"What an odd thing it is that you and that girl never can meet without having all sorts of private things to say to each other," she said, angrily, as soon as they were out of earshot.

"Private things! what can you possibly mean, Helen? Miss Nevill was asking me if I had heard of John's arrival."

"I wonder she has the face to mention John's name!"

"Why, pray?"

"After her disgraceful conduct to him."

"I think you know very little about Miss Nevill's conduct, Helen."

"No, I dare say not. And you have always known a great deal more about it than anybody else. That I have always understood, Maurice."

Maurice looked very black, but he was silent.

"I am very glad I told her about the boudoir," continued Helen, spitefully. "How mortified she must feel to think that it has all slipped through her fingers and into mine. I do hope she will come up to the house. I shall show her all over it; she will wish she had not been such a fool!"

Maurice was looking at his wife with a singular expression.

"I begin to think you have a very bad heart, Helen," he said, with a contempt in his voice that was very near akin to disgust.

She looked up, a little startled, and put her hand back, caressingly, under his arm.

"Oh, don't look at me like that, Maurice; I don't want to vex you. You know very well how much I love you—and—and"—looking up with a little smile into his face that was meant as a peace offering—"I suppose I am jealous!"

"Suppose you wait to be jealous until I give you cause to be so," answered her husband, gravely and coldly, but not altogether unkindly, for he meant to do his duty to her, God helping him, as far as he knew how.

But all the way home he walked silently by her side, and wondered whether the sacrifice he had made of his love to his duty had been, indeed, worth it.

It had been hard for him, this first meeting with Vera. He had felt it more than he had believed possible. Instinctively he had realized what she must have suffered; and that her sufferings were utterly beyond his power to console. It began to come into his mind that, meaning to deal rightly by Helen, he had dealt cruelly and badly by Vera. He had sacrificed the woman he loved to the woman he did not love.

Had it, indeed, been such a right and praiseworthy action on his part? Maurice lost himself in speculation as to what would have happened had he broken his faith to Helen, and allowed himself to follow the dictates of his heart rather than those of his conscience.

That was what Vera had done for his sake; but what he had been unable to do for hers.

There was a certain hardness about the man, a rigid sense of honour that was almost a fault; for, if it be a virtue to cleave to truth and good faith above everything, to swear to one's neighbour and disappoint him not—even though it be to one's own hindrance—it is certainly not a fine or noble thing to mistake tenderness for a weakness only fit to be crushed out of the soul with firm hands and an iron determination.

Guilty once of one irreparable action of weakness, Maurice had set himself determinedly ever after to undo the evil that he had done.

To be true to his brother, to keep his faith with Helen, these had been the only objects he had steadily kept in view: he had succeeded in his efforts, but had scarcely realized that, in doing so, he had not only wrecked his own life, but also that of the woman whom he had so infinitely wronged.

But when he saw her once again—when he held for an instant the cold hand within his own—when he marked, with a pang, the dark circles round the averted eyes that spoke so mutely and touchingly of sleepless vigils and of many tears—when he noted how the lovely sensitive lips trembled a little as she spoke her few common-place words to him—then Maurice began to understand what he had done to her; and, for the first time, something that was almost remorse, with regard to his own conduct towards her, came into his soul.

Such meditations were not, however, safe or profitable to indulge in for long. Maurice recalled his wandering thoughts with an effort, and with something of repentance for having given them place, turned his attention resolutely to his wife's chatter during the remainder of the walk home.

Meanwhile Vera and the vicar are walking back, side by side, to the vicarage.

"Something," says Eustace, with solemn displeasure, "something must really be done, and that soon, about Ishmael Spriggs; that man will drive me into my grave before my time! Anything more fearfully and awfully out of tune than the Te Deum I never heard in the whole course of my life. I can hear his voice shouting and bellowing above the whole of the rest of the choir; he leads all the others wrong. It is not a bit of use to tell me that he is the best behaved man in the parish; it is not a matter of conduct, as I told Mr. Dale; it is a matter of voice, and if the man can't be taught to sing in tune, out of the choir he shall go; it's a positive scandal to the Service. Marion says we shall turn him into an enemy if we don't let him sing, and that he will go to the dissenting chapel, and never come to church any more. Well, I can't help that; I must give him up to the dissenters. As to keeping him in the choir, it is out of the question after that Te Deum. I shall never forget it. It will give me a nightmare to-night, I am convinced. Wasn't it dreadful, Vera?"

"Yes, very likely, Eustace," answered Vera, at random. She has not heard one single word he has said.

Eustace Daintree looks round at her sharply. He sees that she is very white, and that there are tears upon her cheeks.

"Why, Vera!" he cries, standing still, you have not listened to a word I have been saying. "What is the matter, child? Why are you crying?"

They are in the vicarage garden now; among the beds of scarlet geraniums, and the tall hollyhocks, and the glaring red gladioli; a whole bank of greenery, rhododendrons and lauristinas, conceals them from the windows of the house; a garden bench sheltered beneath a nook of the laurel bushes is close by.

With a sudden gesture of utter misery Vera sinks down upon it, and bursts into a passion of tears.

"My dear child; my poor Vera! What is it? What has happened? What can be the reason of this?"

Mr. Daintree is infinitely distressed and puzzled; he bends over her, taking her hand between his own. There is something in this wild outburst of grief, from one habitually so calm and self-contained as Vera, that is an absolute shock to him. He had learnt to love her very dearly; he had thought he had understood all the workings of her candid maiden soul; he had fancied that the story of her broken engagement was no secret to him, that it was but the struggle of a conscientious nature after what was true and honest. It had seemed to him that there had been no mystery in her conduct, for he could appreciate all her motives. And surely, as she had done right, she must be now at peace. He had told himself that the pure instincts of a naturally stainless soul had triumphed in Vera over the carelessness and worldliness of her early training; and lo, here was the passionate weeping of a tempest-tossed woman, whose agony he could not fathom, and whose sorrows he knew not how to divine.

"Vera, will you not tell me?" he asked her, in his distress. "Will you not make a friend of me? My dear, forget that I am a clergyman; remember only that I am your brother, and that I shall know how to feel for you—for you, my dear sister."

But she could not tell him. There are some troubles that must be kept for ever buried within our own souls; to speak of some things is only to make them worse. Only she choked back her sobs, and lifted her face, white and tear-stained; there was a look of hunted despair in her eyes, that bewildered, and even half-terrified him.

"Tell me," she said, with a sort of anger, "tell me, you that are a clergyman—Do you think God has made us only to torment us? You have got a daughter, Eustace; pray God, night and morning, that she may have a hard heart, and that she may never have one gleam of womanly tenderness within her; for only so are women happy!"

He did not answer her wild words. Instinctively he felt that common-place speeches of rebuke or of consolation would be trivial and out of place before the great anguish of her heart. The man's soul was above the narrow limits of his training; he felt, dimly, that here was something with which it were best not to intermeddle, some trouble for which he could offer no consolation.

She rose and stood before him, holding his hands and gazing earnestly at his anxious face.

"It has come to this with me," she said, below her voice, "that there are times when there is but one good thing in all the world that I know any longer how to desire. God has so ordered my life that there is no road open for me that does not lead to sin or to misery. Surely, if He were merciful, He would take back the valueless gift."

"Vera! what do you mean?"

"I mean," she exclaimed, wearily, "that if I could die, I should be at peace."

She had walked slowly on; her voice, that had trembled at first with a passionate wildness, had sunk into the spiritless apathy of despair; her head was bent, her hands clasped before her; her dress trailed with a soft rustle across the grass, sweeping over a whole wilderness of white daisies, that bent their heads beneath its folds as she walked. A gleam of sunshine fell upon her hair, and a bird sang loud and shrill in the lime trees overhead.

Often and often, in the after days, Eustace Daintree thought of her thus, and remembered with a pang the sole sad gift that she had craved at Heaven's hands. Often and often the scene came back to him; the sunny garden, the scarlet geraniums flaring in the borders, the smooth green lawn, speckled with shadows from the trees, the wide open windows of his pleasant vicarage beyond, and the beautiful figure of the girl at his side, with her bent head, and her low broken voice—the girl who, at twenty-three, sighed to be rid of the life that had become too hard for her; that precious gift of life which, too often, at three-score years and ten, is but hardly resigned!

"If I could die, I should be at peace," she had said. And she was only twenty-three!

Eustace Daintree never forgot it.



CHAPTER XXXI.

AN EVENTFUL DRIVE.

Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.

Shakespeare, "Henry IV."

I imagine that the most fretting and wearing of all the pains and penalties which it is the lot of humanity to undergo in this troublesome and naughty world are those which, by our own folly, our own shortsightedness, and our own imprudence, we have brought upon ourselves.

There is a degree of irritation in such troubles which adds a whole armoury of small knife-cuts to intensify the agony of the evil from which we suffer. It is more dreadful to be moaning over our own mistakes than over the inscrutable perversity of an unpropitious fate.

