Probation
Date: 2025-05-13T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: English fiction -- 19th century; Lancashire (England) -- Fiction; Cotton famine; 1861-1864 -- Fiction

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Title: Probation
a novel

Author: Jessie Fothergill

Release date: May 13, 2025 [eBook #76077]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1887

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76077

Credits: Carla Foust, Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROBATION ***

PROBATION

J. Collier, px.     C. O. Murray. Sc.
ADRIENNE.

PROBATION

A Novel

BY

JESSIE FOTHERGILL

AUTHOR OF ‘THE FIRST VIOLIN,’ ‘KITH AND KIN,’ ETC.

A NEW EDITION

LONDON

RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST.

Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen

1887

All rights reserved

BOOK I.
PRIDE AND PLENTY.

CHAPTER I.

OF AN ABSENTEE EMPLOYER.

‘The perfection of mechanism, human and metallic.’

You, at any rate, Lancashire reader, know this place; the large somewhat low room; the long lines of looms; the wheels, straps, and beams; the rows of standing work-people, men, women, and children; the dimness of the dust-laden atmosphere. You know, too, the roar of noise—how deafening, stunning, and overwhelming it is to the stranger who may happen casually to encounter it, yet how easily those in the habit of working in it can make themselves intelligible to one another. You know all this, and your accustomed eye recognises at once one division of the ‘weaving shed’ of a large cotton factory; which forms, with its perfect mechanism, the ‘metallic and the human,’ a most wonderful sight to any eyes but the too careless or the too accustomed.

There is an air of calm, leisurely ease about the process which might be apt to lead the uninitiated astray, and make him suppose that not so much accuracy of eye, delicacy of manipulation, sensitiveness of touch, was required as is really the case. Which are the most alive—the girls in the cotton dresses, and the men in their fustian clothes, who move lightly to and fro, adjusting their work, keeping watch and ward over the flying shuttle; or that flying shuttle itself, which seems instinct with vitality, darting with vivid, almost oppressive, regularity of activity backwards and forwards—indulging sometimes in a malicious vagary, worthy of a human being, such as flying suddenly out from its groove, and perhaps striking its human fellow-worker a sharp blow on the forehead, or in the eye? It would be difficult to say—the definition at the head of the chapter forms also the best description of the whole—‘the perfection of mechanism, human and metallic.’

It was during the afternoon hours of work; the day’s labour was drawing to a close; the great ceaseless roar and buzz and rush seemed to grow rhythmic, harmonious in its monotonous continuity; through the thick-ribbed panes of glass, distorted yellow sunbeams came streaming, golden, hazy, smoky, dusty, striking here and there upon the face of some laughing or languid girl; here into the eyes of some lad—an imp of mischief—or a youth of thoughtful and serious aspect.

That was the head overlooker who came in, looked round, stopped the loom of one of the said laughing girls, fingered the cloth, remarked warningly, ‘Now, Sarah Alice! this won’t do! You must look out, or there’ll be some mischief;’ then passed on his round, stopping more looms; examining more cloth, and then went out of the room altogether.

A steady progression, for a time, of the rhythmic toil, till the same door was again opened, and a young man, who also appeared to be a person of some authority, stepped in, and paused, note-book and pencil in hand. This was the second overlooker, a person who of necessity must possess considerable intelligence—being generally, as in this case, a working-man born and bred—some discrimination and tact also, since he fulfilled the duties, in some measure, both of a workman and a superior. In addition to his position as overlooker, he also performed the functions of what is known in factory parlance as ‘head cut-looker:’ and a cut-looker is a man who examines each piece or ‘cut’ of cloth after it leaves the loom; notes the flaws, and deducts from the wages of the weaver in compensation for the same. Perhaps this ‘cut-looking’ and over-looking may be like criticising—they may have a tendency to produce a turn of mind sceptical as to the merits of the work with which the cut-looker, or the critic, has to do. Incessant flaws, ‘scamped’ work, broken threads, ill-joined ends, an uneven weft, a rough warp—the parallel is certainly a striking one; and a long career of cut-looking, to say nothing of criticising, may tend to make the temper quick, and the tone just a little imperious.

The individual whose occupation was something like criticism was a tall young man, dressed in grey clothes, which looked in some way cleaner, or better, or different from the clothes of the others, and a white linen jacket, which gave a cool and airy look to the whole costume, and was far from unbecoming to the spare, yet very strong, well-built figure, and to the dark, handsome, sharply cut face belonging to it.

A right workmanlike figure. There was power and capacity—skilled power and capacity, too, in the supple, lissome figure, in the brown hands, long and slim, yet strong and muscular, which looked as if they were well-accustomed to do fine work, and to do it well. The loose linen jacket was by no means new, though clean; it bore here and there traces of having been mended, and sat in the easy creases and folds of a much-worn old friend, from whose shape no washing and starching can quite banish the accustomed outline, given by the wearer’s form. Above the collar of this jacket was a narrow line of grey waistcoat; then a white collar, and a narrow black tie. The whole costume was as pleasant and as becoming to look at as it was practical, fit, and workmanlike.

The face was rather thin and rather square; the complexion pale. The eyes were very dark and very steady—at the moment very quiet, though with a touch of defiance in them which was habitual; the forehead broad and thoughtful—the level eyebrows had a trick of contracting sharply, which took away from the calmness which might have seemed at first the dominant characteristic of the ample brow. The nose was rather long and sharp—the mouth firm, and a little cross: the lips looked as if they would more readily tighten in irritation at the stupidity of others, than part in wonder or amaze at their cleverness—and their expression did not belie the truth. The whole face was more clearly cut, more decided in feature, more distinct in expression than the faces of many—nay, of most of his class in the same place. Perhaps it answered to a clearer mental outline—was the distinct objective side of a well-defined subjectivity. Be that as it may, the figure was a manly and a good one—the face no less so.

This young man, holding his pencil suspended over his note-book, looked reflectively around the room, standing erect, though the wall was just behind him to lean upon. Walls to lean upon, moral or material, are irresistible to some people. His eyes fell upon the different workers as they moved hither and thither, adjusting their work, or stepping from one loom to another. Those eyes presently fell upon a young woman who was standing at the far end of the room, and whose face happened to be turned towards him. Her glance met his: they nodded and smiled to one another, and his smile flashed across his dark face with an effect which the smiles of fair faces and light eyes can never have.

This young man’s name was Myles Heywood, and the scene of his labours was the factory of Sebastian Mallory, the largest mill and property owner but one in the town of Thanshope, in Lancashire. He was, then, clever, honest, proud to excess, and self-opinionated, though few people could help liking him, even when his opinions and prejudices, with both of which articles he was well provided, might rub against theirs. One thing deserves recording of him, which alone would have shown him to be somewhat aloof from his fellow-workmen—he had no nickname; and in that district, where often a man’s real name was quite hidden under a cloud of bynames and nicknames, this was at least peculiar.

Myles Heywood, after spending a few moments looking down the shed, through the mist of cotton fluff which made the air dim and the lungs irritable, turned and went into a neighbouring room, where they were twisting—a monotonous task—the rapid twisting together of the ends of cotton of two warps, paid for at the rate of threepence per thousand ends—a fact which had caused our critic in the linen jacket much thought at different times.

Out of this twisting-room into a large square yard or court, with the engine-house and its neighbouring boilers on one side; offices on another, and the great wall of the mill on the third. On the fourth, a blank wall and huge gates, at present standing open, and affording a glimpse into the dingy street.

The engineer, this warm August afternoon, was standing in the full glow of the furnace: his face was black, and shone as if recently it had been anointed with oil. His arms were bare and sinewy, and they were black too. His shirt, whatever its original hue, was black now, and his other garments, reduced to as scanty a quantity as was compatible with decency, were black also with oil, and grease, and coal-dust. He paused to mop away a swarthy perspiration with a dingy-looking handkerchief, as Myles went by, looking clean and cool, and aggravatingly comfortable.

‘Hey, Miles, lad, what time dost make it? I’m too hot to get my watch.’

‘Ten to six,’ said Myles, looking at his watch.

‘The Lord be praised!’ responded the engineer piously, ‘and send us a speedy deliverance. It’s as hot as hell here of a summer afternoon, and no jokin’. Hast had thi’ baggin?’[1]

‘I don’t take baggin,’ said Myles, a little contemptuously, as he took his way to the office, where he found a man and a boy behind a desk, on which was a heap of gold, silver, and copper coins, and a number of books and papers. It was Friday afternoon—pay-day.

‘Oh, you’re there, Myles,’ said the man. ‘You may take your wages now, if you like.’

‘All right!’ said Myles, picking up two sovereigns from the heap of gold, and slipping them into his pocket. Then he twisted himself over the counter and seated himself on a high stool beside the desk.

‘By your leave, I’ll just wait here till my lass comes, and then we’ll go home together.’

Wilson, the head-overlooker and cashier, assented. Myles folded his arms before him, and began to whistle a tune to himself. It was the tune of the song, ‘Life let us cherish!’ and when Myles had nothing else to do, he generally did whistle it—unthinkingly, almost unconsciously. While he whistled he looked through the dingy panes of a small window upon a prospect as dingy as the panes.

There was nothing but a short patch of grey-looking street, and over the way the multitudinous windows of a great foundry, from the back premises of which came loud sonorous clangs, as of metal striking against metal—a maddening and a deafening sound to ears unused to it, but which, from long habit, failed to disturb the workers in ‘Mallory’s Factory.’ It had become not exactly inaudible to them, but part of the day’s features—as clouds, or wind, or rain. They would, to use a Hibernicism, only have noticed it if it had left off.

It still wanted some eight or nine minutes to the time when the bell would ring for ‘knocking off’ work, and that interval was used by those present to discuss with their tongues that with which their heads happened to be concerned, for the truth is, that out of the emptiness of the head, much oftener than out of the fulness of the heart, does the mouth speak.

‘Hast heerd news, Myles?’ inquired the lad.

The whistle ceased for a moment.

‘What news?’

‘We have heard say,’ said the other man, ‘as how he’s coming home.’

‘Who?’

Wilson pointed northwards, over his shoulder, with his thumb.

‘Oh, him!’ said Myles, with again the touch of contempt which came a little too often to his voice. And he shrugged his shoulders—another gesture betraying his unlikeness in temper and temperament to those with whom he was surrounded.

‘Ay, him!’

‘Is it true?’ inquired Heywood.

‘Don’t know. I’ve only heard say so.’

‘Who said so?’

‘Why, I believe it were one of the men from the stables at Mrs. Mallory’s.’

‘Servants’ gossip!’ said Myles, trenchantly, unsuccessfully trying to turn up his nose. ‘Never believe what they say. Flunkeys by trade, and liars by nature, the whole lot of ’em, or they wouldn’t be where they are.’

‘I’m none so keen about believing everything that any one says to me,’ said Wilson, with a slightly offended air, ‘but this seems to me so uncommonly probable, with things in the state that they are. Why shouldn’t he come back?’

‘Ay, why shouldn’t he?’ echoed Ben, the office boy, feeling a dawning sense of coming pleasure in the idea of having given Myles a poser.

‘Why shouldn’t he?’ began Myles.

‘That makes three times as it’s been said,’ observed Ben, with an intelligent smile. ‘Well?’

‘Young one, keep your fingers out of the pie!’ said Myles, ‘and answer me this—why should he?’

Crestfallen silence on the part of Wilson and Ben, till the former began rather feebly,

‘Well, he’s been abroad for years and years, and when he’s a fine property like this awaiting for him to step into, as it were, and a fine house, and a fine mother——’

‘Ha, ha!’ said Myles, and his laugh was by no means one of unsophisticated enjoyment.

‘And with things in the state that they are,’ Wilson again repeated, as if much impressed with that state. ‘With these Yankees and Southerners at it like cat and dog, and cotton going up, and no prospect of any end to it yet. Mr. Sutcliffe said to me, he says, ‘Wilson, we don’t know what’s before us yet. If I’m not much mistaken,’ he says, ‘there’ll be a famine in the land before this time next year.’ And I say, if a master shouldn’t come home under those circumstances, when should he?’

‘Should! Ought!’ repeated Heywood, in sarcastic tones; his scornful smile lighting his face and gleaming in his eyes. ‘What’s that to do with it? I’ll tell you why he couldn’t, and shouldn’t, and won’t come.’

The others settled themselves more attentively in their positions to hear the riddle answered.

‘Because he’s proud and lazy, and likes amusing himself better than working,’ said Myles, with a strong flavour of contempt and dislike in his voice. ‘Because the money’s there, and let who may have made it, choose how they’ve sweated for it, it’s got into his hands, whether he deserves it or not, and it’s his to do as he likes with—so he does what he likes with it. He’s got such a manager as there isn’t another like him in Lancashire. Mr. Sutcliffe can do anything; it’s he that has slaved and made this business what it is—the biggest in Thanshope, next to Spenceley’s. He’s got this manager, and if he chooses to think that he hasn’t got a duty in this mortal world, except to muddle his head with foreign politics, as I hear he does, and amuse himself by dancing attendance on a lot of fine ladies, and stroll about foreign countries, and stare himself blind up at pictures as big as the side of a house, and as black as my hat, and figures of men and women without any clothes on——’

‘Lord!’ said Ben, awestruck and shocked.

‘And go rambling about, admiring scenery, and wondering what to do with himself next—well, what is it to us?’

As Wilson and Ben really did not see what it was to them, but had an uncomfortable sensation that their hitherto revered and honoured Mr. Sutcliffe was in some way a wronged and slighted individual, and that they ought to feel it all to be a great deal to them, and a subject of soreness and offence, they waited humbly for the keynote, nodding their heads, and trying to look wise.

‘It’s true,’ went on Myles, more warmly—‘it’s true, he’s got this big business here, which makes his money, and hundreds of hands who work for him, and who are, so to speak, under his care; and it’s true that some people—old-fashioned idiots, of course—might think that a big property has its duties as well as its pleasures, and that a capitalist has, or ought to have, something else to do than take and spend his money, and never inquire how he got it, nor what state the machine is in that made it for him; but what is that to us? If we’re going to have a famine in the land, it would be unpleasant for a person not accustomed to this kind of thing—all the more reason for him to keep away. My lord likes the company of lords and ladies, and he thinks Thanshope is only fit for tradespeople.’

‘I bet he’s ne’er seen nowt finer nor the new town-hall, choose where he may have been!’ said Ben, aggressively.

‘And,’ went on Myles, whose mouth had grown very cross indeed, and whose eyebrows met in a straight line across his frowning brow, ‘he’s a Tory—a Tory; if I’d said that at first, I shouldn’t have needed to say all the rest. A Tory, in these times, and in Thanshope!’

Wilson and Ben laughed, but not quite a whole-hearted laugh. A Tory—every species of Conservative—was a poor thing, was the general Thanshope opinion, but they had always thought of Tories more as harmless old women, or vulgar ‘risen’ men, like Mr. Spenceley, than as anything so actively mischievous and to be eschewed as their absentee employer, Sebastian Mallory.

‘He’s ashamed of the place, and the people, and the business that has made him what he is. And that’s why he won’t come back.’

‘I say, Myles, who told you all this?’ inquired Wilson, deferentially.

‘That I’m not at liberty to say; but not one of the men from the stables, old lad,’ said Myles. ‘But my authority is a good one, and it’s what I’ve suspected for years. I’ve heard of his doings. He goes about with parsons. He’s trying all he can to shake himself free of trade. He’ll try to do it by marrying a lord’s daughter—that’s what these shoddy Conservatives always do—she’ll spend his money for him, and if he says anything, she’ll tell him it smells of cotton, and she wants to get rid of it.’

‘Nay, nay, now!’ interrupted Ben, with feeling.

‘But she will,’ said Myles, looking as angry as if the fair and contemptuous aristocrat stood in person before them. ‘I know. Don’t we all know what happened to Jack Brierley’s lad, and how——’

Clang, clang, clang! went the great bell in the courtyard. It was two minutes past six. Wilson raised himself rapidly from his recumbent attitude, and began to turn over his papers, calling Ben to his side to help him. The discussion as to the merits or demerits of Sebastian Mallory, who certainly formed a striking instance of the theory that les absents ont toujours tort, was over; soon the office was filled with a pushing, elbowing crowd, waiting more or less impatiently to receive the hire of their week’s labour.

Myles sat upon his high stool in the background, and watched, while Wilson and his assistant paid out the wages. It was rather a dingy-looking crowd that he saw, and was apparent to nose, as well as to eye, by the unmistakable odour of oil and fluff which emanated from it. Bare-armed girls with long, greasy pinafores, loud voices, and ungainly gestures, elbowing their way through the lads, and exchanging with them chaff of the roughest description. Small, pale, stunted-looking men; sometimes downright hideously ugly and mean-looking, or again, only sallow, pale, and subdued by a sedentary occupation, with here and there a tremendous massive brow; here and there a pair of eyes so deep and glowing as to cause a shock and thrill to one who encountered them; here a mouth of poetical delicacy and sensitiveness; there a jaw so strong and heavy, that, comparing it with the eyes, brows, and mouths before spoken of, one no longer felt cause for surprise in hearing such aphorisms as ‘Manchester rules England,’ ‘What Lancashire thinks to-day, England thinks to-morrow.’ It was, taken all in all, an ugly crowd, but in its way a commanding one. It might have moved the soul of a ‘Corn-Law Rhymer,’ a Gerald Massey, a ‘Lancashire Lad;’ it would probably have been repulsive to more refined bards and writers, and the poet of the brush and canvas would have found absolutely nothing here with which to gladden his eye.

Myles, a striking exception to almost every one of the men in point of good looks and fine physical development, if not in point of intelligent expression, sat upon his stool; and his monotonous whistle continued as he scanned the faces, and returned a nod here and there. Many a girl looked at him, and smiled her brightest as she caught his grave eyes.

He was not quite like the other workmen in more things than beauty, and a somewhat higher position, and none knew that better than the workwomen. The smiles and amiable looks provoked little answer. Myles was not rude to girls; he never chaffed them in the rough manner of some of his fellow-workmen; but, on the other hand, he very seldom took any notice of them at all, having very little to say to any young woman out of his own family.

They passed before him in varied array; ugly, and pretty, and mediocre; fair girls and dark girls, stout girls and thin ones, tall and short, stupid and intelligent-looking. Here and there a pale, pensive face, with a head of flaxen hair, and long, delicate, Madonna-like features; now a brunette, with high complexion, and flashing black eyes, that showed the brighter under the thick white powdering of cotton fluff with which her head was covered; piquante and placid, merry and melancholy; but not for one in all the crowd did his cheek flush in the least, not once did the calm indifference in his eyes change, nor did his low, careless whistle cease for an instant. He stared over or between their heads, or—which was the most irritating of all—right at them, without once noticing them, until a girl, somewhat taller than the majority of her companions, came in, and stood waiting with a group of others near the door, until her turn should come to go up for her wages.

Then Myles stopped whistling, and got off his stool, remarking, half to himself, ‘There’s Mary, at last!’ and applied to Wilson for the sum of eighteen shillings, that being the amount of his sister’s wages. He received the money, and made his way through the crowd towards the door.

‘Eh, Myles, art there?’ said the young woman. ‘Wait of me a minute, while I get my wages.’

‘They’re here,’ said he, putting the money into her hand. ‘So come along, lass! Let’s get out of this shop.’

They passed out at the door, and walked together down the sloping street—a tall and well-looking pair. It was very seldom, indeed, that Myles Heywood and his sister Mary failed to walk home from their work together.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] ‘Baggin’ is not only lunch, but any accidental meal coming between two regular ones.

CHAPTER II.

BEFORE THE STORM.

‘And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.’

It was August of the year 1861—the year succeeding that which might almost be called the apotheosis of the cotton trade. The goods of Lancashire were piled in every port; her merchants were a byword for riches and prosperity. ‘Cotton lords’—the aristocracy of the land—that grimy, smutty, dingy, golden land, whose sceptre was swayed by King Cotton.

Day after day the goodly ships had borne their load across the Atlantic, from New Orleans and the other cotton ports; day after day those Liverpool cotton lords had received that load upon their docks, and those Manchester cotton lords had bartered with them and bought it; and it had been borne slowly along, piled up on great lorries, or it had been whirled along the iron road, and unloaded, and carried to a thousand factories in Manchester, and Bolton, and Oldham—the giant consumers; in Rochdale, and Bury, and Burnley; Blackburn and Wigan, and Ashton and Stockport; to the great, young, growing towns; to strange moorland villages, younger sisters of the towns; and there thickset spikes had whirled it about, and combs had smoothed it out; revolving spindles had spun it into the thickest or the most fairy threads; rows and rows of shining looms had received it, and woven it into every conceivable variety of texture and colour, and breadth, and length, and pattern. Skilled workmen and workwomen, deft-handed, lissome, soft-fingered craftsmen and craftswomen had stood by their wooden and metal fellow-workers, and fed their untiring jaws; then it had gone to the white-looking warehouses, to be piled in great masses, like little mountains for height and solidity, and from thence removed to ships again, and borne over the seas to India, and China, and America, and to every town in Europe where men and women needed clothing and had money to buy it.

The glory of King Cotton at this period of his reign, and the splendour of him, cannot be better summed up than in the graphic words of one who has thought and written on that great subject:—

‘The dreary totals which Mr. Gladstone’s eloquence illuminates, and the rolling numerals of the National Debt, become almost insignificant beside the figures which this statement (the statistics of the cotton trade) involves. Arithmetic itself grows dizzy as it approaches the returns of the cotton trade for 1860. One hundred years back, and the cotton manufactures of England had been valued at £200,000 a year. Had not French, American, and Russian wars—had not railways and telegraphs, had their part and lot in this century, surely it would be known as the Cotton Age. This year, 1860, was the annus mirabilis of King Cotton. In this year his dependents were most numerous and his throne most wide. There was no Daniel at hand to interpret to him the handwriting on the wall, which within twelve months should be read by all who ran, in letters of blood. What cared he? An argosy of ships bore him across every sea and into every port. He listened to the humming of his spindles and to the rattle of his looms; he drank of the fulness of his power and was satisfied, for he was great—yes, very great.... The total value of their (the manufacturers’) exports for the year amounted to £52,012,380. If figures can ever be magnificent—if naked totals ever reach to the sublime—surely the British cotton trade for the year 1860 claims our admiration. Its production for this single year equalled in value £76,012,380, or nearly six millions more than the gross revenue of the kingdom for the same period.’

Surely the land which was the chief home of this monster trade deserved the title of ‘The Land of Plenty,’ and such it was—‘a goodly land,’ in fact, if not in outward show, ‘a land flowing with milk and honey,’ or at least their modern English equivalents—a land where wealth was profuse—where masters and men vied with each other in pride of bearing and dogged independence of spirit. Such was that rough, dark land at the end of 1860; such it was still at the end of August 1861; what it was in August 1862 only those know who dwelt in it, and saw its thousands of perishing children, and noted their stoic endurance of their sufferings.

Even now, even in this month of August 1861, rumours were gaining ground that the war in America would not soon be over. The price of cotton was beginning to go up; the days were hastening towards that month of October when prices sprang up, mounting daily higher and higher, and factories began to close—not in ones and twos as heretofore, not to run short time, or half-time, or even quarter-time, but to close bodily, in dozens and scores, with no prospect of their opening again for an indefinite period of want and woe. It was a vast, dark, pitiless cloud, that which was even now rolling up from the West, bearing in its huge womb lamentation, and mourning, and woe.

But still Lancashire was the land of plenty and of hospitality; still her generous fires burnt merrily upon her ample hearths, making the stranger forget her murky skies, and the smoke-dimmed countenance of her landscapes. Her work-people still got the largest wages, her masters still made the greatest fortunes of any masters and work-people, taken collectively, in England; and nothing was said about the over-production of the last plethoric year, nor of the piled-up goods in the overstocked warehouses.

CHAPTER III.

RIFTS WITHIN THE LUTE.

The brother and sister walked together down the sloping street already mentioned, and which was, as usual at that time, full of work-people, streaming out of the numberless factories which formed the staple of Thanshope buildings. Arms were swinging, and clogs were clattering; tongues were wagging furiously in the reaction of the release from work, and the inhalation of the air, which, though close and thunderous, was yet fresher than that in the great hot factories.

Thanshope was built on a situation with considerable claims to natural beauty, and there were days, even now, when it looked beautiful. Its streets all climbed up and down steep hills. Whenever the day or the smoke was clear enough, hills might be seen surrounding it on all sides in the distance, except to the south, where Manchester lay.

There was a river—the river Thanse—running through the town, which unfortunate stream formed a fertile source of bickering and heart-burning amongst the members of the town-council, the medical men, and the people who write to the newspapers: one party of them contended that there was nothing the matter with the river Thanse, it was a good and wholesome stream, which purified the town; while the other party said that it and its unspeakable uncleanness were at the root of all the ills that Thanshope flesh suffered from.

Altogether, the verdict of a stranger would most likely have been that Thanshope was a dim, unlovely, smoky place, in which no one would choose to live whose business did not oblige him to do so—a place where substantial dirt was the co-operator of substantial prosperity, where grime and plenty went hand in hand.

Yet there were people who loved this dirty town, and who lived contented lives in it—people not belonging to the great swarm of workers who were obliged to live there, and who, perhaps, thought more about the rate of wages than about the æsthetic condition of their surroundings.

Myles and Mary Heywood, having come to the end of the sloping street, turned a corner to the left, and soon found themselves in another street, quieter, wider, with terraces of small houses on either side, whose monotony was diversified by various chapels, meeting-houses, and schools. Uphill for a short distance, till the street grew wider and the houses better, and Myles and Mary, turning down a side street to the right, emerged upon one side of a wide, open, square space, called Townfield, or the Townfield, and elevated so high that the rest of the town lay below them as in a basin. All along that side of the Townfield where they stood was a row of neat, small houses, each exactly like all the others; the only room for the individuality of the owners making itself apparent being in the arrangement of the little strip of garden spreading before each.

Half the Townfield had been cut off, a couple of years ago, to furnish a small park or pleasure-ground; but looking across the open space to the north-west, they could see the old part of the town in its hollow; the old church of the parish on ground almost as high as the Townfield itself; the gilded spire of the town-hall rising ambitiously from the hollow (it chimed a quarter after six with mellow tone as they stood there), and all the other churches and chapels and public buildings strewn here and there about the town. A great cloud of smoke came up and dimmed the air; on every side was a fringe of long chimneys; different big factories were familiar features in the landscape, and formed landmarks to Mary and her brother—had formed landmarks to them from infancy.

Away to the north-west were undulating lines of blue, lofty moors. They were part of Blackrigg—that mighty joint of England’s irregular spine. It was not exactly an enlivening prospect, but it had certain beauties of its own; and at least this town, full of rough, busy toilers, had a fitting and harmonious frame in that semicircle of bleak and treeless moors.

Mary and Myles went up one of the strips of garden about the middle of the terrace, and opened the door of the house.

‘Pah! how hot and close it feels!’ said Myles, as they closed themselves in. ‘Now I wonder how that lad is!’

They went along a little passage, to the left of which was the ‘parlour,’ arranged in the approved style of such parlours, with a brilliant, large-patterned carpet in red, yellow, and blue; bright green merino curtains, a ‘drawing-room suite’ in rosewood and crimson rep, a pink cloth upon the centre table, upon which were negligently arranged albums, Sunday books, paper mats, and a glass shade, under which reposed waxen apples and grapes of a corpulent description. On the mantelpiece, two green glass vases, and a china greyhound of an unknown variety, more frilled paper mats, and little piles of spar and crystal. On the walls, photographs and a rich collection of framed funeral cards, together with the chef-d’œuvre of the whole establishment—a work of art which Mary regarded with feelings little short of veneration—‘Joseph sold by his Brethren,’ executed in Berlin wools, the merchants all squinting frightfully, and Joseph with a salmon-coloured back and a decidedly ruddy countenance, though one not of such remarkable beauty as quite to account for his subsequent adventures.

Past the door leading into this epitome of art and beauty went these young people, into the kitchen, which was, of course, the general living-room of the family. Upon a couch beneath the window, with the crinkling of the cinders and the ticking of the clock for his only companions, lay the failure of his family—a cripple lad of eighteen.

‘Well, Ned, lad, how dost find thyself?’ asked Myles, going in.

‘I find myself as usual—wishing I was dead,’ was the encouraging reply, as the lad turned a pale and sallow face, not without considerable beauty of feature, but stamped with a look of ill-health, pain, and something deeper and more sorrowful than either, towards the strong, handsome brother who stooped over him.

‘Nay, come! Not quite so bad as that,’ said Myles, smoothing Edmund’s hair from his hot forehead, and seating himself beside the couch. He looked into his cripple brother’s eyes with a glance so full of life, and hope, and strong, protecting kindness, and withal so contagious a smile, that an answering, if a reluctant one, was wrung from the lad’s dull eyes and down-drawn mouth.

‘I’m that thirsty!’ he said. ‘Molly, do get the tea ready.’

‘I’m shappin’’ (shaping) ‘to’t now, lad,’ she returned, hanging up her cotton kerchief and poking the fire to settle the kettle upon it.

‘And you read a bit, Myles, wilta?’ pursued Edmund. ‘Mother won’t be home for half an hour, and I could like to know how yon Lady Angiolina got on at the castle.’

Myles took up a book from a table and began to read aloud:

‘“As the groom of the chambers announced the Lady Angiolina Fitzmaurice, every eye turned towards her. She advanced with the step of a queen. Her trailing robe of black velvet set off her superb beauty to the utmost advantage,”’ and so forth.

Edmund listened with face intent and a pleased half-smile upon his lips. Mary moved noiselessly about, getting the tea-cups out of the cupboard and setting them on the tray with gingerly hand, so as not to disturb the literary party in the window.

The reading was continued only for the space of some quarter of an hour. The story was a novel of ‘high life.’ No agent in it was of lower rank than a baronet; no menial less distinguished than a groom of the chambers or a majordomo was permitted to appear in its truly select and exclusive pages; the action took place in Mayfair, in Belgravia, and in the ancestral halls of dukes and earls. Manchester was alluded to by the refined author much as if it had been of about equal importance with Timbuctoo; the whole a very tawdry tinsel, pasted together in a very poor, second-rate manner.

Myles read on and Edmund listened. Perhaps he was aware that the story was rubbish, but it took him into a world which by contrast with his own was beautiful: it spoke of something else than the Townfield as a pleasure-ground, grey factories, smoke and chimneys by way of a prospect. It pointed out another sort of existence than that led by him and his.

Edmund had an intensely poetic temperament. Poetry of some sort, in real life or in books, he must have or die. It was not forthcoming in real life: Myles never read novels for his own pleasure, therefore Edmund had no beneficent hand to point out to him the shining treasures of real poetry with which our English literature abounds, so he had to rely on the titles in the catalogue of the Thanshope Free Library, and often received a stone instead of bread, in the shape of such jingling nonsense as he was greedily listening to just now.

Myles was a great reader of politics and science. The romantic and poetic side of his nature had been left to itself; the soil, whether sterile or fruitful, had never received the least touch of cultivation—yet. He had some strong convictions on the subject of ethics, which will be best left undescribed, to display their results in his actions as circumstances put his theories to the test.

There was something striking and uncommon in the appearance of all three of this group of brothers and sister. Mary was comely—a tall, well-formed, well-grown young woman, with the pale but clear and healthy complexion, dark eyes and hair of her elder brother—a calm, sensible face, not destitute of a certain still, regular beauty, but lacking the impetuousness and intensity of Myles’s expression. She sat knitting a long grey woollen stocking, and looked with a large steady gaze now at Myles, now at Edmund, whose face was equally sharp cut as his brother’s, but worn and drawn with pain and ill-health.

Edmund was nineteen; Mary, two-and-twenty; Myles, six-and-twenty; another, born between them, had died an infant.

At this juncture the back door was heard to open. Some one entered, and in the pause made by Myles in his reading there was distinctly audible a heavy sigh—almost a groan. Glances were exchanged between Myles and Mary; both looked as if they braced themselves to meet some ordeal. Edmund’s face darkened visibly.

‘Is that you, mother?’ called out Mary cheerfully.

‘Ay, it’s me!’ replied a rather grating voice—a voice high, though not loud, and complaining in the midst of an ostentatious resignation.

‘Go on, Myles!’ said Edmund, in an undertone.

‘Can’t, my lad. You know mother can’t abide it.’

‘Why am I never to have a bit o’ pleasure? It’s precious little as I get,’ grumbled the lad, as he turned away, and lay with his face concealed.

‘See, lad! Tak’ the book, and read for thysel’,’ said Myles, who indulged in a tolerably broad dialect when in the bosom of his family.

Edmund shrugged his shoulders irritably and made a gesture of aversion. Myles closed the book, rising from the side of the couch and going to the table, as a woman came in from the back kitchen—a small, sharp-featured woman, comely yet, with a bright cheek and a dark eye. She was the mother of all those tall children, though she was only five-and-forty, having been married, as too many of her class do marry, at eighteen. The great wonder was that she had remained a widow so long, for in addition to good looks, clever fingers, and a stirring disposition, she possessed property to the extent of thirty pounds per annum left by a rich relation to her years ago.

An ignorant observer, looking at the family party just now, would have said what a good-looking, prosperous, well-to-do party they were. But Mrs. Heywood had scarcely spoken yet.

‘Evenin’, mother,’ said her eldest son, civilly, but, it must be owned, hardly cordially.

‘Good evenin’,’ she returned, in her high-pitched, dubious voice. ‘What! you’ve managed to get th’ tea ready, lass? But I know what that means. Just twice as much tea in the pot as we’ve any need for, or as I should ‘a put in mysel’. Waste, waste, on every side!’

As this was Mrs. Heywood’s invariable remark when she came in from her occasional day’s sewing at one of the large houses of the neighbourhood and found the tea prepared, it excited neither comment nor indignation, and the excellent woman, seating herself, cast a sharp, discontented look around, as if wishing that some one would give her an opportunity of saying something disagreeable.

‘Eh, bi’ the mass! It is some and hot! If some folks had to walk as far as me, mayhap they’d understand what I feel at this moment.’

Again no answer. Myles was buttering a piece of bread. His eyebrows were contracted again. The serpent in that Eden was the contentious woman. Myles never answered her complaints, on principle, for fear of saying something outrageous and unbecoming, but it was often with a sore struggle that he abstained: he did not want to become a household bully, or he knew—he had found it out by accident one day—that a certain look and tone of his could quell Mrs. Heywood’s temper in one minute. He was very much afraid of using it too frequently, though often sorely provoked. ‘Such people as Sebastian Mallory,’ he reflected (whose mother was said to live for him and his happiness), ‘were not obliged to stay in one room, listening to maddening complaints, like the continual dropping of a rainy day, with no alternative but solitude, silence, or the taproom.’

Edmund’s shoulders were drawn up to his ears, and his back expressed distinctly that he felt himself jarred and grated in every fibre of his being.

‘Now, then, Edmund,’ said his mother, in her thin, penetrating voice; ‘art comin’ to the table, or mun thou have thy tea carried to thee, to drink on th’ sofa, like a lady, eh?’

Answering to this appeal, he raised himself, his face darkened, his lips quivering with anger.

‘That’s right!’ said he, bitterly. ‘Do insult me a little more! It’s so nice to be ill, and so pleasant to spend your days by yourself upon a sofa in a kitchen. I’m likely to keep it up as long as ever I can. So would you if once you knew how agreeable it was.’

He had supported himself by means of a stick to the table; and as he limped along to the chair which Mary had placed for him, one could see how much deformed he was, and how clumsily he moved. No look of pity warmed the woman’s face as she saw him. He was not, like many a weakly or deformed child, the object of the mother’s divinest love and tenderest care. He had been born three months after his father’s sudden death. Mrs. Heywood had never been noted for enthusiastic devotion to any of her children, or to her husband, or, indeed, to any one but herself and her own interest. Myles could influence her; but she seemed to have a positive aversion to Edmund, who used to say that his real mother was Mary.

When the meal was over, there was a little movement. Edmund looked wistfully towards Myles and the book; but Myles did not offer to resume it. He had begun to think over that conversation in the office before pay-time, and was wondering whether it could be really true that Sebastian Mallory meant to return.

Sebastian Mallory was, and had been for years, his bete noire. He had seen him once, ten years ago, a handsome, fair-faced, ‘yellow-haired laddie’ of sixteen, who had come to look round his own works, with a somewhat listless gaze. Myles’s vigorous soul had been filled with contempt for him at that moment, and he had never seen fit to alter that feeling. All he heard of Sebastian Mallory was exactly contrary to his ideas of what a man—unless the man were some irresponsible person, with neither business nor estate in the background—ought to be and do. He had a very strong sense of duty himself, and never, so far as he knew, left a duty unperformed. He struggled hard, according to his light, to do what was right; consequently he felt himself in a position to be somewhat censorious upon those who, he considered, obviously did not fulfil their duties—duties to their property, their dependents, their privileges, to him—such persons as this very Sebastian Mallory. Therefore he smiled somewhat grimly to himself as he imagined that lily-handed, yellow-haired, delicate-looking young man coming to take his place at the head of affairs at such a crisis as was striding towards Lancashire—a storm which it would take the keenest heads, the strongest hands, the most practised eyes of the wariest business men who should succeed in weathering it. Probably Mr. Sebastian Mallory, if he did come, would cut a sorry spectacle, and would soon be glad to retire again to more congenial scenes abroad.

He did not feel it his duty to excite Mrs. Heywood’s disagreeable remarks by reading aloud what he justly considered ‘balderdash’ to Edmund; he therefore suggested that they should go and take a turn on the Townfield.

Edmund, who for some reason was in a more unhappy temper than usual, shrugged his shoulders, and said he did not feel inclined to go out.

‘No? Then I must go by myself, I suppose,’ said Myles.

But he made no immediate effort to leave the house. He seated himself at the table with a book, and might possibly have remained in the house, but for his mother, who having ascertained that his book was entitled ‘The History of Rationalism,’ announced that the bitterest grief of her declining years consisted in having to see a son of hers growing up an infidel, or worse. She hunted under the Family Bible, and produced a tract, which she offered him in lieu of the work he was reading. It bore the alluring title, ‘Thou also, Worm!’ And on his refusing this tit-bit of religious badinage, she put it aside with a bitter smile, and an audibly expressed hope that it might not in the future go too hardly with those who had spurned the means of grace proffered by a mother’s hand.

Myles endured these, and a succession of similar remarks, for some little time, while he appeared to go on with his book without heeding them; but, as none knew better than she who made them, the contracted eyebrows and the impatient twisting of his moustache covered considerable inward irritation. He at last abruptly rose, and took his cap from the nail on which it hung.

‘Out again!’ said Mrs. Heywood, in the same maddening voice; ‘and if a mother may ask, what pothouse are you going to now?’

‘No thanks to you, mother, that I’ve not taken to the pothouse long ago,’ replied the young man curtly, slapping his hat upon his head and leaving the room.

‘If he doesn’t break that door off its hinges some fine day, in one of his tempers, my name’s not Sarah Ann Heywood,’ remarked his mother. ‘It’s a grievous thing to have an ungovernable temper. His Bible, if he ever read it, would tell him that the tongue is a little member, but a consuming fire.’

‘The Bible never said a truer word,’ retorted Edmund, witheringly; and Mrs. Heywood, returning to her knitting, with the pleasant sense of having driven out the strongest, sank into silence.

CHAPTER IV.

ADRIENNE.

‘I love my lady; she is very fair;
Her brow is wan, and bound by simple hair:
Her spirit sits aloof, and high,
But glances from her tender eye,
In sweetness droopingly.’

Myles left the house, and, traversing some sideways, found himself presently in a steep, hilly street, which he descended, arriving at last at a sort of square, through the middle of which ran the river Thanse, and on both sides of which were rows of shops. Then, walking on a hundred yards or so, he emerged in another still larger open space, opposite a large and beautiful building, which, in its delicate and multiform Gothic tracery, and noble dimensions, with the springing gilded spire leaping aloft at last, offered a startling contrast to its sordid surroundings—the shabby, low houses, narrow streets, and grimy factories which crowded round, as near as they dared. The river here made a bend, and passed the front of the town-hall. A kind of boulevard had been made, planted with trees, and immediately across the river, fronting the town-hall, was a house standing in a garden, divided by the river from the road. It was a fine old house of red brick, which had no doubt originally been ‘in the country.’ There was a look of stateliness and substance about it—the brick was relieved by handsome stone mullions, copings, and chimney-stacks.

The trees had been stunted by smoke, but they lived yet. Much ivy, strong and tenacious from advanced age, clung about it. The grounds were thoroughly well kept. The parterres were blazing with the passionate, glowing colours of late summer flowers; the windows were glazed with sheets of plate-glass. Here and there a bow had been thrown out. Behind were extensive stables and outhouses. It was, though dingy, and miscellaneous in architecture, a fine, imposing old mansion; it instantly caught the stranger’s eye, and was known from infancy to every inhabitant of Thanshope as well as the old church on the hill behind the town-hall, or as the great co-operative stores on another hill at the other side of the town.

To-night Myles looked more earnestly than usual at this old house. It was called ‘The Oakenrod,’ and was the property of Sebastian Mallory, tenanted during his absence by that stately dame, his mother.

‘There it is!’ said Myles within himself. ‘Cumbering the ground—kept like a palace for a fellow who doesn’t care two straws for it!’

Again he shrugged his shoulders, and turned somewhat abruptly to the left, making for one of the side doors of the town-hall. He went in, and ran up a great many flights of stone steps, past corridors and branching passages, till he could go no higher, for the excellent reason that he was at the top of the building. Pushing open the glass door, which swung to behind him, Myles found himself in the holy of holies—the library. A door to the right led into the reading-room, and thither he directed his steps. It was a large, lofty, handsome room, with many tables and chairs, and plenty of pens, ink, newspapers, and periodicals scattered about. When Myles entered, the room was almost empty. One or two men were reading newspapers, and at one table in a window sat a girl, who had a great book open before her, but whose eyes were at the moment intently fixed upon the old house, the Oakenrod, which lay directly beneath.

Myles, searching about, found a number of the Westminster Review, and took it to his accustomed place, at the table next to that where the girl sat. He noticed no one to right or to left of him—not even her who was almost the only lady visitor who ever entered the reading-room.

She was already a familiar figure to his eyes. For some months past he had seen her nearly every evening, sitting at the same table, even at the same side of that table, with a book—generally some large and weighty volume—open before her, and a small thick note-book, in which she wrote extracts or abstracts of what she read.

Myles knew quite well the tall, slim figure, the two dresses which she alternately wore—one a soft, flowing black one—another, soft and flowing too, of a blue so dark as to be nearly black. He knew that the lines of her dresses flowed gracefully, and were agreeable to the eye. He knew, too, the little black fichu which she usually wore—a sort of apology for a mantle, which she never discarded on the hottest days; the modestly shaped white straw hat, with its carefully preserved black lace scarf, and bunch of daisies at one side, which hat she always ended in taking off after she had sat there ten minutes or so. She had a pale, clear, fair complexion, bright, warm chestnut hair, and a face which, not conventionally beautiful in outline, was full to overflowing of the subtler, more bewitching charm of a beautiful spirit. It—her face—had a youthful softness of outline—not full, but not thin, with a charming rounded chin, melting into the full white throat; a mouth whose lines attracted irresistibly, so good, so spiritual were their curves; an insignificant but well-cut nose; a pair of large, luminous, expressive eyes, which in some favourable lights might appear grey, but which an impartial observer must inevitably have confessed had a shade of green in them.

Myles and this young lady had sat at neighbouring tables in the public reading-room almost every evening throughout the spring and summer months of that year. Whenever Myles came into the room he had found the young lady there; he could not, of course, tell whether she came when he was not there.

Conversation in the reading-room was against the rules; but ‘conversation’ is an abstract noun of considerable indefiniteness, and one to which different minds may attach different meanings. A few words exchanged, of greeting or courtesy, could scarcely have come under the head of ‘conversation,’ or if it did, the rules were infringed every day. A little remark, as one passed the paper to the other—fifty little things might have been said (and were said by some frequenters of the room) without in the least disturbing the peace of the studious.

But between Myles and his neighbour those words had never been spoken. They had never exchanged a syllable—Myles because of a certain British-workmanlike shyness, and a general sense that she belonged, despite the simplicity of her appearance, manner, and attire, to the class of ‘fine ladies’ whom he disliked and distrusted—the class which was typified for him in the person of Mrs. Mallory of the Oakenrod—and of whom he had the idea that they were silly, pretty, useless, expensive things, good for nothing but to spend a man’s money, and make him miserable with their tricks and antics—and break his heart if he were fool enough to give it into their keeping—incapable of taking any part in the serious things of life. That was his opinion of ‘ladies.’ For the women of his own class he had a hearty respect and admiration: they could earn wages; they could work; they did not meddle with things out of their sphere; they had a distinct use and purpose; he never uttered an ill word to or of any one of them.

He had never spoken to his neighbour, because he was shy, and did not know how to begin a conversation; but he would have scorned to own it: he would have said, ‘Speak to her? Why should I speak to her? I’ve nothing that I want to say to her.’

Which would have been untrue; for there was such intelligence, such sympathy in her face, that he many a time caught himself, on reading any striking passage, wondering what she would think of it if she had read it.

She had never spoken to him—because—why—because—well, what did it matter? possibly because she was a little more sensible than most girls, and felt no wish to speak unless she had something to say.

They met without sign of recognition. He would take his place—she hers; she always had some book under her arm, for which she had stopped to ask the librarian on her way in, and they would often pass a couple of hours thus almost without a word or a look. She read earnestly and hard—not as if she read for pleasure, but for work—with a purpose. Privately, Myles was mighty puzzled to know what she could be reading, or rather, with what object she read what she did. Once he had been quite excited (silently) to see her poring over a musical score; reading it as if it were a book. One of the specialities of the Thanshope Free Library was its musical department, which was richly stocked both in scores and in treatises on music and musicians.

During the summer the room was generally nearly empty. The people were otherwise employed, so that often not more than half a dozen readers were to be found in all the large, airy room—sometimes Myles and the studious, unknown ‘reading girl’ were all alone there.

Myles opened his Review, and his eye fell upon an article on the governing classes which instantly caught his attention. In the hope of finding some follies and weaknesses of the governing classes sharply castigated, he settled himself with pleased expectation to his book.

Half an hour passed. One by one the other occupants of the room walked away. The workman and the young lady were left alone together. She looked every now and then out of the window. Her note-taking did not seem to flow so smoothly as usual. Spread open on the table before her, she had a fine edition of the ‘Fugues’ of Domenico Scarlatti, which she studied a little now and then, but oftener looked out through the window. Now, from that window she had a tolerably wide prospect; and immediately beneath her eyes was the handsome old red-brick house, with its flower-beds, and its lawns, smooth, and green, and well-watered—a rural fastness in the midst of the dusty town.

There was silence that was almost solemn in the big room, which was growing dusk: it was so high and airy, and so isolated; raised far above the town and its troubles; the din hushed; the rolling vehicles and the passing throng dwarfed; books on every side, and silence like a garment over all.

As chimes broke that silence, and eight o’clock struck, the girl, with a sigh, turned resolutely away from the outside prospect, and applied herself again to her score.

Myles, half roused by the chiming, half pleased with a particularly hard hit at the governing classes, which especially took his fancy, raised his head at this moment, and his eyes, without any thought of his neighbour. It is a gesture which every one makes sometimes in reading. Smiling with satisfaction at what struck him as a masterly argument, Myles let his eyes fall upon her.

She too was looking up—not at him, but past him. Her eyes were turned towards the door, and quick as thought there passed a subtle, inexplicable flash of dislike, tempered with alarm, across her face. She made a movement as if to rise—as if to escape; then sat down again, with a flush, more of annoyance than confusion, mantling in her cheeks. Then, bending to her book, she seemed to make some effort to keep her eyes firmly fixed upon it.

This little bit of by-play roused Myles’s attention. He turned his head towards the door, which was behind him, and he saw how it was opened, and a man came into the room. A gentleman? he speculated, as he first saw the figure, in the obscure background. The visitor gradually approached, and Myles, staring unceremoniously at him, experienced a feeling of surprise, disgust, and sudden enlightenment as to the cause of the young lady’s disturbance.

The new-comer was a young man with a somewhat high colour, dark hair and eyes, a full beardless face, and a coarse, animal mouth. He was well, even foppishly dressed, and bore the outward stamp of a person to whom money is not a subject of painful study or consideration. But, as Myles knew, he was not sterling coin. His manner, even of entering that room, was less than second-rate; confidence became a swagger; independence was metamorphosed into self-consciousness. The expression of his face was bold and vulgar. Perhaps no greater or more telling contrast could have been found, than that between the workman in his work-a-day dress, and the would-be dandy in his gloved, perfumed, over-dressed vulgarity.

This person came forward; his eyes fell upon Myles; he removed them. A workman—a person not demanding his attention, one of the “fellahs” who came to the reading-room.

Nevertheless, he seated himself at Myles’s table and drew a Daily News towards him, without speaking and without removing his hat. Myles glanced at the young lady without letting her see that he did so; her eyes were fastened upon the page before her, but he had studied her expressions, and knew that she was not reading.

‘Now, I should like to know,’ speculated Myles inwardly, ‘what you may want here, Mr. Frederick Spenceley?’

He had recognised the man—the son of a rich manufacturer of Thanshope, who had earned his fortune as a Radical, and was living in state now as a Conservative and a supporter of the aristocracy, Church, State, and landed gentry interest. His son, as Myles was well aware, had assuredly not visited the reading-room for purposes of mental instruction.

Myles apparently applied himself again to his book, but the argument had lost its charm for him. He had not known until now how lively was the interest he had taken in his graceful young neighbour. Placing his book so as to shield his face, but yet so that he could observe what was going on, he said to himself,

‘I’m glad I didn’t go away ten minutes ago.’

After bestowing a very short and scant need of attention upon the Daily News, Mr. Spenceley cast his eyes around him. Myles watched him, and saw the leisurely impudence of the stare with which he favoured the young lady, and his ears began to tingle. He—my poor Myles—was of a fiery temperament, could not endure to see even a ‘fine lady’ insulted without cause, and was dangerously ready to take up the cudgels for the unprotected or ill-used.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr. Frederick Spenceley, leaning towards the girl. ‘Do you want that paper?’

He stretched his hand towards a newspaper which lay upon the table at which she sat, but he was looking at her with a stare, perhaps intended for one of gallant admiration, but which, from the unfortunate ‘nature of the beast,’ succeeded only in being impertinent.

Without looking at him, she raised her elbow from the paper on which it had rested, and continued, or seemed to continue, her reading.

‘You don’t want it?’ he said, with what may have been meant for a winning smile.

‘No,’ came like a little icicle from her lips.

Myles with difficulty sat still; but, making an effort, continued quiet, though watching the game with a deeper interest than before.

The twilight had grown almost into darkness by this time. The attendant, perhaps not knowing that any one was in the room, had not yet lighted the gas.

Mr. Spenceley took the paper, but, without even pretending to look at it, said in a tone of under-bred badinage,

‘Isn’t it rather dark to be reading, Miss—a——’

She raised her eyes this time, and caught those of the speaker fixed full upon her. Her own were instantly averted, with an expression of cold contempt and disgust, and she made no reply.

‘I assure you it’s very bad for the eyes to read by this half-light—very trying. Hadn’t I better tell the fellah to light the gas? I am sure you will spoil your eyes, and that would be a pity,’ with a winning simper, which made Myles’s fist clench with an intense desire to do him some horrible violence. ‘Don’t you really think I had better?’ he pursued, evidently bent upon making her speak. At last he succeeded.

‘Be good enough to mind your own business, without addressing me,’ said she, in a voice which, thought Myles, was sufficient to have rebuffed the veriest cur that ever called itself by the name of man.

With that she quietly, by slightly altering the position of her chair, turned her back upon Mr. Spenceley, while her profile, with frowning brow and indignantly compressed lips, was plainly visible to Myles.

Mr. Spenceley laughed, not so musically as a lady-killer should be able to laugh, and remarked:

‘I feel it my business to prevent a young lady from spoiling her eyes, and——’

Steadying his voice with some difficulty into something like indifference, Myles turned to him and said,

‘Don’t you know that talking is forbidden here?’

The look which he received in answer made him smile, despite his inner indignation. Mr. Spenceley contemplated him with a stare, which was unfortunately not so regal as it might have been; then, raising a single eyeglass, he stuck it into one eye, and surveyed the audacious speaker anew, as if his wonder at what had occurred could never be sufficiently satisfied.

‘Will yah mind yah own business, and leave gentlemen to mind they-aws?’ he at last drawled out, with magnificent disdain.

‘When I see the gentleman I shall be quite ready to leave him to mind his own business,’ was the placid retort. ‘In the meantime, as the young lady wishes to read, and I wish to read, and you disturb us with your chatter, perhaps you will kindly hold your tongue.’

Here Mr. Spenceley resolved upon a master-stroke. Turning his broadcloth-clad back upon Myles, he tilted his chair back so as to see the young lady better, and inquired,

‘Do you know the fellah, Miss—a——?’

Before she could reply (supposing that she had any intention of replying) Myles had leaned a little forward, and tapped Mr. Spenceley on the shoulder. With a great start, quite disproportionate to the circumstances, the latter brought his chair to its normal position again. Myles saw the start, and stifled a smile.

‘Excuse me, my good sir, I don’t remember ever to have seen you here before, so perhaps you won’t mind showing me your ticket—I mean your member’s ticket—otherwise——’

‘Will yah hold yah tongue?’ retorted the other, in a tone of scornful exasperation.

‘No,’ replied Myles. ‘If you’ve any right to be here, show me your ticket, and hold your tongue, according to rules; if you haven’t that right, walk out at once.’

‘I can tell yah, yah don’t seem to know who ya’h speaking to,’ observed Mr. Spenceley, apparently lost in astonishment. ‘Are yah one of the authorities here?’

‘Oh yes! I know you,’ said Myles, who saw that the young lady was now watching the dispute with undisguised interest. ‘And I’m that much of an authority that I can prevent you from disturbing and annoying people. Once for all, will you show me your card of admission?’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘Then you’ll excuse my going to the librarian and telling him you are here without right—unless you prefer to save that trouble to me, and ten shillings to yourself, by walking yourself off now, this moment,’ said Myles, who began to find a delicious piquancy in the sensation of dealing thus summarily with a person of the consideration of Frederick Spenceley. It was an ignoble feeling, and we all have ignoble feelings sometimes, or what is the meaning of the constant injunctions to bear and forbear which we receive from different sources?

‘Haw! Wha—at?’

‘The fine for using this room without belonging to it is ten shillings. There’s another fine for talking and disturbing people, too,’ said Myles, who had never lost his look of perfect ease and calmness, and who did not for a moment remove his eyes from the other’s face.

Mr. Spenceley did not appear to like the mention of fines. His face fell; his hand involuntarily sought his pocket.

‘Tender in that direction, poor fellow!’ thought Myles to himself.

‘Confounded radical place, this!’ observed Mr. Spenceley. ‘Not fit for gentlemen to live in.’

‘Not when they have only been gentlemen since the last general election,’ said Myles, politely. ‘I quite agree with you.’

‘Well, I shall go and see what the librarian says to all this,’ said Mr. Spenceley, by way of covering his retreat; and then, after a prolonged stare at the girl in the window, he retired, not so jauntily as he had entered.

Myles picked up his book again. The girl watched her tormentor, until the noiseless door had swung to behind him, and she had seen his shadow pass towards the stairs. Myles feigned to read, but he could not help seeing how she trembled as she sat there.

He did not speak to her. Something—he knew not what—held him back. But he suddenly felt a light touch upon his arm, and, looking up, saw the young lady standing beside him.

‘Do you think he is really gone?’ she asked, scarcely above her breath.

‘Oh yes! That sort of cur slinks off when you stoop for a stone, with his tail between his legs. It’s only when he has his kennel well behind him that he turns upon you and snaps,’ replied Myles, with homely if expressive metaphor.

She drew a long breath, raised her head again, and said, with a mixture of dignity and gentleness which appealed intensely to his strongest feelings of admiration,

‘I cannot tell you how much I am obliged to you!’

‘Don’t mention it, miss,’ said he; and it was odd that, while Mr. Spenceley’s ‘miss’ made every right-minded person pant to knock him down and pound him well, Myles’s ‘miss’ was not in the faintest degree offensive.

‘You spoke as if you knew who he is. Do you?’ she added.

‘Oh yes! He’s well enough known; he’s the only son of that Spenceley who has the big factories down at Lower Place—“Bargaining Jack” they call him.’

‘Oh! I know who you mean. Poor man! How I pity him for having such a son!’

‘Had you ever seen him before?’ asked Myles, confirmed in his impression that she was not a native of Thanshope, and finding conversation easier than he had expected.

‘I have seen him several times lately. I seem always to be meeting him. Once I thought he had followed me, and then I thought how absurd to imagine such a thing; but he must have done it all the same.’

Myles had had inexplicable sensations while she spoke. He had known her so long without a voice, that now, when he heard it, she seemed to become a stranger again; and yet not a stranger. She had a sweet, low voice, clear and penetrating, and she spoke with an accent that had something not quite English in it.

It would have been difficult—to Myles in his ignorance, impossible—to say in what the foreign element lay; but it was assuredly there. When she spoke she looked at him with fleeting glances which had nothing insincere in them, and her face lighted up and became lovely—and more than that, distinguished, spiritual; the slender figure was balanced with such a graceful poise; the delicate hands were free from all nervous restlessness. Her chestnut hair was abundant, and its dressing so simple and beautiful as alone to make her remarkable. Myles realised that she was most distinctly a ‘lady,’ but he could not make himself feel her to be either trivial or stupid. There had been nothing trivial in her behaviour. Her treatment of him flattered his discrimination when he remembered her late treatment of Mr. Spenceley. At that time of his life he had very wrong ideas on the subject of gentlemen, having mistaken notions as to their power and character; but the best part of his nature was soothed and pleased when so perfect a piece of refinement as this young lady treated him entirely as a gentleman.

‘And I thank you again, very much,’ she added, smiling, and holding out her hand.

Myles forgot to be confused as he accepted the hand so frankly extended, and felt encouraged to do what he had thought would be right from the moment she had spoken to him.

‘I am very glad to have been of service. May I ask how far you are going?’

‘To Blake Street, if you know it.’

‘I know it well. It is too far for you to go alone, if you will excuse my saying so. It is quite possible that fellow may be hanging about yet. I’ll go with you, if you will allow me?’

‘Oh! you are very kind,’ said she, with visible relief. ‘I cannot refuse, though I am sorry to take you away.’

‘Not at all. I can’t fasten to it again,’ said Myles, sincerely.

‘Then, if you would be so good, I should be very grateful,’ said she; and she looked so relieved and so pleased, that Myles felt himself rewarded an hundredfold for the act which had occurred to him as one of simple civility—nay, of almost obvious necessity.

They left the town-hall when she had returned her book to the librarian, and passed out into the street turning to the right.

‘This is the shortest way, miss,’ said Myles, distracted as to what he should call her, feeling ‘miss’ disagreeable, he hardly knew why, but, despite the wealth of the English language, having no other alternative than a bold ‘you.’

She relieved his mind as if she had understood his thoughts.

‘My name is Adrienne Blisset,’ said she. ‘I should like to know yours, if you will tell it me?’

‘Myles Heywood.’

‘I like it—it is so English, so Lancashire.’

‘It’s not like yours, then,’ said he. ‘It sounds foreign.’

‘Adrienne? Yes; that is French for Adriana; but I pronounce it in the German way—Adrien-ne. Don’t you see?’

‘I never heard such a name—for an English young lady,’ said Myles, simply.

‘I am not altogether an Englishwoman. I am half German. I was never in England till eighteen months ago.’

‘Never in England!’ echoed Myles, incredulously. ‘Then you speak English amazingly well.’

Adrienne laughed, and Myles asked,

‘How do you like England, now that you are in it?’

‘I do not know England. I only know Thanshope, and I—cannot say—that I do like it much—if you will excuse me.’

‘Oh, we don’t expect every one to like our town,’ said Myles, magnanimously. ‘It is a rough sort of a place, I fancy. And I should not think you would like it either. You are not like most of the ladies here.’

‘No?’

‘There isn’t another lady in the place who would come to the reading-room as you do.’

‘Indeed. Why?’

‘They are too fine, I suppose,’ said he, contemptuously.

‘Too fine?’

‘Ay. We have a lot of fine ladies here. There’s Mrs. Spenceley, mother of that fellow who was annoying you this evening; but she’s not so fine, certainly, poor thing! But there’s her daughter!’ Myles shrugged his shoulders and turned his eyes to heaven.

‘Is she very fine?’

‘Whenever I see her she is as fine as fine can be; but perhaps she has some excuse for it, for she is very handsome, and she has a kind face too; one would wonder how she could be that fellow’s sister. Then there’s Mrs. Shuttleworth, that has the grand yellow carriage, but she is better than some of them; and she looks ill, poor thing! so perhaps her finery only gives her very little comfort.’

‘It seems to me that you have an excuse for them all,’ said Miss Blisset.

‘Perhaps I have—for all but one—the proudest and the finest of the whole lot. I’d rather have any of them than her—and that’s Mrs. Mallory of the Oakenrod.’

‘Mrs. Mal——’ began Adrienne quickly, and then stopped abruptly. ‘Do you know her?’ she added.

‘I know this much of her, that I work in their factory, and she comes looking round now and then, behaving as if she thought that I, and the factories, and the town, and the world in general were made for her pleasure and service. Oh, she’s a proud, insolent woman, Mrs. Mallory; all the Mallorys are proud and insolent. It would do them good to be humbled, and I hope they will be.’

‘Oh! how can you be so bitter against them?’ said she, as if shocked.

‘No, I’m not bitter; but I don’t like to see people like that giving themselves airs, looking as if the world’s prosperity depended upon their continuing to favour it by living in it, when any one knows that if they had their bread to earn they couldn’t do it. I like justice.’

‘Justice, and a little generosity with it,’ said she, gently, smiling in what appeared to Myles a very attractive manner.

‘We are here in Blake Street,’ said he; ‘which way do we turn?’

‘To the right, please. My uncle’s house is at the very end of the street.’

‘The end—it must be lonely,’ observed Myles.

‘Yes, it is, rather. He lives at Stonegate.’

‘Stonegate!’ echoed Myles. ‘I’ve often wondered who lived there, and never knew. Why, it is part of the Mallorys’ property,’ he said suddenly.

‘Yes; I believe it is,’ she replied composedly. ‘My uncle has lived there for ten years now.’

There was a little pause, and then Myles said,

‘You will excuse me, but I don’t really think it is fit for you to walk all that long way of an evening, especially now that it gets dark so soon, and after what has happened to-night.’

