edgeworth not much longer. The most modern volumes in the collection were inscribed with the name of "Dorothy Fairfax," who reigned in the days of Byron and Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley, and had through them (from the contents of three white vellum-covered volumes of extracts in her autograph) learnt to love the elder poets whose works in quarto populated the library. To Bessie these volumes became a treasure out of which she filled her mind with songs and ballads, lays and lyrics. The third volume had a few blank pages at the end, and these were the last lines in it:

"Absence, hear thou my protestation Against thy strength, Distance and length; Do what thou canst for alteration: For hearts of truest mettle Absence doth join, and Time doth settle."

Twice over Bessie read this, then to herself repeated it aloud—all with thoughts of her friends in the Forest.

The next minute her fortitude gave way, tears rushed to her eyes, Madame Fournier's precepts vanished out of remembrance, and she cried like a child wanting its mother. In which unhappy condition Mrs. Betts discovered her, sitting upon the floor, when the little page came flying to announce luncheon and visitors. It was two o'clock already.



CHAPTER XIX.

NEIGHBORS TO ABBOTSMEAD.

Some recent duties of Mrs. Betts's service had given her, on occasion, an authoritative manner, and she was impelled to use it when she witnessed the forlornness of her young lady. "I am surprised that you should give way, miss," said she. "In the middle of the day, too, when callers are always liable, and your dear, good grandpapa expects a smiling face! To make your eyes as red as a ferret—"

"Indeed, they are not!" cried Bessie, and rose and ran to the looking-glass.

Mrs. Betts smiled at the effect of her tactics, and persevered: "Let me see, miss: because if it is plain you have been fretting, you had better make an excuse and stop up stairs. But the master will be vexed." Bessie turned and submitted her countenance to inspection. "There was never a complexion yet that was improved by fretting," was the waiting-woman's severe insinuation. "You must wait five minutes, and let the air from the window blow on you. Really, miss, you are too old to cry."

Bessie offered no rejoinder; she was ashamed. The imperative necessity of controlling the tender emotions had been sternly inculcated by Madame Fournier. "Now shall I do?" she humbly asked, feeling the temperature of her cheeks with her cool hands.

Mrs. Betts judiciously hesitated, then, speaking in a milder voice, said, "Yes—perhaps it would not be noticed. But tears was the very mischief for eyes—that Miss Fairfax might take her word for. And it was old Lady Angleby and her niece, one of the Miss Burleighs, who were down stairs."

Bessie blushed consciously, appealed to the looking-glass again, adjusted her mind to her duty, and descended to the octagon parlor. The rose was no worse for the shower. Mr. Fairfax was there, standing with his back to the fireplace, and lending his ears to an argument that was being slowly enunciated by the noble matron who filled his chair. A younger lady, yet not very young, who was seated languidly with her back to the light, acknowledged Bessie's entrance with a smile that invited her approach. "I think," she said, "you know my brother Cecil?" and so they were introduced.

For several minutes yet Lady Angleby's eloquence oozed on (her theme was female emancipation), the squire listening with an inscrutable countenance. "Now, I hope you feel convinced," was her triumphant conclusion. Mr. Fairfax did not say whether he was convinced or not. He seemed to observe that Elizabeth had come in, and begged to present his granddaughter to her ladyship. Elizabeth made her pretty curtsey, and was received with condescension, and felt, on a sudden, a most unmannerly inclination to laugh, which she dissembled under a girlish animation and alacrity in talk. The squire was pleased that she manifested none of the stupid shyness of new young-ladyhood, though in the presence of one of the most formidable of county magnates. Elizabeth did not know that Lady Angleby was formidable, but she saw that she was immense, and her sense of humor was stirred by the instant perception that her self-consequence was as enormous as her bulk. But Miss Burleigh experienced a thrill of alarm. The possibility of being made fun of by a little simple girl had never suggested itself to the mind of her august relative, but there was always the risk that her native shrewdness might wake up some day from the long torpor induced by the homage paid to her rank, and discover the humiliating fact that she was not always imposing. By good luck for Miss Fairfax's favor with her, Pascal's maxim recurred to her memory—that though it is not necessary to respect grand people it is necessary to bow to them—and her temptation to be merry at Lady Angleby's expense was instantly controlled. Miss Burleigh could not but make a note of her sarcastic humor as a decidedly objectionable, and even dangerous, trait in the young lady's character. That she dissembled it so admirably was, however, to her credit. After his first movement of satisfaction the squire was himself perplexed. Elizabeth's spirits were lively and capricious, she was joyous-tempered, but she would not dare to quiz; he must be mistaken. In fact, she had not yet acquired the suppressed manner and deferential tone to her betters which are the perpetuation of that ancient rule of etiquette by which inferiors are guarded against affecting to be equal in talk with the mighty. Mr. Fairfax proposed rather abruptly to go in to luncheon. Jonquil had announced it five minutes ago.

"She is beautiful! beautiful! I am charmed. We shall have her with us—a beautiful young woman would popularize our cause beyond anything. But how would Cecil approve of that?" whispered Lady Angleby as she toiled into the adjoining room with the help of her host's arm.

"Mr. Cecil Burleigh is wise and prudent. He will know how to temporize with the vagaries of his womankind," said the squire. But he was highly gratified by the complimentary appreciation of his granddaughter.

"Vagaries, indeed! The surest signs of sound and healthy progress that have shown themselves in this generation."

Lady Angleby mounted her hobby. She was that queer modern development, a democrat skin-deep, born and bred in feudal state, clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, and devoted colloquially to the regeneration of the middle classes. The lower classes might now be trusted to take care of themselves (with the help of the government and the philanthropists), but such large discovery was being made of frivolity, ignorance, and helplessness amongst the young women of the great intermediate body of the people that Lady Angleby and a few select friends had determined, looking for the blessing of Providence on their endeavors, to take them under their patronage.

"It is," she said, "a most hopeful thing to see the discontent that is stirring amongst young women in this age, because an essential preliminary to their improvement is the conviction that they have the capacity for a freer, nobler life than that to which they are bound by obsolete domestic traditions. Let us put within the reach of every young girl an education that shall really develop her character and her faculties. Why should the education of girls be arrested at eighteen, and the apprenticeship of their brothers be continued to one-and-twenty?" This query was launched into the air, but Lady Angleby's prominent blue eyes seemed to appeal to Bessie, who was visibly dismayed at the personal nature of the suggestion.

