"She's looking at me straight out of his eyes!" he said to himself.

"Ain't you going to sit down?" he said to him at last, forgetting that he had neither shaken hands with him, nor spoken a word of welcome.

Richard moved a chair a little nearer and sat down, wondering what would come next.

"Well, what are you going to do?" asked his father.

"I must first know your wish, sir," he answered.

"Church won't do?"

"No, sir."

"Glad to hear it! You're much too good for the church!—No offence, Mr. Wingfold! The same applies to yourself."

"So my uncle on the stock-exchange used to say!" answered Wingfold, laughing, as he turned to the baronet. "He thought me good enough, I suppose, for a priest of Mammon!"

"I'm glad you're not offended. What do you think of that son of mine?"

"I have long thought well of him."

At the first sound of his voice, Richard had risen, and now approached him, his hand outstretched.

"Mr. Wingfold!" he said joyfully.

"I remember now!" returned sir Wilton; "it was from him I heard of you; and that was what made me seek your acquaintance.—He promises fairly, don't you think?—Shoulders good; head well set on!"

"He looks a powerful man!" said Wingfold. "—We shall be happy to see you, Mr. Lestrange, as soon as you care to come to us."

"That will be to-morrow, I hope, sir," answered Richard.

"Stop, stop!" cried sir Wilton. "We know nothing for certain yet!—By the bye, if your stepmother don't make you particularly welcome, you needn't be surprised, my boy!"

"Certainly not. I could hardly expect her to be pleased, sir!"

"Not pleased? Not pleased at what? Now, now, don't you presume! Don't you take things for granted! How do you know she will have reason to be displeased? I never promised you anything! I never told you what I intended!—Did I ever now?"

"No, sir. You have already done far more than ever you promised. You have given me all any man has a right to from his father. I am ready to go to London at once, and make my own living."

"How?"

"I don't know yet; I should have to choose—thanks to you and my uncle!"

"In the meantime, you must be introduced to your stepmother."

"Then—excuse me, sir Wilton—" interposed the parson, "do you wish me to regard my old friend Richard as your son and heir?"

"As my son, yes; as my heir—that will depend—"

"On his behaviour, I presume!" Wingfold ventured.

"I say nothing of the sort!" replied the baronet testily. "Would you have me doubt whether he will carry himself like a gentleman? The thing depends on my pleasure. There are others besides him."

He rose to ring the bell. Richard started up to forestall his intent.

"Now, Richard," said his father, turning sharp upon him, "don't be officious. Nothing shows want of breeding more than to do a thing for a man in his own house. It is a cursed liberty!"

"I will try to remember, sir," answered Richard.

"Do; we shall get on the better."

He was seized, as by the claw of a crab, with a sharp twinge of the gout. He caught at the back of a chair, hobbled with its help to the table, and so to his seat. Richard restrained himself and stood rigid. The baronet turned a half humorous, half reproachful look on him.

"That's right!" he said. "Never be officious. I wish my father had taught me as I am teaching you!—Ever had the gout, Mr. Wingfold?"

"Never, sir Wilton."

"Then you ought every Sunday to say, 'Thank God that I have no gout!'"

"But if we thanked God for all the ills we don't have, there would be no time to thank him for any of the blessings we do have!"

"What blessings?"

"So many, I don't know where to begin to answer you."

"Ah, yes! you're a clergyman! I forgot. It's your business to thank God. For my part, being a layman, I don't know anything in particular I've got to thank him for."

"If I thought a layman had less to thank God for than a clergyman, I should begin to doubt whether either had anything to thank him for. Why, sir Wilton, I find everything a blessing! I thank God I am a poor man. I thank him for every good book I fall in with. I thank him when a child smiles to me. I thank him when the sun rises or the wind blows on me. Every day I am so happy, or at least so peaceful, or at the worst so hopeful, that my very consciousness is a thanksgiving."

"Do you thank him for your wife, Mr. Wingfold?"

"Every day of my existence."

The baronet stared at him a moment, then turned to his son.

"Richard," he said, "you had better make up your mind to go into the church! You hear Mr. Wingfold! I shouldn't like it myself; I should have to be at my prayers all day!"

"Ah, sir Wilton, it doesn't take time to thank God! It only takes eternity."

Sir Wilton stared. He did not understand.

"Ring the bell, will you!" he said. "The fellow seems to have gone to sleep."

Richard obeyed, and not a word was spoken until the man appeared.

"Wilkins," said his master, "go to my lady, and say I beg the favour of her presence in the library for a moment."

The man went.

"No antipathy to cats, I hope!" he added, turning to Richard.

"None, sir," answered Richard gravely.

"That's good! Then you won't lie taken aback!"

In a few minutes—she seldom made her husband wait—lady Ann sailed into the room, the servant closing the door so deftly behind her, that it seemed without moving to have given passage to an angelic presence.

The two younger men rose.

"Mr. Wingfold you know, my lady!" said her husband.

"I have not the pleasure," answered lady Ann, with a slight motion of the hard bud at the top of her long stalk.

"Ah, I thought you did!—The Reverend Mr. Wingfold, lady Ann!—My wife, Mr. Wingfold!—The other gentleman, lady Ann.—"

He paused. Lady Ann turned her eyes slowly on Richard. Wingfold saw a slight, just perceptible start, and a settling of the jaws.

"The other gentleman," resumed the baronet, "you do not know, but you will soon be the best of friends."

"I beg your pardon, sir Wilton, I do know him!—I hope," she went on, turning to Richard, "you will keep steadily to your work. The sooner the books are finished, the better!"

Richard smiled, but what he was on the point of saying, his father prevented.

"You mistake, my lady! I thought you did not know him!" said the baronet. "That gentleman is my son, and will one day be sir Richard."

"Oh!" returned her ladyship—without a shadow of change in her impassivity, except Wingfold was right in fancying the slightest movement of squint in the eye next him. She held out her hand.

"This is an unexpected—"

For once in her life her lips were truer than her heart: they did not say pleasure.

Richard took her hand respectfully, sad for the woman whose winter had no fuel, and who looked as if she would be cold to all eternity. Lady Ann stared him in the eyes and said,—

"My favourite prayer-book has come to pieces at last: perhaps you would bind it for me?"

"I shall be delighted," answered Richard.

"Thank you," she said, bowed to Wingfold, and left the room.

Sir Wilton sat like an offended turkey-cock, staring after her. "By Jove!" he seemed to say to himself.

"There! that's over!" he cried, coming to himself. "Ring the bell, Richard, and let us have lunch.—Richard, no gentleman could have behaved better! I am proud of you!—It's blood that does it!" he murmured to himself.

As if he had himself compounded both his own blood and his boy's in the still-room of creation, he took all the credit of Richard's savoir faire, as he counted it. He did not know that the same thing made Wingfold happy and Richard a gentleman! Richard had had a higher breeding than was known to sir Wilton. At the court of courts, whence the manners of some other courts would be swept as dust from the floors, the baronet would hardly gain admittance!

Lady Ann went up the stair slowly and perpendicularly, a dull pain at her heart. The cause was not so much that her son was the second son, as that the son of the blacksmith's daughter was—she took care to say at first sight—a finer gentleman than her Arthur. Rank and position, she vaguely reflected, must not look for justice from the jealous heavens! They always sided with the poor! Just see the party-spirit of the Psalms! The rich and noble were hardly dealt with! Nowadays even the church was with the radicals!

The baronet was merry over his luncheon. The servants wondered at first, but before the soup was removed, they wondered no more: the young man at the table, in whom not one of them had recognized the bookbinder, was the lost heir to Mortgrange! He was worth finding, they agreed—one who would hold his own! The house would be merrier now—thank heaven! They liked Mr. Arthur well enough, but here was his master!

The meal was over, and the baronet always slept after lunch.

"You'll stay to dinner, won't you, Mr. Wingfold?" he said, rising. "—Richard, ring the bell. Better send for Mrs. Locke at once, and arrange with her where you will sleep."

"Then I may choose my own room, sir?" rejoined Richard.

"Of course—but better not too near my lady's," answered his father with a grim smile as he hobbled from the room.

When the housekeeper came—

"Mrs. Locke," said Richard, "I want to see the room that used to be the nursery—in the older time, I mean."

"Yes, sir," answered Mrs. Locke pleasantly, and led them up two flights of stairs and along corridor and passage to the room Richard had before occupied. He glanced round it, and said,

"This shall be my room. Will you kindly get it ready for me."

She hesitated. It had certainly not been repapered, as sir Wilton thought, and had said to Mrs. Tuke! To Mrs. Locke it seemed uninhabitable by a gentleman.

"I will send for the painter and paper-hanger at once," she replied, "but it will take more than a week to get ready."

"Pray leave it as it is," he answered. "—You can have the floor swept of course," he added with a smile, seeing her look of dismay. "I will sleep here to-night, and we can settle afterward what is to be done to it.— There used to be a portrait," he went on, "—over the chimney-piece, the portrait of a lady—not well painted, I fancy, but I liked it: what has become of it?"

Then first it began to dawn on Mrs. Locke that the young man who mended the books and the heir to Mortgrange were the same person.

"It fell down one day, and has not been put up agin," she answered.

"Do you know where it is?"

"I will find it, sir."

"Do, if you please. Whose portrait is it?"