‘I suppose I shall have to give it up. Luckily I am nearly at the end of my task. So I shall try to finish it.’

‘Your reading?’ he said inquiringly.

‘Yes. References for my uncle’s book. He is writing a book about Art and the Development of Civilisation: he is too infirm to go to the library himself, and I like going there. I have been reading up music for him all summer.’

‘Oh, that’s it!’ said Myles, in a tone which betrayed ingenuously enough that he had thought often and deeply upon the subject.

‘Yes, that is it. I must really try to go a few times more, because those books may not be removed from the library; and then I shall not need to go any more.’

‘But you have not been here long, you said?’ said Myles.

‘No. Only eighteen months, since my father died abroad, and my uncle asked me to come and live here with him, else I should have had no home.’

She spoke with a quietness amounting to sadness, and Myles felt sure that there was sadness in her life, though she spoke so cheerfully.

‘Were you sorry or glad to come to England?’ he ventured to ask.

‘Oh, sorry. Every association I had with it was unpleasant; whereas I had had many pleasures at different times abroad; and it is so cold, and dull, and triste here.’

‘For any one that has no friends——’ he began.

‘Like me,’ she said.

‘It must be rather dull. Here is your place, I think.’

‘Yes,’ said Adrienne, pausing with her hand on the latch of the gate. ‘I would ask you to come in, only it would disturb my uncle so much. But I shall see you again, and another evening I hope you will come in—will you?’

‘You are very kind,’ said Myles, secretly feeling immensely flattered at the invitation. ‘If it wouldn’t be intruding——’

‘Not at all. I should like to know what you think about one or two things. I know you think, by the books I have seen you reading, and I have a burning curiosity to know what you think.’

Myles suggested that his subjects—work, wages, politics—might not be very interesting to a young lady.

‘It depends so much upon the kind of young lady, I think,’ said she, smiling. ‘Well, good night; I am obliged for your kindness.’

With a gracious inclination of her head she was gone—had passed swiftly up the walk, opened the door, and entered the house.

Myles stood for some time on the spot where she had left him, staring at the house. He looked at it well. ‘Stonegate. Blake Street.’ The whole of Blake Street was part of the Mallorys’ property—Sebastian Mallory’s property, to gain which he had toiled not, neither had he spun; but it had come to him, and was his to do as he would with.

Blake Street was a long street, composed, for about half its length, of smallish houses, in which lived quiet, steady, proper people. Several of the door-plates bore the indications of dressmakers; there were two dentists, a veterinary surgeon, and an undertaker. The rest were quiet, dull, dingy-looking private residences.

Beyond a certain point all this changed. Blake Street became a mere confusion of pasteboard terraces, half-finished houses, single strips of houses, and general disorder and chaos—a brick and plaster abomination of desolation. And then came a lonely stretch of street, quite without houses, with an unfinished footpath on either side, skirting a waste of what really had been heath, and was now little else. Some tufts of heather might be found growing there in their season, and the air that blew over it was sharp and keen.

Across this common one might see the lights of the town; dim outlines of factories and churches, and masses of buildings—the tortuous lines of light creeping up steep streets and lanes, and the indistinct outlines of the long range of the Blackrigg moors. On the left side of the road stood one solitary house, in a moderately sized garden—the Stonegate where Adrienne lived with her uncle. It was an old house of dark grey stone; square, solidly built, and of moderately large proportions. It was contemporary with the Oakenrod, and had been built by some far-back, dead and gone Mallory (they were lords of the manor of Thanshope) as a dower-house. In the garden the trees were shrivelled up, the flower-beds were adorned with nothing but a few evergreen bushes, and the grass was not kept as was the grass in the Oakenrod garden.

Behind the house was the lonely-looking waste of heath or common which was out of Sebastian Mallory’s jurisdiction; and in front a low wall, with a wicket-gate in it, bounded the garden. From the wicket to the door was a flagged walk, raised a little above the grass border on either side of it. On each side the door two windows; on the second story five windows. The shutters of the lower windows were closed—the whole face of the house presented a blank, staring void, till at last Myles, looking intently upwards, saw a light appear in one of the upper windows, and a shadow pass the blind. That must be Adrienne’s room. Then he glanced at the surroundings of the house.

‘A lonely place enough!’ he decided within himself. ‘I’m glad I came home with her. If that blackguard had been at the trouble to follow her! I hope he doesn’t know where she lives: it hardly looks as if he did, or he wouldn’t have chosen the public library to molest her in. I don’t believe that if she called out, in this street, any one would hear her; and if they did, they’re a poor lot—tailors, and women, and ‘pothecaries: they wouldn’t know a woman’s screaming from a cat’s miauling.’

‘It is a nasty place!’ he muttered again to himself, lingering unaccountably, reluctant to go. ‘It looks as if there were a blight, or a curse, or something upon it.’

At last he tore himself away, and took his homeward way.

CHAPTER V.

PHILOSOPHY AND FASCINATION.

‘A tenderness shows through her face,
And, like the morning’s glow,
Hints a full day below.’

Myles walked home, not in the ‘kind of dream’ proper for a hero under the circumstances, but thinking very lucidly and very connectedly during his pretty long walk, from the end of Blake Street to his house on the Townfield, chiefly of what had happened that evening. He thought of Adrienne—of all those summer months of silence, and then of the sudden, quick acquaintance.

‘She’s certainly different from other people,’ he said to himself: and in that matter he was right, if he meant that she was not like the ordinary Thanshope lady. But the ordinary Thanshope lady had not been brought up as Adrienne Blisset had been, and Myles did not know then what patient struggles with sorrow and poverty and adverse circumstances had made her what she was. At one-and-twenty she had lived in many lands, and her mind had come in contact with many other minds, often minds of a far from common order. Very few English girls in her class have had that experience at that age—nor would those who wish a girl to be innocent and happy desire such experience for her, if it had to be paid for with such a heavy guerdon of sorrow and suffering as Adrienne had paid for hers.

Myles knew nothing of that, he only saw the difference. He felt a curiosity about her, blended with some admiration. He admired her grace, her spirit, her sweet voice, her quick intelligence; and he thought a great deal about her as he walked home, and wondered if he should see her again to-morrow—if she would be as gracious as she had been to-night; he thought of Frederick Spenceley, and classed him in his mind with ‘Mallory and that lot,’ and was glad, quite revengefully glad, that he had been able to treat him as he had done, and that was all.

Perfectly unexpectant, unconscious, unaware of the web which circumstances, past, present, and to come, were weaving about his head, he paced the well-known streets—a son of toil, the descendant of generations of sons of toil, but with a whole world dormant in him, or rather nascent—a whole realm of suffering: love, hope, grandeur, baseness, which this night had first stirred into a premonitory natal activity.

Saturday morning came, and work, and the business of life; Saturday afternoon, and holiday. Myles and Mary walked home together about two o’clock; and his sister looked at him more than once, as his head and his eyes turned quickly from one side to the other, so often that at last she said,

‘Why, Myles, dost expect to see some one thou knows?’

‘Me—no!’ said he, hastily, and with a forced laugh. He had been half unconsciously looking for Adrienne, but in vain.

In the evening he repaired to the reading-room as usual. He went straight to his seat in the window; but she was not there, so he picked up the Westminster, which no one had disturbed since last night, and resumed the article on the governing classes.

But he could not, to use his own expression, ‘fasten to it,’ until he heard the soft opening and closing of the swing-door in the background, and the faint sound, almost imperceptible, of a girl’s light footfall and undulating dress, came nearer and nearer. Then, when he looked up, she was there, looking just the same as usual—which was surprising, after all his dreamy thoughts about her.

She bowed to him, with the smile which lent such a charm to her fair face. For she was fair, Myles decided, as he saw that look of recognition; and he was right. She was one of those women who are not anything, neither ugly nor beautiful, until one knows them, and then they are lovely for ever.

With the ‘Good evening’ and the smile they exchanged, he felt at rest, and could turn to his book again, and read, and understand. For not yet did he know that he had met his fate—good or evil as the case might be; there was a sweet, momentary pause before there came that fever of unrest which love must be to such men as he.

Miss Blisset made her notes, and studied her music with diligence, until nine o’clock came chiming from the steeple above their heads, and there rang out after the chimes the music of the tune ‘Life let us cherish!’

Adrienne put her books together, and rose.

‘Mr. Heywood, I told my uncle about what happened last night, and he told me to ask you to come and see him this evening. Will you?’

‘I shall be very glad to do so,’ said Myles, looking up, pleased and somewhat surprised. He had thought Miss Blisset’s gratitude to him natural, under the circumstances, and had quite supposed that she would treat him with friendliness afterwards; but he had smiled at the idea of the uncle of whom she spoke troubling himself about him. If he let the girl take that disagreeable walk to the town-hall every evening, he was not likely to care much whether she were annoyed or not, so that his work was done. That was the conclusion Myles had come to; and it was a conclusion quite in harmony with his character.

They left the hall together: it was Saturday night, and the streets were thronged with a rough-spoken, roughly mannered Lancashire crowd, pushing and talking, and, too many of them, reeling about, with the absence of ceremony peculiar to them. They soon left the thoroughfare, and found themselves first in the narrow cross-lane, and then in Blake Street.

‘Only one more evening,’ said Adrienne, ‘and then my work will be done; and I shall not need to come any more.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Myles, abruptly.

‘You like reading,’ said Adrienne. ‘Have you read much?’

‘I don’t think I have,’ he owned frankly.

‘The Thanshope library is not a bad one in its way,’ she remarked. ‘Rather behind the time though, in the matter of science and philosophy.’

‘Well, you see, it’s like the gentlemen who have the managing of it, I suppose,’ said Myles, apologetically. ‘They are a little behind the time, too.’

‘Fortunately they have been allowed to exercise no control over my department, the music, since it was all bequeathed by a good and enlightened man to the town; and all those worthy committee people had to do, was to accept it gratefully, and find a room to put it in. And then, too, I don’t think they would know anything about the orthodox and heterodox in such matters.’

‘Is there orthodox and heterodox in music?’ asked Myles.

‘I should think so! The adherents of the different musical creeds are given to a “bear and forbearance” equal to that of adherents of different religious creeds.’

Myles laughed a little at this and said,

‘Then I’m sure ignorance is bliss in that case. We’re somewhat overrun with parsons in these parts. The women make so much of them that they seem quite to lose their understanding—what they have of it. But the vicar—Canon Ponsonby—he is quite different; and he keeps a pretty tight hand over his parsons. I’ve heard that he shows them their place sometimes as if they were schoolboys. He ought to have been a prime minister, ought Canon Ponsonby.’

‘Yes, I know him,’ said Adrienne. ‘He and my uncle are great friends. He is a grand old gentleman.’

Here they turned in at the wicket of Stonegate; Adrienne opened the door, and Myles for the first time—not for the last by any means—stood within that sad-looking, lonesome old house.

It was a square, matted hall in which they stood; dimly lighted by a Japanese lantern, also square, hanging from the roof. On a great oaken table in the centre, stood a large, beautiful vase of grey-green Vallouris ware. Over the carved mantelpiece hung an oil-painting—a fine copy of that beautiful likeness of Goethe—the one with the dark rings of curling hair, and the magnificent face; that likeness which always reminds one of the herrlichen Jüngling described by Bettina as the hero of a certain skating scene, when he stole his mother’s cloak—der Kälte wegen. Opposite to this picture stood, on a pedestal, a bust of Orfila. These were the only ornaments in the place: every other available corner was filled with book-shelves loaded with books. A dome-light gave light by day to this hall.

‘This way,’ said Adrienne, opening a door to the left, and Myles followed her into the room. This room too was lighted with lamps and candles. There was a table in the centre—a writing-table in one of the windows, piled with books, and papers, and manuscripts. In an easy-chair, beside this writing-table, reading, was a man—presumably the ‘uncle’ of whom Adrienne had so often spoken.

‘Uncle’ said she, going up to him, and touching his arm, ‘here is Mr. Heywood, of whom I spoke to you.’

He looked up, and Myles beheld a strange, long, pale face, with hollow eyes, and a large and, as it seemed to him, an expressionless mouth. It was a deathlike face; its expression neutral to impassiveness.

‘Mr. Heywood—oh, I am glad to see you. Take a seat.’

Somewhat chilled by this unenthusiastic greeting Myles complied without a word, feeling remarkably small and insignificant, while Adrienne produced her papers, sat down at the desk, and began to arrange them. Mr. Blisset turned towards her, but did not move his chair. He merely observed to Myles,

‘You will excuse us a moment, Mr. Heywood,’ and then gave his attention to the remarks which his niece, in a low tone, made to him. It was with a kind of shock that Myles soon perceived the man’s lower limbs must be paralysed. That was what Adrienne meant when she spoke of his being unable to come to the library. That was why he was so shy and reserved, that he must be prepared for the visit of a stranger. Myles understood it all now, and, from his experience of Edmund, knew what it meant, only that this was far worse, far more of a living death than that in which Edmund lived.

The writing and reporting over, Adrienne left the room. Myles and the strange-looking, corpse-like man were left alone; and now Mr. Blisset turned to him and said, still in the same cold, measured voice,

‘You rendered a very kind service to my niece last night, and I am much obliged to you.’

‘Pray don’t mention it. No one could have sat still and seen a young lady annoyed by a fellow like Frederick Spenceley.’

‘Spenceley—surely I have heard the name!’

‘Very likely. His father is the richest man in Thanshope.’

‘Oh—ah! Naturally I have heard of him then. So that was the name of the individual who insulted her?’

‘That is his name,’ said Myles, concisely, ‘and it’s another name for a cad and a blackguard.’

‘Oh, is it? You know something about him?’

‘There are few people in Thanshope who don’t. He is a born ruffian—Spenceley. Some day the ruffianism will come out through the veneering, and, once out, it will never be polished over again.’

Mr. Blisset assented half-inquiringly, surveying Myles all the time from his impassive eyes, and then he said,

‘I am sorry my niece should have to go to the reading-room. She tells me that one evening more will finish what she has to do, otherwise I should not permit it. But I should think you have frightened the fellow away for a time?’

‘Oh yes! He won’t trouble her again,’ said Myles, with contemptuous indifference, forgetting that beaten-off insects, with or without stings, have a habit of returning with blundering persistency to the attack. ‘But couldn’t she go in the daytime?’ he asked suddenly.

Mr. Blisset shrugged his shoulders.

‘There is so much work to be done in the daytime,’ said he—‘correspondence, and reading, and manuscript to copy. But I spare her as much as I can. I never ask or wish her to work after she returns in the evening. The rest of her time is her own.’

‘I should hope so!—from nine o’clock!’ thought Myles, a little surprised. ‘She must be ready to go to bed at ten, after such a day as that. I wonder at what time it begins. Why, I am better off than that.’

‘The rest of her time is her own,’ repeated Mr. Blisset, as if he clung to that concession with fondness and pride, feeling that it made up for all other privations which her day’s work might entail—which indeed was the case. His infirmity—his long confinement to one house and one spot—the absorbed concentration of his faculties upon one work—a work which he was determined should burst upon the world, and make him illustrious—all this, and above all, Adrienne’s own devotion to him and his pursuits, since she had come to live with him, had fostered his natural egotism; till now he verily believed that his yoke was easy and his burden light to the young creature who bore it, and that that hour ‘after she came in’ was an elastic period, in which any amount of private work and reading could be done, and pleasure enjoyed.

Yet he was not a hard-hearted man, and if Adrienne had been by any cause removed from him, it would have been her gentle presence and the charm of her company that he would have lamented—not the loss of her services in reading, writing, and research.

His intense and almost forbidding coldness of manner was soon understood by Myles, who discovered before long that it arose chiefly from physical weakness and languor—not from any want of interest in the questions of the day, or in the men and things about him.

‘You are writing a great book, sir?’ inquired Myles, by way of something to say.

‘A book,’ corrected Mr. Blisset—a slight but ineffable smile playing upon the marble of his face. ‘Let no men and no generation call any of their own achievements—whether in literature or legislation—great. That is for posterity to decide.’

(‘Humph!’ thought Myles. ‘That implies that posterity will take some notice of it, in which case—but the reflections opened up were too large to be fully followed out then.)

‘One branch of knowledge, and one alone, can produce works which at the very time of their appearance may be safely pronounced great—and that is science, of course,’ resumed Mr. Blisset half-closing his eyes.

‘Then yours is not a scientific work,’ said Myles politely.

‘It is chiefly historical and speculative, but based, I trust, on the truest and most profoundly scientific principles. It is an inquiry into the question whether highly advanced civilisation and an art-spirit living, original, and capable of producing new and great works, can exist together—whether they are ever likely to go hand in hand.’

‘And what do you conclude?’ asked Myles.

‘I began in hope,’ said Mr. Blisset. ‘But the hope has died away. Music still remains—a wide, only partially trodden field, but for the rest——’ he shook his head. ‘Of course it is a gigantic undertaking,’ he went on, ‘and I have been engaged upon it for twenty years. But I think when my work is complete, that I shall have pretty well exhausted the subject.’

‘And your readers, too, perhaps,’ thought Myles, unwillingly forced to wonder whether there were much use in Mr. Blisset’s gigantic undertaking.

At this juncture Adrienne came into the room again; and Myles, beholding her for the first time in indoor dress, was sensible of a warmer, deeper feeling of admiration than he had hitherto experienced. There was a nameless foreign charm about her, which worked like a spell upon him. She held some trifling work in her hand, and coming quietly in, seated herself, and lent her attention to her uncle as he went on discoursing in a monotone, which by degrees fascinated Myles, so that he listened intently, and nolens volens.

It was only afterwards, in thinking it all over, that he remembered what a sad, dreary life it must be for the young girl, alone with this stupendous egotist, listening while he discoursed of—himself; helping him in his great work; writing letters relating to his vast undertaking; studying hard in order to supply him with facts. That was all true: but at the moment Myles did not think of it, for Mr. Blisset spoke upon subjects that the young man had thought about himself—subjects that made his heart burn—of governments and peoples, and the lessons which history may teach us.

And when Myles heard the treasures of learning and research, which Mr. Blisset had undoubtedly accumulated, brought to bear upon his own view of the question, and found that the speaker too was one of those whose watchword is—

‘The people, Lord! the people!

Not crowns and thrones, but men!’

his admiration speedily grew to enthusiasm, and he sat listening, his handsome face all flushed with eagerness, and was disposed, before the evening was over, to rank Mr. Blisset as a demigod.

Mr. Blisset was pleased, like other philosophers, with the admiration he excited, and surveyed the young man with a favouring eye.

‘You must come and see me again,’ said he. ‘It is always a pleasure to me to know one who has thought and felt upon these subjects. But I have talked till I feel almost exhausted. Adrienne, my love, suppose you give us some music.’

‘Yes, uncle,’ said she; ‘I like you to talk in that way,’ she added, touching his forehead with her lips. ‘Then you do yourself justice.’

There was a piano in the room, and Adrienne’s playing for her uncle when the day’s work was quite over—a sort of requiem upon the toil they had passed through—was as regular a thing as the falling of night upon the earth. There, in the world of harmony, was her kingdom—there she ruled; from thence she could sway the hearts of men.

The harmonies she made for them that evening were calm and grave—a pathetic Tema of Haydn’s; a solemn Ciaconna of Bach’s; a slow movement, the ‘singing together of the morning stars,’ of Beethoven’s.

Mr. Blisset shaded his long pale face with his long pale hand, and sat, with closed eyes, listening. Myles was listening too, but ear, with him, was subservient to eye and to thought. His gaze never left Adrienne, and the longer he looked, the deeper became the charm. There had slumbered in his mind, throughout these years of toil and striving, a latent, dormant, ideal of loveliness, purity, and fitness for worship, and it was as though, when Adrienne’s fingers touched the keys, that the door of heaven was opened, and a ray, falling upon her fair head, proclaimed her his soul’s dearest wish.

With a sigh, promptly repressed, he rose from his dream as she finished, and took his departure, after Mr. Blisset had made him promise to come again.

It was Saturday night, and Myles found the din of the town not yet hushed. He saw sights which were familiar enough to his eyes, heard sounds to which his ears were accustomed—drunken men reeling out of the public-houses which must be closed, brawling songs shouted hoarsely up and down—all the ugliness of rude, coarse natures taking their pleasure. He had never in his life found pleasure himself in such things; but equally, he had grown accustomed to the fact that others—men with whom he was on good terms—did take pleasure in them. He thought of the scene he had just left, and there shot a sudden sense of chill doubt and discomfiture through his frame of musing, high-strung happiness, a desperate feeling that those whom he saw about him in the streets now, were his class, his companions; that, ever since he had begun to hope and think, he had hoped for their advancement, their good, and he must not be untrue to them.

‘Pah!’ said he to himself, ‘as if she could ask a man to be false to what he ought to be true to. She’s like truth itself.’

CHAPTER VI.

FINE LADIES AND FOLLY.

Monday morning, with the business of this work-a-day world in full swing, or rather in preparation for the week’s swing of labour. In the freshness and rawness of a six o’clock morning air, Myles walked with his sister to his work. He and Mary were accustomed to do all their private conversation during these walks. They sometimes discussed their mother and her doings, and the discussion took away from the bitterness which silence would have left to rankle there.

To-day Myles was exceedingly silent, but Mary, who knew him and loved him better than any other soul, felt that the silence was no sign of dejection.

The brother and sister separated on arriving at the factory. Mary went to the weaving shed, and Myles to the warehouse. After breakfast the same arrangement took place; but the day was not destined to be one of pleasant memories for Myles.

In the course of the forenoon he was in the outer office, with Wilson the overlooker, when the latter, glancing through the window, remarked,

‘There’s Mrs. Mallory coming. I see her carriage.’

Myles made no answer, for the information did not seem to him of any particular importance; but Wilson went on, in a voice which had grown by anticipation smooth and respectful,

‘I expect she wants to see Mr. Sutcliffe, and he’s out. So she’ll have to put up with me.’

With that he stepped up to a square of looking-glass, which he retained despite all Myles’s gibes and jeers, over the mantelpiece, and smoothed his hair.

‘And Myles, lad, as Mrs. Mallory’s coming, and may have business to speak about, perhaps you’d better——’

‘Go?’ said Myles, tranquilly, though the suggestion was highly irritating to him. ‘That I’m not going to do, old chap. I’ve got these figures to write down; and here I stay and write them, if fifty Mrs. Mallorys were coming.’

Wilson made no answer. Myles’s position was too near his own for him to be able to order him out of the office; but, not quite satisfied, he waited, snatching up bundles of papers and sample cops, shoving an empty skip aside, and endeavouring to make the rough office look a little tidier.

‘What a pity,’ remarked Myles, sarcastically, ‘that you haven’t got a few evergreens and some paper roses. I’d invest in a few, if I were you, and keep them in the cupboard, ready for such an occasion as this.’

With which he seated himself at the desk in the window, which commanded a view of the street, and began to write.

Wilson walked up and down, watching the carriage as it drew nearer, and Myles felt contemptuous and superior.

‘She’s got Miss Spenceley in the carriage with her,’ observed Wilson, reconnoitring over Myles’s head. ‘They go a deal together, those two.’

Myles looked up sharply as he heard this. The carriage had stopped; Wilson had rushed to open the door. Myles saw the open carriage standing at the gates, and how one lady sat waiting while the other got out. The face of the waiting lady was turned towards the office.

‘Miss Spenceley’—the sister of the man who had displayed his contemptible character to Adrienne Blisset the other night. It was not likely that Myles should glance at her with very amiable or respectful feelings. He saw a graceful figure leaning nonchalantly back in the carriage; he had a general impression of a brilliantly beautiful brunette face, large dark eyes, an extremely elegant costume, a hat, or bonnet, with a waving plume, a parasol covered with lace—and that was all. But he had long sight; he saw none of her brother’s expression on the girl’s countenance, which was frank and open, as well as beautiful.

‘I’d bet something they don’t get on well together,’ he thought; and then he heard a silk dress rustle over the threshold, and a woman’s voice answering indifferently Wilson’s profuse salutations. Myles could not help looking up, though he tried not to do so. He had often seen Mrs. Mallory before; but she had never seen him. Now she was looking full at him.

She was a handsome woman, of some forty-six years of age, but looking younger when one did not notice certain lines about her eyes and mouth—lines of meanness as well as of pride. She was very richly dressed in black; there was silk, and lace, and perfume about her. She was tall, fair, pale, and inclined towards embonpoint. She looked Myles over from head to foot; then, turning to Wilson, said,

‘Is Mr. Sutcliffe in?’

‘I’m very sorry, ’m; he isn’t. He has had to go to Bolton, and won’t be back till afternoon.’

‘Oh!’ said she, pausing as if in thought; and then added, ‘Give me the papers Mr. Sutcliffe was speaking about the other day; they are sure to have been left ready. I will take them home with me, and look them over.’

Myles had turned again to his work, and was bending over a page of figures, wroth with himself that, instead of being able undisturbedly to add up the figures he had put down, he could not help listening to Mrs. Mallory’s voice.

‘Yes, ’m; I’ll find the papers. They’ll be in Mr. Sutcliffe’s room. But won’t you sit down ’m, while I look for them?’

‘No; make haste, please,’ was all she said, a little impatiently; for Mr. Wilson’s manner was, to put it mildly, fussy; and Myles, feeling the influence of that tone, despite all his efforts, began to count half aloud:

‘Three and five, nine—eight, I mean; and seven fifteen, and——’

‘Here they are, ’m. Allow me to make them into a parcel, ’m: it will be more convenient.’

‘No; you can take them to the carriage, and I will look them over when I have time.’

‘Myles, lad, suppose you were to take the papers to the carriage,’ said Wilson, wishing to appear superior.

Myles looked up, surprised; he could read the simple, fussy character of the faithful old cashier to its very depths, and knew his motives exactly. He had no wish to disoblige him, and, with an amused half-smile, took the papers and walked to Mrs. Mallory’s carriage.

The young lady, Miss Spenceley, was looking somewhat impatiently towards the office.

‘Oh!’ said she, when she saw Myles, ‘is Mrs. Mallory in there? Has she nearly finished her business, do you think?’

Myles had seen the girl many a time before; she was the beauty and the heiress, par excellence, of Thanshope; the only daughter, as her brother was the only son, of her parents. The young man, looking at her more attentively than ever before, could find no trace of likeness, or his scorn of her relative might have displayed itself in his voice.

‘I really don’t know,’ said he, in answer to her question. ‘She is talking to the cashier.’

‘Oh, thanks!’ said she, turning abruptly away, and looking impatiently up the street.

Myles returned to the office, and as he re-entered it Mrs. Mallory was saying to Wilson,

‘Because I expect my son—your master—will be at home again shortly, and of course he will wish to inquire into everything that is going on.’

There was something in the tone in which this was said which rasped upon Myles’s feelings—a calm superiority which he felt to be extremely needless.

‘Then we may expect Mr. Mallory to come and take possession some time soon?’ Wilson hailed the news as if it were a personal favour.

‘I expect so. I do not know the exact time; but of course everything will be ready for him?’

‘Will he be ready for everything?’ thought Myles, with strong contempt; his old spite—it deserves no nobler name—against the absent, unknown Sebastian Mallory rose angrily to the surface again. ‘Our master, indeed!’ he reflected angrily. ‘I wonder if he’s ever proved himself his own master yet?’

Wilson, by an unlucky combination of circumstances, was at this moment inspired to turn pointedly to Myles and remark:

‘Now, Myles, do you hear what Madam Mallory says? I told you the master was coming, and you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘It remains to be seen whether “master” is the right word to use,’ said Myles, with deliberation. ‘In this case I have my doubts about it.’

He bent to his book once more, but not before he had seen the stony stare in the light blue eyes of Mrs. Mallory, and the gaze of haughty astonishment upon her pale, high-featured face—a stare which seemed to say, ‘I have seen human nature in many obtrusive and ill-bred aspects, but never in one which so much required putting into its proper place as this.’

Myles smiled rather grimly to himself; he hated to exchange such civilities with any one, most of all with a woman, but his spirit could ill brook the unquestionably haughty and supercilious manner of Mrs. Mallory, and the profuse mouthing of the word ‘master’ by Wilson’s complaisant lips. Myles had, up to now, utterly refused to call any man master, and he was not going to begin it in the case of a man whom he had never seen; and to whom local report gave anything but a decided or master-like character.

‘There’s no call for you to be so rude,’ said the cashier, shocked and reproachful.

Myles turned to him.

‘Will you understand,’ said he, with lips that had grown tight, ‘that a man can’t both do arithmetic and talk?’

‘Who is the young man?’ inquired Mrs. Mallory of the discomfited Wilson.

‘You must excuse him, ’m. He’s one of the foremen: he knows no better.’

Myles made no sort of comment upon this apology, content that they should say what they liked about it, so long as they did not require him to acknowledge an unknown ‘master.’

Mrs. Mallory, after another and a prolonged stare of the said haughty astonishment, which stare wasted itself upon the back of the delinquent, swept away, leaving Myles with his lips twisted into a fine sneer—an expression to which they were wont too readily to bend.

Myles’s temper had assuredly not been improved by the occurrences of the morning. It was destined to be yet more severely tried before his return to work in the afternoon.

On leaving the factory he parted from Mary, as he had an errand in the town, and told her he would be home in half an hour for dinner. He did his errand, and took his way home. And as he arrived at his own gate there came out from it a man whom Myles recognised as a person to whom he bore no friendly feelings. He was named James Hoyle, and was by trade a small shopkeeper, in the stationery and evangelical-religious-book line: occasionally he acted as a preacher of a denunciatory and inflammatory description; always he was a missionary—so, at least, he said.

To him and to his style of preaching and piety Myles had a most thorough dislike; he believed him to be a hypocrite, and in this case his dislike was well grounded enough, and founded on facts.

‘Good morning, Myles. The Lord bless you!’ observed Mr. Hoyle, holding out a dingy, fat hand. No lowest scum of the Levites, of whatever section, whatever persuasion, could have looked, thought Myles, sleeker, or more as if his sleekness were an ill-gotten gain.

Out of tune as Myles was with all the world, this apparition and his tone of familiarity was not of a kind likely to restore harmony to the jarring notes of his life’s music. Drawing up his proud figure to its utmost height, and looking with his contemptuous eyes down upon the pudgy individual who addressed him, he said,

‘Good morning. I’ll thank you not to make so free with my name. Who gave you leave to call me “Myles”?’

He ignored the outstretched hand, having an objection to touching what he considered to be both literally and metaphorically dirty fingers.

Hoyle looked up at him, and his eyes twinkled.

‘I’ve been taking spiritual counsel with your mother, my dear young friend. A sweet, precious soul! It is a privilege to converse with her; she teaches one so much.’

‘Does she? It’s a pity but she could teach you to be sober and honest,’ said Myles, with distinct enunciation and scornful mien, holding himself somewhat aloof from Mr. Hoyle. ‘Anyhow,’ he continued, ‘until you’ve managed it—the soberness and honesty, I mean (you needn’t look as if you didn’t know. I saw where you came out of at eleven o’clock on Saturday night)—till then, you’ll please give this house a clear berth, and my mother may take her spiritual counsel—if she wants it—with a different sort of person from you.’

He was about to turn in at the gate, but, with his hand on the latch, was arrested by an expression on the face of the other.

‘The day will come, young man, when you will wish you had treated me—me, of all people—with more respect,’ said he with a smile, for he had a flexible face, which appeared to lend itself even more easily to smiles than to other expressions. Yet the smile was an evil one.

He turned and walked away, and Myles, in some annoyance, went into the house. Usually Mrs. Heywood had the field to herself in the exercise of her tongue. Edmund occasionally indulged in a burst of temper, but always to his own disadvantage. Mary never answered at all. Myles alone, as has been before said, could, with a certain look and tone, show himself master of the fretful, repining embodiment of scolding and selfishness whom they had the misfortune to call mother. To-day he was in no mood to ‘stand nonsense,’ and as he went into the kitchen he said, hanging up his cap, and taking Edmund’s hand, as he seated himself beside him,

‘What does yon James Hoyle want always hanging about here? The chap is never out of the place, and I can’t abide him. If he doesn’t give us a little more of his room and less of his company I must speak to him. Mary, lass, I hope thou’rt not got agate of meeting-going.’

He spoke with perfect good-nature and good temper, not suspecting anything but that all the rest of the company were equally averse with himself to Mr. Hoyle’s visits, and he smiled a little as he looked at Mary.

‘Me!’ said his sister, laughing. ‘Nay, I’m not come to that. As long as I live I’st go to th’ parish church every Sunday, and sit in th’ old place——’

‘Alongside o’ Harry Ashworth,’ put in Edmund, gravely, at which Mary’s cheeks flushed, and she went on somewhat more rapidly.

‘For I make nowt at o’ out o’ the meetin’-house.’

‘Perhaps you’ll end by leaving th’ owd place for an older, and going clean over to Rome,’ said Mrs. Heywood, who had been bending over the fire, looking at a pan of potatoes, and who now raised rather a flushed face from that occupation; ‘choose how, there’st nowt be said here against James Hoyle, the godly man! and it’s more than likely that you’ll see more of him than you have done yet.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked her eldest son, turning towards her; ‘you mean that Jimmy Hoyle would come here a second time after I’d forbidden him the house?’

He laughed, as if he thought it rather a good joke.

‘You’d turn him out of the house? That’s like you!’ said Mrs. Heywood, emptying the potatoes into a tureen.

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Myles, in some surprise at her whole demeanour.

‘Well, you’ll get to know, then,’ she retorted, without meeting his eye. ‘A good man is like the salt of the earth. He can make even a sinful house holy, and bring a blessing on it. James Hoyle and me is going to be married. We’st be wed this day three week, and then I’d like to know how you’ll forbid him the house.’

There was a momentary silence, during which Myles, who had risen, stared at his mother in an incredulous manner. Mary, after a moment, turned pale, and sat down upon a chair in the background. Edmund’s lips were curled into a sneer.

‘Mother!’ said Myles, confronting her, and somewhat forcing her eyes to meet his. ‘Is this a joke that you’re playing upon us? Because, if so, it’s a very poor one.’

‘Joke!’ she retorted, her voice rising to shrillness. ‘What should it be a joke for, I’d like to know? Have I such comfort in my children that I shouldn’t be glad of the help of a godly man—oh, and he is a godly man—like that?’

‘That’s a poor answer, mother,’ said Myles, who had thrust his hand into his breast, as if to repress some anger or emotion. ‘Your children have never done anything to cause you uneasiness.’

‘Do go on blowing your own trumpet!’ Mrs. Heywood exhorted him.

‘Nay, I’ve no more to say about it. But I want a better answer than that your children’s conduct drove you to marry that great, idle, greasy, sanctimonious, all-praying, no-doing brute—he isn’t a man. I can understand him wanting to marry you, you’ve thirty pounds a year of your own: but that you should look at him!’ He made an expressive gesture of contempt.

‘So it’s my money he’s marrying me for,’ said Mrs. Heywood; and no girl of eighteen could have spoken with more anger at the suggestion. ‘That’s it, is it? Ay, ay! “Honour thy father and thy mother”—do!’

‘Are you giving us an example of honouring our father?’ he inquired, growing quieter in tone as his anger and disgust grew more intense, and her determination (he saw) more fixed. ‘Or is your present plan likely to lead us to honour you? No, mother; I can’t see what a woman like you wants with marrying again; though if it had been a decent man, let him be never so rough, I’d have put up with him, but that—why, I saw him on Saturday night coming out of the lowest public-house in Thanshope—half-drunk—as plain as I see you. But here’s the long and short of it. That man certainly never enters this house again. I’ll let him know that. And if you do marry him, he’ll please to find a home for you; for neither he nor you will share ours. Mark my words—if you go to him you leave us for ever.’

‘Mother, thou’ll ne’er be so wicked,’ said Mary, from her corner, in tears.

‘Hold thy tongue, thou hussy! calling thy mother wicked,’ said Mrs. Heywood, sharply.

‘I’ll not have Molly called by that name,’ said Myles, composedly. ‘Remember, it’s I that am master here, when all’s said and done. I’ll have no such nonsense carried on. So let us hear—do you intend to be a wise woman or a fool?’

The words were not at all rudely spoken, but they were unfortunately chosen. They incensed Mrs. Heywood, and she replied sharply,

‘I intend to marry James Hoyle.’

‘Then,’ said he, slowly, as if giving her an opportunity to recant, ‘it’s settled that I intend to have no more to do with you.’

‘Oh, Myles, don’t be so hard on her!’ implored Mary, coming forward and laying her hand upon his arm.

‘My good lass,’ said he, ‘dry thy eyes, and be glad thou’rt not called upon to be hard, as thou calls it.’

Mary did not expostulate. Under the gentleness of the words she read a decision which she did not attempt to combat.

‘Mary’s our good angel,’ remarked Edmund from the couch; and his eyes, too, fell upon her with affection.

‘A nice angel you’ll find her when I’m gone,’ grumbled Mrs. Heywood.

‘Once more,’ broke in Myles’s voice, ‘I tell you, mother, I have spoken to you for the last time, unless I hear that this abominable thing is given up—for the last time.’

‘Myles!’ implored his sister. But she might as well have tried to move one of the great boulders on Blackrigg as make him soften or yield one jot.

‘Come, lass!’ he observed to her. ‘Those that must work must eat. The time’s gone by in this precious palaver, and we’ve only twenty minutes left.’

He sat down and helped himself, and tried to look as if nothing had happened; soon, however, he laid down his knife and fork, and told Mary, who had not even pretended to eat, that it was time to go.

She put her shawl over her head, and, saying good afternoon to Edmund, they went out.

CHAPTER VII.

SANS FAÇON.

Six o’clock was the time at which the work-people ‘knocked off.’ Myles and Mary had not spoken as they went to their work, and of course not during the afternoon; and it was only as they were coming home again that they first named the subject which at that moment lay nearest their hearts. Mary was all for mildness and temperate measures.

‘I think, Myles, that if we was to be kind to her, and talk to her, hoo’d likely give it up,’ said the girl, in her soft, broad, Lancashire dialect.

‘Not she, Molly. She’s no intention of giving it up.’

‘I never could abide yon Hoyle,’ went on Mary. ‘A false, sneakin’ fellow, he always seemed to me. I reckon he’s after mother’s bit o’ brass; but how hoo can gi’ so mich as a thought to him—nay, it fair passes me!’

‘Ay! you may well blush! I don’t wonder!’ said Myles, grimly. ‘It looks as if some people’s minds were fair crooked, or set up on edge, or upside down, or something.’

They went into the house, and found Edmund alone.

‘She’s not coming back,’ said he, by way of salutation. ‘She’s gone to some of his relations. She says she’s lived through a deal o’ trouble, and has found out at last what it was to be turned out of doors by her own children.’

Neither Mary nor Myles made any answer to this announcement. Mary got tea ready, and they sat down. It was a silent painful meal. Myles rose from it with a sense of relief, and taking Edmund’s book to change, said he was going down to the reading-room.

‘Would thou mind calling at th’ saddler’s in Bold Street for yon strap o’ mine?’ said Mary.

‘What strap, Molly?’

‘It’s a girder as I took to have a new un made like it. He’ll give you both th’ old and th’ new un. I could like to have it to take wi’ me to-morn. I’ve been using Sally Rogers’; but hoo’s comin’ back again to-morn, and hoo’ll want it hoo’rsel.’

‘Ay, I’ll get it,’ said Myles, putting on his cap and going out.

He made a little détour from his usual route, in order to go to the saddler’s on his errand for Mary. Bold Street was one of the principal streets of Thanshope, and close to the very shop to which Myles was going was a place known to the vulgar as ‘th’ Club.’ This was a billiard and whist club, frequented by the golden youth of the promising town of Thanshope.

It was a spot not exactly loved of the mammas of the said town, and much discussed by the young ladies of the same. Much iniquity was vaguely supposed to be perpetrated there: some of the piously disposed spoke of it as a ‘den’; others, who knew nothing, and wished to appear as if they knew a great deal, said it was ‘as bad as the worst of London clubs,’ which remark may serve as a specimen of the mighty self-consciousness of little provincial towns—and ‘den’ is a word which has about it a fine abstract flavour of awfulness.

It is probable that, as a matter of fact, much bad whist was played there; billiard balls were knocked up and down, and bets made; too much spirits were probably consumed; as many dull, coarse, or vulgar tales were told, as much aimless scandal was talked, as many praise-worthy efforts were made to ape the manners and tone of metropolitan clubs, as in most provincial institutions of a similar kind.

Myles went to the saddler’s, which was next door to this temple of hilarity, fashion, and fastness; got the straps which Mary had spoken of, and then came out to take his way to the town-hall. As he passed the portico of the club, he saw just within it a back which he remembered, clothed in broadcloth. Beside this figure was another, that of a mere lad, with a babyish face and no chin to speak of, who would have been better in the cricket-field, or even grinding at his Latin grammar. On his small-featured insignificant face was stamped an expression of foolish glee and admiration.

The first individual was speaking; Myles, strolling leisurely past, heard the words, in the loud, strident voice:

‘Such a chase, my boy! but I succeeded. I found out where she lives, and waylaid her; gave her my protection whether she liked it or not. Unless I’m much mistaken, we shall soon be very good friends. She’s a deep one—those little demure things always are. Ha, ha!’

‘I say, Spenceley——’

‘Doosid pretty, though. D—d good eyes she has, and knows how to use them. Look here! do you want your revenge for Saturday night?’

‘Oh yes! Come along!’

They walked forward to the interior of the hall, and were lost to view.

Never before had Myles felt the singular sensation which just then clutched him—a kind of tingling, half of rage, half of shame, from head to foot—a tempest of his whole mental being. He was in a white heat of fury, and only two ideas were distinct in his mind: to find Adrienne, and to punish her insulter.

Almost unknowing how, he hurried to the town-hall, up the stairs, through the library, into the reading-room. Would she be there? Yes, she was there, in her usual place. He strode towards her. She was not even pretending to read or write. She was pale as ashes, and trembling, as he saw in his approach.

‘Miss Blisset!’ he almost whispered, as he went up to her, and bent over her, his face dark with suppressed indignation, his eyes aflame. If she too had not been moved out of all conventional calm, she must have started at the expression which flashed from his face upon hers.

‘Oh, Mr. Heywood, will you be so very good as to go home with me now, at once? I have been so frightened and—insulted.’

Her voice broke, though her eyes flashed. How proud a front soever she might have showed to her insulter, the reaction had set in: the remembrance was not to be borne unmoved.

‘I know you have,’ said he in a low emphatic voice; and a tremor shook him too as he looked at her and saw how beautiful she was. He had admired her as she sat in repose, but now every fibre of his nature bowed to her, and he felt a passionate desire to do something, anything, which should set him apart in her eyes from others. Yet after his first swift glance, he scarcely looked at her, and said very little. Words appeared weak and trivial—he could not express in them his detestation of the conduct of that other man, or how profoundly he reverenced her.

‘How was it?’ he asked, speaking composedly, but clenching his hands, and crushing together what he held in them.

‘It was that man,’ said she, in a low breathless voice, ‘that hideous man. I don’t know where he saw me. I think he must have followed me, but when I got to that little lane, he suddenly overtook me, and spoke to me. I could not turn back. It would have been much farther—and so lonely. I did not answer him; I went on very fast, but he detained me so long in that lane—he would not let me pass. I thought I should—bah! I thought, when we got into the town, that he would have left me, but he did not. He came to the very door of this place, and I dare not go out for fear he should be there yet. Oh, I am so glad to see you! I thought you were never coming.’

She had leaned her head upon her hand, or she must have seen the light that flashed suddenly into his eyes—not the light that had been there at first. He drew a long breath, but succeeded in not betraying for a second his emotion, as she turned, pale and quivering with excitement, and put her two little slender hands upon his, saying earnestly,

‘You have been very kind to me. What should I have done if you had not helped me?’

‘It has been a pleasure to serve you,’ he said constrainedly. ‘Do you feel fit to walk home now?’

‘Oh, quite!’ she answered, picking up her note-book; and they went away together.

Myles walked with her to the gate of her uncle’s house, and said, as they paused there,

‘Of course you will never come again, Miss Blisset?’

‘Never. Of course not.’

‘Then—then—’ he faltered, unable to say what he wished.

‘But I shall see you again, of course,’ said Adrienne, quickly. ‘You will come again. My uncle wishes you to come again. And you will—yes?’

‘You are sure it wouldn’t be an intrusion?’ said Myles, doubtfully.

‘Very far from an intrusion,’ she answered. ‘You will be welcome—and you will be expected until you come.’

With which, and with a warm hand-shake she disappeared.

Myles did not pause to-night to contemplate the street, or to look out for the light in the window. He took the shortest and straightest course into the town again, went direct to Bold Street, and stopped before the club.

There was a light in the vestibule of that building, and a waiter stood at the door surveying the passers by, and feeling no doubt that he looked negatively fascinating.

‘Is Mr. Frederick Spenceley here?’ inquired Myles, quietly and politely.

‘Mr. Frederick Spenceley?’ repeated the waiter, while an expression of ill-humour crossed his face. ‘I rather think he is, and in a deuce of a temper too. If Mr. Frederick Spenceley keeps on coming here, I shan’t stay. Well, do you want to see him?’

‘I should like just to speak to him,’ said Myles, ever calmly and politely; his one object being to penetrate to Mr. Spenceley’s presence, content to pocket his burning fury until he was face to face with him.

Mr. Spenceley evidently enjoyed little favour in the eyes of the waiter, or the latter would hardly have allowed a working-man to penetrate into that sanctum sanctorum, the billiard-room. As it was, he said,

‘Well, if you go straight ahead upstairs, you’ll find him in the billiard-room, I expect. But perhaps you want to see him down here?’

‘Oh no! I can go to him. Upstairs, you say?’

The waiter nodded; and Myles obeying his direction, found himself on the first landing, opposite a door inscribed ‘Billiards.’

He knocked, but no reply was given, which was accounted for by the loud and overpowering voice of Frederick Spenceley, whose accents drowned all other sounds.

Myles opened the door, and walked into the room, which was like most other billiard-rooms: four green-shaded lights above the table; the marker, standing in his place, looking sulky—he too having received his share of the compliments of Mr. Spenceley that evening.

(It was a significant fact, that not one of Frederick Spenceley’s inferiors would have felt anything but pleasure in his degradation or humiliation.)

There was Charlie Saunders, the insignificant-looking boy whose pretty pink-and-white face was now a good deal flushed, and who laughed foolishly now and then in high-pitched voice. Opposite, with his burly back towards the door, was Frederick Spenceley, shouting very loudly, and freely expressing his opinion that the cloth was a confounded bad one, and that the table was not level.

‘It’s your eye that’s not level, Freddy, my boy,’ said his youthful opponent; ‘and your cue too. Look out what you’re doing.’

‘D—n it! it isn’t. Where’s the cha-alk? It’s my beastly luck,’ roared Spenceley, against whom the balls had broken most unfavourably the whole evening.

Had the fellow been in the least intoxicated, Myles would have retired; but he was merely noisy and ill-tempered, and accordingly the workman chose that moment to step forward and touch Mr. Spenceley on the shoulder.

With a violent start, which contrasted somewhat curiously with his previous bluster, he turned; and when he saw Myles, his face assumed a deep hue of anger, and perhaps of some less noble feeling.

‘I want a word with you,’ said Myles, curtly; and young Saunders paused to stare at the new-comer, while the marker turned and looked on too.

Be it observed that neither of these men loved Frederick Spenceley. A billiard-marker, however, is not always in a position to resent affronts, and Charlie Saunders was a person of less importance than Spenceley, whatever might be his private opinion of him. Moreover, the whole proceeding took them by surprise, or—perhaps they might have interfered.

‘If you like to come to another room, where we can be alone,’ pursued Myles, composedly, ‘lead the way. I don’t care where it is.’

‘What the —— do you want, you ——?’ growled Spenceley, recovering his pluck, or what he was pleased to consider his pluck.

‘I think you remember me. I don’t need to introduce myself,’ said Myles. ‘Now look here! You’ve been behaving like a blackguard again—perhaps you can’t help that—but, in any case, you’ll be pleased to take your attentions to some other quarter than that one. You know what I mean.’

‘I’ll be—’ (a volley of the dash dialect)—‘if I do, you fool! Be off, and don’t annoy gentlemen. Clear out, I say, or I’ll call the waiter, and have you kicked out.’

There was that in Myles’s face, so far removed from brutal violence, which was conspicuous in every word and gesture of Spenceley, that the others were quiescent. How he had got there was a mystery to them; but being there, they were Englishmen enough to wish for fair play, and had sufficient sense to perceive that the workman was no blackguard, whatever his interlocutor might be.

‘You were in Markham’s Lane, to-night,’ went on Myles composedly, though his face had become white, and his lips were set.

‘What’s that to you? What business have you to come spying on gentlemen?’

‘If I were you, I wouldn’t say too much about spying. You know what happened there—in Markham’s Lane I mean. If anything like it happens again—just once again——’

He paused.

‘Well?’ said Spenceley, with a sneer and a taunt, ‘what will be the consequences, my fine fellow?’

‘They will be unpleasant to you, for I’ll thrash you within an inch of your life.’

‘Ha! ha! ha!’ roared Mr. Spenceley, but somehow there was a false note in the full chord: it failed of rounded complete harmony.

‘Freddy, what have you been up to?’ cried Charlie Saunders, in amaze; but he did not ask what the other man had been ‘up to.’ It appeared to be taken for granted that he had good ground for his complaint.

‘Look here, you beggar,’ observed Spenceley to Myles; ‘just get out of this, before you are turned out, and don’t interfere in things you don’t understand.’

‘I go when I have your promise to behave yourself in future—not before.’

‘Wha-at? Promises? I don’t make promises to cads.’

‘Then I suppose you’ve never promised yourself what you deserve. I’m waiting for a promise to me, not a cad, and I’ll stay till I get it.’

‘D—n you! will you be off?’ shouted Spenceley, in a sudden passion, as he saw the cool, scornful face of Myles, and his eyes contemptuously measuring him from head to foot; and took in with a side-glance the scarcely concealed smile upon the faces of the others. ‘Will neither of you fellows ring the bell, and have this fool turned out?’

The rules of the club not providing for such an emergency, they took no notice of what he blustered at them, while Myles replied coolly as ever,

‘When I’ve got what I want, I’ll be off, as I said.’

‘Perhaps you want to keep the little darling to yourself,’ began Spenceley.

‘Drop that!’ said Myles, sharply, for the first time losing his perfect self-command.

‘Ah, that’s it! We don’t want to be disturbed in our little game. We are so very industrious and literary in our pursuits——’

In clenching his hand, Myles felt something in it which he had forgotten—the parcel containing Mary’s straps. The paper which enwrapped them had got loose. One strap had fallen coiling upon the floor; one remained in his hand. He looked at it, and felt very strong to wield it. He turned once more to Spenceley, saying,

‘Do you promise never to speak to, or molest the lady again?’

‘Make promises to you, about that little jade ...’ began Spenceley, jeeringly, but he did not finish the sentence.

Myles’s hand, like an iron vice, was at his throat, and during the paralysing astonishment and bewilderment of the other two, Frederick Spenceley received such a thrashing as he had many a time deserved, but which circumstances had hitherto denied to him. Myles’s hold, strengthened by a passion which lent him irresistible power, did not for one moment relax. At last Saunders turned and rang the bell; but not before the fine broadcloth coat was in ribbons upon its owner’s back, and the face above it purple and almost suffocating, did Myles fling him away from him, remarking coolly,

‘Perhaps that will answer as well as a promise. If ever it’s necessary, there’s the same thing, and worse, ready for you a second time.’

He turned to find the door open, and the waiter staring in, aghast.

‘Kick him out! Fetch some water!’ cried young Saunders, bending over the prostrate figure of his friend. ‘Kick him out, I say!’ he reiterated. He was remarkably small and slender in figure, and doubtless felt that it would be a mockery to attempt the deed himself.

Myles turned towards the waiter, who still blocked up the doorway.

‘Well,’ said he, tranquilly, ‘I am waiting; which are you going to do? Kick me out—or let me pass?’

The billiard-marker had made no attempt to interfere. The insults received that very evening from Spenceley rankled in his mind; he was well pleased at the humiliation of the bully. The little waiter looked up for a moment at the tall, muscular, sinewy young man who towered above him, with a pale face, and a look of inflexible determination and power about his eyes and mouth, and a frown of anger, terrible in its intensity, on his brow. He stood aside silently. Myles turned and said,

‘If I’m wanted again about this business, my name is Heywood, and I live on the Townfield. I can easily be found.’

No answer was returned: he composedly picked up his second strap, and walked away.

CHAPTER VIII.

AFTER-THOUGHTS.

‘What ails thee, Myles?’ asked his sister, as he came into the kitchen.

‘Me? Nothing, lass. Here’s your straps. The new one has had a kind of inauguration, but I reckon it will have done it good more likely than harm.’

‘What dost mean?’ she asked, staring at him.

‘Oh, nothing!’ said he, with a slight laugh, as he leaned against the mantelpiece with his arms folded behind him, his favourite attitude.

‘Hast changed my book, Myles?’ inquired Edmund.

‘Eh, I clean forgot it,’ replied Myles, with a start. ‘I’m very sorry. Fact is, I was called off, and I never thought of the book again.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ answered Edmund, who was in high good humour at his mother’s absence.

Mary also seemed less constrained, though nothing would have induced her to own that she was glad her mother had left them. She moved about more freely, and as she passed to and fro, ‘putting things to rights,’ she was heard to sing snatches of no less a song of praise than the ‘Old Hundredth.’ And when her household work was done (for Myles’s adventure had not taken long, and it was now barely eight o’clock) she brought her work, and sat down with her brothers; and though there were shadows brooding over them all—darker shadows, and deeper, than they imagined—they formed a very happy trio.

Mary especially felt happy and contented. She was devoted to her brothers—loved Edmund with a mother’s and a sister’s love combined, while she looked upon Myles as her ideal of all that was good and manly. He had given her no cause to think otherwise. With regard to her own merits, she was humble; but let any one impeach in the slightest degree those of Myles or Edmund, and she became fierce, proud, and resentful. Something in Myles’s mien to-night disturbed her, she knew not why.

‘Wilt have thi pipe, lad? It’s theer; I’st get it in a minute.’

‘No, thank you, Molly. I don’t care about smoking to-night.’

‘Did iver ony one see sich a chap?’ said Mary, secretly filled with pride in him. ‘He ne’er drinks, and he ne’er hardly smokes, and he ne’er does nowt disagreeable.’

‘He hasn’t a redeeming vice,’ said Myles, ironically, watching her fingers as she plied her needle, and forcing himself to speak, though he did it half mechanically. What was she making? he asked.

‘A shirt.’

‘For whom?’

‘Why, for thee, lad!’ said Mary, with a laugh and a look at him; and Myles returned the look with a smile, and instantly became lost in a long train of reflection.

Edmund and Mary loved him, and looked up to him as to a superior being, as the centre figure in their lives, and the person around whom clustered their hopes, fears, and loves. Beyond them, out of their circle, was Adrienne Blisset; was it in the nature of things that she could ever behold him with eyes like theirs? No, never; because she was instructed, and they were ignorant. Well, was adoration the best thing for a man? Was it not better to adore? Could there be any shame in the worship of a woman like Adrienne? He decided, no. It was not the giving up of independence—it was the bending to a superior being, which, when that attitude was self-elected, was the highest independence. Here all was secure, safe, assured. Nothing would ever change the love of these two for him: outside there, where Adrienne was, all was storm, cloudy, feverish, uncertain: he knew not what she thought of him—what feelings or no-feelings her gracious manner might cover.

He had defended her—from the first moment of their intercourse his attitude had been made by circumstances a protecting one: he felt at once an inferiority and a superiority to her, which two things do surely form part of the primal basis of pure and holy love. He stood still, leaning against the chimney-piece, thinking of what he had this night done for her sake, and his face flushed at the remembrance.

‘Can she ever be like another woman to me?’ he thought. ‘It is impossible. If it were possible I should be a clod.’ For what he had done counted for something with Myles: he was not one of those heroes who will thrash you half a dozen fellows, twice as big as themselves, and then require to be reminded of such a trifle.

He was not quite sure, even now, that he felt unmixed satisfaction in the deed. To thrash a cowardly bully, who seemed unable to express himself without the assistance of copious volleys of oaths, was one thing, and Myles contemplated with some complacency the fact that he had done it. But if any evil consequences should ensue to Adrienne!

After a moment he reassured himself. He did not believe that Spenceley knew her name. He had not mentioned it. Myles would have died rather than utter it himself in that company—that would indeed have been a casting of pearls before swine, of which he was naturally incapable.

If Mr. Spenceley chose to prosecute him he would own himself guilty, and take his punishment—anything rather than drag her name into the discussion; but he doubted much whether Spenceley would wish to draw public attention so pointedly to the fact that he had been flogged by a workman in the billiard-room of his own club. That would have been to expose his own brutal insolence and violence, and to hint, moreover, at some discreditable deed in the background which had called forth the attack. Myles began to wonder how that beautiful sister of his, whom he had spoken to that morning—could it be that morning?—would receive her brother. Then his thoughts wandered off again to Adrienne.

‘At any rate, I can’t face her yet. I must stay quiet awhile until it has blown over. Perhaps, as she’s so very quiet, and goes out so little, she’ll not hear about it; and then I could call, and not mention it, and it would all pass over.’

A knock at the back door roused him.

Mary lifted her head, and cried ‘Come in!’ but after a pause the knock was renewed.

‘It’s Harry,’ observed Edmund. ‘Thou mun open to him, Myles, or he’ll go on knocking for half an hour.’

‘Ay, poor lad, I suppose he will,’ said Myles, going towards the door, while Mary maintained absolute silence, continuing her work.

Myles soon returned, accompanied by a young man, slight and somewhat delicate-looking, pale-faced and fair-complexioned, whose calm, open countenance was pleasant to look upon, despite a certain vagueness in its expression—not a want of intelligence, or anything approaching vacancy, but rather as if something escaped him and left him apart from other people.

‘Good evenin’, Mary—evenin’, Ned,’ he said, in the very softest and gentlest of voices.

‘Sit down, Harry, and have supper with us,’ said Myles; and when he spoke, Harry Ashworth’s infirmity became apparent.

Myles had to go close up to him and speak, not very loudly, but very slowly and clearly. He was almost deaf, in consequence of a fever he had had when a boy of twelve. He was twenty-five now, and the weakness increased each year: it was probable that in a few more years he would be stone-deaf. He was a frequent visitor at the Heywoods’, and a great friend of Myles and Edmund; Mary and he had little to say to each other beyond the words of greeting and farewell.

There was a certain constraint this evening immediately after his entrance, on account of what had happened in regard to Mrs. Heywood, but this constraint was dissipated by Harry himself.

‘I hear your mother has gone,’ he remarked.

Myles assented in a grave sort of way.

Mary’s cheeks flushed, and she did not raise her eyes from her work.

‘She thinks of being married soon, then?’

‘I expect so,’ said Myles.

‘Ah,’ said Harry; and then, without any embarrassment, changed the subject.

‘We may expect changes soon, Myles, I reckon.’

‘What changes?’ asked Myles, who had come close to Harry, while the latter had placed his chair beside Edmund’s sofa.

‘The master’s coming back—so I hear.’

‘Oh, him!’ said Myles, again trying to turn up his nose, and again failing to do so.

Harry laughed, and Mary remarked,

‘Eh, but I could like to seen yon chap. He mun be some and clever.’

‘Molly thinks he must be clever,’ said Myles to Harry, who nodded.

‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t be, choose how. I think you’re a bit hard on him, Myles. We know no harm on him.’

‘Yes, we do. We know he’s neglected his business and his property. He’s six-and-twenty if he’s a day, and he’s never looked in upon us since he came into possession. He’s a gawmless chap—he must be.’

‘Well, we’st see that when he comes. Have you heard as Mr. Lippincott, his health’s failin’, and he’s ordered abroad? They say he can’t live.’

Mr. Lippincott was the sitting member for Thanshope.

‘Nay, I heard nothing of that,’ said Myles, reflectively. ‘Then, suppose he dies, we shall have a fresh election.’

‘Ay; and I have heard,’ pursued Harry, not without a twinkle of humour in his eyes, ‘as it’s possible Mr. Mallory may stand, if Mr. Lippincott resigns or dies.’

‘What!’ ejaculated Myles. ‘And who is to oppose him?’

‘Spenceley—Bargaining Jack.’

‘Why, Myles, thou’d be hard set to know who to vote for,’ said Mary, innocently.

Myles suddenly recovered his presence of mind, and shouted to Harry,

‘You’ve heard wrong, lad. Mallorys are all Tories, and always have been—it’s bred in the bone; and Bargaining Jack reckons to be a Conservative too, so far as he’s anything. Conservatives manage better than us. They would never run two candidates in Thanshope—in fact, they only run one for the look of the thing. They can’t get the wedge in here.’

‘Well, I have heard too,’ continued Harry, ‘as how Mallory is a Radical—a Liberal, choose how.’

‘That I’ll never believe till I hear him say it himself,’ said Myles, decidedly. ‘And from all I’ve heard, I think you’ve been misinformed, Harry.’

‘Well, perhaps I have,’ said Harry, peaceably. ‘It doesn’t matter to me which way it is.’

Nor did the others appear to take much interest in the subject, for it dropped, and Mary began to get supper ready.

At that meal the conversation was carried on almost entirely between Harry and Myles. Harry was a spinner, in receipt of a large wage. He was, as has been said, a pleasant, comely-looking young man, and if not very robust, did not look unhealthy. Many of his friends wondered why he did not marry; for he was turned twenty-five. He and Myles and Mary Heywood were beginning to be looked upon as drifting into the old maid and bachelor ranks.

At all times, early—terribly early—marriages are the rule in Lancashire; but in those halcyon years of plenty and golden prosperity preceding the American Civil War, they had been more numerous than ever.

After supper Edmund, stretching out his arms, said in a muffled kind of voice,

‘Eh, I say, it is some and hot here. I wonder what it’s like outside.’

‘Why, the air’s pleasant enough on the Townfield,’ said Harry.

‘I could like to feel it,’ remarked Edmund. ‘I’ve not been out these three days.’

‘Well, come along and take a turn,’ said Myles, good-naturedly, well knowing that Edmund’s motive for suggesting such a thing at that time was that the dusk was rapidly gathering: there were fewer people about, and he was less likely to be observed.

Edmund jumped at the offer, and Myles, giving him his cap, and taking his own, drew his brother’s arm through his, shouting to Harry,

‘Wilt come with us, or wilt stay with Molly?’