Mr. Fairfax smiled and bade her speak, and then laughing, she said, "Because at eighteen girls tire of grammar and dictionaries and precepts for the conduct of life. We are women, and want to try life itself."

"And what do you know to fit you for life?" said Lady Angleby firmly.

"Nothing, except by instinct and precept."

"Exactly so. And where is your experience? You have none. Girls plunge into life at eighteen destitute of experience—weak, foolish, ignorant of men and themselves. No wonder the world is encumbered with so many helpless poor creatures as it is."

"I should not like to live with only girls till one-and-twenty. What experience could we teach each other?" said Bessie, rather at sea. A notion flashed across her that Lady Angleby might be talking nonsense, but as her grandfather seemed to listen with deference, she could not be sure.

"Girls ought to be trained in logic, geometry, and physical science to harden their mental fibre; and how can they be so trained if their education is to cease at eighteen?" Then with a modest tribute to her own undeveloped capacities, the great lady cried, "Oh, what I might have done if I had enjoyed the advantages I claim for others!"

"You don't know. You have never yet been thrown on your own resources," said Bessie with an air of infinite suggestion.

Lady Angleby stared in cold astonishment, but Bessie preserved her gay self-possession. Lady Angleby's cold stare was to most persons utterly confusing. Miss Burleigh, an inattentive listener (perhaps because her state of being was always that of a passive listener), gently observed that she had no idea what any of them would do if they were thrown on their own resources.

"No idea is ever expected from you, Mary," said her aunt, and turned her stony regard upon the poor lady, causing her to collapse with a silent shiver. Bessie felt indignant. What was this towering old woman, with her theory of feminine freedom and practice of feminine tyranny? There was a momentary hush, and then Lady Angleby with pompous complacency resumed, addressing the squire:

"Our large scheme cannot be carried into effect without the general concurrence of the classes we propose to benefit, but our pet plan for proving to what women may be raised demands the concurrence of only a few influential persons. I am sanguine that the government will yield to our representations, and make us a grant for the foundation of a college to be devoted to their higher education. We ask for twenty thousand pounds."

"I hope the government will have more wit," Mr. Fairfax exclaimed, his rallying tone taking the sting out of his words. "The private hobbies of you noble ladies must be supported out of your private purses, at the expense of more selfish whims."

"There is nothing so unjust as prejudice, unless it be jealousy," exclaimed Lady Angleby with delicious unreason. "You would keep women in subjection."

Mr. Fairfax laughed, and assented to the proposition. "You clamor for the high education of a few at the cost of the many; is that fair?" he continued. "High education is a luxury for those who can afford it—a rich endowment for the small minority who have the power of mind to acquire it; and no more to be provided for that small minority out of the national exchequer than silk attire for our conspicuous beauties."

"I shall never convert you into an advocate for the elevation of the sex. You sustain the old cry—the inferiority of woman's intellect."

"'The earth giveth much mould whereof earthen vessels are made, but little dust that gold cometh of.' High education exists already for the wealthy, and commercial enterprise will increase the means of it as the demand increases. If you see a grain of gold in the dust of common life, and likely to be lost there, rescue it for the crucible, but most such grains of gold find out the way to refine themselves. As for gilding the earthen pots, I take leave to think that it would be labor wasted—that they are, in fact, more serviceable without ornament, plain, well-baked clay. Help those who are helpless and protect those who are weak as much as you please, but don't vex the strong and capable with idle interference. Leave the middle classes to supply their wants in their own way—they know them best, and have gumption enough—and stick we to the ancient custom of providing for the sick and needy."

"The ancient custom is good, and is not neglected, but the modern fashion is better."

"That I contest. There is more alloy of vanity and busy-bodyism in modern philanthropy than savor of charity."

"We shall never agree," cried Lady Angleby with mock despair. "Miss Fairfax, this is the way with us—your grandfather and I never meet but we fall out."

"You are not much in earnest," said Bessie. Terrible child! she had set down this great lady as a great sham.

"To live in the world and to be absolutely truthful is very difficult, is all but impossible," remarked Miss Burleigh with a mild sententiousness that sounded irrelevant, but came probably in the natural sequence of her unspoken thoughts.

"When you utter maxims like your famous progenitor you should give us his nod too, Mary," said her aunt. Then she suddenly inquired of Mr. Fairfax, "When do you expect Cecil?"

"Next week. He must address the electors at Norminster on Thursday. I hope he will arrive here on Tuesday."

Lady Angleby looked full in Bessie's face, which was instantly overspread by a haughty blush. Miss Burleigh looked anywhere else. And both drew the same conclusion—that the young lady's imagination was all on fire, and that her heart would not be slow to yield and melt in the combustion. The next move was back to the octagon parlor. The young people walked to the open window; the elders had communications to exchange that might or might not concern them, but which they were not invited to hear. They leant on the sill and talked low. Miss Burleigh began the conversation by remarking that Miss Fairfax must find Abbotsmead very strange, being but just escaped from school.

"It is strange, but one grows used to any place very soon," Bessie answered.

"You have no companion, and Mr. Fairfax sets his face against duennas. What shall you do next week?"

"What I am bid," said Bessie laconically. "My grandfather has bespoken for me the good offices of Mrs. Stokes as guide to the choice of a blue bonnet; the paramount duty of my life at present seems to be to conform myself to the political views of Mr. Cecil Burleigh in the color of my ribbons. I have great pleasure in doing so, for blue is my color, and suits me."

Miss Burleigh had a good heart, and let Bessie's little bravado pass. "Are you interested in the coming election? I cannot think of anything else. My brother's career may almost be said to depend on his success."

"Then I hope he will win."

"Your kind good wishes should help him. You will come and stay at Brentwood?"

"Brentwood? what is Brentwood?"

"My aunt's house. It is only two miles out of Norminster. My aunt was so impatient to see you that she refused to wait one day. Cecil will often be with us, for my father's house is at Carisfort—too far off."

"I am at my grandfather's commands. I have not a friend here. I know no one, and have even to find out the ways and manners of my new world. Do you live at Brentwood?"

