People say these things are ordered for us. I do not know; it may be so, but sometimes it seems rather as if we were irresponsible puppets, tossed and buffeted about, blindly and helplessly, upon life's river, as fluttering dead leaves are danced wildly along the swift current of a Highland stream. Such a trifle might have saved us! yet there was no pitying hand put forth to avert that which, in our human blindness, appeared to us to be as unimportant as any other incident of our lives.

Life is an unsolvable problem. Shall we ever, in some other world, I wonder, read its riddles aright?

All these moral dissertations have been called forth because Vera Nevill went to stay for a week at Shadonake. If she had known—what we none of us know—the future, she doubtless would have stayed away. Fate—a beneficent fate, indeed—made, I am bound to confess, a valiant effort in her behalf. Little Minnie fell ill the day before her departure; and the symptoms were such that everybody in the house believed that she was sickening for scarlet fever. The doctor, however, having been hastily summoned, pronounced the disease to be an infantile complaint of a harmless and innocuous nature, which he dignified by the delusively poetical name of "Rosalia."

"It is not infectious, Mr. Smee, I hope?" asked Marion, anxiously. "Nothing to prevent my sister going to stay at the Millers' to morrow?"

"Not in the least infectious, Mrs. Daintree, and anybody in the house can go wherever they like, except the child herself, who must be kept in a warm room for two days, when she will probably be quite well again."

"I am glad, dear, there is nothing to put a stop to your visit; it would have been such a pity," said Marion, in her blindness, to her sister afterwards.

So the fates had a game of pitch and toss with Vera's future, and settled it amongst them to their own satisfaction, probably, but not, it will be seen, for Vera's own good or ultimate happiness.

On the afternoon of the 3rd day of January, therefore, Eustace Daintree drove his sister-in-law over to Shadonake in the open basket pony-carriage, and deposited her and her box safely at the stone-colonnaded door of that most imposing mansion, which she entered exactly ten minutes before the dressing-bell rang, and was conducted almost immediately upstairs to her own room.

Some twenty minutes later there are still two ladies sitting on in the small tea-room, where it is the fashion at Shadonake to linger between the hours of five and seven, who alone have not yet moved to obey the mandate of the dressing-bell.

"What is the good of waiting?" says Beatrice, impatiently; "the train is often late, and, besides, he may not come till the nine o'clock train."

"That is just what I want to wait for," answers Helen Romer. "I want just to hear if the carriage has come back, and then I shall know for certain."

"Well, you know how frightfully punctual papa is, and how angry it makes him if anybody is late."

"Just two minutes more, Beatrice; I can dress very quickly when once I set to work," pleads Helen.

Beatrice sits down again on the arm of the sofa, and resigns herself to her fate; but she looks rather annoyed and vexed about it.

Mrs. Romer paces the room feverishly and impatiently.

"What did you think of Miss Nevill?" asks Beatrice.

"I could hardly see her in her hat and that thick veil; but she looked as if she were handsome."

"She is beautiful!" says Beatrice, emphatically, "and uncle Tom says——"

"Hush!" interrupts Helen, hurriedly. "Is not that the sound of wheels?—Yes, it is the carriage."

She flies to the door.

"Take care, Helen," says Beatrice, anxiously; "don't open the door wide, don't let the servants think we have been waiting, it looks so bad—so—so unlady-like."

But Helen Romer does not even hear her; she is listening intently to the approaching sounds, with the half-opened door in her hand.

The tea-room door opens into a large inner hall, out of which leads the principal staircase; the outer or entrance-hall is beyond; and presently the stopping of the carriage, the opening and shutting of doors from the servants' departments, and all the usual bustle of an arrival are heard.

The two girls stand close together listening, Beatrice hidden in the shadow of the room.

"There are two voices!" cries Helen, in a disappointed tone; "he is not alone!"

"I suppose it is Mr. Pryme—mamma said he might come by this train," answers Beatrice, so quietly that no one could ever have guessed how her heart was beating.

"Helen, do let us run upstairs; I really cannot stay. Let me go, at all events!" she adds, with a sudden agony of entreaty as the guests were heard advancing towards the door of the inner hall. And as Helen made not the slightest sign of moving, Beatrice slipped past her and ran lightly and swiftly across the hall upstairs, and disappeared along the landing above just as Captain Kynaston and Mr. Herbert Pryme appeared upon the scene below.

No such scruples of modesty troubled Mrs. Romer. As the young men entered the inner hall preceded by the butler, who was taking them up to their rooms, and followed by two footmen who were bearing their portmanteaus, Helen stepped boldly forward out of the shelter of the tea-room, and held out her hand to Captain Kynaston.

"How do you do? How late your train is."

Maurice looked distinctly annoyed, but of course he shook hands with her.

"How are you, Mrs. Romer? I did not expect you to be here till to-morrow. Yes, we are late," consulting his watch; "only twenty minutes to dress in—I must look sharp."

Meanwhile the stranger, Mr. Pryme, was following the butler upstairs.

Helen lowered her voice.

"I must speak to you a minute, Maurice; it is six weeks since we have met, and to meet in public would be too trying. Please dress as quickly as ever you can; I know you can dress quickly if you choose; and wait for me here at the bottom of the stairs—we might get just three minutes together before dinner."

There were the footmen and the portmanteaus within six yards of them, and Mr. Pryme and the butler still within earshot. What was Maurice to do? He could not really listen to a whole succession of prayers, and entreaties, and piteous appeals. There was neither the time, nor was it the place, for either discussion or remonstrance. All he could do was to nod a hasty assent to her request.

"Then I must make haste," he said, and ran quickly upstairs in the wake of the other guest.

The staircase at Shadonake was very wide and very handsome, and thoroughly in keeping with the spacious character of the house. It consisted of one wide flight of shallow steps, with a richly-carved balustrade on either side of it, leading straight down from a large square landing above. Both landing and steps were carpeted with thick velvet-pile carpet, so that no jarring footfall was ever heard upon them. The hall into which the staircase led was paved in coloured mosaic tiles, and was half covered over with rich Persian rugs. A great many doors, nearly all the sitting-rooms of the house, in fact, opened into it, and the blank spaces of the wall were filled in with banks of large handsome plants, palms and giant ferns, and azaleas in full bloom, which were daily rearranged by the gardeners in every available corner.

At the foot of the staircase, and with his back to it, leaning against the balustrade, stood Captain Kynaston, exactly four minutes before the dinner was announced.

Most people were in the habit of calling Maurice a good-looking man, but if anybody had seen him now for the first time it is doubtful whether they would have endorsed that favourable opinion upon his personal appearance. A thoroughly ill-tempered expression of face seldom enhances any one's good looks, and if ever a man looked in a bad temper, Maurice Kynaston did so at the present moment.

He stood with his hands in his trousers pockets, and his eyes fixed upon his own boots, and he looked as savage as it was well possible for a man to look.

He was waiting here for Helen, because he had told her that he would do so, and when Captain Kynaston promised anything to a lady he always kept his word.

But to say that he hated being there is but a mild term for the rage and disgust he experienced.

To be waylaid and attacked thus, directly he had set foot in the house, with a stranger and three servants looking on so as to render him absolutely helpless; to be uncomfortably hurried over his toilet, and inveigled into a sort of rendezvous at the foot of a public staircase, where a number of people might at any minute enter from any one of the six or eight surrounding doors, was enough of itself to try his temper; but when he came to consider how Helen, in thus appropriating him and making him obey her caprices, was virtually breaking her side of the treaty between them; that she was exacting from him the full amount of servitude and devotion which an open engagement would demand, and yet she had agreed to deny any such engagement between them openly—it was, he felt, more than he could continue to bear with meekness.

Meekness, indeed, was in no way Maurice Kynaston's distinguishing characteristic. He was masterful and imperious by nature; to be the slave of any woman was neither pleasant nor profitable to him. Honour, indeed, had bound him to Helen, and had he loved her she might have led him. Her position gave her a certain hold over him, and she knew how to appeal to his heart; but he loved her not, and to control his will and his spirit was beyond her power.

Maurice said to himself that he would put a stop to this system of persecution once and for all—that this interview, which she herself had contrived, should be made the opportunity of a few forcible words, that should frighten her into submission.

So he stood fretting, and fuming, and raging, waiting for her at the foot of the stairs.

There was a soft rustle, as of a woman's dress, behind him. He turned sharply round.

Halfway down the stairs came a woman whom he had never seen before. A black velvet dress, made high in the throat, with a wide collar of heavy lace upon her shoulders, hung clingingly about the outlines of her tall and perfect figure; her hands, with some lace ruffles falling about her wrists, were simply crossed before her. The light of a distant hanging-lamp shone down upon her, just catching one diamond star that glittered among the thick coils of her hair—she wore no other ornament. She came down the stairs slowly, almost lingeringly, with a certain grace in her movements, and without a shadow of embarrassment or self-consciousness.

Maurice drew aside to let her pass him—looking at her—for how could he choose but look? But when she reached the bottom of the steps, she turned her face towards him.

"You are Maurice—are you not?" she said, and put forth both her hands towards him.

An utter bewilderment as to who she was made him speechless; his mind had been full of Helen and his own troubles; everything else had gone out of his head. She coloured a little, still holding out her hands to him.

"I am Vera," she said, simply, and there was a little deprecating appeal in the words as though she would have added, "Be my friend."

He took the hands—soft slender hands that trembled a very little in his grasp—within his own, and some nameless charm in their gentle touch brought a sudden flush into his face, but no appropriate words concerning his pleasure at meeting her, or his gratification at their future relations, fell from Maurice Kynaston's lips. He only held her thus by her hands, and looked at her—looked at her as if he could never look at her enough—from her head to her feet, and from her feet up again to her head, till a sudden wave of colour flooded her face at the earnestness of his scrutiny.

"Vera—Vera Nevill!" was all he said; and then below his breath, as though his absolute amazement were utterly irrepressible: "By Jove!" And Vera laughed softly at the thoroughly British character of the exclamation.