‘I’st stay and have a pipe till you come in, if Mary’s no objection,’ said Harry; and Mary, by way of answer, pointed to a china basket on the mantelpiece, in which stood half a dozen neatly made ‘spills.’

These spills were a mystery to the household. Mary gave it out that she liked to have them. They looked tidy like, and did for lighting the pipes; but it was a well-known fact that Edmund did not smoke at all, that Myles preferred to light his pipe with a coal or a match, and that the only visitor who enjoyed the privilege of smoking in that kitchen was Harry Ashworth. Yet no one ever suggested that the lighters were kept in stock for Harry’s benefit, though Edmund had been perilously near doing so once or twice. Had he or any one else uttered that theory, it is impossible to imagine what Mary would have said—possibly nothing at all, for she was, in practice at least, a strong upholder of the theory that ‘silence is golden.’

The two brothers went out, leaving the door open, and a waft of the somewhat cooler outside air penetrated to the kitchen. The gas was not lighted; the fire had burnt low; the room was almost dark. Mary could no longer see to work, and sat, with her head thrown a little backwards, in the high-backed, red-cushioned rocking-chair. The clock ticked: everything was very still. It was Harry who spoke first, in his soft voice.

‘Warm and close, this here weather, Mary.’

‘Ay,’ said Mary, ‘’tis.’

‘How does Ned get on?’ he asked; for though she did not speak very loudly, she spoke deliberately, and he appeared to hear her easily.

‘He feels th’ heat aboon a bit,’ replied Mary.

‘Ay! I dare say.’

A pause, while Harry puffed away at his pipe, and Mary offered no further observations on men or things.

‘I took a long walk o’ Sunday—yesterday,’ observed Harry at last.

‘Did you? Where to?’

‘Reet o’er th’ moors to th’ top o’ Blackrigg.’

‘It’s to’ far. Thou’rt none strong eno’ for sich like walks.’

‘Yea, but I am. I set me down on the heather, and listened wi’ all my might, and I thowt I heard a bird singing.’

‘Happen a lark?’ said Mary, after a perceptible pause.

‘Happen. I should ha’ gone to church in th’ evenin’, but I can’t hear—nowt distinct, that’s to say—and I’m a’most inclined to think that I didn’t hear yon lark, but only thowt I did, from memory, thou known.’

‘Ay,’ assented Mary.

‘And when I go into church, and hear the organ buzzin’ and th’ voices all mixed up wi’ it, and can’t make out what it is, it fair moithers me; same as when I look up, and see th’ parson speakin’, and don’t know what it’s about.’

‘Ay,’ said Mary, laconically as ever, but this time there was the faintest possible vibration in her voice.

And there was another long pause, while Mary’s eyelids drooped. He did not see that—it was too dark; and had he seen it, he could not have known that those eyelids were sore with repressed tears, which burnt them, and which she would not allow to flow.

‘Sometimes,’ his voice broke in again, ‘I get discontented. I’m main fond o’ music, as you know, Mary.’

‘Ay, I know thou art.’

‘And it troubles me above a bit sometimes as I should be deaf, for it just takes away my greatest pleasure. Sometimes I wish I’d been blind instead.’

No answer from Mary, till Harry, in a hesitating voice, said,

‘What dost think, Mary? Is it very wrong to have such thoughts?’

‘No, I dunnot,’ replied Mary. ’ I call it very nateral. If I was deaf, I reckon I should make more noise about it than you do. I wonder what them chaps is doin.’ It’s time they was comin’ in.’

‘Don’t thou go out. I’ll find ’em, and tell ’em, for I mun be goin’ too,’ said Harry, rising.

Mary had begun to poke the fire violently, and now let the poker fall with a loud rattle, as Harry, without her knowing it, had advanced close to her, so that her elbow struck against his outstretched hand.

‘Dule tak’ th’ fire-irons!’ said she, impatiently. ‘I conna think what ails ’em. Good neet to you, if you mun be going,’ she added, shaking hands with him, and, as soon as he was gone, lighting the gas.

Presently her brothers came in. The house was locked up. Mary went to bed, followed by Edmund. Myles was left by the dying-out kitchen fire, with a book on the table, which he never opened, but sat till far into the night, living through some of those strange hours of still, silent, yet vivid, rushing, mental life which come to all of us sometimes in our youth, and which are like no other hours in our experience.

CHAPTER IX.

A TEA-PARTY.

‘Mir war’s so wohl, so weh!’

After that evening Myles found himself in a position which he at least found full of difficulties. Two things happened, both of which he had looked upon as probable; the news of what had happened spread, and Frederick Spenceley did not prosecute. The waiter who had allowed Myles to go into the billiard-room was dismissed; the billiard-marker who had stood by shared the same fate.

It would be difficult to guess what object, real or supposed, was gained by this measure; but it seemed to afford great satisfaction to many minds. Spenceley found it convenient to leave home for some weeks, and Myles heard no more of his share in the transaction.

There were endless tales in circulation—the facts, the names, the causes of the affair, all got mixed up in the wildest and most inextricable confusion, as in such cases they always do. The principals maintained absolute silence, and let report work what wonders it would or could.

‘Bear not false witness; let the lie

Have time on its own wings to fly!’

They adhered to the precept, and the result was that they and their grievances were soon completely obscured in the buzz of talk, conjecture, wrong guesses, and wild surmises which gathered about them like a thick cloud. One thing soon became apparent; and, once secure of that, Myles cared nothing for the rest. Adrienne’s name was not known. The cause of the fracas was generally supposed to be a woman; but the tale which gained the greatest favour was one taking the side of the workman—that mysterious ‘workman’ whose name had somehow disappeared in the midst of contradictory reports, and whom no one could distinctly specify, because there were so many workmen in Thanshope. How was a genteel person to know one linen jacket, or its wearer, from another? This report, which preserved a kind of likeness amidst all its variations, was to the effect that Frederick Spenceley had deserved his thrashing; for that he had been taking undue liberties with the young man’s sweetheart—and her name was Sally Rogers, was Frances Alice Kershaw, and she was a dressmaker, was a mill hand, and lived in half a dozen places, and worked in as many factories, quite certainly and positively; she was very pretty, and he was very jealous; or, she was not a particularly good-looking girl, but Fred Spenceley had had words with the young man before, and had wished to insult him.

Myles maintained a rigid silence upon the subject, even when Mary came in one day in a state of unusual excitement, exclaiming,

‘Eh! Ned, Myles, have ye heerd tell o’ what’s happened?’

‘What?’

‘Jack Spenceley’s lad has had such a leathering,’ said Mary; and told the rest of it with much excitement and volubility, for her.

Edmund manifested a lively interest in the story, and Myles admitted indifferently that he had heard something about it.

They were, however, not much given to gossiping at that house, and the subject soon dropped.

Then came Myles’s other difficulty. He did not know whether boldly to go and call at Mr. Blisset’s, as he longed and desired to do, or whether to remain away. He plagued himself with wondering what she thought about it, and then tried to believe that she had perhaps not even heard of it—her life was so very retired, she saw and heard so little of what was going on outside. Then he might go? But suppose she did know, and he appeared as if he came to be thanked and made a hero of? He contradicted himself ten times a day; decided to go—to stay—to go—and stayed because he absolutely could not decide which was best.

So the days went on until Saturday, and he had not had a glimpse of her—only the remembrance of her grateful eyes and the pressure of her hand, as she bade him good-bye at her uncle’s gate before it had all happened. When Saturday afternoon came, his longing to see her was growing almost unbearable, and he had the sensation that if he went out of the house, his feet would turn mechanically towards Blake Street.

It was Saturday afternoon; the clockhands pointed to five; Mary’s ‘cleaning’ was over, and the house was quiet. Edmund lay upon his sofa with a headache, and Myles was softly reading to him, glad of some monotonous occupation which should divert his thoughts somewhat from the topic which at present tyrannised over them.

Edmund had been reading in a magazine about the works of the Brontë sisters, and Myles had procured him ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ from the free library. ‘Wuthering Heights’ lay as yet untouched; it had not yet laid its strong and dreadful spell on the boy’s spirit. They were deep in ‘Jane Eyre.’ It proved a spell which caused Edmund to forget his headache, and enchained the attention of Myles himself, with its passionate expression of the equality of soul and soul, and its eager conviction of the supremacy of mind over the differences of rank or place. Its burning radicalism went straight to Myles’s soul, while its deep poetry touched Edmund’s inmost heart.

At this moment they were wandering with ‘Jane’ over the summer moors, homeless, friendless, foodless, penniless; and they had forgotten all outside things with her, as she reposed herself beneath the broad sky, on the friendly bosom of her mother—Nature.

‘Hist!’ said Edmund, suddenly, ‘there’s a knock.’

Myles paused. Some one knocked at the front door. Mary had heard it, and rose from her rocking-chair.

‘Thee go on wi’ thi’ readin’,’ said she, going out; and they heard her open the door, and a low voice—a woman’s voice—ask her some question.

With an inarticulate exclamation, Myles half rose, the book open in his hand, and as Edmund was in the act of inquiring what was the matter, Mary came in again, looking rather bewildered, and saying, as she turned to some one who followed her,

‘Myles, here’s a lady wants to speak to thee.’

‘Why did you not come?’ said Adrienne, going straight up to Myles. ‘Why have you never been to see me? I have waited and waited, until I could wait no longer.’

He stood, crimson, unable to speak a word, but looking at her with eyes that must have told their tale—which must have warned her had she been less excited and earnest.

‘How could you go and do a thing like that, and then never take any further notice of me?’ she continued. ‘I have thought of nothing else since I heard of it. It was most wonderfully foolish—oh, very foolish; but oh, I do thank you, and honour you for it, with all my heart. It is exactly what such canaille deserve, and it was nobly done—it was indeed!’

‘Miss Blisset ... you ... you—it was nothing. Any one would have done it. I couldn’t have rested or slept till I had punished him. I was obliged to do it.’

‘Ah, that is how you put it, no doubt—but any one would not have felt so—only you would. I can never thank you—never.’

‘Well, don’t then! I—it makes me ashamed of myself—it does indeed,’ said he, earnestly.

‘But whativer is it o’ about, miss?’ said Mary, putting into words her own and Edmund’s boundless astonishment.

‘Is it possible,’ said Adrienne, turning with wide-open eyes to Myles—‘is it possible that you have never told them? Did he not tell you?’

‘Nay, he’s ne’er told us nowt,’ said Mary.

‘I never heard of anything so extraordinary,’ said Adrienne, with still a vibration in her voice, which showed how much she was moved. ‘You must have heard about that man—Spenceley—who insulted me, and ...’

‘Thank heaven, your name has never been uttered,’ interposed Myles, hastily.

‘And your brother, who had once before sent him away when he tried to annoy me at the library, went to make him promise to behave himself, and he would not. Was not that it? So he flogged him.’

‘Eh—Myles!’ said Mary, with a long-drawn intonation, compounded of incredulity, pride, and pleasure. ‘Eh—h—Myles! I niver did—no niver!’

‘So it were you, Myles,’ said Edmund. ‘Thou hast kept some and quiet about it. But I’m glad thou did it.’

‘And he has never come near my home—never given me a chance of thanking him,’ pursued Adrienne. ‘You must understand, now, why I have come.’

‘Ay, I can so,’ said Mary, regarding her with great favour and cordiality, for this praise of Myles touched her to the very heart. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ she added.

‘I don’t wish to disturb you,’ said Adrienne, hesitating.

‘Eh, no sich thing. Sit you down,’ said Mary, drawing up the rocking-chair, in which Adrienne sat down, and Myles stood leaning against one end of the mantelpiece, feeling the need of a support of some kind; for he felt a sort of intoxication and a bewilderment, and a strange, subtle, new life in the very fact of Adrienne’s presence.

‘I had to inquire where you lived,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘You did not even tell me that. You once mentioned that you lived on the Townfield, and I thought I should never find your house; but the first person I met told me where you lived. But would you never have come?’

‘I—I hardly liked to come. I did not know whether you might have been—displeased, perhaps,’ he said, with some embarrassment.

‘My uncle has often asked when you were coming. He wants to see you again. But now you will come soon—yes?’

‘I—yes. I should like to,’ said he.

‘I hope you don’t mind my coming here,’ said Adrienne to Mary.

‘Eh, no! Lord, no!’ said Mary, earnestly. ‘I’m reet glad to see you. Yon chap would ne’er ha’ told us what he’d been doin’. He’s so—stupid.’

‘Yes—so I should think,’ said Adrienne, meeting Mary’s eyes with a smile.

And then, looking at Edmund, she said, ‘I’ve heard of you, too. You are not strong.’

‘No,’ said Mary, answering for him. ‘He’s ne’er one o’ th’ strongest, and to-day he’s getten a headache.’

‘Don’t you do anything for your headaches?’

‘Nay, I jist bide ’em out.’

‘That is a pity. I could do something for them—if I come again, I will bring you something that will do them good.’

She went on talking to Mary and Edmund, who seemed to feel no embarrassment in the intercourse. Adrienne certainly possessed in a high degree the art of putting people at their ease in her company. Mary and Edmund were not usually communicative in first interviews with strangers; but this stranger appeared to take their hearts by storm, and quickly succeeded in making them forget that there was any difference in station between them. She apologised for her intrusion much more particularly than she would have done to a woman whose servant had opened the door, taken her card, and announced her with a flourish. This demeanour was not put on—it was her natural, spontaneous manner, springing from instinctive politeness and geniality of nature. Everything about her was true and pure—what Myles was accustomed to call in the vernacular ‘jannock.’ Mary, also, was nothing if not jannock; and the two girls—the lady and the factory-worker—seemed instinctively to get on.

‘I must not detain you any longer now,’ said Adrienne, at last. ‘I see you are going to have your tea. But I should like to know you. Would you mind if I came again, now and then?’

‘Eh, I’st be vary glad,’ said Mary, ‘if so be we’re not too simple and plain like for you. Yo’ seen we’re nobbut working folk ...’

‘Well, I am a working person too, and like seeks like,’ said Adrienne.

‘I reckon you’re a different mak’ o’ worker fro’ us,’ said Mary.

‘I am sure I work as hard as you at least, and am as tired and as glad of rest as you, when my work is done.’

‘You look tired now,’ said Mary, fixing her large, clear eyes upon Adrienne’s pale and somewhat weary face, from which the glow had faded. ‘Where do you live?’

‘Up at Stonegate, in Blake Street.’

‘My certy! But that’s a good step!’ said Mary, who, like many of her class, was nothing of a walker. ‘We’re just goin’ to have our tay—won’t you draw up and have a sup, and a bit o’ summat to eyt?’

That homely, cordial Lancashire invitation, ‘Come and have a sup, and a bit o’ summat to eat’—what Lancashire ears are there that do not know it and love it for the kind thoughts it arouses? It went straight home to our lonely Adrienne: a mist rushed over her eyes; she said somewhat hesitatingly,

‘Oh, I should like it. You are very kind, but I fear——’ she half turned to Myles.

‘Myles, coom out o’ yon corner, and behave thisel’, mon! Thou can when thou’s a mind to,’ said Mary, briskly. ‘Now draw up,’ she added to Adrienne. ‘Tak’ off your hat, and I’st hang it up, so! And Myles’ll see you home. He’s got nowt to do to-neet.’

Mary must have been inspired when she made this suggestion.

‘Oh, I need not trouble him now,’ said Adrienne, with a radiant smile upon the approaching Myles—‘unless he has forgotten the way to my uncle’s house, as I begin to think.’

‘It’s much better I should go with you. It’s Saturday evening,’ said Myles, seating himself beside her, and throwing a fleeting glance towards her face.

She was content, pleased, even flattered at the friendly way in which she had been received. Her expression said that as plainly as words could do. Myles began to lose some of his bewilderment, and to gain somewhat more confidence.

‘Eh, I’ve forgotten th’ mowffins!’ said Mary, suddenly, a shade crossing her face. ‘We mun really wait while I toast the mowffins.’

She jumped up and produced tea-cakes out of a cupboard, and Myles suggested that perhaps it did not matter about the muffins. Mary was, however, firm, and bade him cut some bread-and-butter while she toasted.

‘And mind thou cuts it nice and thin, and not all i’ lumps,’ she added in admonitory tones.

Myles, much too simple-minded to see anything derogatory in cutting bread-and-butter, began, but in half a minute Adrienne had jumped up and laid hold of the knife.

‘Stop! That is clearly not your sphere,’ said she, laughing into his embarrassed, yet ever-attractive face. ‘It is not stern enough—not commanding enough. Let me do it.’

Unaware of the distinguished example set by the Wetzlar heroine in the bread-and-butter cutting line, Myles watched the deft fingers of his enchantress as if no woman had ever been known to cut bread-and-butter properly before.

Mary, who grew visibly and every moment more satisfied with her guest, toasted the ‘mowffins,’ buttered them, and tea was proclaimed ready with acclamation.

Then Edmund came to the table; they all sat there, and Mary made tea in state, apologising for not having the best tea-things because of the impromptu nature of the visit.

‘I am sure these seem delightful tea-things,’ said Adrienne, smiling.

The festivity was altogether successful as regarded Adrienne, Mary, and Edmund. But Miss Blisset cast every now and then fleeting glances at Myles, and was not quite at her ease about him, for he alone of all the party was silent and grave. It was the deep intensity of the delight within him that caused this, but Adrienne could not be supposed to know that—in very truth, as yet she honestly believed the greater admiration and liking to be on her side. That delusion was soon to be ended, but at present she was under its influence.

The meal was not long over when she said she must go, and promising Mary to come again, she went away, accompanied by Myles.

Their way lay through what was called ‘the Park.’ They turned in at the large iron gates of a town pleasure-ground, laid out in gravel walks, grass plots, seats, and flower-beds. They were on a height. The town lay below, with the gilded spire of the town-hall cleaving the air, and the hazy-looking blue wall of Blackrigg to the north and north-west.

As they walked slowly along a broad terrace, unoccupied save by themselves, Adrienne asked, in her quick foreign way,

‘Say to me, Mr. Heywood—you are vexed that I came?’

‘I—vexed—nay!’ was all that he could say.

The current which for the last week had ever been hurrying more and more quickly forward had now arrived at the verge. It leapt over it in a bound, and carried everything before. He was madly in love, and all he could do was to say as little, be as brief as possible, for fear of showing her, startling her, perhaps repelling her; for he was intensely conscious of the difference; all his dearly loved, passionately cherished theories of equality could not blind him to the fact that they were not equals—that while he loved her with a strength that shook his nature with its power, yet the bare thought of touching her, holding her hand, speaking to her on easy and familiar terms, came to him with a sense of impropriety—brought him the conviction, non sum dignus.

‘You were so quiet,’ said she. ‘You would hardly speak to me. I was afraid I had offended you.’

‘Not at all,’ said poor Myles, unable to say more lest he should say too much.

‘I am sure,’ pursued Adrienne, stopping in her walk and looking earnestly at him—‘I am sure you know that I did not mean to offend you; and you could not be so hard as to wish me to keep silence. You behaved splendidly. I felt that I must thank you for it.’

It was growing too much for him to stand there quiescent, and hear that voice, which contained all melody for him, and to see that face, those eyes, looking at him so. The eagerness of desperate love came storming down upon prudence, and hurrying words of devotion to his lips. Mastering himself by a strong effort, and clasping, or rather clenching his hands behind him, he said, in what seemed to Adrienne a singularly calm, colourless voice,

‘You make too much of it. I would rather not be thanked for it.’

‘You are hard upon me to say that. It gives me such pleasure to thank you, but you deserve at my hands that I should comply with your wishes—after what you have done for me. But you cannot guess what a delightful feeling it is to one so lonely as I, to suddenly discover that there is some one who has been not afraid to stand up for her—and to some purpose.’

‘I should have thought you would have many friends,’ remarked Myles, endeavouring to change the too-fascinating subject.

‘I—no indeed. I don’t think any one with fewer friends ever lived.’

‘But you may have left friends behind you on the Continent?’

A momentary pause while he looked at her. It was as though some sudden blow had struck the words back from her lips to her heart—then she said steadily,

‘Some few; but chiefly benefactors rather than friends—benefactors who befriended and helped me in my loneliness and destitution, for my father and I were sometimes almost destitute.’

‘Destitute?’ echoed Myles, shocked.

‘Oh yes! I have not always lived in Lancashire, you know. No one seems to be poor here. I have known what it is to look at a piece of money worth sixpence, and know that if I spent that upon my supper I should not have a penny in the morning to buy breakfast with.’

‘But not seriously?’

‘I assure you it seemed very serious to me. I have sunk lower. I have known what it was to go supperless to bed, wondering what poor little trinket or book I could spare in order to get a breakfast next morning.’

Myles was silent, and Adrienne continued,

‘That, you know, is what is not considered respectable for a young lady.’

‘Hang respectability!’ was all he said.

‘Not at all! I like it. After all the fever and the turmoils, and the ups and downs, and dreadful uncertainties of that life, my present one is like Paradise. Oh, rest is a very sweet thing—rest and security, and a strong arm to help you.’ (Myles turned to her with parted lips.) ‘Your home is beautiful. That sister of yours is so calm and good. I love her already. She must be very dear to you.’

‘Ay, I love Mary dearly.’

‘Yes. Both she and you, and all of you, look as if you had had a home all your lives. Do you think I might go to see them again?’

‘They’ll only be too glad. I never thought you could sympathise so much—with our sort,’ said Myles, constrainedly.

‘To-morrow you will come to Stonegate, will you not? and then I will tell you my story, and you will perhaps understand how it is that I sympathise with “your sort,” as you call it, and why I think so much of what you have done for me.’

‘I will come with pleasure.’

‘To-morrow afternoon, then, I shall expect you.’

They walked the rest of the way in silence, and Myles left her at the gate.

CHAPTER X.

‘Deeper and deeper still.’

It was a lovely Sunday afternoon on which Myles took his way to Stonegate. He found Adrienne alone. She said her uncle was taking his afternoon airing in his bath-chair in the garden, and did not wish to be disturbed; his old servant, Brandon, was with him.

‘But sit down,’ she continued, ‘and we can have a talk.’

With that she picked up her knitting and began to work.

‘You will talk,’ said Myles, ‘if you keep your promise. You promised to tell me about yourself.’

‘Do you really want to hear that?’

‘I came on purpose.’

‘Well, I will tell it you, and I hope it will have the effect I intend.’

‘What effect is that?’

‘You are determined to look upon me (I have seen it, so don’t be at the trouble of denying it) as something fine and delicate, and unused to roughness and hardship.’

‘Yes, one can see plainly enough that you are that.’

‘Can one? Well, I’ll begin my story, and you shall learn how appearances may deceive.’

Adrienne related well. She did not exaggerate; there was nothing strained, no striving after effect; but there was colour, pathos, life, in her tale, and a subtle poetry thrown over all, by her way of looking at things.

Myles, in listening, felt as if he were actually wandering with her on that nomadic life she spoke of; through the great foreign capitals, and the country villages, and the towns, big and little; to be sojourning with her in the gay, feverish watering-places; to survey the distant, rose-tinted Alps. He utterly forgot where he was, and knew only her and her life.

There had been two brothers, she told him, of whom her father was the younger, and her uncle the elder. Kith and kin, they had none, and their patrimony was small. Both were gifted, but in different ways. Adrian, her father, was artist to the marrow of his bones. Richard, her uncle, had also some taste for art, but more of the analytical and critical than of the synthetic description; he had been, moreover, at one time, a practical man of business, and had made money—he was not rich, but thoroughly independent. Her father had had the gift of spending, not of making. The brothers had parted early. Adrian, as soon as he was his own master, had said farewell to home, and had gone, first to Germany, there to study the music which his soul loved, and which had beautified his otherwise weary, disappointed life.

Some time was spent in Germany; then two or three years in miscellaneous and somewhat aimless travel; then back again to Germany, to music, and to love. The fair, clever, and penniless daughter of a poor professor and man of science won his heart, as he hers, and they married.

With marriage came the feeling of an insufficiency of means, and the desire to augment them led him into business speculations of a nature which he did not in the least understand: the bubble burst, and Adrian Blisset found himself a ruined man in less than a year after his marriage. Adrienne’s mother died at her birth; the girl had never known that holy bond, however much she might have longed for it. Her father chose to lay part of the cause of his wife’s death to the anxiety induced by his extravagance and folly—moreover, he had adored her, and from the hour of her death he had been a changed man. He had his own living and that of his child to gain, but he settled nowhere. His life became nomadic. He and the little one did not sojourn long in the tents of any particular tribe. Scarce a city or a town of any importance in Europe, but had sheltered the unconscious head of the infant, or been trodden by the child’s uncertain feet, or by the sedate step of the maiden, careworn before her time, while she knew intimately many an out-of-the-way nook, unnamed by Murray, Bradshaw, or Baedeker, amongst Italian hills, deep in the sunny lands of France, Thüringian woods and slopes, or sleepy red-roofed Rhenish hamlets.

A restless ghost drove the musician with his child and his violin hither and thither, never permitting him to stay long in any one place and gather substance; but ever, so soon as the novelty had worn off, seeming to drive him forth on a fresh search after—what? Adrienne had learnt at an early age to ask herself that question, and sorrowfully to give up the answer.

Sometimes he was in funds, when he showered all kinds of presents upon her, and called her his dear child, his Herzallerliebste; but oftener they were plunged in poverty, sore, sordid, dreadful poverty. His moods varied distressingly, from kindness that had in it something fitful and sinister, up to the dark melancholy silence which was his most frequent humour. He was proud, and his pride was of a touchy and intractable kind; it offended men of business, and estranged friends and pupils.

Adrienne had had many teachers and many strange lessons, and the whole had combined into a varied and truly most unconventional education. Her father had lavished musical training upon her. At Florence, where they stayed a whole year, longer than anywhere else, she had wandered about with a kind-hearted old artist, who led her about with him to the great galleries, and showed her the grandest pictures, and made her know the beautiful buildings, till she had imbibed the undying loveliness of such masterpieces as Giotto’s Campanile, or Michael Angelo’s Duomo, and had discovered that her favourite thing in Florence was the ‘Pensiero’ Medici of the last-named artist.

‘You remind me of him,’ she added, suddenly looking at Myles. And she had sat, at thirteen years of age, for a picture of ‘Gravity.’

‘Was that what he called you?’ asked Myles.

‘Yes. Gravity, or Sedateness was his name for me—and it suited me.’

She had had to part from her good old friend, and that had cost her the pain which parting brings to those who know they will not meet again.

In Paris, Adrienne had had lessons in democracy from a young universal genius, whose talents were too vast to stoop to any ordinary walk of life. He lived in a garret, and planned schemes of a perfect republic. Adrienne had not felt much grief on parting from him.

A monstrous learned professor, who lived at Bonn, in a Schlafrock, slippers, and spectacles, had taught her a little store of Greek and Latin. But her greatest teacher had been a strange, absent-looking professor, in Berlin—a man of literature and philosophy, who had been very fond of her, and had given her freely of his very best. Her uncle, Mr. Blisset, looked upon this as a providential circumstance, for he found when she came to him, that he had no tyro to deal with, but one already instructed in philosophy and its terminology.

Two years ago her father had died; and just before his death she had learnt for the first time that they possessed any relation in the world. She had received a letter to give to her uncle. She fulfilled the behest, and that was how she first met Mr. Blisset.

‘And what did he say? How did he receive you?’ asked Myles, eagerly.

‘I was chilled,’ said she, ‘as I sat opposite to him and saw his pale, impassive face, and watched how he raised his eyes now and then from that letter. He gave me no reply that night; told me nothing; did not intimate whether he were pleased or displeased to see me, but ordered a room to be prepared for me; and the next day he told me that my father had asked him in his letter to give me a shelter until I was able to find some employment by which I could support myself. My uncle said that if I could endure to live buried alive with an old man, and work hard at a sedentary employment, he would give me a home and pay me a certain sum every year. I accepted his proposal gratefully, and have never repented it; and I trust he never will, either.’

There spoke the true Adrienne Blisset.

‘And you are happy here?’

‘As happy as I expect to be. It is a great thing not to be miserable.’

‘That’s what our rulers appear to think we working-men ought to feel,’ said Myles, sardonically, his thoughts for the moment flying off at a tangent.

‘Are you bitter against your rulers?’ asked Adrienne, tranquilly.

‘I am bitter against some of them—a pampered set of rich men, who never had a care in their lives, but don’t mind how many other people have to bear. There are some, now—Bright, and Cobden, and the like—for them I’d die. There’s that in their faces which says they have not a mean thought, nor a desire but for our good; but the most of them’—he shrugged his shoulders—‘those lily-handed politicians who call themselves Radicals in these days, and plan how to prevent a working-man from getting his beer, but have half a dozen sorts of wine at their own tables, and go mincing about at public meetings, talking lightly of trials that would make them cringe if they had to face them; talking about “supply and demand” and how to improve the conditions of the lower orders—isn’t that the phrase? Much they know about the lower orders, and how to improve them! They don’t know what ails them yet.’

He laughed sarcastically.

‘It is true, they are a somewhat emasculate type,’ said she; ‘but I don’t see what right you have to blame them much. It is the working-man’s own fault that they can do no more for him.’

‘His own fault!’ he echoed incredulously.

‘Now don’t eat me up, please! I wonder if you and I differ essentially in first principles on this subject. You have thought about it, haven’t you?’

‘Ay, I have. I’ve plenty of reason to think about it, when I see such fellows as Frederick Spenceley and young Mallory living on the fat of the land, without having lifted a finger to get it, or proved by a single act that they merited it.’

‘Mr. Mallory,’ said Adrienne, slowly, ‘you say you have seen him: has he come home?’

‘No. I meant to speak figuratively. I don’t see him; but I know it is so. If I don’t know him, I know the likes of him——’

‘But—but what about him?’ she asked, still with the same slowness and a kind of hesitation. ‘What has he done wrong?’

‘He has done nothing; that’s what he has done wrong,’ said Myles. ‘Well, he’s coming home soon; we shall see how he breasts the storm—for we are in for a storm, sooner or later. But don’t you think, Miss Blisset, it must make a man think to see these contrasts—a man who has the least bit of a power of thought?’

‘No doubt. And what conclusion have you come to in the matter?’

‘The conclusion that it’s a crying injustice.’

‘To whom?’

‘To—well, to put it broadly, we’ll say to the working-man—but I mean to those in general, who work very hard, and get very little.’

‘In what way?’

‘Miss Blisset! Where is the justice of fellows like that having that money without either rhyme or reason; and of fellows like——’

‘You,’ suggested Adrienne, demurely.

‘I don’t mean me in particular, but my class in general, earning from thirty to sixty shillings a week—the very best paid of us—in payment for hours and hours of close, hard work.’

‘I suppose it is not the work you object to?’

‘No. I like work. I should be lost without my work.’

‘The property which those young men enjoy has been earned with trouble as great, or probably, from an intellectual point of view, greater than your weekly wages.’

‘But not by them.’

‘Suppose it had been earned by you, and you wished to leave it to your only son, whom you had educated with a view to his inheriting it, and the law stepped in and said you should not, but should leave it amongst a number of working-people whom you had never seen or heard of—how would you like that?’

‘But that is an exaggerated view of the case.’

‘I don’t see it. I don’t believe you have ever considered the subject fairly. And answer me this; suppose the average working-man became possessed of that money, or of part of it—money which he had not earned—money which had become his by a lucky chance: do you think his use of it would be worse, or as good as, or better, than the use made of it by those two of whom we are speaking? Do you think it would do him a real and permanent good: increase his self-respect, lessen his self-indulgence, make him steadier, soberer, more inwardly dignified, worthy, and honourable?’

She was looking earnestly at him, and Myles frowned, the words driven back from his lips. Did he know one man amongst his fellow-workman on whom the possession of such money would have such an effect? Would it have such an effect upon himself? The generalities of the writers who cried up the working-man and his wrongs seemed suddenly to grow small, and to shrink into the background.

‘Oh,’ went on Adrienne, ‘I don’t think you working-men know in the least how noble your work intrinsically is. You only see that others are outwardly better off than you, and you clamorously demand a share of that wealth. You don’t see how disastrous to your best interests such an acquisition would be.’

Myles had started up, feeling terribly humiliated.

‘You think so ill of us!’ he exclaimed. ‘You could come and see us yesterday, and talk to my sister as if she had been your sister—and now you reproach us in this way. Good-bye!’

‘Stop!’ said she, laying her hand upon his arm, and looking earnestly into his face. ‘How wild and impatient you are! Think a moment! It is not of you I am speaking. Do you know any other working-man to whom I could speak in this way?’

She paused. It was true. Perhaps Harry Ashworth might hear those words and bear them—he knew of no other who would do so; and while he was stung and tortured by what she said, he felt a bitter consciousness that it was true. But he stood still, and waited to hear the end.

‘I am speaking to you with a purpose,’ Adrienne went on in the same tone, low and quiet, but full of vehemence. ‘Since that night when you stepped forward in my defence, I have thought much about you—very much. I have studied you, and you do not know how well-used I am to studying people. The more I have studied you, the more I have felt that you were both generous and high-minded—and terribly hot-tempered,’ she added, with a smile, which Myles thought must have charmed the temper of a ravening wolf. ‘Just think what you, a workman, might do by setting an example to your fellow-workmen. Take the right side. You are too good for the commonplace career of an ordinary “intelligent working-man,” for a blind submission to trade-union rules, and for an obstinate resistance to your masters, just because they are your masters, or because your union bids you resist them. Don’t be a tool; use your reason; consider the why and wherefore of things. Be answerable to your conscience alone for all you say and do. Help to show your fellows that all improvement in their condition must arise actively from within, not be received passively from without—you know that, and own it, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Myles, quickly, folding his arms and leaning against the mantelpiece, his eyes fixed upon her, as she stood before him, with her head a little thrown back; her eyes alight, looking beautiful in her energy and excitement.

‘I wish,’ she said, ‘I often wish that I were a working-woman, like your sister. I would show you what I meant; how toil could be ennobled.’

She paused. Myles’s heart was beating wildly. Something, whether God or devil he had no time to think, hurried quick words from his lips; in a voice as low, as vehement as her own had been, he said,

‘Do you? And suppose it ever came to the point? Suppose some day some working-man came to you, and told you he loved you; that he could see how toil might be ennobled, if you would help him to do it—there would be an end of your philosophy. You would think of the cottage to live in, the floors to scrub, the rough neighbours, the coarse common life, the children to tend, and make, and mend, and sew for; and if you could get over that, there would be the man himself—a great rough fellow—a workman, not a gentleman, a man of rough speech, like—like our sort. You would have to work for him, too; to cook, and sew, and wash for him; to obey him—you. When he said, “Do this,” you must do it, and when he called, “Come here!” you must go to him. That’s the way amongst us working-people. What about the ennobling of toil then?’

He spoke jeeringly, and hated himself for doing so; and listened for her answer in a state of wild, if silent, excitement.

Her hands had dropped, her eyes had sunk, her face was burning; she turned away. If he could have trusted himself to move or speak, he would have fallen upon his knees and begged her pardon.

‘Oh, Myles!’ said she, at last, in a very low voice. He bit his lip till the blood came, at that sound; the most maddening in its mingled sweetness and bitterness, he had ever heard. ‘I suppose I gave you the right to say that,’ she said, ‘and to demand an answer too. You put it tersely, certainly. As you speak, I can see the very life rising before me that you picture.’

‘And yourself in it!’ said he, still with a sneer, though he would have given the world to ask her to forgive him.

‘No. You forget something,’ she replied, walking to the window, while he still leaned against the mantelpiece. ‘You made it all hard and sordid. You forgot the very “ennobling” that began the discussion. I could fancy myself in such a home—a working-man’s wife—but to become that, I must love that man; and in the life you described there was no love. The man I loved, be he workman or prince, must be a gentleman—not a brute.’

‘Ah! and supposing you met this working-man—or whoever he might be?’ suggested Myles, in a calm, restrained kind of voice.

‘If I met him, and if I loved him, and he loved me, and asked me to marry him, I would say “yes;” and I would love him, and serve him faithfully to the end of my life.’

The words fell softly and gently, almost timorously, as if she hesitated to speak of such a thing; and yet with a certain gentle firmness which said that they were no sentimental verbiage, but expressed the steadfast feeling of a steadfast heart. But each word was like a drop of liquid fire in the young man’s veins. She seemed suddenly to be close beside him—a possibility, a thing he might dream of—and fifty thousand times higher and farther off, and more impossible to him than ever. How could he ever hope to bend that heart to love him? The very thought was insanity.

He mastered his emotion, and walked up to her. She turned, but did not look at him.

‘I beg your pardon, most humbly,’ said he.

‘It is granted freely. I dare say it has been good for me; it has reduced my vague theories to the language of common sense. I had no right to reproach you with the faults of your class, and expect nothing but milk and honey from your lips in return. We understand each other. Oh, but yours is a biting tongue! It cuts like a knife.’

‘It forgot itself when it turned against you. But, remember, your words had roused me. You made me blush for my own “vague theories,” as you call them. If you could not have said what you did, to any other workman, do you suppose I could have spoken so to any other young lady?’

‘No, no. I suppose not,’ said she, but her face was still downcast. The glance which he at last received wavered almost timidly. She resumed her seat and her work, saying, ‘And you will think of what I have said?’

‘I will—seriously. I believe you are right, but the thing was too wonderful for me. I could not attain unto it—all at once.’

The conversation was turned, as if by one consent, to books. Adrienne’s heart was beating unwontedly fast; her knight had not only surprised, but somewhat subdued her; delighting her at the same time. He was no tool; he could turn upon her, and he had the front of a ruler. That glance and that voice were not to be forgotten. She thrilled as she remembered them. She was glad he had not gone; the sensation that he was still there was pleasurable, with a strange potency of strength.

The door opened, and Mr. Blisset was wheeled in, and a servant brought afternoon tea. Then Mr. Blisset began to talk, and Myles to listen. Mr. Blisset had some of his niece’s conversational power. The time flew insensibly, till supper was announced. Myles rose, fearing he had intruded too long.

‘No,’ said Mr. Blisset. ‘Stay, unless you are tired, and my niece will give us some music.’

He looked at her, and she said, ‘Yes, do stay!’ And Myles stayed.

That evening Adrienne sang some songs. She finished with ‘Neue Liebe neues Leben,’ and Myles went home with its last passionate words ringing in his ears:

‘Liebe, Liebe, lass’ mich los!’

Would it ever ‘let him loose,’ that love which had sprung up so suddenly and strongly, making every other feeling weak in the glow of its might and strength?

CHAPTER XI.

PROMISES.

That visit was but the first of a long series. Mr. Blisset was pleased to see the young man who listened so patiently and so deferentially to him, and Myles had an ever-growing conviction that Mr. Blisset’s views of men and things, of right and wrong, were deeper and sounder than his own; riper, truer, and most justly balanced. Myles learnt much in these visits and conversations.

Adrienne had been many times to the cottage on the Townfield, and had completely won the hearts of Mary and Edmund. She had opened up a new field of delight and wonder to the boy, by putting him in the way of studying botany, and his enthusiasm knew no bounds. She lent him books and specimens, and Harry Ashworth, who was a great walker, brought him all kinds of plants, and ferns, and mosses, from the moors on which he was wont to spend his Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings.

When Myles and Adrienne were in his house at the same time, they seemed to have little to say to each other; which was, perhaps, not surprising, for their subjects were not those discussed by Mary and Edmund. Harry Ashworth had a great deal to ask Miss Blisset about music; she comforted him, too, for she helped him to some scientific understanding of the mighty harmonies of which he was fast losing the outward apprehension. Harry had not read much about music or musicians; he had, while his hearing had been pretty good, contented himself with drinking in the sounds themselves. Adrienne soon discovered that the sorrow of his life was his failing hearing, and one evening it occurred to her to tell him the story of Beethoven. Mary and Harry and she happened to be alone. Adrienne began, and related that saddest of stories. It had the effect she intended.

Harry sat with one hand shading his face, in an attitude which he had assumed soon after she began the story, when she said, ‘And at last he wrote to one of his friends and confessed that he was growing quite deaf—that if he went to the opera, he must sit close to the orchestra, and even then, even leaning over towards it, he could scarcely hear.’

Mary went on knitting. Adrienne’s voice, somewhat raised, slow, distinct, and clear, told the tale of that mighty genius—Christlike in the immensity of his woe and the utterness of his separation from those around him. She went through it all. She told him about the great symphonies, about Beethoven’s one or two sad, luckless love-episodes; his poverty; his love for the thankless young profligate, his nephew; the performance of the Choral Symphony—of that great adagio ‘in which we discern the slowly stalking movement of a god!’

‘When it was over,’ Adrienne went on, ‘the audience were almost mad with rapture and delight, and the applause was deafening—thundering—it resounded through and through the great room! the master still stood with his baton in his hand, his back to the audience, till one of the vocalists gently turned him round, and he saw them all—how they were wild with pleasure and emotion; he had thus moved them by his heavenly music to ‘joy,’ and he had heard no sound of it all.’

She paused. It was the life which she most loved in all truth or poetry; to her Beethoven’s sufferings were as actual as his genius or his grandeur.

She saw Harry look at her with an expression which told her that he too understood, and she went on to the end—told of the bitter loneliness of those last years, that death in harmony with the life—that passing away of the Titan soul in the sublime music of the spring thunderstorm, and then she was silent.

Harry looked at her for a moment, started up, and took her hand.

‘Thank you, miss,’ said he, and left the house.

‘Eh, Miss Blisset,’ said Mary, wiping her eyes, ‘you’re like no one else as ivver I heerd tell on afore. You’ve done a kindness to yon poor lad, such as he never had yet.’

‘I’m very glad if you think so.’

‘Yo’ve gi’en him summat to console him. He’ll go about now, thinking he may bear his deafness quite easy like, seein’ yon man as yo’ towd us on were so great and patient. His mind is fair beautiful—Harry’s mind is,’ said Mary, moved out of all reticence.

‘I like him very much,’ said Adrienne; ‘very much indeed.’

‘Ay! He’s good—good to th’ marrow of his bones, he is.’

‘Like you, Mary. You and he are well matched.’

‘Eh, nay! Eh, don’t think o’ that! He’s ne’er said nowt about it.’

‘He will some time!’

Mary was silent, with a downcast face, till at last she said,

‘I know you’ll ne’er say a word to no one about it. I can trust you to tell you this, as whether he ever says owt about it or not, the vary thowt of ony other mon than him fair gives me a turn.’

‘Yes,’ said Adrienne. ‘And you do deserve to be happy, Mary. I wonder how it is that you and all yours are so different from other people. I always feel well, and happy, and right with the world, when I am with you.’

Later, as Myles walked with her up Blake Street, Adrienne remarked that the end of September was approaching and the evenings darkened earlier.

‘Yes,’ said Myles, ‘soon winter will be here. And then ... now then, you,’ he added to a passer-by, who gave Adrienne a very close berth; ‘mind your manners when you’re passing a lady.’

‘I didn’t know you had lady-friends, Myles Heywood,’ replied a smooth voice, as the offender paused, and looked at them.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ said Myles, with trenchant contempt. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have troubled to speak to you.’ And he passed on.

‘Who is the man?’ asked Adrienne.

‘He’s my—step-father,’ said Myles, in a peculiar voice. Adrienne had heard the whole story from Mary; Myles had never been able to speak of it.

‘Oh, forgive me for saying it, but I wish you had not spoken to him in that way.’

‘Why? How?’ he stammered.

‘Has he ever done you any harm?’

‘Not directly; but I can’t abide the very looks of him.’

‘There!’ said she, with a somewhat nervous smile; ‘you are too contemptuous. Reverence is better than contempt; it is indeed.’

‘Reverence! Would you have me reverence him?’

‘Yes. You ought to reverence human nature—your own nature—in him. If you could have heard yourself speak! Do you know what you would do, if any one spoke to you in that way?’

‘What?’

‘Why, you would—I think you would shake him. I can just see you make one stride towards him, and fasten upon him—poor fellow!—to teach him manners.’

‘You mean that I have none myself. Well, you may be right.’

‘Are you offended?’

‘Miss Blisset—you could not offend me.’

‘I think I could. But do think of what I have said; and try not to be so contemptuous. Will you?’

‘The next time I meet Jim Hoyle, I’ll take off my hat to him politely—since you wish it.’

‘You will drive me to despair! How different you are from your reasonable sister, who sees the right bearings of things at once; and from your sensitive brother, who....’

‘Yes, Ned is like a girl for delicacy,’ said Myles, a sarcastic flavour in his voice. ‘Well, Miss Blisset, I will try hard to please you. Next week there’s a fellow coming that I have a contempt for, if I ever had for any one.’

‘Who may that be?’

‘Mr. Sebastian Mallory, our so-called master.’

A pause. Then a hesitating, ‘In-deed!’ from her, the intonation of which Myles did not remark.

‘So I’ll try to be polite to him, if our paths cross—which I hope they won’t.’

‘Perhaps they may not. But now do try,’ said she. ‘You may find it easier than you think.’

They parted at the wicket, and Myles went home, to find Edmund gone to bed, and to sit up himself, reading ‘My Beautiful Lady,’ which Adrienne had lent to Edmund, never supposing that Myles would look at it, or that he would take any interest in it if he did. But he pored over it, and his heart-strings trembled to the poet’s notes: it was he himself, his own thoughts put into poetry as the lover waited his lady’s coming. And as for the end, Myles read it differently; to please himself, he allowed common sense to step in—Adrienne was not consumptive.

CHAPTER XII.

MR. MALLORY’S POLITICS.

‘Philinte.—Mais on entend les gens au moins sans se fâcher.

Alceste.—Moi, je veux me fâcher, et ne veux point entendre.’

Le Misanthrope.

During the following forenoon Myles sat alone in the outer office, employed exactly as he had been on the day of Mrs. Mallory’s visit, weeks before. Wilson was going his usual round in the works, and Mr. Sutcliffe, the manager, was out.

Pausing at the end of a column of figures, he raised his eyes and saw coming down the street something which caused him to open his eyes in surprise, though surprise was not his usual expression.

It was a very high and very swell phaeton, with a pair of magnificent bays, which danced along the street, as if its shabby, clog-worn stones caused much distress to their aristocratic hoofs. The driver of this (in Thanshope) unique conveyance was a young man in light grey clothes and a round cloth cap—no English cap: indeed there was, at least to the uninitiated Thanshope eye, something un-English in his whole appearance. He was, however, master of his cattle, as even Myles could see. Beside him sat a slight, dark boy, with a plain, queer, but attractive face; and behind was a very correct-looking groom.

‘Who on earth is that chap?’ was Myles’s first very natural thought, as he forgot his work, and gazed in the blissfulness of ignorance at the vision. The next moment he could have bitten off his tongue could he have had the feeling that he had not bestowed a second glance upon the whole affair, for the dancing bays came sidling down the street, and the driver pulled them up before that very office door; moreover, he had caught sight of Myles staring at him, and had given him in return a lazy look from a pair of rather sleepy eyes.

Now Myles knew it was the ‘so-called master’—it was Sebastian Mallory: a second glance at the fair though bronzed face, the yellow hair and moustache, the proudly cut features, and the indifferent expression, displayed sufficient likeness to his mother to make the first intuitive conviction a certainty.

Furious with himself at having been caught staring openly and wonderingly, Myles forgot his voluntary promise to Adrienne, and, in order to prove that, whatever his open eyes might at first have seemed to intimate, yet that he was not really at all struck by anything he had seen, he turned his back to the door, and was apparently bending with the deepest attention over his work, when that door was opened; he heard a voice conclude some injunctions to the groom, and the answer which followed:

‘Jawohl, mein Herr.’

‘Foreign servants, even!’ murmured Myles, shrugging his shoulders.

‘Good morning, my good man,’ was the next thing he heard, in an accent as different from that of the Thanshope ‘gentleman’ as Adrienne’s was different from that of the Thanshope lady.

He turned round and looked up; he was forced to do so now, and, without noticing the lad who stood in the background, he faced Mallory. The two young men confronted each other for the first time.

So far as expression and complexion went, they were as great a contrast as could be imagined. Both were tall, spare, and well-built, and there the resemblance ended. Myles was, as has been said, quick, passionate, lithe, alert, with a temper that sprang into action on every possible occasion, with eyes that flashed, brows that contracted, very often in the course of the day. Sebastian Mallory was graceful, but there was some languor, real or assumed, in the grace. He was handsome, but the good looks were certainly marred by the bored expression on his pale, fine features. His eyes moved slowly; they were very good eyes, luminous, and hazel in colour, but they did not look as if they would easily flash. He spoke, looked, moved, as if he found life rather troublesome, and scarcely worth the trouble when it had been taken. He had taken off his cap when he entered the office—foreign fashion, and Myles saw that his face, all save the forehead, was somewhat bronzed; but it was with the bronze of a hot sun—not nature, naturally he was pale. His hair, too, seemed to have caught the sun at the ends, elsewhere it was just yellow hair. Every gesture and movement was full of the polished ease of high cultivation.

Myles, looking straight at him, said to himself, ‘One of your languid, heavy swells, are we? I’m afraid we shall ruffle his fine feathers in this horrid democratic place.’

He had Mrs. Mallory in his mind’s eye as he surveyed her son; her principles were well known—the divine right of kings—the Conservative side through thick and thin, good report and evil report; Church and Constitution intact through every storm; our greatest Premier, the late lamented Duke of Wellington; the working-man in his proper place (wherever that may be); rich and poor, gentle and simple, a providential arrangement which it would be sinful and impious to think of disturbing.

Thinking of all this, Myles surveyed Sebastian Mallory, and as he found him entirely different from any young man he had ever seen before, and as most of the Thanshope people, great and small, were of the Radical persuasion, he immediately concluded that he was right—what had been bred in the bone must come out in the flesh, and it was quite clear that Mr. Mallory was a Conservative of the bluest dye.

Meanwhile Sebastian had been looking at Myles, too, surprised at receiving no answer to his remark, and still more surprised to observe that the eyes of the ‘good man’ were fixed intently, criticisingly, and with unabashed steadfastness upon himself, and appeared to measure him over from head to foot, in a manner which was, to say the least, singular. The cap of the young man remained on his head; he did not rise; he did not ask what he could do, nor the visitor’s business; he simply looked at him with a pair of remarkably keen, piercing, dark eyes, and Sebastian returned the look, until at last a gleam of amusement appeared in his sleepy eyes.

That look of amusement was not lost upon Myles; it irritated and angered him. He was so terribly in earnest about all he did, thought, or believed, as not readily to see the comic side of a question, while it was Mallory’s chief foible to take everything in this world that came to him as rather amusing—if not too troublesome.

‘Ma foi!’ he observed, with a quaint look, but very good-naturedly; ‘they told me in the train that I should be surprised at the Thanshope people, and so I am!’

‘Perhaps they’ll be equally surprised with you,’ said Myles, concisely.

‘Well, they may,’ replied Sebastian, coolly. ‘Do you know who I am?’

Myles hesitated a moment, much wishing to say, ‘No, I don’t,’ but integrity got the upper hand; he only put the fact as disagreeably as he could.

‘I should suppose you are Mrs. Mallory’s son.’

Sebastian turned to the brown-faced, dark-eyed boy who stood behind, and remarked smilingly,

‘You see, I am nobody, Hugo; only my mother’s son; and yet here I am upon my own property.’

The youth nodded, and glanced thoughtfully at Myles, who could not resist going on with the rather perilous game he was playing, and who remarked drily,

‘You’ll find that we count a good deal by residence and relationship here.’

‘So!’ said Sebastian, with the amused half-smile still playing about his lips and in his eyes, to the intense exasperation of Myles, who naturally saw nothing at all to laugh at in the situation. There was something, too, about Mallory, which struck a subtle blow at his pride and self-esteem—something which in his innermost heart he knew to be superior to himself, though he passionately refused to admit the idea.

‘Your guess is correct,’ went on Sebastian. ‘I am Mrs. Mallory’s son. And now I should be glad to know who and what you are—one of my work-people, perhaps?’

The young man did not seem to be at all annoyed at what was taking place; indeed, there was that in his manner which said that he was mildly amused with the whole affair. He looked around as he spoke, with a lazy, criticising glance, but it was the glance, as Myles keenly felt, of a master, and of one who was accustomed to be a master. He was surveying his property, and questioning one of his servants. All the revolutionary element in that servant was in perturbation.

‘What am I?’ he began, when Sebastian, who had taken off his cap on entering the office, said suggestively, ‘Hadn’t you better take your cap off?’

‘That is a matter of opinion,’ said Myles, the blood rushing to his face. ‘It is not the fashion here. As for me, I doff to no man, and but few women.’

‘Ah! well, we won’t quarrel about it. As you say, it is a matter of opinion,’ said Sebastian, politely; but there was something in the tone which made Myles feel small, and as if he had been behaving childishly—not a comforting feeling.

‘But I interrupted you,’ continued Mallory, who seemed to be acquiring gradually a sort of interest in the conversation; ‘you were going to tell me who you are?’

‘My name is Myles Heywood, and my business is cut-looking and part of the over-looking in this factory,’ said Myles.

‘Heywood,’ repeated Sebastian, his eyes losing their lazy look, ‘Heywood, where have I—ah, yes! A cut-looker—I don’t know what that is.’

‘Likely enough not,’ said Myles.

‘But it is quite certain that I must learn it,’ pursued Sebastian; ‘what is it, if I may ask?’

An uncomfortable sense began to steal over Myles, that Mr. Mallory was courtesy itself, and that too under considerable provocation. He gave a short sketch of his business.

‘Thanks,’ said Sebastian. ‘And now—by-the-by, I am absolutely forgetting my business—is Mr. Sutcliffe in?’

‘Not now: he will be in about an hour.’

‘In an hour? Then I must go over the works without him. Is there any one here who knows all about it—you, perhaps?’ he added quickly, as if struck by a happy thought.

The idea of leading Mr. Mallory round the works excited the liveliest aversion in Myles’s mind.

‘Wilson, the head-overlooker, is above me. He generally does that,’ said he.

‘Wilson—I ought to remember Wilson. He has been here a long time, hasn’t he?’

‘He has,’ said Myles, rather emphatically.

‘I thought so. Well, where is he?’

Myles, despite himself, very much despite himself, felt the influence of Sebastian’s manner. He would have been glad could he reasonably have classed him with Frederick Spenceley, but no such classification was for a moment possible. He wished he had not made that difficulty about going through the works. He suddenly remembered his voluntary promise to Adrienne, and felt that he could not tell her he had kept his word. But too proud, or perhaps too shy, to suddenly change his manner, he said, in the same curt tone,

‘He’s going round the works. If you’ll wait a minute I’ll send him to you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Mallory.

Myles went out of the office, and across the yard to the factory; and Mallory, putting his hand upon Hugo’s shoulder, silently pointed to the workman’s figure, and they watched him until he had gone into the mill.

‘Hugo, you have not a good ear for English names yet, but I have. I have heard that man’s name just lately—yesterday, in fact, in the train as we came from Manchester. He is a fellow I must know something more about. Did you notice him? He has a splendid face.’

‘Splendid manners too, I think,’ said the boy sarcastically.

‘Yes,’ replied Sebastian meditatively. ‘Heywood! If he had not mentioned his name when he did, I think I should have lost my temper. As it is, I shall try another plan. There he goes! What a row comes from behind that door!’

Then they looked through the window.

‘What a prospect!’ said Sebastian, glancing over the head of his companion, who leaned with both arms on the window-sill. ‘This time last week, do you remember? we were with—ah, what was their name—those girls and their brother?’

‘On the Luzern steamer, going to Fluelen,’ said Hugo, his eyes fixed upon the dead wall opposite.

‘Just so! Do you remember the sunset, and Mount Pilatus, as we came back? Well, Pilatus is there now—and we are here.’

Hugo made no answer, but Sebastian saw a smile curve his cheek.

‘Why, you might be pleased rather than not,’ said he.

‘I am not displeased,’ replied the lad, with the same little smile.

‘Not displeased that I took a notion about duty into my head, and whirled you away from Switzerland, and snow-peaks, and Alpine colouring, to Thanshope, Hugo?’

‘Suppose you had obeyed the call of duty without whirling me away—had left me behind somewhere?’ said Hugo, tranquilly.

‘Ah, so! That is at the root of it,’ said Sebastian, laughing. ‘What an odd—ah, here comes the overlooker! Now, Hugo, observe me doing the merchant-prince, and prepare your artist-eye for some shocks during the progress we are going to make.’

Wilson entered in a state of high excitement.

‘Mr. Mallory, sir, this is a hunexpected pleasure! I couldn’t believe it. ‘Ow are you, sir? Well, I ’ope. We’ve looked forward long to this event.’

‘Very well, thank you. I found myself at home sooner than I had expected—a week earlier. I remember you very well,’ he added. ‘How are you and your family?’

‘As well as possible, sir, thank you,’ said Wilson, pressing the hand which Sebastian had held out to him. ‘Do I see a friend of yours, sir?’ he added, looking at Hugo, who was watching the man with the preternatural solemnity which was one of his ways of showing that he was amused.

‘Yes; a very great friend—Mr. Von Birkenau,’ was all Sebastian said, and added, ‘I want to go through the works. I asked that young fellow who was here, who——’

‘I hope he wasn’t rude, sir. I trust he didn’t make him self unpleasant,’ said Wilson, fervently.

‘Why, is he insubordinate usually, or rude to his superiors?’ asked Sebastian, with a sudden keenness of look, in strong contrast with his soft voice, and gentle manner.

‘Insubordinate! no, sir. A better workman or an honester young fellow never lived; only he’s got the idea that he hasn’t got no superiors—and it will bring him into trouble. I often tell him so.’

‘But he is clever and honest, you say?’ said Sebastian, pausing to ask the question.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Wilson, who was fond of Myles, and had been fond of him for years. ‘He’s got the brains of half a dozen of the usual run, and you might trust him with untold gold; ay, and more dangerous things than that. But he is apt to give a little too much of his sauce.’

‘Ah! Well, we will go on now, if you please; and when Mr. Sutcliffe comes in, I’ll get him to go on and lunch with me. I should like to say a few words to the—“hands,” is it you call them?—if there is any place where they could come and listen to me.’

‘Surely, sir. The big yard will hold them all, and more than them.’

‘Then be good enough to lead the way,’ said Sebastian, looking at his watch suggestively.

Wilson was a proud and a happy man that morning, as he led the newly arrived lord of that place through the maze of great rooms and machinery, and pointed out all the improvements, the wonderful contrivances for making wood and steel and iron do the work of hands and feet; all the ‘perfection of mechanism, human and metallic,’ of which the factory and its contents formed an example.

Sebastian followed him: his eyes had lost their sleepy look; he asked many questions, acute enough, for all the indifferent tone of them. He seemed to have much of the gift which is said to be royal—the eye which took in with incredible rapidity both details and generalities. Very little that was to be seen escaped him, including the curious glances and the loud comments and surmises relative to himself.

It took an hour to go even quickly through the different rooms, and then Wilson, saying, ‘This is the last, sir, the warehouse,’ took them into a large, well-lighted room, in which were some half-dozen men at work, Myles Heywood in the centre. Sebastian stooped to Hugo, whispering,

‘I want to speak to that young fellow alone a few minutes.’

Hugo stepped up to a large pile of cloth, seemingly interested in some mystic marks and figures upon it, which he requested Wilson to explain; while Sebastian, going on, stopped at Myles’s side, and, looking at his work said,

‘That is cut-looking is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’ve learnt something. Listen to me a moment, will you?’

Myles looked up inquiringly.

‘I am going to say something to all these people directly, and I want you to promise to come and listen to it; will you?’

Half vexed, half flattered, Myles looked into Mallory’s face. He had not given up his notion that the young man was a ‘jackanapes:’ but if so, the ‘jackanapes’ had a manner that it was not easy for even a superior person to resist. Myles replied,

‘Certainly I will come.’

He looked as if he were going to add something—in fact it was on the tip of his tongue to say, ‘I don’t promise to like what I shall hear;’ but he refrained. He remembered Adrienne and his promise. Yet he had the conviction that he would dislike what Sebastian had to say. A Conservative—Southern sympathies, no doubt. What could such an one have to say that he would like? But he would go, if only to watch till the cloven foot showed itself.

At that moment Wilson came up again.

‘You’ve seen the last of the rooms, sir. If you’re ready, I’ll have the bell rung, and then we can go out into the yard.’

In a few minutes the great bell had clanged out, the engines had been stopped, the hands were streaming out into the yard.

Sebastian and Wilson stood upon a huge empty lorrie that was close by one of the warehouse doors, so that they had nothing to do but step on to it, which they did, while Myles and his comrades swung themselves on to the ground, and took their stand in a knot, not far away from this impromptu platform.

Sebastian looked keenly at all the upturned faces, while Wilson made a few brief yet remarkably entangled and involved introductory remarks.

The overlooker’s voice ceased. He swung himself from the lorrie, and went and stood with the crowd.

‘My friends,’ began Sebastian, ‘circumstances have kept me for ten years away from Lancashire. Perhaps I might still not have made the necessary effort to return, but for this great struggle which is going on in America, and whose direct effects will first be felt in Lancashire. When that began, I felt I had no right to remain any longer away. I have heard, and one or two little things which I have seen, even during the few hours I have been in Thanshope, lead me to feel that the saying is a true one, that you Lancashire men are inclined to despise an employer who does not know his business, much as you would despise a workman who did not know his work. The principle is a right and honest one; and I don’t say that I may not have come under the head of those who deserve some contempt as being ignorant, and “absentee owners.” Even since I came here, I have discovered that I never knew what work was before; I see that my task will be no easy one, to master the principles of my business, and to try and provide in some degree against the dark days which, I fear, are almost inevitable. But, hard or easy, it is a task I mean to learn. The time is coming, as I think all thoughtful men must see—coming rapidly, when Lancashire will have to exert every effort to meet that distress which will rush upon her; that cloud that is hastening across the Atlantic is a very black cloud, and will make the days very dark. Let us try manfully, hand in hand, to breast the storm together.

‘I suppose that you all, or nearly all, will agree with me upon at least one point—sympathy with the Federal side in this struggle. (A murmur, deep and strong, of profound approbation arose—a murmur in which men’s and women’s voices alike joined.) ‘That noble man, Abraham Lincoln, against whose honour the Southern press has lifted its impotent voice—not to mention some journals in this country, which Englishmen ought to be ashamed to read—that noble man, should he live and be fortunate in his grand crusade, will benefit all the world by his intrepidity. He cannot give you cheap and abundant supplies of cotton now, but by his courage and wisdom he is securing your future supplies upon a firm basis, very different from the slippery vantage-ground of slave-labour upon which they have hitherto depended. (Another murmur indicative of that approval which, to their honour, Lancashire working-men and women, throughout those bitter years, gave to the Federal side, greeted the speaker.)