"Yes. My home is with my aunt. I shall be glad, very glad, to give you any help or direction that you like to ask for. Mrs. Stokes has a charming taste in dress, and is a dear little woman. You could not have a nicer friend; and she is well married, which is always an advantage in a girl's friend. You will like Colonel Stokes too."

In the course of the afternoon Bessie had the opportunity of judging for herself. Colonel Stokes brought his wife to call upon her. Their residence was close by Abbotsmead, at the Abbey Lodge, restored by Mr. Fairfax for their occupation. Colonel Stokes was old enough to be his wife's father, and young enough to be her hero and companion. She was a plump little lady, full of spirits and loving-kindness. Bessie considered her, and decided that she was of her own age, but Mrs. Stokes had two boys at home to contradict that. She looked so girlish still in her sage matronhood because she was happy, gay, contented with her life, because her eyes were blue and limpid as deep lake water, and her cheeks round and fresh as half-blown roses ungathered. Her dress was as dainty as herself, and merited the eulogium that Miss Burleigh had passed upon it.

"You are going to be so kind as to introduce me to a good milliner at Norminster?" Bessie said after a few polite preliminaries.

"Yes—to Miss Jocund, who will be delighted to make your acquaintance. I shall tell her to take pains with you, but there will be no need to tell her that; she always does take pains with girls who promise to do her credit. I am afraid there is not time to send to Paris for the blue bonnet you must wear next Thursday, but she will make you something nice; you may trust her. This wonderful election is the event of the day. We have resolved that Mr. Cecil Burleigh shall head the poll."

"How shall you ensure his triumph? Are you going to canvass for him?"

"No, no, that is out of date. But Lady Angleby threatens that she will leave Brentwood, and never employ a Norminster tradesman again if they are so ungrateful as to refuse their support to her nephew. They are radicals every one."

"And is not she also a radical? She talks of the emancipation of women by keeping them at school till one-and-twenty, of the elevation of the masses, and the mutual improvement of everybody not in the peerage."

"You are making game of her, like my Arthur. No, she is not a radical; that is all her hum. I believe Lord Angleby was something of the sort, but I don't understand much about politics."

"Only for the present occasion we are blue?" said Bessie airily.

"Yes—all blue," echoed Mrs. Stokes. "Sky-blue," and they both laughed.

"You must agree at what hour you will go into Norminster on Monday—the half-past-eleven train is the best," Colonel Stokes said.

"Cannot we go to-morrow?" his wife asked.

"No, it is Saturday, market-day;" and his suggestion was adopted.

When the visit was over, in the pleasantness of the late afternoon, Bessie walked through the gardens and across the park with these neighbors to Abbotsmead. A belt of shrubbery and a sunk fence divided the grounds of the lodge from the park, and there was easy communication by a rustic bridge and a wicket left on the latch. "I hope you will come often to and fro, and that you will seek me whenever you want me. This is the shortest way," Mrs. Stokes said to her. Bessie thanked her, and then walked back to the house, taking her time, and thinking what a long while ago it was since yesterday.

Yesterday! Only yesterday she was on board the Foam that had brought her from France, that had passed by the Forest—no longer ago than yesterday, yet as far off already as a year ago.

Thinking of it, she fell into a melancholy that belonged to her character. She was tired with the incidents of the day. At dinner Mr. Fairfax seemed to miss something that had charmed him the night before. She answered when he spoke, but her gayety was under eclipse. They were both relieved when the evening came to an end. Bessie was glad to escape to solitude, and her grandfather experienced a sense of vague disappointment, but he supposed he must have patience. Even Jonquil observed the difference, and was sorry that this bright young lady who had come into the house should enter so soon into its clouds; he was grieved too that his dear old master, who betrayed an unwonted humility in his desire to please her, should not at once find his reward in her affection. Bessie was not conscious that it would have been any boon to him. She had no rule yet to measure the present by except the past, and her experience of his usage in the past did not invite her tenderness. A reasonable and mild behavior was all she supposed to be required of her. Anything else—whether for better or worse—would be spontaneous. She could not affect either love or dislike, and how far she could dissemble either she had yet to learn.



CHAPTER XX.

PAST AND PRESENT.

The next morning Bessie was left entirely at liberty to amuse herself. Mr. Fairfax had breakfasted alone, and was gone to Norminster before she came down stairs. Jonquil made the communication. Bessie wondered whether it was often so, and whether she would have to make out the greater part of the days for herself. But she said nothing; some feeling that she did not reason about told her that there must be no complaining here, let the days be what they might. She wrote a long letter to Madame Fournier, and then went out of doors, having declined Mrs. Betts's proposed attendance.

"Where is the village?" she asked a boy who was sweeping up fallen leaves from the still dewy lawn. He pointed her the way to go. "And the church and parsonage?" she added.

"They be all together, miss, a piece beyond the lodge."

With an object in view Bessie could feel interested. She was going to see her mother's home, the house where she was herself born; and on the road she began to question whether she had any kinsfolk on her mother's side. Mrs. Carnegie had once told her that she believed not—unless there were descendants of her grandfather Bulmer's only brother in America, whither he had emigrated as a young man; but she had never heard of any. A cousin of some sort would have been most acceptable to Bessie in her dignified isolation. She did not naturally love solitude.

The way across the park by which she had been directed brought her out upon the high-road—a very pleasant road at that spot, with a fir wood climbing a shallow hill opposite, bounded by a low stone fence, all crusted with moss and lichen, age and weather.

For nearly half a mile along the roadside lay an irregular open space of broken ground with fine scattered trees upon it, and close turf where primroses were profuse in spring. An old woman was sitting in the shade knitting and tending a little black cow that cropped the sweet moist grass. Only for the sake of speaking Bessie asked again her way to the village.

"Keep straight on, miss, you can't miss it," said the old woman, and gazed up at her inquisitively.

So Bessie kept straight on until she came to the ivy-covered walls of the lodge; the porch opened upon the road, and Colonel Stokes was standing outside in conversation with another gentleman, who was the vicar of Kirkham, Mr. Forbes. Bessie went on when she had passed them, shyly disconcerted, for Colonel Stokes had come forward with an air of surprise and had asked her if she was lost. Perhaps it was unusual for young ladies to walk alone here? She did not know.

The gentlemen watched her out of sight. "Miss Fairfax, of course," said the vicar. "She walks admirably—I like to see that."