"The last lady Lestrange's, sir.—But bless my stupid old head! it's his own mother's picture he's asking for! You'll pardon me, sir! The thing's more bewildering than you'd think!—I'll go and get it at once."

"Thank you. Mr. Wingfold and I will wait till you bring it."

"There ain't anywhere for you to sit, sir!" lamented the old lady. "If I'd only known! I'm sure, sir, I wish you joy!"

"Thank you, Mrs. Locke. We'll sit here on the mattress."

Richard had not forgotten how the eyes of the picture used to draw his, and he had often since wondered whether it could be the portrait of his mother.

In a few minutes Mrs. Locke reappeared, carrying the portrait, which had never been put in a frame, and knotting the cord, Richard hung it again on the old nail. It showed a well-formed face, but was very flat and wooden. The eyes, however, were comparatively well painted; and it seemed to Richard that he could read both sorrow and disappointment in them, with a yearning after something she could not have.

They went out for a ramble in the park, and there Richard told his friend as much as he knew of his story, describing as well as he understood them the changes that had passed upon him in the matter of religion, and making no secret of what he owed to the expostulations and spiritual resistances of Barbara. Wingfold, after listening with profound attention, told him he had passed through an experience in many points like, and at the root the same as his own; adding that, long before he was sure of anything, it had become more than possible for him to keep going on; and that still he was but looking and hoping and waiting for a fuller dawn of what had made his being already blessed.

They consulted whether Wingfold should act on the baronet's careless invitation, and concluded it better he should not stay to dinner. Then, as there was yet time, and it was partly on Wingfold's way, they set out for the smithy.



CHAPTER LIX.

WINGFOLD AND ARTHUR MANSON.

When the first delight of their meeting was abated, Simon sent to let Arthur Manson know that his brother was there. For Arthur had all this time been with Simon, to whom Richard, saving enough from his allowance, had prevented him from being a burden.

He looked much better, and was enchanted to see his brother again, and learn the good news of his recognition by his father. "I'm so glad it's you and not me, Richard!" he said. "It makes me feel quite safe and happy. We shall have nothing now but fair play all round, the rest of our lives! How happy Alice will be!"

"Is Alice still in the old place? I haven't heard of her for some time," said Richard.

"Don't you know?" exclaimed Arthur. "She's been at the parsonage for months and months! Mrs. Wingfold went and fetched her away, to work for her, and be near me. She's as happy now as the day is long. She says if everybody was as good as her master and mistress, there would be no misery left in the world."

"I don't doubt it," answered Richard. "—But I've just parted with Mr. Wingfold, and he didn't say a word about her!"

"When anything has to be done, Mr. Wingfold never forgets it," said Arthur; "but I should just like to hear all the things Mr. Wingfold did and forgot in a month!"

"Arthur's getting on." thought Richard.

But he had to learn how much Wingfold had done for him. First of all he had set himself, by talking to him and lending him books, to find out his bent, or at least something he was capable of. But for months he could not wake him enough to know anything of what was in him: the poor fellow was weary almost to death. At last, however, he got him to observe a little. Then he began to set him certain tasks; and as he was an invalid, the first was what he called "The task of twelve o'clock;"—which was, for a quarter of an hour from every noon during a month, to write down what he then saw going on in the world.

The first day he had nothing to show: he had seen nothing!

"What were the clouds doing?" Mr. Wingfold asked. "What were the horses in the fields doing?—What were the birds you saw doing?—What were the ducks and hens doing?—Put down whatever you see any creature about."

The next evening, he went to him again, and asked him for his paper. Arthur handed him a folded sheet.

"Now," said Mr. Wingfold, "I am not going to look at this for the present. I am going to lay it in one of my drawers, and you must write another for me to-morrow. If you are able, bring it over to me; if not, lay it by, and do not look at it, but write another, and another—one every day, and give them all to me the next time I come, which will be soon. We shall go on that way for a month, and then we shall see something!"

At the end of the month, Mr. Wingfold took all the papers, and fastened them together in their proper order. Then they read them together, and did indeed see something! The growth of Arthur's observation both in extent and quality, also the growth of his faculty for narrating what he saw, were remarkable both to himself and his instructor. The number of things and circumstances he was able to see by the end of the month, compared with the number he had seen in the beginning of it, was wonderful; while the mode of his record had changed from that of a child to that almost of a man.

Mr. Wingfold next, as by that time the weather was quite warm, set him "The task of six o'clock in the evening," when the things that presented themselves to his notice would be very different. After a fortnight, he changed again the hour of his observation, and went on changing it. So that at length the youth who had, twice every day, walked along Cheapside almost without seeing that one face differed from another, knew most of the birds and many of the insects, and could in general tell what they were about, while the domestic animals were his familiar friends. He delighted in the grass and the wild flowers, the sky and the clouds and the stars, and knew, after a real, vital fashion, the world in which he lived. He entered into the life that was going on about him, and so in the house of God became one of the family. He had ten times his former consciousness; his life was ten times the size it was before. As was natural, his health had improved marvellously. There is nothing like interest in life to quicken the vital forces—the secret of which is, that they are left freer to work.

Richard was rejoiced with the change in him, and reckoned of what he might learn from Arthur in the long days before them; while he in turn would tell him many things he would now be prepared to hear. The soul that had seemed rapidly sinking into the joyless dark, was now burning clear as a torch of heaven.



CHAPTER LX.

RICHARD AND HIS FAMILY.

As the dinner-hour drew nigh, Richard went to the drawing-room, scrupulously dressed. Lady Ann gave him the coldest of polite recognitions; Theodora was full of a gladness hard to keep within the bounds which fear of her mother counselled; Victoria was scornful, and as impudent as she dared be in the presence of her father; Miss Malliver was utterly wooden, and behaved as if she had never seen him before; Arthur was polite and superior. Things went pretty well, however. Percy, happily, was at Woolwich, pretending to study engineering: of him Richard had learned too much at Oxford.

Theodora and Richard were at once drawn to each other—he prejudiced in her favour by Barbara, she proud of her new, handsome brother. She was a plain, good-natured, good-tempered girl—with red hair, which only her father and mother disliked, and a modest, freckled face, whose smile was genuine and faith-inspiring. Her mother counted her stupid, accepting the judgment of the varnished governess, who saw wonder or beauty or value in nothing her eyes or hands could not reach. Theodora was indeed one of those who, for lack of true teaching, or from the deliberateness of nature, continue children longer than most, but she was not therefore stupid. The aloe takes seven years to blossom, but when it does, its flower may be thirty feet long. Where there is love, there is intellect: at what period it may show itself, matters little. Richard felt he had in her another sister—one for whom he might do something. He talked freely, as became him at his father's table, and the conversation did not quite flag. If lady Ann said next to nothing, she said nearly as much as usual, and was perfectly civil; Arthur was sullen but not rude; Theodora's joy made her talk as she had never talked before. A morn of romance had dawned upon her commonplace life. Vixen gave herself to her dinner, and but the shadow of a grimace now and then reminded Richard of the old monkey-phiz.

Having the heart of a poet, the brain of a scientist, and the hands of a workman—hands, that is, made for making, Richard talked so vitally that in most families not one but all would have been interested; and indeed Arthur too would have enjoyed listening, but that he was otherwise occupied. That he had to look unconcerned at his own deposition, while regarding as an intruder the man whose place he had so long in a sense usurped, was not his sorest trial: regarding as a prig the man who talked about things worth talking about, he could not help feeling himself a poor creature, an empty sack, beside the son of the low-born woman. But indeed Richard, brought face to face with life, and taught to meet necessity with labour, had had immeasurable advantages over Arthur.

The younger insisted to himself that his brother could not have the feelings of a gentleman; that he must have poverty-stricken ways of looking at things. He could, it was true, find nothing in his manners, carriage, or speech, unlike a gentleman, but the vulgarity must be there, and he watched to find it. For he was not himself a gentleman yet.

When they went to the drawing-room, and Richard had sung a ballad so as almost to make lady Ann drop a scale or two from her fish-eyes, Arthur went out of the room stung with envy, and not ashamed of it. The thing most alien to the true idea of humanity, is the notion that our well-being lies in surpassing our fellows. We have to rise above ourselves, not above our neighbours; to take all the good of them, not from them, and give them all our good in return. That which cannot be freely shared, can never be possessed. Arthur went to his room with a gnawing at his heart. Not merely must he knock under to the foundling, but confess that the foundling could do most things better than he—was out of sight his superior in accomplishment as well as education.—"But let us see how he rides and shoots!" he thought.

Even Vixen, who had been saying to herself all the time of dinner, "Mean fellow! to come like a fox and steal poor Arthur's property!"—even she was cowed a little by his singing, and felt for the moment in the presence of her superior.

Sir Wilton was delighted. Here was a son to represent him!—the son of the woman the county had declined to acknowledge! What was lady Ann's plebeian litter beside this high-bred, modest, self-possessed fellow! He was worthy of his father, by Jove!

He went early to bed, and Richard was not sorry. He too retired early, leaving the rest to talk him over.

How they did it, I do not care to put on record. Theodora said little, for her heart had come awake with a new and lovely sense of gladness and hope.

"If he would but fall in love with Barbara Wylder!" she thought; "—or rather if Barbara would but fall in love with him, for nobody can help falling in love with her, how happy I should be! they are the two I love best in the world!—next to papa and mamma, of course!" she added, being a loyal girl.