‘I understand that you Lancashire men, especially you Thanshope men, think a great deal of politics and principles. So you ought, considering who is your member, and that other great name which is connected with Thanshope. I also know that in spite of the strong Conservative element amongst your gentry, and, they tell me, amongst the workmen too’ (a voice: ‘Conservative working-man—there’s no such thing!’)—‘in spite of this alleged Conservative element, you have always, since you first returned a representative to Parliament, returned a Radical.

‘I was not aware of the strength of the feeling upon this point in Thanshope. I have always myself held politics to be secondary to some other subjects, but, since I find so much interest centred round the point here, and moreover, since persons whom I have met and spoken to have treated me on the tacit assumption that I was a Conservative, I judge it as well to tell you, face to face, that whatever I may be on other matters, in politics I am no Conservative, but a Radical. Of course there are almost as many kinds of Radicals as there are of Dissenters. The details of my radicalism and those of your radicalism are, I dare say, somewhat different; but I hope we shall both be able to respect the principle and never mind the form.

‘Now I will not keep you longer—only let me say, finally, I am here to learn my business, and to try to guide my ship through the storm that is coming. Thanshope, as you know, is one of the places where the pinch of distress will be soonest felt, since the counts of yarns used here are precisely those the supply of which will soonest fall off. I ask a promise from you, and I make one to you. In that time that is coming I ask you to trust me—my feelings and intentions towards you, and on my part I promise to strain every nerve to do my duty by you. We will work on as long as there is cotton to be had, and then—I trust, for your sakes, and mine, and that of humanity at large, that it will not be long that I shall have to help you in your fight to keep the wolf from the door.’

He stopped, bowed, and was turning away, when they gave him a hearty cheer; and one or two voices informed him laconically that they ‘reckoned he was one o’ th’ reet sort,’ and that ‘he’d suit.’

He jumped down from the lorrie, joined Wilson and his friend Hugo, and went with them towards the office. The engineer returned to his post; soon the busy machinery was in full roar again, as if there had been no such thing as war—no such parties as Federals and Confederates. The interruption to the morning’s work was already a thing of the past—an incident to be talked about.

Myles Heywood maintained entire silence upon the subject, nor could any one of all who inquired of him get him to say what he thought of the new master. He might have deep thoughts about it—at least they were unexpressed. The rest of the hands talked the event over with lively excitement. The general impression was a favourable one. The men liked what he had said, though he was generally pronounced to be a ‘bit too much of a swell,’ and it was agreed that he ‘spoke rather fine,’ and, they said, minced his words too much; was, in short, rather too much of a fine gentleman. Otherwise he was considered sound, and they were pleased to find him on the right side in politics.

The women, too, liked him, for reasons apparently similar to those alleged by Peter van den Bosch, as their grounds for liking Philip van Artevelde,

‘And wenches who were there, said Artevelde

Was a sweet name, and musical to hear.’

Mary Heywood, at least, said she ‘liked the chap: he had siccan a soft voice, and a nice, smooth-soundin’ name, like.’

The general conclusion was a very Lancashire one; that the young man had spoken well and reasonably; sensibly enough for a person who knew nothing about his business, but that ‘fair words butter no parsnips;’ and the conjecture may reasonably be hazarded whether Sebastian’s speech had induced any one of his hearers to form a decided opinion, good or bad, of him. They waited to see, and indeed the time was striding forward with fearful rapidity, nearer and nearer, when the sincerity of his profession should be put to the proof.

CHAPTER XIII.

INITIATION.

Sebastian and Hugo drove away from the factory, accompanied by Mr. Sutcliffe, the manager and head man of the business. Arrived at the Oakenrod, Mallory and his manager retired to the library, and there plunged straight into business.

Mr. Sutcliffe was a small, mild-looking man, with eyes that were keen despite his nervous, almost timid expression, a bald head, spectacles, a gentle smile, and a large bundle of what he called ‘documents.’

Over these documents he and Sebastian remained absorbed until luncheon was announced. They tarried not long over that meal. Hugo von Birkenau appeared to be a very familiar friend, for Sebastian made no excuse for leaving him, and with a slight apology to his mother he and Mr. Sutcliffe returned to the library.

An hour, two, three hours passed, chiefly occupied in expositions from Mr. Sutcliffe on the nature of the business, its principles, and the method of carrying it on. Sebastian’s part consisted chiefly in listening, naturally; but every now and then he interposed with a question—questions so much to the point, and showing such discernment and discrimination, that Mr. Sutcliffe, who had at first begun his task with some constraint and great dryness of manner and tone, brightened visibly every minute; his tone grew warmer, his manner more animated, his eyes flashed now and then. Thus the interview went on, until Mr. Sutcliffe, laying down a bundle of papers, whose import he had just explained, took up another bundle, and was beginning—

‘These refer to the——’

But Sebastian interrupted him.

‘Excuse me, Mr. Sutcliffe. Suppose we lay aside business for to-day. I want to ask you some other questions. With such a manager as you, I have no fear of things going wrong.’

Mr. Sutcliffe smiled.

‘Judging from what I have heard and seen of you, Mr. Mallory, you will soon be in a position to manage your own business. You must not feel offended when I say that I have been most agreeably disappointed—surprised is perhaps rather the word.’

Sebastian smiled a little.

‘I am a fearfully indolent fellow, I believe,’ said he. ‘I take a lot of rousing; but once set me to plod at a thing, and I continue until I understand it—at least, I think so.’

‘That is a very modest way of describing your ready comprehension of details which must be as strange to you as those we have just been discussing. But that’s neither here nor there; you wanted some other information?’

‘I suppose you are pretty well acquainted with the different parties, social and political, in the town, and with the characters, at any rate, of the leading people?’

‘I may say that I certainly am.’

‘Well, to begin with, I wish you would tell me candidly what character is borne by my own concern and the management of it?’

Mr. Sutcliffe looked up quickly, an almost startled expression upon his face.

‘That is rather a delicate matter,’ he began.

‘Yes, I suppose it is. But I am sure you will be frank with me. I drew my own conclusions from what I saw and heard this morning, and I want to find out if your account agrees with them. Never mind how disagreeable it may be.’

‘Your works, then, bear a very high reputation in many respects. Your hands are as decent and as steady a lot as any in the town, take them all in all. Things are generally peaceable. It is looked upon, and with justice, as an increasing, thoroughly prosperous concern. Our goods, both yarns and cloth, have got a name. I like the men who are under me, and I think they like me—Wilson, and Heywood, and the others. I think I have succeeded in keeping things right; but——’

‘Well?’

‘There are some misunderstandings about yourself—some prejudices. They don’t like absentee owners here, and that’s a fact. But I’m sure that impression will soon be effaced, now that you are here yourself. If you show them that you don’t mean play——’

Sebastian shrugged his shoulders.

‘Mon Dieu! There does not seem to be much question of play. I never saw anything so oppressively in earnest as every one here seems to be. It is stamped upon almost every face you meet. Certainly I am not in play.’

‘Then they will soon find that out, and respect you accordingly.’

‘But that is not all you were going to say?’

‘It may seem a small kind of complaint to make; but it’s better to let you know the truth at once. There certainly is a feeling against Mrs. Mallory.’

Sebastian looked up in surprise.

‘Against my mother? What has she to do with it?’

‘A feeling that she is not sufficiently liberal in her ideas, and that she would, if she could get the authority, interfere unduly in matters which, with the utmost respect to her, she does not understand, never having had occasion to study them. I am bound to say that, though I have never had anything like a dispute with Mrs. Mallory, yet that is my own impression too, and that is one reason why I rejoice at your return. You are now the final authority.’

The murder was out, and Mr. Sutcliffe’s shrewd eyes watched the young man’s face attentively. He did not look angry, did not look even annoyed, but rather thoughtful for a moment. Then he said,

‘I am glad you mentioned it. Of course that is not a topic for discussion. As you said, my presence will make all the difference. Is that all about my own works?’

‘Yes. I don’t think there is anything else.’

‘Who are the leading men here?’

‘So far as money goes, there are a good many big men here. Mr. Spenceley is reported to be the richest, and I believe report is right.’

‘Spenceley! Ah! What about him?’

‘He is a spinner; does an enormous trade. They say he has been speculating rather too much lately. He has a certain influence in some quarters, but it is an influence that will die with him.’

‘How so?’

‘He has only a son and a daughter, and the son is probably the biggest blackguard in the place; he will never have any influence. The daughter, I hear, is rather an eccentric young lady.’

‘Oh!’ was all Sebastian said.

Mr. Sutcliffe went on,

‘The son I believe, is a very black sheep. It was only a week or two ago that he insulted some young woman—in a small place, you see, these things make a good deal of noise—in a most abominable manner; but he was punished for that, for the girl’s sweetheart—at least that is one of the tales, I don’t believe it myself; but one thing is quite certain, a young working-man followed him to his club that very night, and gave him a good hiding in the billiard-room. No one, I don’t think one soul, was sorry for him. The feeling was so dead against him that he did not even prosecute.’

‘I have heard some account of it. But don’t you know who the young man was who did it?’

Mr. Sutcliffe smiled a little as he said,

‘In my own mind, I believe I could lay my finger upon the man; but as I thoroughly respect him for what he did, and should be sorry to get him into trouble, I shall keep quiet about it.’

Sebastian looked inquiringly at him.

‘I believe the man was one of your own work-people—Heywood, a fellow I have known from the time when he first came as a half-timer.’

‘I have seen the man. You think it was he. Why?’

‘Partly because I was passing the club-door at the very time of the row, and saw him come out of it, looking rather dangerous, with a couple of straps in his hand; and, secondly, because when it has been discussed, which you will easily believe has been pretty actively, he has looked embarrassed, and kept perfect silence upon the subject.’

Sebastian nodded.

‘Miss Spenceley is a great friend of Mrs. Mallory,’ went on the manager. ‘But that’s neither here nor there; only they are about the biggest people, in a money point of view, in the place. There are several other families something like them. Then there’s Canon Ponsonby, the radical parson, our vicar, a very fine old gentleman; you will like him. He is respected by all who are themselves worthy of respect, be they Churchmen or dissenters.’

‘Naturally the feeling here is radical?’

‘Tremendous; and North, almost to a man. Lots of these working-men know what’s coming; and it is coming upon them too, like the very devil. They’ll tell you they know the cotton must run out soon, or run up to such a price that we can hardly get it. But if they have to do without it, or with Surats——’

‘What on earth is “Surats”?’

‘Indian cotton; abominable stuff to work. Haven’t you—but of course you haven’t—heard of the weaver who put up the prayer, “O Lord! send us cotton; but not Surats!” But if they have to work Surats, they’ll stick to it that North is right, and South wrong; and they’ll clem rather than have anything to say to Jeff Davis.’

‘How soon do you think distress will begin?’

‘I think we shall have to shut up shop by Christmas. It’s of no use talking much about it beforehand. All I can say is, there’s a time coming which will prove Lancashire once for all, her rich and her poor alike; and show them up to the world in a light as fierce as that of the midday sun. We shall get to see the stuff we’re made of. And there’s half-past five; I must go.’

‘Won’t you stay and dine with us?’

‘I have another engagement, thank you. To-morrow, at the same time, Mr. Mallory, we will resume the discussion, if you feel so inclined.’

‘Certainly. I shall expect you. Good evening.’

He was left, leaning against the mantelpiece, to reflect upon what had passed.

A tap at the door was followed by the entrance of his mother.

‘Have you finished at last, Sebastian? I have had no opportunity to tell you that I am expecting a friend to dine with us to-night.’

‘Oh, are you? Who may he be?’

‘She is Helena Spenceley, a very great favourite of mine. If my son will spend all his time away from home, I am obliged to find some kind of a substitute, you know. She has been almost like a daughter to me.’

‘Any relative of the young man who recently distinguished himself by earning a thrashing?’

Mrs. Mallory looked annoyed.

‘He is her brother,’ said she coldly. ‘He is away from home now. You must not judge Helena by him. Poor girl! She has a sad, unhappy home. I believe I really have been a friend to her. And I like to see young people about me.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I hope you have no engagement?’

‘None at all. I shall be delighted to make Miss Spenceley’s acquaintance.’

She retired, after casting a comprehensive glance around at the papers which strewed the table.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE TWO RADICALS.

Mrs. Mallory came into her drawing-room twenty minutes before the dinner-hour, and found her son already there, alone, already dressed, and stretched, in an attitude of extreme laziness, in an arm-chair by the fire.

There was likeness between the mother and son—strong likeness; and there was also, what most people forget in comparing relations with one another, strong unlikeness. Mrs. Mallory was an elegant-looking and a young-looking woman. She had an impassive, pale face, with thin lips and a high nose; pale, flaxen hair, without a grey streak in its glossy abundance; and the elegant trifle of lace and feathers which she wore upon it made her look still younger and handsomer. She was dressed in pale lavender silk and white lace, and she looked a very handsome, prosperous person, as she came in, casting a glance at Sebastian—a sharp, keen, calculating glance. Mrs. Mallory loved power, and had long exercised it; she did not realise that her son had grown from a boy into a man since she had known him. She had the lowest possible opinion of the natural penetration of men; and circumstances had fostered that impression. There is a great deal in having once lived for a term of years in close intercourse with a person very decidedly one’s inferior in intellect, as in the case of Mrs. Mallory and her late husband. There is nothing like it for giving one an overweening idea of one’s own capacities, and for fostering an attitude of contemptuous tolerance towards the opinions of every one else. Mrs. Mallory’s experience of her husband had entailed, as one of its indirect sequences, that she was completely deceived now by the lazy, languid manner of her son. In this most agreeable of convictions, that of mental supremacy over the rest of the company, let her tranquilly abide, until her hour of disillusion arrives.

‘Mother, it is too absurd that I should have to go about representing myself as your son! Couldn’t you pass as my sister?’

‘Nonsense! Where is your friend?’

‘Dressing, I suppose. He was greatly excited at hearing that a young lady was expected to dine with us.’

Mrs. Mallory had some remarks to make à propos of the young lady, but she deferred them for a moment in order to inquire,

‘What have you been doing all day?’

And she placed herself in an easy-chair opposite to his, and held a feathery screen between her face and the fire.

‘I have been, like a good little boy, attending to my lessons,’ said her son, lazily.

‘Ah, don’t speak in parables! I have forgotten how. In this dreadful place every one says the most disagreeable things they can think of, in the most disagreeable way they can think of, and then call it being honest and candid. And if you can contrive to drop a few h’s, and speak in a broad Lancashire dialect at the same time, you are thought very honest and candid indeed. I detest the place!’

‘Do you really, mother? I wonder you have remained here so long.’

‘I have tried to do my duty, Sebastian, to you and your property. A woman must make up her mind to sacrifice herself—a mother above all others.’

‘I am infinitely obliged to you, mother, but I trust that now you will have a long and complete rest. I am going to learn my business——’

‘Very proper, but I think it will take you some time. With your habits, I am afraid you will find it a frightful bore.’

‘Do you know my habits, mother?’ he inquired in the very quietest of voices.

Mrs. Mallory looked at him in some surprise. As a matter of fact, she did not know his habits in the very least. But, looking at him as he lounged in his easy-chair, with the newspaper across his knees, she said within herself, and prided herself upon her discernment,

‘His father all over: weak and idle, though he has more surface quickness. I don’t think I shall have much trouble with him.’

‘At least I know, dear, that your habits have not been those of Thanshope business men. But I suppose your first object will be to go over the works and see your people?’

‘I have been over the works, and have seen my people, and spoken to them.’

‘When—why did you not tell me?’ she asked vivaciously, and with no little vexation. ‘You should not be so impetuous, Sebastian.’

He laughed.

‘The first time I was ever accused of impetuousness. It shows indeed that you don’t know my habits.’

This was annoying, though it was impossible to complain about it.

‘These people will not bear to be treated unceremoniously, though they are such bears themselves.’

‘I am not aware that I did treat them unceremoniously.’

‘What did you say to them?’ she asked, curiosity getting the better of vexation. ‘I wish you had not been so hasty. A speech of that kind requires both consideration and careful management I hope you did not commit yourself. They are such frightful people for taking up one’s most innocent remarks and construing them into something quite different from what one intended.’

Mrs. Mallory spoke feelingly, as if from experience.

‘Are they? Well, I don’t know that I committed myself to anything from which I should wish to back out later. Indeed, I am not a fellow who is given to backing out of his promises—but then I make so few,’ he added, thoughtfully. ‘I simply told them I was afraid there were bad times coming, and that we must stand by each other in them. And I said a few words on politics.’

‘My dear boy! how foolish! Excuse me, but it was. They are rabid Radicals, and have a prejudice against you already—one of their horrid, narrow-minded prejudices, and to mention that you were a Conservative would certainly not improve your situation.’

Sebastian looked a little surprised.

‘How odd it is! Why should I tell them I was a Conservative when I am a Radical? I spoke the truth of course.’

Not Mrs. Transome herself could have been more horrified at Harold’s declaration of his views than was Mrs. Mallory at this avowal by her son. She forgot to shade that complexion, which was not as the complexions of other women of six-and-forty. She laid her screen down, sat bolt upright, without the pretence of any amiability in her expression, and said sharply,

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’

‘I am truly sorry that I cannot oblige you by feeling so.’

‘You have no respect for your father, or your grandfather—for any of your forefathers,’ said she, sullenly. ‘Every man here who can boast of a grandfather, much more a man of good old family like yours, ought to be a Conservative out of pure self-respect. No! You have no respect for your ancestors or for yourself.’

‘Mon Dieu! I think I have as much respect for them as they deserve. Do you think ancestors are really of much use? But at least I have more respect for their memories than to imagine that they would wish me simply to sit down and hobnob with the first opinions that happened to be offered to me. Since I have inherited my name and my tendencies of mind from them, I must also have inherited my brains and my reasoning powers from them. I have an inquiring mind, a thing, my dear mother, which is not spontaneously generated, but developed.’

‘That is wicked nonsense, Sebastian. I won’t allow it.’

‘But you will allow me to explain my opinions to you, I am sure. That is always better, and saves so many misunderstandings.’

‘I see without explanation that you are a renegade to your fathers, and have degraded yourself to the level of these horrid, insolent Radicals; yes, to the level of these grasping, dirty, presuming work-people. I hate them, Sebastian; I cannot tell you how I hate all Radicals. How can you refuse any of the demands of these odious people now, professing, as you do, their own opinions?’

‘I don’t know what their opinions may be, I am sure. Probably not at all the same as mine. But I was going to mention that, in my quite early youth, I once read a little sentence which made a deep impression upon my mind. It ran thus: “Those who believe that heaven is what earth has been—a monopoly in the hands of a favoured few, would do well to reconsider their opinion; if they find that it came from their priest or their grandmother, they could not do better than reject it.”’

‘I call that impiety,’ said she, her lips tightening.

‘Allow me to finish,’ said he, courteously. ‘I read between the lines of that little remark, and applied the principle contained in it to a great many other things beside those mentioned in the text; and the result of my continued use of that principle, as a test of institutions, opinions, and customs, has been that I am a Radical.’

‘It is an odious and an impious principle,’ said Mrs. Mallory, with cold and bitter anger in her voice, ‘and it is a principle to which I will never give my countenance.’

The shock had been not a small one of finding that Sebastian called himself by the name she hated, as the formula of the sum of the opinions of Thanshope—Radical. But a yet greater shock was that of finding, that though he seemed so soft and pliable, spoke so indifferently, smiled so languidly, yet that she could no more bend him, nor apparently impress him, than she could stem the incoming tide of the ocean.

Sebastian had risen, and was standing by the mantelpiece. Mrs. Mallory glanced at him once, sideways, and caught his eye. That was annoying in itself: it vexed and angered her because he was smiling.

‘I am sorry you don’t like it, mother,’ he said quite pleasantly and cheerfully, but not in the least apologetically; ‘and yet, do you know, considering the letters you have had from me, and my perfect frankness as to the society I have most sought and enjoyed, I think you might have been prepared for it, even if I never explicitly stated my convictions.’

This was also true. He had a most annoying way of being in the right.

‘Convictions? Oh, I dislike that talk about convictions. When people want to annoy their best friends, they call their conduct the result of convictions.’

‘The impertinence of circumstances is certainly very great sometimes,’ assented Sebastian, leaning against the mantelpiece, and she, as she tapped her foot impatiently upon the floor, would hardly have been flattered to find that he was thinking:

‘I must let her rail against it until it begins to be tiresome—perhaps she may see the wisdom of stopping before then. I suppose one must make allowances for the disappointment of a woman whose prejudices (or convictions?) have been offended; but it would be wasting words to reason with her about it, and soon, I suppose, she will learn to accept the circumstances and make the best of it.’

He had no wish or intention of being disrespectful. Simply, he had ‘beaten his music out’ with more difficulty than any one knew, save himself, and was mildly surprised to find that the resulting harmony, which sounded not ill in his own ears, should cause his mother such shuddering, should fall so discordantly upon her perceptions. He had no more idea of interrupting the flow of that harmony than he had of sharing his ample estate with all the paupers in Thanshope.

Fortunately, at this juncture, Hugo came into the room, his odd, original young face looking still more peculiar in contrast with his careful evening dress, and before many words had been exchanged ‘Miss Spenceley’ was announced.

Sebastian turned, with the story of Frederick Spenceley and his already conceived contempt for him strong in his mind, to confront Frederick Spenceley’s sister. His glance softened as it fell upon the girl advancing towards his mother.

Had he wandered through all the cities of Europe and seen their lovely women, in order to come home and find in a provincial manufacturing town a daughter of the people more beautiful than any of them?

‘Helena, my love, let me introduce my son, who has arrived sooner than I expected. Sebastian, Miss Spenceley.’

A profound bow on his part, and a rather careless, not very sophisticated inclination of her beautiful head on hers, was the result of these phrases of politeness.

‘My son’s friend, Mr. von Birkenau,’ was then introduced, and received the same notice exactly, a notice graceful and even dignified, because she could not help all her movements being graceful and dignified.

‘Like my daughter,’ Mrs. Mallory had said, and as she spoke to Helena Spenceley her voice assuredly took a tender accent; she glanced over the young lady’s costly dress, and smoothed down a lace ruffle with the affectionate familiarity of a very intimate friend or much-loved relative.

Miss Spenceley remained standing on the hearthrug, talking to Mrs. Mallory—a lovely, noble figure, tall, slim, and shapely, with the exquisite elasticity of perfect health in every line.

‘Splendid!’ said Sebastian, in his own mind; and splendid expressed her appearance and her character both. From her great dark, soft eyes, her dusky hair, in its delicate unruly little rings and tendrils, her ripe red lips, set in a delicious curve of mirth, frankness, and wilfulness, down to her rich dress and sparkling rings, she was all splendid, without being in the least vulgar.

‘Dear child, what a long time it is since I saw you!’ said Mrs. Mallory.

‘Yes. I have been busy. How nice this fire is, Mrs. Mallory. I do believe we have not had one at our house yet. Perhaps it is lighted on your behalf?’ she added, turning to Sebastian with a somewhat malicious smile.

‘Mine? Not so far as I am aware. What makes you think so?’

‘You have been living in warm countries lately, and Thanshope is not a warm place, but one of those towns where we have to use a lot of coals to make up for the want of sunshine!’

‘Yes, indeed!’ said Mrs. Mallory, shivering.

‘I have not had time to miss the sunshine, or to enjoy it, if there had been any, since I came,’ said Sebastian, his glance dwelling almost involuntarily upon her as she stood there, her eyes flashing back the firelight, and looking herself (he thought) like some bright living flame, or some tropical flower.

He could not understand her. There was nothing vulgar about her; her voice was pleasant and, though distinctly northern in its clear accent, was not in the least uneducated in its pronunciation of words; she had ease, grace, self-possession of carriage; apparently she was devoid altogether of self-consciousness; all of which things were surely signs of good breeding; and yet she was not in the least like the many well-bred girls whom he had met in society up and down the world—in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other places. He wondered what she could talk about, and whether she talked well.

Dinner was announced, and he led her into the dining-room. Hugo von Birkenau was talking with much animation to Mrs. Mallory, as was his wont, though she did not appear to find him a very interesting companion.

Helena Spenceley, suddenly turning to Sebastian, said,

‘I know quite well where you have been. I have followed your course with the greatest interest Mrs. Mallory used always to tell me where you went, and sometimes read me bits of your letters.’

‘Did she? I wish I had known.’

‘Do you? Why?’ she asked, looking at him with a certain bright attentiveness, and waiting with evident interest for his answer.

Certainly she was not like other girls. Another girl would have known directly that he meant a kind of vague compliment by his aimless phrase; but she said ‘Why?’

‘If I had known, perhaps I might have written rather more carefully considered epistles to my mother,’ he said, and felt that it was, and sounded, a lame reply.

‘That would have been a pity, for the sake of a person you had never seen and did not know,’ she said, the smile fading from her face.

Sebastian felt he had made a bad beginning. It began to be rather dreadful, when she went on quite seriously,

‘Do you mean that if you had thought your letters were read aloud you would have made them into set compositions to please an audience?’

‘I think it is a matter of no importance whatever. Letter-writing is not my forte. I am too lazy.’

‘Oh, they were very interesting letters,’ said Helena, naïvely. ‘But how can you talk about being lazy! If only I had had such chances!’ She shook her head.

‘I should think you had the chance of doing whatever you pleased,’ he said, smiling.

Helena did not respond to the smile. Her face, intensely expressive, darkened visibly. Her eyes sank.

‘No,’ said she, coldly. ‘You are quite mistaken. Whatever pleasures and enjoyments I have had in my life have been procured for me by the kindness of Mrs. Mallory. She has been so good to me!’ She looked at him with eyes tragic in the earnestness of their expression.

Sebastian, glancing down the table, saw that Hugo’s eyes were fixed upon her in a perfect trance of admiration.

‘Then you have never been abroad?’ said he.

‘I—no! I have been nowhere except to London once or twice—oh, and to Brighton with Mrs. Mallory. I don’t want to go anywhere.’

‘You are such a home-bird?’

He saw immediately that he had asked an unfortunate question. The blood rushed over her face as she replied, again coldly,

‘Oh no! I think all that stuff about “home, sweet home,” and that, is the most wearisome nonsense imaginable. I hate it.... Did you study the position of women at all when you were abroad?’

Sebastian looked at her. She was perfectly grave, serious, and judicial. The ‘Woman Question’ had not been forced so far to the front in 1861 as in 1878, and Sebastian was proportionately surprised to hear that question from so young, rich, and beautiful a woman as Helena Spenceley.

‘I’m afraid I was rather remiss in that respect. But one sees their position without studying it, I think.’

‘And what do you think about it? Is it what it ought to be? But that is a foolish question. It is not what it ought to be, anywhere. It never will be what it ought to be, until women themselves rise and refuse any longer to submit to their own degradation. Don’t you think so?’

‘Really I am afraid I have not thought much at all upon the question.’

‘I suppose the idea has not yet penetrated to France and Germany. It will have to come, though, sooner or later. The German woman, for instance—is she in bonds, or emancipated?’

‘As how?’

‘Is the German woman the slave of the German man, or has she a position of her own?’

A malign spirit took possession of Sebastian. Mrs. Mallory and Hugo were both listening to the discussion, Mrs. Mallory with a shade of anxiety on her face. Sebastian, after a pause, as if he were profoundly considering the question, said,

‘I should say that she combined both those conditions—that she was very decidedly the slave of the German man, and at the same time had a distinct position of her own.’

‘Really! I wish I had brought my note-book. Pray explain!’

‘The German woman’s thoughts are, if I may use such an expression, directed manwards, Mann being, you know, her word for husband. Her thoughts, then, are directed Mann-wards from her earliest youth—from the time when she begins to go to school....’

‘Horrible!’ said Helena, her eyes fixed in grave earnest upon his face, so that his gravity was sorely tried. ‘Horrible! Well?’

‘I don’t know how much or how little true the report maybe about her beginning in early youth to prepare her trousseau.’

‘Disgusting!’

‘But she hears all around her and all her life long conversations on the subject of matrimony.’

‘The end and aim of her existence, poor thing!’ said Helena, with a pitying smile. ‘Go on! you have studied the subject almost unconsciously, as every thinking man must.’

‘If she reaches the age of one-and-twenty, unmarried, she begins to wonder what the reason can be of such a thing, and her friends, too, begin to speculate about it....’

‘Naturally!’ said Helena, her eyes flashing and her colour rising, while Hugo looked preternaturally solemn, except for a gleam in the depths of his eyes, and Mrs. Mallory’s face wore a puzzled expression. ‘Naturally—she is sold, disposed of before her reasoning powers are developed. It is very deplorable. Well?’

‘But very generally she is married at or before that age, and then——’

‘And then?’ echoed Helena, waving away the butler’s offer of wine and leaning eagerly towards Sebastian. ‘And then—what is her life afterwards, Mr. Mallory? Tell me that!’

‘A long course of bondage to husband, children, domestic affairs, and social exactions.’

‘Hideous!’ murmured Helena. ‘What a sad, sad fate! Did you not burn with indignation every time you witnessed it?’

‘I—I——’

‘Ah! you did, I know, or you could not have described it so graphically. And now you will consider the subject, I don’t doubt, and you will see it in its true light. But you said the German women had also a distinct position of their own. How do you account for that?’

‘They have. The very fact of their bondage gives them a sort of distinguishing rank. They have been accustomed to it for so long, that now they glory in it. If you were to attempt to inspire them with your enlightened notions, they would probably scoff at you; you would appear as dark to them as they to you.’

Helena looked at him with such intense earnestness and expressiveness, that Sebastian began to feel somewhat embarrassed.

‘What an odd girl she is!’ he thought. ‘And how, in Heaven’s name, shall I get out of this mess that I have got into? I can’t let her go without offering some explanation.’

‘You grieve me,’ said Helena, in a sorrowful voice. ‘I had no idea it was so bad as that.’

Here Mrs. Mallory rose in a dignified though perplexed silence, and they all went into the drawing-room.

Arrived there, Sebastian, as in duty bound, asked Helena to play.

‘I don’t play at all,’ said she. ‘I can’t waste my time upon practising.’

‘Waste your time upon music?’ he asked, wondering whether that were one of the strong-minded female ideas too.

‘I have not the power of interpreting music; it would be vanity and vexation. So I never try. I can just accompany myself in one or two little songs; that is all.’

‘Then you will gratify us by singing one of the said little songs, I am sure.’

Helena went to the piano, sat down, and began to play an introduction. Sebastian looked at Hugo, with ever so slight a shrug, and they waited. It was ‘Kathleen Mavourneen.’ But the faces of the two critics changed gradually from an expression of painful doubt and suspense, to pleased surprise, pleasure, and a broad smile of delight. A pure, strong, fresh, sweet soprano voice rang out. There was no attempt at airs and graces; the severest simplicity and the most unaffected tenderness sounded in every one of the true, clear notes.

Mrs. Mallory watched her son covertly, but intently, and saw that Helena’s music had power to move him. The languor disappeared from his expression; his head was raised, and his lips parted. Song and songstress engrossed his attention.

Mrs. Mallory’s countenance gradually cleared.

As Helena finished, both Hugo and Sebastian sprang forward, with thanks and entreaties for something else.

She paused a moment, and then sang:

‘Since first I saw your face, I resolved
To honour and renown ye;
If now I be disdained, I wish
My heart had never known ye!

‘What! I that loved, and you that liked,

Shall we begin to wrangle?

No, no, no, my heart is fast,

And cannot disentangle.

‘The sun, whose beams most glorious are,
Rejecteth no beholder;
And your sweet beauty, past compare,
Makes my poor eyes the bolder.

‘Where beauty moves, and wit delights,
And ties of kindness bind me,
There, oh! there, where’er I go,
I leave my heart behind me.’

It is a sweet, tender, quaint old song, and Helena sang it almost perfectly. She rose when she had finished, and, looking at Hugo, asked him if he did not play.

‘Yes,’ said the boy, flushing; ‘but after your voice——’

‘Don’t refuse, Hugo,’ put in Sebastian.

And Hugo seated himself and began to play German music—deep, strange, and expressive, con amore.

‘But he is a musician—he must be!’ said Helena, turning, with wide-open eyes, to Sebastian.

‘Most certainly he is. I believe he has it in him to make a great name as a composer.’

‘How delightful to have a talent, a genius, that gives pleasure to yourself and every one else! Is he a very great friend of yours?’

‘Yes; he is my ward. I have been his guardian now for four years.’

‘Ah! if he can compose, he has a life before him—a career!’ sighed Helena; and her eyes looked dreamingly and longingly before her.

Sebastian felt strangely attracted to the girl, but as yet he felt he knew her too little to know whether he should even like her. The explanation he had to make would serve to bring out some fresh point in her character.

Mrs. Mallory was knitting fleecy-white wool by the fireside, and seemed able to give up Helena’s society on this occasion. Hugo’s fingers wandered on in one melody after another—melodies like those which Adrienne Blisset’s fingers most readily wove.

Helena herself gave Sebastian the opportunity he wished for.

‘About the German women and their position?’ she began.

He laughed a little.

‘I had no idea you were so much in earnest,’ said he. ‘It was a joke.’

‘A joke!’

She turned to him in amaze.

‘In this way. What I said was quite true—that is the the position of the German women; but—but—I thought you would see it—isn’t it the position of all civilised women? Are not Englishwomen in the same case? I am sure I think so. I don’t see how any woman who marries can expect anything else.’

The colour rushed in an angry flood over her cheek, and brow, and throat, as she realised that he had been politely making merriment of the subject, and that the very point of the joke lay in her having taken it all as solemn, thoughtful earnest.

‘You were making fun of me and of the cause: that was very polite of you!’ she said, her eyes flashing upon him in anger.

‘I am very sorry,’ he said, with a provoking smile. ‘I was only describing the position of women in general in a picturesque manner. It depends upon the feelings of the speaker as to the colouring he gives to his descriptions.’

‘I see,’ said Helena, ‘you are just like any other selfish, unthinking man—not in earnest. But I am! I think that cause is worthy the devotion of a woman’s life; and it is what I intend to devote my life to.’

‘Don’t!’ said Sebastian, involuntarily.

But Helena had been roused to real anger.

‘Compliments and pretty phrases are all we ever get from men on that subject,’ she said. ‘All my life I have been sure it was women alone who must work their own emancipation; and after what you have said to-night, I am doubly sure of it. Oh! it is horrible to think that a woman is not even allowed to have a serious thought upon her own condition; or if she says she has to a man, he laughs at her! There is one consolation—the laugh dishonours him, not her.’

‘But, my dear Miss Spenceley, do let me explain. Do you think you really have had any experience in such things? Many most accomplished women think quite differently; the nicest girl I ever knew—I mean the cleverest and best-informed young lady I ever knew—thought very differently.’

‘Perhaps that was one reason why you thought her so nice. I am sure she had not been brought up in the school of adversity and experience.’

‘Pardon me! She had been brought up in that school alone, and in no other. I fancy she had attended more of its classes than you.’

‘I don’t see how you can know what school I have attended,’ said Helena, the same sudden, cold, sharp look coming into her eyes and over her face. ‘And I do not think much of any woman who is indifferent upon that subject.’

‘I did not say she was indifferent,’ said Sebastian; and Helena, looking at him, saw that he was, in imagination, in some very different place from his mother’s drawing-room: perhaps thinking of ‘the nicest girl I ever knew.’

‘Don’t you think,’ said he, breaking the angry silence which on her part had supervened, ‘that the best way of securing your ends would be for men and women to work together, and——’

‘I don’t believe in men’s help in that matter. They are too thoroughly and naturally selfish ever to give real help in such a cause.’

‘Without help you can do nothing,’ he said composedly.

‘Can we not?’ she replied, setting her lips.

‘I don’t think that any number of women agitating, and making speeches, will answer the purpose. The sort of help I mean is such as would be given by, for instance, husband and wife practically showing how much they had the subject at heart, by working together and giving in their lives a specimen of their doctrines. It is not a question that will ever be settled by public meetings and petitions. It must grow and evolve, as other social conditions evolve—gradually!’

‘Husband and wife!’ said Helena, with a sneer—a sneer so bitter and unmistakable as to startle him. ‘That is a relation I have put entirely out of my calculations in this matter. I don’t believe in the existence of husbands who will give up, and help their wives. I have been able to study the subject remarkably well....’

(‘Mr. Spenceley sits upon Mrs. Spenceley, and the redoubtable Frederick sits upon them all,’ thought Sebastian.)

‘And the women who wish to improve their condition must put all such foolish ideas aside, and feel, as I do, that they can never be tempted into accepting any such delusory fancies.’

‘You feel that?’ he said, smiling.

‘Yes, I do—to the bottom of my heart.’

Helena spoke with emphasis; her eyes flashing, her cheek flushing. She was very handsome; she was more, splendidly beautiful; ‘but how untrained, how unreasonable,’ thought Sebastian. ‘How different this heat and prejudice from the calm, well-balanced judgment, the clear, philosophical mind, of that other girl, scarcely older than herself. This raging against the weakness and selfishness of men was very short-sighted, and rather vulgar, was it not?’ All he said, however, was,

‘I am glad you feel so independent. It must give you a sense of superiority.’

‘I never think about such things. I call it vanity to be always wondering whether you are superior to other people.’

She rose and went across the room to talk to Mrs. Mallory. Very soon she was discussing the merits of a new knitting-pattern, just as if no such thing as women’s rights had ever been heard of.

When she had gone, and Hugo had retired, after fervently expressing his opinion that she was the loveliest, most fascinating, schönste, herrlichste person he had ever seen, Mrs. Mallory introduced her intended remarks upon her favourite. Did not Sebastian think her very lovely? Yes; she certainly was an exquisitely beautiful girl. And intelligent, too? Undoubtedly; but there was a certain sameness about her animation. She seemed to rave a good deal upon one subject.

‘If you knew her surroundings, Sebastian, you would not be surprised, I assure you. Such a brother! With her high spirit, and rather strained ideas as to what is honourable and gentlemanly, it must be a bitter cross to her to have that brother constantly disgracing himself in one way or another.’

‘Yes, that is true.’

‘And her father and mother too——’

‘Ha! what about them?’

‘Her mother is a mere cipher—a handsome, helpless, vulgar woman; kind-hearted, but absolutely weak in intellect, and the father is a hard, coarse man, who bullies that unfortunate woman in a disgraceful manner. He is proud of his daughter, but in a tyrannical, despotic way. Fortunately for her (I may say it without boasting), he thinks me the best friend she could have, and places no restraint on her visits to me. Otherwise, she has not a congenial companion.’

‘The benefit must have been immense to her,’ he said. ‘I wondered, after all I had heard of her family, how she came to be even so—well-behaved.’

‘She ought to marry soon. She would soon calm down if she had a kind husband, whom she loved.’

Sebastian remarked drily that she had forcibly expressed her determination to eschew any such relationship.

Mrs. Mallory shook her head, smiling with gentle pity.

‘So she may say, but her father has very different views for her. She would be very helpless, cast upon the world, with her beauty, her hasty disposition, and her large fortune.’

‘Has she a fortune, then?’ he asked, with provoking indifference.

‘Sebastian, that young, warm-hearted girl, with all her enthusiasms and crotchets, ready to fall into the hands of any adventurer, will have at least a hundred thousand pounds.’

Mrs. Mallory spoke with solemn, impressive manner and tones. She was watching her son, who seemed to view the matter with a seriousness that promised well, for he stood, his hands folded behind him, his eyes fixed upon the carpet, profoundly silent and profoundly grave, till, looking up with a sudden, humorous smile, he said,

‘Ma foi! The adventurer who won her, and her hundred thousand pounds, and her frantic ideas on women’s rights, and the execrations of all the other adventurers who had tried, and failed to win her—and her family, who must be most delightful people, I am sure—that adventurer would have driven the very hardest bargain that could well be imagined. I pity him, whoever he may be.... Good night, mother. You must excuse me; I have several things to do to-night. I have my business to learn, you know.’

CHAPTER XV.

‘“Do so,” said Socrates; “here is room by me.”
‘“Oh, Jupiter!” exclaimed Alcibiades, “what I endure from that man! He thinks to subdue every way.”’

In a week from that time the master’s face was beginning to be familiar to his work-people; and his business and its details were beginning to be a little less strange to him. Whatever Sebastian thought, felt, or endured, in the change so complete and entire, of habits, customs, and surroundings—and the contrast, and the effort to grow accustomed to it must have been pretty severe at times—he said nothing—made absolutely no remark, but quietly ‘went at it,’ with a cool, calm, comprehensive energy which amazed Wilson and the other secondary officials, and delighted little Mr. Sutcliffe.

It seemed as if, from the moment in which the young man had entered the place, work had walked up to him, ready to his hand, and that hand had grappled with it, and that head had bent itself to the understanding of it, without thought or intention of ever turning back, until the task were accomplished. His place was ready for him, and he stepped into it. He had a tenacious memory; he was rather fond of saying that it was the only mental advantage he possessed. He was a very quiet, undemonstrative person—never paraded any likes or dislikes: at the end of a week, his mother was amazed and angry to find, that though he had so completely worsted her on that eventful night when Helena Spenceley had dined with them, yet that she did not discover any pronounced points of character in him—no particular weaknesses or predilections on which she could lay hold, as handles by which to manage him. This annoyed her excessively: she puzzled over it, and tried to find a way out of it, and was, almost unknowingly to herself, nourishing towards her son an attitude which was beginning to be one of opposition.

Sebastian’s retentive memory held, amongst the other figures with which it was peopled, that of Myles Heywood in a conspicuous and prominent place. A most distinct impression remained in his mind of the workman’s defiant attitude and words. What Sebastian felt towards the young man would make too long a tale, and involve too much dry psychological analysis, to be here recorded. Mrs. Mallory had most truly told her son that whether she knew his habits or not, she was sure they were not the habits of Thanshope business men. Something happened just about this time—and Sebastian’s method of treating the matter would probably have made the hair of a Thanshope business man stand on end, or called forth from his tongue emphatically Doric epithets as to the young mill-owner’s sanity, and mental capacity in general.

Sebastian never beheld Myles’s firmly set lips and sharply contracting eyebrows without wondering whether those strongly marked features were merely signs of an absolutely crabbed disposition and bad temper, or whether they were only traits of a hot temper and quick disposition. He tried in half a dozen ways to find out, but in vain. Myles put on a silent dignity and reserve equal to Sebastian’s own, until at last pure accident put the matter to the test.

Some irregularity or insubordination had occurred in one of the rooms, which Sebastian had been discussing with Mr. Sutcliffe, and the latter had said that some one must be told off on the following day to superintend that room—some one in authority. The following morning Sebastian, coming down to the works, entered the outer office, and found Wilson and Myles there.

‘Has Mr. Sutcliffe come?’ he inquired.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Wilson. ‘He’s in his room.’

‘Did he give any orders about the beaming-room?’

‘No, sir. He hasn’t mentioned it to me.’

‘Oh! Well, Heywood, you had better go there and look over them this morning. I can’t have them idling about as they have been doing. You had better go at once.’

With that, and without waiting for any answer, he stepped forward into the inner office, and closed the door after him.

Myles went on with his work for some minutes, and then rose.

‘If you go to the beaming-room,’ observed Wilson, ‘I must take your place in the warehouse myself, I suppose.’

‘I’m not going to the beaming-room,’ was the tranquil reply.

‘Not going! But the master——’

‘I’m not a Jack-of-all-trades. I know what my business is, and how long it will take me to do it. It is not my business to overlook the beaming-room.’

‘But Mr. Mallory didn’t know that.’

‘So it appears,’ said Myles, with a disagreeable smile. ‘He’ll know it for the future. It’s all in the way of learning. You can find some one else to overlook the beamers. I’m off to the warehouse.’

With which he departed, leaving Wilson aghast.

It was through a mere casual question to Wilson that Sebastian found out, later, what had happened. Wilson’s evident confusion aroused his suspicions. Dropping his careless tone, he promptly bade the overlooker tell him all that had passed.

Wilson stammered out the whole story, even to Myles’s remark about it ‘all being in the way of learning,’ and then stood, looking miserable, and feeling no less so, listening for the command, ‘Send Heywood to me.’

But the command did not come, and Wilson concluded that the dismissal would perhaps be given through Mr. Sutcliffe. That it would be given, and that promptly, he did not doubt, nor was he reassured by the perfect calm and good temper of Mr. Mallory’s expression.

Several days passed, and still Myles Heywood, without let or hindrance, pursued his usual avocations undisturbed; and still Mr. Mallory, calm and good-tempered as ever, continued to learn away at his business; and still he made no remark upon the act of flagrant insubordination which had taken place.

Saturday came some three days after the occurrence just described. It was late in the afternoon, and work had been over for an hour and a half, but the mill was not yet closed, for Mr. Mallory and Mr. Sutcliffe were in the inner office, in consultation, and Ben, the office boy, stood lounging outside, wishing that his superiors would bring their parley to an end and let him lock up and get home to his holiday.

Within, at that moment, there ensued a little pause, and Sebastian rose, looking thoughtful, and leaning against the mantelpiece. Presently he said,

‘Well, I suppose there is nothing else for it; we had better put up the half-time notice this afternoon.’

‘Yes. There is nothing else for it,’ echoed Mr. Sutcliffe. ‘It will be no time at all in a few weeks. We can’t hold out much longer.’

‘Ah!’ said Sebastian, and again seemed to fall into a train of thought, until he said,

‘I wonder how it will all end? What is there in this life of yours, Mr. Sutcliffe, that gives it its interest? I feel more as if I was really living now than I ever did before. The cotton trade is on its last legs, for a time; and a young man who dislikes me has behaved with insubordination and impertinence; and yet, though there is nothing intrinsically interesting in those facts, and no connection between them, I feel intensely interested in both.’

‘You will excuse my saying it, Mr. Mallory, but it is not discipline to have allowed Heywood to remain a single day in your employment after his openly disobeying an order of yours. It goes very much against my judgment.’

‘I know it is neither business nor discipline,’ said Sebastian, apologetically; ‘but you must allow me a little tether now and then, till I am more used to run in harness in this way. I am trying an experiment in regard to that young man. It is a delightful diversion from business. How long has he been here, did you say?’

‘Fifteen years, and his sister eleven. Except in the strike, four years ago, they have never missed a day.’

‘Exactly, it would decidedly displease me—it would humiliate me to think that a man who had amicably worked fifteen years during my absence should have to—hook it within a fortnight after my arrival. Besides, he is unusually intelligent, and an admirable workman.’

‘Ay, he is. He could direct and manage if ever he got a rise in life. He has a head on his shoulders as good as any one else’s, but that temper of his will be the ruin of him.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Sebastian, reflectively, as if discoursing with himself. ‘That temper of his—I should dearly like to subdue it.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Mr. Sutcliffe, to whom this was as so much Sanscrit.

Sebastian looked up with a smile.

‘Leave me my own way in this matter, Mr. Sutcliffe. I promise that, if things do not turn out as I expect, I will dismiss Heywood on Monday.’

At this moment Ben put his head in at the door, and remarked,

‘Please, sir, there’s your carriage, and the young gentleman in it, a-come for you; and Heywood, he wants to know if he can speak to you.’

‘Show him in here, and tell the gentleman I will join him in a few minutes.’

Ben disappeared. Mr. Sutcliffe rose.

‘I’ll leave you alone with your rebel, Mr. Mallory. I shall be curious to know whether he has come to beg pardon, or to give notice.’

‘For my part,’ said Sebastian, ‘I have no more idea which he will do than an owl in the parish church tower.’

Mr. Sutcliffe laughed and went away, and a moment afterwards Myles Heywood entered the office. Sebastian, still leaning up against the mantelpiece, looked at him, and could read nothing from his expression. He felt that he did not know the man, and he also felt an inexplicable anxiety that the man should not say he was going to leave his service.

‘Good afternoon,’ said he, courteously; ‘you wish to speak to me?’

Myles had taken off his cap, a sign which Sebastian noted instantly.

‘Yes,’ said he, slowly, but not ungraciously. ‘You gave me an order the other day, which I took no notice of, and I spoke of you as I ought not to have done. I am sorry that I did so, and I beg your pardon.’

Sebastian had watched him intently, and with keen interest. He saw that Myles had strung himself up to say the words from a sheer sense of what was right and fitting, and from honest conviction that he had done wrong; not from any sudden leaning towards him, Sebastian. And he saw that the anxiety and the uneasiness followed, not preceded, the words. He saw that Myles laid great importance upon the manner in which his words were taken.

‘It is granted freely,’ said Mallory. ‘I felt sure that you were too manly not to do this. You have felt that I had no wish to be capricious, or put you to work that was not yours, when I gave you that order?’

‘Yes; I have thought it over, and felt that that was the case.’

‘You have worked here fifteen years, and it would have troubled me very much if you had, from any reason, been obliged to leave me as soon as I got here.’

Myles looked up, surprised, but, as Sebastian plainly saw, with a flush of self-reproach. It had not entered into his calculations that Sebastian could possibly take any interest in him or his. The latter went on,

‘I am new to my work; you must remember that. Another time, don’t let a mistake go so near costing you your place, and me my best workman.’

Myles’s face flushed.

‘I will certainly bear it in mind,’ said he. ‘I have a hasty temper, and it leads me astray often, I know.’

‘And you do not like me,’ said Sebastian, looking steadily at him.

Myles’s eyes were also fixed upon his.

‘I have not liked you,’ he said; ‘I should tell a lie if I said even now that I liked you; but I respect you. I shall respect you from this day, and I don’t think you will ever have to complain either of disrespect or disobedience from me again.’

‘You have relieved my mind very much. I am glad we have had this explanation. It does you credit.’

‘The credit is not all with me,’ said Myles, hastily, with a rising colour and a conscious look, which Sebastian remarked. ‘I had some advice from some one, that finished it off. I must go now. Good afternoon.’

‘Good afternoon,’ said Sebastian, who would have prolonged the conversation if he could; but Myles departed, and Sebastian followed him out of the office.

Standing just without was Sebastian’s phaeton, with Hugo holding the reins, and carrying on a conversation with Ben at the same time. Sebastian heard the words:

‘Ay, and his mother never got o’er it, hoo didn’t. It were main stupid o’ Sally Whittaker to say what hoo did——’

Ben stopped abruptly and grew very red in the face, as Sebastian tapped him on the shoulder, inquiring, as he climbed into his place,

‘What was so stupid?’

‘Go on!’ said Hugo to the boy. ‘He’s telling me about a boy that he knew, who was killed at a factory. Go on! What did Sally Whittaker say?’

‘Well, it were i’ this way, yo’ seen. It were at Ormerod’s works as th’ lad were killed, and Ormerod come round just as they was takin’ th’ body away on a shutter; and he says, “Now then, where are you boun’?” he says. And they told him they were for takkin’ him to his mother, and they doubted it would kill her too, for hoo were main fond on him. “Eh, what?” he says. “Yo munnot do so. Yo mun one on yo go afore, and warn her—prepare her like a bit,” he says. “Let one o’ these ’ere wenches go on afore.” So Sally Whittaker, hoo knew his mother, and hoo said hoo’d go and tell her, and hoo went on afore. Eh, bi’ th’ mass! but hoo is a gradely foo’, is Sally Whittaker! and hoo walks into Emma’s kitchen, and hoo says, straight out, hoo says, “Eh, Emmer, but troubles is never to seech,” hoo says. “Your Johnny’s killed as dead as a stoan!”’

‘What did the poor woman do?’ asked Sebastian, with interest.

‘Eh, hoo just dropped the fryin’-pan, and hoo gave a screech yo’ mowt a yeard down to the town-hall, and then hoo begun to cry, and then they browt him whoam. Mun I lock up, sir, now? Have you finished?’

‘Yes, quite,’ said Sebastian, with a good-natured nod. ‘Lock up, and go home. You’ve not had much of a holiday this afternoon’

‘Bless you, sir, it’s no soart o’ consequence,’ said Ben, with a gratified look at this mark of attention; and he retired to lock up again.

‘Will you drive?’ asked Hugo, when they were alone.

‘No; I’ll let you drive on, if you will. And, stay! What do you say to a drive in the country before dinner? It will be daylight for a long time yet. If there is any country about here?’ he added, with a disparaging look around.

‘Oh, lots! While you have been so industriously grubbing away at those figures, and showing me quite a new phase in your character, I have been exploring the interior. I know of four separate and distinct routes to the country. Certainly it is rather stony when one does get there; but it is country all the same. Will you go north, south, east, or west?’

‘Hurrah for the North!’ said Sebastian, drily. ‘Turn the horses’ heads towards Yorkshire, mein Hugo!’

Hugo complied. Very soon they were rattling through the main street. Hugo’s attention was taken up with the guiding of his cattle. Sebastian leaned back, a little wearily, and was long silent, until they had left the town behind them—left the dirty straggling suburb called Bridgehouse, and passed through the neighbouring manufacturing village of Hamerton, with its stately houses of gentry and rich mill-owners, and were put out upon a wide, open road, driving past a solemn old house called Stanlaw, deeply sunk in trees. Beyond that, the purple moors spread before them, rising every moment higher and nearer. The sky was pure, the air sweet. As if with a sudden impulse, they both turned and looked behind them. A heavy cloud of smoke showed where Thanshope lay below, in the distance.

Hugo shrugged his shoulders.

‘Comfort yourself,’ said Sebastian. ‘It won’t be there long. Soon we shall see what Thanshope looks like without smoke.’

They drove quickly on in the sharp, delicious October afternoon air, along the upland road. The heather sprang from the very roadside, and rich, mellow purple, brown, and crimson, the moors spread themselves around, under the pale, chill blue of the cloudless sky. The peculiar scent of the ling and heather rose like a pastoral incense around them; far away glittered the sinuous line of a canal, and a silvery pond or two. The crack of a gun broke the stillness once or twice.

‘Did I not tell you I would bring you into the country?’ said Hugo.

‘You always manage to keep your promises, somehow’ (they were speaking German now). ‘How goes the music under these changed conditions, Hugo?’

The lad smiled his odd smile, and said,

‘The more prosaic the surroundings, the more need one has of something like music to brighten them. Don’t you think so?’

‘Just so. I only asked because I have not noticed you practising, and as for sitting down and listening to you—why, the last time I did that was when Miss Spenceley was at the Oakenrod.’

‘You have been so busy. I have practised hard enough, only your mind was taken up with other things.’

‘Ay, with things less artistic than the Sonatas of Beethoven.’

‘But not more earnest and workmanlike. Do you know, I like this Thanshope. There is something real in the life these people lead.’

‘There is so! And in the things they say, and the way in which they remind you of your duties. There is a fellow I am very curious to know something more about. Do you remember that brusque individual who confronted us the first time we drove to the office?’

‘Perfectly well. Do you never see him?’

‘Oh, daily. I have just had another shindy with him. He piques me excessively. Every time I see the fellow, with his handsome face and defiant eyes—he has a pair of eyes—I feel as if I must stop and question him upon his thoughts and feelings. It is a most insane idea, and I know it makes him exceedingly angry; but it is so, all the same. What is that air you are humming, Hugo?’

Hugo held the reins loosely between his fingers, while the horses climbed slowly up the hill: he hummed to himself the half-melancholy air of the German Volkslied—Der Verschmähete; and Sebastian listened attentively with a half-smile.

‘Aren’t you tired, Hugo? Let me take the reins.’

‘As you will!’ said Hugo, changing places with him, and they turned homewards again.

‘Do you remember when we last heard Der Verschmähete?’ asked Hugo, smiling to himself.

‘Perfectly,’ said Sebastian, concisely. ‘Corona Müller sang it, and....’

‘There was instrumental music, too,’ put in Hugo; ‘one of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies—ay, ay! And it was a Rhapsody too! How splendidly she played it! It would have delighted Liszt himself. Do you remember the end?’

‘Yes, yes! Un poco pesante!’ said Sebastian, who listened attentively to the reminiscences, but volunteered no remark upon the subject.

They were now again in Thanshope, and the dusk was beginning to fall, though it was still far from dark. There had been a silence. Now as they turned into the main street, Hugo, suddenly taking courage, looked up into his companion’s face, and said,

‘Sebastian, do you know where she went with her father, from Wetzlar?’

‘No I have seen nothing, and heard nothing of her, since then.’

‘But you have inquired?’

‘Inquired—naturally. But—ah, there’s my handsome young democrat. Just take a good look at him, Hugo—quick! before he turns off—do you hear? What? Impossible!’

Hugo had touched his arm, so that his attention was diverted from the figure of Myles Heywood, who was in the act of turning off down a side street, and directed towards that of a young lady going straight down the main street, and whom they were now in the act of passing.

It was nothing remarkable for an expression of lively excitement, pleasurable or otherwise, to be seen upon Hugo’s face, but such a look upon Sebastian Mallory’s countenance was a rare visitor; and it painted itself there at this moment, as his eye fastened upon the slight figure of the girl, who was pursuing her way, looking neither to right nor left of her. Would she see them? Would she turn? No—yes—no! The phaeton had just passed her, when she casually raised her eyes, and glanced towards the road; and then into her face, too, leapt the same startled look—the same surprise and vivid emotion of some kind, as that which already brightened Sebastian’s. She made a visible pause, as her eyes fell upon the occupants of the carriage. Both hats were lifted, two deep bows were made at the same moment; four earnest eyes looked eagerly into her face. With a sudden, quick, warm flush, she returned the bow of the young men, and then they had driven on, and left her behind them.

They were almost at home now, close to the Oakenrod. No word was spoken, until, as they sprang out of the carriage, their eyes met, Hugo’s full of inquiry, Sebastian’s of a trouble and excitement strange to them.

‘Are you glad?’ asked the boy, in a low voice, as they hung up their hats in the vestibule.

‘Nay, mein Bester—time alone can tell me that. I know no more than you. But here—how did she come here?’

CHAPTER XVI.

‘Mais pourquoi pour ces gens un intérêt si grand?’

One evening—it was Sunday, the day after that drive into the country—Sebastian Mallory strolled into the drawing-room where his mother sat, and, glancing round, seated himself, without speaking at the piano, on which he struck some aimless chords, which presently developed into a coherent harmony, in a style un poco pesante. He played the first bars of Liszt’s second Rhapsodie Hongroise, and then paused.

‘What is that thumping thing?’ inquired Mrs. Mallory, whose many mental superiorities did not include an understanding of the art of music.

‘This “thumping thing,” as you so justly term it, is a “Hungarian Rhapsody,” by that Thor the Hammerer of pianoforte music, Franz Liszt.’

‘I am as wise as I was before.’

‘N’importe! Where is Hugo, I wonder?’

No reply.

‘You have not seen him?’

‘I saw him leave the garden about an hour ago.’

‘Gone out for a walk, I suppose. I am glad he can find anywhere to go to.’

‘Sebastian, may I ask how long a visit that boy is to pay here?’

‘Visit!’ said Sebastian, turning round on the music stool, in some surprise; ‘why, Hugo lives with me. I thought you knew.’

Mrs. Mallory lowered her favourite weapon, the feathery screen.

‘Lives with you? What will you say?’

‘I can but repeat my previous statement. He is my ward—you do know that, mother—but then we drop that connection as much as possible. I suppose we are more like brothers than anything else.’

‘You are the guardian of his property, then? He is a von—is he of noble family?’

‘Two questions. He is of noble family. Von Birkenau is a good old name, and he is the last of his race. As for property, he has none—not a scrap.’

‘How came you to be his guardian? It was very extraordinary—so young a man as you. Had his family, or whoever left him to you, any claims upon you?’

‘It was his mother who left him to me, because I asked her to. She had no claims upon me in the legal sense of the word; only the claim of having been my great friend, and the source of inestimable benefit to me. Paula von Birkenau was a woman in a thousand, beautiful, good, and gifted; and, I am sorry to say, very unhappy.’

Mrs. Mallory, watching her son’s face, thought how odd it was that he should have such queer, out-of-the-way ideas and tastes. What could there be in this memory of an impecunious German countess to bring that smile to his lips, and that light of subdued enthusiasm to his eyes?

‘If her son has no property, how did she manage to live?’

‘She was penniless when she married, and her husband’s family had been a declining one for generations. When he died, she was left without a stick or stone of land or house, and without a penny of fortune. She retired into a Stift—an institution, you know, for poor ladies of noble family. There are many like it in Germany. She procured admittance for her son into a place of the same kind—a school, where he was hard-worked and ill-fed, and quite unable to pursue the real bent of his talent for music. I made the acquaintance of Frau von Birkenau six years ago. I could not describe her; she was a beautiful soul; she did more for me than any one I have ever known. She talked to me a great deal about her boy, and I went to see him. I liked him, and told her so. She asked me if I would think of him sometimes, and perhaps pay him an occasional visit, when she should be dead; she suffered from a painful complaint, and bore her sufferings like a heroine. I said the best and shortest way would be for her to make a will, appointing me her son’s guardian, when I should have full authority over him. This she did, about four years ago, and very shortly afterwards she died. On my signing a document to the purport that henceforth I undertook the duties of a parent to him, the authorities of the school permitted me to remove Hugo, to his and my great satisfaction. Since then he has been my companion in all my ramblings, and though I don’t wish to sound my own praises, I must say he looks a different fellow altogether from the white-faced, pinched-looking lad whom I took away with me overwhelmed with grief at his mother’s death.’

‘In-deed!’ observed Mrs. Mallory, in cold tones of intense, though repressed, exasperation. ‘It sounds like a page from a romance. If my opinion were asked, I should say I could hardly tell whether he or you stood most in need of a guardian—of some one to control you. You have encumbered yourself with his entire maintenance. He is a pensioner on your bounty?’

Sebastian shook his head. Leaning his elbow upon the top of the piano, he remarked,

‘There is no question of “incumbrance.” I love the lad. I delight to see him growing happier every day, and to know that his powers are expanding in the direction best suited to them. It is not every one who can secure the pleasure of enabling an artist nature to grow and develop in a congenial soil. As to his being “a pensioner on my bounty,” excuse me, mother, I mean no disrespect when I say that I dislike that expression intensely. If you had not used those words, I should not have mentioned that Hugo knows nothing at all of this. All he knows is that I am his guardian. I let him live under the impression that I guard not only himself, but his property. And that impression must not be disturbed. I will not have his happiness embittered just when he should be able to throw aside all care for everything except his studies. He is intensely sensitive. I never approach the subject with him—you understand?’

‘I suppose I do. But I consider it the most amazing piece of folly I ever heard of. How do you know what he may turn out?’

‘How, indeed? At least he will have had every inducement to turn out well; and, unless I am much mistaken, he will do so. It is not only his name and lineage that is noble.’

‘I thought you were a Radical’ observed Mrs. Mallory.

‘My dear mother!’

‘That Frau von Birkenau must have been a clever woman—too clever for you, at any rate.’