"How like an Englishman!" she said. "An Italian would have paid me fifty pretty compliments in half the time you have taken just to stare at me!"

"What a charming tableau vivant!" exclaims a voice above them as Mrs. Romer comes down the staircase. "You really look like a scene in a play! Pray don't let me disturb you."

"I am making friends with my sister-in-law that is to be, Mrs. Romer," says Maurice, who has dropped Vera's hands with a guilty suddenness, and now endeavours to look completely at his ease—an effort in which he signally fails.

"Were you? Dear me! I thought you and Miss Nevill were practising the pose of the 'Huguenots'!"

Now the whole armoury of feminine weapons—impertinence, spite, and bad manners, born of jealousy—is utterly beneath the contempt of such a woman as Vera; but she is no untried, inexperienced country girl such as Mrs. Romer imagines her to be disconcerted or stricken dumb by such an attack. She knew instantly that she had been attacked, and in what manner, and she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

"I have never seen that picture, the 'Huguenots,' Mrs. Romer," she said, quietly; "do you think there is a photograph or a print of it at Kynaston, Maurice? If so, you or John must show it to me."

And how Mrs. Romer hated her then and there, from that very minute until her life's end, it would not be easy to set forth!

The utter insouciance, the lady-like ignoring of Helen's impertinence, the quiet assumption of what she knew her own position in the Kynaston family to be, down to the sisterly "Maurice," whereby she addressed the man whom in public, at least, Mrs. Romer was forced to call by a more formal name—all proved to that astute little woman that Vera Nevill was no ordinary antagonist, no village maiden to be snubbed or patronised at her pleasure, but a woman of the world, who understood how to fight her own battles, and was likely, as she was forced to own to herself, to "give back as good as she got."

Not another single word was spoken between them, for at that very minute a door was thrown open, and the whole of the party in the house came trooping forth in pairs from the drawing-room in a long procession on their way to the dining-room.

First came Mr. Miller with old Mrs. Macpherson on his arm. Then Mr. Pryme and Miss Sophy Macpherson; her sister behind with Guy Miller; Beatrice, looking melancholy, with the curate in charge; and her mother last with Sir John, who had come over from Kynaston to dinner. Edwin Miller, the second son, by himself brought up the rear.

There was some laughter at the expense of the three defaulters, who, of course, were supposed to have only just hurried downstairs.

"Aha! just saved your soup, ladies!" cried Mr. Miller, laughingly. "Fall in, fall in, as best you can!"

Mrs. Miller came to the rescue, and, by a rapid stroke of generalship, marshalled them into their places.

Miss Nevill, of course, was a stranger; Helen had been on intimate terms with them all for years; Vera, besides, was standing close to Maurice.

"Please take in Miss Nevill, Captain Kynaston; and Edwin, my dear, give your arm to Mrs. Romer."

Edwin, who was a pleasant-looking boy, with plenty to say for himself, hurried forward with alacrity; and Helen had to accept her fate with the best grace she could.

"Well, how did you get on with Vera, and how did you like her?" asked Sir John, coming round to his brother's side of the table when the ladies had left the room. He had noted with pleasure that Vera and Maurice had talked incessantly throughout the dinner.

"My dear fellow!" cried Maurice, heartily, "she is the handsomest woman I ever met in my life! I give you my word that, when she introduced herself to me coming downstairs, I was so surprised, she was so utterly different to what I and the mother have been imagining, that upon my life I couldn't speak a word—I could do nothing but stare at her!"

"You like her, then?" said his brother, smiling, well pleased at his openly expressed admiration.

"I think you are a very lucky fellow, old man! Like her! of course I do; she's a downright good sort!"

And if Sir John was slightly shocked at the irreverence of alluding to so perfect and pure a woman as his adored Vera by so familiar a phrase as "a good sort," he was, at all events, too pleased by Maurice's genuine approval of her to find any fault with his method of expressing it.



CHAPTER XI.

AN IDLE MORNING.

We loved, sir; used to meet; How sad, and bad, and mad it was; But then, how it was sweet!

Browning.

Leaning against a window-frame at the end of a long corridor on the second floor, and idly looking out over the view of the wide lawns and empty flower-beds which it commands, stands Mr. Herbert Pryme, on the second morning after his arrival at Shadonake House.

It is after breakfast, and most of the gentlemen of the house have dispersed; that is to say, Mr. Miller has gone off to survey his new pigsties, and his sons and a Mr. Nethercliff, who arrived last night, have ridden to a meet some fifteen miles distant, which the ladies had voted to be too far off to attend.

Mr. Pryme, however, is evidently not a keen sports-man; he has declined the offer of a mount which Guy Miller has hospitably pressed upon him, and he has also declined to avail himself of his host's offer of the services of the gamekeeper. Curiously enough, another guest at Shadonake, whose zeal for hunting has never yet been impeached, has followed his example.

"What on earth do they meet at Fretly for!" Maurice Kynaston had exclaimed last night to young Guy, as the morrow's plans had been discussed in the smoking-room; "it's the worst country I ever was in, all plough and woodlands, and never a fox to be found. Your uncle ought to know better than to go there. I certainly shan't take the trouble to get up early to go to that place."

"Not go?" repeated Guy, aghast; "you don't mean to say you won't go, Kynaston?"

"That's just what I do mean, though."

"What the deuce will you do with yourself all day?"

"Lie in bed," answered Maurice, between the puffs of his pipe; "we've had a precious hard day's shooting to-day, and I mean to take it easy to-morrow."

And Captain Kynaston was as good as his word. He did not appear in the breakfast-room the next morning until the men who were bound for Fretly had all ridden off and were well out of sight of the house. What he had stayed for he would have been somewhat puzzled to explain. He was not the kind of man who, as a rule, cared to dawdle about all day with women when there was any kind of sport to be had from hunting down to ratting; more especially was he disinclined for any such dawdling when Helen Romer was amongst the number of the ladies so left to be danced attendance upon. And yet he distinctly told himself that he meant to be devoted for this one day to the fair sex. All yesterday he had been crossed and put out; the men had been out shooting from breakfast till dinner; some of the ladies had joined them with the Irish-stew at lunch time; Helen had been amongst them, but not Miss Nevill. Maurice, in spite of the pheasants having been plentiful and the sport satisfactory, had been in a decidedly bad temper all the afternoon in consequence. In the evening the party at dinner had been enlarged by an influx of country neighbours; Vera had been hopelessly divided from him and absorbed by other people the whole evening; he had not exchanged a single word with her all day.

Captain Kynaston was seized with an insatiable desire to improve his acquaintance with his sister-in-law to be. It was his duty, he told himself, to make friends with her; his brother would be hurt, he argued, and his mother would be annoyed if he neglected to pay a proper attention to the future Lady Kynaston. There could be no doubt that it was his duty; that it was also his pleasure did not strike him so forcibly as it should have done, considering the fact that a man is only very keen to create duties for himself when they are proportionately mingled with that which is pleasant and agreeable. The exigencies of his position, with regard to his elder brother's bride having been forcibly borne in upon him—combined possibly with the certain knowledge that the elder brother himself would be hunting all day—compelled him to stop at home and devote himself to Vera. Mr. Herbert Pryme, however, had no such excuse, real or imaginary, and yet he stands idly by the corridor window, idly, yet perfectly patiently—relieving the tedium of his position by the unexciting entertainment of softly whistling the popular airs from the "Cloches de Corneville" below his breath.

Herbert Pryme is a good-looking young fellow of about six-and-twenty; he looks his profession all over, and is a good type of the average young barrister of the present day. He has fair hair, and small, close-cropped whiskers; his face is retrieved from boyishness by strongly-marked and rather heavy features; he studiously affects a solemn and imposing gravity of face and manner, and a severe and elderly style of dress, which he hopes may produce a favourable effect upon the non-legal minds of his somewhat imaginary clients.

It is doubtful, however, whether Mr. Pryme has not found a shorter and pleasanter road to fortune than that slow and toilsome route along which the legal muse leads her patient votaries.

Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes elapse, and still Mr. Pryme looks patiently out of the window, and still he whistles the Song of the Bells. The only sign of weariness he gives is to take out his watch, which, by the way, is suspended by a broad black ribbon, and lives, not in his waistcoat pocket, but in a "fob," and is further decorated by a very large and old-fashioned seal. Having consulted a time piece which for size and thickness might have belonged to his great-grandfather, he returns it to his fob, and resumes his whistling.

Presently a door at the further end of the corridor softly opens and shuts, and Mr. Pryme looks up quickly.

Beatrice Miller, looking about her a little guiltily, comes swiftly towards him along the passage.

"Mamma kept me such ages!" she says, breathlessly; "I thought I should never get away."

"Never mind, so long as you are here," he answers, holding her by both hands. "My darling, I must have a kiss; I hungered for one all yesterday."

He looks into her face eagerly and lovingly. To most people Beatrice is a plain girl, but to this man she is beautiful; his own love for her has invested her with a charm and a fascination that no one else has seen in her.

Oh! divine passion, that can thus glorify its object. It is like a dash of sunshine over a winter landscape, which transforms it into the loveliness of spring; or the magic brush of the painter, which can turn a ploughed field and a barren common into the golden glories of a Cuyp or a Turner.

Thus it was with Herbert Pryme. He looked at Beatrice with the blinding glamour of his own love in his eyes, and she was beautiful to him. Truth to say, Beatrice was a woman whom to love once was to love always. There was so much that was charming and loveable in her character, so great a freshness of mind and soul about her, that, although from lack of beauty she had hitherto failed to attract love, having once secured it, she possessed that rare and valuable faculty of being able to retain it, which many women, even those who are the most beautiful, are incapable of.