Somebody once has said that most men grieve over the smallest mistake more bitterly than over the greatest sin. This is decidedly a perversion of the moral nature; nevertheless, there is a good deal of truth in it.

"If only I had not been such a fool! If I could only have foreseen such and such results?"

These are more generally the burden of our bitterest self-reproaches.

And this was what Miss Miller was perpetually repeating to herself during the months of August and September. Beatrice, in these days, was a thoroughly miserable young woman. She was more utterly separated than ever from her lover, and that entirely by her own fault. That foolish escapade of hers to the Temple had been fatal to her; her father, who had been inclined to become her lover's friend, had now peremptorily forbidden her ever to mention his name again, and her own lips were sealed as to the unlucky incident in which she had played so prominent a part.

Beatrice knew that, in going alone and on the sly to her lover's chambers, she had undoubtedly compromised her own good name. To confess to her own folly and imprudence was almost beyond her power, and to clear her lover's name at the expense of her own was what she felt he himself would scarcely thank her for.

Mr. Miller had, of course, said something of what he had discovered at Mr. Pryme's chambers to the wife of his bosom.

"The young man is not fit for her," he had said; "his private life will not bear investigation. You must tell Beatrice to put him out of her head."

Mrs. Miller had, of course, been virtuously indignant over Mr. Pryme's offences, but she had also been triumphantly elated over her own sagacity.

"Did I not tell you he was not a proper husband for her? Another time, Andrew, you will, I hope, allow that I am the best judge in these matters."

"My dear, you are always right," was the meekly conjugal reply, and then Mrs. Miller went her way and talked to Beatrice for half-an-hour over the sinful lives which are frequently led by young men of no family residing in the Temple, and the shame and disgrace which must necessarily accrue to any well-brought-up young woman who, in an ill-advised moment, shall allow her affections to rove towards such unsanctified Pariahs of society.

And Beatrice, listening to her blushingly, knew what she meant, and yet had no words wherewith to clear her lover's character from the defamatory evidence furnished against him by her own sunshade and gloves.

"Your father has seen with his own eyes, my dear, that which makes it impossible for us ever to consent to your marrying that young man."

How was Beatrice to say to her mother, "It was I—your daughter—who was there, shut up in Mr. Pryme's bedroom." She could not speak the words.

The sunshine twinkled in Shadonake's many windows, and flooded its velvet lawns. Below, the Bath slumbered darkly in the shadow of its ancient steps and its encircling belt of fir-trees; and beyond the flower-gardens, half-an-acre of pineries, and vineries, and orchard-houses glittered in a dazzling parterre of glass-roofs and white paint. Something new—it was an orchard-house—was being built. There was always something new, and Mr. Miller was superintending the building of it. He stood over the workmen who were laying the foundation, watching every brick that was laid down with delighted and absorbed interest. He held a trowel himself, and had tucked up his shirt cuffs in order to lend a helping hand in the operations. There was nothing that Andrew Miller loved so well. Fate and his Caroline had made him a member of Parliament, and had placed him in the position of a gentleman, but nature had undoubtedly intended him for a bricklayer.

Beatrice came out of the drawing-room windows across the lawn to him. She was in her habit, and stood tapping her little boot with her riding whip for some minutes by her father's side.

"I am going to see uncle Tom, papa," she said; "have you any message?"

"Going to Lutterton? Ah, that's right; the ride will do you good, my dear. No; I have no message."

Beatrice went back into the house; her little bay mare stood at the door. She met her mother in the hall.

"I am going to see uncle Tom," she said, to her also.

Mrs. Miller always encouraged her children in their attentions to her brother. He was rich, and he was a bachelor; he must have saved a good deal one way or another. Who could tell how it would be left? And then Beatrice was undoubtedly his favourite. She nodded pleasantly to her daughter.

"Tell uncle Tom to come over to lunch on Sunday, and, of course, he must come here early for Guy's birthday next week," for there were to be great doings on Guy's birthday. "Ride slowly, Beatrice, or you will get so hot."

Lutterton Castle was a good six miles off. The house stood well, and even imposingly, on a high wooded knoll that overlooked the undulating park, and the open valley at its feet. It was a great rambling building with a central tower and four smaller ones at each corner. When Mr. Esterworth was at home, which was almost always, it was his vanity to keep a red flag flying from the centre tower as though he had been royalty. All the reception-rooms and more than half the bedrooms were permanently shuttered up, and there was a portly and very dignified housekeeper, who rattled her keys at her chatelaine, and went through all the unused apartments daily, followed by a meek phalanx of housemaids, to see that all the rooms were well-aired and well kept in order, so that at any minute they might be fit for occupation. Five or six times during the hunting season the large rooms were all thrown open, and there was a hunt breakfast held in the principal dining-hall; but, with that exception, Mr. Esterworth rarely entertained at all.

He occupied three rooms opening out of each other in the small western tower. They consisted of a bedroom, a dressing-room, and a small and rather inconvenient study, where the huntsman, whips, and other official personages connected with the hunt were received at all hours of the day and night. The room was consequently pervaded by a faint odour of stables and tobacco; there were usually three or four dogs upon the hearthrug, and it was a rare thing to find Mr. Esterworth in it unaccompanied by some personage in breeches and gaiters, wearing a blue spotted neckcloth and a horseshoe pin.

Such an individual was receiving an audience at the moment of Miss Miller's arrival, and shuffled awkwardly and hurriedly out of the room by one door as she entered it by another.

"All right, William," calls the M.F.H. after his departing satellite. "Look in again to-night. I shall have her fired, I think, and throw her up till December. Hallo! Pussy, how are you?"

All the four dogs rose from the hearthrug and wagged their tails solemnly in respectful greeting to her. Beatrice had a pat and a word for each, and a kiss for her uncle, before she sat down on the chair he pulled forward for her.

"What brings you, Pussy? What are you riding?"

"Kitty; they have taken her round to the stable. I thought I'd have lunch with you, uncle Tom."

"Very well; you won't get anything but a mutton-chop."

"I don't ask for anything better."

Beatrice felt that her heart was beating. She had taken a desperate resolution during her six miles' solitary ride; she had determined to take her uncle into her confidence. He had always been indulgent and kind to her; perhaps he would not view her sin in so heinous a light as her mother would; and who knows? perhaps he would help her.

"Uncle Tom, I'm in dreadful trouble, and I want to tell you about it," she began, trembling.

"I'm very sorry, Pussy; what is it?"

"I did a shocking, dreadful thing when I was in London. I went to a young man's rooms, and got shut up in his bedroom."

"The deuce you did!" says Tom Esterworth, opening his eyes.

"Yes," continues Beatrice, desperately, and crimson with shame and confusion; "and the worse of it is, that I left my sunshade in the sitting-room; and papa came in, and, of course, he did not know it was mine, and—and—he thinks—he thinks——"

"That's the best joke I ever heard in my life!" cries Mr. Esterworth, laying his head back in the chair and laughing aloud.

"Uncle Tom!" Beatrice could hardly believe her ears.

"Good lord, what a situation for a comedy!" cries her uncle, between the outbursts of his mirth. "Upon my word, Pussy, you are a good plucked one; there isn't much Miller blood in your veins. You are an Esterworth all over."

"But, uncle, indeed, it's no laughing matter."

"Well, I don't see much to cry at if your father did not find you out; the young man is never likely to talk."

"Oh, but uncle Tom; papa and mamma think so badly of him, and I can't tell them that I was there; and they will never let me marry him."

"Oh! so you are in love, Pussy?"

"Yes, uncle."

Tom Esterworth smote his hand against his corduroy thigh.

"What a mistake!" he exclaimed; "a girl who can go across country as you do—what on earth do you want to be married for? Is it Mr. Pryme, Pussy?"

Beatrice nodded.

"And he can't go a yard," said her uncle, sorrowfully and reproachfully.

"Oh, I think he goes very well, uncle; his seat is capital; it is only his hands that are a bit heavy; but then he has had very little practice."

"Tut—tut, don't talk to me, child; he is no horseman. He may be a good young man in his way, but what can have made you take a fancy to a fellow who can't ride is a mystery to me! Now tell me the whole story, Pussy."

And then Beatrice made a clean breast of it.

"I will see if I can help you," said her uncle, seriously, when she had finished her story; "but I can't think how you can have set your heart upon a fellow who can't ride!"

This was evidently a far more fatal error in Tom Esterworth's eyes than the other matter of her being shut up in Mr. Pryme's rooms. Beatrice began to think she had not done anything so very terrible after all.

"I must turn it over in my mind. Now come and eat your mutton-chop, Pussy, and when we have finished our lunch, you shall come out with me in the dog-cart. I am going to put Clochette into harness for the first time."

"Will she go quietly?"

"Like a lamb, I should say. You won't be nervous?"

"Dear, no! I am never nervous; I shall enjoy the fun."