"A handsome girl," said Colonel Stokes. And then they reverted to their interrupted discussion, the approaching election at Norminster. The clergyman was very keen about it, the old Indian officer was almost indifferent.

Meanwhile Bessie reached the church—a very ancient church, spacious and simple, with a square tower and a porch that was called Norman. The graveyard surrounded it. A flagged pathway led from the gate between the grassy mounds to the door, which stood open that the Saturday sun might drive out the damp vapors of the week. She went in and saw whitewashed walls; thick round pillars between the nave and aisles; deep-sunken windows dim with fragmentary pieces of colored glass, and all more or less out of the perpendicular; a worm-eaten oak-screen separating the chancel and a solemn enclosure, erst a chapel, now the Fairfax pew; a loft where the choir sat in front for divine service, with fiddle and bassoon, and the school-children sat behind, all under the eye of the parson and his clerk, who was also the school-master.

In the chancel were several monuments to the memory of defunct pastors. The oldest was very old, and the inscription in Latin on brass; the newest was to Bessie's grandfather—the "Reverend Thomas Bulmer, for forty-six years vicar of this parish." From the dates he had married late, for he had died in a good old age in the same year as his daughter Elizabeth, and only two months before her. In smaller letters below the inscription-in-chief it was recorded that his wife Letitia was buried at Torquay in Cornwall, and that this monument was erected to their pious memory by their only child—"Elizabeth, the wife of the Reverend Geoffry Fairfax, rector of Beechhurst in the county of Hants."

All gone—not one left! Bessie pondered over this epitome of family history, and thought within herself that it was not without cause she felt alone here. With a shiver she returned into the sunshine and proceeded up the public road. The vicarage was a little low house, very humble in its externals, roofed with fluted tiles, and the walls covered to the height of the chamber windows with green latticework and creepers. It stood in a spacious garden and orchard, and had outbuildings at a little distance on the same homely plan. The living was in the gift of Abbotsmead, and the Fairfaxes had not been moved to house their pastor, with his three hundred a year, in a residence fit for a bishop. It was a simple, pleasant, rustic spot. The lower windows were open, so was the door under the porch. Bessie saw that it could not have undergone any material change since the summer days of twenty years ago, when her father, a bright young fellow fresh from college, went to read there of a morning with the learned vicar, and fell in love with his pretty Elizabeth, and wooed and won her.

Bessie, imperfectly informed, exaggerated the resentment with which Mr. Fairfax had visited his offending son. It was never an active resentment, but merely a contemptuous acceptance of his irrevocable act. He said, "Geoffry has married to his taste. His wife is used to a plain way of living; they will be more useful in a country parish living on so, free from the temptations of superfluous means." And he gave the young couple a bare pittance. Time might have brought him relenting, but time does not always reserve us opportunities. And here was Bessie Fairfax considering the sorrows and early deaths of her parents, charging them to her grandfather's account, and confirming herself in her original judgment that he was a hard and cruel man.

The village of Kirkham was a sinuous wide street of homesteads and cottages within gardens, and having a green open border to the road where geese and pigs, cows and children, pastured indiscriminately. It was the old order of things where one man was master. The gardens had, for the most part, a fine show of fragrant flowers, the hedges were neatly trimmed, the fruit trees were ripening abundantly. Of children, fat and ruddy, clean and well clothed, there were many playing about, for their mothers were gone to Norminster market, and there was no school on Saturday. Bessie spoke to nobody, and nobody spoke to her. Some of the children dropt her a curtsey, but the majority only stared at her as a stranger. She felt, somehow, as if she would never be anything else but a stranger here. When she had passed through the village to the end of it, where the "Chequers," the forge, and the wheelwright's shed stood, she came to a wide common. Looking across it, she saw the river, and found her way home by the mill and the harvest-fields.

It would have enhanced Bessie's pleasure, though not her happiness perhaps, if she could have betaken herself to building castles in the Woldshire air, but the moment she began to indulge in reverie her thoughts flew to the Forest. No glamour of pride, enthusiasm, or any sort of delightful hope mistified her imagination as to her real indifference towards Abbotsmead. When she reached the garden she sat down amongst the roses, and gazed at the beautiful old flower-woven walls that she had admired yesterday, and felt like a visitor growing weary of the place. Even while her bodily eyes were upon it, her mind's eye was filled with a vision of the green slopes of the wilderness garden at Brook, and the beeches laving their shadows in the sweet running water.

"I believe I am homesick," she said. "I cannot care for this place. I should have had a better chance of taking to it kindly if my grandfather had let me go home for a little while. Everything is an effort here." And it is to be feared that she gave way again, and fretted in a manner that Madame Fournier would have grieved to see. But there was no help for it; her heart was sore, and tears relieved it.

* * * * *

Mr. Fairfax was at home to dinner. He returned from Norminster jaded and out of spirits. Now, Bessie, though she did not love him (though she felt it a duty to assert and reassert that fact to herself, lest she should forget it), felt oddly pained when she looked into his face and saw that he was dull; to be dull signified to be unhappy in Bessie's vocabulary. But timidity tied her tongue. It was not until Jonquil had left them to themselves that they attempted any conversation. Then Mr. Fairfax remarked, "You have been making a tour of investigation, Elizabeth: you have been into the village?"

Bessie said that she had, and that she had gone into the church. Then all at once an impulse came upon her to ask, "Why did you let my parents go so far away? was it so very wrong in them to marry?"

"No, not wrong at all. It is written, 'A man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife,'" was the baffling reply she got, and it silenced her. And not for that occasion only.

When Bessie retired into the octagon parlor her grandfather stayed behind. He had been to see Mr. John Short that day, and had heard that a new aspect had come over the electioneering sky. The Radicals had received an impetus from some quarter unknown, and were preparing to make such a hard fight for the representation of Norminster that the triumph of the Tory party was seriously threatened. This news had vexed him, but it was not of that he meditated chiefly when he was left alone. It was of Bessie. He had founded certain pleasurable expectations upon her, and he felt that these expectations were losing their bloom. He could not fail to recollect her quietness of last night, when he noticed the languor of her eyes, the dejection of her mouth, and the effort it was to her to speak. The question concerning her parents had aroused the slumbering ache of old remembrance, and had stung him anew with a sense of her condemnation. A feeling akin to remorse visited him as he sat considering, and by degrees realizing, what he had done to her, and was doing; but he had his motive, he had his object in it, and the motive had seemed to justify the means until he came to see her face to face. Contact with her warm, distinct humanity began immediately to work a change in his mind. Absent, he had decided that he could dispose of her as he would. Present, he recognized that she would have a voice, and probably a casting voice, in the disposal of herself. He might sever her from her friends in the Forest, but he would not thereby attach her to friends and kinsfolk in the north. His last wanton act of selfish unkindness, in refusing to let her see her old home in passing, was evidently producing its effect in silent grieving, in resentment and revolt.