The next morning, Richard came upon Arthur shooting at a mark, and both with pistols and rifle beat him thoroughly. But when Arthur began to talk about shooting pheasants, he found in Richard a rooted dislike to killing. This moved Arthur's contempt.

"Keep it dark," he said; "you'll be laughed at if you don't. My father won't like it."

"Why must a man enjoy himself at the expense of joy?" answered Richard. "I pass no judgment upon your sport. I merely say I don't choose to kill birds. What men may think of me for it, is a matter of indifference to me. I think of them much as they think of a Frenchman or an Italian, who shoots larks and blackbirds and thrushes and nightingales: I don't see the great difference!"

They strolled into the stable. There stood Miss Brown, looking over the door of her box. She received Richard with glad recognition.

"How comes Miss Brown here?" he asked. "Where can her mistress be?"

"The mare's at home," answered Arthur. "I bought her." "Oh!" said Richard, and going into the box, lifted her foot and looked at the shoe. Alas, Miss Brown had worn out many shoes since Barbara drove a nail in her hoof! Had there been one of hers there, he would have known it—by a pretty peculiarity in the turn of the point back into the hoof which she called her mark. The mare sniffed about his head in friendly fashion.

"She smells the smithy!" said Arthur to himself.—"Yes; your grandfather's work." he remarked. "I should be sorry to see any other man shoe horse of mine!"

"So should I!" answered Richard. "—I wonder why Miss Wylder sold Miss Brown!" he said, after a pause.

"I am not so curious!" rejoined Arthur. "She sold her, and I bought her."

Neither divined that the animal stood there a sacrifice to Barbara's love of Richard.

Arthur had given up hope of winning Barbara, but the thought that the bookbinder-fellow might now, as he vulgarly phrased it to himself, go in and win, swelled his heart with a yet fiercer jealousy. "I hate him," he said in his heart. Yet Arthur was not a bad fellow as fellows go. He was only a man for himself, believing every man must be for himself, and count the man in his way his enemy. He was just a man who had not begun to stop being a devil.

At breakfast lady Ann was almost attentive to her stepson. As it happened they were left alone at the table. Suddenly she addressed him.

"Richard, I have one request to make of you," she said; "I hope you will grant it me!"

"I will if I can," he answered; "but I must not promise without knowing what it is."

"You do not feel bound to please me, I know! I have the misfortune not to be your mother!"

"I feel bound to please you where I can, and shall be more than glad to do so."

"It is a small thing I am going to ask. I should not have thought of mentioning it, but for the terms you seem upon with Mr. Wingfold."

"I hope to see him within an hour or so."

"I thought as much!—Do you happen to remember a small person who came a good deal about the house when you were at work here?"

"If your ladyship means Miss Wylder, I remember her perfectly."

"It is necessary to let you know, and then I shall leave the matter to your good sense, that Mrs. Wylder, and indeed the girl herself at various times, has behaved to me with such rudeness, that you cannot in ordinary decency have acquaintance with them. I mention it in case Mr. Wingfold should want to take you to see them. They are parishioners of his."

"I am sorry I must disappoint you," said Richard. Lady Ann rose with a grey glitter in her eyes.

"Am I to understand you intend calling on the Wylders?" she said.

"I have imperative reasons for calling upon them this very morning," answered Richard.

"I am sorry you should so immediately show your antagonism!" said lady Ann.

"My obligations to Miss Wylder are such that I must see her the first possible moment."

"Have you asked your father's permission?"

"I have not," answered Richard, and left the room hurriedly.

The next moment he was out of the house: lady Ann might go to his father, and he would gladly avoid the necessity of disobeying him the first morning after his return! He did not know how small was her influence with her husband.

He took the path across the fields, and ran until he was out of sight of Mortgrange.



CHAPTER LXI.

HEART TO HEART.

When he came to the parsonage, which he had to pass on his way to the Hall, he saw Mr. Wingfold through the open window of the drawing-room, and turned to the door. The parson met him on the threshold.

"Welcome!" he said. "How did you get through your dinner?"

"Better than I expected," replied Richard. "But this morning my stepmother began feeling my mouth: she would have me promise not to call on the Wylders. They had been rude to her, she said."

"Come into the drawing-room. A friend of mine is there who will be glad to see you."

The drawing-room of the parsonage was low and dark, with its two windows close together on the same side. At the farther end stood a lady, seemingly occupied with an engraving on the wall. She did not move when they entered. Wingfold led Richard up to her, then turned without a word, and left the room. Before either knew, they were each in the other's arms.

Barbara was sobbing. Richard thought he had dared too much and had frightened her.

"I couldn't help it!" Barbara said pleadingly.

"My life has been a longing for you!" said Richard.

"I have wanted you every day!" said Barbara, and began again to sob, but recovered herself with an effort.

"This will never do!" she cried, laughing through her tears. "I shall go crazy with having you! And I've not seen you yet! Let me go, please. I want to look at you!"

Richard released her. She lifted a blushing, tearful face to his. But there was only joy, no pain in her tears; only delight, no shame in her blushes. One glance at the simple, manly face before her, so full of the trust that induces trust, would have satisfied any true woman that she was as safe in his thoughts as in those of her mother. She gazed at him one long silent moment.

"How splendid you are!" she cried, like a wild schoolgirl. "How good of you to grow like that! I wish I could see you on Miss Brown!—What are you going to do, Richard?"

While she spoke, Richard was pasturing his eyes, the two mouths of his soul, on the heavenly meadow of her face; and she for very necessity went on talking, that she might not cry again.

"Are you going back to the bookbinding?" she said.

"I do not know. Sir Wilton—my father hasn't told me yet what he wants me to do.—Wasn't it good of him to send me to Oxford?"

"You've been at Oxford then all this time?—I suppose he will make an officer of you now!—Not that I care! I am content with whatever contents you!"

"I dare say he will hardly like me to live by my hands!" answered Richard, laughing. "He would count it a degradation! There I shall never be able to think like a gentleman!"

Barbara looked perplexed.

"You don't mean to say he's going to treat you just like one of the rest" she exclaimed.

"I really do not know," answered Richard; "but I think he would hardly enjoy the thought of Sir Richard Lestrange over a bookbinder's shop in Hammersmith or Brentford!"

"Sir Richard! You do not mean—?"

Her face grew white; her eyes fell; her hand trembled on Richard's arm.

"What is troubling you, dearest?" he asked, in his turn perplexed.

"I can't understand it." she answered.

"Is it possible you do not know, Barbara?" he returned. "I thought Mr. Wingfold must have told you!—Sir Wilton says I am his son that was lost. Indeed there is no doubt of it."

"Richard! Richard! believe me I didn't know. Lady Ann told me you were not—"

"How then should I have dared put my arms round you, Barbara?"

"Richard, I care nothing for what the world thinks! I care only for what God thinks."

"Then, Barbara, you would have married me, believing me base born?"

"Oh Richard! you thought it was knowing who you were that made me—! Richard! Richard! I did not think you could have wronged me so! My father sold Miss Brown because I would not marry your brother and be lady Lestrange. If you had not asked me, and I had been sure it was only because of your birth you wouldn't, I should have found some way of letting you know I cared no more for that than God himself does. The god of the world is the devil. He has many names, but he's all the same devil, as Mr. Wingfold says.—I wonder why he never told me!—I'm glad he didn't. If he had, I shouldn't be here now!"

"I am very glad too, Barbara; but it wouldn't have made so much difference: I was only here on my way to you! But suppose it had been as you thought, it was one thing what you would do, and another what I would ask you to do!"

"What I would have done was what you should have believed I would do!"

"You must just pardon me, Barbara: well as I thought I knew you, I did not know you enough!"

"You do now?"

'"I do."

There came a silence.

"How long have you known this about yourself, Richard?" said Barbara.

"More than four years."

"And you never told me!"

"My father wished it kept a secret for a time."

"Did Mr. Wingfold know?"

"Not till yesterday."

"Why didn't he tell me yesterday, then?"

"I think he wouldn't have told you if he had known all the time."

"Why?"

"For the same reason that made him leave us together so suddenly—that you might not be hampered by knowing it—that we might understand each other before you knew. I see it all now! It was just like him!"

"Oh, he is a friend!" cried Barbara. "He knows what one is, and so knows what one is thinking!"

A silent embrace followed, and then Barbara said, "You must come and see my mother!"

"Hadn't you better tell her first?" suggested Richard.

"She knows—knows what you didn't know—what I've been thinking all the time," rejoined Barbara, with a rosy look of confidence into his eyes.

"She can never have been willing you should marry a tradesman—and one, besides, who—!"

"She knew I would—and that I should have money, else she might not have been willing. I don't say she likes the idea, but she is determined I shall have the man I love—if he will have me," she added shyly.

"Did you tell her you—cared for me?"

He could not say loved yet; he felt an earthy pebble beside a celestial sapphire!

"Of course I did, when papa wanted me to have Arthur!—not till then; there was no occasion! I could not tell what your thoughts were, but my own were enough for that."

Mrs. Wylder was taken with Richard the moment she saw him; and when she heard his story, she was overjoyed, and would scarcely listen to a word about the uncertainty of his prospects. That her Bab should marry the man she loved, and that the alliance should be what the world counted respectable, was enough for her. When Richard told his father what he had done, saying they had fallen in love with each other while yet ignorant of his parentage, a glow of more than satisfaction warmed sir Wilton's consciousness. It was lovely! Lady Ann was being fooled on all sides!