The mutton-chop over, Clochette and the dog-cart came round to the door. She was a raking, bright chestnut mare, with a coat like satin. Even as she stood at the door she chafed somewhat at her new position between the shafts. This, however, was no more than might have been expected. Mr. Esterworth declining the company of the groom, helped his niece up and took the reins.

"We will go round by Tripton and back by the common," he said, "and talk this matter well over, Pussy; we shall enjoy ourselves much better with nobody in the back seat. A man sits there with his arms crossed and his face like a blank sheet of paper, but one never knows how much they hear, and their ears are always cocked, like a terrier's on the scent of a rat."

Clochette went off from the door with a bound, but soon settled down into a good swinging trot. She kept turning her head nervously from side to side, and there was evidently a little uncertainty in her mind as to whether she should keep to the drive, or deviate on to the grass by the side of it; but, upon the whole, she behaved fairly well, and turned out of the lodge gates into the high road with perfect docility and good breeding.

There was a whole avalanche of dogs in attendance. A collie, rushing on tumultuously in front; a "plum-pudding" dog between the wheels; a couple of fox-terriers snapping joyfully at each other in the rear; and there was also an ill-conditioned animal—half lurcher, half terrier—who killed cats, and murdered fowls, and worried sheep, and flew at the heels of unwary strangers; and was given, in short, to every sort of canine iniquity, and who possessed but one redeeming feature in his character—that of blind adoration to his master.

This animal, who followed uncle Tom whithersoever he went, came skurrying out of the stables as the dog-cart drove off, and joined in the general scamper.

Perhaps the dogs may have been too much for Clochette's nerves, or perhaps the effort of behaving well as far as the park gates with those horrible wheels rattling behind her was as much as any hunter born and bred could be expected to do, or perhaps uncle Tom was too free with that whip with which he caressed her shining flanks; but be that as it may, no sooner was Clochette's head well turned along the straight high-road with its high-tangled hedge-rows on either side than she began to show symptoms of behaving very badly indeed. She bucked and pranced, and stood on her hind legs; she whipped suddenly round, pirouetted upon her own axis with the dexterity of a circus performer, and demonstrated very plainly that, if she only dared, she would like to take to her heels in the reverse direction to that which her driver desired her to go.

All this was, however, equally delightful and exciting both to Tom Esterworth and his niece. There was no apprehension in Beatrice's mind, for her uncle drove as well as he rode, and she felt perfectly secure in the strong, supple hands that guided Clochette's erratic movements.

"There is not a kick in her," uncle Tom had said, as they started, and he repeated the observation now; and kicking being out of the category of Clochette's iniquities, there was nothing else to fear.

No sooner, however, had the words left his lips than a turn of the road brought them within sight of a great volume of black smoke rushing slowly but surely towards them; whilst a horrible roaring and howling, as of an antediluvian monster in its wrath, filled the silence of the summer afternoon with a hideous and unholy confusion.

Talk about there being no wild animals in our peaceful land! What could have been the Megatherium and the Ichthyosaurus, and all the fire-spitting dragons of antiquity compared to the traction engines of the nineteenth century?

"It's a steam plough!" ejaculated Beatrice, below her breath.

"D——n!" cried her uncle, not at all below his breath.

As to Clochette, she stood for an instant stock still, with her ears pricked and her head well up, facing the horrors of her situation; next she gave an angry snort as though to say, "No! this is too much!" Then she turned short round and began a series of peculiar bounds and plunges, accompanied by an ominous uplifting of her hind quarters, which had plainly but one object in view—the correct conjugation of the verb active "to kick."

There was a crunching of woodwork, a cracking as of iron hoofs against the splash-board. Beatrice instinctively put up her hands before her face, but she did not utter a sound.

"Do you think you could get down, Pussy, and go to her head?"

"Shall I hold the reins, uncle?"

"No, you couldn't hold her; she'll be over the hedge if I let go of her. Get down if you can."

It was not easy. Beatrice was in her habit, and to jump from the vacillating height of a dog-cart to the earth is no easy matter even to a man unencumbered with petticoats.

"Try and get over the back," said her uncle, who was in momentary terror lest the mare's heels should be dashed into her face. And Beatrice, with that finest trait of a woman's courage in danger, which consists in doing exactly what she is told, began to scramble over the back of her seat.

The situation was critical in the extreme; the traction engine came on apace, the man with the red flag having paused at a public-house round the corner, was only now running back into his place. Uncle Tom shouted vainly to him; his voice was drowned in the deafening roar of the advancing monster.

But already help was at hand, unheard and unperceived by either uncle or niece; a horseman had come rapidly trotting up the road behind them. To spring from his horse, who was apparently accustomed to traction engines, and stood quietly by, to rush to the plunging, struggling mare, and to seize her by the head was the work of a moment.

"All right, Mr. Esterworth," shouted the new comer. "I can hold her if you can get down; we can lead her into the field; there is a gate ten yards back."

Uncle Tom threw the reins to his niece and slipped to the ground; between them the two men contrived to quiet the terrified Clochette, and to lead her towards the gate.

In another three minutes they were all safely within the shelter of the hedge. The traction engine passed, snorting forth fire and smoke, on its devastating way; and Clochette stood by, panting, trembling, and covered with foam. Beatrice, safely on the ground, was examining ruefully the amount of damage done to the dog-cart, and Mr. Esterworth was shaking hands with his deliverer.

It was Herbert Pryme.

"That's the last time I ever take a lady out, driving without a man-servant behind me," quoth the M.F.H. "What we should have done without your timely assistance, sir, I really cannot say; in another minute she would have kicked the trap into a thousand bits. You have saved my niece's life, Mr. Pryme."

"Indeed, I did very little," said Herbert, modestly, glancing at Beatrice who was trembling and rather pale; but, perhaps, that was only from her recent fright. She had not spoken to him, only she had given him one bewildered glance, and then had looked hastily away.

"You have saved her life," repeated Mr. Esterworth, with decision. "I hope you do not mean to contradict my words, sir? You have saved Beatrice's life, sir, and it's the most providential thing in this world for you, as Clochette very nearly kicked her to pieces under your nose. I shall tell Mr. and Mrs. Miller that they are indebted to you for their daughter's life. Young people, I am going to lead this brute of a mare home, and, if you like to walk on together to Lutterton in front of me, why you may."

That was how Herbert Pryme came to be once more re-instated in the good graces of his lady love's father and mother.

Mr. Esterworth contrived to give them so terrifying an account of the danger in which Beatrice had been placed, and so graphic and highly-coloured a description of Herbert Pryme's pluck and sagacity in rushing to her rescue, that Mr. and Mrs. Miller had no other course left than to shake hands gratefully with the man to whom, as uncle Tom said, they literally owed her life.

"I could not have saved her without him," said uncle Tom, drawing slightly upon his imagination; "in another minute she must have been kicked to pieces, or dashed violently to the earth among the broken fragments of the cart, and"—with a happy after-thought—"the steam plough would have crushed its way over her mangled body."

Mrs. Miller shuddered.

"Oh, Tom, I never can trust her to you again!"

"No, my dear; but I think you must trust her to Mr. Pryme; that young man deserves to be rewarded."

"But, my dear Tom, there are things against his character. I assure you, Andrew himself saw——"

"Pooh! pooh!" interrupted Mr. Esterworth. "Young men who sow their wild oats early are all the better husbands for it afterwards. I will give him a talking to if you like, but you and your husband must let Pussy have her own way; it is the least you can do after his conduct; and don't worry about his being poor, Caroline; I have nothing better to do with my money, and I shall take care that Pussy is none the worse off for my death. She is worth all the rest of your children put together—an Esterworth, every inch of her!"

That, it is to be imagined, was the clenching argument in Mrs. Miller's mind. Uncle Tom's money was not to be despised, and, by reason of his money, uncle Tom's wishes were bound to carry some weight with them.

Mr. Pryme, who had been staying for a few days at Kynaston, where, however, the cordial welcome given to him by its master was, in a great measure, neutralised by the coldness and incivility of its mistress, removed himself and his portmanteau, by uncle Tom's invitation, to Lutterton, and his engagement to Miss Miller became a recognised fact.

"All the same, it is a very bad match for her," said Mrs. Miller, in confidence, to her husband.

"And I should very much like to know who that sunshade belonged to," added the M.P. for Meadowshire, severely.

"I think, my dear, we shall have to overlook that part of the business, for, as Tom will leave them his money, why——"

"Yes, yes, I quite understand; we must hope the young man has had a good lesson. Let bygones be bygones, certainly," and Mr. Miller took a pinch of snuff reflectively, and wondered what Tom Esterworth would "cut up for."

"But I am determined," said Mrs. Miller, ere she closed the discussion, "I am determined that I will do better for Geraldine."

After all, the mother had a second string to her bow, so the edict went forth that Beatrice was to be allowed to be happy in her own way, and the shadow of that fatal sunshade was no longer to be suffered to blacken the moral horizon of her father's soul.