All his life long Mr. Fairfax had coveted affection, and had missed the way to win it. No one had ever really loved him except his sister Dorothy—so he believed; and Elizabeth was so like Dorothy in the face, in her air, her voice, her gestures, that his heart went out to her with a yearning that was almost pain. But when he looked at her, she looked at him again like Dorothy alienated—like Dorothy grown strange. It was a very curious revival out of the far past. When he was a young man and Lady Latimer was a girl, there had been a prospect of a double marriage between their families, but the day that destroyed one hope destroyed both, and Dorothy Fairfax died of that grief. Elizabeth, with her tear-worn eyes, was Dorothy's sad self to-night, only the eyes did not seek his friendly. They were gazing at pictures in the fire when he rejoined her, and though Bessie moved and raised her head in courteous recognition of his coming, there was something of avoidance in her manner, as if she shrank from his inspection. Perhaps she did; she had no desire to parade her distresses or to reproach him with them. She meant to be good—only give her time. But she must have time.

There was a book of photographs on the table that Frederick Fairfax and his wife had collected during their wedding-tour on the Continent. It was during the early days of the art, and the pictures were as blurred and faded as their lives had since become. Bessie was turning them over with languid interest, when her grandfather, perceiving how she was employed, said he could show her some foreign views that would please her better than those dim photographs. He unlocked a drawer in the writing-table and produced half a dozen little sketch-books, his own and his sister Dorothy's during their frequent travels together. It seemed that their practice had been to make an annual tour.

While Bessie examined the contents of the sketch-books, her grandfather stood behind her looking over her shoulder, and now and then saying a few words in explanation, though most of the scenes were named and dated. They were water-color drawings—bits of landscape, picturesque buildings, grotesque and quaint figures, odd incidents of foreign life, all touched with tender humor, and evidently by a strong and skilful hand; and flowers, singly or in groups, full of a delicate fancy. In the last volume of the series there were no more flowers; the scenes were of snow-peaks and green hills, of wonderful lake-water, and boats with awnings like the hood of a tilted cart; and the sky was that of Italy.

"Oh, these are lovely, but why are there no more flowers?" said Bessie thoughtlessly.

"Dorothy had given up going out then," said her grandfather in a low, strained voice.

Bessie caught her breath as she turned the next page, and came on a roughly washed-in mound of earth under an old wall where a white cross was set. A sudden mist clouded her sight, and then a tear fell on the paper.

"That is where she was buried—at Bellagio on Lake Como," said Mr. Fairfax, and moved away.

Bessie continued to gaze at the closing page for several minutes without seeing it; then she turned back the leaves preceding, and read them again, as it were, in the sad light of the end. It was half a feint to hide or overcome her emotion, for her imagination had figured to her that last mournful journey. Her grandfather saw how she was affected—saw the trembling of her hand as she paused upon the sketches and the furtive winking away of her tears. Dear Bessie! smiles and tears were so easy to her yet. If she had dared to yield to a natural impulse, she would have shut the melancholy record and have run to comfort him—would have clasped her hands round his arm and laid her cheek against his shoulder, and have said, "Oh, poor grandpapa!" with most genuine pity and sympathy. But he stood upon the hearth with his back to the fire, erect, stiff as a ramrod, with gloom in his eyes and lips compressed, and anything in the way of a caress would probably have amazed more than it would have flattered him. Bessie therefore refrained herself, and for ever so long there was silence in the room, except for the ticking of the clock on the chimney-piece and the occasional dropping of the ashes from the bars. At last she left looking at the sketches and mechanically reverted to the photographs upon which Mr. Fairfax came out of his reverie and spoke again. She was weary, but the evening was now almost over.

"I do not like those sun-pictures. They are not permanent, and a water-color drawing is more pleasing to begin with. You can draw a little, Elizabeth? Have you any sketches about Caen or Bayeux?"

Bessie modestly said that she had, and went to bring them; school-girl fashion, she wished to exhibit her work, and to hear that the money spent on her neglected education had not been all spent in vain. Her grandfather was graciously inclined to commend her productions. He told her that she had a nice touch, and that it was quite worth her while to cultivate her talent. "It will add a great interest to your travels when you have the chance of travelling," he said; "for, like life itself, travelling has many blank spaces that a taste for sketching agreeably fills up. Ten o'clock already? Yes—good-night."

* * * * *

The following morning Mr. Fairfax and Bessie walked to church together. Along the road everybody acknowledged the squire with bow or curtsey, and the little children stood respectfully at gaze as he passed. He returned the civility of all by lifting a forefinger to his hat, though he spoke to none, and Bessie was led to understand that he had the confidence of his people, and that he probably deserved it. For a sign that there was no bitterness in his own feelings, each token of regard was noted by her with satisfaction.

At the lodge Colonel and Mrs. Stokes joined them, and Mrs. Stokes's bright eyes frankly appreciated the elegant simplicity of Bessie's attire, her chip bonnet and daisies, her dress of French spun silk, white and violet striped, and perfectly fitting Paris gloves. She nodded meaningly to Bessie, and Bessie smiled back her full comprehension that the survey was satisfactory and pleasing.

Some old customs still prevailed at Kirkham. The humble congregation was settled in church before the squire entered his red-curtained pew, and sat quiet after sermon until the squire went out. Bessie's thoughts roved often during the service. Mr. Forbes read apace, and the clerk sang out the responses like an echo with no time to lose. There had been a death in the village during the past week, and the event was now commemorated by a dirge in which the children's shrill treble was supported by the majority of the congregation. The sermon also took up the moral of life and death. It was short and pithy; perhaps it was familiar, and none the less useful for that. Mr. Forbes was not concerned to lead his people into new ways; he believed the old were better. Work and pray, fear God and keep His commandments, love your neighbor, and meddle not with those who are given to change,—these were his cardinal points, from which he brought to bear on their consciences much powerful doctrine and purifying precept. He was a man of high courage and robust faith, who practised what he preached, and bore that cheerful countenance which is a sign of a heart in prosperity.