‘Please don’t say anything against her. I would as soon say anything against you as against her,’ said Sebastian, calmly; and his mother, meeting his eyes, found herself blushing for her own meanness. Such signs of sensibility are often reckoned hopeful.

‘Is he to be always here?’ she asked quickly, to cover her confusion.

‘I don’t know. He will please himself. At present England is new to him. He may enjoy it, or study it, until he gets tired of it; and then, I expect, he will go to some German musical Conservatoire to study, just as he pleases. I shall give him his choice.’

‘Humph!’ said Mrs. Mallory, with indescribable significance of tone.

‘But I repeat, he is never to be told of his position. I shall explain it all to him myself, when circumstances make it desirable. And I think you will get to like him, mother. He is the best-hearted fellow, and absolutely adores those who are kind to him. He is a perfect child in some ways.’

‘I don’t like young men who are like children.’

‘Well, I like Hugo. It would pain me exceedingly to have any misunderstanding with him,’ said he, with an emphasis unusual to him, as he turned again to the piano, and solaced himself with a waltz of Schubert.

Mrs. Mallory sat puzzling angrily over the character which daily baffled her more completely; its traits becoming more involved, enigmatical—nay, to her, insane. She considered this freak of his to display an eccentricity not short of insanity, but strangely enough she did not dare to tell him so. Did he care for any one? Was he so devoted to this lad, whom she disliked for his fantastic, unconventional habits and speech, and whom she would regard with contemptuous pity, as he sat, the morning long, at the piano, absorbed, with strange tossings of the head, and quaint, absent-minded wavings of the hands, and contortions of the body? Or was he only obstinate to have his own way, and provoke her, his mother?

At this moment the door was opened, and Hugo entered, followed by the butler, with tea.

Mrs. Mallory was too much annoyed to linger over that refreshment. She drank it quickly, and went to her writing-table, where she turned over the papers, listening vexedly the while to the talk between Sebastian and Hugo—talk in which she had no sort of share—about music, and foreign friends, and foreign countries; and she heard Hugo express his rejoicing that at last he could have an hour of Sebastian’s company, and she heard Sebastian answer, that he was glad too, for that he missed his companion. And she knew that the tone was one of genuine affection; that Mr. Mallory of the Oakenrod was perverse enough to pin his affections rather upon an eccentric, penniless German lad, than to make acquaintances which would be to his advantage; that her chance remark about the cleverness of the late Frau von Birkenau had been, in vulgar parlance, ‘a bad shot’—a very bad one indeed, and that she had not increased her own influence by making it.

The laughs and chaff of Hugo and Sebastian became intolerable, as forming a running accompaniment to reflections of this nature. She made another shot, this time unconsciously; and this time she hit her mark, also unconsciously. Picking up a note which lay upon her table, she suddenly interrupted the conversation.

‘Sebastian, here is a note—it must go to you now, I suppose. I have nothing more to do with these affairs.’

He looked up; rose and came to fetch it; smiled as he took it; but she would not see either smile or look.

‘It is from Mr. Blisset,’ she remarked, apparently busily arranging her papers. ‘Something about repairs. I cannot imagine what he wants doing, I am sure.’

Sebastian and Hugo exchanged glances.

‘Mr. Blisset—who may he be!’ inquired Sebastian.

‘Your tenant. He lives at Stonegate, that place up at other end of the town, which your great-grandfather built, and which has always been a great deal more trouble than profit.’

‘How long has this Mr. Blisset been its tenant?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know. Eight or nine years, I think.’

‘Do you know anything about him—who he is, or where he comes from?’

‘No. He is an invalid—paralysed—a most crotchety, tiresome person.’

‘Ah! Let me see what he says.’

He opened the note, and his face changed as he saw the handwriting. It had been addressed to Mrs. Mallory, as had probably all other communications on the subject. The hand was small, compact, and characteristic—the matter was business-like.

‘Mr. Blisset presents his compliments to Mrs. Mallory, and begs to inform her that the outside of his house stands in need of some repairs before the winter sets in. If Mrs. Mallory will have the kindness to send her agent, or the work-people she usually employs, to inspect the house, Mr. Blisset will feel extremely obliged to her.’

Sebastian, without comment, handed the note to Hugo, who read it with a smile, and an excited expression, which caused Mrs. Mallory to set him down in her own mind as a lunatic.

‘I will have it seen to!’ was all Sebastian said, carefully putting the document into a small letter-case.

‘I should send Mitchell to make an estimate: he will do it as cheaply as any one,’ observed Mrs. Mallory.

‘Yes, it shall be attended to,’ repeated her son. ‘Now, Hugo, sit down to that piano, and play something—something right lively and soul-stirring, you will understand.’

‘I think I do,’ said Hugo, smiling in an uncanny manner, as he placed himself at the piano, and straightway burst into a triumphal march.

Later, when Hugo and Sebastian were alone, the former said,

‘Now you can go and call, Sebastian.’

‘Heaven forbid! I have not the least right to do so.’

‘But you would like to. Make a way. Make that note about the repairs an excuse. Call upon Mr. Blisset, and find out what sort of an old party he is.’

Sebastian said nothing, and the subject dropped.

The next day, as they sat in Sebastian’s study, and he cut the leaves of a Review, he remarked,

‘I had a conversation with Myles Heywood to-day.’

‘The revolutionary weaver?’

‘He is no weaver, ignoramus. He is a sort of head man, but they call him a cut-looker.’

‘A how much?’

‘A cut-looker. Your education, like mine, has been neglected. But I know now what a cut-looker is. Myles Heywood is one. He earns forty shillings a week. It exercises the brains and the observation, and they have time for reading and thinking, too. Myles Heywood reads. He has read Buckle’s History of Civilisation.’

‘Indeed!’ said Hugo, sitting with his head on one side, looking like an intelligent dog. ‘That does not raise my opinion of him. It is a book I hate.’

‘He has read most of the works of John Stuart Mill.’

‘I’m glad I don’t know him so well as you do.’

‘Impertinent!’

‘Can he play Beethoven’s Sonatas, and paint in oils; and does he sing tenor, baritone, or bass?’

‘Tsh! I tell you I take the greatest interest in the fellow. He knows a lot of German, too. Where he learnt it I can’t tell. When I asked him who taught him he flushed up, looked me straight in the face, and said, “A friend.” So I had to beg his pardon.’

Sebastian had thrown himself into an easy-chair, and was lighting a cigar.

‘Beg his pardon—why?’

‘My dear child, you wouldn’t say to your equal, “You learn German—who teaches you?” and why should you say it to a cut-looker?’

‘Well?’ said Hugo, seeing the expression upon Sebastian’s face, and knowing it to be no careless one.

‘I did beg his pardon, and he said, “Don’t mention it.” Then I asked him what he meant to do with himself while we were working half-time. He said he had no doubt he could manage to dispose of his own time, and I incautiously persisted, “But how?” He said he really had not thought much about it—might he ask why I wanted to know? So I had to beg his pardon again.’

Sebastian was puffing away, with raised eyebrows. Hugo burst out laughing.

‘I never heard of anything so preposterous. Why did you go on talking to him, if you got so vexed?’

‘But I didn’t. I got interested. Why should the fellow dislike me so intensely? What can be his object?’

‘Sebastian! I thought you did not care a straw what any one thought of you. You have said so often enough.’

‘Well, and it was generally true—generally, mind you. I am interested against my will—personally interested. One thing I’ve found out—he hates me.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Hold your froward tongue! You know how to play Beethoven’s Sonatas, and I know what I am talking about. He hates me, and I have made up my mind that he shall, so to speak, eat his words—that is, change his opinion. It will gave me endless trouble, I know,’ added Sebastian, knocking the ash from his cigar; ‘endless trouble, but I will do it. I must know whether that man is master, or I.’

‘Oh, if it comes to that,’ said Hugo, shrugging his shoulders, and laughing a little; ‘if he has excited your obstinate combative instincts, you will never let the poor beggar alone till he at any rate says that he gives in. Bless you, I know you!’

‘He will never say he gives in unless he actually does so.’

‘Ja, ja!’ said Hugo, nodding significantly, ‘I know. May you find the game worth the candle, is the sincere wish of one who succumbed long ago to your masterful disposition!’

‘Thanks!’ laughed Sebastian. ‘And as I can’t begin this laudable campaign on the instant, I shall carry my investigations into another direction, that, namely of Stonegate. I am going to call upon Mr. Blisset.’

‘At Stonegate—also with a view to conquest?’ inquired Hugo, politely, rising and walking quickly to the door, and closing it after him just in time for it, instead of his own person, to receive the large bundle of tape-tied ‘documents’ which Sebastian wrathfully sent flying after him.

CHAPTER XVII.

DISCORD.

The scene once again the drawing-room of Mr. Blisset’s house; its occupants, Myles and Adrienne: he just arrived; she smiling to receive him, and he smiling in answer, as one might smile on suddenly finding a flower peeping up through the snow.

‘I rather hoped you would come to-night, to do some German,’ said she, ‘but I did not think you would come so early.’

‘We are working half-time. We began to-day,’ said Myles.

‘Half-time already? I thought there was such an enormous supply of cotton somewhere in the country.’

‘So there is, somewhere; but it will have to be bought with a price before it can be got at. Lots of other places have begun half-time to-day. And it’s not only that cotton is dear; there must have come a reaction after last year’s over-production. It was tremendous. There is a bad time coming for the workers; but those who can afford to wait, and who know how to use their chances, will make some big fortunes.’

‘Some others will lose them, I think.’

‘Naturally. The one goes with the other.’

‘But how will you all manage when the hard time comes?’

‘We shall pull through,’ said poor short-sighted Myles, little dreaming of the depths of misery, and what he, and such as he—proud, honest, self-dependent men—considered deepest degradation, which lay in the not far-distant future. ‘We shall pull through. If it is only half-wage we get, we shall have to do with half-doings; pinch a bit, and clem a bit, and put on a good face.’

‘But,’ said she gravely, ‘my uncle and Canon Ponsonby were saying the other night that the time must most likely come when there would be no work and no wages.’

‘If the war lasts a long time, or the ports are very well blockaded, it may come to that,’ said Myles, calmly. ‘But we, and a good many others besides us, have money laid by. We must live on that till better times come.’

In six months from that time, thousands of working homes were stripped of every stick of furniture that could possibly be done without. Many a savings bank had collapsed. Many a stout-hearted toiler had to bend his proud, unwilling feet towards the relief committee, or the guardians, and, with burning face, and bursting heart and down-drooped head, tell his tale, and ask for ‘charity.’ Not yet had the ‘Lancashire Lad’ sent to the Times that pathetic account of the shame-faced girls who stopped him to ask him, ‘Con yo help us a bit?’ that appeal which brought the tears to thousands of eyes of readers in every end of the earth. None of this had happened yet. The great ‘panic’ had not come swooping down upon the land; but it was not long before the cry of the distressed must go up.

Myles Heywood, after this his first half-day’s enforced idleness, perhaps not ill-pleased to be freed for a few hours, on a fine afternoon, from his toil, said he had no fears for the future. He felt himself strong: felt that a little pinching and ‘clemming’ would do him no material harm, and smiled at the storm-cloud hurrying across the Atlantic.

They went on talking upon different topics; but while she questioned or answered, his jealous eyes detected some change in her. She was not cold to him; there was the same genial grace and cordiality, and yet there was a change. In a pause which presently ensued, a footstep passed on the flags outside. She raised her head quickly and looked up, with parted lips and a startled expression.

‘Do you expect some one?’ asked Myles; and so much were the words a part of the thought, that he scarcely knew he had spoken them, until she answered,

‘I—oh no! Why should I? But shall we not read some more of “Iphigenia”? Here is the book.’

She did not look at him. There was a sudden constrained expression upon her face as she opened the book, and he as suddenly felt his heart sink with a reasonless, aimless, lover’s pang. He said nothing, however, but obediently began to read. But neither his heart nor her’s was in the work, as usual. She had told him that he was an apt scholar; his intelligence was ready, and his ear quick, and attuned to the Lancashire gutturals, and its broad ‘a’s’ and ‘u’s’ found little difficulty with the corresponding German sounds. Myles, for his part, had treasured up that hour that she devoted to him once or twice a week, as if it had been some precious coin or gem. Then she was all attention to him; then she was thinking of nothing else but him and his lesson, and the idea was heavenly. But this very evening, for the first time, he was obliged to let himself understand that her attention wandered, that she sometimes scarcely heard what he said, and his anxiety and foreboding increased every moment. He was no favoured lover; he had striven assiduously to conceal every sign of his devotion, for fear it should annoy her, or repel her. He had no right to ask her why her attention strayed, what made her absent and distraite, and that very fact made him the more sensitive to the change in her manner.

He read on, and translated, mechanically, dreamily, till he came to the words:

‘Und künft’ge Thaten drangen wie die Sterne,

Rings um uns her, unzählbar aus der Nacht.’

‘“And future deeds,”’ he slowly translated, while the sense of discord and oppression grew every moment stronger; ‘“and future deeds pressed about us, out of the night, countless as the stars.”’

She had not heard a word. He looked at her, with eyes that dared not be reproachful, and said nothing. There was pain, there was embarrassment, in her expression. Then she suddenly said,

‘I want to speak to you. Let us put away this book. I want to tell you something that I ought to have told you before.’

At once his face changed; the cloud fled; he turned to her with a smile.

‘Something you ought to have told me——’ he began.

The door was opened. Just outside they heard the voice of Brandon, Mr. Blisset’s old servant, saying,

‘I will see whether Mr. Blisset is at liberty, sir, if you will step in here.’

Then he threw the door wide open and announced,

‘Mr. Mallory.’

Sebastian came into the room, and Adrienne rose, feeling like one in a dream, looking like a person who has received overwhelming news of some kind. She saw Sebastian: she felt that Myles was there—felt it in every fibre of her being, and while Sebastian spoke to her, she was only intensely conscious that Myles was gazing at them both; and she wondered, with an intensity that amounted to pain, what he was thinking of her.

She gazed at Sebastian, as he came up to her, looking as if he saw no one but her, with extended hand, and she heard him as he said,

‘Miss Blisset, I little thought before Saturday, that I should have the happiness of meeting you again—in Thanshope!’

With that their hands closed, and her voice said (with a vibration),

‘It is certainly long since we met. I am glad to see you again.’

Myles had risen with a swift, almost unconscious impulse, and was now in the window, leaning against it, and looking into the night, which was now falling fast. He closed his eyes. He felt his own emotion to be almost grotesque in its intensity, but it was so—he could not help it. The devil jealousy had seized his very heart-strings on the instant, and clutched them relentlessly. There was one thing, and one only, that he could do—having no right to call her to account, he could suffer in silence, and speak gently to her—after all, he reminded himself, she had been exquisitely kind to him, and he had no sort of claim upon such kindness.

While Myles fought this silent, desperate battle with the feelings which urged him to rush out of the room, and leave those two together, Sebastian was saying,

‘I came to see Mr. Blisset on some business, and his servant asked me to come in here. I fear I disturb you.’

‘Not at all. May I introduce—but Mr. Heywood tells me he knows you already.’

She turned to Myles, who also turned. His very emotion made him rise to the occasion. Pride and self-esteem, respect and regard for Adrienne, modesty as to his own merits, all urged him to put on an outwardly calm demeanour; and Sebastian, whatever astonishment he might feel, was of course far too civilised to betray it.

‘We have met already to-day, earlier,’ remarked Mr. Mallory, courteously bowing towards the young man, who, on his part, bowed his head gravely and proudly, and wished his employer good evening. If Adrienne had not flushed up, and looked with such startled, conscious eyes, and such a half-excited smile, around her, he could have done even more—he might have been able to force a smile too, but under the circumstances it was physically impossible.

Adrienne, turning aside, as if to push forward a chair, looked at him, but in his then state of mind he could not understand the glance; all he could do was to answer it with another, of bitter, clouded, miserable feeling; sorrow, pain, and a sort of premonitory despair.

Sebastian did not see Adrienne’s look, but he did see this one of Myles’s, and it made him feel suddenly grave and doubtful. In an instant he understood how things were with Myles: as to Adrienne’s feelings he was utterly in the dark. He remembered one morning, when she, relieved through his efforts of great anxiety, had clasped his hand, and, looking up at him with brimming eyes, had said, ‘There is nothing I would not do for you.’ They had been almost the last words she had said to him. The day afterwards he had lost her. He knew nothing of what she thought of him now, but he realised immediately that the stiff-necked young workman, whose pride and reserve resisted all his efforts to break through them, was over head and ears in love with the woman of whom he had been thinking, when he spoke to Helena Spenceley of ‘the nicest girl I ever knew.’ It might be preposterous: it might be that young, handsome, and more than ordinarily high-spirited and ambitious young workman had no business to fall in love with young ladies in a superior position in life; but all that did not prevent the fact that such an occurrence had taken place before, and would take place again. Sebastian knew it, and, reasoning from the interest he himself took in Myles, did not underrate the importance of the discovery he had made.

‘Have you seen the evening edition of the Manchester paper?’ he asked Myles, as he seated himself.

‘To-night? No.’

‘The war news seems rather important. I hope our neutrality won’t be put in peril. It would be an everlasting disgrace to us if it were to be interrupted for a moment.’

‘Yes, it would,’ assented Myles, dimly conscious that it was a superior sophistication which was able to converse thus easily upon foreign affairs—under the circumstances.

‘I suppose you take a great interest in the war too?’ said Sebastian, turning to Adrienne.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Mr. Heywood and I have the audacity to dispute even with my uncle sometimes.’

‘Mr. Blisset is your uncle?’

‘Yes. Oh! I forgot you could not know; I live with him here. Have you known him before?’

‘Never. But I find he is my tenant I came to see him on a matter of business and——’

‘Will you step into the other room, sir?’ interrupted Brandon, coming in.

Sebastian rose.

‘Shall I see you again?’ he asked, stooping a little towards Adrienne, who looked up to him with the same distinct, though well-repressed, agitation or excitement of some kind in her face.

‘It will depend upon how long you stay; I do not know,’ said she; and her voice was not calm and deliberate as usual.

Myles sat still, his face composed, watching those two; realising her grace and beauty, and his charm of manner, and all those advantages in the background. No girl—he felt it keenly—need be ashamed of the fact that she had fallen captive to the wooing of Sebastian Mallory. His heart grew heavier and colder.

‘Then I will say good evening, in case I do not see you again,’ said Sebastian.

They shook hands, and Mallory followed the waiting Brandon.

Then they were left alone. Adrienne’s face had changed; the excitement had gone from it; it was pale; the glow had faded; her voice sounded tired when she spoke.

‘When Mr. Mallory came,’ she said, forcing a smile, ‘I was just going to explain to you that I knew him—or rather, had known him a few years ago. It was curious that he should call at that very moment.’

‘Yes,’ said Myles, in a voice colourless as her own.

‘Once he was very kind,’ she pursued, ‘when my father was in trouble. He saved me a great deal of anxiety and distress.’

‘Yes,’ again assented Myles. ‘I am sure he is very considerate, and means to do right.’

‘You think so! Then your opinion has changed?’

‘Yes, very much. He is not at all the kind of man I supposed him to be.’

‘I am glad you have discovered that. I am sure you and he will get on, now that the misunderstanding is cleared up.’

Myles rose, smiling rather a faint, miserable smile. He felt it impossible not to give one little thrust in the midst of the agony he was himself enduring.

‘You know I am hot-tempered, and, I am afraid, prejudiced,’ said he quietly; ‘but if you had mentioned to me that you knew Mr. Mallory, and that he was not the kind of man I supposed, I should—perhaps I might have behaved more rationally.’

Adrienne stood speechless. She made neither apology nor excuse. When he said good night, she put out her hand silently, and did not meet his eyes. His own manner was quite to coldness. Thus they parted. Myles, as he walked home, could not forget the verse from ‘Iphigenia,’ which he had laboriously translated:

‘Und künft’ge Thaten drangen wie die Sterne,

Rings um uns her, unzahlbar aus der Nacht.’

In that moment he doubted bitterly whether any deeds, whether anything but woes, lay for him in the future.

Meanwhile Adrienne was left alone to reflect upon the situation, to think of Sebastian’s smile, and of Myles Heywood’s pale face and glowing eyes; and, after due reflection, either to congratulate or commiserate herself, as she thought most appropriate.

CHAPTER XVIII.

‘MAY MY MOTHER CALL UPON YOU?’

Mr. Mallory contrived to make his visit so delightful to Mr. Blisset that that gentleman pressed him, with an eagerness unwonted to him, to remain a little longer; and Sebastian, hoping each moment to see Adrienne appear, continued in his place.

At last she came into the room; but she had brought her work with her, and after a few sentences of courtesy, amiable but meaningless, she took a chair a little apart, and sat in almost entire silence, while the two men discussed, first politics, and then, when each had taken the length of the other’s foot on that topic, science and philosophy.

Sebastian, whether intentionally or not, showed himself in his best mood, and putting aside both cynicism and indifference, discussed the subjects earnestly, and incidentally displayed how much thought and attention he had really given to them.

Mr. Blisset, greatly delighted at finding so cultivated a listener, was also in a happier and more hopeful mood than usual. Adrienne’s eyes were fixed upon that monotonous embroidery. It is to be presumed that she did not see the repeated glances, half of inquiry, half of surprise, with which Sebastian’s eyes continually sought her face. He knew that she could talk on such subjects. Mr. Blisset’s reiterated appeal to her—‘Eh, Adrienne?’ ‘Don’t you think so, my dear?’—showed Sebastian that she was not accustomed to sit in silence at the feet of even so great a philosopher as her uncle; and yet she was silent now, merely answering when spoken to, as briefly as possible.

At length came a pause, and Sebastian hastened to make use of it.

‘How do you like England, Miss Blisset?’

‘I can hardly say, seeing that I only know Thanshope.’

‘Thanshope, then, as compared with the Continent in general?’

‘I like it,’ said Adrienne, ‘because I have found a home in it, and because I am useful to some one—am I not, uncle?’

‘Necessary, my dear, necessary.’

‘There, you see! necessary!’ said Adrienne.

‘But you used to rejoice so intensely in the sunshine, and the poetry, and the beauty of those foreign lands.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Wetzlar, for instance. Do you remember how delighted you were? how you sat dreaming by Goethe’s Brunnen, and how you seated yourself in Lotte Buff’s parlour, and looked round, and could scarcely speak?’

‘Ah, yes!’ said Adrienne, her eyes lighting up at the remembrance, and a smile stealing over her face; ‘but that was very enchanted ground, you know.’

‘And you struck a few chords on that piano; that “old, tuneless instrument,” on which Goethe had played to Lotte, and then drew back, quite ashamed of your own audacity—you must remember?’

‘Did I ever say I did not remember?’ said Adrienne, a tremor in her voice as she looked up and found Sebastian leaning forward, his chin in his hand, and his eyes fixed upon her face.

Something in the expression of those eyes seemed to cause Adrienne some emotion. Her colour rose. Mr. Blisset had opened a newspaper which his servant had brought in, and was apparently buried behind it. Sebastian, his eyes still fixed upon the young lady’s troubled face, said softly,

‘Don’t you think Wetzlar was the most sunshiny place you were ever in?’

‘At least the sun began to shine for me there,’ she said quickly, and looking towards him with a sudden, deeper glance than before.

He smiled.

‘I think, for me too.’ Then, seeing that she looked still more downcast, he added, ‘But we shall meet again, I hope, and then we can discuss those old days. I was going to ask, have you many friends here?’

‘Scarcely any. My uncle does not visit. We know Canon Ponsonby, and Mrs. Ponsonby called upon me, and was very kind. Then I have a few friends of my own peculiar kind, you know.’

‘I know. Old apple-women at street-corners; working-people; unhappy youths who want a few lessons in this and that—eh?’

‘Yes,’ said Adrienne, smiling.

‘Then Myles Heywood is not counted amongst your friends?’ said Sebastian, composedly, glancing aside at Mr. Blisset, to assure himself that that gentleman was absorbed in his newspaper.

‘Yes, he is,’ said Adrienne, raising her head. ‘He is a friend both of my uncle’s and mine.’

‘Is it allowable to ask how you made his acquaintance?’

Adrienne suddenly crimsoned, while Sebastian unkindly continued steadfastly to watch her. He had been piecing different facts and inferences together in his mind, and was rather anxiously awaiting her answer.

‘It is not allowable?’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Yes, it is, quite,’ retorted she, somewhat recovering herself. ‘I met Myles Heywood a few weeks ago, not more. I used to have some work that I did at the public reading-room, and he used to read there too. He rendered me a very kind service on one occasion, and has been a friend and a visitor here ever since.’

Sebastian bowed politely.

‘He interested me,’ said he, with a rather ambiguous smile. ‘I wished to know more of him; but he declines every advance I make to him.’

Adrienne was silent. Sebastian, with a laudable thirst for information, went on, in the same calm, matter-of-fact voice,

‘I begin to think that in his case appearances deceive me’ (Adrienne looked rapidly up and down again). ‘There is something wonderfully attractive about his face and manner. He appears so very superior to his class, and yet I begin to fancy there must be some fatal defect of temper—some moral want.’

‘You are mistaken,’ said she, in a voice which, though low, was so clear and decided as to startle Sebastian. The information he wished for appeared to be readily forthcoming—whether it were of a pleasant nature or not, he could hardly yet say.

‘You think so? You think it is not mere churlishness?’ he said, purposely using a strong word.

‘He has not a grain of the churl in him.’

‘Indeed! Then he must have well-developed imitative faculties,’ said Sebastian, with a politely sceptical accent, which he had often found useful as a conversational weapon. It was successful upon this occasion. Adrienne answered quickly,

‘You must not think him churlish. It would be a grievous mistake to make. He has a most generous disposition. You should see him at home with his sister and his cripple brother—they are friends of mine too, and his deaf friend, Harry Ashworth. You would not misjudge him then. Those people know his heart, as it is—and they all adore him. Churlish—no!’

‘Well, does he behave in such an extraordinary way to Mr. Blisset? Does he look at him as if he would say, “Thus far, and no farther. Keep your distance if you please”?’

‘To my uncle—oh no! He is very fond of him, and very respectful to him,’ said Adrienne, demurely, a curious little smile quivering about the corners of her mouth.

‘Then why does he select myself as the object of his hatred—for I am sure he does hate me?’

‘He—because——’

‘Because?’

‘I cannot explain. Only he does not hate you.’

‘I am convinced you could tell me all about it if you would, so, as you will not, I must find it out in my own way. I am determined I will learn the reason of his aversion to me—and will overcome it.’

‘Oh, don’t! Pray let him alone. He is best let alone.’

Sebastian smiled.

‘You seem to be well acquainted with what is best for him—though you have only known him a few weeks. If you have succeeded in making a friend of him, why should not I?’

‘I would not go too far. Remember, he, as well as you, has a right to choose his own friends, and if he does not choose you for one of them, you have no right to——’

‘Importune him? No. You are quite right,’ he said, rising. ‘But there is society of a different stamp from Myles Heywood, even in Thanshope. Would you have any objection to my mother calling upon you?’

‘Mrs. Mallory—objection? Not the least. I should be delighted. But don’t you think, if she had wished for my acquaintance, she would have called before?’

‘She was ignorant that you lived here. She thought Mr. Blisset’s household was quite without ladies. I expect she will call upon you within the next few days.’

‘I shall be happy to see her,’ said Adrienne, politely, but not enthusiastically; and he could read nothing from her eyes, as they answered his inquiring gaze. She roused her uncle from his abstraction, and Sebastian dropped her hand with a smile. After all, he told himself, it was absurd to think seriously of Myles Heywood as a rival—quite absurd. A high cultivation like Adrienne’s—and how different she was from that little dark-eyed Helena, with her vehemence and her disorganised ideas as to women’s rights and man’s selfishness—could surely never feel any real affinity with that untamed, untutored specimen of humanity, Myles Heywood. There might be plenty of force about him, but force without culture is apt to get uncomfortable.

Amidst earnest requests from Mr. Blisset that he would speedily renew his visit, and equally earnest assurances on his part that he would do so, Sebastian departed.

In the Oakenrod drawing-room, Mrs. Mallory by the fire, with a novel and the feathery screen; Hugo gloating over a copy of the original edition of Bewick’s ‘Birds,’ the like of which treasure, he considered, he had never seen before: for the rest silence.

‘You have been out all the evening?’ inquired Mrs. Mallory, languidly, as she looked up.

‘Yes, I have been at Mr. Blisset’s.’

Hugo looked up.

‘Mother, do you ever call at Mr. Blisset’s house?’

‘No. Soon after he came, I called; but his man-servant told me that he was a great invalid, and saw no one.’

‘He is certainly a great invalid. But there is a Miss Blisset.’

‘Is he a widower?’ asked Mrs. Mallory, struck by something in her son’s tone, dimly conscious of some impending unpleasantness in store for herself.

‘She is his niece. She came to live with him some two years or eighteen months ago. I was delighted to renew my acquaintance with her.’

‘Then you had met her before?’

‘Yes, at Coblentz, and at Wetzlar, on the Lahn.’

Sebastian was at the present moment leaning on the top of his mother’s chair, which was a deep, roomy easy-chair of a bygone day. As he spoke he took the feathery screen out of her hand and fanned her with it a little. She wished he would not do so. It might not make it more really difficult to resist him, but it made her look very ungracious; it must look ungracious in a mother to deny favours to a son who asked them in so seductive a manner.

Mrs. Mallory thought there were certain points upon which she would never give in; but even while she thought it, and Sebastian’s hand waved the screen to and fro, and his voice gently continued to speak—even then, she had an indefinable sensation of being managed—that power was slipping from her hands into his. But she could say nothing until he had in some way committed himself; and he had a most provoking habit of not committing himself.

‘She is as clever and accomplished in her way as her uncle is in his,’ Sebastian went on: ‘and she is, in addition, a most charming young lady. She has no friends here—and she is so different from the Thanshope people—much more in your style than that vehement little Miss Spenceley,’ he added, while Hugo looked on from afar and laughed in his sleeve. ‘I am sure you would like her if you knew her, and I want you to be so kind as to call upon her.’

‘Call upon her! Call upon a person I know nothing about! Really, Sebastian, I wonder at you!’

‘My dear mother, she is not in the least what you would describe as a “person.” Even your critical taste will pronounce her a thorough lady when you see her.’

‘How is it nobody else has called upon her?’

‘Some one else has. Mrs. Ponsonby has called upon her. But I want you to call upon her. You really would oblige me exceedingly, mother, if you would.’

‘And therefore I must, I suppose. That appears to be the rule by which the young judge the old in the present day,’ said Mrs. Mallory, a little acidly.

Sebastian had come round to the other side, and was leaning against the mantelpiece, and as Mrs. Mallory concluded her remark she looked at her son, and her son looked at her. If he had only been talking about Helena Spenceley! But it was merely some Miss Blisset. She thought she would refuse. But at that moment the idea struck her that she might even serve her own aims by consenting conditionally.

Scarcely two days before, Sebastian had treated, first with levity and contempt, and then with downright repugnance, the prospect of dining at the Spenceleys’ house, or cultivating their further acquaintance. Mrs. Mallory had at that moment in her pocket a note, in Helena’s handwriting, requesting the pleasure of the company of Mrs. and Mr. Mallory, and that of Mr. von Birkenau, to dinner ten days hence.

‘If I go out of my way to make new acquaintances, about whom I care nothing in the world, it is only fair that you should put yourself a little out of the way too, Sebastian.’

‘Perfectly fair. As how?’

‘We are invited to dine at the Spenceleys on the —th. If you don’t go there, and behave civilly to my friends, I really don’t see how I can encourage yours, about whom I know nothing, to come here, or go to see them myself.’

‘I quite grasp the importance of the situation,’ said Sebastian, with that placid politeness which exasperated Mrs. Mallory beyond bounds, because she did not know into what language to translate it. ‘If you will call upon Miss Blisset within the next day or two—I mean a proper call, you know, with an intimation that you would like her to return it, and so on—I will go to any amount of Spenceley spreads, be they never so gorgeous, and will listen to Miss Spenceley’s diatribes with the utmost resignation. There will be the contrast to think of.’

This was not very encouraging behaviour; but it was the best to be extracted from her very ‘trying’ son, and Mrs. Mallory had to accept it, merely remarking,

‘If your friend, Miss Blisset, has anything like the good qualities of Helena, I shall be surprised.’

‘No, she has not,’ said Sebastian. ‘Miss Spenceley has one hundred thousand golden virtues—not to mention others of a less tangible character—of a kind that Adrienne Blisset knows nothing about.’

Mrs. Mallory made a note of the ‘Adrienne Blisset,’ and began to feel an intense dislike to that young lady.

But the bargain had been struck. On the third day after the treaty had been, so to speak, signed, Mrs. Mallory called out her horses and called out her men, and drove in state to see and overwhelm Miss Blisset.

She saw her; but the overwhelming remained still a dream of the future. Adrienne’s utter freedom from embarrassment in the presence of Mrs. Mallory, of the Oakenrod, might be in bad taste, but it could not very well be commented upon. She parried all her visitor’s hidden thrusts upon the subject of Sebastian with a cool adroitness which called forth her visitor’s reluctant admiration, and behaved altogether with an ease and an address which was the more reprehensible in that it seemed so perfectly natural.

‘But it could not have been natural,’ reflected Mrs. Mallory, as she drove away. ‘The attention, after Sebastian’s calling there and finding her, was so marked. I think she is the most consummate little actress I ever met anywhere.’

CHAPTER XIX.

‘I DREAMT I DWELT IN MARBLE HALLS.’

Castle Hill, the Spenceley mansion, was a large, new, imposing residence of red brick, with massive stone facings. It had been the dwelling of Mr. Spenceley and his family for some six or seven years, and it was within these walls that Helena sat in captivity, and groaned alternately over the selfishness of men and the mean-spiritedness of women.

On the appointed evening, Mrs. Mallory, her son, and Hugo, were driven to this mansion, and ushered into the drawing-room. It was an apartment vast in dimensions, lofty, dazzling, perfectly square, perfectly gorgeous, and more than perfectly uncomfortable.

Some ten or twelve persons were collected somewhere amidst the mass of gorgeous carpet, hangings, furniture, and dazzling crystal drops which seemed to blend and combine in a determined and successful effort to crush and annihilate the human portion of the scene. Sebastian and Hugo saw Mrs. Mallory sail up to a massive-looking lady in purple satin, and white lace, and unlimited jewellery of florid design and great brilliance. This lady she greeted almost affectionately. Was she not Helena’s mother? and did not Mrs. Mallory herself regard Helena almost as a daughter? Having introduced Sebastian and Hugo, Mrs. Mallory turned to Mr. Spenceley, while the young men bowed themselves before the mistress of the house.

She said she was very glad to see them. Then she told Sebastian that she had heard a great deal about him, and then she looked hurriedly around for ‘Mr. Spenceley.’

That gentleman, who had been exchanging courtesies in a loud and blatant voice with Mrs. Mallory, now began to welcome Sebastian to his native place, also in a loud and blatant manner.

‘Well, sir, I’m glad to see you. Come home just in the nick of time, you have. You’ve a grand opportunity for making your fortune now. Gad! But it’s providential, this American business! We shall get rid of some of our surplus stock now. It’ll give us a pull over our work-people too, at last; and not before we need it. The fellows were getting beyond everything, eh!’

Sebastian, his calm and serious eyes quietly scanning the strong, if coarse, under-bred face of the man before him, merely said that he was quite new to this kind of thing. He had not considered the subject in that light at all.

‘Well, I should advise you to do so as soon as possible then, or you’ll lose your chance,’ shouted Mr. Spenceley, whose voice was elevated so as to drown entirely those of the rest of the company, while his wife timidly looked on, her florid face set gravely, and her eyes round and staring with a sort of anxious attentiveness.

Sebastian foresaw that he would have to take her in to dinner, and he glanced at her now and then, wondering what he should say to her—how keep up some kind of a conversation. She was a tall, stout, matronly woman; once she must have been an extremely handsome lass. Her black hair was still abundant, and had something of the waviness of Helena’s: her eyes, too, were dark. She was as tall as her daughter, but more lymphatic in temperament.

Helena probably inherited her beauty from her mother, and her vehemence from her father. Mrs. Spenceley was accustomed to roll in her carriage through Bridgehouse and Lower Place, suburbs of Thanshope, and to look from her elevation upon the extensive matrons who stood at their cottage doors, exchanged gossip, and scolded their ingenuous offspring, sporting in the road before them; but her nature was the same as theirs. Denude her of her silks and satins, attire her in a cotton or linsey gown, with bare arms and a large apron, her hair twisted up into a knot behind, and her head capless; a cottage full of cares and unruly children, a rough ‘measter’ to make and mend and ‘do’ for, and she would have been indistinguishable from those other matrons. She would have fallen back into the old ways quite genially and naturally; she would have been what she certainly was not under existing arrangements—happy.

For Mrs. Spenceley was unhappy in her riches and greatness; she could remember quite distinctly the days when Spenceley had been overlooker at one of the great Thanshope factories, and she had done the work of the house, and brought up the children single-handed, and been happy—and not genteel. She remembered the sudden leap into prosperity, the gradually increasing establishment, Helena dismissed to a fashionable boarding-school, and Fred to a private and select academy, where he was to learn how to become a gentleman—that short, easy, and every-day process, where, as a matter of fact, he had drunk in one lesson, and one only, namely, that a fellow whose father has money, and who will one day have money himself, need not know, or do, or be anything—except rich. Mrs. Spenceley remembered how servants, of whom she stood in awe, had accumulated around her; how she had had to leave her kitchen to their tender mercies; how she had found that she must not handle a duster, or have an opinion as to the merits of the heave-shoulder or the wave-breast any longer; until she had got a magnificent housekeeper, in black silk and a lace cap, who was fully conscious of the primordial fact that large and wealthy establishments only existed in order that she might domineer over one of them. How Helena was returned upon her hands, a ‘finished’ young lady, ignorant, as it seemed to Mrs. Spenceley in her own ignorance, of the very elements of a womanly education—unable to keep house, to cook, to sew, even to distinguish ribs of beef from sirloin. She had ventured, mildly, to utter some of her woe to the father, who had said, ‘Pooh! Let the lass alone. She’ll never need to know such things. She shall marry a lord! Only don’t let her cross me and she’ll do.’ And Helena had been suffered to trample upon the domestic arts, and to throw herself, with all the energy of one who has nothing to do with herself, into all sorts of questions about which her active brain made her curious, while her unfinished education left her profoundly ignorant of their practical bearings. She had no female friends except Mrs. Mallory and Miss Mereweather, a conspicuous friend and upholder of ‘the cause.’ She loved Mrs. Mallory, because that lady was kind to her, and was by no means a nonentity; and she adored Miss Mereweather because of her talents, or what seemed to Helena her talents.

Friends at home the girl had none. Fred had one of those hopelessly dense natures which may be called the complacently brutal—nothing in the way of friendship or sympathy was to be had from him. Her father—Helena, in her intercourse at school with girls of good family and social surroundings, had learnt to know that her father’s manners and language were to be abhorred, while, had he been a Sir Charles Grandison in the matter of deportment, his coarse bullying and ferocious bantering of her mother would alone have made the hot-spirited girl almost hate him.

And Fred—his mother stood in profound awe of him; his talk, his slang, his ways in general; and she was the one soul on earth, except himself, who was firmly convinced of the fact that Frederick Spenceley was at once a finished gentleman and a consummate man of the world.

As Sebastian sat watching his hostess, and partly divining some of these facts, a voice at his elbow roused him.

‘Good evening, Mr. Mallory. You look as if you were dreaming.’

Looking quickly round, he saw Helena standing close beside him, smiling as frankly as if no misunderstanding had ever existed between them, as if they had not quarrelled violently within two hours of first seeing each other. How lovely she was! None but a very lovely woman could have stood the dull ivory satin dress she wore, fitting tight in the waist, without a fold or a crease; and, in an age of voluminous, portentous crinolines, trailing straight and long behind her. She wore a black lace fichu, and elbow sleeves with black lace ruffles falling from them. The fichu was fastened with a golden brooch; beyond that was not a ribbon, not a frill, not a jewel or a flower about her. And her beauty came triumphant through the ordeal.

They had parted on decidedly evil terms, and he was surprised now to find that she welcomed him cordially, and smiled as she took the chair beside him.

‘I am afraid I was very cross the other night,’ said she, with a sunny smile. ‘But I thought you had treated me badly, and I am going to have my revenge to-night, and show you that I am in earnest. My greatest friend, Laura Mereweather, has most fortunately been able to come just when I invited her. Wasn’t that wonderful?’

‘I am prepared to say that it was; but I don’t yet know why.’

‘You know Miss Mereweather; by name, at least?’

‘To my shame I must confess that I never even heard of her before.’

‘What an extraordinary thing! She has a European reputation.’

‘You astonish me! For what?’

‘As being the most advanced female thinker, and the greatest benefactor to her sex, of her time.’

Sebastian’s face fell, as he looked round the room.

‘These very intellectual women have often nothing remarkable in their personal appearance,’ said he. ‘Would you believe that, of the several young ladies I see seated about the room, I could not say which I should suppose to be Miss Mereweather.

‘That,’ said Helena impressively, ‘that slight girl, all intellect, and mind, and spirit, talking to my brother—that is Laura!’

‘Is it really?’ he said, his eyes falling upon the ethereal-looking being described by Helena.

He saw a thin, nervous-looking girl—a girl with not a bad face, if it could not be called absolutely handsome. She too was dressed, like Helena, in a tightly fitting robe with undistended skirts, but her dress was black. She wore an eyeglass, looked restlessly around, and had a deep contralto voice. There was nothing alarming in her appearance; she looked, thought Sebastian, as if she would have made an excellent head-mistress of a large school, the matron of an hospital, or some authority of that description.

‘She is a woman of powerful individuality, I should say,’ he remarked.

‘Is she not? After dinner she shall talk to you.’

‘Oh, you are very kind! I wouldn’t trouble her for the world.’

‘It is no trouble. Nothing done for the cause would be a trouble to Laura; and then you must be enlightened. You must learn that ours is not a cause to be treated with levity. You must be punished for what you did and said the other night,’ said Helena.

‘I submit; but—I am sure you could talk just as well,’ said Sebastian, resignedly.

‘Ah, if I could!’ said Helena, gazing with admiring devotion towards her friend.

‘Is there not an immensity of power and force about her?’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Laura has several times been mistaken for a man—by persons who have heard her voice, and her remarks, without seeing her.’

‘Has she? How excessively annoying for her!’ said Sebastian, with feeling.

‘Annoying! It pleases her, as a testimony to her power, and as a proof that there is no real disparity in the respective capacities of men and women. Of course, when it is known that books or pictures have been written or painted by women, all hope of fair and impartial criticism is over.’

‘Is it?—Well, I was looking at the question from another point of view. I thought that if Miss Mereweather disapproves so strongly of men in general, it would annoy her to be mistaken for one of that odious and inferior sex; and, moreover, would only be a sign of how very different she must be from most women.’

‘She is very superior to most women; if that is what you mean, I concede the point willingly.’

‘Well, if such a superior woman is often mistaken for a man, is not that a piece of negative evidence of the inferiority of women in general?’ he asked politely.

Helena’s face had flushed again.

‘As I said, Laura shall talk to you. She will argue much better than I can. I do not pretend to her abilities. And there is Parsons announcing dinner,’ added Helena hastily, her colour mounting still higher as she caught Sebastian’s eyes fixed with a grave yet not unkindly expression upon her face.

He rose to offer Mrs. Spenceley his arm, and stood with her, watching the couples as they filed out of the room. Yes, Helena was lovely, and not all her wild talk, not even her enthusiastic admiration for Miss Mereweather, could make her otherwise.

He looked absently on, as first his mother and Mr. Spenceley went by; next a gorgeous dowager, whose tribal name and standing were unknown to him, but whom he distinctly heard saying something about ‘the ’oist at the Lang’um ’otel,’ as she swept past on the arm of a flaccid-faced, red-haired, meek-looking man, pertaining to the goodly company of cotton-spinners. The wife of the said cotton-spinner followed next, with a gentle-looking incumbent—he who ministered to the spiritual needs of Mr. Spenceley and his family. More couples followed. Fred Spenceley with Miss Mereweather—more gorgeous dowagers and resplendent spinsters, and more of the native young men, leading the same to the banquet, and, at last, Helena, in her creamy robes, with Hugo.

‘The lucky young dog!’ thought Sebastian, resignedly, as Hugo’s eyes met his, and the lad smiled rather triumphantly, in the full consciousness that he was leading out the prettiest woman in the room.

Was she talking women’s rights now? Sebastian wondered, as he silently brought up the rear with the equally silent Mrs. Spenceley. No! She was laughing with Hugo, like any other pleasant, well-conditioned girl, and asking him to tell her exactly how he spelt his name, and if it had any particular meaning.

‘For I know nothing about German, you know, except a translation of the “Sorrows of Werther,” which I thought very funny.’

‘And I do not know much about English,’ said Hugo, much delighted with his own good fortune, ‘but I can understand yours, sehr gut, I mean, very well. You speak so clearly—it is different from the London people.’

‘Not bad for a first attempt, old boy!’ thought Sebastian, smiling as they entered the celebrated dining-room of Castle Hill, with its pictures and bronzes, and statuary, all of the very best, and ‘bought by people who understood such things,’ as Mr. Spenceley was wont modestly to say, when any one praised any of his artistic treasures.

Mrs. Spenceley did not look like a person who would have exactly a discriminating taste in the matter of genre-paintings, or landscape, but Sebastian broke the silence between them by remarking on a little picture hanging opposite to him.

‘Yes; it’s by a person called Ansdell, I believe,’ said Mrs. Spenceley. ‘They say it’s very good; but for my part I’m no judge of such things.’

Sebastian bowed, and then, thinking that perhaps local topics might prove more successful than artistic ones, said he feared that distress was already beginning amongst the work-people.

Mrs. Spenceley turned with some vivacity to her guest.

‘You’re right, Mr. Mallory. If it goes on as it is doing, it’ll break some ’earts before all’s over.’

‘Do you visit much amongst them?’

‘Not so much as I could wish. There’s some of the poor creatures will soon be fair clemming—starving, I mean.’ Mrs. Spenceley sank her voice, and every now and then her eye turned with a little nervous, wavering glance towards her lord at the other end of the table. ‘You see I shouldn’t like to go amongst them so much without I could keep them a bit. I should like to have a soup-kitchen!’ she added with feeling; ‘but Spenceley doesn’t quite approve of it. He says that many of them have money laid by, and he’s of opinion that we must let them help themselves a bit before we begin to help them.’

‘From a politico-economical point of view Mr. Spenceley is perhaps right,’ said Sebastian, glancing down the table at the red-faced, coarse-featured man, with a heavy jaw not devoid of cruelty; and noting that same jaw reproduced even more obtrusively and unpleasantly in the son; scarcely at all in the daughter, or at least only in a manner which gave an expression of decision to the charming mouth.

‘I know nothing about politics,’ said Mrs. Spenceley; ‘and you may mark my words—those that’s starving will want bread—not politics.’

‘Certainly they will. Unfortunately you often cannot give them the one without a good deal of the other.’

‘I dare say. But if the war doesn’t stop soon we shall have to do something, if it was only to try and teach the poor women to make the most of their bits of stuff. Most of them are no housekeepers to speak of. They can spin and weave, but they can’t make home comfortable, and after all, that’s the chief thing. But,’ she added, suddenly remembering different reports she had heard of Sebastian, and Helena’s contemptuous announcement that he was a fop, who thought the world was made for his amusement, and that there was nothing in life worth the trouble of being earnest about, ‘you won’t be much interested in these kind of things, Mr. Mallory.’

‘On the contrary, I am much interested in it. Your idea makes me wonder if something could not be done. If some schools, or something of that kind, could be established,[2] if some of the ladies of the town would take it up—my mother and you, for example, Mrs. Spenceley—and make it unnecessary for those poor girls to be wandering about, laughing and making fun of people in the streets as I saw them the other day. And your daughter—I should think Miss Spenceley would find the work congenial.’

‘Helena!’ echoed the mother, shaking her head. ‘It’s of no use talking about her, Mr. Mallory. She has always some fresh craze in her head, and never a useful one. That horrid Miss Mereweather has been the ruin of her.’

Sebastian repressed a smile.

‘If she only would turn to something useful!’ lamented Mrs. Spenceley, ‘but with these ridiculous ideas about women being better than men, and all that—and she can’t even make a shirt for her father or a pudding for her brother. Oh, but I beg your pardon—only I do often tell her that she would never make a good wife with these ideas—not if she had millions of pounds and was the prettiest girl in England.’

Though Mrs. Spenceley threw back her head and spoke in a tone of annoyance, yet Sebastian clearly distinguished an accent of pride in her voice. The homely mother then was not altogether displeased with her wilful, brilliant girl.

‘And what does she say to that?’ he asked, looking at Hugo and Helena, who seemed to be greatly enjoying some remarkably good joke; and he thought: ‘The prettiest girl in England! At least she might hold her own amongst a dozen of the prettiest.’

‘Oh, she says she never will be married, and that nonsense. I tell her to wait until Mr. Right comes, and then we shall hear a different song. I wish he would, I’m sure,’ she added fervently, ‘before she gets spoiled. She has a right good heart, has Helena, if only a giddy head.’

Sebastian did not answer. He was still looking towards Hugo and Helena, and felt intensely conscious of the ripple of laughter which scarcely ceased between them. It was impossible that women’s rights, or any such bristly, hateful topic could be causing that delighted look on Hugo’s dark, artist face; could call that gracious curve to Helena’s red lips. Hugo threw himself with passion into the joy of the moment, as Sebastian knew; Helena seemed to have something of his eager, inflammable temperament. At least they appeared to be very happy together.

Dinner over; a group of four congregated in a corner. Helena on a sofa, with Hugo beside her; Sebastian and Miss Mereweather facing one another in chairs, and the cross-examination about to begin. Helena had wished to leave Sebastian and Miss Mereweather to fight it out alone, but he had meekly suggested that it was not fair to make him confront the most remarkable woman of her age entirely without support; and Hugo adding his petition, Helena had consented to be present at the discussion.

Helena seated herself, opened her fan, and said,

‘Now, Laura dear, Mr. Mallory would like to know your views on the Woman Question.’

She avoided meeting the look of sorrowful amazement and reproach with which Sebastian heard this decidedly exaggerated announcement, and Laura replied,

‘I should first wish to know Mr. Mallory’s own views upon that subject—the subject, I may say, of the present age.’

‘They are soon stated,’ said Sebastian. ‘I have none.’

‘Then there is some hope for you,’ said Miss Mereweather, with rather a pitying smile.

‘I am glad of that. At the same time, I should like to know in which direction the hope shows itself.’

‘Your frank acknowledgment of your utter ignorance of the question is a great point in your favour. As you have no views at all upon it, you are the more likely to be able to receive just ones when they are offered to you.’

‘I have some preconceived ideas upon the matter of logic and reasonableness, common sense, and all that kind of thing. Will that be against me in this case, do you think?’

‘I dislike flippancy,’ said Laura.

‘I did not mean to be flippant. I merely wished for information.’

‘We will take the suffrage first,’ said Miss Mereweather, raising her voice somewhat, as if to scatter such irrelevant remarks to the winds. ‘Are you in favour of extending the franchise to women—I mean women-householders and ratepayers?’

‘On what grounds?’

‘On the only grounds on which they can claim it; on the grounds that they are mentally, morally, and, in the practical affairs of the world, the equal of man; and that, as they bear equal burdens for the State, so they should have equal privileges.’

‘I could never grant them the suffrage on those grounds.’

‘What!’ exclaimed both ladies, while Helena started forward, and dropped her fan, her eyes flashing, and her face flushing.

‘Because it would take too long to prove your case. What is more, if you fight the question on that ground, I doubt whether you will ever win it. You cannot be said to have proved a case to your opponent until you have got him to agree with you, and you will never, in your lifetime at least, get more than a number to agree with you on that point; it may be an influential number, and a select one, but it will not be at all a majority.’

‘Your argument is not logical, it is a quibble,’ said Miss Mereweather disdainfully. ‘Your real opinion is that women ought not to have the franchise.’

‘I never said so. If they think it a privilege, and if they would be pleased to have it, why not?’

Miss Mereweather, unaccustomed to this style, neither agreement nor opposition, was silent a moment. Then a shade of pique crossed her brow.

‘You do not think women worth discussing anything seriously with?’ said she.

‘Excuse my saying that you are quite mistaken.’

‘Then why don’t you discuss this question seriously?’ was the decidedly feeble reply of the most remarkable woman of her time.

‘But I do. I say, why not give them the franchise if they would like to have it? I suppose that by degrees they would get educated up to it.’

‘Mr. Mallory! you are absolutely insulting,’ cried Helena, angrily, and Sebastian merely answered with a grave look, and the remark,

‘I am sorry if I have offended you.’

Helena’s lips, opened to utter further reproach, suddenly closed; with a look of embarrassment she became silent, and Miss Mereweather, in a business-like tone, said,

‘Mr. Mallory is not so dark as he seems to you, my dear, I have good hopes for him. We will turn to another branch of the subject. What is your opinion, Mr. Mallory, of the relative status before the law of husband and wife? What do you think of the laws about married women’s property?’

‘I think they are bad,’ said Sebastian, stifling a yawn, and glancing at Hugo, who was fanning himself with Helena’s fan, while she leaned eagerly forward.

‘Ah!’ said Laura, ‘an opinion at last! You agree with us that there, in that most important of all relations, the woman is a slave.’

‘I don’t think I said so. I suppose the woman might be a slave if every husband were as bad as the law would allow him to be. Men are not all tyrants, nor women all slaves! so I suppose that is why the law has not been changed.’

‘That is sophistry,’ said Laura.

‘Will you deny that it is fact?’ he inquired politely.

‘Then you would allow the law to be altered?’

‘Certainly.’

‘It is an important subject for you, my dear child,’ said Miss Mereweather to Helena. ‘I only hope your resolution will remain firm, and that you will resist temptation and specious promises. In your case you will have plenty of both.’

‘Of course I shall resist,’ said Helena, a little crossly. ‘I am not quite imbecile, Laura, and know how to take care of myself. My mind is quite made up on that subject.’

‘In what direction?’ inquired Sebastian.

‘I have told you already. I know I shall have property,’ said Helena, trying to speak with lofty indifference, but all the same, not unaware that the young man’s eyes were fixed upon her face, and with her own wavering as she went on with the speech which she had uttered many a time before, and which now struck her for the first time as falling somewhat flat, and not being quite equal to the occasion. Other young men had looked at her, and said they were sure she didn’t mean it, and it was too cruel of her, and other ‘vacant chaff’ of the same description. Sebastian only looked at her gravely, calmly, as it seemed to her, almost pityingly, and in perfect silence.

The glance stung and galled her. She would not be deterred by that look. What was Sebastian Mallory but a man—a thoughtless young man, who had dared to laugh at her views?

‘And property entails responsibilities,’ she continued.

‘It certainly does.’

‘I shall therefore never marry,’ said Helena, courageously, though her face burned, and she wished intensely that she had never insisted upon the discussion. ‘I shall look after my own affairs, and arrange them according to my own judgment. I will be free, and nobody’s servant.’

‘A very wise resolution; provided, first, that you keep it; and second, that you feel equal to disposing judiciously of a large property.’

‘I have no doubt about that,’ said she, with a lofty smile, still not raising her eyes, and very angry with herself for not being able to do so.

Sebastian smiled, and the smile made Helena feel hot and uncomfortable.

‘I hope,’ said he, with extreme politeness, ‘that you will feel the satisfaction which should be the reward of such high motives.’

Helena flushed again. She had argued the point more than once with different people, and without this feeling of embarrassment. Why was she embarrassed now? What would that ‘nicest girl’ he ever knew think, if she were here? Had she money? He had said she had been brought up in the school of adversity. That reminded Helena of another point in the argument, which she ought to have advanced long ago. She was dimly conscious of a kind of bathos as she said, ‘I don’t believe in useless fine ladies, you know, all the same. I think women ought to be able to earn their own living, if necessary. They ought to be able to be quite independent of men, if they choose.’

‘Do you think they ever would choose?’ he asked with a suppressed smile.

‘I know this, that I would rather earn fourpence a day as a needle-woman, than depend upon any man!’ said Helena, hotly and indignantly. ‘And I could always do that.’

‘In that case I congratulate you,’ he retorted ironically. ‘You are superior to all calamities and misfortunes. I wish I could feel myself equally secure.’

‘You have not argued a single point,’ said Helena with passion. ‘I shall never be at the trouble to talk seriously to you again.’

‘If you will only talk to me at all, I shall be delighted.’

She had risen, and whirled herself away to the other end of the room, where she busied herself in setting two young ladies to screech duets, while she conversed (seriously or otherwise) with the clergyman.

Sebastian turned with a half-smile to Miss Mereweather. He found an unaccountable pleasure in goading Helena into a passion. He had a dim, vague idea that if he tried, he could not only irritate her into fury, but soothe her back into calmness; but he was quite sure he never would try. Rages, he thought, were not in his line. He liked better, as a permanency, the perfect temper and calm self-possession of another character. No one would want to tease Adrienne.

His mind half given to such thoughts, he conversed with Miss Mereweather, and his opinion of Helena’s discrimination was gradually raised. Miss Mereweather was not at all bitter about her defeat—if defeat it were. She was clever, sensible, accomplished. She owned that she did think a great deal about the advancement of women and their improvement, and she was an ardent advocate for giving them the franchise; but, she added, she could not go to the lengths Helena did, and very soon they left that subject and turned to others. Their conversation was perfectly amicable and agreeable, and Helena watched them from afar, with a darkling, somewhat resentful glance. Dear Laura’s one fault, she thought, was that she was too facile—that she compromised too easily.

As the Mallorys drove home, Mrs. Mallory, completely deceived by the long conversation which had taken place, was in a disastrously, unsuspiciously amiable frame of mind, and was correspondingly dejected when Sebastian, summing up his description of the evening’s entertainment, said that Miss Spenceley had adopted the strictly feminine line of argument, ‘Agree with all I say, or I will quarrel with you!’

‘As I did not agree with all she said, she quarrelled with me. Violà tout! Did she talk women’s rights to you, Hugo?’

‘To me—no!’

‘Why I should be selected as the victim, I can’t imagine,’ pursued Sebastian. ‘It is a pity she does it, for she could be nice, I am sure; and as it is, she makes herself simply a bore.’

Mrs. Mallory was silent, mentally heaping opprobrium upon Helena’s crazes.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] An apology is herewith offered to the Manchester Central Committee, for thus putting into the mouth of a fictitious individual their excellent proposals for the schools which were of so much benefit in most of the distressed districts.

BOOK II.
THE STORM.

CHAPTER I.

THE FIRST OF THE STORM

The year 1861 had closed in thick clouds and a great darkness, with the mutter of war in the far west, and with the threatening of famine at home. The year 1862 dawned, but with a dawn so dark as scarce to be distinguishable from profoundest midnight.

‘Earth turned in her sleep for pain.’

January, February, dragged slowly by, and times only grew worse. Few chimneys smoked, no workers tramped through the streets; faces were pinched, fires burnt low and meagre in the bitter weather; money was not forthcoming, clothes were few, pleasures were at an end. Men paused and waited, as it were, while the thunder growled and the first heavy drops of the storm began to fall, slowly and deliberately, and then faster and ever faster, till none could escape the universal drenching.

One bitter morning, in the beginning of March, Myles and Mary Heywood turned out to their daily work. A furious, stinging wind, and a driving, scourging rain, saluted them as they entered the long sloping street leading to the factory. Myles pulled his collar up about his ears, and Mary folded her shawl more tightly round her, pulling it also farther over her face. They walked in silence, and did not look at each other. In truth, both their hearts were sad as sad could be. They were entirely changed from the well-to-do, untroubled, noble-looking brother and sister who, six or seven months ago, had walked home together in the heat of the August afternoon. What a hot, plentiful blaze of sunlight then! what cold, what wet, what inclemency of elements now! The contrast was pointed and searching, and went home to both.

For months now, Myles’s heart had been growing bitterer and harder, and more rebellious; ever since that evening on which Sebastian Mallory had come and interrupted his talk with Adrienne. He had not seen her often since then, or rather had not visited her often since then; but on the few occasions when he had done so, she was changed. He had seen the change distinctly, had seen how her eye wavered and her colour changed under his piercing glance, for he could look at her steadily enough now, without bashfulness, and with a gaze of desperate, hopeless inquiry, which, he thought, must burn her secret from her heart. With each visit, each conversation with her, he had grown more hopeless, more despairingly certain that what little part or lot he had ever had in her life, had now vanished—was done with for ever more. Once, strolling aimlessly along, he had seen her come out of a shop, and had been going to speak to her, when Sebastian Mallory had come up, smiling, and lifting his hat, and fixing his eyes upon her face.

The sight had been quite enough for Myles, who had plunged his hands into his pockets, and turned away with bitterness in his heart. Once or twice—he did not know how often—he had purposely and pointedly spoken to her of Sebastian, and had even asked her a question or two about her former acquaintance with him, and had watched cruelly and unflinchingly to see how she took it. And she had taken it just as he had expected, with downcast eyes, a heightened colour, and a sudden confused silence. He had been satisfied with his experiment; now he had given over going to Mr. Blisset’s house, saying to himself,

‘If she cares for us, and is worth anything, she will come—she will come, if it is only to see Mary. By this I shall know her. If she comes I’ll keep quiet, and try to be satisfied with her—friendship. And if she does not come—I’ll hate her; no, I’ll think no more of her—I’ll forget her, and rid myself of this plague that has been with me ever since I knew her.’

Adrienne did not come; days and weeks went by, and she came not, and Myles did not hate her; he did not cease to think of her. His ‘plague’ tormented him more grievously than ever, and his life was miserable. His days were long; there was only half the usual work to fill them. The weary afternoons and evenings were unutterably long. He sat at home with his books open before him, or he took his way to the reading-room, and sat with more books open before him, and stared at them, and knew nothing about what was in them, while the chimes played ‘Life let us cherish!’ and Myles thought of the hundreds, now daily augmenting, dwelling in the houses beneath those chimes, to whom, in their destitution, the tune must have seemed a sort of melodious mockery. ‘Life let us cherish!’ while the men across the Atlantic were locked in the deadly grip of war, and the cotton manufacture in England was coming steadily, surely to a stand-still. A few more throbs of its mighty pulse—a few more desperate struggles to break through the paralysis that was creeping over it, and then the iron lungs, the great throbbing heart of it, its huge limbs, its vast arteries, would be quiescent—for who should venture to say how long? It was a deadly prospect.