"It is just as I imagined about Mr. Nethercliff," says Beatrice, laughing; "he has been asked here for my benefit. Mamma has just been telling me about him; he is Lord Garford's nephew and his heir. Lord Garford's place, you know, is quite the other side of the county; he is poor, so I suppose I might do for him," with a little grimace. "At all events, I am to sit next to him at dinner to-night, and make myself civil. You see, I am to be offered to all the county magnates in succession."

Herbert Pryme still holds her hands, and looks down with grave vexation into her face.

"And how do you suppose I shall feel whilst Mr. Nethercliff is making love to you?"

"You may make your mind quite easy; it is impossible that there should be another man foolish enough in all England to want to make love to such an 'ugly duckling' as I am!"

"Don't be silly, child, and don't fish for compliments," he answers, fondly, stroking her short dark hair, which he thinks so characteristic of herself.

Beatrice looks up happily at him. A woman is always at her very best when she is alone with the man she loves. Unconsciously, all the charms she possesses are displayed in her glistening eyes, and in the colour which comes and goes in her contented face. There is no philtre which beauty can use, there is neither cosmetic nor rouge that can give that tender, lovely glow with which successful love transforms even a plain face into radiance and fascination.

"I wish, Beatrice, you would let me speak to your father," continued Herbert; "I cannot bear to be here under false pretences. Why will you not let me deal fairly and openly with your parents?"

"And be sent about your business by the evening train. No, thank you! My dear boy, speaking to papa would be as much use as speaking to the butler; they would both of them refer you instantly to mamma; and with an equally lamentable result. Please leave things to me. When mamma has offered me ineffectually to every marriageable man in Meadowshire, she will get quite sick of it, and, I dare say, I shall be allowed to do as I like then without any more fuss."

"And how long is this process to last?"

"About a year; by which time Geraldine will be nearly eighteen, and ready to step into my shoes. Mamma will be glad enough to be rid of me then, and to try her hand upon her instead. Geraldine is meek and tractable, and will be quite willing to do as she is told."

"And, meanwhile, what am I to do?"

"You! You are to make love to Sophy Macpherson. Do you not know that she is the excuse for your having been asked here at all?"

"I don't like it, Beatrice," repeats her lover, gravely—not, however, alluding to the duties relating to Miss Macpherson, which she had been urging upon him. "Upon my life, I don't." He looks away moodily out of the window. "I hate doing things on the sly. And, besides, I am a poor man, and your parents are rich. I could not afford to support a wife at present on my own income."

"All the more reason that we should wait," she interrupts, quickly.

"Yes; but I ought not to have spoken to you; I'd no business to steal your heart."

"You did not steal it," she says, nestling up to his side. "I presented it to you, free, gratis."

Where is the man who could resist such an appeal! Away went duty, prudence, and every other laudable consideration to the winds; and Herbert Pryme straightway became insanely and blissfully oblivious of his own poverty, of Mr. Miller's wealth, and of everything else upon earth and under the sun that was not entirely and idiotically delightful and ecstatic.

"You will do as I tell you?" whispers Beatrice.

"Of course I will," answers her lover. And then there is a complete stagnation of the power of speech on both sides for the space of five minutes, during which the clock ticking steadily on at the far end of the corridor has things entirely its own way.

"There is another couple who are happy," says Herbert Pryme, breaking the charmed silence at length, and indicating, by a sign, two people who are wandering slowly down the garden. Beatrice Miller, following the direction of his eyes, sees Maurice Kynaston and Vera.

"Those two?" she exclaims. "Oh dear, no! They are not happy—not in our way. Miss Nevill is engaged to his brother, you know."

"Umph! if I were Sir John Kynaston, I would look after my brother then."

"Herbert! what can you mean?" cries Beatrice, opening her eyes in astonishment. "Why, Captain Kynaston is supposed to be engaged to Mrs. Romer; at any rate, she is desperately in love with him."

"Yes, everybody knows that: but is he in love with her?"

"Herbert, I am sure you must be mistaken!" persists Beatrice, eagerly.

"Perhaps I am. Never mind, little woman," kissing her lightly; "I only said they looked happy. If you will take the trouble to remark them through the day, you will, perhaps, be struck by the same blissful aspect that I have noticed. If they are happy, it won't last long. Why should not one be glad to see other people enjoying themselves? Let them be happy whilst they can."

Herbert Pryme was right. Maurice and Vera wandering side by side along the broad gravel walks in the wintry gardens were happy—without so much as venturing to wonder what it was that made them so.

"I did not want to hunt to-day," Maurice is saying; "I thought I would stop at home and talk to you."

"That was kind of you," answers Vera, with a smile.

If she had known him better, she would have been more sensible of the compliment implied. To give up a day's hunting for a woman's sake is what very few keen sports-men have been known to do; the attraction must be great indeed.

"You will go out, of course, on Monday, the day the hounds meet here? I should like to see you on a horse."

"I shall at all events put on a habit and get up on the mare John has given me. But I know very little of English hunting; I have only ridden in Italy. We used to go out in winter over the Campagna—that is very different to England."

"You must look very well in a habit." He turned to look at her as he spoke. There was no reticence in his undisguised admiration of her.

Vera laughed a little. "You shall look at me if you like when I have it on," she said, blushing faintly under his scrutiny.

"I am grateful to you for the permission; but I am bound to confess that I should look all the same had you forbidden me to do so."

Vera was pleased. She felt glad that he admired her. Was it not quite right and most desirable that her husband's brother should appreciate her beauty and ratify his good taste?

"When does your mother come?" she said, changing the subject quietly, but without effort.

"Only the very night of the ball, I am afraid. Tuesday, is it not?"

"Have you written to her about me? She does not like me, I fear."

"No; I will not write. She shall see you and judge for herself. I am not the least afraid of her not liking you when she knows you; and you will love her."

By this time they had wandered away from the house through the belt of shrubbery, and had emerged beyond upon the margin of the pool of water.

Vera stood still, suddenly struck with the sight.

"Is this Shadonake Bath?" she asked, below her breath.

"Yes; have you never seen it before?" he answered, in some surprise.

"Never. I have not lived in Meadowshire long, you know, and the Millers were moving into the house and furnishing it all last summer. I have never been in the gardens till to-day. How strangely sad the place looks! Let us walk round it."

They went round to the further side.

The pool of water lay dark and silent within its stone steps; not a ripple disturbed its surface; not a dead leaf rested on its bosom. Only the motionless water looked up everlastingly at the gray winter skies above, and reflected them back blackly and gloomily upon its solemn face.

Vera stood still and looked at it. Something in its aspect—she could not have told what—affected her powerfully. She went down two or three steps towards the water, and stooped over it intently.

Maurice, watching her curiously, saw, to his surprise, that she trembled. She turned round to him.

"Does it not look dark and deep? Is it very deep?"

"I believe it is. There are all sorts of stories about it. Come up, Vera; why do you tremble so?"

"How dreadful to be drowned here!" she said, below her breath, and she shuddered.

He stretched out his hand to her.

"Do not say such horrid things! Give me your hand—the steps are slippery. What has put drowning into your head? And—why, how pale you are; what has frightened you?"

She took his hand and came back again to where he stood.

"Do you believe in presentiments?" she said, slowly, with her eyes fixed still, as though by some fascination, upon the dark waters beneath them.

"Not in the very least," he answered, cheerily; "do not think of such things. John would be the first to scold you—and to scold me for bringing you here."

He stood, holding her hand, looking at her kindly and compassionately; suddenly she looked at him, and as their eyes met once more, she trembled from head to foot.

"Vera, you are frightened; tell me what it is!"

"I don't know! I don't know!" she cried, with a sudden wail, like a person in pain; "only—oh! I wish I had not seen it for the first time with you!"

Before he could answer her, some one, beckoning to them from the further side of the pool, caused them both to turn suddenly round.

It was not only Herbert Pryme who had seen them wander away down the garden from the house. Mrs. Romer, too, had been at another window and had noticed them. To run lightly upstairs, put on her hat and jacket, and to follow them, had been the work of but a very few minutes. Helen was not minded to allow Maurice to wander about all the morning with Vera.

"Are you going for a walk?" she called out to them across the water. "Wait for me; I am coming with you."

Vera turned quickly to her companion.

"Is it true that you are engaged to her?" she asked him rapidly, in a low voice.

Maurice hesitated. Morally speaking, he was engaged to her; but, then, it had been agreed between them that he was to deny any such engagement. He felt singularly disinclined to let Vera know what was the truth.

"People say you are," she said, once more. "Will you tell me if it is true?"

"No; there is no engagement between us," he answered, gravely.

"I am very glad," she answered, earnestly. He coloured, but he had no time to ask her why she was glad—for Helen came up to them.

"How interested you look in each other's conversation!" she said, looking suspiciously at them both. "May I not hear what you have been talking about?"

"Anybody might hear," answered Vera, carelessly, "were it worth one's while to take the trouble of repeating it."

Maurice said nothing. He was angry with Helen for having interrupted them, and angry with himself for having denied his semi-engagement. He stood looking away from them both, prodding his stick into the gravel walk.

For half a minute they stood silently together.

"Let us go on," said Vera, and they began to walk.

Once again in the days that were to come those three stood side by side upon the margin of Shadonake Bath.



CHAPTER XII.

THE MEET AT SHADONAKE.

The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar.

Shelley.

Mrs. Macpherson had brought up her daughters with one fixed and predominant idea in her mind. Each of them was to excel in some one taste or accomplishment, by virtue of which they might be enabled to shine in society. They were taught to do one thing well. Thus, Sophy, the eldest, played the piano remarkably, whilst Jessie painted in water-colours with charming exactitude and neatness. They had both had first-rate masters, and no pains had been spared to make each of them proficient in the accomplishment that had been selected for her. But, as neither of these young ladies had any natural talent, the result was hardly so satisfactory as their fond mother could have desired. They did exactly what they had been taught to do with precision and conscientiousness; no less and no more; and the further result of their entire devotion to one kind of study was, that they could do nothing else.