"Richard has been making good use of his morning!" he said at dinner. "He has already proposed to Miss Wylder and been accepted! Richard is a man of action—a practical fellow!"

Lady Ann did perhaps turn a shade paler, but she smiled. It was not such a blow as it might have been, for she too had given up hope of securing her for Arthur. But it was not pleasant to her that the grandchild of the blacksmith should have Barbara's money. Theodora was puzzled.



CHAPTER LXII.

THE QUARREL.

For a few weeks, things went smoothly enough. Not a jar occurred in the feeble harmony, not a questionable cloud appeared above the horizon. The home-weather seemed to have grown settled. Lady Ann was not unfriendly. Richard, having provided himself with tools for the purpose, bound her prayer-book in violet velvet, with her arms cut out in gold on the cover; and she had not seemed altogether ungrateful. Arthur showed no active hostility, made indeed some little fight with himself to behave as a brother ought to a brother he would rather not have found. Far from inseparable, they were yet to be seen together about the place. Vixen had not once made a face to his face; I will not say she had made none at his back. Theodora and he were fast friends. Miss Malliver, now a sort of upper slave to lady Ann, cringed to him.

Arthur readily sold him Miss Brown, and every day she carried him to Barbara. But he took the advice of Wingfold, and was not long from home any day, but much at hand to his father's call, who had many things for him to do, and was rejoiced to find him, unlike Arthur, both able and ready. He would even send him where a domestic might have done as well; but Richard went with hearty good will. It gladdened him to be of service to the old man. Then a rumour reached his father's ears, carried to lady Ann by her elderly maid, that Richard had been seen in low company; and he was not long in suspecting the truth of the matter.

Not once before since Richard's return, had sir Wilton given the Mansons a thought, never doubting his son's residence at Oxford must have cured him of a merely accidental inclination to such low company, and made evident to him that recognition of such relationship as his to them was an unheard-of impropriety, a sin against social order, a class-treachery.

Almost every day Richard went to Wylder Hall, he had a few minutes with Alice at the parsonage. Neither Barbara nor her lawless, great-hearted mother, would have been pleased to have it otherwise. Barbara treated Alice as a sister, and so did Helen Wingfold, who held that such service as hers must be recompensed with love, and the money thrown in. Their kindness, with her new peace of heart, and plenty of food and fresh air, had made her strong and almost beautiful.

It was Richard's custom to ride over in the morning, but one day it was more convenient for him to go in the evening, and that same evening it happened that Arthur Manson had gone to see his sister. When Richard, on his way back from the Hall, found him at the parsonage, he proposed to see him home: Miss Brown was a good walker, and if Arthur did not choose to ride all the way, they would ride and walk alternately. Arthur was delighted, and they set out in the dusk on foot, Alice going a little way with them. Richard led Miss Brown, and Alice clung joyously to his arm: but for Richard, she would not have known that human being ever was or could be so happy! The western sky was a smoky red; the stars were coming out; the wind was mild, and seemed to fill her soul with life from the fountain of life, from God himself. For Alice had been learning from Barbara—not to think things, but to feel realities, the reality of real things—to see truths themselves. Often, when Mrs. Wingfold could spare her, Barbara would take her out for a walk. Then sometimes as they walked she would quite forget her presence, and through that very forgetting, Alice learned much. When first she saw Barbara lost in silent joy, and could see nothing to make her look glad, she wondered a moment, then swiftly concluded she must be thinking of God. When she saw her spread out her arms as if to embrace the wind that flowed to meet them, then too she wondered, but presently began to feel what a thing the wind was—how full of something strange and sweet. She began to learn that nothing is dead, that there cannot be a physical abstraction, that nothing exists for the sake of the laws of its phenomena. She did not put it so to herself, I need hardly say; but she was, in a word, learning to feel that the world was alive. Of the three she was the merriest that night as they went together along the quiet road. A little way out of the village, Richard set her on the mare, and walked by her side, leading Miss Brown. Such was the tolerably sufficient foundation for the report that he was seen rollicking with a common-looking lad and a servant girl on the high road, in the immediate vicinity of Wylder Hall.

"He is his father's son!" reflected lady Ann.

"He's a chip of the old block!" said sir Wilton to himself. But he did not approve of the openness of the thing. To let such doings be seen was low! Presently fell an ugly light on the affair.

"By Jove!" he said to himself, "it's the damned Manson girl! I'll lay my life on it! The fellow is too much of a puritan to flaunt his own foibles in the public eye; but, damn him, he don't love his father enough not to flaunt his! Dead and buried, the rascal hauls them out of their graves for men to see! It's all the damned socialism of his mother's relations! Otherwise the fellow would be all a father could wish! I might have known it! The Armour blood was sure to break out! What business has he with what his father did before he was born! He was nowhere then, the insolent dog! He shall do as I tell him or go about his business—go and herd with the Mansons and all the rest of them if he likes, and be hanged to them!"

He sat in smouldering rage for a while, and then again his thoughts took shape in words, though not in speech.

"How those fools of Wylders will squirm when I cut the rascal off with a shilling, and settle the property on the man the little lady refused! But Dick will never be such a fool! He cannot reconcile his puritanism with such brazen-faced conduct! I shall never make a gentleman of him! He will revert to the original type! It had disappeared in his mother! What's bred in the damned bone will never out of the damned flesh!"

Richard was at the moment walking with Mr. Wingfold in the rectory garden. They were speaking of what the Lord meant when he said a man must leave all for him. As soon us he entered his father's room, he saw that something had gone wrong with him.

"What is it, father?" he said.

"Richard, sit down," said sir Wilton. "I must have a word with you:—What young man and woman were you walking with two nights ago, not far from Wylder Hall?"

"My brother and sister, sir—the Mansons."

"My God, I thought as much!" cried the baronet, and started to his feet—but sat down again: the fetter of his gout pulled him back. "Hold up your right hand," he went on—sir Wilton was a magistrate—"and swear by God that you will never more in your life speak one word to either of those—persons, or leave my house at once."

"Father," said Richard, his voice trembling a little, "I cannot obey you. To deny my friends and relations, even at your command, would be to forsake my Master. It would be to break the bonds that bind men, God's children, together."

"Hold your cursed jargon! Bonds indeed! Is there no bond between you and your father!"

"Believe me, father, I am very sorry, but I cannot help it. I dare not obey you. You have been very kind to me, and I thank you from my heart,—"

"Shut up, you young hypocrite! you have tongue enough for three!—Come, I will give you one chance more! Drop those persons you call your brother and sister, or I drop you."

"You must drop me, then, father!" said Richard with a sigh.

"Will you do as I tell you?"

"No, sir. I dare not."

"Then leave the house."

Richard rose.

"Good-bye, sir," he said.

"Get out of the house."

"May I not take my tools, sir?"

"What tools, damn you!"

"I got some to bind lady Ann's prayer-book."

"She's taken him in! By Jove, she's done him, the fool! She's been keeping him up to it, to enrage me and get rid of him!" said the baronet to himself.

"What do you want them for?" he asked, a little calmer.

"To work at my trade. If you turn me out, I must go back to that."

"Damn your soul! it never was, and never will be anything but a tradesman's! Damn my soul, if I wouldn't rather make young Manson my heir than you!—No, by Jove, you shall not have your damned tools! Leave the house. You cannot claim a chair-leg in it!"

Richard bowed, and went; got his hat and stick; and walked from the house with about thirty shillings in his pocket. His heart was like a lump of lead, but he was nowise dismayed. He was in no perplexity how to live. Happy the man who knows his hands the gift of God, the providers for his body! I would in especial that teachers of righteousness were able, with St. Paul, to live by their hands! Outside the lodge-gate he paused, and stood in the middle of the road thinking. Thus far he had seen his way, but no farther. To which hand must he turn? Should he go to his grandfather, or to Barbara?

He set out, plodding across the fields, for Wylder Hall. There was no Miss Brown for him now. Miss Wylder, they told him, was in the garden. She sat in a summer-house, reading a story. When she heard his step, she knew, from the very sound of it, that he was discomposed. Never was such a creature for interpreting the signs of the unseen! Her senses were as discriminating as those of wild animals that have not only to find life but to avoid death by the keenness of their wits. She came out, and met him in the dim green air under a wide-spreading yew.

"What is the matter, Richard?" she said, looking in his face with anxiety. "What has gone wrong?"

"My father has turned me out."

"Turned you out?"

"Yes. I must swear never to speak another word to Alice or Arthur, or go about my business. I went."

"Of course you did!" cried Barbara, lifting her dainty chin an inch higher.

Then, after a little pause, in which she looked with loving pride straight into his eyes—for was he not a man after her own brave big heart!—she resumed:

"Well, it is no worse for you than before, and ever so much better for me!—What are you going to do, Richard?—There are so many things you could turn to now!"

"Yes, but only one I can do well. I might get fellows to coach, but I should have to wait too long—and then I should have to teach what I thought worth neither the time nor the pay. I prefer to live by my hands, and earn leisure for something else."

"I like that," said Barbara. "Will it take you long to get into the way of your old work?"

"I don't think it will," answered Richard; "and I believe I shall do better at it now. I was looking at some of it yesterday morning, and was surprised I should have been pleased with it. In myself growing, I have grown to demand better work—better both in idea and execution."