With these various causes of distress gnawing perseveringly at his heart, the young man might well be silent, as he set his teeth against the wind, and stooped his head to shield his face from the rain.

While Mary, on her side, had cause enough and to spare of unhappiness. The poor girl’s heart was full to bursting of a dread fear that she had had for many weeks now, and concerning which she had not breathed a word to any one.

‘That it should ha’ begun just now!’ she thought to herself; ‘just when times is hard, and work is short, and I can none get him all he should have.’

She kept up a brave face; worked out her daily task at her looms, and her much harder, heart-breaking task at home; had caresses, and smiles, and tender words for Edmund, and a good face to turn to poor Myles, in his gloom, which oppressed her faithful heart like a chill hand laid upon it. She had her meed of consolation for Harry Ashworth, who said he was growing deafer and deafer. She had her own private astonishment at Adrienne’s long absence, but no thought that Adrienne meant any slight or ill-will to her or hers.

Still, her secret cares had thinned her cheeks, and taught her lips to assume a sadder curve; had placed a line or two upon her frank, calm brow, and lent a quiet pensiveness to her dark-brown eyes. It had always been a good face—now it had the dignity and pathos of well-borne sorrow.

They entered the great gas-lighted room. Myles went off to his part of the mill and Mary to hers. How hot and overpowering it felt, after the bitter rawness of the outside air! She cast aside her shawl, and set her looms going, and in a few minutes the old accustomed roar of the machinery had somewhat soothed her; and her monotonous, weary pondering over ways and means, and sharp, stinging fears as to some dread event hovering in the near future, had been somewhat dissipated by attention to her work and the chat of a fellow factory-worker.

‘I reckon we’st soon have to shut up shop here, Mary,’ said the latter. ‘I yeard Wilson say as how we couldn’t hold out mich longer.’

‘Eh, what?’ said Mary, with a start—‘eh, I hope not, lass. What mun we do, if we’ve no work?’

The other girl shrugged her shoulders.

‘I’ve yeard say, too, as if we do have any work, it’ll be wi’ Surats, and I mun say I’d rayther have none at all. I conno’ work yon stuff.’

‘I care nowt at all, whether it’s Surats, or what it is, so as I’ve summat to do, and summat to earn,’ said Mary.

‘Thou may work twelve hours a day at Surats, and not earn above six shillin’ a week,’ said her companion cynically; and then the conversation ceased, and Mary was left to her reflections.

At eight they went home to breakfast, and at half-past they were at their work again, and continued at it until half-past twelve, when Wilson put his head into the room, and called out,

‘All the hands in this here room will please wait a few minutes in the big yard. I’ve got something to say to you.’

The same announcement had been made in the different rooms, and the result was, all the hands were assembled and waiting, some curiously, some apathetically, for the communication that was coming.

Wilson jumped upon a lorrie which stood in the yard, and in a clear, distinct voice, read out from a paper he held in his hand this announcement:—

‘I hereby give notice that on and after Friday, March the —th, this factory will be closed, owing to the present condition of the cotton trade, in consequence of the American war. At the same time, as I am anxious to keep my hands together, and to save them as much as possible from distress, I undertake, for the present at least, and until other circumstances should make a change desirable, to furnish them with the means of subsistence, and such of them as are my tenants will not be pressed for rent until the times improve. Each head of a family is requested to attend in the warehouse of this mill on the afternoon of Monday next, at three o’clock, when the conditions of relief will be made known, and the names and addresses of all in receipt thereof taken down. I request you earnestly, and with perfect confidence, to try, all of you, during this present trouble, to act together, and assist me in the preservation of order and the relief of distress.

‘Sebastian Mallory.’

There was a short silence; then murmurs; then, from some lips, an attempt at a cheer. Some girls and women were wiping their eyes with their aprons, and one or two men waved their hats: exclamations and murmurs arose all around. ‘Eh, but that’s reet-down kind, that is!’ ‘Th’ chap is a good sort!’ ‘Well, we needna fear to clem just yet!’ and so on. The gratitude was very real, if expressed with true Lancashire reticence and absence of effusion. But almost greater than the gratitude was the gloom—the sense of shame and degradation—the feeling that this was a draught too bitter for any amount of sugaring to sweeten, and that they had done nothing to deserve to have to swallow it. Sebastian had done wisely in committing to Wilson the delivery of the message. Wilson seemed to the work-people almost as one of themselves; he, too, must suffer somewhat from this calamity. The humiliation would have been too intense had Sebastian read the announcement himself. He, like hundreds of other masters, was making money—netting large profits at this stage of the crisis. His piled-up warehouses would be emptied at profitable prices of the accumulated results of last year’s over-production, while the impossibility of getting at the stores of cotton which were undoubtedly reposing in large quantities in Manchester and Liverpool warehouses, relieved him from the immediate expense of working, and of paying wages. That part of the ‘panic,’ as it was and is always called by the work-people, was one of unmitigated severity for the poor man—for the worker—capital added hugely to her stores. Yet every employer of any foresight was troubled to know what was to become of his work-people during the great distress—such skilful, practised, deft-handed, soft-fingered work-people as no other corner of the world could supply to him—work-people who, if they once got scattered, or emigrated, or separated from their labour, could not be replaced—the choicest of craftsmen and craftswomen. This was a hard subject during all the years of the cotton famine—how keep the operatives together, provide for them, prevent them from becoming demoralised by the enforced idleness, combined with the living on money not earned by themselves? It was a problem which, all must confess, was nobly solved.

At this precise time, though the distress was daily augmenting in an appalling manner, though each week saw a greater number of factories closed entirely, yet the organised system of relief—that gigantic machinery whose equal the world had never before seen—was not yet in existence.

Sebastian, after long consultations with Mr. Sutcliffe, had come to the conclusion, for the present at least, to support his own work-people, and the result of that resolution was the paper just now read out by Wilson.

Slowly the hands dispersed. Mary Heywood, seeing her brother near the big gate, joined him there, and glanced rather doubtfully up into his face. Doubt rapidly changed to dismay: he was white as death; his lips tight-set; his great dark eyes absolutely scintillating with passion. The words she had been about to speak to him died upon her lips.

‘Thou go home, lass! I’ve a little business to do before I come after thee, but I’ll not be long,’ said he, so quietly and calmly that her heart beat a little less rapidly, and without a word she obeyed, leaving him there in the yard, he conscious only of one purpose, and of a burning restlessness until that purpose should be accomplished.

He waited by the gates, looking at no one, speaking to no one, until he saw that all the hands had filed out, and that Wilson was left alone in the office, locking things up. A few swift, striding steps brought him inside the little room. Wilson looked up.

‘Hey, Myles! Is that you? Do you want something?’

‘Yes. I just want to tell you to take my name—and my sister’s too—off the books. We shall not work here any more.’

‘Oh! but you will. This here is only a temporary stoppage, you know. Times must mend, though they look bad enough now, and Mallory’s won’t go to smash so easily.’

‘I shall never work here again, I tell you, nor Mary either. Take our names off the books, if you please; and look you, Wilson, if anybody comes round to my house offering me relief in’—a spasm twitched his pain-set lips—‘the master’s name, I’ll kick him out—so you’re warned.’

‘My certy, Myles! You’re mad to talk i’ that way. You’ve ne’er thought about it. How are you to live without relief? And when such a handsome arrangement has been made——’

‘That’s nothing to the point. Please to do as I ask, and remember, I’ll keep my word.’

He turned on his heel and left the yard. Wilson looked after him, watching the proud, elastic figure, haunted by the remembrance of the deadly paleness of the face, and the sombre, despairing gloom of the eyes.

Wilson acted as became a wary man, who did not choose to commit himself—shook his head, and murmured,

‘Ay, ay, my good chap, but you’ll have to eat humble-pie sooner or later—and why not sooner?’

Evidently, the characters of Myles and his easy-going old friend were fundamentally unlike.

Meantime Myles, breathing rather more freely, and with a faint return of colour to his cheek, took his way home, feeling that now, if he met Sebastian Mallory, he could look him in the face as defiantly as he chose. There was something almost exquisite in the sense that, though only a few pounds stood between him and destitution, yet he was no longer in any way dependent upon Mallory.

Arrived at home, he found the kitchen empty; the dinner half ready (not such an abundant dinner, even now, as it once had been), the table spread. He sat down moodily, and waited; and presently Mary came down looking very sad indeed. She had not been crying, but there was something in her eyes speaking of a grief and fear beyond tears.

‘Well, my lass, where’s Edmund?’

‘Edmund’s in bed, Myles.’

‘In bed!’ he echoed, looking up in some surprise; ‘why, what ails him?’

‘The same thing as has been ailin’ him this six-week. I dunnot know what it may be. Th’ doctor calls it low fever.’

‘The doctor!’ he echoed again, more astonished still. ‘What’s the meaning of this, Molly?’

‘Eh, Myles, if thou’d none been so wrapped up in summat all this time, thou might ha’ seen as the lad were fair pinin’ away.’

She could hardly finish her words, but sat down upon the rocking-chair, and covered her face with her hands for a moment, while he looked at her with a haggard gaze. A hundred trifles came into his mind now, crowding quickly forward—Mary’s pre-occupation—Edmund’s passive silence and flushed face—and he had never seen it. Brute that he was!

‘And to-day he’s that weak, he can’t sit up no longer,’ continued Mary, raising her face from her hands and looking sadly before her; ‘and I’m sore fleyed he’ll ne’er be strong again, that I am.’

Then she rose, and began to finish the few preparations for dinner, though, sooth to say, no two people ever made ready for a meal with less appetite. She began to talk, as she thought cheerfully.

‘When I heard Wilson read out as factory would stop o’ Friday, my heart fair sank within me, when I thowt o’ yon lad, and us wi’out a penny to earn, but, eh! I could ha’ cried wi’ joy afore he’d done. Yon Mr. Mallory mun be a reet good-hearted chap, and our Edmund winnot clem now.’

‘Mary!’ he exclaimed, starting up, and speaking in so strange a voice that she looked at him involuntarily, and saw again the look—the pale face, the scintillating eyes—which had so terrified her an hour before, at the mill-gate. He stepped across the room to her, and grasped her arm. ‘Never thou name such a thing again. I told Wilson to take my name, and thy name, off the books, and to send anybody round here, poking into my affairs, if he dared. I’d die like a dog before I’d take bit or sup from him, or let any of those that belonged to me do it.’

‘Why, whatever——’ she began, but he went on, forcibly moderating his voice,

‘Molly, I never could have thought to hear such a word from thee. Hast thought what it means? It means that we—seven hundred and more of us—shall go like beggars every day, and take that man’s money, and eat his bread, and do nothing for it. Thou’rt mazed with thy trouble,’ he added soothingly, ‘or thou’d never have dreamt of it.’

‘But how mun we live?’ she asked, seeing only that they were Mr. Mallory’s work-people, and that he prized their services, and like a generous master desired to help them until better times came round again. ‘Thou wert always so set against th’ master, lad; but when we’re like to starve, what mun we do?’

Neither Mary nor Myles, it may have been observed, made any mention of their mother, or spoke as if she could relieve them. Later in the distress Mary went to her mother, and represented their situation. Mrs. Hoyle replied sententiously that her money was sunk in her husband’s business, and she had no longer any control over it, which was indeed true: she had put it entirely in his power immediately after marrying him, and it remained there, for towards the close of 1863 Mrs. Hoyle, who had believed that she was doing well for herself in her marriage, died of a rapid, sudden illness, and her money passed away from her children, and into her husband’s hands, for ever.

‘We’re not like to starve yet,’ replied Myles, to his sister’s last remark. ‘I’ve got over ten pounds put by—it ought to have been more, but I wasn’t as careful as I should have been; and you’ve something of your own, I know. It’s true, we’d meant to keep it, but in these times we’ll most of us have to use up what we put by.’

‘Eh, lad!’ answered Mary, with sorrowful embarrassment, ‘mine were such a bit! And I’ve drawn it all out, for to buy yon lad his bits of things as he must have. Doctor ordered them, and I saw as thou were moithered wi’ summat, so I didn’t ax thee, but just used up my own bit o’ brass. It’s all gone—all but a few shillin’s.’

He dropped her arm, and turned aside. This then was the prospect—a sick brother to cherish, himself and his sister to support; the rent to pay; and a little over ten pounds between them and destitution. Undaunted though his spirit was, it was fain to stand appalled before these facts, until at last, turning round, he said,

‘I’ll think about what can be done, Mary. Ten pounds will last a good while, and thou’rt so clever at managing, and all that.’

Mary was silent. She knew how quickly ten pounds would vanish, where there was an invalid to be cared for; and the regular weekly sum which Myles had haughtily refused, seemed, now that it was out of her reach, to assume the proportions of absolute wealth.

‘Myles,’ she said, ‘I know thou mun have some reason for what thou’rt doing, but I’ve no grudge against the master. I don’t see why I shouldn’t take the relief and help Ned a bit ... thou needna know nowt about it.’

‘Mary!’ He paused, choked back some passionate emotion, and looked at her. There rushed over his mind, as by an inspiration, the conviction that what he had said, what he had proposed to do, was a mean, tyrannical way of making others suffer for his own private grudge. Mary’s mind was to be kept on the rack as to ways and means; Edmund’s comforts were to be stinted, or stopped, because he, Myles, hated Sebastian Mallory, and, knowing his sister would obey him, despotically said, ‘You will take no help from him.’

Certainly, to know that Mary and Edmund were subsisting upon Mr. Mallory’s bounty, while he was idle, would be anguish almost as keen as to sit down and subsist upon that bounty himself; but anguish, it seemed, prevailed a good deal in the world. It had to be borne by some people—what right had he to shift his portion upon the shoulders of a loving woman and a cripple boy? He cried shame upon himself. His cheek flushed, and he hesitated no longer. He had begun to speak passionately; he finished calmly.

‘I had not thought of that. You are right, Molly. You’d better do so. It will be bad for me to bear’ (how bad, his pale face and drawn lips foretold), ‘but it’s best so. This is a great trouble that has come upon us, and we must be as great as we can to meet it, I suppose. I shall look out and see if I can find anything to do—perhaps away from here. I’m sure it’s the best thing I could do. It’s a great mistake my being here at all.’

This speech, with the misery and bitterness underlying its acquiescence in her wish, seemed to freeze Mary’s heart within her. She could not understand it, yet it seemed to forebode evil and misery and woe to her. She looked at Myles, in whose whole attitude was something alien and strange. For a moment a fearful weight and foreboding oppressed her; then, breaking suddenly loose from it, she ran up to him with a cry of love, flung her arms around his neck, and kissed him eagerly.

‘Eh, Myles, hush, hush! Thou munnot talk like that. I’d clem sooner nor take a penny from any one thou didn’t like. It were only that I were quite disheartened, like, wi’ wondering what I were to do in these hard times, now yon lad is so poorly. But for thee to go away and leave us—the best brother’—a hug—‘ay, the vary best, ever a lass had—my certy, don’t say nowt about it again.’

She was half laughing, half crying. As for Myles, the clasp of her warm arms about his neck seemed to unstiffen it; the pressure of her face upon his breast appeared to loosen a load of pent-up feeling. He put his arm round her waist, and kissed her soft brown hair again and again, and once more the feeling rushed over him that this was true hearty love, and that he was a fool to distress himself for that other love, which would never be his.

‘Don’t take on so, there’s a dear lass. Do just as you like about the relief. Say nothing to me about it, and I shall know nothing about it. There’s a reason why I can take neither bit nor sup from young Mallory—a reason I can’t tell you, and that will never be removed. A crumb of his bread would choke me.’

‘Why, has he done thee any wrong?’

‘None at all, and means me no wrong; it’s what they call circumstances, Molly. They come rather hard upon a fellow sometimes, that’s all. Come! the dinner must be well-nigh cold. Let’s have it, and then I’ll go up and sit wi’ poor Ned a bit.’

It was a dark prospect which opened before them; yet, after this conversation, they both felt lighter of heart, and better prepared to meet it.

CHAPTER II.

‘RATHE SCHLAGEN.’

Sebastian Mallory, Mr. Sutcliffe, and Wilson, holding a council of war together, late in the afternoon of that eventful day, discussed the means to be taken for the preservation of order, and the best distribution of relief.

Sebastian, in the course of the debate, asked how many exactly there were to be relieved.

Wilson ran his eye over some long lists of names and addresses.

‘The number of hands is seven hundred and thirty, sir, all in all; but it’s with the heads of families we shall have to deal. About a dozen won’t require relief, and four have taken their names off the books altogether.’

‘Which are they?’ asked Sebastian.

‘Frank Mitchell, weaver; he’s got a brother in Canada, who offered to pay his passage out if he’ll go and help him on his farm; so, as soon as he heard work was stopped, he decided to go. That’s one. Myles and Mary Heywood——’

‘What! Any reasons given for their leaving?’ asked Sebastian, quickly.

‘Well, sir, relief would be a hard nut for Myles Heywood to crack, at the best of times. He’s uncommon proud, and he came up to me, after I’d read your notice, and told me very stiff indeed to take his name and his sister’s off the books. I did hexpostulate with him, but he were quite determined.’

‘Did he give any reasons?’

‘No, sir. He doesn’t generally give his reasons for what he does, leastways not to me; but I’m not his master.’

‘Is he one of my tenants?’

‘No, sir. He lives on the Townfield, at Number 16.’

‘Oh, very well!’ said Sebastian, and the business went on for some time uninterruptedly.

In the evening Sebastian, calling at Stonegate, and asking if Miss Blisset could see him, was admitted, and taken to the drawing-room, where he found Adrienne alone, seated at her piano. She rose, coming forward to greet him, and he saw that her face was pale, and her eyes sad and heavy.

‘I hope you are in a good-natured and self-sacrificing mood,’ said he, ‘for I am come to ask a very great favour.’

‘I shall be delighted if I can help you in any way.’

‘Did you know we cease to work at all after Friday?’

‘Cease to work at all! What will become—oh, I am very sorry—what will the work-people do?’

‘I thought,’ began Sebastian, and bit his lips.

He was afraid of appearing to parade his intentions before her, and altered the form of his announcement.

‘I have consulted with Sutcliffe, my manager, you know, and we have come to the conclusion that it will be the best and wisest plan for me to relieve my work-people myself, for the present at any rate, and——’

‘All of them! To keep them, do you mean?’ asked Adrienne, quickly.

‘It is really the best, and it will be the cheapest way in the end,’ said he, half apologetically; ‘and what I wished to ask you was——’

‘It is right—it is a generous thing to do. I am glad you are going to do it,’ she interrupted him, her eyes beaming, and suppressed warmth in her tone.

And she looked at him more fully and steadily than she had done for many weeks past. Yet there was something not perfectly pleased in her expression.

Sebastian, a young man who was not usually given to losing his self-possession or presence of mind, coloured, half with embarrassment, half with pleasure.

‘I am glad you approve,’ was all he could find to say.

‘I do. It will be such an excellent example.’

‘An example—ah, yes! But now to ask my favour. Sutcliffe thinks it will not do to let them be idle all the time, so we have decided to open some schools—one for the men and boys, and another for the women and girls. Both of them will require some one with brains and a head on their shoulders to look after them. I want to know if you will take the management of the women’s school?’

‘But Mrs. Mallory—will she not wish to——’

‘No. She will have nothing to do with it beyond giving me a subscription. I believe she does not altogether approve of the course I have taken, and has decided to hold herself aloof. You can do it, if you will, and if Mr. Blisset will spare you. I know you are not afraid of yourself, and that is why I asked you.’

‘If my uncle can spare me, I will undertake it,’ said Adrienne, speaking as she now usually did speak to him—rather briefly and drily.

Sebastian could wring no sign from her—nothing but a rapid, guarded glance, and a brief, unemotional speech. It was unsatisfactory, he felt. He was not making way. She tormented his thoughts sometimes in a way that was harassing; he carried in his mind almost incessantly the calm, sweet face, pale and clear; the rapid glance which was, he felt, not so much destitute of expression as full of something veiled—something which she would not allow to beam fully out upon him.

‘It will not be play,’ he proceeded, after a silent pause, during which his eyes interrogated hers, which made no answer. ‘It will be downright hard, arduous work. If it should prove to be too much for you....’

‘It will not be too much for me,’ she said quickly, and then her eyes did suddenly fill with some expression—what he could not tell. ‘I want some work like that—work which will be hard and absorbing,’ said Adrienne, clasping her hands with an involuntary movement. ‘What must I do? Have you got a room for the school, and some teachers?’

‘I think of dividing part of my warehouse, and filling it with benches. It can soon be done. As for teachers, I thought some of the better-educated amongst the young women themselves, or I could find a mistress, and—do you know Miss Spenceley?’

‘No, I do not,’ said Adrienne, steadily, her colour rising.

‘She is a young lady who professes to need active work and to love it, and I really think, if she had the opportunity, she would throw herself heart and soul into such a scheme. But perhaps you would rather not make her acquaintance?’

Adrienne paused again. Was she to extend the scorn and contempt she felt for Frederick Spenceley to his whole connections, and to make difficulties and quibbles about her co-workers in a scheme in which it was essential chiefly to have workers as soon as possible?

‘No,’ said she; ‘if you think Miss Spenceley would help, I shall be very happy to work with her.’

‘Of course you will be the head,’ said Sebastian. ‘I will take care that is understood, and then there will be no difficulty.’

‘If you will send me a list of names and addresses,’ said Adrienne, ‘I will go myself and see after them. I dare say Mary Heywood could tell me something about a good many of them.’

‘That reminds me that Myles Heywood, for some reason or other, has seen fit to decline all assistance. He has ordered his own name and his sister’s to be taken off my books, and withdraws in dignified silence.’

He looked intently at Adrienne as he spoke. She was silent, crimsoned for a moment as she met his glance; then she started from her chair and walked to the fireplace, stooped over the fire-irons, and began to mend the fire.

‘Allow me!’ said Sebastian, politely, coming to her assistance in time to see her disturbed face. ‘Is it not foolish of him?’ he added, remorselessly. ‘He is too young to have been able to save anything almost, and there is not the least prospect of work at present.’

‘He was quite right,’ said Adrienne, clearly, as she fixed her eyes upon Sebastian.

‘Quite right?’ he echoed, holding the poker suspended in his hand, and looking at her in his turn.

‘Perfectly right. I am thankful to hear it. If he had stooped tamely to accept charity from you—I mean from any one—as soon as it was offered, I—I would never have forgiven him.’

Sebastian gently replaced the poker in the fender.

‘Perhaps he knew that,’ he remarked in his softest tone.

‘He could not,’ was Adrienne’s quick retort. ‘I have not spoken to him for weeks. And if I had—if he had known it....’

‘He might know it perfectly well, all the same,’ insisted Sebastian. ‘Have you thought seriously about it, Miss Blisset? I know Heywood is a friend of yours....’

‘Yes, he is—a great friend of mine,’ she answered firmly, and not one sign was lost upon Sebastian’s cool, observant eyes; the head a little thrown back, eyes bright, the pale cheek flushed, as if she braced herself to meet some peril. He saw and noted it all.

‘You should be cautious how you influence him,’ said he.

‘I do not influence him. He is far too strong and decided to be influenced by—by a girl like me.’

Sebastian smiled politely but derisively.

‘Pardon me, but I don’t think you are quite right there. I am convinced you do influence him, and if so, don’t you think it is unkind to prejudice him against his real interests?’

‘His real interest is not to take charity. Mr. Mallory, the bare idea of Myles Heywood coming up to receive charity is dreadful. It makes me miserable to think of it—only I can’t imagine his doing such a thing. He never will. Poor fellow! I am sorry for him!’

‘Sooner or later it will come to that—it must,’ said Sebastian. ‘And I—you speak as if I had tried to thrust alms upon him ostentatiously, like a rich man relieving a beggar, and then appealing to every one to notice his generosity. Can you suppose I intended anything so revolting?’

The usually placid and unruffled Sebastian spoke in a tone of deep vexation and chagrin.

‘No, of course I did not suppose any such thing,’ replied Adrienne, her face still flushed. ‘I did not do you so much injustice. But I’m glad he refused—so glad. I hope he will find something else. I even hope that this present trouble may turn out to be a means of improving his position, for I think he may turn his thoughts to some higher employment than mere drudgery in a factory—even though it is your factory,’ she added, with a slight smile.

‘He is certainly fit for a higher post. You would be glad to know him in such a situation, would you not?’

‘Indeed I should.’

‘Even though it took him away from his friends and native town?’ went on Sebastian, somewhat ironically.

‘Y—yes. Even in that case.’

‘Well—who knows! It may turn out to be as you say.’

The conversation had been a far from satisfactory one to Sebastian. He had had no idea, a month ago, that Myles Heywood’s image would take such an important place in his concerns. He turned the subject, and made arrangements with Adrienne about the school; but it seemed to him that since their passage of arms—for it had been a passage of arms—her eyes had brightened, and her voice had been more full and decided. He left her at last, firmly convinced that Myles was his formidable rival, and the conviction gave him a strange sensation, such as he had never known before. All his life he had been accustomed to quietly make up his mind, and then as quietly carry out his decision. Now, to his own astonishment, he found himself strangely wavering between certainty and uncertainty; and as he walked from Mr. Blisset’s house to his own, he pondered over the history of his own love for Adrienne, and, almost for the first time, began to wonder what would be the end of that history.

It was three years now since he had first met her. There had been a chamber concert, in Coblenz, of classical music. Adrian Blisset had played violin and his daughter piano, and Sebastian had been one of the not very numerous audience; for the taste of the Coblenzers for music was not of the severe sort. Perhaps the small audience was the more appreciative—at least Sebastian Mallory sat a long two hours and a half, without a thought of being weary or any wish to go. When the music was over he had penetrated to the little room whither Adrian and his daughter had retired; and knocked, and been bidden herein.

Apologising for the intrusion, he had introduced himself, and said he imagined that certain pieces that had been played that evening, and which stood on the programme without any composer’s name, were the production of the musician himself. He was right, and as these compositions had appeared to him to possess a certain wild, weird beauty of their own, there had ensued a long conversation upon the subject, during which Sebastian’s discrimination and real, earnest love for the art he professed had won over even Mr. Blisset’s reserved and moody disposition.

Thus the acquaintance began. The musician had been kinder and more open than he usually was, not only to strangers, but to any one at all. Sebastian had been allowed to visit him and his daughter. Adrienne had played for him; she had talked with him, and he had found her charming.

From Coblenz they had gone to Wetzlar, in the vain and illusory hope that there they might find an audience, and receive remuneration. The projected concert never took place, but certain other things did. They spent altogether a week in the sleepy old town. They floated in a little boat up the river, between the rows of poplars and the level meads; they sat under the shadow of the grim old Heidenthurm of the cathedral, and looked over all the landscape below. Adrienne sat upon the wall above Goethe’s Brunnen, and looked at the girls coming to fill their pitchers, and said to Sebastian, who was standing beside her, and looking earnestly down at her,

‘I wonder if it was to such a well that Hermann came and helped Dorothea? I could almost fancy so. Could not you?’

‘I think I could,’ Sebastian had answered, looking, not at the well, but at her.

With each day that he saw her, his admiration for her grew greater. She was a fair jewel in a poor setting. Her gentleness, her dignity under trouble and sorrow, her

‘Festen Muth in schweren Leiden,’

impressed him, delighted him. Her flashes of quaint humour, which showed him how gay the spirit she owned might be, if only the sun would shine a little upon its dwelling-place; her grace, her intellect, attracted him irresistibly; and he loved, too, the quiet independence with which she met him; the calm dignity with which she ignored his wealth, his position, his advantages, and treated him as her equal—no more, no less.

Amongst the list of events which made, as it were, a gaily coloured, kaleidoscopic pattern in his memory, that week at Wetzlar stood out from the rest, like a little patch of pure gold, like the lucent background on which stands out, pure and clear, some mediæval Madonna.

One morning, when he went to call upon them, he found Adrienne in sore distress, which she tried in vain to conceal. She was alone, and he had succeeded at last in getting her to confess what troubled her. A creditor of her father’s pressed hard for a certain sum of money, due long ago. That fact was in itself painful enough, but it alone would not have been sufficient to break down Adrienne’s calm and steadfast courage. It was her father’s manner of accepting, or not accepting, his position, which alarmed and made her wretched. More than once he had uttered dark and oracular hints as to the wisdom of leaving a world which was full of nothing but misery and contradictions. At that time he was in his room, and had refused to see her or speak to her. She did not know what would happen, what he might or might not do; and Sebastian saw the young girl’s courage fail for the first time, for the first time saw her fold her hands, and, with tear-stained eyes, ask piteously,

‘What am I to do?’

‘Leave it to me, Miss Blisset. Of course something must be done, and I will do it. For your sake I will do it gladly,’ he had said, taking her hands, looking into her troubled eyes with a glance that made them more troubled still, and going straight to her father’s room.

The ‘something to be done’ naturally resolved itself into pecuniary assistance. The matter was perfectly simple. Notes for three hundred thalers settled it. Sebastian insisted upon becoming Mr. Blisset’s banker, and Mr. Blisset said that he could not refuse the possibility of being under obligations to a gentleman, who would understand the feelings of another gentleman, rather than to a coarse-minded tradesman, who could not by any possibility understand such fine sensibilities. The money was a loan. They both called it a loan; and Sebastian came out and told Adrienne that it was all right.

She had burst into tears; then recovering, had said,

‘There is nothing that I would not do for you.’

To which he had replied,

‘Then come and have a row on the river.’

Upon which they had straightway had a very delightful row on the river, the Lahn; and delicacy alone had prevented Sebastian from then and there saying to Adrienne that he loved her, and asking her to be his wife. He deferred the question—he hoped, not for long—only until he had spoken to her father; and that he decided he would do the following day.

In pursuance of this resolution, he had called during the forenoon at the musician’s lodgings, and had asked to see him.

‘Ja!’ the hostess told him, with a shrug of the shoulders, ‘the Herrschaften had left by the first train that morning. Last night the gentleman had spoken very sternly to the Fräulein; she had heard him. The Fräulein had expostulated, and cried, and said, “How unthankful it will seem!” To which her Herr Papa had replied that he could not endure such a burden; he must leave the place. After which he had desired his Fräulein Tochter to pack up, and they were gone.’

‘Where?’ asked Sebastian.

‘Na! How should I know, mein Herr? Apparently to Frankfort, since the first train in the morning goes direct there; but from Frankfort, I have heard, one may go out anywhere over the whole world, even to Africa, if one chooses. What do I know?’

Sebastian had retired, quite convinced that it was not Adrienne but the morbid pride and vanity of her father, which had caused this contretemps. That pride could not endure to live in the presence of the man who had placed him under an obligation. He had gone to hide himself, and Sebastian tried in vain to find any further trace of Adrian Blisset and his daughter.

He had so much the less forgotten her. The feelings of warm admiration, chivalrous respect, and tender affection which he had hitherto felt for her, suddenly leaped up in a quicker flame—he loved her. From feeling convinced that to have her as his wife would be a good and a happy thing for him, he had become determined that one day she should be his wife; she and no other. From that time she had remained for him as a sort of standard, an ideal of womanhood; gentle-spirited, true, and pure, wise and prudent, sweet and modest. He had judged all other women by this standard, and had never felt anything more than a certain admiration for any woman since his parting from Adrienne.

Then had ensued his return home, his not very satisfactory relations with his mother, the distress amongst his people, the necessity for prompt action and hard work, his introduction to Helena Spenceley, his sudden, unexpected meeting with Adrienne, and the eager conviction that now she soon must, should be his. Beside Helena’s brilliant beauty, the delicate grace of Adrienne was as the beauty of a white violet compared with a crimson rose. Helena was dazzlingly beautiful, but she was the exact opposite of all which he had been for three years praising and exalting to himself as best and sweetest and most desirable in woman. He thought a good deal of Helena. She was younger than Adrienne, wilder, less educated, prejudiced, hot-headed, violent, and bewitching.

‘Yes, she must be bewitching,’ argued Sebastian, with exquisite naïveté, within himself. ‘Look at Hugo. The lad was enraptured with her.’ That was to be expected. Hugo was young too; he had not loved Adrienne Blisset for three years. Sebastian had the steady purpose and intention of asking Adrienne to marry him, to honour him and make him happy by becoming his wife. When? As soon as he could find the opportunity, he said to himself. But it never did come. He could not understand how it was, that, though he saw Adrienne repeatedly and alone, though she was amiable, cordial, pleasant, yet he could never get that question asked. Adrienne’s behaviour puzzled him. He could have sworn that once she loved him. When he was with her, Myles Heywood’s handsome olive-hued face, with its scornful lips and defiant eyes, seemed always to be hovering there between her and him. And yet, on the one occasion on which he had seen them together, Myles had looked and behaved as if he were as far as possible from being anything like a favoured lover, thought Sebastian, with an odd sensation of jealousy and pain. No; it was only opportunity for which he waited, an opportunity which seemed as if it would never come. Certainly it had not been there that evening. He walked home lost in profound speculations, thinking of Adrienne’s lifted head and flashing eyes, and of how Myles Heywood had been ‘very stiff indeed’ with poor old Wilson that morning.

CHAPTER III.

‘Kannst du des Herzens Flammentrieb nicht dämpfen,

So fordre, Tugend, dieses Opfer nicht.’

Towards eight o’clock on the following evening, Mary Heywood and Edmund were the only occupants of the kitchen. The lad was somewhat better and less feverish, and Myles had carried him downstairs and laid him upon his old resting-place, the chintz-covered sofa under the window.

There he lay, with a shawl thrown across him; his thin face wasted to sharpness—a waxen pallor on his cheeks and lips; dark rings under his great bright eyes. His almost transparent hands were stretched out upon the couch before him, and his unread book lay open across his knees. Mary had made things as cheerful as she could, so as not to let Edmund know how bitterly they were pinched in order to give him the things he needed. True, the fire was smaller than their kitchen fires were wont to be; and behind the cupboard-doors there was not very much to bring forth for supper; but the place was exquisitely clean and tidy, and so was the girl herself, in her faded gown, and with her pale, pathetic face.

‘Mary,’ said Edmund, breaking a silence, ‘does Miss Blisset never come here now?’

‘Well, it’s a good while, like, since hoo were here; likely hoo’s had summat to do as has kept her away,’ said Mary, as confidently as she could.

‘I canno’ think why hoo ne’er comes. I could like to see her ... where’s Myles to-neet?’

‘Gone to the reading-room, he said. I’m some and glad he does go there. Some o’ these chaps is hanging about the livelong day, fair as if they didn’t know what to do with theirsels. I reckon some on ’em will do summat as they shouldn’t before long.’

‘Has Harry Ashworth been lately?’ pursued Edmund, his thoughts turning towards his friends, now that he felt himself somewhat more free from pain and weariness.

‘Ay—he’s been more than once,’ replied Mary, and her cheeks flushed, and she gave a great jump, as a knock resounded at that very moment through the house. The coincidence was too remarkable.

In a moment, however, she realised that the knock was at the front, not the back, door, therefore it could not be Harry Ashworth who knocked; and secondly, it was not at all like his knock when he did come. Wondering who the visitor could be, and casting a critical glance around, to see if the kitchen were as neat as it should be, she stepped out through the passage, and went through the ceremony of unlocking and opening the door.

Outside it was dark. Coming from the light of the kitchen she could not see who stood there, but a voice which she had already heard once, and thought pleasant, inquired,

‘Does Myles Heywood live here?’

‘Ay, he does; but he’s out.’

‘Oh, is he? I’m sorry. I felt sure he would be in in the evening.’

The visitor still lingered on the doorstep, and inquired again,

‘Do you know how long he will be?’

Mary’s sense of hospitality was stronger than even her dread of Myles’s displeasure.

‘Won’t you step in a minute, and see if he comes? It’s Mr. Mallory, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I did want to see him very particularly.’

‘’Appen, if you were to sit you down a bit, he might coom back soon,’ suggested Mary, fervently trusting that he would do nothing of the kind; and that Mr. Mallory would get tired of waiting, as she knew Myles himself did.

With a word of thanks Mr. Mallory accepted the invitation, and entered the house. A proper attention to established etiquette would have led Mary to usher him into the highly coloured parlour, but the recollection that there was no fire there, and that some of the furniture was wanting, overcame conventional rules, and he was taken forward into the kitchen.

‘I hope I am not intruding,’ he began, so courteously that all Mary’s innate politeness was roused to action, and his welcome was more effusive than it might otherwise have been.

‘Eh, dear no! Please take a seat!’ said Mary, pulling up her own rocking-chair. ‘Me and Edmund was quite alone, and not doin’ nowt at all, except talk a bit. Ned, here’s Mr. Mallory. You’ve ne’er seen him afore.’

Edmund had never been aware of Myles’s deep antipathy to the young master; he only knew that his brother had a sort of contempt for his employer, as a useless, highly finished piece of humanity, not good for much in such a rough place as Thanshope. He himself was intensely sensitive to refinement and beauty, in every shape and form, and as Sebastian was handsome, polished, and refined in an eminent degree, Edmund’s eyes rested upon him with a sense of satisfaction and soothed pleasure and delight, and he smiled pleasantly as he took the hand which their visitor extended, saying kindly,

‘I fear you are a great invalid.’

‘I’m none so strong,’ said Edmund. ‘I’ve been ill, but now I’m better.’

‘I suppose you are Myles Heywood’s brother and sister?’ continued Sebastian.

‘Ay,’ said the others, and they smiled—that smile of mingled pride and affection which speaks well for the absent one, and which Sebastian noted directly.

He took a chair by Edmund’s sofa, and, turning to Mary, said,

‘I suppose you know your brother has had his name and yours taken off my books.’

‘Ay,’ responded Mary, colouring with some embarrassment, while Edmund looked rather anxiously from the one to the other, this being the first he had heard of the circumstance.

‘Was it your wish, too, to leave my employment so suddenly?’ he asked slowly.

‘I didn’t know—Myles did it. He thought it would be for the best, I suppose, sir,’ stammered the girl.

‘But you,’ he persisted gently—‘have you such an intense objection to receiving a little assistance in such a time of distress, from a—you don’t say master here, I notice—from an employer whom you have served so long and so well as I hear you have done? I should not have thought so. You know it is not an ordinary case. It is not as if you or I, or any of us here, could have prevented it. There can be no shame——’

‘I never thought there was,’ said Mary, wondering in her distress what could be the grudge that Myles had against such a master as this. ‘I fair cried wi’ joy when I heard what you was going to do; but when Myles came in and told me——’

‘But you do not mean that he has forbidden you—that he prevents—it is——’

‘No!’ said Mary, suddenly. ‘Our Myles is not one of that sort, I can tell you, Mr. Mallory. He won’t take a penny himself—why, I don’t know. And I saw as it would go near to break his heart to see me and yon lad eating another man’s bread, and him standing by idle. But he said to me, “Thou’ll do what thou’s a mind to, Molly; it’s a great distress, and we m—mun—be g—great to meet it.” Oh! it were same as if he’d said, “There’s nowt for’t but to cut off my right hand; give me th’ chopper, and let me do it!”—that it were!’

She sobbed vehemently once or twice, and Sebastian read the passionate love and devotion she felt for that brother, whom, he began to think, he never could conquer.

‘Ah! that is more like him!’ he said warmly. ‘I thought I was mistaken. And will nothing persuade you to accept this help? It is such a small thing to refuse; and I do not think it right in you to refuse it. You must think of this brother of yours. He cannot stand the hardships of this time as Myles, and even you, can; and——’

‘You are very good—reet-down kind, you are!’ said Mary, looking at him with gratitude. ‘I’ll say this. We’ll hold out as long as we can. We mun do that, if we want to think well of ourselves. But I’ll come to you when it gets too much. You’re reet: I can’t see nowt to be ashamed of in it.’

‘You promise?’

‘Ay, I promise.’

‘That is well. Now, if your brother would come in, I could say what I have to say to him, and——’

Mary lifted her head. She heard footsteps along the flags of the back, and the tune being whistled which no one but Myles ever did whistle. She started forward as the back door was opened, and exclaimed,

‘Here’s Myles; he’s coming now.’

‘Ah, I’m glad of that,’ said Sebastian, though he was fully conscious of Mary’s discomfited looks. ‘Now I can speak to him myself.’

The back door was closed again; the quick steps grew leisurely; presently the kitchen-door also was opened, and the voice of Myles was heard, saying, as he entered,

‘I say, Molly, thou must——’

He came in, and looked round with a smile, which flashed out of his face as he saw who was there. His first impulse was to ask fiercely, ‘What brings you to my house?’ but Myles had very strongly developed the proverbial Lancashire sense of hospitality, and accordingly he suppressed his question, and remained silent, until Sebastian offered him his hand, saying courteously,

‘I hope you will not think I am intruding. I particularly wished to see you, and your sister was so kind as to ask me to wait a few minutes, in the hope that you would return.’

Sebastian had spoken just in time. Myles was assailed on the side of hospitality, politeness to a guest, and other similar feelings. He realised quickly that Sebastian had not acted as most masters would have done—sent for him to come and see him—but had come himself to seek him out, and now apologised for intruding in the most handsome and ample manner. There was nothing there that even his sore heart could construe into a slight. Moreover, the man was there, under his roof—had been invited there; and, if Molly might have been wiser, the thing was done, and he must act accordingly. He could not look cordial—the sense of the advantages which the other had over him was too heavily and oppressively present for that—but he could be civil, he could speak words something like welcome. He could even, under the circumstances, accept the hand which Mallory held out—or rather, circumstances did not allow him to refuse it. Accordingly, he took the hand, standing very erect, and looking very proud and solemn, while Mary knitted more quickly, as she observed, from her seat in the background, how each man looked straight and steadily into the other’s eyes.

‘Won’t you take a seat?’ said Myles, handing a chair to Sebastian, and taking one himself. ‘It’s a cold night, and you’ve had a longish walk.’

‘Thank you. It was on a small matter of business that I called—about your having taken your name from my books.’

‘Yes,’ said Myles, his eyebrows setting suddenly in a straight line across his brow, and his lips in one nearly as straight beneath his moustache.

‘It was this. I do hope you will not think that I come out of any officiousness or curiosity, because it is not so. Mr. Sutcliffe told me you had left my employment. I asked him if he thought you had any other occupation; and he said that, so far as he knew, you had not. I concluded, whether rightly or not, that your reason for leaving was that the factory was closed, and you would not accept assistance without working for it. Was I right?’

‘Yes,’ said Myles, concisely.

‘I know that employment, especially remunerative employment, is not easy to find in these bad times, and that you might not soon find anything to do; so I merely called to say that I know of two situations, for either of which you would be suited, and if you would like me to use my influence to get you either of them, I shall be glad to do so. You must not think that I meant anything else.’

‘You are very kind,’ said Myles, in the same constrained and colourless voice, which belied his contracted brows and the fiery flash of his eyes beneath them, ‘very kind; but I do not require any assistance, thank you!’

The manner and the tone were such that Sebastian felt he could not, after what he had said, urge his offer any farther. But the desire which he constantly felt when with Myles, to gain his esteem and win his confidence, rushed more strongly over him than ever before. He saw in the young man so much that was noble, so much that was good, so much that he, in his quiet, reserved way, intensely prized. Sebastian had a strong, though secret, desire to be much loved, to greatly influence certain individuals. He felt very strongly that where Myles Heywood loved or admired, it would be with a passionate whole-hearted devotion, which would go all lengths; and he desired greatly to see some other expression light those sombre, moody eyes, when they looked at him; to compel that right hand to stretch itself towards him in a genial, spontaneous clasp of friendship and regard.

Was it possible that he who before now had won hearts, both of men and of women; he who had inspired that fitful, capricious artist-Hugo with a passionate love and devotion; he who had seen Adrienne Blisset’s quiet eyes well over with something more than gratitude; he who felt within him the potentiality to subdue that fiery-hearted Helena, did he but choose to give his mind to the task, and to bring her to his feet with a devotion as intense as her present half-assumed scorn—was it possible that he was to be baffled by a young, uncultivated, untutored, unsophisticated artisan, who could continue to resist, defy, and scorn him, in spite of all his efforts to the contrary? Was it possible that this plain-spoken Myles Heywood, with nothing on his side but his prejudices, his pride, and his love, could continue to hold Sebastian Mallory at arm’s length, when he really set his whole battery of persuasion to work upon him? The idea was a galling one. He did not like effusiveness, but he did like devotion very much. He hated a display of power; but the power itself he loved dearly. Myles, in his present attitude, represented a defiant obstacle which must be overcome. But how?

Mary here afforded him unconsciously a little assistance, by saying in a tearful voice, ‘Eh, Myles, think about it! Remember how badly off we are. It’s not for mysel’, it’s for Edmund and thee. I canna bear to think o’ thee bein’ so pulled down and troubled wi’ such things. Thou’rt too good for it.’

‘Molly, lass, don’t make it worse for me!’ said Myles, with a reproachful look; and Mary was silenced, as Sebastian saw.

She sat down in a rocking-chair, and cried quietly, wiping her eyes at intervals, but she said no more. Myles turned his back upon her, not wishing to see her distress. Sebastian had also stood up. The man’s pride was stiffer than even he had supposed, and his desire to bend it became proportionately greater.

‘I am very sorry you will not let me do anything,’ he said. ‘You are quite mistaken in thinking there could be any degradation in it.’

‘I never said I did think so,’ interposed Myles.

‘You are not without ambition,’ pursued Sebastian, fixing his eyes upon Myles with conviction, and noting the answering flush in his face, though his eyes remained downcast. ‘No man who is worth anything is without ambition. If you would let me, I could put you into the way of furthering your ambition. Of course it would be a struggle; but then you are one of the right kind to struggle—you like it. A few years’ absence from England, a few years’ hard work in a post for which you would be well suited, and you might return here, if you liked, a different man, in a different position, able to do and get pretty much what you liked. Remember, to a man of courage, who has made a mark, most things that he wishes for stand open. Is this nothing to you? Do you prefer remaining shut up in Thanshope, with your own prospects, and the prospects of your fellow-workmen no better than they are? I cannot believe it of you.’

Almost unconsciously, Sebastian had half-cast aside the mask of indifference, and was speaking nearly as eagerly as he felt. He had stepped up to Myles, and laid his hand upon his arm. Their eyes met. Myles’s very soul had been stirred by the words he had heard.

They had touched the very well-spring of his present wishes and desires, the longing which had grown and intensified with his love and his sense of its utter hopelessness. To leave this place—go away to some other spot, where there would be scope for hard work, mental and bodily—work that would absorb his energies. There was nothing he desired more than such work. His enforced idleness was absolutely hideous to him. Out of England, he might advance, rise; Sebastian, he knew, was not wont to speak rashly or unadvisedly on such matters, but was given to measuring his words. He might return an altered man, well off, perhaps, or at least with the means of becoming well off; why, he might (it all seemed to flash in a second through his mind)—he might go at last, and seek Adrienne—and find her gone, hear that she was Sebastian Mallory’s wife. And then the acceptance of Sebastian Mallory’s assistance would have caused his last state to be worse than his first. He would have stooped, not to conquer, but to be forestalled, defeated, humiliated, and all the riches, and all the position that the world could give, would not restore his hopes and his lost self-respect. With a short sardonic, miserable laugh, he jerked his arm from Sebastian’s hand, and said almost angrily,

‘It is of no use. You will never persuade me to that. It is wasted breath to try it.’

Sebastian felt an absolute thrill of vexation and mortification; a thrill so strong as to surprise himself.

‘What makes you so obstinate?’ he unwarily exclaimed. ‘Is it some personal reason?’

‘Yes,’ answered Myles, looking him directly in the eyes; ‘it is!’

Sebastian’s lips were parted to speak, but he could not utter the words he intended to say. He was silent with a disagreeable, discomfiting sense that he was baffled and defeated. They were all silent till Sebastian said,

‘Well, since you will not, you will not. But I think you are mistaken in your course, and what is more, I think you will repent it before long. If you do, if you should come to change your mind, let me know. I have no wish to take my word back, but shall always be ready to abide by it.’

Myles smiled, almost scornfully, as he bowed his head slightly and said,

‘Thank you.’

In his inmost heart he was thinking that he would rather die than place himself under obligations to his rival, whose full formidableness he only realised to-night. There was, he confessed it, fully and frankly to himself, something extremely attractive about the grace and courtesy of Sebastian, but the most dangerous quality was the power which soon became distinctly visible beneath the polish; a power which forced the observer, however reluctantly, to respect as well as to admire. If he, the unwilling and prejudiced, felt these things so strongly, how much more must others, already prejudiced in his favour, experience it? So much the more reason why he, the plain and unadorned, should keep himself to himself, follow his own path, and not ape qualities so different from his own. But he had ceased to bear any ill-will to Sebastian. The latter did not know how far he had advanced in the very moment in which he seemed to have receded.

‘I will not intrude upon you any longer,’ said he. ‘You bear no resentment, I trust, but understand my motives?’

‘I bear no resentment at all,’ said poor Myles, putting his hand without hesitation into that held out to him. ‘If I have been rather rough, I beg your pardon. It is my way. I meant no incivility.’

‘I am sure of it. Good night,’ he added, turning to Edmund. ‘Good night, Miss Heywood.’

‘Good night, sir,’ said Mary, looking tearfully up, as Sebastian followed Myles from the room. She heard the door open and shut, and the steps of the unwonted visitor going away. Then Myles returned to the kitchen.

Edmund was tired. Myles helped him upstairs, and came down again. They scarcely spoke. Mary uttered no reproach, and he offered no apology; but when she got up to go to bed, he kissed her tenderly, saying,

‘Don’t think too hardly of me, Molly. I can’t do otherwise and be an honest man at the same time.’

‘I’m none thinking of blaming thee, lad,’ said Mary, escaping from him, and going upstairs.

He remained there a long time, brooding over the embers of the fire, and thinking, if only things had been different! And as he thought, a vision rose before him of that Sunday afternoon when he had so nearly betrayed himself, and he remembered Adrienne’s words:

‘If I loved that man, and he loved me, and asked me to be his wife, I would say yes; and I would love him and serve him as long as I lived.’

‘Ay, my darling!’ his heart cried within him, in a kind of anguish, ‘but you don’t love me; and if you did, I should not be worthy of you, if I did what was wrong to win you.’

No doubt he took a wild, fantastic, mistaken view of things, but to him it was much more real than if the most accomplished logician had argued it out for him, and proved it to be founded on the purest and most solidly reasonable basis.

CHAPTER IV.

COMBINATION V. STARVATION.

For the space of some six weeks—that is, from early March to the middle of April, Adrienne, Helena, Mr. Sutcliffe, Hugo, Sebastian, and others who worked with them or under them, had toiled hard at the schools of both kinds which Mr. Mallory had opened in connection with his relief system. At first considerable difficulties were naturally experienced; some of the work-people grumbled bitterly at being obliged to ‘go to school again,’ as the condition of receiving a sum, which appeared to them small indeed, after the abundant wages they had for years been earning; but the tact and kindness of the three principals, Sebastian, Adrienne, and good little Mr. Sutcliffe, and the hearty manner in which they were backed up by their subordinates, soon worked wonders. Ere long the work-people themselves discovered how much better off they were than those of their friends whose masters had not seen fit to provide for them; and who were just then groaning under the obnoxious ‘labour test,’ as it was called, which roused so much gall and bitterness before the sewing and educational schools were fairly started. Learning to make clothes, or reading, writing, and arithmetic, were felt to be decidedly more distinguished and elevating employments than stone-breaking, or road-making, and were, moreover, much better adapted to the lissom fingers, and to the physique, accustomed to sedentary labour in a high temperature, of the operatives. By degrees they fell into their places. They felt that they were known, and expected, and missed if they did not come at the appointed time. The great warehouse was warmed and lighted, and threw open its doors hospitably wide to receive them. ‘Mallory’s schools’ were known all over the town, and those who attended them were envied by those who did not.

For the principals the task was, as Sebastian had told Adrienne, no joke. It was continuous, dry drudgery. The routine was monotonous, and the discipline strict; but the master and head of it all was the first to adhere unswervingly to every rule laid down, and his coadjutors followed with unhesitating obedience. Mr. Blisset received more kisses and thanks from his niece just now than she had ever bestowed before—kisses and thanks for what she called his goodness in sparing her to help the poor people in their great distress. She was with him much less than usual, and perhaps did not therefore notice so much his pallor and weakness, and the strength which was failing in every way. He, for some reason, withheld the truth from her, and did not tell her that he felt almost at the end of his weary, dismal pilgrimage. It was only to Sebastian that he spoke about that—Sebastian, who had become the trusted friend of the poor, lonely man.

Adrienne and Helena worked heartily, hand in hand. That was no time for petty bickerings and jealousies. Even sectarians forgot their differences in the imperative necessity for administering to the great need and woe of the people. In working-hours Adrienne forgot entirely who Helena was; and knew her only as a hearty helper, a quick, bright, kind-hearted girl, to whom no trouble was too great, and no task too hard. It was not quite the same with Helena. She had divined, by some subtle means—herself scarce knew how—that Adrienne was no other than ‘the nicest girl I ever knew,’ and Miss Spenceley’s eyes grew intensely critical. Every word, every gesture and action of her coadjutor, was weighed in a nice balance, and, so far, had not been found wanting. Helena herself was, without knowing it, changing rapidly. Despite a certain vague disquietude of heart, she was happier than she had ever been in her life before. She threw herself into her new work with her characteristic passionate energy and vehemence, and her contact with life, and some of its sternest lessons, was rubbing down her preconceived extravagances of opinion, though she still, in word and theory, cherished them as fondly as ever. But it was impossible that one of her intensely sensitive and receptive mind could behold what she daily did, of sorrow and pain, of ignorance and helplessness, and remain the same. She saw into depths in this our life of which she had never dreamed, and which Laura Mereweather’s philosophy passed over entirely.

It has been acknowledged on all sides that the benefits, at that time were not only on one side. It was not only the rough factory-girls who came to learn, but also the delicate ladies who gave up time and comfort and their best energies to teach, who profited by the intercourse. In the sad and degrading spectacle of the spring of 1878, the sweet lessons learned and taught in that bitter season of 1862 seem almost to have been forgotten and obliterated. Many a benighted girl—many an uneducated, ignorant matron, roused to her toil at half-past five in the morning, and prevented by its long monotony from acquiring any domestic grace, learnt almost her first notions of making home happy and comfortable in the schools that were set up in the ‘panic.’

Then, in the woe of the poor, and the sympathy of the rich, it almost seemed as if the great black frowning barriers of caste had been overthrown; but the division of classes, the opposition between master and man, is a plant of sturdy growth, and strikes its roots deep and far under the earth. Now, sixteen years later, comes a strike almost without parallel for bitterness and unyielding stubbornness on either side—a strike accompanied by rioting and mob-rule, broken windows, houses sacked, men assaulted, women and children threatened; and the necessity for a strong military force to preserve even the outward semblance of order; and this, on the identical ground where, during the cotton famine, the sore distress was most nobly borne and most generously relieved. These things make a riddle hard to read.

Adrienne and Helena found both their mental and physical energies taxed to the utmost by the work they had undertaken, but neither had any thought of giving up. With Adrienne it was a labour of calm, affectionate duty; she went to it with an enlightened sense of her own responsibilities, and a full comprehension of the gravity of the crisis. With Helena it was something quite different; she worked eagerly, till she was wearied, and scarcely knew why she did it. Of course she was sorry for the poor people, and pitied them in their present condition, and was anxious to help them, strained every nerve to do her work; but she thought more about Adrienne Blisset and Sebastian Mallory than about all the poor people in Thanshope.

She was changing rapidly, without knowing it. In the presence of this great urgent need, and of her own deeper emotions, all the flimsy theories of the past were being utterly undermined, though outwardly towering as high and as fair as ever. She was no happier in her home-relations than before. Sebastian’s conduct was condemned there by her father and brother. She knew that it was only because of Sebastian’s wealth and Mrs. Mallory’s high position in the town, that she was allowed to participate in what was called the ‘madness’ of Mr. Mallory. Fool and madman were the mildest words in the vocabulary of the Spenceley men, by which to describe Sebastian’s course. It was wrong and iniquitous in him, they said, to set such an example, as if every mill-owner in Thanshope could be expected to support his hands while this confounded war lasted.

‘Every mill-owner—no!’ said Helena, with flashing eyes. ‘So many of them are too poor. They have not the means; but if all those who could afford it did so, it would only be their duty—their bare duty, and there would not be so many begging letters in the papers, asking for help for the richest county in the richest country in the world.’

She was informed that she knew nothing about it, and that it was only to keep her out of some other mischief that she was allowed to have anything to do with such folly.

(‘And,’ she thought to herself, with a hard smile, ‘because Sebastian Mallory is rich and influential, and I see him every day, there.’)

The conversation turned to Helena’s coming birthday, when she would attain her majority, and great festivities would be the order of the day. With tears in her eyes, she took the opportunity to implore her father to give up the ball which would cost so much money, and to give her half, nay, a quarter of the sum he intended to spend upon it, that she might give it to Miss Blisset or Mr. Mallory, and have it used for relief purposes; but the request was peremptorily refused, and she was told, in oracular language, that she did not know what was good either for herself or the work-people. Moreover, she was informed, it was all very well for a pretty girl to play at women’s rights; but that a daughter was expected to obey her father; and the regal Fred remarked that a fool and her money were soon parted, and he would back Helena for making ducks and drakes of any property she might ever have, if it were not pretty tightly tied up.

‘I suppose it is only finished gentlemen like yourself who know how to make proper use of their money and their time,’ said Helena, turning upon him bitterly. ‘I can tell you the whole town will cry shame on both of you—the richest men in it, and you have scarcely subscribed five pounds to keep your own work-people from starving.’

‘I didn’t become the richest man in Thanshope by pouring my money into my work-people’s pockets,’ said Mr. Spenceley, grimly.

And Helena, with a passionate ‘Psha!’ rushed from the room, drawing on her gloves as she went, to go forth to her afternoon labours at the school.

This was in the middle of March, and as she came up the cindery path leading to the little anteroom, which Sebastian and his staff were in the habit of using as an office, he and Miss Blisset sat at the window watching her approach.

‘What a lovely, graceful creature she is!’ said Adrienne, admiringly, as the tall supple figure of the girl came swiftly up the walk. ‘I often wonder how she can be the child of such parents.’

‘There is some southern impetuousness in her nature,’ he replied, ‘and a capacity for southern rages, too,’ he added, watching her and smiling. ‘Look at her now, Miss Blisset; do you see that frown, and how her eyes are flashing, and her lips set?’

‘Yes, I do; but that is a very unusual expression with her. I wonder what is the matter with her?’

Here Helena came in, somewhat in the whirlwind style, her tall figure erect—her silken skirts angrily sweeping about her.

‘You look annoyed, Miss Spenceley,’ said Adrienne, looking up from where she sat, composed and cool.

‘Annoyed!’ repeated Helena, whose anger and mortification had been augmenting all the time since she had left home, and whose voice vibrated; ‘they tell me on all sides that my father is the richest man in Thanshope, and that I shall have more money than I know what to do with—some time. Some time, indeed! And I cannot get five pounds now to help people with. I’ve given away all my money. I have just half a crown in the world, and I can’t get any more for a month. Do you call that the proper way to treat a woman who will be responsible for five thousand a year—some time? My father said I should. Do you call that the right means to accustom her to the duties of her position?’

She had turned suddenly, and almost fiercely, to Sebastian.

‘Not at all,’ said he at once; perceiving that her lips quivered, and that she was divided between tears of mortification and flames of anger. ‘Not at all; but, my dear Miss Spenceley, so long as we have your services, the money which you do or do not contribute is not of the very least consequence.’

‘Don’t say that to me!’ she exclaimed, excitedly. ‘What is the use? My services are nothing; I can do nothing.’

‘Indeed, I don’t know what I should do without you,’ said Adrienne. ‘You can influence those girls and women sometimes, when I can make nothing of them. You can make them laugh heartily, when all my efforts can only extort a solemn stare from them.’

‘You must not talk of going,’ chimed in Sebastian. ‘It is your countenance alone which reconciles my mother to the undertaking. And if you did not come,’ he added, smiling, ‘I don’t believe Hugo would have anything to say to it; and he is invaluable to me amongst the boys. For heaven’s sake, don’t desert us!’

Helena, with downcast eyes, was taking off her gloves. Her cheek was flushed, and she smiled a little triumphantly.

‘Girls can do something then, after all?’ said she.

‘Have I not two living and bright proofs of the fact before me now?’ he replied, looking from the one to the other.

‘Ah, yes!’ said Helena, coolly, while the flush died from her cheek, and the smile faded from her lips. ‘Would you mind helping me off with my mantle? Thanks. There comes Hugo von Birkenau, and there is our first batch of girls, Miss Blisset. What is the programme for this afternoon?’

She was all business now; had tied on a great holland apron, studded with baggy-looking pockets, and slung a huge pair of scissors by a string round her slim waist. Adrienne was accoutred in a similar manner. Helena stopped some of the girls who were coming in, to make them carry a pile of calico to the workroom. Raising his hat, Sebastian left them to their labours, and joined Hugo outside.

Half of the great warehouse had been temporarily cleared, and accommodated with benches and half a dozen huge deal tables. This afternoon was to be a ‘cutting-out’ lesson—a lesson which, sooth to say, Helena had had to learn herself for the occasion, from her mother. The two young ladies, with some half-dozen others, who rapidly followed on Helena’s steps, each took a class, and began their instructions; the women and girls standing round, and many a dozen of them receiving their first impressions as to the practical construction of the clothes they wore. The directions were clear and simple enough; care was taken, by questionings and cross-questionings, that the pupils should thoroughly understand what was being explained to them.

When the ‘cutting out’ was over, they were shown how to fix the things, and as they all sat doing this, each one bringing up her performance when it was complete, for approval or correction, there was much talking, and some singing, chiefly of hymns, in very high, and generally in minor keys. It was very fatiguing work: the long standing, the continuous talking, explaining, expounding, arranging and rearranging for the stiff, unaccustomed fingers, formed no light task. After more than two hours and a half of such labour, it was time to go. The work was folded up, piled in heaps, laid on one side, and the pupils prepared to leave.

Adrienne and Helena, both very tired, stood at the door, counting them as they filed out.

‘Three hundred and five,’ they exclaimed together, as the last one departed, and they smiled, and turned inside the room again, to divest themselves of their aprons and shears.

‘Miss Blisset, will you not come home with me, and have some tea?’ asked Helena, who had given the invitation several times before, and always received the same answer as on this occasion.

‘Thank you very much. I am sorry to say I cannot come.’

‘You always say that,’ said Helena, looking earnestly at her. ‘I have tried in vain to get a little conversation with you, and to know you better. I never see you, except at this dingy schoolroom, where I am sure the incentives to cheerful intercourse are not strong.’