CHAPTER XXXII.

BY THE VICARAGE GATE.

Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free, (Time swift to fasten, and swift to sever Hand from hand....) I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been. And never (Though the gods and the years relent) shall be.

Swinburne.

The peacocks had it all to themselves on the terrace walk at Kynaston. They strutted up and down, craning and bridling their bright-hued necks with a proud consciousness of absolute proprietorship in the place, and their long tails trailed across the gravel behind them with the soft rustle of a woman's garments. Now and then their sad, shrill cries echoed weirdly through the deserted gardens.

There was no one to see them—the gardeners had all gone home—and no one was moving from the house. Only one small boy, with a rough head and a red face, stood below the stone balustrade, half-hidden among the hollyhocks and the roses, looking wistfully up at the windows of the house.

"What am I to do with it?" said Tommy Daintree, half-aloud to himself, and looked sorely perplexed and bewildered.

Tommy had a commission to fulfil, a commission from Vera. He carried a little note in his hands, and he had promised Vera faithfully that he would wait near the house till he saw Captain Kynaston come in from his day's shooting, and give him the note into his own hands.

"You quite understand, Tommy; no one else."

"Yes, auntie, I quite understand."

And Tommy had been waiting there an hour, but still there was no sign of Captain Kynaston's return; he was getting very tired and very hungry by this time, for he had had no tea. He had heard the dressing-bell ring long ago in the house—it must be close upon their dinner hour. Tommy could not guess that, by an unaccustomed chance, the master of the house had gone in by the back-door to-day, and that he had been in some time.

Presently some one pushed aside the long muslin curtains, and came stepping out of the long French window on to the terrace. It was Helen.

She was dressed for dinner; she wore a pale blue dress, cut open at the neck, a string of pearls and a jewelled locket hung at her throat; she turned round, half laughing, to some one who was following her.

"You will see all the county magnates at Shadonake to-morrow. You will have quite enough of them, I promise you; they are neither lively nor entertaining."

A young man, also in evening dress, had followed her out on to the terrace; it was Denis Wilde; he had arrived from town by the afternoon train. Why he should have thrown over several very good invitations to country houses in Norfolk and Suffolk, where there were large and cheerful parties gathered together, and partridge shooting to make a man dream of, in order to come down to the poor sport of Kynaston and the insipid society of a newly married couple, with whom he was not on very intimate terms, is a problem which Mr. Wilde alone could have satisfactorily solved. Being here, he was naturally disposed to make himself extremely agreeable to his hostess.

"You can't think how anxious I am to inspect the elite of Meadowshire!" he said, laughing. "My life is an incomplete thing without a sight of it."

"You will witness the last token of mental aberration in a decently-brought up young woman in the person of Beatrice Miller. You know her. Well, she has actually engaged herself to a barrister whom nobody knows anything about, and who—bien entendu—has no briefs—they never have any. He was staying here for a couple of days; a slow, heavy young man, who quoted Blackstone. Maurice took a fancy to him abroad; however, he was clever enough to save Beatrice's life by stopping a run-away horse. Some people say the accident was the invention of the lovers' own imaginations; however, the parents believed in it, and it turned the scales in his favour; but he has taken himself off, I am thankful to say, and is staying at Lutterton with her uncle. Beatrice might have married well, but girls are such fools. Hallo, Topsy, what are you barking at?"

Mrs. Kynaston's pug had come tearing out of the house with a whole chorus of noisy yappings. The peacocks, deeply wounded in their tenderest feelings, instantly took wing, and went sailing away majestically over the crimson and gold parterre of flowers below.

"What can possess her to bark at the peacocks?" said Helen. "Be quiet, Topsy."

But Topsy refused to be tranquillized.

"She is barking at something below the terrace; perhaps there is a cat there," said Denis.

"If so, it would be Dutch courage, indeed," answered Helen, laughing. They went to the edge of the stone parapet and looked over; there stood Tommy Daintree below them, among the hollyhocks.

"Why, little boy, who are you, and what do you want? Why, are you not Mr. Daintree's little boy?"

"Yes."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"I want to give a note to Captain Kynaston," said Tommy, crimson with confusion. "Is he ever coming in?"

"He is in now; give me the note."

"I was to give it to himself, to nobody else."

"Who told you?"

"Aunt Vera."

"Oh!" There was a whole volume of meaning in the simple exclamation. Mrs. Kynaston held out her hand. "You can give it to me, I am Captain Kynaston's wife, you know. Give it to me, Tommy. Your name is Tommy, isn't it? Yes, I thought so. Mr. Wilde, will you be so kind as to fetch Tommy a peach off the dinner-table? Give the note to me, my dear, and you can tell your aunt that it shall be given to Captain Kynaston directly."

When Denis returned from his mission to the dining-room he only found Tommy waiting for his peach upon the terrace steps. Mrs. Kynaston had gone back into the house.

Tommy went off devouring his prey with, it must be confessed, rather a guilty conscience over it. Somehow or other, he felt that he had failed in the trust his aunt had placed in him; but then, Mrs. Kynaston had been very kind and very peremptory; she had almost taken the letter out of his hand, and she had smiled and looked quite like a fairy princess out of one of Minnie's story-books in her pretty blue silk dress and shining locket—and then, peaches were so very nice!

What happened to Denis Wilde after the small boy's departure was this. He sauntered back to the drawing-room windows and looked in; no one was there. He then wandered further down the terrace till he came opposite the window of the boudoir—Mrs. Kynaston's own boudoir—which Sir John's loving hands had once lined with blue and silver for his Vera. Here he caught sight of Mrs. Kynaston's fair head and slender figure. Her back was turned to him; he was on the point of calling out to her, when suddenly the words upon his lips were arrested by something which he saw her doing. Instead of speaking, he simply stood still and stared at her.

Mrs. Kynaston, unconscious of observation, held the note which Tommy had just given her over the steam of a small jug of hot water, which she had hastily ordered her maid to bring to her. In less than a minute the envelope unfastened of itself. Helen then deliberately took out the note and read it.

What she read was this:—

"Dear Captain Kynaston,—I have something that I have promised to give to you when you are alone. Would you mind coming round to the vicarage after dinner to-night, at nine o'clock? You will find me at the gate.—Sincerely yours,

"Vera Nevill."

Then Helen lit a candle, and fastened the letter up again with sealing-wax.

And Denis Wilde crept away from the window on tip-toe with a sense of shocked horror upon him such as he never remembered having experienced in his life before.

All at once his pretty, pleasant hostess, with whom he had been glad enough to banter, and with whom even he had been ready to enter upon a mild and innocent flirtation, became horrible and hateful to him; and there came into his mind, like an inspiration, the knowledge of her enmity to Vera; for it was Vera's note that she had opened and read. Then his instincts were straightway all awake with the acuteness of a danger, to something—he knew not what—that threatened the woman he loved.

"Thank God, I am here," he said to himself. "That woman is her foe, and she will be dangerous to her. I would not have come to her house had I known it; but now I am here, I will stay, for it is certain that she will need a friend."

At dinner-time the note lay by Maurice's side on the table. Whilst the soup was being helped he took it up and opened it. He little knew how narrowly both his wife and his guest watched him as he read it.

But his face was inscrutable. Only he talked a little more, and seemed, perhaps, in better spirits than usual; but that is what a stranger could not have noticed, although it is possible that Helen may have done so.

"By the vicarage gate," she had said, and it was there that he found her. Behind her lay the dark and silent garden, beyond it the house, with its wide-open drawing-room windows, and the stream of yellow light from the lamp within, lying in a golden streak across the lawn. She leant over the gate; an archway of greenery, dark in the night's dim light, was above her head, and clusters of pale, creamy roses hung down about her on every side.

It was that sort of owl's light that has no distinctness in it, and yet is far removed from darkness. Vera's perfect figure, clad in some white, clinging garment that fell about her in thick, heavy folds, stood out with a statue-like clearness against the dark shrubs behind her. She seemed like some shadowy queen of the night. Out of the dimness, the clear oval of her perfect face shone pale as the waning moon far away behind the church tower, whilst the dusky veil of her dark hair lost itself vaguely in the shadows, and melted away into the background. A poet might have hymned her thus, but no painter could have painted her.

And it was thus that he found her. For the first time for many weary weeks and months he was alone with her; for the first time he could speak to her freely and from his heart. He knew not what it was that had made her send for him, or why it was that he had come. He did not remember her note, or that she had said that she had something for him. All he knew was, that she had sent for him, and that he was with her.

There was the gate between them, but her white soft hands were clasped loosely together over the top of it. He took them feverishly between his own.

"I am late—you have waited for me, dear? Oh, Vera, how glad I am to be with you!"

There was a dangerous tenderness in his voice that frightened her. She tried to draw away her hands.

"I had something for you, or I should not have sent—please, Captain Kynaston—Maurice—please let my hands go."