Mrs. Macpherson began to realize that her system of education had possibly left something to be desired on the Monday morning that Mr. Esterworth brought up his hounds to Shadonake House. It was provoking to see all the other ladies attired in their habits, whilst her own daughters had to come down to breakfast in their ordinary morning dresses, because they had never been taught to ride.

"Are you not going to ride?" she heard Guy Miller ask of Sophy, who was decidedly the best looking and the pleasantest of the sisters.

"No, we have never ridden at all; mamma never thought we had the time for it," answers Sophy.

"I think," said Mrs. Macpherson, turning to her hostess, "that I shall pursue a different course with my younger girls. I feel sorry now that Sophy and Jessie do not ride. Music and painting are, of course, the most charming accomplishments that a woman can have; but still it is not at all times that they are useful."

"No, you cannot be always painting and playing."

"Neither can you be always riding," said Mrs. Macpherson, with some asperity, for there was a little natural jealousy between these ladies on the subject of their girls; "but still——"

"But still, you will acknowledge that I have done right in letting Beatrice hunt. You may be quite sure that there is no accomplishment which brings a girl so much into notice in the country. Look at her now."

Mrs. Macpherson looked and saw Beatrice in her habit at the far end of the dining-room surrounded by a group of men in pink, and she also saw her own daughters sitting neglected by themselves on the other side of the room. She made no observation upon the contrast, for it would hardly have been polite to have done so; but she made a mental note of the fact that Mrs. Miller was a very clever woman, and that, if you want an ugly daughter to marry, you had better let her learn how to ride across country. And she furthermore decided that her third daughter, Alice, who was not blessed with the gift of beauty, should forthwith abandon the cultivation of a very feeble and uncertain vocal organ and be sent to the nearest riding-school the very instant she returned to her home.

Beatrice Miller rode very well indeed; it was the secret of her uncle's affection for her, and many a good day's sport had the two enjoyed side by side across the flat fields and the strong fences and wide ditches of their native country. Her brothers, Guy and Edwin, were fond of hunting too, but they rode clumsily and awkwardly, floundering across country in what their uncle called, contemptuously, a thoroughly "provincial style." But Beatrice had the true Esterworth seat and hand; she looked as if she were born to her saddle, and, in truth, she was never so happy as when she was in it. It was a proof of how great and real was her love to Herbert Pryme that she fully recognized that, in becoming his wife, she would have to live in London entirely and to give up her beloved hunting for his sake.

A woman who rides, as did Beatrice, is sure to be popular on a hunting morning; and, with the consciousness of her lover's hands resting upon the back of her chair, with her favourite uncle by her side, and with several truly ardent admirers of her good riding about her, Miss Miller was evidently enjoying herself thoroughly.

The scene, indeed, was animated to the last degree. The long dining-room was filled with guests, the table was covered with good things, a repast, half breakfast, half luncheon, being laid out upon it. Everybody helped themselves, with much chattering and laughter, and there was a pleasant sense of haste and excitement, and a charming informality about the proceedings, which made the Shadonake Hunt breakfast, which Tom Esterworth had been prevailed upon by his niece's entreaties to allow, a thorough and decided success.

Outside there were the hounds, drawn up in patient expectation on the grass beyond the gravel sweep, the bright coats and velvet caps of the men, and the gray horses—on which it was the Meadowshire tradition that they should be always mounted—standing out well against the dark background of the leafless woods behind. Then there were a goodly company who had not dismounted, and to whom glasses of sherry were being handed by the servants, and who also were chattering to each other, or to those on foot, whilst before the door, an object of interest to those within as to those without, Sir John Kynaston was putting Miss Nevill upon her horse.

There was not a man present who did not express his admiration for her beauty and her grace; hardly a woman who did not instantly make some depreciatory remark. The latter fact spoke perhaps more convincingly for the undoubted success she had created than did the former.

Maurice was standing by one of the dining-room windows, Mrs. Romer, as usual, by his side. He alone, perhaps, of all the men who saw her vault lightly into her saddle, made no audible remark, but perhaps his admiration was all too plainly written in his eyes, for it called forth a contemptuous remark from his companion—

"She is a great deal too tall to look well on a horse; those big women should never ride."

"What! not with a figure so perfect as hers?"

"Yes, that is the third time you have spoken about her figure to-day," said Helen, irritably. "What on earth can you see in it?" for Mrs. Romer, who was slight almost to angularity, was, as all thin women are, openly indignant at the masculine foible for more flowing outlines, which was displayed with greater candour than discretion by her quasi-lover.

"What do I see in it?" repeated Maurice, who was dimly conscious of her jealousy, and was injudicious enough to lose his temper slightly over its exhibition. "I see in it the beauty of a goddess, and the perfection of a woman!"

"Really!" with a sarcastic laugh; "how wonderfully enthusiastic and poetical you become over Miss Nevill's charms; it is something quite new in you, Maurice. Your interest in this 'goddess-like' young lady strikes me as singularly warmly expressed; it is more lover-like than fraternal."

"What do you mean?" he said, looking at her coldly and angrily. Helen had seen that look of hard contempt in his face before; she quailed a little before it, and was frightened at what she had said.

"Of course," she said, reddening, "I know it's all right; but it does really sound peculiar, your admiring her so much; and—and—it is hardly flattering to me."

"I don't see that it has anything to do with you," and he turned shortly away from her.

She made a step or two after him. "You will ride with me, will you not, Maurice? You know I can't go very hard; you might give me a lead or two, and keep near me."

"You must not ask me to make any promises," he said, politely, but coldly. "Guy Miller says there is a groom told off to look after you ladies. Of course, if I can be of any use to you, I shall be happy, but it is no use making rash engagements as to what one will do in a run."

"Come, come, it's time we were off," cries out Tom Esterworth at the further end of the room, and his stalwart figure makes its way in the direction of the door.

In a very few minutes the order "to horse" has gone forth, and the whole company have sallied forth and are busy mounting their horses in front of the house.

Off goes the master, well in front, at a sharp trot, towards the woods on the further slope of the hill, and off go the hounds and the whips, and the riders, in a long and gay procession after him, down the wide avenue.

"Promise me you will not stop out long, Vera," says Sir John to her as they go side by side down the drive. "You look white and tired as it is. Have you got a headache?"

"Yes, a little," confesses Vera, with a blush. "I did not sleep well."

"This sitting up late night after night is not good for you," says her lover, anxiously; "and there is the ball to-morrow night."

"Yes; and I want to look my best for your mother," she said, smiling. "I will take care of myself, John; I will go home early in time for lunch."

"You are always so ready to do what I ask you. Oh, Vera, how good you are! how little I deserve such a treasure!"

"Don't," she answers, almost sharply, whilst an expression of pain contracts her brow for an instant. "Don't say such things to me, John; don't call me good."

John Kynaston looks at her fondly. "I will not call you anything you don't wish," he says, gently, "but I am free to think it, Vera!"

The first covert is successfully drawn without much delay. A fox is found, and breaks away across the open, and a short but sharp burst of fifteen or twenty minutes follows. The field is an unusually large one, and there are many out who are not in it at all. Beatrice, however, is well up, and so is Herbert Pryme, who is not likely to be far from her side. Close behind them follows Sir John Kynaston, and Mrs. Romer, who is well mounted upon one of Edwin Miller's horses, keeps well up with the rest.

Vera never quite knew how it was that somehow or other she got thrown out of that short but exciting run. She was on the wrong side of the covert to begin with; several men were near her, but they were all strangers, and at the time "Gone away!" was shouted, there was no one to tell her which way to take. Two men took the left side of the copse, three others turned to the right. Vera followed the latter, and found that the hounds must have gone in the opposite direction, for when she got round the wood not a trace of them was to be seen.

She did not know the country well, and she hardly knew which way to turn. It seemed to her, however, that by striking across a small field to the left of her she would cut off a corner, and eventually come up with the hounds again.

She turned her mare short round, and put her at a big straggling hedge which she had no fears of her being unable to compass. There was, however, more of a drop on the further side than she had counted upon, and in some way, as the mare landed, floundering on the further side, something gave way, and she found that her stirrup-leather had broken.

Vera pulled up and looked about her helplessly. She found herself in a small spinney of young birch-trees, filling up the extremity of a triangular field into which she had come. Not a sign of the hounds, or, indeed, of any living creature was to be seen in any direction. She did not feel inclined to go on—or even to go back home with her broken stirrup-leather. It occurred to her that she would get off and see what she could do towards patching it together herself.

With some little difficulty, her mare being fidgety, and refusing to stand still, she managed to dismount; but in doing so her wrist caught against the pommel of her saddle, and was so severely wrenched backwards, as she sprang to the ground, that she turned quite sick with the pain.

It seemed to her that her wrist must be sprained; at all events, her right hand was, for the minute, perfectly powerless. The mare, perceiving that nothing further was expected of her, amused herself by cropping the short grass at her feet, whilst Vera stood by her side in dire perplexity as to what she was to do next. Just then she heard the welcome sound of a horse's hoofs in the adjoining field, and in another minute a hat and black coat, followed by a horse's head and forelegs appeared on the top of the fence, and a man dropped over into the spinney just ten yards in front of her.

Vera took it to be her lover, for the brothers both hunted in black, and there was a certain family resemblance between their broad shoulders and the square set of their heads. She called out eagerly,

"Oh, John! how glad I am to see you! I have come to grief!"

"So I see; but I am not John. I hope, however, I may do as well. What is the matter?"

"It is you, Maurice? Oh, yes, you will do quite as well. I have broken my stirrup-leather, and I am afraid I have sprained my wrist."

"That sounds bad—let me see."

In an instant he had sprung from his horse to help her.

She looked up at him as he came, pushing the tall brushwood away as he stepped through it. It struck her suddenly how like he was to the photograph she had found of him at Kynaston long ago, and what a well-made man he was, and how brave and handsome he looked in his hunting gear.