"It is horrid to have you go," said Barbara; "but I will think you up to God every day, and dream about you every night, and read about you every book. I will write to you, and you will write to me—and—and"—she was on the point of crying, but would not—"and then the old smell of the leather and the paste will be so nice!"

She broke into a merry laugh, and the crisis was over. They walked together to the smithy. Fierce was the wrath of the blacksmith. But for the presence of Barbara, he would have called his son-in-law ugly names. His anger soon subsided, however, and he laughed at himself for spending indignation on such a man.

"I might have known him by this time!" he said. "—But just let him come near the smithy!" he resumed, and his eyes began to flame again. "He shall know, if he does, what a blacksmith thinks of a baronet!—What are you going to do, my son?"

"Go back to my work."

"Never to that old-wife-trade?" cried the blacksmith. "Look here, Richard!" he said, and bared his upper arm, "there's what the anvil does!" Then he bent his shoulders, and began to wheeze. "And there's what the bookbinding does!" he continued. "No, no; you turn in with me, and we'll show them a sight!—a gentleman that can make his living with his own hands! The country shall see sir Wilton Lestrange's heir a blacksmith because he wouldn't be a snob and deny his own flesh and blood!—'I saw your son to-day, sir Wilton—at the anvil with his grandfather! What a fine fellow he do be! Lord, how he do make the sparks fly!'—If I had him, the old sinner, he should see sparks that came from somewhere else than the anvil!—You turn in with me, Richard, and do work fit for a man!"

"Grandfather," answered Richard, "I couldn't do your work so well as my own."

"Yes, you could. In six weeks you'll be a better smith than ever you'd be a bookbinder. There's no good or bad in that sort of soft thing! I'll make you a better blacksmith than myself. There! I can't say fairer!"

"But don't you think it better not to irritate my father more than I must? I oughtn't to torment him. As long as I was here he would fancy me braving him. When I am out of sight, he may think of me again and want to see me—as Job said his maker would."

"I don't remember," said Barbara. "Tell me."

"He says to God—I was reading it the other day—'I wish you would hide me in the grave till you've done being angry with me! Then you would want to see again the creature you had made; you would call me, and I would answer!' God's not like that, of course, but my father might be. There is more chance of his getting over it, if I don't trouble him with sight or sound of me."

"Well, perhaps you're right!" said Simon. "Off with you to your woman's work! and God bless you!"



CHAPTER LXIII.

BARONET AND BLACKSMITH.

Richard took Barbara home, and the same night started for London. Barbara prayed him to take what money she had, but he said that by going in the third class he would have something over, and, once there, would begin to earn money immediately.

His aunt was almost beside herself for lack of outlet to her surprise and delight at seeing him. When she heard his story, however, it was plain she took part with his father, though she was too glad to have her boy again to say so. His uncle too was sincerely glad. His work had not been the same thing to him since Richard went; and to have him again was what he had never hoped. He could not help a grudge that Richard should lose his position for the sake of such as the Mansons, but he saw now the principle involved. He saw too that, in virtue of his belief in God as the father of all, his nephew had much the stronger sense of the claim of man upon man.

Richard never disputed with his uncle; he but suggested, and kept suggesting—in the firm belief that an honest mind must, sooner or later, open its doors to every truth. He settled to his work as if he had never been away from it, and in a fortnight or so could work faster and better than before. Soon he had as much in his peculiar department as he was able to do, for almost all his old employers again sought him. His story being now no secret, they wondered he should return to his trade, but no one thought he had chosen to be a workman because he was not a gentleman.

But how changed was the world to him since the time that looked so far away! With how much larger a life in his heart would he now sit in the orchestra while the gracious forms of music filled the hall, and he seemed to see them soaring on the pinions of the birds of God, as Dante calls the angels, or sweeping level in dance divine, like the six-winged serpents of Isaiah's vision high and lifted up—all the interspaces filled with glow-worms and little spangled snakes of coruscating sound! He was more blessed now than even when but to lift his eyes was to see the face of Barbara; she was in his faith and hope now as well as in his love. He had the loveliest of letters from her. She insisted he should not write oftener than once for her twice: his time was worth more, she said, than twice hers. Mr. Wingfold wrote occasionally, and Richard always answered within a week.

As soon as his son was gone, sir Wilton began to miss him. He wished, first, that the obstinacy of the rascal had not made it necessary to give him quite so sharp a lesson; he wished, next, that he had given him time to see the reasonableness of his demand; and at length, as the days and weeks passed, and not a whisper of prayer entered the ears of the family-Baal, he began to wish that he had not sent him away. The desire to see him grew a longing; his need of him became imperative. Arthur, who now tried a little to do the work he had before declined, was the poorest substitute for Richard; and his father kept thinking how differently Richard had served him. He repented at last as much as was possible to him, and wished he had left the rascal to take his own way. He tried to understand how it was that, anxious always to please him, he yet would not in such a trifle, and that with nothing to gain and everything to lose by his obstinacy. There might be conscience in it! his mother certainly had a conscience! But how could the fool make the Mansons a matter of his conscience? They were no business of his!

He pretended to himself that he had been born without a conscience. At the same time he knew very well there were pigeon-holes in his memory he preferred not searching in; knew very well he had done things which were wrong, things he knew to be wrong when he did them. If he had ever done a thing because he ought to do it; if he had ever abstained from doing a thing because he ought not to do it, he would have known he had a conscience. Because he did not obey his conscience, he would rather believe himself without one. I doubt if consciousness ever exists without conscience, however poorly either may be developed.

Fur the first time in his life he was possessed with a good longing—namely, for his son; a fulcrum was at length established which might support leverage for his uplifting. He grew visibly greyer, stooped more, and became very irritable. Twenty times a day he would be on the point of sending for Richard, but twenty times a day his pride checked him.

"If the rascal would make but apology enough to satisfy a Frenchman, I would take him back!" he would say to himself over and over; "but he's such a chip of the old block!—so damned independent!—Well, I don't call it a great fault! If I had had a trade, I should have been just as independent of my father! No, I want no apology from him! Let him just say, 'Mayn't I come back, father?' and the gold ring and the wedding garment shall be out for him directly!"

A month after Richard's expulsion, the baronet drove to the smithy, and accused Simon of causing all the mischief. He must send the boy Manson away, he said: he would settle an annuity on the beggar. That done, Richard must make a suitable apology, and he would take him back. Simon listened without a word. He wanted to see how far he would go.

"If you will not oblige me," he ended, "you shall not have another stroke of work from Mortgrange, and I will use my influence to drive you from the county."

Without waiting for an answer, he turned to walk from the shop. But he did not walk. The moment he turned, Simon took him by the shoulders and ran him right out of the smithy up to his carriage, into which, for the footman had made haste to open the door, he would have tumbled him neck and heels, but that, gout and all, sir Wilton managed to spring on the step, and get in without falling. In a rage by no means unnatural, he called to the coachman to send his lash about the ruffian's ears. Simon burst into a guffaw, which so startled the horses that the footman had to run to their heads. In his haste to do so, he failed to shut the door properly; it opened and banged, swinging this way and that, as the horses now reared, now backed, now pulled, and the baronet, cursing and swearing, was tossed about in his carriage like a dried-up kernel in a nut. Simon at length, with tears of merriment running down his red cheeks, managed, in a succession of gymnastics, to close the door.

"Home, Peterkin?" he shouted, and turning away, strode back to his forge, whence immediately sprang upon the air the merriest tune ever played by anvil and hammer with a horse-shoe between them—the sparks flying about the musician like a nimbus of embodied notes. It seemed to soothe the horses, for they started immediately without further racket. Before the next month was over, the baronet was again in the smithy—in a better mood this time. He made no reference to his former ignominious dismissal—wanted only to know if Simon had heard from his grandson. The old man answered that he had: he was well, happy, and busy. Sir Wilton gave a grunt.

"Why didn't he stay and help you?"

"I begged him to do so," answered Simon, "for he is almost as good at the anvil, and quite as good at the shoring as myself; but he said it would annoy his father to have him so near, and he wouldn't do it."

His boy's good will made the baronet fidget and swear to hide his compunction. But his evil angel got the upper hand.

"The rascal knew," he cried, "that nothing would annoy me so much as have him go back to his mire like the washed sow!"

Perceiving Simon look dangerous, he turned with a hasty good-morning, and made for his carriage, casting more than one uneasy glance over his shoulder. But the blacksmith let him depart in peace.



CHAPTER LXIV.

THE BARONET'S FUNERAL.

It was about a year after Richard's return to his trade, when one morning the doctor at Barset was roused by a groom, his horse all speckled with foam, who, as soon as he had given his message, galloped to the post-office, and telegraphed for a well-known London physician. A little later, Richard received a telegram: "Father paralyzed. Will meet first train. Wingfold."

With sad heart he obeyed the summons, and found Wingfold at the station.

"I have just come from the house," he said. "He is still insensible. They tell me he came to himself once, just a little, and murmured Richard, but has not spoken since."

"Let us go to him!" said Richard.

"I fear they will try to prevent you from seeing him."

"They shall not find it easy."

"I have a trap outside."

"Come along."

They reached Mortgrange, and stopped at the lodge. Richard walked up to the door.

"How is my father?" he asked.

"Much the same, sir, I believe."