Adrienne smiled rather faintly as she replied,

‘I am sorry; it looks rude, I know, but I must go home to my uncle. He is not very well at present; and I am obliged to leave him so much. You must excuse me!’

‘If I must, I must, I suppose, but I don’t all the same,’ said Helena, turning away in some dissatisfaction, and at that moment Sebastian and Hugo entered, arm in arm.

‘Miss Spenceley!’ said Hugo, eagerly going up to her; ‘it is getting dark. May I accompany you home?’

‘Oh yes, if you like,’ said Helena, absently, while she attentively listened to what was passing between their fellow-workers.

‘Miss Blisset,’ she heard Sebastian say, ‘your uncle particularly asked me to call this afternoon. I will walk with you to Stonegate, if you will allow me.’

‘I shall be very glad,’ said she. ‘I am sure he will be pleased to see you. Do you know, sometimes I am afraid he will not live long.’

‘His is hardly likely to be a long life,’ said Sebastian, evasively.

‘Oh, but it may be. Invalids—when they are taken such care of as I take of him—sometimes live a long time. And he is not old, and it is not as if he had a complaint in which there was danger of his dying suddenly.’

‘Do you dread his death so much?’ asked Sebastian, folding her shawl around her.

‘I do; and I fear for selfish reasons. Without him I should be perfectly alone in the world.’

‘You alone? not unless you wished it,’ said he, almost reproachfully, whilst Helena, assisted by the proud and happy Hugo, was wrapping herself in her fur-lined mantle with the sable border; the mantle which set off her dark, piquant beauty to the utmost advantage; for she was one of those truly English beauties who look almost lovelier in their outdoor dress, and with the flush of exercise upon their cheeks, than in the airy fabrics of the ball-room. But there was no flush upon Helena’s cheeks now. She turned to the boy who had been, or wished to be since he first saw her, her particular page in attendance (he aspired to nothing more in his own mind, and, despite all unfavourable circumstances, he had always seen Helena the wife of his worshipped friend), and said, in a voice that had sunk and grown tired,

‘Come, Hugo, I have no time to spare. We will leave the others to lock up. I must go.’

‘I am ready, and waiting your pleasure, mein gnädiges Fräulein.’

‘Don’t speak foreign tongues to me. Do you forget what Gretchen said to Faust when he called her Fräulein?’

‘“Thank you, sir, I can walk home by myself.” That would be shocking, and I will not do it again.’

‘Good afternoon!’ suddenly said Helena, in a loud, clear voice, as she looked carelessly over her shoulder at the other two, who started, as if suddenly recalled to a sense of what was going on around them.

Hugo and his companion left the mill-yard, and paced down the street in the bitter cold of the March twilight, now rapidly becoming darkness. The lamps were being lighted; some shops were open; the passengers along the streets were not many; the great factories were silent, there was no cloud of smoke to obscure the frostily twinkling stars.

Helena suddenly began to speak, in a voice bitter, though it strove to be careless, and with a short laugh that was not a merry one.

‘How affecting—truly affecting it is, to see two such congenial spirits together as Mr. Sebastian Mallory and Miss Adrienne Blisset. He likes a rose-watery kind of woman, who looks up to him and thinks he is better than she is herself, and wiser; and she likes a dreamy, unpractical kind of man, full of sweet compliments and vague generalities—like a sugar-plum that breaks in your mouth, and then you find it has been full of a weak, diluted kind of essence—like Sebastian Mallory.’

‘What a comparison!’ exclaimed Hugo, in a tone, almost of offence. ‘You are very harsh, sometimes, Miss Spenceley. Sebastian dreamy and unpractical! Jawohl! I used to think so once; but I have found out that there is an iron hand under the silken glove. Once I fancied he was all art, all——’

‘All art!’ said Helena, perversely twisting his imperfect English to suit her own purposes; ‘perhaps you were not so far wrong there, Hugo.’

‘What has occurred to vex you, mein Fräulein?’ asked her companion innocently.

‘To vex me? I am not vexed. I am tired, and it is so cold. Well, go on! I don’t think very highly of Mr. Mallory, as you may be aware; and I should like to hear what you can find to say in his favour. What other good points has he?’

‘Herrgott! He is all good.’

‘Ha! ha!’

‘Miss Spenceley——’

‘A good, bigoted Tory and Conservative, despite his professed radicalism. Mrs. Mallory need not have been distressed. He may call himself what he likes, but he hates progress.’

‘I don’t understand about Radicals and Conservatives,’ said Hugo, good-humouredly. ‘I am densely ignorant about politics. In Prussia there are Liberals and Conservatives, and Communists, but I don’t know what any of them want. I don’t think the Reichstag is the sphere for me—do you?’

‘Good gracious! how should I know? I was not talking about Communists or the Reichstag. If you don’t know anything about them, you know something else, Hugo,’ she said, softening her voice confidentially.

‘I know that you are charming—so kind to me,’ said he, with a vibration in his voice—and indeed Helena had been very kind to the boy; ‘and I know that you sing “Since first I saw your face” like an angel.’

‘You know perfectly well that Mr. Mallory and Miss Blisset are desperately in love with one another—deny it if you can.’

Hugo was silent.

‘You cannot,’ said Helena, triumphantly.

‘I am not in their confidence,’ he said slowly.

‘All the world is in the confidence of people who are so far gone as they are. If you mean to say that they did not each take you separately aside, and tell you in so many words—well, I can say the same. He that hath eyes to see, let him observe.’

Hugo was not yet master enough of the English language to be able to turn off her remark. Helena began to hum a little song to herself, and then suddenly sank into silence and gravity, until it began to snow, and grew quite dark, when she shivered, putting up her umbrella, and saying pettishly,

‘My mantle will be ruined. Why didn’t I bring a cloak? I declare, another day, when the weather is so bad, I won’t take this horrid long walk.’

‘You will rather drive?’ suggested Hugo, with apparently the most childlike innocence of her meaning.

‘How ridiculous you are! How far is it, Hugo, from the mill to Stonegate?’

‘About as far as from the mill to Castle Hill, only in exactly the opposite direction.’

‘Oh! I don’t know that end of the town at all. We, at any rate, have had time for a delightful conversation, haven’t we? Come in, and have some tea, and play me something.’

Nothing loth, Hugo followed her, and they vanished within the portals of Castle Hill.

CHAPTER V.

‘Death, with most grim and grisly visage seene,

Yet is he nought but parting of the breath;
Ne ought to see, but like a shade to weene,
Unbodièd, unsoul’d, unheard, unseene.’

Adrienne and Sebastian were walking ‘just the opposite way,’ with very little more satisfaction to themselves than Hugo and Helena had found. Helena was constantly picturing Sebastian to herself as engaged in half-intellectual, half-amorous discourse with the ‘nicest of girls;’ his mind elevated by her spiritual observations, and his languid but ever-present sense of superiority (this was Helena’s hypothesis) gratified by her deference to his superior wisdom. It was a comical theory—one worthy of Helena’s vivid imagination and hopelessly impractical ideas; and was, moreover, as far removed from the truth as she herself could possibly have wished. Yes, wished; for while the delusive vision kept dangling before her mental eyes, and while she professed to sneer and scoff at it, it was in reality an ever-present, dull pain, none the less real because not clearly comprehended for what it was.

On this especial evening Adrienne was tired more than usual, and mentally as well as physically weary. An undefined pain and distress had troubled her mind for some weeks—to-day the cloud was very dark. She had seen Sebastian Mallory growing more and more intimate with her uncle, and progressing with great rapidity in the favour of that most fastidious individual; she had seen—how could she help seeing?—Sebastian’s attentions to herself; how, when he was with her, his eyes constantly turned towards her, and how a light flashed into their quietness when they met hers; how his voice, in speaking to her, took a deeper sound. He was good, rich, handsome, clever, kind. She knew all his good qualities, and thoroughly valued them. She approved of him; she liked his presence; it was pleasant to her. She remembered with deep, earnest gratitude his delicate kindness and attention to her in those days gone by, when her troubles with her father, and her terrible struggle against their adverse circumstances had threatened to overwhelm her. ‘I would do anything for you,’ she had said, and had meant it. And yet, now! How painfully, unaccountably, unexpectedly things changed! Thus meditating, her step dragged, and her head drooped a little, as they paced the dreary length of Blake Street together. She did not understand why that load of oppression and longing—that Sehnsucht—should just now lie so heavily upon her heart. Sebastian paused at the gate, and laid his hand upon it, and then Adrienne seemed to see, in a flash of sunlight, Myles Heywood’s tall figure and earnest face; as he, in the same attitude, almost a year ago, had laid his hand upon that wicket, and had opened it for her to pass in. Her heart throbbed—something rose in her throat as she entered.

‘Myles has not been near us for weeks,’ said she to herself. ‘I will go and call there some day, very soon,’ she added valiantly, ‘and ask the reason of it, and if I have done anything to offend them.’

Mr. Blisset, his servant said, was not at all well. He felt very weak, and had gone to bed, and he had left word that if Mr. Mallory called, he particularly wished to see him.

Sebastian followed the man upstairs. Adrienne went into the drawing-room, and mechanically sat down, without even turning up the shaded lamp, and her hands clasped themselves before her upon her knees.

Sebastian sat a long time beside Mr. Blisset’s bed, for their conversation was prolonged. At last Mr. Blisset said,

‘And I have made you one of my executors. I hope you don’t mind. I have so few friends.’

‘I am honoured in being chosen, and will gladly undertake it.’

‘Thank you. Of course, I have left everything to Adrienne. She will be placed above all money troubles; for she is like me, she has no extravagant desires. But I should wish the child to have a staunch friend, and you are different from other young men, or I would not have asked it. Will you be her friend?’

‘It is my most earnest wish. But since we have spoken of this, I may as well tell you the whole truth. I have loved your niece for a long time—for years. When I find an opportunity, I intend asking her to become my wife. Have you anything against it?’

Mr. Blisset pressed the young man’s hand with a clasp which had grown feeble.

‘You make me very happy. I would rather know her safe in your hands than in those of any other man.’

‘I wish you could know it,’ said Sebastian, with a somewhat melancholy smile. ‘I assure you I am far from feeling confident myself, but I hope for the best.’

‘I think you may be quite confident,’ said Mr. Blisset. ‘Poor child! now she need not be alone, and has a fair chance of a safe, untroubled future, such as a woman ought to enjoy.’

Shortly after this Sebastian left him, and went away without seeing Adrienne. Later, she went upstairs to sit with her uncle, and ask if she should read to him.

‘No, thank you, my child. I shall need no more reading now, Adrienne. Your wearisome, monotonous task is almost at an end.’

‘Dear uncle, what do you mean?’

‘I am what men call dying, my dear. Whether it is the end of all things for each one of us, or whether it is but the beginning of an endless succession of advancing lives, very soon I shall know—or I shall not know.’

She kissed his hand.

‘You must not talk in that way. You have been very good to me, and I cannot spare you. I love you, uncle—you must not leave me.’

‘I fear your pleasure will not be consulted on that point, my daughter,’ said he, with a strange half-smile, half-pity, half-deep amusement. ‘Ah! Adrienne, when men have lived—or existed—as I have done, and for so long, they are not sorry when the machinery comes to a stop, and they know no more.’

Much moved and much distressed, she listened to him until he sent her away, telling her to sleep undisturbedly, for he would yet live to talk with her, and convince her that it was for the best.

But he was wrong. When morning dawned, Richard Blisset was at rest, and free from the mantle of pain and weakness which he had worn so long.

CHAPTER VI.

‘TO THE DREGS.’

The merry month of May, in the year of grace 1862, and in that part of her Majesty’s dominions known as the County Palatine of Lancaster, wore a face even less smiling and colder than usual. Despite the gaudy sunshine, despite the unusual chances offered to external nature, of showing herself to the best advantage through the absence of smoke—despite this, all was sad, penitential, silent. One missed the burst of talk and laughter, the chaffing and shouting in the streets when the mills were loosed. One missed the tramp, tramp, of the thousands of clogs over the flags at the appointed times.

Trade had collapsed. King Cotton was discrowned; his subjects had become a nation of paupers; some of whom were begging their bread, all of whom were living chiefly on help from outside. There was a vast organisation kept up, chiefly by unpaid, voluntary toil, for discovering distress, and distributing relief. Thanshope had now added herself to the list of towns which had instituted Relief Committees, and Sebastian’s schools had been merged into the larger ones belonging to the public body. They had served as a sort of model or introduction, and the others were founded upon the same plan. He himself was one of the most powerful and active members of the committee, while Adrienne and Helena, from their previous experience, were in reality the head and front of the ladies’ committee, though duly subordinated in outward order to Mrs. Ponsonby, and one or two other dames of place and importance.

But while the great complicated machine was working with such regularity and smoothness, so that it and its movements were praised by all who beheld them, what were those doing on whose behalf all this mechanism had been set a-going? What was happening in the thousands of homes whose most cherished hopes and traditions had to be given up and forsaken in this terrible emergency? In the one home in which we are interested it was going hardly enough.

It was in the very beginning of the month, a bright, glaring, sunny May morning, to look upon, with a dry pitiless east wind blowing round the corners and sweeping down the shady side of the streets. It was the middle of the forenoon, and the Heywoods’ kitchen did not get the morning sun. There was no fire. Mary and her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Mitchell, took turns at having a fire, for the cooking of both households now was less extensive than it once had been, and each alternately undertook the responsibility of the other’s baking and boiling. This was the day on which Mrs. Mitchell had the fire; consequently Mary’s kitchen was all the colder from its bareness and its spotless neatness. She was sitting in the window, sewing. Myles was at the centre table with some books from the library before him, ostensibly reading—really gazing blankly at the page, and looking, as it is not good that a young man, or any man, should look—looking as men only do look when their affairs are in a very bad way.

His sister stole occasional side-glances at his face, and her heart wept, if her eyes did not. She and Edmund had been living all this time upon the weekly sum allowed by Sebastian Mallory to such of his hands as chose to accept it. They had been aided by Myles from his own store, in order that Edmund might have the things he required; and that store, Mary knew now, was at an end, had come to an end some days ago. She did not quite know how Myles had lived during those few dreadful days. He had accepted nothing from her, because what she offered had been bought with Sebastian Mallory’s money. He had smiled when she had implored him to take something and repay her when times mended, if he would not have it as a gift; smiled in a way that had not encouraged her to repeat the offer. He had made no complaints, had been very quiet, but those days had been the most wretched Mary had ever spent in her life. She knew what her brother had been trying to hold out for, but the hope continued to be deferred; and even if it must now be soon fulfilled, she feared the relief would come too late to save him from what he and she both considered the supreme and ultimate disgrace and shame, of having to apply for relief. Some fortnight ago, the Relief Committee had advertised for two clerks, to relieve their honorary secretaries of the burden of accounts and correspondence, which had grown greater than they could bear. Candidates of the artisan class were invited to apply, and it was intimated that, if competent, they would be preferred rather than others, on the principle of helping them to help themselves. Myles Heywood had been one of the applicants, and the decision would not be known for two days yet. The day before, Mary had met Mr. Mallory, and had hurriedly implored him to use his influence, if he had any, to get her brother in; but never, never to say she had asked him, or she did not know what would happen if Myles ever knew of it. He had promised; but there still remained a dreadful blank two days, and then, even with Sebastian’s efforts, the answer might be that Myles was rejected.

Thus she sat this morning, with a sick heart, furtively watching her brother in an anguish of pity. Would it really come to the worst? Would he actually have to turn his steps—her brother, of whom she was so proud—towards those dreadful doors above which glared, in white letters a foot long, ‘Relief Committee’s Offices’? those doors which, she thanked her God every night, she had not yet been obliged to enter? He had had no breakfast, she knew; she did not know when he had last eaten, or of what the meal had consisted. His face was terribly wasted; so was the muscular, long-fingered hand which lay before him on the table. There was lassitude in his attitude, a drawn look about his lips and his eyes; his eyes haunted her, and made her very heart bleed when she encountered them. What would he do? At eleven the committee began their sitting, and it was ten minutes to eleven now, and the offices were some distance away. If he were going it was time he——

She started violently as he, at this moment, pushed his books away from him with a slow, resolute sweep of his hand, and rose. What a terrible change had taken place in the whole figure and deportment of the man!

Myles took his cap from the nail on which it hung, and turned to her.

‘I’m going out, Molly,’ said he.

‘Yes,’ she answered; and something in the muffled toneless accent of her voice made him look at her. She was gazing intently at him, with a fixed, almost staring look—a glance of blank pain and suffering, passive, yet terrible.

‘Mary,’ said he, pausing, ‘you know what it is. It must be. You think it is the worst; but I tell you it is not so. It is not so bad as what you would have me do.’

With that he left the room and the house.

He had a pretty long walk, up and down hill. He felt inexpressibly tired—and worse than tired: his stomach was empty: he had a sick, gnawing sense of hunger—absolute, grinding hunger, such as he had read of others—destitute people—feeling; but such as he had never before felt, till now that he was destitute himself. His head felt weak and dizzy; his mind dull and stupid—he found he could only walk slowly, as he took first this turning and then that, and presently arrived at his destination—the one place in Thanshope where, in these hard times, a flourishing business was being carried on.

About the door was a crowd of people—men and women; young and old. The expressions upon the different faces varied from callousness, through every variety of unwillingness, pain, and shame, up to a careless hardihood that felt no disgrace, and was only wishful to make the most of the opportunity.

Into this crowd stepped the tall figure of the young workman; his face white, half with exhaustion, half with emotion; his lips set, his deep-set eyes glooming beneath the pain-drawn brows. He looked neither to right nor left of him, but leaning against the wall, plunged his hands into his pockets and waited. There was a kind of network of railings before the door, through which the people had to pass in single file, to prevent their all crowding in together, and Myles, like the rest, had to wait his turn.

Most men have to go through one or two mauvais quarts d’heure in the course of their lives, but few can have surpassed in bitterness the minutes which Myles Heywood spent, waiting his turn, before the door of the committee-room. Some one recognised him, spoke to him, and said she had never expected to see him there. He answered mechanically and composedly, but felt his face suddenly grow fierily hot; and then a little push from behind warned him to move on, and he obeyed it.

He entered the large room in company with several other people, and there were more than a dozen gentlemen seated round the table in the middle of the room. But from the moment in which he entered and saw a face raised, a pair of eyes fixed in pitying astonishment upon him, he felt as if he were alone with one man, and that man Sebastian Mallory. Strange to say, he had never remembered, had scarcely been conscious of the fact, that Mallory was one of the most important members of this very committee. He knew it now—realised it with heart and brain and consciousness, as the face of his rival

‘Flashed like a cymbal on his face,’

and for a moment the sense of degradation, of humiliation, burned and scorched him, and he felt almost mad.

Almost—but no; reason was still the stronger. The remembrance of his own utter destitution, the distinct, imperative call of sickness and hunger, the clear knowledge that there was no alternative, prevailed. He did not turn round and walk away. He remained, but how he dragged his feet towards the desk of the man who was asking questions, he knew not. How he answered those questions remained also a mystery to him. The gentlemen heard him, noted his address, and said he would see that the case was inquired into. Myles felt no resentment at the idea of his statements being thought to require investigation: whether because his pride had been once for all laid low, or whether from sheer weakness and dulness of sense, he did not know. He was turning away and wondering when the inquiries would be made, and how much longer he would be able to hold out, when Sebastian Mallory, for the first time removing his attention from the writing in which he had apparently been engrossed, said composedly,

‘There is no need to trouble the visitor to inquire into that case, Mr. Whitaker. I can vouch for the truth of every word of it. I should recommend you to write a ticket and pay the sum required at once.’

Then he turned to his writing again. Mr. Whitaker said, ‘Ah, that is all right, then,’ and immediately took a ticket and began to write.

Myles felt as if everything was reeling around him, and himself with the rest. He caught at the top of a chair by the table and steadied himself, feeling as if he were some one else, some strange, alien, degraded being—one of the beggars of whom he used to read in advanced periodicals, that they ought not to be relieved by private, miscellaneous almsgiving; but should all be ticketed and classified, and strictly watched and overlooked. It was as the bitterness of death, and must be borne unmoved, standing composedly and decently.

All the time he still supported himself by the back of the chair, unable, from very weakness and dizziness, to move. The gentleman who sat in it rose, and looked at him from a pair of keen, stern, steel-gray eyes.

‘You look ill, young man,’ said he. ‘Come with me, and I will show you where to get the money.’

He took the ticket in his hand, and, taking Myles’s arm, led him away through a side-door, into a small sort of anteroom. Here he bade Myles sit down, and he took from a cupboard some wine—red wine, which he poured into a glass and gave to Myles with a piece of bread.

‘Take that,’ said he, ‘and drink the wine, or you will be ill before you get home. You have fasted long. You should have come sooner. How long is it since you had any food?’

‘About thirty-six hours, I think,’ said Myles, looking at him as he took the glass in his hand. It was Canon Ponsonby, ‘the radical parson,’ the man who ought to have been a prime minister, but who, as Rector of Thanshope, earned more love than falls to the lot of most prime ministers, charm they never so wisely.

His stern face softened as he looked upon the figure before him.

‘You have a right spirit,’ said he. ‘I know your name, and who you are. Your sister attends the parish church. You——’

‘Attend no church at all. I’m a free thinker.’

‘Are you? I don’t think you will ever solve your riddle by free-thinking. But shake hands. I wish you were one of my flock.’

‘If anything could make me one of a flock, it would be that you are the shepherd, sir,’ said Myles, finishing his bread and wine, and feeling a warmed life in his veins and at his heart.

‘See!’ said Canon Ponsonby, ‘here is the weekly allowance to which your ticket entitles you. Do not trouble to call at the office. Good morning.’ He took the young man’s hand. ‘I have long known of you. I am glad to have seen you. God have you in His keeping!’

Strangely moved and grateful, Myles silently clasped the noble old man’s hand. He could not speak. Canon Ponsonby showed him out by a side-door, so that he avoided that dreadful crowd round the entrance. He was in the street again, with the white ticket, and some money in his hand. After what Canon Ponsonby had said to him, he had ceased to feel that dreadful agony of shame, but he felt utterly crushed, and reduced to the most perfect insignificance.

Dreamily pursuing his homeward way, he turned over the money in his hand, and remembered that he must buy some food with it! Food! for himself? When he had gone through that age of anguish, as it had seemed to him, he should take the coins which had been so hardly earned, and buy bread with them, and eat them? It struck him as being absurd—as if one had used a steam-hammer to crush a midge withal.

Nevertheless, he went into a shop, and bought some bread and cheese, and was carrying it home, still with the same sense of incongruity between the means and the end. But, as he passed a doorstep, at the end of a street, he beheld a little girl sitting on it, and crying bitterly.

‘Little one, what’s the matter?’ he asked, stopping, and looking down at her.

‘I’m—so—hungry!’ said the child, with a sob between each word, as she looked piteously up into his face, and held a thin little pinafore, soaked with tears, in two small, tremulous hands.

‘So hungry!’ he said, stooping over her, with the sense that perhaps, after all, he had not gone through the furnace to find nothing at the other side. ‘Hast had no breakfast?’

‘Nay, none at o’.’

‘How’s that?’

Here a thin, clean-looking, poorly clad woman, with a baby in her arms, came to the door.

‘Come in, Sarah Emily,’ said she. ‘For shame o’ thisel, to sit bawlin’ on th’ dur-step. Thi’ feyther’s gone to see about summat to ayt. Coom in, and hold thi’ din.’

‘I’m—so—hungry!’ was the only answer.

‘Ne’er heed her, lad!’ said the woman to Myles. ‘My measter’s going to th’ committee to-day. We’ve had to come to that, and we’ll likely get summat to ayt afore neet.’

‘Nay, but it’s very hard for such a bit of a lass to wait so long,’ said Myles. ‘If you’ll trust her to me, I’ll give her some breakfast. I’m just going to get my own.’

‘Eh, thank you, you’re very kind,’ said the woman, her voice suddenly breaking, as she looked at him, and then turned aside again.

‘Come, my lass!’ said Myles gently, and he took the open-mouthed Sarah Emily in his arms, and carried her to his home.

In the kitchen, he seated her in Mary’s rocking-chair, explaining briefly to his sister that the child was clemming, and must be fed, and then he cut her some bread and cheese, and watched her with an intense and altogether unaccountable interest while she ate it. He felt almost light-hearted. If he had not, so to speak, walked up to the cannon’s mouth this morning, little Sarah Emily might have been sickening with hunger until eventide.

‘Good! good!’ she cried, when she had eaten as much as she could.

And she laughed at him, while he slowly ate something himself.

‘Look here!’ he suggested; ‘do you think you could find your way from your home to this another day?’

‘Eh, ay! It’s none so far,’ said Sarah Emily.

‘Then, if you come every morning—every morning, mind—I’ll give you something to eat always, eh?’ he suggested.

‘But I can ayt such a lot, when I’m hungry,’ said Sarah Emily bashfully, putting her forefinger into her mouth.

‘Never mind! There’ll always be something. Wilt come?’

‘Eh, I will so!’ said the child, clapping her hands, jumping upon his knee, and kissing him.

Thus was the bargain struck.

There is this day, in Thanshope, a dark-eyed young woman, of some twenty-four years, who has a husband, and some young children. When the little ones clamour for breakfast or dinner, she is in the habit of reproving them, by telling them that they don’t know what real hunger is; and, as an instance in point, she is given to relating the story how she sat on the doorstep one day in the ‘panic’ crying with hunger, and how the tall, pale-faced young man with the kind eyes picked her up, and carried her home, and gave her food; and how either he or his sister welcomed their hungry little visitor daily for——

‘How long, mother?’

‘Three months, child; every day—eh, they were kind; they were so.’

‘Is he alive now, mother?’

‘Ay, for sure he is, and——’

But the dark-eyed young woman always makes rather a long story of it, and freely intersperses remarks and comments, which, though doubtless interesting to her family, might not be considered of value by the public in general.

Two days later, the postman brought Myles a summons to attend at the Central Offices of the Relief Committee that day, as he was one of the successful candidates for the clerkship, and the announcement that his salary would be twenty shillings a week.

Thus the worst, materially, was tided over; but the bitterness of the cup he had drunk that terrible morning did not lightly pass away.

CHAPTER VII.

A PAUSE.

When Myles began his work at the Committee Office, one conspicuous member of the Ladies’ Committee was temporarily absent. Adrienne Blisset was then occupied in learning the condition of her own affairs, and found herself soon in a totally different position from any she had ever expected to fill—very rich, as it seemed to her, and a person of great importance; and, what was strangest of all, with Sebastian Mallory coming and going and fulfilling his duties as executor, and explaining everything to her. She repeatedly told him that she could not believe it; it was impossible—there must be a mistake. All that money hers to do as she liked with, and she had not earned it, nor worked for it!

‘What an idea you have of working for everything you get!’ he exclaimed suddenly one day. ‘Do you carry it so far as to demand a service from every one to whom you accord a sign of favour?’

‘Really I don’t know what you mean,’ replied she. ‘I only know that I have got, you tell me, between six and seven hundred a year, and I have done nothing to deserve it.’

‘No. I suppose you have to deserve it now, by using it properly,’ said he sedately.

That was in fact the amount of Adrienne’s means, and it was natural that it should appear to her as wealth unbounded. She had also Stonegate on a lease, which had yet somewhat over two years to run. And when she had learnt all this, and that she really was the mistress of such means, with the only drawback that there was no one to share them with, no one to consult with—herself alone, and her own pleasure and convenience to study; when she had grasped these facts, and had begun to feel rather sad and lonely, she returned to her work one morning in a black dress, looking rather thinner and paler than she had done before. The people with whom she had become acquainted in her work, and who had heard the reason of her absence, came round her, and, though not openly, congratulated her, hoped she would now take a recognised place amongst them, asked if they might call, and so on. And as she somewhat vaguely and sadly answered these efforts at friendship, she looked up, and saw some one pass the window. It was Myles Heywood going to his work.

Adrienne’s name had become well known in Thanshope during the last three months. It was but a provincial town, and every one seemed thoroughly acquainted with every one else’s affairs. Mrs. Mallory had been much annoyed at finding Sebastian ‘mixed up,’ as she called it, with Mr. Blisset’s affairs, and above all, with those of Miss Blisset. She had had to explain it as well as she could to certain friends who had asked her who this Miss Blisset was, and what it all meant.

Sebastian, she said, was so very good-natured; she feared he would be imposed on some time. Did she know Miss Blisset? Certainly she did, in a way; but as for being a friend of hers, certainly not! Sebastian had consented to act as Mr. Blisset’s executor out of pure goodwill and kindness, because the man was so much to be pitied, and seemed to have absolutely no friends. That was all.

But despite all Mrs. Mallory’s efforts, it got known that her son and the young lady, who had lately come into a fortune, and who was reported to be both charming and accomplished, were very great friends. Helena Spenceley took rather a malicious pleasure in upholding this theory in Mrs. Mallory’s very presence, so that that lady would have boxed her ears with pleasure, if one could box the ears of a person who would have one hundred thousand pounds some day.

Thus Miss Blisset and Mr. Mallory were already talked about in a certain set, and Adrienne’s duties had made her name and herself familiar to another and a less distinguished public—to the working-people of Thanshope. She had been a notability amongst them before her sudden accession to wealth and friends; she was doubly well known to them now. She was busy and preoccupied, thought Myles, as he sat at his desk in the second office, and saw her almost daily pass the windows on her way to the Ladies’ Committee-room. She was a lady of property, sought after and busy, and he was a clerk on a high stool, to whom she scarce spoke a word from one week’s end to the other.

Those years of distress brought about some strange acquaintances, and led to some unusual events. Though everything appeared on the outside to work so smoothly, there were active emotions stirring amongst the members of that Thanshope Relief Committee—emotions, quite unconnected with the wants of those for whose benefit they had assembled themselves. The circumstances were exceptional, and it was only under exceptional circumstances that those particular people could have not only met, but continued almost daily to meet and come in contact with one another. Gradually circumstances drew them together—gradually as they met, the half-forgotten, smouldering feelings of love and hate, contempt and pity, sprang into life and activity again, and emotion stepped to the front, and all these things acted and reacted one upon the other, till every story was modified, every life received a bend this way or that, a change in the even tenor of its way.

CHAPTER VIII.

A MEETING.

Mr. Spenceley, the millionaire, the richest man in Thanshope, the man of boundless wealth and boundless callousness, was amongst those cotton lords who, to their lasting shame and disgrace, were determined at this crisis not to come forward and give of their abundance, but who preferred to hang back until the popular voice left them no option, and the universal indignation absolutely thrust them to the front.

For a long time Mr. Spenceley had contented himself with abusing the sorely tried work-people, demanding to know why they did not all emigrate, and vowing that he would not waste his money upon them. He amused himself by everywhere calling Sebastian Mallory, behind his back, a fool and a madman, a spendthrift, a pernicious leveller, and so on: and by behaving to him before his face with the utmost courtesy and politeness, excusing conduct which might savour of double dealing by saying that such fools could never be made to see that they were fools, and that it was best to take them as you found them, and let them go their own way.

When the Public Relief Committee was established, and one and all, rich and poor, young and old, contributed something either in money, or kind, or assistance, or all, the chief inhabitant of Thanshope could no longer hold back. He allowed his name to appear as a member of the committee, sent a subscription of a hundred pounds, and deputed his son to act as his proxy at councils, committee meetings, and so on. Despite the bad times, he himself was so much engaged with business, that he had no time to attend to such things.

Accordingly, Fred Spenceley periodically shed the light of his countenance upon the council board and those surrounding it. He continued to come, despite a terrible rebuff he received on the occasion of his first appearance upon the scene.

It was that rebuff, and one or two incidents connected with it, which filled him with rage and bitterness; so that if he had been an Irish reaper, or an Oldham weaver, he would have proceeded to drink himself blind, and then gone home and maltreated his wife, or any other feminine creature within the range of his arm. Being in a different station from that occupied by reapers and weavers, and thinly veneered over into a poor, tinselly, outward semblance of a gentleman, he only raged frantically within himself, and cast about to find an instrument to execute a moral revenge, which, he had sense enough in his dull brutal brain to know, would far more torture the objects of it than all the corporal punishment in the world.

He arrived one afternoon, thinking the whole business a great piece of ‘tomfoolery.’ The Relief Committee’s offices consisted of three rooms, opening one out of the other. The first was the Ladies’ Committee-room, a large, spacious place, where the ladies could meet, decide upon their proceedings, and hear the accounts of their wants and troubles brought to them by mothers, wives, and daughters from all parts of the town. Passing through this room, a second and smaller one was reached, in which sat the two clerks, Myles Heywood, and a lad who was under him. Through this second apartment, ingress was obtained to the Gentlemen’s Committee-room, where the council assembled, three times a week as a rule, and oftener if necessary.

Coming to attend his first committee meeting, Fred Spenceley entered the first of these rooms, and, glancing round, beheld different groups scattered in different parts of the room. No one took any notice of him; they were all much too busy; but as he looked round, he perceived, in one of the windows apart from the rest, three persons: Sebastian Mallory, whom he had hated since first he saw his face, as only a true ‘cad’ can hate a true gentleman; and two ladies—one in black, whose back was turned towards him, the other his sister Helena, erect, animated, with her dark eyes flashing and her silks in some agitation.

He walked up to the group, and touched Helena on the shoulder, inquiring graciously,

‘Well, little one, what’s the matter now?’

‘Fred! How you startled me! Have you come to the meeting?’

‘Yes, I have. Much good it will do me or any one else, my being here. But the governor was——’

‘Oh yes! I know. But stop! You know Mr. Mallory. Miss Blisset, let me——’

Adrienne interrupted her. She was standing, pale, haughty, and erect, with eyes full of cold contempt; and she interposed, in a cool, decided voice,

‘Pardon me, Miss Spenceley, I do not wish for any introduction. I must decline to make that—gentleman’s acquaintance.’

With which she turned away, in perfect outward composure, and, seating herself at a desk, calmly looked out of the window, leaving Sebastian surprised, and yet not surprised, Fred furious, and Helena overwhelmed with confusion; for she knew her brother, and felt sure that he must have distinguished himself in some far from desirable manner towards Miss Blisset, to cause that gentle lady openly to manifest discourtesy. Helena’s humiliation was increased as she realised, with lightning-like rapidity, that Adrienne must have some excellent reason for repeatedly refusing to visit her at Castle Hill. Crimson, she stood where she had received the rebuff, and knew not what to do. It was Sebastian who, after the unavoidable momentary pause, and when Mr. Spenceley had turned upon his heel, said just as if nothing had happened,

‘I shall lay the matter before the Board to-day, Miss Spenceley, and I am sure it will be attended to immediately.’

Helena met his eyes as she looked up at him, and the burning blush of mortification glowed more deeply than before.

‘You are very kind,’ said she, in a low, choked voice; ‘but you cannot do away with the fact that I have to blush for my nearest relations.’

With that, she too turned away, as if not knowing where to go to; and Sebastian decided that the best thing he could do would be to follow Mr. Spenceley to the council-room.

For Mr. Spenceley, muttering an anathema, had directed his steps away from such dangerous ground, and with raging hatred in his heart, entered the second of the three rooms. In that moment he would gladly have strangled some one, or kicked his dog, or flogged his horse, or sworn at his mother; and if he had had a wife, he would have caused her to spend a joyful evening on his return home.

As it was, he found himself in a small room, in the window of which stood a long desk, at which desk sat two men busily writing. One of them rose, as he entered, to fetch a ledger from a shelf at the other side of the room. Spenceley’s rage gave way to a momentary start of surprise; then the blood came surging to his face and ears, as he found that he was confronting that insolent, unknown operative who had disgraced and branded him, and degraded and punished him, ten months ago in the club billiard-room.

Like a lurid dream it all started up again in his brain. There the man stood—he tingled from head to foot as he beheld him—with face pinched and worn, but with that same broad, unstained brow, the same scornful grey eyes, the same muscular fingers—he seemed to feel them at his collar again—and he could not grind him to powder, as he would like to do, nor put him to any kind of horrible torture, such as he would have deemed desirable for him. Myles’s eyes fell upon him, and a sudden gleam of scornful contemptuous amusement shot into them; his head flung itself backwards—his lips curved into a kind of smile, but otherwise he did not deign to notice Mr. Spenceley.

Into the heart of the latter the old devils of revengeful desire and frantic hatred came leaping back. Why had he been so quiet? Why had he suffered himself to be laughed at and diverted from his original purpose of punishment? Why had he sat down patiently all this time with that—a black cloud of fury overshadowed his mind. His thoughts were scarcely coherent. But it was incredible. The fellow should and must be made to pay dearly for his insolence. He had sworn it once, and he would carry it out now. With wrath and rage contending madly in his stupid, brutal soul, he went on into the committee-room, where he was immediately followed by Sebastian Mallory, and business commenced.

Fred Spenceley was too much occupied with his own private fury, with thinking, with a sort of hatred and love combined, of the sweet, contemptuous face of Adrienne Blisset, which he could not banish from his mind—of these and of other things, to take any particular notice of the man called James Hoyle, who was summoned to read a report to the Board that afternoon.

He had been intrusted with the task of visiting certain courts in a low part of the town, whither, it was said, a number of the factory hands had been obliged to retire, in consequence of being unable any longer to pay the rent of more respectable houses. Mr. Hoyle had offered himself to the Board as peculiarly suited for the work, being himself a minister of the gospel, and used to strange scenes and low neighbourhoods.

‘He speaks the truth there, at all events,’ Sebastian Mallory had remarked sotto voce to Canon Ponsonby, ‘but the Father of Lies has had some share in his parentage, all the same, sir—don’t you think so?’

‘Or else he has selected him as his peculiar adversary, and left the traces of his attempts to corrupt him,’ replied Canon Ponsonby, fixing his piercing eyes upon Mr. Hoyle.

But as Mr. Hoyle really did seem well fitted and anxious for the work, he was allowed to undertake it.

His report was considered clear and succinct. He was told that he had done well; a further commission of the same kind was given him, and he was told to present himself again as soon as possible with the required information.

Expressing himself humbly gratified at having been of any service in such a cause, Mr. Hoyle bowed to the assembled Board, carefully avoiding two pairs of eyes—a pair of lazy brown ones and a pair of piercing grey ones, and, with a long sidelong look at the sullen, averted countenance of Frederick Spenceley, took his departure.

A fortnight passed. The middle of May had come and gone. Every day the distress grew more tremendous—the efforts needed to meet it more strenuous and unceasing. The whole time and the whole energies of those who had begun the work were gradually absorbed into it. Still the cruel war raged on across the Atlantic, and Mid-summer and Famine advanced hand in hand, with long, devouring strides.

CHAPTER IX.

‘FOR A PRICE.’

A committee meeting had been called for a certain Tuesday afternoon. An appeal for help had been sent out to all the persons of any position in the neighbourhood. Canon Ponsonby’s name headed the list with a donation of fifty pounds, which was more to him than fifty hundred would have been to Mr. Spenceley. Some half-dozen large manufacturing firms followed with sums varying from one to five hundred pounds. ‘S. M., five hundred pounds.’ ‘Mrs. Mallory, five pounds.’ Mrs. Mallory had so many calls upon her charity just then, she said, she really could not afford more, or the yearly sum she set apart for such purposes would be exceeded.

‘The yearly distress to be relieved is also considerably exceeded,’ murmured her son, as he took possession of the contribution. ‘H. v. B., five pounds.’

‘Our money!’ as Mrs. Mallory indignantly observed to herself, and tossed her head angrily.

‘H. S., ten pounds.’ This stood for Helena Spenceley, who delivered the money over to Sebastian with a kind of chuckle. ‘You would never guess how I got it,’ said she, with a broad smile of triumph and satisfaction.

‘Begged, borrowed, or stolen?’ he asked, smiling too.

‘Neither one nor the other. Nor yet was it a free gift, nor yet did I find it at the back of a drawer, having quite forgotten that I had put it there, as I once before did with a five-pound note. Oh, you will never know how I got it.’ And she laughed.

But Sebastian learnt from Adrienne how she had come by the money.

‘Her father would not give her a penny,’ said she, ‘because he had made up his mind with his narrow income to sacrifice twenty-five pounds, which he was sadly in need of himself, so what do you think she did?’

‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.’

‘She sold a lot of her dresses and things. I expect the poor girl has been awfully cheated,’ Adrienne added, a touch of real feminine feeling and regret in her tone. ‘She said she had left herself only half a dozen—and fancy getting no more than ten pounds for the rest of her wardrobe—it is awful to think of. But the money was there, she said, and she could not resist it. She is as pleased as if it had been a hundred.’

‘Like somebody else’s,’ suggested Sebastian.

‘Somebody else’s?’

He pointed to the written subscription list which they had been looking over. ‘Life let us Cherish, £100,’ stood inscribed on the page.

‘Do you think I don’t know what hand traced that?’

‘But you won’t tell, please!’ said Adrienne.

‘Ah, you have confessed. No; I will not tell, unless I think it would be for your good.’

‘Nonsense! But was it not nice and generous in that girl?’ persisted Adrienne, who always would talk to Sebastian, much more than he liked, about Helena.

‘Yes; it was. But she has a generous disposition,’ he admitted, still looking affectionately at his favourite inscription.

The celebrated twenty-five pounds spoken of by Adrienne—it is lucky that money has not an organised nervous system, or it might suffer keenly under the touch of some fingers!—was committed by Mr. Spenceley the elder to Mr. Spenceley the younger, with the remark that he wondered how much longer people who had honestly earned their money would be expected to pour it out like water ‘in that way;’ and the request that he would deliver it into the hands of Sebastian Mallory, the treasurer.

Mr. Frederick Spenceley, who did not appear to find business so engrossing as his father, strolled down to the committee-rooms, arriving on the scene of action some ten minutes or quarter of an hour before any signs of action had begun to manifest themselves. The well-known mauvais quart d’heure may be evil in many ways, kinds, and degrees of badness. Frederick Spenceley had no intention of spending his fifteen minutes more aimlessly or mischievously than usual; but his guardian demon had ordained that they should be consumed more reprehensibly, perhaps, than all the rest of his existence put together.

There was no one in the first room, no one in the second room; in the third room was a solitary figure standing in one of the windows—a figure in black cloth clothes, with a bundle of documents under one arm—the figure of Mr. James Hoyle.

There were two windows to the room. Mr. Spenceley, jingling the coin in his pockets, strolled up to the other one, and stood at it, whistling to himself, and looking out upon the prospect—what there was of it. The two windows were on the same side of the room, and looked upon a kind of open yard, separated from the street by a low wall. It was a slanting street, like so many others in that up-and-down town, Thanshope. Exactly opposite the window in which Spenceley stood was a gate, through which any one coming to the committee-rooms must pass, and, going under the windows (to the right) of the other two rooms, at last arrive at the door opening into the Ladies’ Committee-room. There was also a separate door, leading into the second room, or clerk’s office, where Myles Heywood and his fellow-clerk sat.

Half absently, Spenceley began to collect the money together that his father had given him, and to lay it out, two five-pound notes and fifteen sovereigns, upon the window-ledge before him. He looked at it pensively, and Mr. Hoyle’s little sharp eyes were fixed with a sidelong gaze, full of interest, upon his face. Mr. Hoyle had surveyed the prospect to more purpose than Mr. Spenceley, and was very anxious that the latter should give over counting out his money, and return to the apparently innocent pursuit of looking out of the window, which he presently did.

He plunged his hands into his pockets, and gazed out again, swaying to and fro from his toes to his heels, in the rhythmic manner common to persons in his position. Presently the rhythmic movement ceased. Mr. Spenceley’s attention became concentrated on outside objects, on a figure some two hundred yards distant, approaching down the hill. He looked at her as she came along, in her black dress, with her pale face and her warmly tinted hair. He hated her for a thousand reasons, and because she looked sad and lovely at once, because she was gentle to others and to him an icicle; and most of all, because he had made a great mistake about her in his gross, clumsy, blundering way, and knew now, that if he had but known what she was he would never have insulted her, but would have tried with all his might, though he was not clever, to become good enough for her. But she had prevented that, she had refused him the faintest chance of letting her know that he repented, and by ——, he thought savagely, he did not repent. These women were all alike; either worse than the devil himself, or too icily cold and pure to glance aside at such as he. He watched and watched, as if fascinated; watched how she came along, looking tired and pale, but lovely; despite his hatred he felt, with all the finer feeling he had, that she was lovely, and his head turned, his eyes followed her steps, till she arrived at the gate, and then her face changed, and he gave a great start, for, standing there, exactly as she came up, was Myles Heywood, who had been coming (as the astute Mr. Hoyle had perceived) up the hill from the opposite direction.

They met at the gate. Adrienne’s face, after a faint smile, seemed to grow still paler and calmer. She held out her hand. Myles took off his cap, and though he did not smile—unless a slight quiver about the comers of his mouth could be called a smile—yet he took her hand, and they spoke together for a moment at the gate. It was quite evident that it was Adrienne, and not Myles, who made the pause and carried on the conversation which took place before they both came on, past the windows (which had the lower panes frosted, on purpose to baffle vulgar curiosity), without seeing the two striking countenances that were watching them.

Myles left Adrienne at the door of the second room, and she went on to the ladies’ room.

Frederick Spenceley had entirely forgotten the presence of any one but himself. He gave vent to his feelings in a low but distinctly audible—

‘D—n them!’

He suddenly felt a touch on his arm, and, turning round with his usual disproportionate start, beheld Mr. Hoyle at his elbow, looking into his face.

‘Oh! Confound you! What do you want, creeping up to a fellow in that way?’

‘I beg your pardon, sir. I have been looking at that man Myles Heywood....’

‘What, that’s the blackguard’s name, is it?’

‘Yes, sir. My step-son. A—some young ladies choose strange friends, sir; don’t you think so?’

Spenceley was about to ask roughly what business of his it was; but something in the intent, glittering fixity of the man’s gaze held him fast.

‘Perhaps they do,’ said he, slowly. ‘What then?’

‘Only this. That young man’s mother is now my wife. I ought to know what sort of a character he is. I ought to know something about the young lady, too. If the facts about both of them, the real facts, were known, she would be in a different position from what she has, and he——’

Mr. Hoyle laughed.

‘He—what about him?’ asked Mr. Spenceley, almost breathlessly.

‘Well, I don’t think that young fool of a master of his——’

‘Who is his master?’

‘Mallory.’

‘Ah—h!’

‘He’s taken a fancy to him; he’s offered to help him. He did help him to his present place. But it was in ignorance of the facts. If he knew the facts, my young gentleman would not be in such a hurry to patronise him. In fact—he’d be ruined.’

‘Facts—what facts?’

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Hoyle. ‘That’s just it. Properly to investigate and establish those facts might be rather expensive.’

‘Oh! you are certain that if they were known they would have the requisite effect?’

‘You mean——’

‘Of parting him and her—of punishing her?’

‘I tell you, he would leave the place, and she would cry her eyes out. I know it.’

‘And about how expensive would that be?’ demanded Spenceley.

‘It would cost a hundred pounds, and I should want five-and-twenty to go on with—the rest down when I tell you he has gone.’

Spenceley put his hand on the money.

‘This is five-and-twenty,’ he remarked. ‘I must give them a cheque for it, instead of money down. But remember, if you’re cheating me——’

‘On my soul and honour, sir,’ said Hoyle, with almost vehement earnestness, ‘you may trust me. It’s as much my cause as yours. And meantime, if you should hear any reports to the disadvantage of a certain lady, don’t deny them—I told you I knew some queer facts about them both.’

Scarcely had the money been transferred to the keeping of Mr. Hoyle, than the door was opened, and Canon Ponsonby, Sebastian Mallory, and others, came in. Mr. Hoyle began to study his documents, and Fred Spenceley to look out of the window again, his heart beating unheroically fast, with a sense of peril of which he felt ashamed, and an undercurrent of eager thirst for revenge, the stronger in that there was now some prospect of its being gratified.

CHAPTER X.

‘Bear not false witness; let the lie

Have time on its own wings to fly.’

One fine morning, Mrs. Mallory, her son, and Hugo von Birkenau sat at breakfast, and the young men maintained a decorous silence while the lady held forth on what was at present her favourite topic, the approaching ball at Castle Hill, in honour of Helena’s coming of age.

‘Helena will be the belle at her own ball,’ she observed. ‘I called the other day, and Mrs. Spenceley showed me her dress. It had just come from Paris. It is perfectly exquisite. Even you, Sebastian, will be able to find no fault with that toilette.’

‘Black velvet, diamonds, and point lace?’ he suggested. ‘That would be just like her, and then it is a costume on which you may spend an indefinite amount of money.’

‘How ill-natured you are! It is a charming dress, and she will look lovely in it. I hope you have secured one dance, at any rate, or you will have no chance now.’

He confessed that he had not acted with sufficient spirit in that respect; he had never even thought of asking for a dance.

‘Then I am sure she will be very much hurt. She let me see the other day that she thought a great deal about your coming.’

‘If she did, she is not the girl I take her for,’ said he, looking rather impatient. It was not Mrs. Mallory’s fault if her son remained sceptical on the subject of Helena Spenceley’s penchant for him. She had long ago seen that it was useless for her to dangle Helena’s hundred thousand pounds before his eyes; he would none of it, whereas to Mrs. Mallory it was an ornament which grew more becoming and more desirable the longer she looked at it. She had discovered, or thought she had discovered, that Sebastian was very anxious not to hurt the feelings of any one, by neglect or unkindness, ‘that is, of any one but myself,’ as she plaintively told herself—and she thought that if she pictured in colours strong enough the affection which she was determined Helena had for him, this sensitiveness of his might lead to the desired results—sooner or later.

‘Any other man,’ Mrs. Mallory said to herself, ‘would have fallen in love with the girl for her beauty alone, if she had not had a penny; but in that case, of course, he would have fallen in love with her.’

Then she tried to excite his self-esteem, and pique his amour propre, by telling him that Helena was very difficult to please, and had already had half a dozen more or less eligible offers, all of which she had refused sans façon.

‘I can quite believe it,’ was the tranquil reply. ‘Sans façon exactly describes her manner and her character as well. She has no idea of any medium. Wild enthusiasms and extravagant hatreds——’

(‘Like me,’ murmured Hugo to his plate.)

‘And I have no doubt she did refuse the “six braw gentlemen” you mention, unceremoniously enough.’

Mrs. Mallory would have despaired, if she had not taken comfort in the idea that Sebastian liked to conceal his feelings from her, which argued that perhaps he cherished a secret passion for Helena, and would do as he ought to do, if he were let alone.

Her fears as to the influence of Adrienne Blisset were fitful and intermittent. Sometimes that adventuress did not particularly disturb her mental peace, but at other moments a dread fear seized her lest the game should be going in the very direction she least wished it to take; lest the obstacle which interfered with her plans and wishes was not Sebastian’s utter and unaccountable indifference to beauty, love, and a hundred thousand pounds, but a misguided, infatuated inclination on his part, for a daughter of Heth, with neither beauty (compared with Helena) nor pretensions. When attacked by such thoughts, Mrs. Mallory felt herself turn cold and numb with fear. The idea of Adrienne Blisset promoted to her place was the most thoroughly unpleasant—not to say altogether hideous—that had ever occurred to her.

On the morning in question, Sebastian, on being asked what his plans were, said he should be in his office all morning, and at a committee meeting in the afternoon. Would he be in to lunch at half-past one? Yes, he fully expected so; and with that, he said good morning, and went away.

The others went their several ways. Hugo retired to the drawing-room, to a packet of new transcendental German music, and to the spinning out certain music of his own. Mrs. Mallory, after an interview with her housekeeper, ordered her carriage for half-past eleven, wrote letters in the breakfast-room till that time, and then got ready and drove out in the said carriage. The proverbial ‘spectator might have seen’ the equipage go from one place to another in the town, and afterwards to certain mansions in the vicinity of the same, where its mistress made state calls. (It was the fashion in Thanshope to make state calls in full dress between twelve and one.) It was quite half-past one when Mrs. Mallory forsook the war-path, and returning home, came into the dining-room. She sat down to lunch without removing her bonnet. She was dressed in her favourite lavender and black, and so attired, with a new and unusual expression of animation and amiability upon her high fair features, she looked a very handsome, agreeable, though rather thin-lipped English matron.

The gong sounded. First Hugo strolled in, and raised his dark eyes in astonishment when the lady graciously and sweetly inquired,

‘May I give you some soup, Mr. von Birkenau?’

‘No, thank you,’ he replied, politely but tentatively.

‘How warm it is, is it not? So unlike the end of May. May is generally such a bad month in England; don’t you think so?’

‘You should know best,’ said Hugo, bowing solemnly, and somewhat nervous under this excessive amiability.

‘I wonder what Sebastian is doing,’ she remarked, still graciously. ‘He really seems to have his hands quite full.’

At that moment he came in.

‘Sorry to be so late, but Sutcliffe kept me. Soup? No, thanks. I’ll trouble you for some of that cold fowl, Hugo, please.’

‘And will you give me a little sherry, my dear?’ said his mother.

Sebastian, too, changed countenance at this tone, privately wondering ‘what next?’ but poured out the sherry with imperturbable gravity.

The meal proceeded in silence for some little time, until it occurred to Sebastian to ask,

‘Where have you been all morning, mother?’

‘Driving,’ was the vague reply, and another pause ensued.

Sebastian poured out a glass of sherry, drank some of it, and then thought he would trouble Hugo again; he was so awfully hungry. Hugo, with a gravity amounting to gloom, wrenched the second wing from the fowl before him, and placed it upon Sebastian’s plate.

Sebastian was watching the operation with the intense eagerness of a mind quite at ease; and it was at this juncture that Mrs. Mallory said,

‘Sebastian, I am sorry to hear of a very strange thing in connection with that girl—what is her name?—whose uncle’s affairs you somehow got mixed up with.’

Hugo’s eyes gave a flash. That was what was coming.

‘Do you mean Miss Adrienne Blisset?’ asked Sebastian, in a distinct voice.

‘Blisset—yes, Miss Blisset. She professes to take a great interest in the relief affairs.’

‘So far as I know, the interest is real—at least if hard work is any test of reality.’

‘She appears to choose very strange people as her intimate friends.’

‘Myself, par exemple?’ he suggested.

War was now declared. The blandness had disappeared from Mrs. Mallory’s countenance. The excitement remained. Her son did not appear to her to be excited, but Hugo, glancing at him, felt a little thrill as he saw all the slight signs which he so well understood, and which told him that his friend was moved, much moved, unpleasantly moved.

Mrs. Mallory, all unconscious how much Sebastian knew, and reckless of the storm she was inviting to descend upon herself, continued,

‘I must say, I hope you are not amongst her intimate friends, unless you wish to be placed on the level of low, immoral, atheistical work-people; the very dregs of the lower orders.’

‘It is asserted that Miss Blisset selects her friends from the dregs of the lower orders?’ he inquired, with ominous politeness.

‘The case does not rest on mere assertion. Her uncle professed peculiar opinions, and she carries them to extremes, as is the way with those women who have been brought up amongst men, and always led a vagabond life.’

Sebastian smiled slightly as he carefully balanced a fork upon his little finger.

‘Après?’ he inquired.

‘She made the acquaintance of a young man of whose character the less is said the better—picked him up at some reading-room where she used to go in an evening—an evening,’ said Mrs. Mallory, in an utterly indescribable tone. ‘She encouraged him to visit her, and he did so repeatedly; he is a socialist, an atheist, and altogether immoral. How far the connection may have gone I cannot pretend to say, but this I know, that Frederick Spenceley, who is not exactly strait-laced——’

‘No, certainly not.’

‘Frederick Spenceley declined to make her acquaintance, and took his sister away, and declined to let her converse with her.’

‘You have this information from a reliable source?’

‘Perfectly reliable. I am not at liberty to say who told me, but I must say the news exactly agrees with what my own judgment led me to expect. I always said....’

‘Pardon! No matter what you have always said, or what other people say. I can tell you the truth, not from any second-hand source, but from my own personal knowledge of the circumstances. The young man of whom you have heard such a delightful character was, though he no longer is, one of my own work-people. He is perfectly respectable, and of unstained character. If Frederick Spenceley were one hundredth part—if he could ever become one hundredth part as much of a gentleman as Myles Heywood naturally is, he might congratulate himself. He—Heywood, I mean—is a friend of Miss Blisset’s, and the fact honours both him and her. I have met him at her uncle’s house, and I have shaken hands with him in his own house. He is a man whom I honour and respect very much. So much for that part of your information. For the rest, that Frederick Spenceley refused to make Miss Blisset’s acquaintance—my dear mother, I am surprised that a woman with your knowledge of the world should believe such a story. I happened to be present then, too. Miss Spenceley wished to introduce her brother to Miss Blisset, and the latter declined the acquaintance; I believe she had excellent reasons for doing so. I pitied Miss Spenceley, from my soul, for she is as superior to her blackguard of a brother as heaven is to earth. But—I trust you will see the wisdom of making the best of Miss Blisset, and not the worst, for I shall ask her to be my wife—to-day, if I get the chance, and if not, on the very first opportunity.’

Mrs. Mallory had sat, during this prolonged harangue, drawing deep breaths, but at the last announcement, made with an emphasis unusual to Sebastian, it seemed suddenly to burst upon her, how entirely she had overreached herself, and she rose from her chair very pale; and, but that her pride forbade it, would have burst into tears of mortification.

‘There is no ingratitude like that of a child to a mother,’ said she, in an icy voice. ‘You have done all you could to humiliate me and cross my wishes ever since your return, and now you insult me by seeking out the least——’

They were at the door. He had opened it for her, but as she looked up in uttering those words, she paused, subdued by a certain expression in his eyes and mouth.

‘Don’t speak too recklessly of that lady. It will do no good, and you would repent it,’ he remarked.

She did not finish her sentence, but swept out of the room, and he gently closed the door after her.

He stood in the middle of the room, biting his lip, till Hugo came up to him and took his hand.

‘Dear Sebastian, I wish you success, though, freilich, I fancied you would marry Miss Spenceley.’

‘Why, I wonder?’ asked Sebastian, impatiently. ‘I cannot imagine why I am supposed to be destined for Miss Spenceley, or she for me. She cannot endure me, and makes no secret of her dislike....

‘You could overcome that,’ suggested his counsellor audaciously.

‘Could I? She is perfectly charming, I don’t wish to deny, but I have loved Adrienne Blisset for years, and I am not going to give her up unless she refuses me.’

‘Fellows don’t always give up when they are refused,’ suggested Hugo again.

‘Finish your lunch and hold your tongue. What I was going to say is, that my mother is answerable for a great deal of mischief by persisting in marrying me to Miss Spenceley.’

‘If there had been no such person as you, then there would have been no mischief,’ said Hugo, apparently throwing in the observation between two sips of claret, for he had obediently returned to the table.

‘What do you mean?’ asked his friend, stopping in his promenade between the two windows.

‘I mean what I say.’

‘Why, do you mean that I have ever encouraged——’

‘Miss Spenceley? I, bewahre! No. But——’

‘I shall do you some serious bodily injury if you don’t curb your boundless impertinence. Do you mean that I ever encouraged my mother’s scheme in any way?’

‘Can’t say. I’ve done. Adieu!’ said Hugo, going out of the room, and singing in an insultingly loud voice—

‘Willst du dein Herz mir schenken,

So fang’ es heimlich an!’

CHAPTER XI.

‘Opportunity is always golden and beautiful. It is the use it is sometimes put to that is—imperfect.’

Sebastian did not find any opportunity that afternoon for carrying out his purpose. He was fully occupied; so was Adrienne, and he was forced to see her, half an hour before he could leave himself, walk away alone in the direction of Blake Street, without having been able to exchange a word with her. This annoyed him, and made him feel nervous and anxious. Three months ago he would, without any inordinate vanity, have felt almost secure of being accepted if he proposed to Adrienne; now he felt very far from sure of it. The unpleasant scene with Mrs. Mallory left him determined to wait no longer, no more to ‘fear his fate too much,’ but ‘to put it to the touch, and win or lose it all,’ that very day, be it early or late.

Accordingly, he returned home after the meeting, dined alone before the usual time, and, knowing that Adrienne was usually at home about half-past seven, set off a little after seven.

His shortest way to Blake Street was to go past the town-hall, and proceed through the pleasure-grounds on the hillside, through the park at the top, and so across the Townfield into Blake Street.

This he did, and having ascended the hill, entered the park by one of its gates, and found that it was almost deserted. There was a nursemaid, and some children playing about the croquet lawn; there was a man reclining upon a bench in a rocky recess—a man who seemed tired, for he was almost crouched together; his face was completely hidden by his arm and hand, which were stretched on the back of the bench. There was also a woman’s figure advancing from the other end of the park, and Sebastian’s heart gave a spring as he recognised Adrienne Blisset.

He walked up to her, and met her.

‘You here, Mr. Mallory, at this time? That is unusual, isn’t it?’

‘I am here because I was on my way to your house, hoping very much to find you in. I am glad I have not missed you altogether.’

‘I am glad too. I was going to see Mary Heywood, and should most likely have sat with her some time, for my conscience accuses me of having neglected her. But shall we return to my house?’

‘Not on any account—that is, if you are not tired, and do not object to walking about on this terrace for a short time.’

‘Not in the least. What a lovely evening it is! And how clear! Look at those purple moors to the north. I have often longed to get to the top of one of those moors. What do you think I should see at the other side?’

‘Yorkshire—and more moors.’

‘Those are the moors on the other side of which Charlotte and Emily Brontë lived,’ said Adrienne, her thoughts taking any direction but the one Sebastian wished.

‘Yes, I believe so. Haworth and Keighley, and all about there. You should go there some time. But don’t look at the prospect now. I want to ask you something.’

‘Yes,’ said Adrienne, turning to him with a half-smile.

The smile died away. She found his eyes fixed upon hers with an unmistakable meaning in their earnest gaze. Her own face flushed deeply, as he gently took her hand and said,

‘I have tried in vain to take an opportunity—at last I have had to make one. I must know something, certainly. I cannot wait any longer. Adrienne, I love you dearly—I have loved you ever since I lost sight of you on that unhappy morning after you left Wetzlar. I knew it then, and my love has only grown stronger ever since. Can you return it? Will you—some time—be my wife?’

He felt his happy confidence falling from him on all sides, as he beheld her face, and stood there, cold, as if a warm mantle had dropped from his shoulders.

‘You—I am very sorry,’ she stammered. ‘Oh, Mr. Mallory——’

‘Mr. Mallory!’ he echoed drearily. ‘Adrienne, I see what you are going to say, but think again! I must have been a terrible, conceited fool all this time; but will you not think again? Wait till to-morrow. Don’t speak to-day. Let me explain.’