"How have you managed to hurt your wrist? Let me see it."

"I wrenched it somehow in jumping down; but I don't think that it can be sprained, for I find I can move it now a little; it is only bruised, but it hurts me horribly."

She turned back her cuff and held out the injured hand to him. Maurice stooped over it. There was a moment's silence, the two horses stood waiting patiently by, the solitary fields lay bare and lifeless on every side of them, the little birch-trees rustled mysteriously overhead, the leaden sky, with its chill curtain of unbroken gray cloud, spread monotonously above them; there was no living thing in all the winter landscape besides to listen or to watch them.

Suddenly Maurice Kynaston caught the hand that he held to his lips, and pressed half a dozen passionate kisses upon its outstretched palm.

It was the work of half a minute, and in the next Maurice felt as if he should die of shame and remorse.

"For God's sake, forgive me!" he cried, brokenly. "I am a brute—I forgot myself—I must be mad, I think; for Heaven's sake tell me that I have not offended you past forgiveness, Vera!"

His pulses were beating wildly, his face was flushed, the hands that still held hers shook with a nameless emotion; he looked imploringly into her face, as if to read his sentence in her eyes, but what he saw there arrested the torrent of repentance and regret that was upon his lips.

Upon Vera's face there was no flush either of shame or anger. No storm of indignation, no passion of insulted feeling; only eyes wide open and terror-stricken, that met his with the unspeakable horror that one sees sometimes in those of a hunted animal. She was pale as death. Then suddenly the colour flushed hotly back into her face; she averted her eyes.

"Let me go home," she said, in a faint voice; "help me to get on to my horse, Maurice."

There was neither resentment nor anger in her voice, only a great weariness.

He obeyed her in silence. Possibly he felt that he had stood for one instant upon the verge of a precipice, and that miraculously her face had saved him, he knew not how, where words would only have dragged him down to unutterable ruin.

What had it been that had thus saved him? What was the meaning of that terror that had been written in her lovely eyes? Since she was not angry, what had she feared?

Maurice asked himself these questions vainly all the way home. Not a word was spoken between them; they rode in absolute silence side by side until they reached the house.

Then, as he lifted her off her horse at the hall-door, he whispered,

"Have you forgiven me?"

"There was nothing to forgive," she answered, in a low, strained voice. She spoke wearily, as one who is suffering physical pain. But, as she spoke, the hand that he still held seemed almost, to his fancy, to linger for a second with a gentle fluttering pressure within his grasp.

Miss Nevill went into the house, having utterly forgotten that she had sprained her wrist; a fact which proves indisputably, I suppose, that the injury could not have been of a very serious nature.



CHAPTER XIII.

PEACOCK'S FEATHERS.

That practised falsehood under saintly show, Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge.

Milton, "Paradise Lost."

Old Lady Kynaston arrived at Shadonake in the worst possible temper. Her butler and factotum, who always made every arrangement for her when she was about to travel, had for once been unequal to cope with Bradshaw; he had looked out the wrong train, and had sent off his lady and her maid half-an-hour too late from Walpole Lodge.

The consequence was that, instead of reaching Shadonake comfortably at half-past six in the afternoon, Lady Kynaston had to wait for the next train. She ate her dinner alone, in London, at the Midland Railway Hotel, and never reached her destination till half-past nine on the night of the ball.

Before she had half completed her toilette the guests were beginning to arrive.

"I am afraid I must go down and receive these people, dear Lady Kynaston," said Mrs. Miller, who had remained in her guest's room full of regret and sympathy at the contretemps of her journey.

"Oh, dear me! yes, Caroline—pray go down. I shall be all the quicker for being left alone. Not that cap, West; the one with the Spanish point, of course. Dear me, how I do hate all this hurry and confusion!"

"I am so afraid you will be tired," murmured Mrs. Miller, soothingly. "Would you like me to send Miss Nevill up to your room? It might be pleasanter for you than to meet her downstairs."

"Good gracious, no!" exclaimed the elder lady, testily. "What on earth should I be in such a hurry for! I shall see quite as much of her as I want by-and-by, I have no doubt."

Mrs. Miller retired, and the old lady was left undisturbed to finish her toilette, during which it may fairly be assumed that that dignified personage, Mrs. West, had a hard time of it.

When she issued forth from her room, dressed, like a little fairy godmother, in point lace and diamonds, the dancing downstairs was in full swing.

Lady Kynaston paused for a minute at the top of the broad staircase to look down upon the bright scene below. The hall was full of people. Girls in many-coloured dresses passed backwards and forwards from the ball-room to the refreshment-room, laughing and chatting to their partners; elderly people were congregated about the doorways gossiping and shaking hands with new-comers, or watching their daughters with pleased or anxious faces, according to the circumstances of their lot. Everybody was talking at once. There came up a pleasant confusion of sound—happy voices mingling with the measured strains of the dance-music. In a sheltered corner behind the staircase, Beatrice and Herbert Pryme had settled themselves down comfortably for a chat. Lady Kynaston saw them.

"Caroline is a fool!" she muttered to herself. "All the balls in the world won't get that girl married as she wishes. She has set her heart upon that briefless barrister. I saw it as plain as daylight last season. As to entertaining all this cohue of aborigines, Caroline might spare her trouble and her money, as far as the girl is concerned."

And then, coming slowly down the staircase, Lady Kynaston saw something which restored her to good temper at once.

The something was her younger son. She had caught sight of him through an open doorway in the conservatory. His back was turned to her, and he was bending over a lady who was sitting down, and whose face was concealed behind him.

Lady Kynaston stood still with that sudden serrement de coeur which comes to us all when we see the creature we love best on earth. He did not see her, and she could not see his face, because it was turned away from her; but she knew, by his very attitude, the way he bent down over his companion, by the eager manner in which he was talking to her, and by the way in which he was evidently entirely engrossed and absorbed in what he was saying—that he was enjoying himself, and that he was happy.

The mother's heart all went out towards him; the mother's eyes moistened as she looked.

The couple in the conservatory were alone. A Chinese lantern, swung high up above, shed down a soft radiance upon them. Tall camellia bushes, covered with waxen blossoms and cool shiny leaves, were behind them; banks of long-fronded, feathery ferns framed them in like a picture. Maurice's handsome figure stood up tall and strong amongst the greenery; the dress of the woman he was with lay in soft diaphanous folds upon the ground beyond him. One white arm rested on her lap, one tiny foot peeped out from below the laces of her skirt. But Lady Kynaston could not see her face.

"I wonder who she is," she said to herself. "It is not Helen. She has peacock's feathers on her dress—bad luck, I believe! Dear boy, he looks thoroughly happy. I will not disturb him now."

And she passed on through the hall into the large drawing-room, where the dancing was going on.

The first person she caught sight of there was her eldest son. He was dancing a quadrille, and his partner was a short young lady in a strawberry-coloured tulle dress, covered with trails of spinach-green fern leaves. This young person had a round, chubby face, with bright apple-hued cheeks, a dark, bullet-shaped head, and round, bead-like eyes that glanced about her rapidly like those of a frightened dickey-bird. Her dress was cut very low, and the charms she exhibited were not captivating. Her arms were very red, and her shoulders were mottled: the latter is considered to be a healthy sign in a baby, but is hardly a beautiful characteristic in a grown woman.

"That is my daughter-in-law," said Lady Kynaston to herself, and she almost groaned aloud. "She is worse even than I thought! Countrified and common to the last degree; there will be no licking that face or that figure into shape—they are hopeless! Elise and Worth combined could do nothing with her! John must be mad. No wonder she is good, poor thing," added the naughty little old lady, cynically. "A woman with that appearance can never be tempted to be anything else!"

The quadrille came to an end, and Sir John, after depositing his partner at the further side of the room, came up to his mother.

"My dear mother, how are you? I am so sorry about your journey; you must be dead beat. What a fool Bates was to make such a mistake." He was looking about the room as he spoke. "I must introduce you to Vera."

"Yes, introduce me to her at once," said his mother, in a resigned and depressed tone of voice. She would like to have added, "And pray get it over as soon as you can." What she did say was only, "Bring her up to me now. The young lady you have just been dancing with, I suppose!"

"What!" cried Sir John, and burst out laughing. "Good Heavens, mother! that was Miss Smiles, the daughter of the parson of Lutterton. You don't mean to say you thought a little ugly chit like that was my Vera!"

His mother suddenly laid her hand upon his arm.

"Who is that lovely woman who has just come in with Maurice?" she exclaimed.

Her son followed the direction of her eyes, and beheld Vera standing in the doorway that led from the conservatory by his brother's side.

Without a word he passed his mother's hand through his arm and led her across the room.

"Vera, this is my mother," he said. And Lady Kynaston owned afterwards that she never felt so taken aback and so utterly struck dumb with astonishment in her life.

Her two sons looked at her with amusement and some triumph. The little surprise had been so thoroughly carried out; the contrast of the truth to what they knew she had expected was too good a joke not to be enjoyed.

"Not much what you expected, little mother, is it?" said Maurice, laughingly. But to Vera, who knew nothing, it was no laughing matter.

She put both her hands out tremblingly and hesitatingly—with a pretty pleading look of deprecating deference in her eyes—and the little old lady, who valued beauty and grace and talent so much that she could barely tolerate goodness itself without them, was melted at once.

"My dear," she said, "you are beautiful, and I am going to love you; but these naughty boys made me think you were something like little Miss Smiles."

"Nay, mother, it was your own diseased imagination," laughed Maurice; "but come, Vera, I am not going to be cheated of this waltz—if John does not want you to dance with him, that is to say."

John nodded pleasantly to them, and the two whirled away together into the midst of the throng of dancers.

"Well, mother?"

"My dear, she is a very beautiful creature, and I have been a silly, prejudiced old woman."

"And you forgive her for being poor, and for living in a vicarage instead of a castle?"