He was alone under the star-flecked heavens with the woman he loved, there was all the witchery of the pale moonlight about her, all the sweet perfumes of the summer night to intensify the fascination of her presence. There was a nameless glamour in the luminous dimness—a subtle seduction to the senses in the silence and the solitude; a bird chirruped once among the tangled roses overhead, and a soft, sighing breeze fluttered for one instant amid its long, trailing branches. And then, God knows how it came to pass, or what madness possessed the man; but suddenly there was no longer any faith, or honour, or truth for him—nothing on the face of the whole earth but Vera.

He caught her passionately in his arms, and showered upon her lips the maddest, wildest kisses that man ever gave to woman.

For one instant she lay still upon his heart; all the fury of her misery was at rest—all the storm of her sorrow was at peace—for one instant of time she tasted of life's sublimest joy ere the waters of blackness and despair closed in once more over her soul. For one instant only—then she remembered, and withdrew herself shudderingly from his grasp.

"For God's sake, have pity upon me, Maurice!" she wailed. It was the cry of a broken heart that appealed to his manhood and his honour more surely and more directly than a torrent of reproach or a storm of indignation.

"Forgive me," he murmured, humbly; "I am a brute to you. I had forgotten myself. I ought to have spared you, sweet. See, I have let you go; I will not touch you again; but it was hard to see you alone, to be near you, and yet to remember how we are parted. Vera, I have ruined your life; it is wonderful that you do not hate me."

"A true woman never hates the man who has been hard on her," she answered, smiling sadly.

"If it is any comfort to you to know it, I too am wretched; now it is too late: I know that my life is spoilt also."

"No; why should that comfort me?" she said, wearily. She leant half back against the gate—if he could have seen her well in the uncertain light, he would have been shocked at the worn and haggard face of his beautiful Vera.

Presently she spoke again.

"I am sorry that I asked you to come—it was not wise, was it, Maurice? How long must you stop at Kynaston? Can you not go away? We are neither of us strong enough to bear this—I, I cannot go—but you, must you be always here?"

"Before God," he answered, earnestly, "I swear to you that I will go away if it is in my power to go."

"Thank you." Then, with an effort, she roused herself to speak to him: "But that is not what I wanted to say; let me tell you why I sent for you. I made a promise, a wretched, stupid thing, to a tiresome little man I met in London—a Monsieur D'Arblet, a Frenchman; do you know him?"

"D'Arblet! I never heard the name in my life that I know of."

"Really, that seems odd, for I have a little parcel from him to you, and, strangely enough, he made me promise on my word of honour to give it to you when no one was near. I did not know how to keep my promise, for, though we may sometimes meet in public, we are not often likely to meet alone. I have it here; let me give it to you and have done with the thing; it has been on my mind."

She drew a small packet from her pocket, and was about to give it to him, when suddenly his ear caught the sound of an approaching footstep; he looked nervously round, then he put forth his hand quickly and stopped her.

"Hush, give me nothing now!" he said, in a low, hurried voice. "To-morrow we shall meet at Shadonake; if you will go near the Bath some time during the day after lunch is over, I will join you there, and you can give it to me; it can be of no possible importance; go in now quickly; good-night. It is my wife."

She turned and fled swiftly back to the house through the darkness, and Maurice was left face to face with Helen.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

DENIS WILDE'S LOVE.

A mighty pain to love it is, And 'tis a pain that love to miss; But, of all pains, the greatest pain Is to love, but love in vain.

Cowley.

He had not been mistaken. It was Helen who had crept out after him in the darkness, and whose slight figure, in her pale blue dress, stood close by him in an angle of the road.

How long she had stood there and what she had heard he did not know. He expected a torrent of abuse and a storm of reproaches from her, but she refrained from either. She passed her arm within his, and walked beside him for several minutes in silence. Maurice, who felt rather guilty, was weak enough to say, hesitatingly,

"The night was so fine, I strolled out to smoke——"

"Qui s'excuse s'accuse," quoted Helen; "only you are not smoking, Maurice!"

"My cigar has gone out; I—I met Miss Nevill at the gate of the vicarage."

"So I saw," rather significantly.

"I stopped to have a little talk to her. There is no harm, I suppose, in that!" he added, irritably.

Helen laughed shortly and harshly.

"Harm! oh dear, no; whoever said there was? By the way, is not this freak of yours of going out into the roads to smoke, as you say, alone, rather a slight on your guest? Here is Mr. Wilde; how very amusing! we all seem to be drawn out towards the vicarage to-night."

Denis Wilde, in fact, had followed in the wake of his hostess, and they met him now by the lodge gates.

"How very strange!" called out Helen to him, in her scornful, bantering voice; "how strange that we should all have gone out for solitary rambles, and all meet in the same place; and there was Miss Nevill out in the vicarage garden, also on a solitary ramble."

"Is Miss Nevill there? I think I will go on and call upon her," said Denis.

"You too, Mr. Wilde!" cried Helen. "Have you fallen a victim to the beauty? We heard enough of her in town; she turned all the men's heads; even married men are not safe from her snares, and yet it is singular that none of her admirers care to marry her; there are some women whom all men make love to, but whom none care to make wives of!"

And Maurice was a coward, and spoke no word in her defence; he did not dare; but young Denis Wilde drew himself up proudly.

"Mrs. Kynaston," he said, sternly, "I must ask you not to speak slightingly of Miss Nevill."

"Good gracious, why not? I suppose we are all free to use our tongues and our eyes in this world! Why should you become the woman's champion?"

"Because," answered Denis, gravely, "I hope to make her my wife."

Maurice was man enough to hold out his hand to him in the darkness.

"I am glad of it," he said, rather hoarsely; "make her happy, Denis, if you can."

"Thanks. I shall go on to see her now."

Helen murmured an unintelligible apology, and Denis Wilde passed onwards towards the vicarage.

He had taken her good name into his keeping, he had shielded her from that other woman's slandering tongue; but he had done so in his despair. He had spoken no lie in saying that he hoped to make her his wife; but it was no doubt a fact that Helen and her husband would now believe him to be engaged to her. Would Vera be induced to verify his words, and to place herself and her life beneath the shelter of his love, or would she only be angry with him for venturing to presume upon his hopes? Denis could not tell.

Ten minutes later he stood alone with her in the vicarage dining-room; he had sent in his card with a pencilled line upon it to ask for a few minutes' conversation with her.

Vera had desired that her visitor might be shown into the dining-room. Old Mrs. Daintree had been amazed and scandalized, and even Marion had opened her eyes at so unusual a proceeding; but the vicar was out by a sick bedside in the village, and no one else ever controlled Vera's actions.

Nevertheless, she herself looked somewhat surprised at so late a visit from him. And then, somehow or other, Denis made it plain to her how it was he had come, and what he had said of her. Her name, he told her, had been lightly spoken of; to have defended it without authority would have been to do her more harm than good; to take it under his lawful protection had been instinctively suggested to him by his longing to shield her. Would she forgive him?

"It was Mrs. Kynaston who spoke evil things of me," said Vera, wearily. She was very tired, she hardly understood, she scarcely cared about what he was saying to her; it mattered very little what was said to her. There was that other scene under the shadow of the roses of the gateway so vividly before her; the memory of Maurice's passionate kisses upon her lips, the sound of his beloved voice in her ears. What did anything else signify?

And meanwhile Denis Wilde was pouring out his whole soul to her.

"My darling, give me the right to defend you now and always," he pleaded; "do not refuse me the happiness of protecting your dear name from such women. I know you don't love me, dear, not as I love you, but I will not mind that; I will ask you for nothing that you will not give me freely; only try me—I think I could make you happy, love. At any rate, you shall have anything that tenderness and devotion can give you to bring peace into your life. Vera, darling, answer me."

"Oh, I am very tired," was all she said, moaningly and wearily, passing her hand across her aching brow like a worn-out child.

It was life or death to him. To her it was such a little matter! What were all his words and his prayers beside that heartache that was driving her into her grave! He could do her no good. Why could he not leave her in peace?

And yet, at length, something of the fervour and the passion of his love struck upon her soul and arrested her attention. There is something so touching and so pitiful in that first boy-love that asks for nothing in return, craves for no other reward than to be suffered to exist; that amongst all the selfish and half-hearted passions of older and wiser men, it must needs elicit some response of gratitude at least, if not of answering love, in the heart of the woman who is the object of such rare devotion.

It dawned at length upon Vera, as she listened to his fervent pleading, and as she saw the tears that rose in poor Denis's earnest eyes, and the traces of deep emotion on his smooth, boyish face, that here was, perchance, the one utterly pure and noble love that had ever been laid at her feet.

There arose a sentiment of pity in her heart, and a vague wonder as to his grief. Did he suffer, she asked herself, as she herself suffered?

"Vera, Vera, I only ask you to be my wife. I do not ask you for your heart; only give me your dear self. Only let me be always with you to brighten your life and to take care of you."

How was she to resist such absolute unselfishness?