After service Colonel and Mrs. Stokes walked home with Mr. Fairfax and Bessie, lunched at Abbotsmead, and lounged about the garden afterward. This was an institution. Sunday is long in country houses, and good neighbors help one another to get rid of it. The Stokes's boys came in the afternoon, to Bessie's great joy; they made a noisy playground of the garden, and behaved just like Jack and Tom and Willie Carnegie, kicking up their heels and laughing at nothing.

"There are no more gooseberries," cried their mother, catching the younger of the two, a bluff copy of herself, and offering him to Bessie to kiss. Bessie kissed him heartily. "You are fond of children, I can see," said her new friend.

"I like a houseful! Oh, when have I had a nice kiss at a boy's hard, round cheeks? Not for years! years! I have five little brothers and two sisters at home."

Mrs. Stokes regarded Bessie with a touched surprise, but she asked no questions; she knew her story in a general inaccurate way. The boy gazed in her face with a pretty lovingness, rubbed his nose suddenly against hers, wrestled himself out of her embrace, and ran away. "When you feel as if you want a good kiss, come to my house," said his mother, her blue eyes shining tenderly. "It must be dreadful to miss little children when you have lived with them. I could not bear it. Abbotsmead always looks to me like a great dull splendid prison."

"My grandfather makes it as pleasant to me as he can; I don't repine," said Bessie quickly. "He has given me a beautiful little filly to ride, but she is not quite trained yet; and I shall beg him to let me have a companionable dog; I love a dog."

The church-bells began to ring for afternoon service. Mrs. Stokes shook her head at Bessie's query: nobody ever went, she said, but servants and poor people. Evening service there was none, and Mr. Forbes dined with the squire; that also was an institution. The gentlemen talked of parochial matters, and Bessie, wisely inferring that they could talk more freely in her absence, left them to themselves and retreated to her private parlor, to read a little and dream a great deal of her friends in the Forest.

At dusk there was a loud jangling indoors and out, and Mrs. Betts summoned her young lady down stairs. She met her grandfather and Mr. Forbes issuing from the dining-room, and they passed together into the hall, where the servants of the house stood on parade to receive their pastor and master. They were assembled for prayers. Once a week, after supper, this compliment was paid to the Almighty—a remnant of ancient custom which the squire refused to alter or amend. When Bessie had assisted at this ceremony she had gone through the whole duty of the day, and her reflection on her experience since she came to Abbotsmead was that life as a pageant must be dull—duller than life as a toil.



CHAPTER XXI.

A DISCOVERY.

While Bessie Fairfax was pronouncing the web of her fortunes dull, Fate was spinning some mingled threads to throw into the pattern and give it intricacy and liveliness. The next day Mrs. Stokes chaperoned her to Norminster in quest of that blue bonnet. Mrs. Betts went also, and had a world of shopping to help in on behalf of her young mistress. They drove from the station first to the chief tailor's in High street, the ladies' habitmaker, then to the fashionable hosier, the fashionable haberdasher. By three o'clock Bessie felt herself flagging. What did she want with so many fine clothes? she inquired of Mrs. Stokes with an air of appeal. She was learning that to get up only one character in life as a pageant involves weariness, labor, pains, and money.

"You are going to stay at Brentwood," rejoined her chaperone conclusively.

"And is it so dull at Brentwood that dressing is a resource?" Bessie demurred.

"Wait and see. You will have pleasant occupation enough, I should think. Most girls would call this an immense treat. But if you are really tired we will go to Miss Jocund now. Mrs. Betts can choose ribbons and gloves."

Miss Jocund was a large-featured woman of a grave and wise countenance. She read the newspaper in intervals of business, and was reading it now with her glasses on. Lowering the paper, she recognized a favorite customer in Mrs. Stokes, and laid the news by, but with reluctance. Duty forbade, however, that this lady should be remitted to an assistant.

"I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Jocund, but it is important—it is about a bonnet," cried Mrs. Stokes gayly. "I have brought you Miss Fairfax of Abbotsmead. I am sure you will make her something quite lovely."

Miss Jocund took off her glasses, and gave Bessie a deliberate, discerning look-over. "Very happy, ma'am, indeed. Blue, of course?" she said. Bessie acquiesced. "Any taste, any style?" the milliner further queried.

"Yes. Give me always simplicity and no imitations," was the unhesitating, concise reply.

"Miss Fairfax and I understand one another. Anything more to-day, ladies?" Bessie and Mrs. Stokes considered for a moment, and then said they would not detain Miss Jocund any longer from her newspaper. "Ah, ladies! who can exist altogether on chiffons?" rejoined the milliner, half apologetically. "I do love my Times—I call it my 'gentleman.' I cannot live without my gentleman. Yes, ladies, he does smell of tobacco. That is because he spends a day and night in the bar-parlor of the Shakespeare Tavern before he visits me. So do evil communications corrupt good manners. The door, Miss Lawson. Good-afternoon, ladies."

"You must not judge of Miss Jocund as a milliner and nothing more," her chaperone instructed Bessie when they had left the shop. "She is a lady herself. Her father was Dr. Jocund, the best physician in Norminster when you could find him sober. He died, and left his daughter with only debts for a fortune; she turned milliner, and has paid every sixpence of them."

Where were they to go next? Bessie recollected that her uncle Laurence lived in the vicinity of the minster, and that she had an errand to him from her grandfather. She had undertaken it cheerfully, feeling that it would be a pleasure to see her kind uncle Laurence again. There was a warmth of geniality about him that was absent from her uncle Frederick and her grandfather, and she had decided that if she was to have any friend amongst her kinsfolk, her uncle Laurence would be that friend. She was sure that her father, whom she barely knew, had been most like him.