"She would be a queen if she were a beggar and lived in a mud hovel!" answered his mother, heartily, and Sir John was satisfied.

Lady Kynaston's eyes were following the couple as they danced: for all her admiration and her enthusiasm, there was a little anxiety in their gaze. She had not forgotten the little picture she had caught a glimpse of in the conservatory, nor had her woman's eyes failed to notice that Vera's dress was trimmed with peacock's feathers.

Where was Helen? Lady Kynaston said to herself; and why was Maurice devoting himself to his future sister-in-law instead of to her?

Mrs. Romer, you may be sure, had not been far off. Her sharp eyes had seen Vera and Maurice disappear together into the conservatory. She could have told to a second how long they had remained there; and again, when they came out, she had watched the little family scene that had taken place at the door. She had seen the look of delighted surprise on Lady Kynaston's face; she had noted how pleased and how proud of Vera the brothers had looked, and then how happily Maurice and Vera had gone off again together.

"What does it mean?" Helen asked herself, bitterly. "Is Sir John a fool or blind that he does not see what is going on under his nose? She has got him, and his money, and his place; what does she want with Maurice too? Why can't she let him alone—she is taking him from me."

She watched them eagerly and feverishly. They stood still for a moment near her; she could not hear what they said, but she could see the look in Maurice's eyes as he bent towards his partner.

Can a woman who has known what love is ever be mistaken about that?

Vera, all wondering and puzzled, might be but dimly conscious of the meaning in the eyes that met hers; her own drooped, half troubled, half confused, before them. But to Helen, who knew what love's signals were, there was no mystery whatever in the passion in his down-bent glance.

"He loves her!" she said to herself, whilst a sharp pang, almost of physical pain, shot through her heart. "She shall never get him!—never! never! Not though one of us die for it! They are false, both of them. I swear they shall never be happy together!"

"Why are you not dancing, Mrs. Romer?" said a voice at her elbow.

"I will dance with you, Sir John, if you will ask me," answers Helen, smiling.

Sir John responds, as in duty bound, by passing his arm around her waist.

"When are you going to be married, Sir John?" she asks him, when the first pause in the dance gives her the opportunity of speech.

Sir John looks rather confused. "Well, to tell you the truth, I have not spoken to Vera yet. I have not liked to hurry her—I thought, perhaps——"

"Why don't you speak to her? A woman never thinks any better of a man for being diffident in such matters."

"You think not? But you see Vera is——"

"Vera is very much like all other women, I suppose; and you are not versed in the ways of the sex."

Sir John demurred in his own mind as to the first part of her speech. Vera was certainly not like other women; but then he acknowledged the truth of Mrs. Romer's last remark thoroughly.

"No, I dare say I don't know much about women's ways," he admitted; "and you think——"

"I think that Vera would be glad enough to be married as soon as she can. An engagement is a trying ordeal. One is glad enough to get settled down. What is the use of waiting when once everything is arranged?"

Sir John flushed a little. The prospect of a speedy marriage was pleasant to him. It was what he had been secretly longing for—only that, in his slow way, he had not yet been able to suggest it.

"Do you really think she would like it?" he asked, earnestly.

"Of course she would; any woman would."

"And how long do you think the preparations would take?"

"Oh, a month or three weeks is ample time to get clothes in."

His pulses beat hotly at the bare possibility of such a thing. To possess his Vera in so short a time seemed something too great and too wonderful to be true.

"Do not lose any more time," continued Helen, following up the impression she saw she had made upon him. "Speak to her this evening; get her to fix your wedding-day within the month; believe me, a man gets no advantage by putting things off too long; and there are dangers, too, in your case."

"Dangers! How do you mean?" he said, quickly.

"Oh, nothing particular—only she is very handsome, and she is young, and not accustomed, I dare say, to admiration. Other men may admire her as well as you."

"If they did, it could do her no harm," he answered, stiffly.

"Oh, no, of course not; but you can't keep other men from looking at her. When once she is your wife you will have her more completely to yourself."

Sir John made no particular answer to this; but when he had done dancing with Mrs. Romer, he led her back to her seat and thanked her gravely and courteously for her suggestions.

"You have done me a great service, Mrs. Romer, and I am infinitely obliged to you," he said, and then went his way to find Vera.

He was not jealous; but there was a certain uneasiness in his mind. It might be, indeed, true that others would admire and love Vera; others more worthy of her, more equally mated with her youth and loveliness; and he, he said to himself in his humility with regard to her, he had so little to offer her—nothing but his love. He knew himself to be grave and quiet; there was nothing about him to enchain her to him. He lacked brilliancy in manner and conversation; he was dull; he was, perhaps, even prosy. He knew it very well himself; but suppose Vera should find it out, and find that she had made a mistake! The bare thought of it was enough to make him shudder.

No; Mrs. Romer was a clever, well-intentioned little woman. She had meant to give him a hint in all kindness, and he would not be slow to take it. What she had meant to say was, "Take her yourself quickly, or some one else will take her from you."

And Sir John said to himself that he would so take her, and that as quickly as possible.

Standing talking to her younger son, later on that evening, Lady Kynaston said to him, suddenly,

"Why does Vera wear peacock's feathers?"

"Why should she not?"

"They are bad luck."

Maurice laughed. "I never knew you to be superstitious before, mother."

"I am not so really; but from choice I would avoid anything that bears an unlucky interpretation. I saw her with you in the conservatory as I came downstairs."

Maurice turned suddenly red. "Did you?" he asked, a little anxiously.

"Yes. I did not know it was her, of course. I did not see her face, only her dress, and I noticed that it was trimmed with peacock's feathers; that was what made me recognize her afterwards."

"That was bad luck, at all events," said Maurice, almost involuntarily.

"Why?" asked Lady Kynaston, looking up at him sharply. But Maurice would not tell her why.

Lady Kynaston asked no more questions; but she pondered, and she watched. Captain Kynaston did not dance again with Vera that night, and he did dance several times with Mrs. Romer; it did not escape her notice, however, that he seemed absent and abstracted, and that his face bore its hardest and sternest aspect throughout the remainder of the evening.

So the ball at Shadonake came to an end, as balls do, with the first gleams of daylight; and nothing was left of all the gay crowd who had so lately filled the brilliant rooms but several sleepy people creeping up slowly to bed, and a great chiffonade of tattered laces, and flowers, and coloured scraps littered all over the polished floor of the ball-room.



CHAPTER XIV.

HER WEDDING DRESS.

Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings, Blank misgivings— High instincts before which our moral nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

Wordsworth.

"Vera, are you not coming to look at it?"

"Presently."

"It is all laid out on your bed, and you ought to try it on; it might want alterations."

"Oh, there is plenty of time!"

"It is downright affectation!" says old Mrs. Daintree, angrily, to her daughter-in-law, as she and Marion leave the room together; "no girl can really be indifferent to a wedding dress covered with yards of lovely Brussels lace flounces; she ought to be ashamed of herself for her ingratitude to Lady Kynaston for such a present; she must really want to see it, only she likes playing the fine lady beforehand!"

"I don't think it is that," says Marion, gently; "I don't believe Vera is well."

"Fiddlesticks!" snorts her mother-in-law. "A woman who is going to marry ten thousand a year within ten days is bound to be well."

Vera sits alone; she leans her head against the window, her hands lie idle in her lap, her eyes mechanically follow the rough, gray clouds that rack across the winter sky. In little more than a week she will be Vera Nevill no longer; she will have gained all that she desired and tried for—wealth, position, Kynaston—and Sir John! She should be well content, seeing that it has been her own doing all along. No one has forced or persuaded her into this engagement, no one has urged her on to a course contrary to her own inclination, or her own judgment. It has been her own act throughout. And yet, as she sits alone in the twilight, and counts over on her fingers the few short days that intervene between to-day and her bridal morning, hot miserable tears rise to her eyes, and fall slowly down, one by one, upon her clasped hands. She does not ask herself why she weeps; possibly she dares not. Only her thoughts somehow—by that strange connection of ideas which links something in our present to some other thing in our past, and which apparently is in no way dependent upon it—go back instinctively, as it were, to her dead sister, the Princess Marinari.

"Oh, my poor darling Theodora!" she murmurs, half aloud; "if you had lived, you would have taken care of your Vera; if you had not died, I should never have come here, nor ever have known—any of them."

And then she hears Marion's voice calling to her from the top of the stairs.

"Vera! Vera! do come up and see it before it gets quite dark."

She rises hastily and dashes away her tears.

"What is the matter with me to-day!" she says to herself, impatiently. "Have I not everything in the world I wish for? I am happy—of course I am happy. I am coming, Marion, instantly."

Upstairs her wedding dress, a soft cloud of rich silk and fleecy lace, relieved with knots of flowers, dark-leaved myrtle, and waxen orange blossoms, lies spread out upon her bed. Marion stands contemplating it, wrapt in ecstatic admiration; old Mrs. Daintree has gone away.

"It is perfectly lovely! I am so glad you had silk instead of satin; nothing could show off Lady Kynaston's lace so well: is it not beautiful? you ought to try it on. Why, Vera! what is the matter? I believe you have been crying."

"I was thinking of Theodora," she murmurs.

"Ah! poor dear Theodora!" assents Marion, with a compassionate sigh; "how she would have liked to have known of your marriage; how pleased she would have been."

Vera looks at her sister. "Marion," she says, in a low earnest voice; "if—if I should break it off, what would you say?"

"Break it off!" cries her sister, horror-struck. "Good heavens, Vera! what can you mean? Have you gone suddenly mad? What is the matter with you? Break off a match like this at the last minute? You must be demented!"

"Oh, of course," with a sudden change of manner; "of course I did not mean it, it only came into my head for a minute; of course, as you say, it is a splendid match for me. What should I want to break it off for? What should I gain? what, indeed?" She spoke feverishly and excitedly, laughing a little harshly as she spoke.