"Oh, Denis, how good you are to me!" burst from her lips. "How can I take you at your word? Do you not know that my heart is gone from me? I have no love to give you."

"Yes, yes, darling," he said, quickly, pressing her hand to his lips. "Do not pain yourself by speaking of it. I have guessed it. I have always seemed to know it. But it is hopeless, is it not? And I—I would so gladly take you away and comfort you if I could."

And so, in the end, she half yielded to him. What else was she to do? She gave him a sort of promise.

"If I can, it shall be as you wish," she said; "but give me till to-morrow night. I will think of it all day, and if you will come here again to-morrow evening, I will answer you. Give me one more day—only one," she repeated, with a dull reiteration, out of her utter weariness.

"One day will soon be gone," he said, joyfully, as he bade her good night.

Alas, how little he knew what that day was to bring forth!

That night the heavens were overcast with heavy clouds, and torrents of rain poured down upon the face of the earth, and peal after peal of thunder boomed through the heavy heated air. Helen could not sleep; she rose, feverish and unrested from her husband's side, and paced wildly and miserably about the room. Then she went to the window and drew back the curtain, and looked out upon the storm-driven world. The clouds racked wildly across the sky; the trees bent and swayed before the howling wind; the rain beat in floods upon the ground; yet greater and fiercer still was the tempest that raged in Helen Kynaston's heart. Hatred, jealousy, and malice strove and struggled within her, and something direr still—a terror that she could not quench nor stifle; for late that night her husband had said to her suddenly, without a word of warning or preparation—

"Helen, do you know a Frenchman called D'Arblet?"

Helen had been at her dressing-table—her back was turned to him—he did not see the livid pallor which blanched her cheeks at his question.

A little pause, during which she busied herself among the trifles upon the table.

"No, I never heard the name in my life," she said, at length.

"That is odd—because neither have I—and yet the man has sent me a parcel." It was of so little importance to him, that it did not occur to him that there could possibly be any occasion for secresy concerning Vera's commission. What could an utter stranger have to send to him that could possibly concern him in any way?

It did not strike him how strained and forced was the voice in which his wife presently asked him a question.

"And the parcel! You have opened it?"

"No, not yet," began Maurice, stifling a yawn; and he would have gone on to explain to her that it was not yet actually in his possession, although, probably, he would not have told her that it was Vera who was to give it to him; only at that minute the maid came into the room, and he changed the subject.

But Helen had guessed that it was Vera who was the bearer of that parcel. How it had come to pass she could not tell, but too surely she divined that Vera had in her possession those fatal letters that she had once written to the French vicomte; the letters that would blast her for ever in her husband's estimation, and turn his luke-warmness and his coldness into actual hatred and repulsion.

And was it likely that Vera, with such a weapon in her hands, would spare her? What woman, with so signal a revenge in her power, would forego the delight of wreaking it upon the woman who had taken from her the man she loved? Helen knew that in Vera's place she would show no mercy to her rival.

It was all clear as daylight to her now; the appointment at the vicarage gate, the something which she had said in her note she had for him; the whole mystery of the secret meeting between them—it was Vera's revenge. Vera, whom Maurice loved, and whom she, Helen, hated with such a deadly hatred!

And then, in the silence of the night, whilst her husband slept, and whilst the thunder and the wind howled about her home, Helen crept forth from her room, and sought for that fatal packet of letters which her husband had told her he had "not yet" opened.

Oh, if she could only find them and destroy them before he ever saw them again! Long and patiently she looked for them, but her search was in vain. She ransacked his study and his dressing-room; she opened every drawer, and fumbled in every pocket, but she found nothing.

She was frightened, too, to be about the house like a thief in the night. Every gust of wind that creaked among the open doors made her start, every flash of lightning that lighted up the faces of the old family portraits, looking down upon her with their fixed eyes, made her turn pale and shiver, lest she should see them move, or hear them speak.

Only her jealousy and her hatred burnt fiercely above her terror; she would not give in, she told herself, until she found it.

Denis Wilde, who was restless too, had heard her soft footsteps along the passage outside his door; and, with a vague uneasiness as to who could be about at such an hour, he came creeping out of his room, and peeped in at the library door.

He saw her sitting upon the floor, a lighted candle by her side, an open drawer, out of her husband's writing-table, upon her lap, turning over papers, and bills, and note-books with eager, trembling hands. And he saw in her white, set face, and wild, scared eyes, that which made him draw back swiftly and shudderingly from the sight of her.

"Good God!" he murmured to himself, as he sought his room again, "the woman has murder in her face!"

And at last she had to give it up; the letters were not to be found. The storm without settled itself to rest, the thunder died away in the far distance over the hills, and Helen, worn out with fatigue and emotion, sought a troubled slumber upon the sofa in her dressing-room.

"She cannot have given it to him," was the conclusion she came to at last. "Well, she will do so to-morrow, and I—I will not let her out of my sight, not for one instant, all the day!"



CHAPTER XXXIV.

A GARDEN PARTY.

I have done for ever with all these things: The songs are ended, the deeds are done; There shall none of them gladden me now, not one. There is nothing good for me under the sun But to perish—as these things perished.

A. L. Gordon.

Mr. Guy Miller is a young gentleman who has not played an important part in these pages; nevertheless, but for him, sundry events which took place at Shadonake at this time would not have had to be recorded.

It so happened that Guy Miller's twenty-first birthday was in the third week of September, and that it was determined by his parents to celebrate the day in an appropriate and fitting manner. Guy was a youth of no particular looks, and no particular manners; he had been at Oxford, but his father had lately taken him away from it, with a view to his travelling, and seeing something of the world before he settled down as a country gentleman. He had had no opportunity, therefore, of distinguishing himself at college; but as he was not overburdened with brains, and had, moreover, never been known to study with interest any profounder literature than "Handley Cross" and "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour," it is possible that, even had he been left undisturbed to pursue his studies at the university, he would never have developed into a bright or shining ornament at that seat of learning.

As it was, Guy came home to the paternal mansion an ignorant but amiable and inoffensive young man, with a small, fluffy moustache, and no particular bent in life beyond smoking short pipes, and loafing about the premises with his hands in his trousers pockets.

He was a tolerable shot, and a plucky, though not a graceful horseman. He hated dancing because he trod on his partner's toes, and shunned ladies' society because he had to make himself agreeable to them. Nevertheless, having been fairly "licked into shape" by a course successively of Eton and of Oxford, he was able to behave like a gentleman in his mother's house when it was necessary for him to do so, and he quite appreciated the fact of his being an important personage in the Miller family.

It was to celebrate the coming of age of this interesting young gentleman that Mr. and Mrs. Miller had settled to give a monster entertainment to several hundreds of their fellow-creatures.

The proceedings were to include a variety of instructive and amusing pastimes, and were to last pretty nearly all day. There was to be a country flower-show in a big tent on the lawn; that was pure business, and concerned the farmers as much as the gentry. There were also to be athletic sports in a field for the active young men, lawn-tennis for the active young women, an amateur polo match got up by the energy and pluck of Miss Beatrice and her uncle Tom; a "cold collation" in a second tent to be going on all the afternoon; the whole to be finished up with a dance in the large drawing room, for a select few, after sunset.

The programme, in all conscience, was varied enough; and the day broke hopefully, after the wild storm of the previous night, bright and cool and sunny, with every prospect of being perfectly fine.

Beatrice, happy in the possession of her lover, was full of life and energy; she threw herself into all the preparations of the fete with her whole heart. Herbert, who came over from Lutterton at an early hour, followed her about like a dog, obeying her orders implicitly, but impeding her proceedings considerably by a constant under-current of love-making, by which he strove to vary and enliven the operation of sticking standard flags into the garden borders, and nailing up wreaths of paper roses inside the tent.

Mrs. Miller, having consented to the engagement, like a sensible woman, was resolved to make the best of it, and was, if not cordial, at least pleasantly civil to her future son-in-law. She had given over Beatrice as a bad job; she had resolved to find suitable matches for Guy and for Geraldine.

By one o'clock the company was actually beginning to arrive, the small fry of the neighbourhood being, of course, the first to appear. By-and-by came the rank and fashion of Meadowshire, and by three o'clock the gardens were crowded.

It was a brilliant scene; there was the gaily-dressed crowd going in and out of the tents, groups of elderly people sitting talking under the trees, lawn-tennis players at one end of the garden, the militia band playing Strauss's waltzes at the other, the scarlet and white flags floating bravely over everybody in the breeze, and a hum of many voices and a sound of merry laughter in every direction.

Mr. and Mrs. Miller, and Guy, the hero of the day, moved about amongst the guests from group to group. Guy, it must be owned, looking considerably bored. Beatrice, with her lover in attendance, looking flushed and rosy with the many congratulations which the news of her engagement called forth on every side; and the younger boys, home from school for the occasion, getting in everybody's way, and directing their main attention to the ices in the refreshment-tent. Such an afternoon party, it was agreed, had not been held in Meadowshire within the memory of man; but then, dear Mrs. Miller had such energy and such a real talent for organization; and if the company was a little mixed, why, of course, she must recollect Mr. Miller's position, and how important it was for him, with the prospect of a general election coming on, to make himself thoroughly popular with all classes.