It was not far to Minster Court, and they directed their steps that way. The streets of Norminster still preserve much of their picturesque antiquity, but they are dull, undeniably dull, except on the occasion of assizes, races, fairs, and the annual assembling of the yeomanry and militia. Elections are no more the saturnalia they used to be in the good old times. Bessie was reminded of Bayeux and its sultry drowsiness as they passed into the green purlieus of the minster and under a low-browed archway into a spacious paved court, where the sun slept on the red-brick backs of the old houses. Mr. Laurence Fairfax's door was in the most remote corner, up a semi-circular flight of steps, guarded on either side by an iron railing.

As the two ladies approached the steps a young countrywoman came down them, saying in a mingled strain of persuasion and threat, "Come, Master Justus: if you don't come along this minute, I'll tell your granma." And a naughty invisible voice made an answer with lisping defiance, "Well, go, Sally, go. Be quick! go before your shoes wear out."

Mrs. Stokes, rounding her pretty eyes and pretty mouth, cried softly, "Oh, what a very rude little boy!" And the very rude little boy appeared in sight, hustled coaxingly behind by the stout respectable housekeeper of Mr. Laurence Fairfax. When he saw the strange ladies he stood stock-still and gazed at them as bold as Hector, and they gazed at him again in mute amazement—a cherub of four years old or thereabouts, with big blue eyes and yellow curls. When he had satisfied himself with gazing, he descended the steps and set off suddenly at a run for the archway. The housekeeper had a flushed, uneasy smile on her face as she recognized Mrs. Stokes—a smile of amused consternation, which the little lady's shocked grimace provoked. Bessie herself laughed in looking at her again, and the housekeeper rallied her composure enough to say, "Oh, the self-will and naughtiness there is in boys, ma'am! But you know it, having boys of your own!"

"Too well, Mrs. Burrage, too well! Is Mr. Laurence Fairfax at home?"

"I am sorry to say that he is not, ma'am. May I make bold to ask if the young lady is Miss Fairfax from Abbotsmead, that was expected?"

Bessie confessed to her identity, and while Mrs. Stokes wrote the name of Miss Fairfax on one of her own visiting-cards (for Bessie was still unprovided), Burrage begged, as an old servant of the house, to offer her best wishes and to inquire after the health of the squire. They were interrupted by that rude little boy, who came running back into the court with Sally in pursuit. He was shouting too at the top of his voice, and making its solemn echoes ring again. Burrage with sudden gravity watched what would ensue. Capture ensued, and a second evasion into the street. Burrage shook her head, as who would say that Sally's riotous charge was far beyond her control—which indubitably he was—and Bessie forgot her errand entirely. Whose was that little boy, the picture of herself? Mrs. Stokes recovered her countenance. They turned to go, and were halfway across the court when the housekeeper called after them in haste: "Ladies, ladies! my master has come in by the garden way, if you will be pleased to return?" and they returned, neither of them by word or look affording to the other any intimation of her profound reflections.

Mr. Laurence Fairfax received his visitors with a frank welcome, and bade Burrage bring them a cup of tea. Mrs. Stokes soon engaged him in easy chat, but Bessie sat by in perplexed rumination, trying to reconcile the existence of that little flaxen-haired boy with her preconceived notions of her bachelor uncle. The view of him had let in a light upon her future that pleased while it confused her. The reason it pleased her she would discern as her thoughts cleared. At this moment she was dazzled by a series of surprises. First, by the sight of that cherub, and then by the order that reigned through this quaint and narrow house where her learned kinsman lived. They had come up a winding stair into a large, light hall, lined with books and peopled by marble sages on pedestals, from which opened two doors—the one into a small red parlor where the philosopher ate, the other into a long room looking to the garden and the minster, furnished with the choicest collections of his travelled youth. The "omnibus" of Canon Fournier used to be all dusty disorder. Bessie's silence and her vagrant eyes misled her uncle into the supposition that his old stones, old canvases, and ponderous quartoes interested her curiosity, and noticing that they settled at length, with an intelligent scrutiny, on some object beyond him, he asked what it was, and moved to see.

Nothing rich, nothing rare or ancient—only the tail and woolly hind-quarters of a toy lamb extruded from the imperfectly closed door of a cupboard below a bookcase. Instantly he jumped up and went to shut the cupboard; but first he must open it to thrust in the lamb, and out it tumbled bodily, and after it a wagon with red wheels and black-spotted horses harnessed thereto. As he awkwardly restored them, Mrs. Stokes never moved a muscle, but Bessie smiled irrepressibly and in her uncle's face as he returned to his seat with a fine confusion blushing thereon. At that moment Burrage came in with the tea. No doubt Mrs. Stokes was equally astonished to see a nursery-cupboard in a philosopher's study, but she could turn her discourse to circumstances with more skill than her unworldly companion, and she resumed the thread of their interrupted chat with perfect composure. Mr. Laurence Fairfax could not, however, take her cue, and he rose with readiness at the first movement of the ladies to go. He began to say to Bessie that she must make his house her home when she wanted to come to Norminster, and that he should always be glad of her company. Bessie thanked him, and as she looked up in his benevolent face there was a pure friendliness in her eyes that he responded to by a warm pressure of her hand. And as he closed the door upon them he dismissed his sympathetic niece with a most kind and kinsman-like nod.

Mrs. Stokes began to laugh when they were clear of the house: "A pretty discovery! Mr. Laurence Fairfax has a little playfellow: suppose he should turn out to be a married man?" cried she under her breath. "So that is the depth of his philosophy! My Arthur will be mightily amused."

"What a darling little naughty boy that was!" whispered Bessie, also laughing. "How I should like to have him at Abbotsmead! What fun it would be!"

"Mind, you don't mention him at Abbotsmead. Mr. Fairfax will be the last to hear of him; the mother must be some unpresentable person. If Mr. Laurence Fairfax is married, it will be so much the worse for you."

"Nothing in the way of little Fairfax boys can be the worse for me," was Bessie's airy, pleasant rejoinder. And she felt exhilarated as by a sudden, sunshiny break in the cloudy monotony of her horizon.

Mr. Laurence Fairfax returned to his study when he had parted with his visitors, and there he found Burrage awaiting him. "Sir," she said with a gravity befitting the occasion, "I must tell you that Master Justus has been seen by those two ladies."

"And Master Justus's pet lamb and cart and horses," quoth her master as seriously. "You had thrown the toys into the cupboard too hastily, or you had not fastened the door, and the lamb's legs stuck out. Miss Fairfax made a note of them."