Marion looked at her anxiously. "I hope to goodness you will never say such horrid things to anybody else; it sounds dreadful, Vera, as if Eustace and I were forcing you into it; as if you did not want to marry Sir John yourself."

"Of course I want to marry him!" interrupted Vera, with unreasonable sharpness.

"Then, pray don't make a fool of yourself, my dear, by talking about breaking it off."

"It was only a joke. Break it off! how could I? The best match in the county, as you say. I am not going to make a fool of myself; don't be afraid, Marion. It would be so inconvenient, too; the trousseau all bought, the breakfast ordered, the guests invited; even the wedding dress here, all finished and ready to put on, and ten thousand a year waiting for me! Oh, no, I am not going to be such an utter fool!"

She laughed; but her laughter was almost more sad than her tears, and her sister left her, saddened and puzzled by her manner.

It was now nearly two months since the ball at Shadonake; and, soon after that eventful visit, Vera had begun to be employed in preparing for her wedding-day, which had been fixed for the 27th of February; for Sir John had taken Mrs. Romer's hint, and had pressed an early marriage upon her. Vera had made no objection; what objection, indeed, could she have found to make? She had acquiesced readily in her lover's suggestions, and had set to work to prepare herself for her marriage.

All this time Captain Kynaston had not been in Meadowshire at all; he had declined his brother's hospitality, and had gone to spend his leave amongst other friends in Somersetshire, where he had started a couple of hunters, and wrote word to Sir John that the sport was of such a very superior nature that he was unable to tear himself away.

Within a fortnight, however, of Sir John's wedding, Maurice did yield at last to his brother's pressing request, and came up from Somersetshire to Kynaston. Last Sunday he had suddenly appeared in the Kynaston pew in Sutton Church by Sir John's side, and had shaken hands with Vera and her relations on coming out of church, and had walked across the vicarage garden by the side of Mrs. Daintree, Vera having gone on in front with Tommy and Minnie. And it was from that moment that Vera had as suddenly discovered that she was utterly and thoroughly wretched, and that she dreaded her wedding-day with a strange and unaccountable terror.

She told herself that she was out of health, that the excitement and bustle of the necessary preparations had over-tried her, that her nerves were upset, her spirits depressed by reason of the solemnity a woman naturally feels at the approach of so important a change in her life. She assured herself aloud, day after day, that she was perfectly happy and content, that she was the very luckiest and most fortunate of women, and that she would sooner be Sir John's wife than the wife of any one else in the world. And she told it to herself so often and so emphatically, that there were whole hours, and even whole days together, when she believed in these self-assurances implicitly and thoroughly.

All this time she saw next to nothing of Maurice Kynaston; the weather was mild and open, and he went out hunting every day. Sir John, on the other hand, was much with her; a constant necessity for his presence seemed to possess her. She was never thoroughly content but when he was with her; ever restless and ill at ease in his absence.

No one could be more thoroughly convinced than Vera of the entire wisdom of the marriage she was about to make. It was, she felt persuaded, the best and the happiest thing she could have done with her life. Wealth, position, affection, were all laid at her feet; and her husband, moreover, would be a man whose goodness and whose devotion to her could never fail to command her respect. What more could a woman who, like herself, was fully alive to the importance of the good things of this world desire? Surely nothing more. Vera, when she was left alone with the glories of her wedding garment, took herself to task for her foolish words to her sister.

"I am a fool!" she said to herself, half angrily, as she bundled all the white silk and the rich lace unceremoniously away into an empty drawer of her wardrobe. "I am a fool to say such things even to Marion. It looks, as she says, as if I were being forced into a rich marriage by my friends. I am very fond of John; I shall make him a most exemplary wife, and I shall look remarkably well in the family diamonds, and that is all that can possibly be required of me."

Having thus settled things comfortably in her own mind, she went downstairs again, and was in such good spirits, and so radiant with smiles for the rest of the evening, that Mr. Daintree remarked to his wife, when they had retired into their conjugal chamber, that he had never seen Vera look so well or so happy.

"Dear child," he said, "it is a great comfort to me to see it, for just at first I feared that she had been influenced by the money and the position, and that her heart was not in it; but now she has evidently become much attached to Sir John, and is perfectly happy; and he is a most excellent man, and in every way worthy of her. Did I tell you, Marion, that he told me the chancel should be begun immediately after the wedding? It is a pity it could not have been done before; but we shall just get it finished by Easter."

"I am glad of that. We must fill the church with flowers for the 27th, and then its appalling ugliness will not be too visible. Of course, the building could hardly have been begun in the middle of winter."

But if Mrs. Eustace Daintree differed at all from her husband upon the subject of her sister's serene and perfect happiness, she, like a wise woman, kept her doubts to herself, and spoke no word of them to destroy the worthy vicar's peace of mind upon the subject.

The next morning Sir John came down from the Hall to the vicarage with a cloud upon his brow, and requested Vera to grant him a few minutes' private conversation. Vera put on her sable cloak and hat, and went out with him into the garden.

"What is the matter?"

"I am exceedingly vexed with my brother," he answered.

"What has Maurice done?"

"He tells me this morning that he will not stop for the wedding, nor be my best man. He talks of going away to-morrow."

Vera glanced at him. He looked excessively annoyed; his face, usually so kind and placid, was ruffled and angry; he flicked the grass impatiently with his stick.

"I have been talking to him for an hour, and cannot get him to change his mind, or even to tell me why he will not stay; in fact, he has no good reason for going. He must stay."

"Does it matter very much?" she asked, gently.

"Of course it matters. My mother is not able to be present; it would not be prudent after her late attack of bronchitis. My only brother surely might make a point of being at my wedding."

"But if he has other engagements——"

"He has no other engagement!" he interrupted, angrily; "He cannot find any but the most paltry excuses. It is behaving with great unkindness to myself, but that is a small matter. What I do mind and will not submit to is, that it is a deliberate insult to you."

"An insult to me! Oh! John, how can that be?" she said, in some surprise; and then, suddenly, she flushed hotly. She knew what he meant. There had been plenty of people to say that Sir John Kynaston was marrying beneath himself—a nobody who was unworthy of him: these murmurs had reached Vera's ears, but she had not heeded them since Lady Kynaston had been on her side. She saw, however, that Sir John feared that the absence of his mother and his brother at his wedding might be misconstrued into a sign that they also disapproved of his bride.

"I don't think Maurice would wish to slight me," she said, gently.

"No; but, then, he must not behave as though he did. I assure you, Vera, if he perseveres in his determination, I shall be most deeply hurt. I have always endeavoured to be a kind brother to him, and, if he cannot do this small thing to please me, I shall consider him most ungrateful."

"That I am sure he is not," she answered, earnestly; "little as I know him, I can assure you that he never loses an occasion of saying how much he feels your goodness and generosity to him."

"Then he must prove it. Look here, Vera, will you go up to the Hall now and talk to him? He is not hunting to-day; you will find him in the library."

"I?" she cried, looking half frightened; "what can I do? You had much better ask him yourself."

"I have asked him over and over again, till I am sick of asking! If you were to put it as a personal request from yourself, I am sure he would see how important to us both it is that he should be present at our wedding."

"Pray don't ask me to do such a thing; I really cannot," she said, hastily.

Sir John looked at her in some surprise; there was an amount of distress in her face that struck him as inadequate to the small thing he had asked of her.

"Why, Vera! have you grown shy? Surely you will not mind doing so small a thing to please me? You need not stay long, and you have your hat on all ready. I have to speak to your brother-in-law about the chancel; I have a letter from the architect this morning; and everything must be settled about it before we go. If you will go up and speak to Maurice now, I will join you—say in twenty minutes from now," consulting his watch, "at the lodge gates. You will go, won't you, dear, just to please me?"

She did not know how to refuse; she had no excuse to give, no reason that she could put into words why she should shrink with such a dreadful terror from this interview with his brother which he was forcing upon her. She told him that she would go, and Sir John, leaving her, went into the house well satisfied to do his business with the vicar.

And Vera went slowly up the lane alone towards the Hall. She did not know what she was going to say to Maurice; she hardly knew, indeed, what it was she had been commissioned to ask of him; nor in what words her request was to be made. She thought no longer of her wedding-day, nor of the lover who had just parted with her. Only before her eyes there came again the little wintry copse of birch-trees; the horses standing by, the bare fields stretching around, and back into her heart there flashed the memory of those quick, hot kisses pressed upon her outstretched hand; the one short—and alas! all too perilous—glimpse that had been revealed to her of the inner life and soul of the man whose lightest touch she had learnt that day to fear as she feared no other living thing.



CHAPTER XV.

VERA'S MESSAGE.

Alas! how easily things go wrong, A word too much, or a sigh too long; And there comes a mist and a driving rain, And life is never the same again.

The library at Kynaston was the room which Sir John had used as his only sitting-room since he had come down to stay in his own house. When his wedding with Miss Nevill had been definitely fixed, there had come down from town a whole army of decorators and painters and upholsterers, who had set to work to renovate and adorn the rest of the house for the advent of the bride, who was so soon to be brought home to it.

They had altered things in various ways, they had improved a few, and they had spoiled a good many more; they had, at all events, introduced a wholesome and thorough system of cleansing and cleaning throughout the house, that had been very welcome to the soul of Mrs. Eccles; but into the library they had not penetrated. The old bookshelves remained untouched; the old books, in their musty brown calf bindings, were undesecrated by profaning hands. All sorts of quaint chairs and bureaus, gathered together out of every other room in the house, had congregated here. The space over the mantelpiece was adorned by a splendid portrait by Vandyke, flanked irreverently on either side by a series of old sporting prints, representing the whole beginning, continuation, and end of a steeple-chase course, and which, it is melancholy to state, were far more highly appreciated by Sir John than the beautiful and valuable picture which they surrounded. Below these, and on the mantelpiece itself, were gathered together a heterogeneous collection of pipes, spurs, horse-shoes, bits, and other implements, which the superintending hands of any lady would have straightway relegated to the stables.