No one in all the gay crowd was more admired or more noticed than "the bride," as she was still called, young Mrs. Kynaston. Helen had surpassed herself in the elaboration of her toilette. The country dames and damsels, in their somewhat dowdy home-made gowns, could scarcely remember their manners, so eager were they to stare at the marvels of that wondrous garment of sheeny satin, and soft, creamy gauze, sprinkled over with absolute works of art in the shape of wreaths of many-hued embroidered birds and flowers, with which the whole dress was cunningly and dexterously adorned. It was a masterpiece of the great Worth; rich without being gaudy, intricate without losing its general effect of colour, and, above all, utterly and absolutely inimitable by the hands of any meaner artist.

Mrs. Kynaston looked well; no one had ever seen her look better; there was an unusual colour in her cheeks, an unusual glitter in her blue eyes, that always seemed to be roving restlessly about her as though in search of something even all the time she was saying her polite commonplaces in answer to the pleasant and pretty speeches that she received on all sides from men and women alike.

But through it all she never let Vera Nevill out of her sight; where Vera moved, she moved also. When she walked across the lawn, Mrs. Kynaston made some excuse to go in the same direction; when she entered either of the tents, Helen also found it necessary to go into them. But the crowd was too great for any one to remark this; no one saw it save Denis Wilde, whose eyes were sharpened by his love.

Once Helen saw that Maurice and Vera were speaking to each other. She could not get near enough to hear what they said, but she saw him bend down and speak to her earnestly, and there was a sad, wistful look in Vera's upturned eyes as she answered him. Helen's heart beat with a wild, mad jealousy as she watched them; and yet it was but a few words that had passed between them.

"Vera, young Wilde says you are going to marry him; is it true?"

"He wants me to do so, but I don't think I can."

"Why not? It would be happier for you, child; forget the past and begin afresh. He is a good boy, and by-and-by he will be well off."

"You, too—you advise me to do this?" she answered with unwonted bitterness. "Oh, how wise and calculating one ought to be to live happily in this miserable world!"

He looked pained.

"I cannot do you any good," he said, rather brokenly. "God knows I would if I could. I can only be a curse to you. Give me at least the credit of unselfishly wishing you to be less unhappy than you are."

And then the crowd, moving onwards, parted them from each other.

"Do not forget to meet me at the Bath," she called out to him as he went.

"Oh, to be sure! I had forgotten. I will be there just before the dancing begins."

And then Denis Wilde took his place by her side.

If Mrs. Kynaston surpassed herself in looks and animation that day, Vera, on the contrary, had never looked less well.

Her eyes were heavy with sleepless nights and many tears; her movements were slower and more languid than of wont, and her face was pale and thin.

Meadowshire generally, that had ceased to trouble itself much about her when she had thrown over the richest baronet in the county, considered itself, nevertheless, to be somewhat aggrieved by the falling off in her appearance, and passed its appropriate and ill-natured comments upon the fact.

"How ill she looks," said one woman to another.

"Positively old. I suppose she thought she could whistle poor Sir John back again whenever she chose; now he is out of the country she would give her eyes for him!"

"I daresay; and looks as if she had cried them out; but he must be glad to have escaped her! Well, it serves her right for behaving so badly. I'm sure I don't pity her."

"Nor I, indeed."

And the two amiable women passed onwards to discuss some other ill-fated victim.

But to the two men who loved her Vera that day was as beautiful as ever; for love sees no flaw in the face that reigns supreme in the soul. And Vera sat still in her corner of the tent where she had taken refuge, and leant her tired, aching head against a gaudy pink-and-white striped pillar. It was the tent where the flower-show was going on. From her sheltered nook there was not much that was lovely to be seen, not a vestige of a rose or a carnation to refresh her tired eyes, only a counter covered with samples of potatoes and monster cauliflowers; and there was a slab of white wood with pats of yellow butter, done up in moss and ferns, which had been sent from the principal dairy-farms of the county, and before which there was a constant succession of elderly and interested housewives tasting and comparing notes. There seemed some difficulty in deciding to whom the butter prize was to be awarded, and at last a committee of ladies was formed; they all tasted, solemnly, of each sample all round, and then they each gave their verdict differently, so that it had all to be done over again amidst a good deal of laughter and merriment.

Vera was vaguely amused by this scene that went on just in front of her. When the knotty point was settled, the committee moved on to decide upon something else, and she was left again to the uninterrupted contemplation of the Flukes and the York Regents.

Denis Wilde had sat by her for some time, but at last she had begged him to leave her. Her head ached, she said; if he would not mind going, and he went.

Presently, Beatrice, beaming with happiness, found her out in her corner.

"Oh, Vera!" she said, coming up to her, all radiant with smiles, "you are the only one of my friends who has not yet wished me joy."

"That is not because I have not thought of you, Beatrice, dear," she answered, heartily grasping her friend's outstretched hands. "I was so very glad to hear that everything has come right for you at last. How did it all happen?"

"I will come over to the vicarage to-morrow, and tell you the whole story. Oh! do you remember meeting Herbert and me, that foggy morning, outside Tripton station?"

Would Vera ever forget it?

"I little thought then how happily everything was to end for us. I used to think we should have to elope! Poor Herbert, he was always frightened out of his life when I said that. But we have had a very narrow escape of being blighted beings to the end of our lives. If it hadn't been for uncle Tom and that dear darling mare, Clochette, whom I should like to keep in a gold and jewelled stall to the end of her ever-blessed days!——Ah, well! I've no time to tell you now—I will come over to Sutton to-morrow, and I may bring him, may I not?"

"Him," of course, meaning Mr. Herbert Pryme. Vera requested that he might be brought by all means.

"Well, I must run away now—there are at least a hundred of these stupid people to whom I must go and make myself agreeable. By the way, Vera, how dull you look, up in this corner by yourself. Why do you sit here all alone?"

"My head aches; I am glad to be quiet."

"But you mean to dance by-and-by, I hope?"

"Oh, yes, I daresay. Go back to your guests, Beatrice; I am getting on very well."

Beatrice went off smiling and waving her hand. Vera could watch her outside in the sunshine, moving about from group to group, shaking hands with first one and then another, laughing at some playful sally, or smiling demurely over some graver words of kindness. She was always popular, was Beatrice, with her bright talk and her plain clever face, and there was not a man or woman in all that crowd who did not wish her happiness.

And so the day wore away, and the polo match—very badly played—was over, and the votaries of lawn-tennis were worn out with running up and down, and the flowers and the fruits in the show-tent began to look limp and dusty. The farmers and those people of small importance who had only been invited "from two to five," began now to take their departure, and their carriage wheels were to be heard driving away in rapid succession from the front door. Then the hundred or so of the "best county people," who were remaining later for the dancing, began to think of leaving the lawns before the dew fell. There was a general move towards the house, and even the band "limbered up," and began to transfer itself from the garden into the hall, where its labours were to begin afresh.

Then it was that Vera crept forth out of her sheltered corner, and, unseen and unnoticed save by one watchful pair of eyes, wended her way through the shrubbery walks in the direction of the Bath.



CHAPTER XXXV.

SHADONAKE BATH.

A jolly place—in times of old, But something ails it now: The spot is cursed!

Wordsworth.

Calm and still, like the magic mirror of the legend, Shadonake Bath lay amongst its everlasting shadows.

The great belt of fir-trees beyond it, the sheltering evergreens on the nearer side, the tiers of grey, moss-grown steps that encompassed it about, all found their image again upon its smooth and untroubled surface. There was a golden light from the setting sun to the west, and the pale mist of a shadowy crescent moon had risen in the east.

It was all quiet here—faint echoes of distant voices and far-away laughter came up in little gusts from the house; but there was no trace of the festivities down by the desolate water, nothing but the dark fir-trees above it, and the great white heads of the water-lilies that lay like jewels upon its silent bosom.

Vera sat down upon the steps, and rested her chin in her hands, and waited. The house and the gardens behind her were shut out by the thick screen of laurels and rhododendrons. Before her, on the other side, were the fir-trees, with their red, bronzed trunks, and the soft, dark brown carpet that lay at their feet; there was not even a squirrel stirring among their branches, nor a bird that fluttered beneath their shadows.

Vera waited. She was not impatient nor anxious. She had nothing to say to Maurice when he came—she did not mean to keep him, not even for five minutes, by her side; she did not want to run any further risks with him—it was better not—better that she should never again be alone with him. She only meant just to give him that wretched little brown paper parcel that weighed upon her conscience with the sense of an unfulfilled vow, and then to go back with him to the house at once. They could have nothing more to say to each other.