"Ah, sir, if you would but let Mr. John Short speak before the story gets round to your respected father the wrong way!" pleaded Burrage. Mr. Laurence Fairfax did not answer her. She said no more, but shook her head and went away, leaving him to his reflections, which were more mischievous than the reflections of philosophers are commonly supposed to be.

Bessie returned to Kirkham a changed creature. Her hopefulness had rallied to the front. Her mind was filled with blithe anticipations founded on that dear little naughty boy and his incongruous cupboard of playthings in her uncle's study.

If there was a boy for heir to Abbotsmead, nobody would want her; she might go back to the Forest. Secrets and mysteries always come out in the end. She had sagacity enough to know that she must not speak of what she had seen; if the little boy was openly to be spoken of, he would have been named to her. But she might speculate about him as much as she pleased in the recesses of her fancy. And oh what a comfort was that!

Mr. Fairfax at dinner observed her revived animation, and asked for an account of her doings in Norminster. Then, and not till then, did Bessie recollect his message to her uncle Laurence, and penitently confessed her forgetfulness, unable to confess the occasion of it. "It is of no importance; I took the precaution of writing to him this afternoon," said her grandfather dryly, and Bessie's confusion was doubled. She thought he would never have any confidence in her again. Presently he said, "This is the last evening we shall be alone for some time, Elizabeth. Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his sister Mary, whom you have seen, will arrive to-morrow, and on Thursday you will go with me to Lady Angleby's for a few nights. I trust you will be able to make a friend of Miss Burleigh."

To this long speech Bessie gave her attention and a submissive assent, followed by a rather silly wish: "I wish it was to Lady Latimer's we were going instead of to Lady Angleby's; I don't like Lady Angleby."

"That does not much matter if you preserve the same measure of courtesy toward her as if you did," rejoined her grandfather. "It is unnecessary to announce your preferences and prejudices by word of mouth, and it would be unpardonable to obtrude them by your behavior. It is not of obligation that because she is a grand lady you should esteem her, but it is of obligation that you should curtsey to her; you understand me? Do not let your ironical humor mislead you into forgetting the first principle of good manners—to render to all their due." Mr. Fairfax also had read Pascal.

Bessie's cheeks burned under this severe admonition, but she did not attempt to extenuate her fault, and after a brief silence her grandfather said, to make peace, "It is not impossible that your longing to see Lady Latimer may be gratified. She still comes into Woldshire at intervals, and she will take an interest in Mr. Cecil Burleigh's election." But Bessie felt too much put down to trust herself to speak again, and the rest of the meal passed in a constrained quiet.

This was not the way towards a friendly and affectionate understanding. Nevertheless, Bessie was not so crushed as she would have been but for the vision of that unexplained cherub who had usurped the regions of her imagination. If the time present wearied her, she had gained a wide outlook to a beyond that was bright enough to dream of, to inspire her with hope, and sustain her against oppression. Mr. Fairfax discerned that she felt her bonds more easy—perhaps expecting the time when they would be loosed. His conjectures for a reason why were grounded on the confidential propensities of women, and the probability that Mrs. Stokes, during their long tete-a-tete that day, had divulged the plots for her wooing and wedding. How far wide of the mark these conjectures were he would learn by and by. Meanwhile, as the effect of the unknown magic was to make her gayer, more confident, and more interested in passing events, he was well pleased. His preference was for sweet acquiescence in women, but, for an exception, he liked his granddaughter best when she was least afraid of him.



CHAPTER XXII.

PRELIMINARIES.

Mr. Cecil Burleigh met Bessie Fairfax again with a courteous vivacity and an air of intimate acquaintance. If he was not very glad to see her he affected gladness well, and Bessie's vivid blushes were all the welcome that was necessary to delude the witnesses into a belief that they already understood one another. He was perfectly satisfied himself, and his sister Mary, who worshipped him, thought Bessie sweetly modest and pretty. And her mind was at peace for the results.

There was a dinner-party at Abbotsmead that evening. Colonel and Mrs. Stokes came, and Mr. Forbes and his mother, who lived with him (for he was unmarried), a most agreeable old lady. It was much like other dinner-parties in the country. The guests were all of one mind on politics and the paramount importance of the landed interest, which gave a delightful unanimity to the conversation. The table was round, so that Miss Fairfax did not appear conspicuous as the lady of the house, but she was not for that the less critically observed. Happily, she was unconscious of the ordeal she underwent. She looked lovely in the face, but her dress was not the elaborate dress of the other ladies; it was still her prize-day white muslin, high to the throat and long to the wrists, with a red rose in her belt, and an antique Normandy gold cross for her sole ornament. The cross was a gift from Madame Fournier. Mr. Cecil Burleigh, being seated next to her, was most condescending in his efforts to be entertaining, and Bessie was not quite so uneasy under his affability as she had been on board the yacht. Mrs. Stokes, who had heard much of the Tory candidate, but now met him for the first time, regarded him with awe, impressed by his distinguished air and fine manners. But Bessie was more diffident than impressed. She did not talk much; everybody else was so willing to talk that it was enough for her to look charming. Once or twice her grandfather glanced towards her, wishing to hear her voice—which was a most tunable voice—in reply to her magnificent neighbor, but Bessie sat in beaming, beautiful silence, lending him her ears, and at intervals giving him a monosyllabic reply. She might certainly have done worse. She might have spoken foolishly, or she might have said what she occasionally thought in contradiction of his solemn opinions. And surely this would have been unwise? Her silence was pleasing, and he wished for nothing in her different from what she seemed. He liked her youthfulness, and approved her simplicity as an eminently teachable characteristic; and if she was not able greatly to interest or amuse him, perhaps that was not from any fault or deficiency in herself, but from circumstances over which she had no control. An old love, a true love, unwillingly relinquished, is a powerful rival.

The whole of the following day was at his service to walk and talk with Bessie if he and she pleased, but Bessie invited Miss Burleigh into her private parlor and went into seclusion. That was after breakfast, and Mr. Cecil made a tour of the stables with the squire, and saw Janey take her morning gallop. Then he spoke in praise of Janey's mistress while on board the Foam, and with all the enthusiasm at his command of his own hopes. They had not become expectations yet.