In this library Sir John and his brother fed, smoked, wrote and read, and lived, in fact, entirely in full and disorderly enjoyment of their bachelorhood and its privileges. The room, consequently, was in a condition of untidiness and confusion, which was the despair of Mrs. Eccles and the delight of the two men themselves, who had even forbidden the entrance of any housemaid into it upon pain of instant dismissal. Mrs. Eccles submitted herself with resignation to the inevitable, and comforted herself with the reflection that the time of unchecked masculine dominion was well-nigh over, and that the days were very near at hand when "Miss Vera" was coming to alter all this.

"Ah, well, it won't last long, poor gentleman!" the worthy lady said to herself, in allusion to Sir John's uninvaded sanctum; "let him enjoy his pigstye while he can. When his wife comes she will soon have the place swept clean out for him."

So the papers, and the books, and the pipes, and the tobacco-tins were left heaped up all over the tables and chairs, and the fox-terriers sat in high places on the sofa cushions; and the brothers smoked their pipes after their meals, emptied their ashes on to the tables, threw their empty soda-water bottles into a corner of the room, wore their slippers at all hours, and lapsed, in fact, into all those delightful methods of living at ease practised by the vicious nature inherent in man when he is unchecked by female influence; whilst Mrs. Eccles groaned in silence, but possessed her soul in patience by reason of that change which she knew to be coming over the internal economy of Kynaston Hall.

Maurice Kynaston reclines at ease in the most comfortable arm-chair in the room, his feet reposing upon a second chair; his pipe is in his mouth, and his hands in his trouser pockets; he wears a loose, gray shooting-jacket, and Sir John's favourite terrier, Vic, has curled herself into a little round white ball upon his outstretched legs. Maurice has just been reading his morning's correspondence, and a letter from Helen, announcing that her grandfather is ill and confined to his room by bronchitis, is still in his hand. He looks gloomily and abstractedly into the red logs of the wood fire. The door opens.

"Any orders for the stable, Captain?"

"None to-day, Mrs. Eccles."

"You are not going out hunting?"

"No, I am going to take a rest. By the way, Mrs. Eccles, I shall be leaving to-morrow, so you can see about packing my things."

"Dear me! sir, I hope we shall see you again, at the wedding."

"Very unlikely; I don't like weddings, Mrs. Eccles; the only one I ever mean to dance at is yours. When you get married, you let me know."

"Law! sir, how you do go on!" said the old lady, laughing; not ill-pleased at the imputation. "Dear me," she went on, looking round the room uneasily, "did I ever see such a mess in all my born days. Now Sir John is out, sir, I suppose you couldn't let me——"

"Certainly not—if you mean bring in a broom and a dust-pan! Just let me catch you at it, that's all!"

The housekeeper shook her head with a resigned sigh.

"Ah, well! it can't last long; when Miss Vera comes she'll turn the whole place inside-out, and all them nasty pipes, and dogs and things will be cleared away."

"Do you think so?" suddenly sitting upright in his chair. "Wait a bit, Mrs. Eccles; don't go yet. Do you think Miss Vera will have things her own way with my brother?"

"Oh! sir, what do you ask me for?" she answered, with discreet evasiveness. "Surely you must know more about Miss Vera than I can tell you."

Mrs. Eccles went away, and Maurice got up and leant against the mantelpiece looking down gloomingly, into the fire. Vic, dislodged from his knee, sat up beside him, resting her little white paws on the edge of the fender, warming her nose.

"What a fool I am!" said Maurice, aloud to himself. "I can't even hear her name mentioned by a servant without wanting to talk about her. Yes, it's clear he loves her—but does she love him? Will she be happy? Yes, of course, she will get her own way. Will that be enough for her? Ah!" turning suddenly round and taking half-a-dozen steps across the room. "It is high time I went. I am a coward and a traitor to linger on here; I will go. Why did I say to-morrow—why have I not settled to go this very day? If I were not so weak and so irresolute, I should be gone by this time. I ought never, knowing what I do know of myself—I ought never to have come back at all." He went back to the fire and sat down again, lifting the little dog back on to his knee. "I shall get over it, I suppose," he murmured. "Men don't die of this sort of thing; she will marry, and she will think me unkind because I shall never come near her; but even if she knew the truth, it would never make any difference to her; and by-and-by I too, I suppose, shall marry." The soliloquy died away into silence. Maurice stroked the dog and looked at the fire dreamily and somewhat drearily.

Some one tapped at the door.

"Come in! What is it, Mrs. Eccles?" he cried, rousing himself.

The door softly opened and there entered, not Mrs. Eccles, but Vera Nevill.

Captain Kynaston sprang hastily to his feet. "Oh, Vera! I beg your pardon—how do you do? I suppose you have come for John? You must have missed him; he started for the vicarage half-an-hour ago."

"No, I have seen him. I have come to see you, Maurice, if you don't mind." She spoke rather timidly, not looking at him.

"I am delighted, of course," he answered, a little constrainedly.

Vera stood up on the hearth divesting herself of her long fur cloak; she flung it over the back of a chair, and then took off her hat and gloves. Maurice was strangely unlike himself this morning, for he never offered to help her in these operations, he only stood leaning against the corner of the mantelpiece opposite her, looking at her.

Vera stooped down and stroked the little fox-terrier; when she had done so, she raised her head and met his eyes.

Did she see, ere he hastily averted them, all the hunger and all the longing that filled them as he watched her? He, in his turn, stooped and replenished the fire.

"John sent me to talk to you, Maurice," began Vera, hurriedly, like one repeating a lesson; "he tells me you will not be with us on the 27th; is that so?"

"I am sorry, but I am obliged to go away," he answered.

"John is dreadfully hurt, Maurice. I hope you will alter your mind."

"Is it John for whom you are speaking, or for yourself?" he asked, looking at her.

"For both of us. Of course it will be a great disappointment if you are not there. You are his only brother, and he will feel it deeply."

"And you; will you feel it?" he persisted. She coloured a little.

"Yes, I shall be very sorry," she answered, nervously. "I should not like John to be vexed on his wedding-day; he has been a kind brother to you, Maurice, and it seems hard that you cannot do this little thing to show your sense of it."

"Believe me, I show my gratitude to my brother just as well in staying away as in remaining," he answered, earnestly. "Do not urge me any further, Vera; I would do anything in the world to please John, but I cannot be present at your wedding."

There was a moment's silence; the fire flickered up merrily between them; a red-hot cinder fell out noisily from the grate; the clock ticked steadily on the chimney-piece; the little terrier sniffed at the edge of Vera's dress.

Suddenly there came into her heart a wild desire to know, to eat for once of that forbidden fruit of the tree of Eden, whence the flaming swords in vain beckoned her back; to eat, and afterwards, perchance, to perish of the poisonous food.

A wild conflict of thought thronged into her soul. Prudence, wisdom, her very heart itself counselled her to be still and to go. But something stronger than all else was within her too; and something that was new and strange, and perilously sweet to her; a something that won the day.

She turned to him, stretching out her hands; the warm glow of the fire lit up her lovely face and her eloquent pleading eyes, and flickered over the graceful and beautiful figure, whose perfect outlines haunted his fancy for ever.

"Stay, for my sake, because I ask you!" she cried, with a sudden passion; "or else tell me why you must go."

There came no answering flash into his eyes, only he lowered them beneath hers; he sat down suddenly, as though he was weary, on the chair whence he had risen at her entrance, so that she stood before him, looking down at him.

There was a certain repression in his face which made him look stern and cold, as one who struggles with a mortal temptation. He stooped over the little dog, and became seemingly engrossed in stroking it.

"I cannot stop," he said, in a cold, measured voice; "it is an impossibility. But, since you ask me, I will tell you why. It can make no possible difference to you to know; it may, indeed, excite your interest or your pity for a few moments whilst you listen to me; but when it is over and you go away you will forget it again. I do not ask you to remember it or me; it is, in fact, all I ask, that you should forget. This is what it is. Your wedding-day is very near; it is bringing you happiness and love. I can rejoice in your happiness. I am not so selfish as to lament it; but you will not wish me to be there to see it when I tell you that I have been fool enough to dare to love you myself. It is the folly of a madman, is it not? since I have never had the slightest hope or entertained the faintest wish to alter the conditions of your life; nor have I even asked myself what effect such a confession as this that you have wrung from me can have upon you. Whether it excites your pity or your contempt, or even your amusement, it cannot in any case make any difference to me. My folly, at all events, cannot hurt you or my brother; it can hurt no one but myself: it cannot even signify to you. It is only for my own sake that I am going, because one cannot bear more than a certain amount, can one? I thought I might have been strong enough, but I find that it would be too much; that is all. You will not ask me to stay any more, will you?"

Not once had he looked at her; not by a single sign or token had he betrayed the slightest emotion or agitation. His voice had been steady and unbroken; he spoke in a low and somewhat monotonous manner; it was as though he had been relating something that in no way concerned himself—some story that was of some other, and that other of no great interest either to him who told it or to her who listened to the tale. Any one suddenly coming into the room would have guessed him to be entirely engrossed in the contemplation of the little dog between his hands; that he was relating the story of his own heart would not have been imagined for an instant.

When he had done speaking there was an absolute silence in the room. What he had spoken seemed to admit of no answer of any sort or kind from his listener. He had asked for nothing; he had pleaded neither for her sympathy nor her forgiveness, far less for any definite expression of the effect of his words upon her. He had not, seemingly, cared to know how they affected her. He had simply told his own story—that was all; it concerned no one but himself. She might pity him, she might even be amused at him, as he had said: anyhow, it made no difference to him; he had chosen to present a picture of his inner life to her as a doctor might have described some complicated disease to a chance acquaintance—it was a physiological study, if she cared to look upon it as such; if not, it did not matter. There was no possible answer that she could make to him; no form of words by which she could even acknowledge that she had heard him speak.