Strangely enough, as she sat there musing all her life came back in review before her. The old days at Rome, with the favourite sister who was dead and gone; her own gay, careless life, with its worldly aims and desires; her first arrival at Sutton, her determination to make herself Sir John Kynaston's wife, and then her fatal love for his brother; it all came back to her again. All kinds of little details that she had long forgotten came flooding in upon her memory. She remembered how she had first seen Maurice standing at the foot of the staircase, with the light of the lamp upon his handsome head; and then, again, how one morning she and he had stood together in this very place by the Bath, and how she had told him, shuddering, that it would be dreadful to be drowned there, and she had cried out in a nameless terror that she wished she had not seen it for the first time with him by her side; and then Helen had come down from the house and joined them, and they had all three gone away together. She smiled a little to herself over that foolish, reasonless terror. The quiet pool of water did not look dreadful to her now—only cool, and still, and infinitely restful.

By-and-by other thoughts came into her mind. She recalled her interview with old Lady Kynaston at Walpole Lodge, when she had so nearly promised her to give back her hand to her eldest son, when she would have done so had it not been for that sight of Maurice's face in the adjoining room. She wondered what Lady Kynaston had thought of her sudden change of mind; what she had been able to make of it; whether she had ever guessed at what had been the truth. It seemed only yesterday that the old lady had told her to be wise and brave, and to begin her life over again, and to make the best of the good things of this world that were still left to her.

"There is a pain that goes right through the heart," Maurice's mother had said to her; "I who speak to you have felt it. I thought I should die of it, but you see I did not."

Alas! did not Vera know that pain all too well; that heartache that banishes peace by day and sleep by night, and that will not wear itself out?

And yet other women had borne it, and had lived and been even happy in other ways; but she could not be happy. Was it because her heart was deeper, or because her sense of pain was greater than that of others?

Vera could not tell. She only wished, and longed, and even prayed that she might have the strength to become Denis Wilde's wife; that she might taste once more of peace, if not of joy; and yet all her longings and all her prayers only made her realize the more how utterly the thing was beyond her power.

To Maurice, and Maurice alone, belonged her life and her soul, and Vera felt that it would be easier for her to be true to the sad, dim memory of his love than to give her heart and her allegiance to any other upon earth.

So she sat and mused, and pondered, and the amber light in the east faded away into palest saffron, and the solemn shadows deepened and lengthened upon the still bosom of the water.

Suddenly there came a sharp footstep and the rustle of a woman's silken skirts across the stone flags behind her. She looked up quickly; Helen stood beside her. Helen, in all the sheen of her gay Paris garments, with the evening light upon her uncovered head, and the glow of a passion, fiercer than madness, in her glittering eyes. Some prescience of evil—she knew not of what—made Vera spring to her feet.

Helen spoke to her shortly and defiantly.

"Miss Nevill, you are waiting here for my husband, are you not?"

A faint flush rose in Vera's face.

"Yes," she answered, very quietly. "I am waiting to speak a few words to him."

"You have something to give him, have you not? Some letters that are mine, and which you have probably read."

Helen said the words quickly and feverishly; her voice shook and trembled. Vera looked surprised and even indignant.

"I don't understand you, Mrs. Kynaston," she began, coldly.

"Oh, yes, you understand me perfectly. Give me my letters, Miss Nevill; you have no doubt read them all," and she laughed harshly and sneeringly.

"Mrs. Kynaston, you are labouring under some delusion," said Vera, quietly; "I have no letters of yours, and if I had," with a ring of utter contempt, "I should not be likely to have opened them."

For it did not occur to her that Helen was speaking of Monsieur D'Arblet's parcel; that did not in the least convey the idea of letters to her mind; nor had it ever entered into her head to speculate about what that unhappy little packet could possibly contain; she had never even thought about it.

"I have no letters of yours," she repeated.

"You are saying what is false," cried Helen, angrily. "How can you dare to deny it? You know you have got them, you are here to give them to Maurice, knowing that they will ruin me. You shall not give them to him. I have come to take them from you—I will have them."

"I do not even know what you are speaking about," answered Vera. "Why should I want to ruin you, if, indeed, such a thing is to be done?"

"Because you hate me as much as I hate you."

"Hate is an ugly word," said Vera, rather scornfully. "I have no reason to hate you, and I do not know why you should hate me."

"Don't imagine you can put me off with empty words," cried Helen, wildly. She made a step forward; her white hands clenched themselves together with a reasonless fury; she was as white as the crescent moon that rose beyond the trees.

"Give me my letters—the letters you are waiting here to give to my husband!" she cried.

"Mrs. Kynaston, do not be so angry," said Vera, becoming almost bewildered by her violence; "you are really mistaken—pray calm yourself. I have no letters: what I was going to give your husband was only a little parcel from a man who is abroad—he is a foreigner. I do not think it is of the slightest importance to anybody. I have not opened it, I have no idea what it contains, and your husband himself said it was nothing—only I have promised to give it him alone; it was a whim of the little Frenchman who entrusted me with it, and whom, I must honestly tell you, I believe to have been half-mad. Only, unfortunately, I have promised to deliver it in this manner."

Mrs. Kynaston was looking at her fixedly; her anger seemed to have died away.

"Yes," she said, "it was Monsieur D'Arblet who gave them to you."

"That was his name, D'Arblet. I did not like the man; but he bothered me until I foolishly undertook his commission. I am sorry now that I did so, as it seems to vex you so much; but I do not think there are letters in the parcel, and I certainly have not opened it."

Helen was silent again for a minute, looking at her intently.

"I don't believe you," she said; "they are my letters, sure enough, and you have read them. What woman would not do so in your place? and you know that they will ruin me with my husband."

"It is you yourself that tell me so!" cried Vera, impatiently, beginning to lose her temper. "I do not even know what you are talking about!"

"Miss Nevill!" cried Helen, suddenly changing her tone; "give that parcel to me, I entreat you."

"I am very sorry, Mrs. Kynaston; I cannot possibly do so."

"Oh yes, you can—you will," said Helen, imploringly. "What can it matter to you now? It is I who am his wife; you cannot get any good out of a mere empty revenge. Why should you spoil my chance of winning his heart? I know well enough that he loves you, but——"

"Mrs. Kynaston, pray, pray recollect yourself; do not say such words to me!" cried Vera, deeply distressed.

"Why should I not say them! You and I know well enough that it is true. I hate you, I am jealous of you, for I know that my husband loves you; and yet, if you will only give me that parcel, I will forgive you—I will try to live at peace with you—I will even pray and strive for your happiness! Let me have a chance of making him love me!"

"For God's sake, Mrs. Kynaston, do not say these things to me!" cried Vera. She was crimson with pain and shame, and shocked beyond measure that his wife should be so lost to all decency and self-respect as to speak so openly of her husband's love for herself.

"I will not and cannot listen to you!"

"But you will not be so cruel as to ruin me?" pleaded Helen; "only give me that parcel, and I shall be safe! You say you have not opened it; well, I can hardly believe it, because in your place I should have read every word; yet, if you will give them to me, I will forgive you."

"You do not understand what you are saying!" cried Vera, impatiently. "How can I give you what is not mine to give? I have no right to dispose of this parcel"—she held it in her hand—"and I have given my word that I will give it to your husband alone. How could I be so false as to do anything else with it? You are asking impossibilities, Mrs. Kynaston."

"You will not give it to me?" There was a sudden change in Helen's voice—she pleaded no longer.

"No, certainly not."

"And that is your last word?"

"Yes."

There was a silence. Helen looked away over the water towards the fir-trees. She was pale, but very quiet; all her angry agitation seemed to have died away. Vera stood a little beneath her on the lowest step, close down to the water; she held the little parcel that was the object of the dispute in her hands, and was looking at it with an expression of deep annoyance; she was wishing heartily that she had never seen either it or the wretched little Frenchman who had insisted upon confiding it to her care.

Neither of them spoke; for an instant neither of them even moved. There was a striking contrast between them: Helen, slight and fragile in her bird-of-paradise garments, with jewels about her neck, and golden chains at her wrist; her pretty piquant face, almost childish in the contour of the small, delicate features. Vera, in her plain, tight-fitting dress, whose only beauty lay in the perfect simplicity with which it followed the lines of her glorious figure; her pure, lovely face, laden with its burden of deep sadness, a little turned away from the other woman who had taken everything from her, and left her life so desolate. And there was the silent pool at their feet, and the darkening belt of fir-trees beyond, and the pale moon ever brightening in the shadowy heavens. It was a picture such as a painter might have dreamt of.

Not a sound—only once the faint cry of some wild animal in the far-off woods, and the flutter of a night-moth on the wing. Helen's face was turned eastwards towards the fast-fading evening glow.

What is it that sends the curse of Cain into the human heart?

Did some foul and evil thing, wandering homeless around that fatal spot, enter then and there, unbidden, into her sin-stained soul? Or had the hellish spirit been always there within her, only biding its time to burst forth in all its naked and hideous horror?