"Is it true that he wanted to see me?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Is he in his own room?"

"Yes, sir; but, I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, "I have my lady's orders to admit no one!"

While he spoke, Richard passed him, and went straight to his father's room, which was on the ground-floor. He opened the door softly, and entered. His father lay on the bed, with the Barset surgeon and the London doctor standing over him. The latter looked round, saw him, and came to him.

"I gave orders that no one should be admitted," he said, in a low stern tone.

"I understand my father wished to see me!" answered Richard.

"He cannot see you."

"He may come to himself any moment!"

"He will never come to himself," returned the doctor.

"Then why keep me out?" said Richard.

The eyes of the dying man opened, and Richard received his last look. Sir Wilton gave one sigh, and death was past. Whether life was come, God only, and those who watched on the other side, knew. Lady Ann came in.

"The good baronet is gone!" said the physician.

She turned away. Her eyes glided over Richard as if she had never before seen him. He went up to the bed, and she walked from the room. When Richard came out, he found Wingfold where he had left him, and got into the pony-carriage beside him. The parson drove off.

"His tale is told," said Richard, in a choking voice. "He did not speak, and I cannot tell whether he knew me, but I had his last look, and that is something. I would have been a good son to him if he had let me—at least I would have tried to be."

He sat silent, thinking what he might have done for him. Perhaps he would not have died if he had been with him, he thought.

"It is best," said Wingfold. "We cannot say anything would be best, but we must say everything is best."

"I think I understand you," said Richard. "But oh how I would have loved him if he would have let me!"

"And how you will love him!" said Wingfold, "for he will love you. They are getting him ready to let you now. I think he is loving you in the darkness. He had begun to love you long before he went. But he was the slave of the nature he had enfeebled and corrupted. I hope endlessly for him—though God only knows how long it may take, even after the change is begun, to bring men like him back to their true selves.—But surely, Richard," he cried, bethinking himself, and pulling up his ponies, "your right place is at Mortgrange—at least so long as what is left of your father is lying in the house!"

"Yes, no doubt I and I did think whether I ought not to assert myself, and remain until my father's will was read; but I concluded it better to avoid the possibility of anything unpleasant. I cannot of course yield my right to be chief mourner. I think my father would not wish me to do so."

"I am sure he would not.—Then, till the funeral, you will stay with us!" concluded the parson, as he drove on.

"No, I thank you," answered Richard: "I must be at my grandfather's. I will go there when I have seen Barbara."

On the day of the funeral, no one disputed Richard's right to the place he took, and when it was over, he joined the company assembled to hear the late baronet's will. It was dated ten years before, and gave the two estates of Mortgrange and Cinqmer to his son, Arthur Lestrange There was in it no allusion to the possible existence of a son by his first wife. Richard rose. The lawyer rose also.

"I am sorry, sir Richard," he said, "that we can find no later will. There ought to have been some provision for the support of the title."

"My father died suddenly," answered Richard, "and did not know of my existence until about five years ago."

"All I can say is, I am very sorry."

"Do not let it trouble you," returned Richard. "It matters little to me; I am independent."

"I am very glad to hear it. I had imagined it otherwise."

"A man with a good trade and a good education must be independent!"

"Ah, I understand!—But your brother will, as a matter of course—. I shall talk to him about it. The estate is quite equal to it."

"The estate shall not be burdened with me," said Richard with a smile. "I am the only one of the family able to do as he pleases."

"But the title, sir Richard!"

"The title must look after itself. If I thought it in the smallest degree dependent on money for its dignity, I would throw it in the dirt. If it means anything, it means more than money, and can stand without it. If it be an honour, please God, I shall keep it honourable. Whether I shall set it over my shop, remains to be considered.—Good morning!"

As he left the room, a servant met him with the message that lady Ann wished to see him in the library. Cold as ever, but not colder than always, she poked her long white hand at him.

"This is awkward for you, Richard," she said, "but more awkward still for Arthur. Mortgrange is at your service until you find some employment befitting your position. You must not forget what is due to the family. It is a great pity you offended your father." Richard was silent.

"He left it therefore in my hands to do as I thought fit. Sir Wilton did not die the rich man people imagined him, but I am ready to place a thousand pounds at your disposal."

"I should be sorry to make the little he has left you so much less," answered Richard.

"As you please," returned her ladyship.

"I should like to have just a word with my sister Theodora," said Richard.

"I doubt if she will see you.—Miss Malliver, will you take Mr. Tuke to the schoolroom, and then inquire whether Miss Lestrange is able to leave her room. You will stay with her; she is far from well.—Perhaps you had better go and inquire first. Mr. Tuke will wait you here."

Miss Malliver came from somewhere, and left the room.

Richard felt very angry: was he not to see his father's daughter except in the presence of that woman? But he said nothing.

"There is just one thing," resumed her ladyship, "upon which, if only out of respect to the feelings of my late husband, I feel bound to insist;— it is, that, while in this neighbourhood, you will be careful as to what company you show yourself in. You will not, I trust, pretend ignorance of my meaning, and cause me the pain of having to be more explicit!"

Richard was struck dumb with indignation—and remained dumb from the feeling that he could not condescend to answer her as she deserved. Ere he had half recovered himself, she had again resumed.

"If the title were ceded to the property," she said, as if talking to herself, "it might be a matter for more material consideration."

"Did your ladyship address me?" said Richard.

"If you choose to understand what I mean.—But I speak with too much delicacy, I fear. Compensation it could be only by courtesy.—Suppose I referred to the court of chancery my grave doubts of your story?"

"My father has acknowledged me!"

"And repudiated;—sent you from the house—left you to pursue your trade—bequeathed you nothing! Everybody knows your father—my late husband, I mean—would risk anything for my annoyance, though, thank God, he dared not attempt to push injury beyond the grave!—he well knew the danger of that! Had he really believed you his son, do you imagine he would have left you penniless? Would he not have been rejoiced to put you over Mr. Lestrange's head, if only to wring the heart of his mother?"

"The proofs that satisfied him remain."

"The testimony, that is, of those most interested in the result—whose very case is a confession of felony!"

"A confession, if you will, that my own aunt was the nurse that carried me away—of which there are proofs."

"Has any one seen those proofs?"

"My father has seen them, lady Ann."

"You mean sir Wilton?"

"I do. He accepted them."

"Has he left any document to that effect?"

"Not that I know of."

"Who presented those proofs, as you call them?"

"I told sir Wilton where they had been hidden, and together we found them."

"Where?"

"In the room that was the nursery."

"Which you occupied for months while working at your trade in the house, and for weeks again before sir Wilton dismissed you!"

"Yes," answered Richard, who saw very well what she was driving at, but would not seem to understand before she had fully disclosed her intent.

"And where you had opportunity to place what you chose at your leisure!—Excuse me; I am only laying before you what counsel would lay before the court."

"You wish me to understand, I suppose, that you regard me as an impostor, and believe I put the things, for support of my aunt's evidence, where my father and I found them!"

"I do not say so. I merely endeavour to make you see how the court would regard the affair—how much appearances would be against you. At the same time, I confess I have all along had grave doubts of the story. You, of course, may have been deceived as well as your father—I mean the late baronet, my husband; but in any case, I will not admit you to be what you call yourself, until you are declared such by the law of the land. I will, however, make a proposal to you—and no ungenerous one:—Pledge yourself to make no defence, if, for form's sake, legal proceedings should be judged desirable, and in lieu of the possible baronetcy—for I admit the bare possibility of the case, if tried, being given against us—I will pay you five thousand pounds. It would cost us less to try the case, no doubt, but the thing would at best be disagreeable.—Understand I do not speak without advice!"

"Plainly you do not!" assented Richard. "But," he continued, "let me place one thing before your ladyship: To do as you ask me, would be to indorse your charge against my father, that he acknowledged me, that is, he lied, to give you annoyance! That is enough. But I have the same objection in respect of my uncle and aunt, of whom you propose to make liars and conspirators!"

He turned to the door.

"You will consider it?" said her ladyship in her stateliest yet softest tone.

"I will. I shall continue to consider it the worst insult you could have offered my father, your late husband. Thank God, he was my mother's husband first!"

"What am I to understand by that?"

"Whatever your ladyship chooses, except that I will not hold any farther communication with you on the matter."

"Then you mean to dispute the title?"

"I decline to say what I mean or do not mean to do."

Lady Ann rose to ring the bell.

Miss Malliver met Richard in the doorway. He turned.

"I am going to bid Theodora good-bye," he said.

"You shall do no such thing!" cried her ladyship.

Richard flew up the stair, and, believing Miss Malliver had not gone to his sister, went straight to her room.

The moment Theodora saw him, she sprang from the bed where she had lain weeping, and threw herself into his arms. He was the only one who had ever made her feel what a man might be to a woman! He told her he had come to bid her good-bye. She looked wild.

"But you're not going really—for altogether?" she said.

"My dear sister, what else can I do? Nobody here wants me!"

"Indeed, Richard, I do!"

"I know you do—and the time will come when you shall have me; but you would not have me live where I am not loved!"

"Richard!" she cried, with a burst of indignation, the first, I fancy, she had ever felt, or at least given way to, "you are the only gentleman in the family!"

Richard laughed, and Theodora dried her eyes. Miss Malliver was near enough to be able to report, and the poor girl had a bad time of it in consequence.

"I will not trouble Arthur," said Richard. "Say good-bye to him for me, and give him my love. Please tell him that, although all I had was my father's yet, as between him and me, Miss Brown is mine, and I expect him to send her to Wylder Hall. Good-bye again to my dear sister! I leave a bit of my heart in the house, where I know it will not be trampled on!"

Theodora could not speak. Her only answer was another embrace, and they parted.

Richard went to see Barbara, and found her at the parsonage.

"What an opportunity you have," said Wingfold, "of maintaining before the world the honour of work! The man who makes a thing exist that did not exist, or who sets anything right that had gone wrong, must be more worthy than he who only consumes what exists, or helps things to remain wrong!"

"But," suggested Barbara, with her usual keenness, "are you not now encouraging him to seek the praise of men? To seek it for a good thing, is the more contemptible."

"There is little praise to be got from men for that," said Wingfold; "and I am sure Richard does not seek any. He would help men to see that the man who serves his neighbour, is the man whom the Lord of the universe honours. An idle man, or one busy only for himself, is like a lump of refuse floating this way and that in the flux and reflux of the sewer-tide of the world. Were Richard lord of lands it would be absurd of him to give his life to bookbinding; that would be to desert his neighbour on those lands; but what better can he do now than follow the trade by which he may at once earn his living? To omit the question of possibility,—suppose he read for the bar, would that bring him closer to humanity? Would it be a diviner mode of life? Is it a more honourable thing to win a cause—perhaps for the wrong man—than to preserve an old and valuable book? Will a man rank higher in the kingdom that shall not end, because he has again and again rendered unrighteousness triumphant? Would Richard's mind be as free in chambers as in the workshop to search into truth, or as keen to suspect its covert? Would he sit closer to the well-springs of thought and aspiration in a barrister's library, than among the books by which he wins his bread?"

With eternity before them, and God at the head and the heart of the universe, Richard and Barbara did not believe in separation any more than in death. He in London and she at Wylder Hall, they were far more together than most unparted pairs.

Wingfold set himself to keep Barbara busy, giving her plenty to read and plenty of work: her waiting should be no loss of time to her if he could help it! Among other things, he set her to teach his boy where she thought herself much too ignorant: he held, not only that to teach is the best way to learn, but that the imperfect are the best teachers of the imperfect. He thought this must be why the Lord seems to regard with so much indifference the many falsehoods uttered of and for him. When a man, he said, agonized to get into other hearts the thing dear to his own, the false intellectual or even moral forms in which his ignorance and the crudity of his understanding compelled him to embody it, would not render its truth of none effect, but might, on the contrary, make its reception possible where a truer presentation would stick fast in the door-way.

He made Richard promise to take no important step for a year without first letting him know. He was anxious he should have nothing to undo because of what the packet committed to his care might contain.



CHAPTER LXV.

THE PACKET.

The day so often in Wingfold's thought, arrived at last—the anniversary of the death of sir Wilton. He rose early, his mind anxious, and his heart troubled that his mind should be anxious, and set out for London by the first train. Arrived; he sought at once the office of sir Wilton's lawyer, and when at last Mr. Bell appeared, begged him to witness the opening of the packet. Mr. Bell broke the seal himself, read the baronet's statement of the request he had made to Wingfold, and then opened the enclosed packet.

"A most irregular proceeding!" he exclaimed—as well he might: his late client had committed to the keeping of the clergyman of another parish, the will signed and properly witnessed, which Mr. Bell had last drawn up for him, and of which, as it was nowhere discoverable, he had not doubted the destruction! Here it was, devising and bequeathing his whole property, real and personal, exclusive only of certain legacies of small account, to Richard Lestrange, formerly known as Richard Tuke, reputed son of John and Jane Tuke, born Armour, but in reality sole son of Wilton Arthur Lestrange, of Mortgrange and Cinqmer, Baronet, and Robina Armour his wife, daughter of Simon Armour, Blacksmith, born in lawful wedlock in the house of Mortgrange, in the year 18—!—and so worded, at the request of sir Wilton, that even should the law declare him supposititious, the property must yet be his!

"This will be a terrible blow to that proud woman!" said Mr. Bell. "You must prepare her for the shock!"

"Prepare lady Ann!" exclaimed Wingfold. "Believe me, she is in no danger! An earthquake would not move her."

"I must see her lawyer at once!" said Mr. Bell, rising.

"Let me have the papers, please," said Wingfold. "Sir Wilton did not tell me to bring them to you. I must take them to sir Richard."

"Then you do not wish me to move in the matter?"

"I shall advise sir Richard to put the affair in your hands; but he must do it; I have not the power."

"You are very right. I shall be here till five o'clock."

"I hope to be with you long before that!"

It took Wingfold an hour to find Richard. He heard the news without a word, but his eyes flashed, and Wingfold knew he thought of Barbara and his mother and the Mansons. Then his face clouded.

"It will bring trouble on the rest of my father's family!" he said.

"Not upon all of them," returned Wingfold; "and you have it in your power to temper the trouble. But I beg you will not be hastily generous, and do what you may regret, finding it for the good of none."

"I will think well before I do anything," answered Richard. "But there may be another will yet!"

"Of course there may! No one can tell. In the meantime we must be guided by appearances. Come with me to Mr. Bell."

"I must see my mother first."

He found her ironing a shirt for him, and told her the news. She received them quietly. So many changes had got both her and Richard into a sober way of expecting. They went to Mr. Bell, and Richard begged him to do what he judged necessary. Mr. Bell at once communicated with lady Ann's lawyer, and requested him to inform her ladyship that sir Richard would call upon her the next day. Mr. Wingfold accompanied him to Mortgrange. Lady Ann received them with perfect coolness.

"You are, I trust, aware of the cause of my visit, lady Ann?" said Richard.

"I am."

"May I ask what you propose to do?"

"That, excuse me, is my affair. It lies with me to ask you what provision you intend making for sir Wilton's family."

"Allow me, lady Ann, to take the lesson you have given me, and answer, that is my affair."

She saw she had made a mistake.

"For my part," she returned, "I should not object to remaining in the house, were I but assured that my daughters should be in no danger of meeting improper persons."

"It would be no pleasure, lady Ann, to either of us to be so near the other. Our ways of thinking are too much opposed. I venture to suggest that you should occupy your jointure-house."

"I will do as I see fit."

"You must find another home." Lady Ann left the room, and the next week the house, betaking herself to her own, which was not far off, in the park at Cinqmer, the smaller of the two estates.

The week following, Richard went to see Arthur.

"Now, Arthur!" he said, "let us be frank with each other! I am not your enemy. I am bound to do the best I can for you all."

"When you thought the land was yours, I had a trade to fall back upon. Now that the land proves mine, you have no trade, or other means of making a livelihood. If you will be a brother, you will accept what I offer: I will make over to you for your life-time, but without power to devise it, this estate of Cinqmer, burdened with the payment of five hundred a year to your sister Theodora till her marriage."

Arthur was glad of the gift, yet did not accept it graciously. The disposition is no rare one that not only gives grudgingly, but receives grudgingly. The man imagines he shields his independence by not seeming pleased. To show yourself pleased is to confess obligation! Do not manifest pleasure, do not acknowledge favour, and you keep your freedom like a man!

"I cannot see," said Arthur, "—of course it is very kind of you, and all that! you wouldn't have compliments bandied between brothers!—but I should like to know why the land should not be mine to leave. I might have children, you know!"

"And I might have more children!" laughed Richard. "But that has nothing to do with it. The thing is this: the land itself I could give out and out, but the land has the people. God did not give us the land for our own sakes only, but for theirs too. The men and women upon it are my brothers and sisters, and I have to see to them. Now I know that you are liked by our people, and that you have claims to be liked by them, and therefore believe you will consider them as well as yourself or the land—though at the same time I shall protect them with the terms of the deed. But suppose at your death it should go to Percy! Should I not then feel that I had betrayed my people, a very Judas of landlords? Never fellow-creature of mine will I put in the danger of a scoundrel like him!"

"He is my brother!"

"And mine. I know him; I was at Oxford with him! Not one foothold shall he ever have on land of mine! When he wants to work, let him come to me—not till then!"

"You will not say that to my mother!"

"I will say nothing to your mother.—Do you accept my offer?"

"I will think over it."

"Do," said Richard, and turned to go.

"Will you not settle something on Victoria?" said Arthur.

"We shall see what she turns out by the time she is of age! I don't want to waste money!"

"What do you mean by wasting money?"

"Giving it where it will do no good."

"God gives to the bad as well as the good?"

"It is one thing to give to the bad, and another to give where it will do no good. God knows the endless result; I should know but the first link of its chain. I must act by the knowledge granted me. God may give money in punishment: should I dare do that?"

"Well, you're quite beyond me!"

"Never mind, then. What you and I have to do is to be friends, and work together. You will find I mean well!"

"I believe you do, Richard; but we don't somehow seem to be in the same world."

"If we are true, that will not keep us apart. If we both work for the good of the people, we must come together."

"To tell you the truth, Richard, knowing you had given me the land, I could not put up with interference. I am afraid we should quarrel, and then I should seem ungrateful."

"What would you say to our managing the estates together for a year or two? Would not that be the way to understand each other?"

"Perhaps. I must think about it."

"That is right. Only don't let us begin with suspicion. You did me more than one kindness not knowing I was your brother! And you sent back Miss Brown."

"That was mere honesty."

"Strictly considered, it was more. My father had a right to take the mare from me, and at his death she came into your possession. I thank you for sending her to Barbara."

Arthur turned away.

"My dear fellow," said Richard, "Barbara loved me when I was a bookbinder, and promised to marry me thinking me base-born. I am sorry, but there is no blame to either of us. I had my bad time then, and your good time is, I trust, coming. I did nothing to bring about the change. I did think once whether I had not better leave all to you, and keep to my trade; but I saw that I had no right to do so, because duties attended the property which I was better able for than you."

"I believe every word you say, Richard! You are nobler than I."



CHAPTER LXVI.

BARBARA'S DREAM.

Mr. Wylder could not well object to sir Richard Lestrange on the ground that his daughter had loved him before she or her father knew his position the same he was coveting for her; and within two months they were married. Lady Ann was invited but did not go to the wedding; Arthur, Theodora, and Victoria did; Percy was not invited.

Neither bride nor bridegroom seeing any sense in setting out on a journey the moment they were free to be at home together, they went straight from the church to Mortgrange.

When they entered the hall which had so moved Richard's admiration the first time he saw it, he stood for a moment lost in thought. When he came to himself, Barbara had left him; but ere he had time to wonder, such a burst of organ music filled the place as might have welcomed one that had overcome the world. He stood entranced for a minute, then hastened to the gallery, where he found Barbara at the instrument.

"What!" he cried in astonishment; "you, Barbara! you play like that!"

"I wanted to be worth something to you, Richard."

"Oh Barbara, you are a queen at giving! I was well named, for you were coming! I am Richard indeed!—oh, so rich!"

In the evening they went out into the park. The moon was rising. The sunlight was not quite gone. Her light mingled with the light that gave it her. "Do you know that lovely passage in the Book of Baruch?" asked Richard.

"What book is that?" returned Barbara. "It can't be in the Bible, surely?"

"It is in the Apocrypha—which is to me very much in the Bible! I think I can repeat it. I haven't a good memory, but some things stick fast."

But in the process of recalling it, Richard's thoughts wandered, and Baruch was forgotten.

"This dying of Apollo in the arms of Luna," he said, "this melting of the radiant god into his own pale shadow, always reminds me of the poverty-stricken, wasted and sad, yet lovely Elysium of the pagans: so little consolation did they gather from the thought of it, that they longed to lay their bodies, not in the deep, cool, far-off shadow of grove or cave, but by the ringing roadside, where live feet, in two meeting, mingling, parting tides, ever came and went; where chariots rushed past in hot haste, or moved stately by in jubilant procession; where at night lonely forms would steal through the city of the silent, with but the moon to see them go, bent on ghastly conference with witch or enchanter; and—"

"Where are you going, Richard? Please take me with you. I feel as if I were lost in a wood!"

"What I meant to say," replied Richard, with a little laugh, "was—how different the moonlit shadow-land of those people from the sunny realm of the radiant Christ! Jesus rose again because he was true, and death had no part in him. This world's day is but the moonlight of his world. The shadow-man, who knows neither whence he came nor whither he is going, calls the upper world the house of the dead, being himself a ghost that wanders in its caves, and knows neither the blowing of its wind, the dashing of its waters, the shining of its sun, nor the glad laughter of its inhabitants."

They wandered along, now talking, now silent, their two hearts lying together in a great peace.

The moon kept rising and brightening, slowly victorious over the pallid light of the dead sun; till at last she lifted herself out of the vaporous horizon-sea, ascended over the tree-tops, and went walking through the unobstructed sky, mistress of the air, queen of the heavens, lady of the eyes of men. Yet was she lady only because she beheld her lord. She saw the light of her light, and told what she saw of him.

"When the soul of man sees God, it shines!" said Richard. They reached at length the spot where first they met in the moonlight. With one heart they stopped and turned, and looked each in the other's moonlit eyes. Barbara spoke first.

"Now," she said, "tell me what Baruch says."

"Ah, yes, Baruch! He was the prophet Jeremiah's friend and amanuensis. It was the moon made me think of him. I believe I can give you the passage word for word, as it stands in the English Bible.

"'But he that knoweth all things knoweth her,'—that is, Wisdom—'and hath found her out with his understanding: he that prepared the earth for evermore hath filled it with four-footed beasts: he that sendeth forth light, and it goeth, calleth it again, and it obeyeth him with fear. The stars shined in their watches, and rejoiced: when he calleth them, they say, Here we be; and so with cheerfulness they showed light unto him that made them. This is our God, and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison of him.'"

"That is beautiful!" cried Barbara. "'They said, Here we be! And so—'—What is it?"

"'And so with cheerfulness they showed light unto him that made them.'"

"I will read every word of Baruch!" said Barbara. "Is there much of him?"

"No; very little."

A silence followed. Then again Barbara spoke, and she clung a little closer to her husband.

"I want to tell you something that came to me one night when we were in London," she said. "It was a miserable time that—before I found you up in the orchestra there! and then hell became purgatory, for there was hope in it. I saw so many miserable things! I seemed always to come upon the miserable things. It was as if my eyes were made only to see miserable things—bad things and suffering everywhere. The terrible city was full of them. I longed to help, but had to wait for you to set me free. You had gone from my knowledge, and I was very sad, seeing nothing around me but a waste of dreariness. I kept asking God to give me patience, and not let me fancy myself alone. But the days were dismal, and the balls and dinners frightful. I seemed in a world without air. The girls were so silly, the men so inane, and the things they said so mawkish and colourless! Their compliments sickened me so, that I was just hungry to hide myself. But at last came what I want to tell you.

"One morning, after what seemed a long night's dreamless sleep, I awoke; but it was much too early to rise; so I lay thinking—or more truly, I hope, being thought into, as Mr. Wingfold says. Many of the most beautiful things I had read, scenes of our Lord's life on earth, and thoughts of the Father, came and went. I had no desire to sleep again, or any feeling of drowsiness; but in the midst of fully conscious thought, found myself in some other place, of which I only knew that there was firm ground under my feet, and a soft white radiance of light about me. The remembrance came to me afterwards, of branches of trees spreading high overhead, through which I saw the sky: but at the time I seemed not to take notice of what was around me. I was leaning against a form tall and grand, clothed from the shoulders to the ground in a black robe, full, and soft, and fine. It lay in thickly gathered folds, touched to whiteness in the radiant light, all along the arms encircling, without at first touching me.

"With sweet content my eyes went in and out of those manifold radiant lines, feeling, though they were but parts of his dress, yet they were of himself; for I knew the form to be that of the heavenly Father, but felt no trembling fear, no sense of painful awe—only a deep, deep worshipping, an unutterable love and confidence. 'Oh Father!' I said, not aloud, but low into the folds of his garment. Scarcely had I breathed the words, when 'My child!' came whispered, and I knew his head was bent toward me, and I felt his arms close round my shoulders, and the folds of his garment enwrap me, and with a soft sweep, fall behind me to the ground. Delight held me still for a while, and then I looked up to seek his face; but I could not see past his breast. His shoulders rose far above my upreaching hands. I clasped them together, and face and hands rested near his heart, for my head came not much above his waist.

"And now came the most wonderful part of my dream. As I thus rested against his heart, I seemed to see into it; and mine was filled with loving wonder, and an utterly blessed feeling of home, to the very core. I was at home—with my Father! I looked, as it seemed, into a space illimitable and fathomless, and yet a warm light as from a hearth-fire shone and played in ruddy glow, as upon confining walls. And I saw, there gathered, all human hearts. I saw them—yet I saw no forms; they were there—and yet they would be there. To my waking reason, the words sound like nonsense, and perplex me; but the thing did not perplex me at all. With light beyond that of faith, for it was of absolute certainty, clear as bodily vision, but of a different nature, I saw them. But this part of my dream, the most lovely of all, I can find no words to describe; nor can I even recall to my own mind the half of what I felt. I only know that something was given me then, some spiritual apprehension, to be again withdrawn, but to be given to us all, I believe, some day, out of his infinite love, and withdrawn no more. Every heart that had ever ached, or longed, or wandered, I knew was there, folded warm and soft, safe and glad. And it seemed in my dream that to know this was the crown of all my bliss—yes, even more than to be myself in my Father's arms. Awake, the thought of multitude had always oppressed my mind; it did not then. From the comfort and joy it gave me to see them there, I seemed then first to know how my own heart had ached for them.

"Then tears began to run from my eyes—but easily, with no pain of the world in them. They flowed like a gentle stream—into the heart of God, whose depths were open to my gaze. The blessedness of those tears was beyond words. It was all true then! That heart was our home!

"Then I felt that I was being gently, oh, so gently, put away. The folds of his robe which I held in my hands, were being slowly drawn from them; and the gladness of my weeping changed to longing entreaty. 'Oh Father! Father!' I cried; but I saw only his grand gracious form, all blurred and indistinct through the veil of my blinding tears, slowly receding, slowly fading—and I awoke.

"My tears were flowing now with the old earth-pain in them, with keenest disappointment and longing. To have been there and to have come back, was the misery. But it did not last long. The glad thought awoke that I had the dream—a precious thing never to be lost while memory lasted; a thing which nothing but its realization could ever equal in preciousness. I rose glad and strong, to serve with newer love, with quicker hand and readier foot, the hearts around me."

THE END