Adrienne’s face was full of pain as she said, tremulously but decisively,

‘No. It would be wrong. I know what I feel, and must always feel, now. I admire you very much; I respect you, oh, more than I can tell you. I have a sort of affection for you. Indeed, I am very fond of you. You were so good to me,’ said Adrienne, with tears swimming in her eyes; ‘but I cannot marry you.... Oh, do not look like that!’ she exclaimed, in an agony, ‘I am so sorry; I am so sorry.’

‘Are you quite certain?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘Have I all along been so utterly indifferent to the woman I——’

‘Not indifferent. You were never indifferent to me. And once——’

‘Once!’ he echoed eagerly.

‘I thought—I believed——’

‘That you could love me—perhaps that you did love me?’

She bowed.

‘Ah, that was when I was away. But why should you not love me now, dearest? If you would only let me show you how I love you—you must—you could not help—so good and so loving as you are.’

‘No, no! Do not speak to me of it. It can never be. I know my own heart now—too well,’ she said, looking at him almost appealingly, and with distracted, troubled eyes.

‘And there is no love in it for me?’

‘Not that kind of love. Oh, heavens! why must I have such things to say to you! You must know that you ought to have a very different kind of wife from me. Your wife should be rich and beautiful, and quite different. You will see it yourself some day, when you meet a woman worthy of you, who will love you as you deserve to be loved.’

‘That is cold comfort when the woman I worship won’t have me. I cannot make you love me.’

‘Only because another man has all the love I have to give,’ said Adrienne, scarcely audibly, as she turned aside her face.

Sebastian stood still for a moment.

‘Forgive me!’ said he; ‘it is hopeless, I see. I will never speak to you of it again.’

‘Forgive me!’ she said, much moved. ‘I ought—no, I could not tell you. I have been distracted.... I——’

‘Do not reproach yourself,’ said he, chivalrously. ‘I understand. After this’ (they had begun to move towards the farther gate of the park, along the broad terrace where the man was sitting on the seat in the trees)—‘after this I have not another word to say. We shall have to meet as before, Adrienne. May I call you Adrienne sometimes?’

‘Always, if you like.’

‘Will you try to overlook this—to treat me as if I had not annoyed you thus?’

‘Annoyed me—you! Oh, how can you ask?’

‘And then slander will be silenced, and then there will be no more misunderstandings. All will be clear between us.’

The tenderness he felt he could not banish from his voice, and hers trembled as she answered.

‘Quite clear—as it should be.’

He raised her hand to his lips, and they passed on. The man on the bench had not moved, and they, as they uttered these last words, which were in effect a farewell, saw nothing and no one but each other.

‘I must go home. I cannot go on now,’ said Adrienne, as they arrived at the gate.

‘I will leave you. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye,’ said she, putting her hand in his, but not looking at him. He kept her hand in his so long that at last she looked up.

‘Dear Sebastian, I——’

‘There, that is all I wanted,’ said he, with a rather faint smile. ‘God keep you, child. Good-bye!’

When Adrienne had left her home, it had been with the firm resolution to see Mary Heywood before returning. But she met Sebastian, and the visit was not accomplished.

CHAPTER XII.

‘Great Mother Nature!

Eternal good and blessed!

Hear me! Hear my prayer!

Forsake me not in this my need!’

Myles Heywood’s life had become worse and darker than merely a sad life. It was filled with a wretched pain and unrest, which had been growing like a disease for weeks. His was an earnest, passionate nature, deep and intense; but there was in it a well-spring of contentment, a something essentially sweet and wholesome, which, so long as no very disturbing element intruded, left him tolerably at ease with his life, in spite of the vague dissatisfaction and striving which had led him in earlier days to associate himself with radical working-men’s clubs; which had made him eagerly devour all kinds of iconoclastic literature, and which had often sent him home, on pay-day, meditating upon the unequal manner in which wealth was distributed. But he had had nothing to make him feel this inequality, keenly and cruelly, until, with one single circumstance, one single evening’s adventure, the turning-point in his life came, and he seemed all at once to realise the significance of all these things—wealth, station, and culture—in the shape of Adrienne Blisset. From that time his view of things was changed. He had seen what he felt to be the best, and most beautiful, and desirable thing in the world; and he did desire it with the ardour of a young man and a poet and a lover all combined, and with an ardour deeper still—the ardour of one who feels that everything great and high and satisfactory lies in one direction, and in the other, blackness, emptiness, death, if death be the opposite of life. He could never look back or down again; and yet, the more he looked forwards and upwards, the more did all he saw in the distance seem unattainable and impossible. He had quite ceased to visit Adrienne. To be with her now was only a prolonged ache and pain. He watched her wistfully, and noted in his heart each day that passed over without a visit from her. She used to come so often; now she never came at all. He knew—every one knew, that her uncle was dead, and that she was his heiress. More than once he had heard it was likely that she and Sebastian Mallory would be married. He felt it to be very likely himself; but to go and see her, to hear such a thing from her own lips, was more than his will had strength to accomplish.

Myles had at one time heartily despised Sebastian Mallory; and later, with little more reason, had as intensely disliked him. Now that was all changed, and he himself was surprised to find how utterly and entirely his resentment had burnt out, vanished, evaporated. He could see his (as he considered him) successful rival without any other feeling than one of quiet, despairing indifference. His most active wish, when he was conscious of actively wishing anything, was that all this could somehow come to an end, that some change would soon take place.

The change was approaching, in a manner so unexpected, so utterly terrible and unthought of, that if his sore and weary heart led him somewhat astray, a just and righteously acting world must not blame him too severely. When the eyes are dim with watching, when every nerve is irritable from long strain and a cruel endless tension, when calamity quickly succeeds calamity, it is not given to all men to act exactly as they ought to do.

On the morning of the day on which Mrs. Mallory had been so signally defeated as regarded Miss Blisset, Myles Heywood received a letter. Address and contents were alike in a handwriting unknown to him. The epistle was simply headed ‘Thanshope,’ with the date following. He turned it over, and the subscription puzzled him—‘A Christian Well-wisher,’ it was signed. Marvelling at the whole thing, he began at the beginning, and read it through.

‘Do you know,’ began the ‘Christian Well-wisher,’ ‘what position you are standing in? Do you know to whom you really owe your situation? You owe it to your friend Mr. Sebastian Mallory. Ask him if he did not get Canon Ponsonby’s casting vote, which, with his own, got you in. I thought you were determined to owe nothing to him. Do you know that, with all his fair professions, he is stealing a march upon you in one direction—that if you don’t either make sure of a certain young lady, or give her up altogether, you will soon look a great fool? I say this because it is well known that you and she are, or were, great friends. Ask any one you know, almost any one in the town of Thanshope, what is said about you and her, and see if I have not written the truth. There is one way open to you out of this, and one only—you can leave the place. I take a real interest in you, and advise this, supposing that you do feel some grief at having caused her to be spoken about in such a manner. Of course you are at liberty either to take my advice or leave it. I should think there cannot be much doubt which is the most manly, not to say Christian, course.

A Christian Well-wisher.’

He laid the letter down, feeling that he was trembling—feeling almost as if his limbs failed him. He did not speculate as to who had written the letter. Much of it seemed true to him. Sebastian’s love for Adrienne was no delusion of his jealous fancy. Nothing was said against her; he was blamed, and it was hinted that others spoke lightly of her. He was told to test the report, to inquire for himself; the challenge was a fair one.

That he owed his situation to Sebastian Mallory’s influence was nothing; such things as that had now lost the slightest power to distress him. That Sebastian was ‘stealing a march’ upon him—that idea was so ludicrous and so pitiable as to make him smile drily in the midst of his own torture. There was no sting in that. If Sebastian chose to woo Adrienne, if she chose to receive his wooing, who should say them nay? He had no such right, at least. He dwelt for a moment on these points, and then came the rush of horror and disgust, the sickening, dreadful part of it. He shook with fury, and with misery too, as he realised that there were people who had watched him and her; that wrong constructions had been put upon their friendship; that people gossiped about her—coupled her name with his. It stung him into madness. There must be something in it. ‘Ask,’ said the writer, ‘ask, and see if I have not written the truth.’ To advise him to go away—to appeal to his manly feeling! It was like a hideous dream, which he could not at first grasp. His heart was sore and aching already; this blow seemed to crush him. His nerves had been strained for weeks past; he saw nothing in its proper light or just proportions. He thrust the letter into his breast-pocket, and, driven by necessity, went out to his work. How he got that work accomplished he could not tell. Adrienne was not there, or he did not think he could have struggled through with it.

At noon he took his way home again. Crossing the Townfield, he met Harry Ashworth, who joined him, wishing him good-day, and observing,

‘Myles, lad, you don’t look so well. What ails you?’

‘Nothing, nothing ails me,’ said Myles; and then there flashed a sudden thought into his mind: that letter—that ‘Ask, and see if I have not written the truth.’ He would put it to the test now; no time like the present.

‘I am telling lies,’ said he; ‘something does ail me. Harry, are you my friend?’

‘Ay, for sure I am, old lad.’

‘Then come and prove it. Come with me into our house; I want to show you something.’

They were close at home. Myles led the way, and Harry followed him into the parlour, the front room, now stripped of almost all the furniture and ornaments which had formerly been the pride of Mary’s life.

‘See here!’ said Myles, his eyes filled with a sombre fire, and his lips twitching a little as he pulled out the letter: ‘read this, and tell me, when you’ve done, if you know who’s meant in it.’

Harry looked surprised, but took the letter and read it. Myles watched him, thinking what a good idea it was to make him read the letter. If the report were unfounded, he would not guess who was referred to; and if it were true, he would. Harry’s face changed, grew amazed, embarrassed as he read on. When he had finished the letter, he folded it up, and returned it, without speaking, to its owner. He did not look at Myles, but out of the window, as he said,

‘It’s a very queer kind of a letter.’

‘Well,’ said Myles, obliged to raise his voice, but desirous that neither Mary nor Edmund should overhear the conversation, ‘can you give a guess, lad, as to who the lady is that’s spoken of?’

‘Well,’ said Harry, rather confusedly, ‘I have heard some talk about you and—and—that lady.’

‘Suppose I don’t know who is meant? Suppose it’s all a riddle to me?’ said Myles.

But Harry shook his head, saying,

‘Nay, nay, that won’t do.’

‘But tell me who you think it is,’ said Myles, impatiently, desperately; ‘tell me, for God’s sake! I will know, Harry, so out with it.’

‘You must remember, it’s no tale of mine—it’s only what I’ve heard; and I believe the lady meant is Miss Blisset. Fact is,’ he added decisively, ‘I know it is!’

Again Myles’s lips quivered a little as he said,

‘You said you were my friend, Harry. You must tell me what you’ve heard.’

‘Well, it’s useless to deny that there’s a story going about that before her uncle died she was in love with you, and that you said so often; but I don’t believe it, old chap. You never think I believe it all?’

‘That I said she was in love with me?’ said Myles in a voice that had grown almost hoarse.

‘Yes; and that when you went to their house it wasn’t exactly to see the old gentleman, but——’

‘There, that will do!’ said the other, holding up his hand and turning away sickened. It was too hideous. If any such rumour had penetrated to her ears? He could not speak, till Harry, in an ill-judged moment, said,

‘Nay, there’s nothing to take on about so much, Myles. Some enemy of yours has written that letter—some one as wants you out of the way. Can’t you see what he’s driving at when he advises you to go? Likely enough some one as thinks he might get your place if you were gone. But you’re not the sort of chap to pay any attention——’

‘The advice is good,’ said Myles, curtly. ‘Very likely I shall take it. Do you know who set this tale going?’ he asked, turning to Harry with a look which startled the latter.

‘That’s just what no one can tell,’ said he. ‘It seems to be known everywhere, and yet we can’t tell where it comes from.’

‘Though you give it the benefit of free discussion. Well, I’ve found out what I wanted to know. There’s only one thing more—if you care for me or mine—and we’ve known each other a good many years now—you’ll never speak of what we have spoken of this morning.’

‘My hand upon it,’ said his friend. ‘Never, so long as I live.’

They left the room. Harry departed by the back way to have a word with Mary, and to offer to come and sit up that night with Edmund, who was much worse. The offer was accepted, and Harry went away.

The midday meal was again a very sad one. Myles ate nothing, and said nothing; and Mary, full of fears and forebodings, was almost as bad.

After dinner the young man went out again—up the street he hated, to the room which had become a purgatory to him. How he loathed the sight of that long building with the many windows and the well-known faces! It seemed to him as if every eye must be fixed upon him, every finger pointing at him.

Work was not over until late that afternoon. It was six o’clock, or after, when Myles got home again, and on going into the house found that Mary was sitting upstairs with Edmund; so, after brooding a little, his mind full of wild, half-chaotic projects and ideas, he left the house and wandered out, he knew not whither. At last he found himself in the park, pacing about the broad terrace, and looking with eyes that saw nothing, across the idle town and the nearer hills, to the blue, calm, moorland ridges far away to the north. It was a scene he had loved, half unconsciously, from his childhood up, but to-day it was without joy—almost without existence for him.

At last he seated himself on a bench situated in a kind of rockery which ran along one side of the terrace; the seat was a little retired in a hollow of the rockwork, and there he remained, and gradually he turned his back upon the prospect and his face to the wall, and hid his face in his arm and fought alone, as well as he could, with the misery and despair which rushed over him like a flood. He saw no point of cheerfulness or light in all his life’s sky. All was black and thick and overcast.

‘This is no fit place for me to stay in,’ he thought. ‘I must get away as soon as I can. If I go, all the lies will die out quickly enough, and then—there’s another man who is ready to fight her battles for her, and he may see her as much as he pleases, and there’s no harm in it.’

How long he had remained there motionless and miserable he did not know. He had forgotten all outside things, and was busied solely with his wretched self-introspection. At last, however, distant voices first, and then approaching footsteps, which advanced slowly and with many pauses, penetrated to his abstracted ear. He did not move; why should any one notice him, or think of him? Still less did he move when he distinctly heard and recognised Sebastian Mallory’s voice close to him saying,

‘And then slander will be silenced, and there will be no more misunderstandings. All will be clear between us.’

His voice was deep with love as he spoke, and to each vibration of it Myles’s heart seemed to give an answering throb.

‘Quite clear, as it should be,’ replied the voice he loved best, and it trembled too.

They paced past. Myles hid his face more deeply in his folded arms. He heard Sebastian kiss her hand, and then their voices died away—their footsteps too, and at last Myles raised his head and changed his position. He was half puzzled at the change which had come over him, at the quiet apathy which seemed to fill his whole soul. He had heard those words spoken which he had thought would be harder than any other words for him to bear, and yet he found himself sitting on in the same place, his pulses beating no faster, his breath coming no more quickly. Such utter indifference he felt to be ominous, and yet, though he tried, he could bring no different feelings forward; he repeated to himself all that he thought he had lost, all he believed Sebastian had won—conned it over as a devotee might tell his beads, but it had no effect. He felt no special pain or indignation.

And yet, when he rose with the instinctive intention of turning his steps homeward, he found that he was incapable of going home. He recoiled from the very idea of entering the house, or speaking to any one he knew. He stood reasoning within himself about it.

‘Why shouldn’t I go home? Home is surely the best place. Molly is there, and Ned. I ought to go and stay with him; he’s so ill.’ And he forced his feet towards home. But it was useless, he felt it impossible to enter the house.

‘I know what I want,’ he reasoned within himself. ‘I want a good stretch of a walk, right over the moors, and away from this smoky hole. There’s nothing like a moorland breeze for blowing away unhealthy fancies. Harry used to say so, and he’s tried it often enough, and in trouble enough, poor lad.’

He smiled. He found himself pitying Harry Ashworth with an intensity of commiseration such as he could not by any means wring out for his own sorrows.

But he congratulated himself. A long, long walk, a walk of twenty miles or so, to prove to himself that he was still young and strong, and swift of foot, and that six weeks of clerkship drudgery, and six months’ alternate hot and cold, hope and fear, doubt and despair, had not impaired one iota his strength and endurance! That glorious moorland air, blowing keen and fresh, though it was pure, from the north over the top of Blackrigg! There was surely not a grief, not a solitude-nourished fear and sorrow, that its strong, bracing breath would not blow clean away!

By this time he had left the park, and was walking quickly down the street in a northerly direction. He met one or two friends and acquaintances before he got fairly out of the town; he returned their salutations quite mechanically, and still walked on. Just outside Thanshope, as the suburb of Bridgefold began, there stood a well-known public-house, the Craven Heifer; and, as he was passing its door, some one hailed him.

‘Eh, Myles! I say, Myles, is yon you?’

He looked up, and saw a man standing in the doorway—a man whom he had known years ago, who had once worked side by side with him in the factory, and had left and gone over into Rossendale before Myles had been promoted from the weaving shed to the warehouse. He stared blankly at the man, who had been drinking, and though by no means drunk, was decidedly elevated.

‘Come in, mon?’ he cried. ‘It’s years sin’ I saw you. Come in, and have a glass, for old acquaintance sake. I’ll stand it.’

He would not be gainsaid, but rolled out, and pulled his former friend into the taproom. There were half a dozen men there, all more or less happy and free from care, as it seemed to Myles. They welcomed him noisily, and his friend asked him, with unnecessary affectionateness of tone and manner, what it should be.

‘What? Oh, anything. What you are having yourself,’ said Myles, greeting first one and then another of them, and thinking, with a kind of savage mirth, within himself, that there were more kinds of pleasure in the world than one; since he could not have one kind, he might as well try another. He would see whether these men, who seemed so pleased to see him, were really such bad company after all. And he sat down, and waited until a girl brought him a glass of steaming hot punch—whisky punch; that was what they were drinking.

‘Now, then,’ cried his acquaintance, ‘good luck to you, Myles! Here’s to our next merry meeting, eh?’

‘To our next!’ said Myles, raising the glass to his lips, and then, even as it touched them, feeling as if he had suddenly come to his senses, he put the glass down on the table. ‘Not yet,’ he said, half aloud, and got up from his seat and walked out of the room, shaking off the hands that were outstretched to stay him, and unheeding the loud and angry expostulations which came after him.

‘Pah!’ he exclaimed, as he took his way along the road again; ‘I’m not come to that yet!’

It was a long and toilsome road that led from the town of Thanshope, through some outlying suburbs, to a large manufacturing village, called Hamerton, which lay on the very skirts of Yorkshire, closed in on all sides by the great ridges of Blackrigg, and some neighbouring wild and desolate moors. He took the road along which Hugo and Sebastian had once driven, and the sun had set as he turned his face towards the hills with that strange sensation of oppressive apathy and indifference ever at his heart. The night was descending, the ‘stars rushed out,’ as he at length gained the complete solitude of the moors, and, turning aside from the road, plunged half knee-deep into the thick heather and ling, which was the only vegetation about there. He walked, for a very short time as it seemed to him—really, for hours—battling with the horrible sensations of a great, black, yawning, hideous blank, a huge emptiness, an ewiges Nichts, which completely overpowered him. He was unconscious how far he had gone, or where he was, or that he was even weary, when suddenly he found himself stumbling over the knolls of heather, and looking up, found that it was dark. The summer night had closed in, and he, for aught he knew, might be twenty miles away, or thirty, from Thanshope.

He thought he would sit down and rest a little, so he sank down upon the friendly heather, and found that it formed a soft and yielding bed, and that the air which played around his head and face was cool, and pure, and sweet. For a moment he found a blessed sensation of rest and relief, and then all things seemed softly to swim and fade around him; with sweeping wing sleep came upon him, and laid her finger upon his eyelids, and bade the weary brain rest. He sank gradually down in the hollow of the heather, and a deep, dreamless slumber overcame him, and saved him. Never had sleep been a more beneficent visitant; never had kindly Nature taken to her soft arms a more weary, heart-sick child of hers, than she did that summer night, when she offered to Myles Heywood rest upon her own broad bosom.

CHAPTER XIII.

SUNRISE.

Mary Heywood, all the weary afternoon of that weary day, sat beside Edmund’s bed and nursed him, with fear at her heart that the nursing would be of no long duration. The fever which had consumed him was over, but the weakness which remained was terrible—it was a weakness from which, as Mary dimly felt, there would never be any rallying. She had brought sewing and knitting upstairs into the little bedroom, and she drew down the blind ‘to keep the sun out,’ as they both said. Edmund lay perfectly still. She asked him if she should read to him, but he smiled a little, and shook his head. Neither of them knew how very near the end was. Edmund, if he could have known, would have been very glad, and Mary would have been so miserable, that it was well she did not know.

‘I could like to see Myles a bit,’ said Edmund at last; ‘I ne’er see him now, hardly. He’s quite different from what he was.’

‘He’s not happy,’ said Mary. ‘I don’t rightly know what ails him, but it’s summat very bad, I’m sure.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t like bein’ out o’ work. No more should I, if I was him. He’s ne’er been used to such pinchin’ work as this. They keep him a long time at yon shop.’

‘Ay, they do. Harry Ashworth said he’d come and sit wi’ thee to-neet, Ned. Would thou like it?’

Edmund assented, with a look of pleasure, and there was silence, while the afternoon wore on, and at last Mary’s head began to droop. She was weary with sorrow, with working, and with watching. The atmosphere of the room was close and heavy, although Mary had conscientiously tried to follow out the doctor’s directions about keeping it ventilated. She could not keep her eyes open, but slept in her chair until Edmund’s feeble touch on her arm awoke her, and she started up.

‘Eh, what is it, lad?’

‘I could so like summat to drink, Molly,’ said he, gaspingly. ‘And I think there’s summat not reet wi’ Myles. I heard him come in, and sit quite still for a bit, and now he’s gone out again, without coming up here, or waitin’ for his tea, or anything.’

Thoroughly awake, Mary hurried downstairs, and found emptiness and solitude. She could see that Myles had been in. She could see the chair that he had drawn up to the table and pushed away again, and she wondered, and was uneasy at his going out thus, without word or message.

The kitchen, too, felt close. She drew up the window, and set the back door open to let some air in. Then she roused the fire, and set the gently singing kettle upon it, and brought out the tea-things. She prepared some tea for Edmund, and took it upstairs to him. He had said he was very thirsty, and he took the cup eagerly, and put his lips to it, then put it down again.

‘I feel very faint, Mary; I can’t take that. I mun have a little—bran——’

He had fainted, and it was some time before she succeeded in restoring him to consciousness.

‘Eh, I wish Myles was here; I wish Harry would come,’ she kept murmuring to herself, looking with anguish upon the poor worn face, which had now the stamp of the approaching end set upon it in unmistakable characters.

At last a knock at the outer door informed her that Harry Ashworth had come. She ran downstairs and let him in, drawing him into the kitchen; and when they were there, sat down upon her rocking-chair, and began to cry heartily.

‘Why, Mary, what ails thee, lass?’ said Harry, taking her hand.

‘Myles is gone out—I don’t know where, and yon poor lad upstairs hasn’t so much longer to be here,’ said Mary, looking at him with her tearful eyes. ‘Thou munnot leave me yet awhile, Harry.’

Whether the presence of a great mutual sorrow broke the barrier which had hitherto existed between these two, I know not. As Mary begged him not to leave her, their eyes met, and something in those eyes gave Harry the courage he had never before been able to summon to his aid. It was as if by a mutual impulse that they bent towards each other, and their lips met for consolation and reassurance; and Harry, with a wonderful sense of strength of courage, put his arm round Mary’s waist, saying,

‘There’s nought I’d like so well as never to leave thee at all, Mary, if thou could look at such a poor, deaf, marred chap as me. Sometimes I think thou could, and sometimes I’m sure thou couldn’t. Dost think thou could make up thy mind to take me?’

‘I made up my mind long ago what I’d do if ever thou asked me,’ said Mary, naïvely.

‘And what was that?’

‘Why, to take thee, for sure,’ she answered.

Harry, smiling, looking on her with amaze and admiration, ventured on another kiss, and said,

‘Eh, but I have been a fool not to speak to thee before.’

She smiled a little, and then the remembrance of the troubled present returning to her, said,

‘I’m very happy, but we mun think o’ poor Ned just now. Thee go upstairs, and tell him what thou’s done. He always were suspicious about thee. It’ll cheer him up like, and I’ll come after thee in a minute or two.’

Just for a few moments the news had the desired effect upon Edmund. He shook hands with Harry, smiled and looked what he had not voice enough to say. But the same chill look of coming death was upon his face; and Mary, as Myles still did not come, could not rest until she had been out and brought the doctor back with her. The doctor was a busy man. He made a very brief visit—said nothing much in the sick-room, but ordered some restorative, and, when Mary followed him downstairs and tremulously asked his opinion, said brusquely, but not at all unkindly,

‘My good girl, you must make up your mind to lose him. I cannot even assure you that he will live till morning.’

Restraining her tears, Mary went upstairs again, and, with Harry, resumed her watch by the sick lad. They were slow and solemn hours. They saw the end approaching under their very eyes; they saw Death’s grey seal stamping its impress more and more visibly upon the features, and one on either side the narrow little bed they sat, while it grew deep night, and still Myles did not come home.

‘What can be keeping him?’ the girl uneasily wondered again and again; but she dared not speak her wonder, for every time that Edmund roused from the lethargy which was settling more and more heavily upon him, he looked round with an anxious gaze, and a vague astonishment at the absence of that brother who had been his stay and protection all his weak and painful life.

Midnight passed, and still the sorrowful watch lasted. One o’clock struck, and still he came not; and still the face on the pillow grew grayer and more deathlike. Two o’clock passed, and yet all was as it had been. Towards half-past two, Mary, going softly to the window, raised a corner of the blind, and beheld the first flush of dawn in the east, as it may be seen at that hour on a June morning. Her heavy eyes looked across the houses, across the town, to where the pure sky, with a cool, bright light, showed the ridges of the moors. She looked back into the room. Harry’s eyes had followed her, and hung upon her face; and Edmund’s eyes too were opened, wide, bright, and clear. His voice had regained a last flicker of strength, as he said distinctly,

‘Wind up the blind, Molly, and open the window a bit. Let me see the sun rise.’

Speechless, Mary complied. A waft of pure, fresh morning air was borne into the room through the open window. Then there was a pause. From where he lay, Edmund could see the broadening rose flush in the east, and then suddenly the chimes from the spire rang out; three was solemnly tolled, and in a moment there rang out upon the sleeping town, resting from its troubles, the sweet old tune, ‘Life let us cherish!’ Mary heard the tune, ‘Myles’s tune,’ as she called it, and wondered longingly where he was. She returned to the bedside, and Harry went to the window. Edmund had closed his eyes again, and another quarter had chimed, when Harry exclaimed,

‘He’s there! He’s coming!’

In a few moments more Myles stood in the room. There were very few words more. They all stood round the bed, and Edmund held his brother’s hand. In the watching him, the others had no time to notice the haggard look on Myles’s face. Day grew broader, and life waned. Four was chimed melodiously; the first stir of life was audible, as Edmund quietly breathed his last.

Mary was sobbing—the sunrise was over—and day, full, glowing, and brilliant, poured in upon the dead face.

CHAPTER XIV.

DUST AND ASHES.

The day that followed was naturally a sad one. Mary was too much occupied in mourning her loss to notice Myles as she otherwise might have done. Harry left the house about five o’clock, promising to call again about dinner-time. A friendly neighbour came in and helped Mary to perform all that remained to be done for the dead. At last all was finished. The woman had gone, and Mary paused as she left the room, looking round it with a kind of sorrowful pride. It looked very white, and pure, and still.

She had drawn the blind down and set everything in the most exquisite order. The dead figure lay stretched out in its eternal repose, with calm, beautiful face, and quietly closed eyes. At the door she returned, and ran up to the bedside, and kissed the cold forehead.

‘Poor lad! poor lad!’ she whispered between her tears, ‘thine has been a hard life, but thou’rt in heaven now, if ever anybody was.’

When Myles came in, during the forenoon, she was struck, for the first time, with his great stillness and the strange, haggard look upon his face. She remembered that he had been out all night, and asked him what he had been doing.

‘I dare say it seemed unkind,’ he replied, ‘but you may trust me, Molly, I couldn’t help it. I can’t explain to you why it was; something had happened. I couldn’t help it.’

He sat down beside her, and took her hand, and they both remained there, looking mournfully into the little fire; she with the sorrow of deep affection which knows its object removed; he sad too, but with a more incurable sadness than hers. They were both oppressed with sorrow, but he

‘Beneath a rougher sea,

And whelmed in deeper gulfs than she.’

On this scene entered Harry Ashworth, with offers of his services if they were wanted, and also with the object of telling Myles what had passed between him and Mary.

Myles heard it all out, down to Mary’s acknowledgment that she wished to marry Harry, ‘supposing thou hast nothing against it, Myles.’

‘Against it? What could I have against it? You’ve my hearty consent and good wishes, both of you. There won’t be a better wife in Thanshope, nor in England, than you’ll get, Harry; and I know you so well that I’m not afraid to trust Molly to you. I’m glad it is so, for I don’t think I shall stay here long, and I should have been unhappy to leave her alone. I hope you’ll both be as happy as you deserve.’

He shook hands with Harry and kissed Mary, but he could not force a smile. They saw that he was glad, relieved to find that they had decided to be married; but they also saw that he had some sorrow behind it all, which was greater than the joy.

It was a little after eight on the same evening. Myles found himself standing opposite the Townhall, with his hand on the latch of the Oakenrod gate. He paused a moment before lifting it, then summoning up courage, did so, and stood within the garden of the house against which he had had so long and so strong a prejudice.

He had never been so near it before. His feet were strange within the gates of rich or important people of any kind, but particularly here. It was with a sort of thrill that he looked round at the smoothly shaven grass, the dazzling flower-beds, in all the splendour of their June garments, the softly rolled gravel beneath his feet. The errand he came upon was one which, a month ago, he would have repudiated, would have said that no imaginable combination of circumstances could make him undertake. Yes, truly; but the combinations of circumstances which force us into the actions that humble us, and wound us, and sting our self-esteem with hornet-stings, are always such combinations as we should never imagine beforehand, because it never occurs to us that deserving persons, such as ourselves, can be put into positions only appropriate to ill-regulated conduct.

Myles was conscious of no bad conduct or evil intentions, but only of a great, ever-growing misery, which was so strong as to force him to try in some way to escape from it, and this was the only path which presented itself as practicable; so he took it, as is generally the case.

He walked up to the front door, past the open windows with the lace curtains fluttering inside, and pulled the bell. An unpleasant fear seized him, lest Sebastian should be out, gone to see Adrienne, perhaps, and he would have his hard task to do all over again.

A page-boy opened the door, and Myles inquired if Mr. Mallory were at home.

‘I believe so,’ said the youth, a little wondering at the unusual visitor.

‘I wish to see him,’ said Myles, stepping in, ‘if he is not engaged, that is; and my business is rather particular.’

The boy, after serious consideration, decided to show the visitor into the library, and asked him to take a seat. This he did, and inquired,

‘Who shall I say wishes to see him?’

‘Tell him that Myles Heywood would be glad to speak to him, if he is disengaged.’

The page disappeared. Myles was left alone in the library, and his quick, restless eyes roamed round it, and took everything in, and the full significance of everything—the soft carpets, the harmonious, subdued hues of walls, hangings, and furniture; the relief afforded by gleams of gold here and there; the book-cases filled with books of all times and in all languages; the great bronze busts of Aristotle and Sophocles; the quaint blue and white vases; the two curious paintings by Sebastian’s favourite German artist; the reading-stands; the writing-tables; the pleasant luxury and taste, and abundance of every appointment.

‘No wonder!’ said he to himself. ‘And between the man and me—his manners and mine, his mind and mine—there is just the same difference as there is between this library of his and our little flagged kitchen at home. This is the place for her, and I feel as if I could see her here sitting at that writing-table, or standing in the window there looking out.’

He heaved a deep sigh, and at that moment some one began to play a melody on a piano in another room; a soft, sad, melancholy air, to which he listened so intently that he did not hear the door open, and was first roused by Sebastian’s voice.

‘Good evening. I am sorry to have kept you waiting; but I was engaged and could not escape.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Myles, rising; and as each man’s eyes fell upon the other man’s face, both felt surprise. Sebastian almost showed his, in a suppressed exclamation, but Myles was too sad and oppressed to experience more than a vague wonder and astonishment that a man in what he thought was Sebastian’s position should wear that subdued, grave, downcast look.

‘I noticed that you were not in your place to-day,’ began Mallory, by way of opening the conversation; ‘nothing wrong at home, I hope?’

‘Yes; we are in trouble at home. My brother, who has been ill for a long time, died this morning, early.’

‘I am very sorry indeed. Of course you would not think of coming to work, at present. It is not——’

‘It was not to excuse myself from work that I came,’ said Myles, in the same quiet, constrained way. ‘My brother’s death is a grief to me, of course; but one does not talk about such things. I was going to trouble you on a matter of business, if you can spare the time——’

‘Perfectly well. In what can I help you?’

Myles bit his lips. He had strong ideas about what it was fitting for a man to say and do under certain circumstances. Probably if he had formulated some of his ideas upon ethics, most sophisticated persons would have broken into inextinguishable laughter. One favourite maxim of his was that, to use his own language, ‘To blackguard a man high and low, and then go and ask a favour of him, was a mean, dirty trick; fit for a hound, perhaps, but not for an honest man.’ If he could not be said to have ‘blackguarded’ Sebastian high and low, he had certainly spoken with less than courtesy, both of him and to him; it was impossible to ignore that fact, and proceed to his real errand.

‘You may think it a very strange thing, but I’ve come to ask a favour of you,’ said he.

‘Is it strange? I shall be glad to grant it if I can.’

Myles lifted his hand a moment, and then went on,

‘You may not know that I have often spoken very bitterly of you, but you do know that I have not been particularly civil to you—have I?’

‘Well, not exactly effusive,’ admitted Sebastian, with a slight smile, wondering whether he had at last completed his much-desired conquest.

‘It is true,’ said Myles. ‘I had a bad opinion of you—a prejudice against you—and I expressed it. If it had not been for troubles I have had lately,’ he added, with that little nervous twitch of the lips which had only lately been present with him; ‘but for those troubles, I might have gone on thinking and speaking evil of you without a cause, but my eyes have been opened. I see how utterly wrong I was—blind and bigoted. You have proved yourself a very different man from what I thought you—a very much wiser and better man than I should have been in your place—and I beg your pardon for what I have said against you.’

‘But, my dear fellow, you must not take it so terribly in earnest; so—so tragically. Every one has his prejudices; I have some most preposterous ones, I believe. All the same, I confess to you that I was excessively piqued by your bad opinion of me. It has been a matter of some moment, with me, to overcome that prejudice, and enlist you amongst my friends. If I can say that you are amongst them now, I must feel that I have won a kind of victory.’

‘Mr. Mallory, I can never be amongst your enemies, never again. Let that be enough. I can say no more. You are wiser and more generous, too, than I am; but you can afford to be so. The reason I came to-night was to ask you if you still remembered an offer you made me a short time ago—the offer to give me a place away from Thanshope and out of England, you said?’

‘I remember it perfectly well, and that I said I could still do it if you changed your mind about it. Well?’

‘I have changed my mind about it If you can carry your generosity a little farther, and get me that place, or something like it—the farther away from here the better—I shall be—God knows, how grateful to you: I can never express it.’

‘I can still do it,’ said Sebastian, looking attentively and kindly at the eager, haggard face of the other. ‘But I am sorry you think of leaving Thanshope.’

‘I must leave Thanshope. It is to get away from here that I ask. Will the work be hard? I hope so. I care for nothing but hard work—hard work,’ he repeated, in a sort of restless, prolonged sigh.

‘You will have what you wish for. The work is certainly pretty stiff. It is in Germany—in a rough, mining district near a large town. There is a cotton factory, and some collieries. They have a lot of English and Irish work-people there. The master and owner, Herr Süsmeyer, is a very intimate friend of mine. He wants a sort of superintendent—an Englishman, and one who is not afraid of work. He himself is as much an Englishman as a German. Still, you must know a little of the language. Did you not learn something of it from Miss Blisset?’ he added deliberately.

‘Yes,’ said Myles, curtly.

‘Ah, you will soon pick up more; you are quick, and you must study when work is over. That will give you as much occupation as even you could wish, I think. I shall give you a very high recommendation, indeed, as being personally known to me.’

‘And as having been always polite, reasonable, and amiable with my superiors; not ready to take offence, and willing to own myself in the wrong!’ suggested Myles, with grim humour.

Sebastian smiled, in silence, as he drew a paper-case and inkstand towards him, and wrote rapidly. He fastened up the letter, and addressed it to—Herrn Gustav Süsmeyer, Eisendorf, Westphalien, Prussia, and handed it to Myles, saying,

‘I know the situation is still open, and that letter will secure it for you. I shall also write to Herr Süsmeyer to-night, so as to lose no time. From what you say, I suppose you will want to go soon?’

‘As soon as ever I can—in a few days, when poor Ned is buried, and I can leave Mary.’

‘You will leave your sister behind you?’

‘For a good reason,’ said Myles. ‘She’s going to be married, and I know I leave her in good hands.’

‘May I ask whom she will marry?’

‘Harry Ashworth, a friend of ours. He has loved her long,’ said Myles, not even feeling surprised that he should be relating such things to Sebastian.

‘I am very glad; I wish them all happiness. I am sure the man is fortunate who marries your sister.’

‘Yes, he is,’ assented Myles. ‘Then,’ he added, ‘you think I may go any day?’

‘Any day; but before you go, I hope you will see me again, so that I can give you some idea of the place, and tell you what route to take. It is an out-of-the-way sort of place; and excuse me, the journey is somewhat expensive, and——’

‘You are very kind. My friend Harry has money which he will lend me. I shall soon repay him if I once get work. He won’t want it till he is married. Let me see: the day after to-morrow—Mary will stay with Harry’s mother. Would it be convenient if I called the day after to-morrow, in the evening?’

‘The day after to-morrow—to-morrow is Mrs. Spenceley’s ball,’ said Sebastian, half to himself. ‘Yes; the day after to-morrow will suit me perfectly well.’

‘And the day after that I can go,’ exclaimed Myles, the first ray of anything like pleasure flashing across his face. ‘I can go,’ he repeated.

Sebastian looked at him, not feeling at all satisfied with his victory. All that he had ever wished to himself, with regard to Myles, had come to pass. The latter had owned himself wrong; had apologised for his own frowardness; had descended so far as to ask a favour, and to express himself in tones of unmistakable emotion as deeply grateful when it was granted. And yet—the effect was not in the least what it ought to have been. The sensations of the victor were anything but jubilant.

‘You seem very anxious to get away?’ he remarked, involuntarily and inquiringly.

‘Yes, I am; it’s the only thing I care for, just at present,’ said Myles. ‘Good night,’ he added, rising. ‘I can’t express my gratitude to you. You would have been justified in treating me very differently.’

‘Indeed I should not!’ exclaimed Sebastian; and the sense that his victory was a barren one was borne still more strongly in upon him.

What was it worth if, after all, it had only been won for him by Myles’s adverse circumstances, not by him, through his own influence over the conquered one?

‘Heywood,’ he exclaimed earnestly, ‘is there nothing behind all this that you could tell me? Can I do nothing for you but help you to get away from this place, which seems to have grown so unbearable to you? I do not ask from ordinary curiosity—you must know that; it is from sympathy, and a sincere wish to be your friend, if possible.’

Myles shook his head.

‘I can speak to no man of what troubles me, thank you,’ said he. ‘All the same, I am not ungrateful.’

He held out his hand, which the other grasped heartily, and in another minute found himself alone.

All that evening, all the night, he was haunted by a vision of the pale face and miserable eyes of Myles Heywood—a vision of suffering whose very remembrance oppressed him.

CHAPTER XV.

HUGO.

The few days intervening between her dispute with her son and the Spenceleys’ ball were, as may be supposed, not particularly pleasant ones to Mrs. Mallory. Sebastian, after his interview with Adrienne, came home, and looking into the drawing-room found his mother alone. She did not deign to notice him, but he, coming in, said to her,

‘Mother, I want to speak to you.’

‘Well?’

‘I proposed to Miss Blisset this evening.’

‘Indeed!’

‘You do not ask what reception my offer met with.’

‘I imagine, considering your relative positions, there cannot be much need to inquire.’

‘Still, I may as well tell you that she refused me.’

Mrs. Mallory was profoundly astonished, of course; but as, after a moment’s reflection, she did not perceive herself any nearer her real and cherished object, Sebastian’s marriage with Helena, she contented herself with uttering a sneering little laugh, and saying, in an exasperating tone—

‘Really!’

‘So that you will not have the annoyance of knowing her your daughter-in-law. But I think it better to mention that such remarks as you made about her this morning must not be repeated in my presence. I do not choose to hear anything spoken of that young lady which is not quite respectful.’

‘Though she has jilted you,’ said Mrs. Mallory, with an amiable smile.

‘I was not aware of it.’

‘Very likely not; men seldom do know when women make fools of them. The better for them and their conviction as to their superior wisdom.’

‘You may possibly be right,’ he rejoined, with perfect temper; ‘but the point I wish to impress upon you is, that nothing disrespectful is ever to be uttered of Miss Blisset in my presence. The other questions are quite supplementary.’

She made no answer, and Sebastian, politely wishing her good night, retired to his study.

Mrs. Mallory sat alone, very angry, after her phlegmatic, batrachian fashion, at what had happened, and longing very much, for the relief of her own feelings, to punish some one in some way. It was too exasperating that Sebastian should behave in that manner, after all her plans for his good and welfare. Helena Spenceley was at the moment perfection in her eyes.

‘At any rate, he must go to the ball the day after to-morrow,’ she said to herself. ‘It is a good chance. There is no time when a man is so likely to fall in love with a woman as when he has just been “refused” by another woman.’

But here her thoughts wandered off to Adrienne, and she felt as angry with her for her presumption in refusing Sebastian as she would have felt with her success had she accepted him. Indeed, her audacity in attracting him at all was thoroughly odious; she was a little dog in the manger, who would neither accept the man’s love herself nor leave him free to wander aside to where beauty and a hundred thousand pounds waited for him to lift his hand in order to utter a rapturous ‘Yes.’

‘For Helena is in love with him, let her pretend what she likes,’ she muttered angrily. ‘I can see it distinctly. He might have her for the asking.... I wonder if all children are born to break their mothers’ hearts?’

With which speculation agitating her brain she retired to rest.

Her spirit was still ruffled and ill at ease all the next day, and by degrees she concentrated her ill-temper upon a single object—a sort of focus to her anger and vexation—and that object was no other than Hugo von Birkenau. She had always regarded him with little favour: he was poor, dependent, and behaved himself as if he were rich and free. Now, everything that he said or did appeared an offence—a purposely intended, premeditated insult directed at herself, with the purpose of angering her—a very strange frame of mind, dear reader, and one which, from its being so utterly unknown to you and me and eminently reasonable persons like ourselves, would almost seem to require some elucidation or description.

Mrs. Mallory found the day go over, and Hugo continue to be insultingly cheerful and conversational, without her being able to find any actual ground for quarrelling with him. It would come, she was determined; it should come: he was too impertinent to be tolerated without an attempt to repress him.

On the evening on which Myles came to see Sebastian, the latter and Hugo were sitting together in Sebastian’s study. Hugo had heard of Adrienne’s refusal, and though condoling, did not feel so sorry as he considered he ought to have done. By degrees the conversation drifted off to Hugo’s own affairs and prospects. Sebastian told him he thought he ought seriously to think about what he meant to do.

‘I have thought about it, and decided,’ said Hugo. ‘I’m going to write an opera. That has been my ambition ever since I could strum upon a piano.’

‘But, my dear lad, you will never learn all that you must know in order to write an opera by staying in Thanshope. You must go away, Hugo, to your native land, where alone true music flourishes, and you must study. You ought to go to Köln or Leipzig or some other conservatorium. I should recommend Leipzig.’

‘I have always thought of Leipzig,’ answered the boy, ‘and I will go as soon as you like, Sebastian, but it will be very dreary without you.’

‘Oh, bah! Yours is a fickle, artist nature, Hugo, revelling in the delight of the moment. You will think Leipzig heaven a week after you get there, and all the other pupils in the conservatorium seraphs and angels, and you will wonder how you ever lived here.’

‘Not fickle, Sebastian!’ he cried, with the tragic earnest which sometimes made Sebastian think him so like Helena Spenceley. ‘Anything but that! Anything but fickle to you! If I thought I ever could be fickle to you, I’d put an end to myself to-night, and have no qualms of conscience about it. Such a wretch would be better out of the world than in it.’

‘Oh, nonsense! But one thing I do wish you would promise me. I’ve often thought of asking you before, but I was afraid it might seem like trying to entrap your youth and innocence.’

‘What is it? Quick, tell me what it is!’ asked Hugo, his eyes ablaze with eagerness.

‘Well, it is this: that you will never, before you are one-and-twenty, take any very important step, without telling me what you intend to do. I don’t say asking my permission. I trust too much to your honour and purity of heart to keep you from doing anything bad,’ he added, with a smile. ‘I would not harass and fetter you by any such stupid restriction; but, as I trust you, I want you to trust me. Don’t do anything important without telling me that you intend to do it, and giving me a chance to offer you a specimen of my superior wisdom, you know.’

‘What a question! I swear it!’ said Hugo, enthusiastically. ‘As if I could do anything without consulting you!’

‘Not so fast!’ said his friend, laughing. ‘Wait till the time comes. I shall most likely seem then a wearisome old formalist, who——’

‘Never!’

‘But I tell you, it will be so, you obstinate young dog! There are temptations, Hugo, and you, with your temperament, will find them as hard to resist as if they were red-hot fiery hail. I am such a slow, phlegmatic sort of fellow. They don’t affect me in the same way. My temptations always come too late. By the time I begin to think I should like to do something either bad or idiotic, the chance is over, and I am saved. So I have got the reputation of being a very well-conducted sort of person, and not caring for the things other fellows care about.’

‘At any rate, I solemnly give the promise you ask, and should have done so if it had been ten times as binding—and there’s my hand upon it,’ said Hugo, to whom the idea of binding himself to any particular thing, by ‘solemn oaths and execrations,’ was especially fascinating and delightful. It seemed to surround him and his friend with a little romance, and to separate them from the outer crowd. It opened up vague possibilities of self-denial, trial, and probation, and a prospect of endurance through good and evil, thick and thin, which delighted his ardent soul.

‘Then that is settled,’ said Sebastian, contentedly. ‘We can talk about your going away later.’

It was towards the close of this conversation that Sebastian had been called away to Myles Heywood—the day, therefore, before the ball at Castle Hill.

On the following afternoon Sebastian had to go out. His mother asked him at lunch if he intended to go to the dance, and he said yes, he supposed he did—he must now, but he did not care about it, and did not think it was in very good taste to be having balls at such a time. Moreover, he had heard a rumour that Mr. Spenceley’s own affairs caused him some anxiety.

Mrs. Mallory said she supposed it was Mr. Spenceley’s own business; he ought to know best whether he were able to give balls at such a time. He could not put off his daughter’s twenty-first birthday for an indefinite time.

‘No,’ said Sebastian, ‘and that is just what makes the whole affair such a melancholy farce. His daughter is very anxious not to have any ball. She told me so, and nearly cried with vexation about it.’

Mrs. Mallory made no reply, and Sebastian, saying he had a meeting to attend, went out.

Hugo was that afternoon in one of his oft-recurring idle moods, and wandered about, apparently not knowing what to do with himself. He was anticipating the ball eagerly enough, having extracted from Helena the promise of no less than three waltzes—less of a distinction than he imagined, perhaps, since Helena, in granting them, had been thinking chiefly of escaping from the defective dancing and fatuous remarks of the Thanshope young men, amongst whom she enjoyed what she considered a fatal popularity. She had wondered whether to keep any dances for Sebastian. Would he ask her to dance at all?

‘Of course he will!’ she thought, ‘as a matter of duty, and I think I shall fill up my programme, and show it him without any comment when he asks me. Then he will raise his eyebrows in that way I hate, and make a little bow, and smile a little smile, and remark, “I see I am indeed too late;” and stand on one side, perfectly content not to dance, since the nicest girl he ever knew is not there.’

But these workings of the feminine mind could not possibly be known to Hugo, who was only aware that he had received an indulgent smile and a pleasant glance from Helena’s dark eyes, as she protested a little against the three waltzes, but yielded in the end. He repaired to the drawing-room, and, with characteristic fitfulness, spent the whole afternoon in playing waltzes, good, bad, and indifferent, of every kind and from every source he could think of. Waltz after waltz flowed from his rapid fingers. Gung’l and Strauss, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert—ancient and modern composers, good and bad ones, were laid under contribution, till his whole being seemed a waltz, and he was in a state of highly strung nervous excitement and anticipation, with which mingled the memories of past waltzes with partners of a bygone day. Hugo felt his whole soul penetrated with music, melody, and happiness as he sat in the shady corner of the drawing-room and saw the sun stream warmly in at the side window. He felt life that afternoon very full and rich and delicious, and crowded with sweet and grand possibilities. He felt at harmony with all the world, and was sure it was a good place to live in.

He had just finished the solemn, passionate strains of a waltz of Beethoven’s, and still his fingers lingered on the keys, and still his ears drank in the glorious notes, when the door opened and Mrs. Mallory came into the room.

Hugo stopped playing. She did not openly request him to do so, but he knew she disliked to hear him, and to his fastidious taste the very presence of an unsympathetic spirit was jarring. Spontaneity ceased; pleasure was gone.

He rose from the instrument, went to the sunny window, and hummed over the air he had been playing.

‘At what time do we go to-night, Mrs. Mallory?’ he presently inquired.

‘Go where?’

‘To the ball.’

‘At eight o’clock, I believe,’ she said, with stony coldness. Mrs. Mallory’s anger was coming to a climax now; it would be strange if Hugo did not say something which should cause the storm to break over his head. Unconsciously, unwittingly, he led straight up to the point.

‘I should like to dance every night,’ he said, rather enthusiastically, for his music still haunted him, and even Mrs. Mallory’s chill influence could not quite bring him down from his heights of abstraction to the commonplaces of every day—yet.

‘Very likely,’ she said. ‘I have noticed that the more frivolous a thing is, the more you delight in it.’

‘Dancing is not necessarily frivolous,’ Hugo assured her with the greatest solemnity. ‘It is, or should be, an art; not a mere kicking about of the legs.’

‘Indeed!’

‘When I grow up,’ continued Hugo, ‘that is to say, when I am majorat, come of age, I mean, and come into my property, I shall devote a great part of my time to dancing, I love it so.’

This was too much, far too much. It was high time that this vain, bombastical, self-conceited pauper was put down.

‘When you come into your property,’ she remarked with polite sarcasm, ‘then you can squander it just as you please. But I would advise you first to make certain that you have any property to come into.’

‘Oh, I don’t suppose I shall be rich. Sebastian knows all about it. He says he will explain all in good time.’

‘Sebastian is as foolish a young man, in some respects, as I know; and as for you, Mr. von Birkenau, I am at a loss to understand how any one professing to be a gentleman can behave as you do.’

‘As how?’ demanded Hugo, his brow suddenly clouding as he perceived that her words bore reference to something unknown to him.

‘Did Sebastian ever tell you, in so many words, that you had any property, any money, estate, possessions of any kind?’

‘N—no.’

‘I thought so. He is very trying, but I have always found him sincere, so far. I should have thought that very fact would have led you to think a little about your own position. That you can quietly accept another man’s bounty, and never ask the reason of it, never inquire into your own affairs, or ask whether you are living in a manner suitable to your future prospects—it is incredible! No one with any sense of honour could conduct himself in such a manner.’

‘I do not know what you mean—Sebastian knows,’ said Hugo, a dread suspicion beginning to creep into his heart. ‘He is my guardian, and I live as he pleases, of course. You know I do.’

‘Your guardian! That is about all he has to guard, I think.’

‘He is my guardian, and the guardian of my property, however small it may be. I dare say, to you, I may seem almost a beggar, but Sebastian——’

‘You make me pity you! I do not think it right that you should live under such a delusion any longer. Let me tell you that you have no property except what my son gives you. You live on his bounty. But for him you would be a beggar.’

‘You are not speaking the truth!’ said Hugo, suddenly standing before her and bending his flashing eyes upon her. ‘You know you are not speaking the truth.’

‘Where is it now, the glory and the dream?’

‘Am I not? You had better ask Sebastian. It was he who told me. I thought you considered him perfect in all respects—not being his mother.’

‘Sebastian told you that I lived on him—that he——’

‘That your mother committed you to his charge, and he took it into his head to adopt you. That, except what he gives you, you have nothing. He told me that, and I think it best that you should know it, for I consider your behaviour and conversation very unfit for your position. That is all that I have to say, or want to hear, upon the subject.’

Mrs. Mallory’s moral equilibrium was almost restored; she felt distinctly more cheerful and better satisfied with everything. For Hugo there remained only a hideous chaos, a general bouleversement of his fixed, contented conceptions of life and his sphere in it.

He walked out of the room, and stood in the hall a moment. What should he do—whither go? This was no place for him. He had no right here. He was the object of a rich man’s pitying charity—a beggar. Mrs. Mallory had said it, and said it after a fashion which left no doubt possible. Instead of playing a grand piano in a luxurious drawing-room, instead of going to balls and dancing with beautiful young women of large fortune, and driving about, and riding fine horses—all belonging to another man—instead of this, he ought to be—what? Well, if Sebastian had left him at the institution where he was being brought up, the authorities would at least have found him a trade and apprenticed him to it: he might have been at this moment a shopman or an usher, or a clerk, or somebody’s secretary and amanuensis. At least, he would not have been anybody’s dependent, loaded with so many obligations that their weight crushed and overpowered him.

By this time he had almost unconsciously ascended the stairs, and found himself in his own room. What must he do? It was impossible to let such a state of things continue any longer. What remained? To go, of course! The idea flashed like an inspiration upon him. He would fly—now, at once, Sebastian was out; Mrs. Mallory would certainly not try to prevent his departure. What should he take? what leave? He made an excited rush to his wardrobe, his drawers, and began to turn them out. Then another idea struck him. That would not do. They were all Sebastian’s things. Not one of them but had been bought with Sebastian’s money. He could not take any of them. It would be stealing. He looked down with a shudder at the very clothes he wore. No—he must take nothing; but he must go—he must get away from here, and go and earn some money, and pay Sebastian back.

But he never could do that. How could he repay the kindness, the advice, the friendship—the care that had watched over him, the generosity which had condoned a thousand impertinences and wayward wearisome fancies? No money, no service, could ever repay these things. But at least he must get away—must remove himself. That very generosity which he had so often proved might, for anything he knew, have wearied of him long ago, though it would never say so.

He rose with the vague intention of getting out of the house with as few impediments as possible, and, once out of it, never to re-enter it. And then memory and conscience again asserted themselves. What was it that he had promised Sebastian only last night? Not to do anything of any importance without first telling him of his intention. He could not even go, for he would not begin his new career by breaking his word to the man to whom he owed everything. He must wait.

‘Oh, Sebastian!’ groaned the poor boy, flinging himself face downwards upon a couch at the foot of his bed, ‘it was cruel, cruel of you! You should not have treated me thus!’

Men of Hugo’s temperament weep sometimes with almost womanly facility, and Hugo, in his new-born anguish and despair, wept now; and when the weeping was over, he did not rise, but remained with his face buried in the cushions, repeating to himself every item of Sebastian’s generosity, and his own blind, besotted self-confidence and ignorant assumption (such it appeared to him). A thousand things rose up in his memory, and he asked himself how he could have failed to comprehend their meaning, to have some suspicion of his real position. He resolved, with more and more impassioned eagerness, to go; to wait till he had redeemed his promise, and then to say farewell, and bid Sebastian forget him. How his heart ached at the thought! But no alternative was open to him. He was a gentleman. No gentleman could knowingly continue to live as he had been doing.

The time went on; whether long or short he could not tell. He did not keep count of the minutes or hours. His whole consciousness seemed to resolve itself into a desire to be gone, which had grown overpowering and intense, when a quick tap at the door was heard, then it was opened, and Sebastian’s voice said,

‘I say, Hugo, do you mean to go to this entertainment or not? Because if—why, what is the matter with you?’

‘I never knew, Sebastian! Upon my soul and honour I never knew till Mrs. Mallory told me to-day!’ exclaimed Hugo, starting up and confronting his horrified friend, with pale face, scintillating eyes, which bore traces of recent weeping, hair wildly tossed up and down his head, and generally demoralised aspect.

‘Didn’t know what, my dear fellow? What is all this excitement about?’

‘Mrs. Mallory told me, just a little while ago, the truth about myself,’ said Hugo, speaking rapidly and vehemently in German, as he nearly always did when agitated, and he began to stride excitedly about the room. ‘It was not right ... no, no! it was very cruel! you should not have done it. I have no right to reproach you, but you should not have laid such a burden upon me—a burden which is greater than I can bear ... aber, Gott im Himmel! what do I mean by reproaching you, when I owe you the very bread I eat, the very clothes I wear! Sebastian! Sebastian! It was not right!’ he reiterated passionately, coming to a stop, and standing before the other, upon whose mind the truth began to dawn.

His mother had played the traitor—had betrayed the trust which he had been weak enough to repose in her before he had understood her so well as he did now, and the result must be, in any case, a very painful explanation, and perhaps failure to convince Hugo; perhaps the alienation of a love which he prized more highly at this present moment than he ever had done before. For the moment, the first moment, his heart sank very low: he suddenly seemed to see everything that he most prized deserting him. Adrienne was lost to him, and his heart was yet smarting under that conviction. Yesterday he had seen Myles Heywood depart, expressing his gratitude, but, as he felt, unconquered, untouched at heart. Now, here was Hugo bitterly reproaching him for not having done what was right towards him. One stroke coming upon the other almost unmanned him momentarily, for the men with warm hearts and cool heads are necessarily more susceptible both to failure and success than the men with cool heads and cold hearts to boot.

Then he suddenly gathered himself together. Hugo was not gone; he was only drifting away from him. He would make a very strong struggle to still hold him fast to him; if he succeeded, he might take it as a good omen for the future—if not, the future must look after itself. He came into the room and closed the door.

‘You startle me, Hugo. This is something I did not expect. Suppose you tell me all about it, and we can discuss it. Shall we?’

‘There is nothing to be discussed. If it had not been for my promise to you yesterday, I should not be here now. As it is, I waited; but only to say that I am going at once—to clear myself—to tell you that I never knew....’

‘Why, Hugo, how could you know? If you had known, you would not have been what you are to me, the frank, open-hearted comrade, whose friendship and companionship have made me so happy.’

‘If I had known,’ said Hugo, ‘I should not have behaved myself like a mountebank, such as I must have seemed to you many a time, with my impertinences and fancies. Mrs. Mallory is quite right—for me to be thinking of balls and amusements and enjoyments is folly—madness. What an ape! what a confounded, conceited, self-important ape I must have seemed all these years! Acting as if I had great prospects before me, while all the time I am a beggar. It is hideous!’

He was getting excited again. His eyes began to flash and his foot to beat the floor restlessly. Sebastian noticed that he had not once looked at him during all this scene, but away from him: anywhere rather than meet his eyes.

‘Let me go,’ he added, in a choked voice. ‘Let me go, and forget me. That is all you and I can do, and it must be done at once.’

‘You will never leave me, any more than I can, or shall try to forget you.’

‘Why? Because I am under such obligations to you, that you can force me to obey you from very shame?’ asked Hugo, bitterly.

‘Not at all, Hugo, but because you love me, and I love you (if it were not so, after all these years, it would be strange), and you could never find it in your heart to wound me as such a proceeding would wound me.’

At last Hugo’s eyes turned to him; at last he stood still and looked at him, and Sebastian returned the look from his inmost heart. This soul-to-soul, searching gaze was a prolonged one, and Hugo at last, turning away, sat down on the sofa again, put his hand before his face, and said in a broken voice,

‘You could always do what you liked with me, and you can now. What do you want?’

‘I only want you to listen to me and believe me,’ said Sebastian. ‘If you will only believe me, all will be well.’

A movement of the head showed that Hugo was listening.

‘You have called me cruel—you have said that what I have done was not right. I cannot hear such accusations unmoved. Why have I been cruel?’

‘In putting me into a false position—making me believe myself to be what I am not.’

‘Somewhat insincere it may have been, but I do not see how I could well have acted otherwise. When your mother died you were equally badly off, so far as worldly circumstances go, as you are now. You did not know it. It was her weakness that she could not bear you, whom she adored, to know it. She had a horror of your learning that the institution at which you were being educated was a ch—I mean——’

‘A charity-school—yes.’

‘That’s right, old fellow! Put it as spitefully as you can. If you like, it was a charity-school—and a poor coarse inadequate place too, not the place for you. When I think of you there, it is horrible; I simply took the place of the authorities of that school towards you. They had nothing to bind them to you; no single tie existed. I had everything. I had been your mother’s intimate friend; she gave me, in her goodness, that which no service of mine could repay. I reverenced her in her lifetime, and I reverence her memory now. She knew what I wished; I discussed it with her fully and freely, and she gave her unqualified consent. She trusted you to me—gave you to me. Have you any right to impute wrong motives to her memory? You remember her perfectly well. You know what she was. You must know that she never acted but as she thought, from right and pure motives.’

‘I know; that alters it. But all the same it is very hard.’

‘I feel it so,’ said Sebastian. ‘Year by year I have been more glad that I had you as my firm and faithful friend, who would never desert me, whatever any one else did. I firmly believed that it was so, and you—you have so little regard for me, that you would leave me—quit me here at an hour’s notice, and why? Because you cannot, or will not, rise above a few miserable, material interests; because you let a few paltry, sordid coins (that is what it comes to) raise themselves between you and me, and make them into a wall which neither of us can pass. Yet you told me the other night that you could not be fickle—to me. Which am I to believe—your words or your actions?’

‘You may believe both now, when I tell you that I will do what you please. Shall I stay? I will do whatever you like—just whatever you like,’ said Hugo, in a dull, toneless kind of voice.

‘You call that doing what I please—remaining though you hate it. I thought—last night I was sure that it would have caused you pain to leave me.’

‘It will—would, I mean, cause me agony; but what am I to think, when you have told Mrs. Mallory, who hates me, my whole story, and kept it from me, whom you say you love?’

‘There I was wrong, Hugo—utterly wrong, I own it Had I known—but I must not say that. If I had it to do now, I should keep silence. But if you will not allow me one mistake, take your own way. Leave me alone. My mother opposes my wishes bitterly. The girl I love won’t have a word to say to me. I have no one left but Hugo von Birkenau—and he begs to decline my acquaintance. So be it!’

He turned to leave the room. His hand was on the door-handle, when Hugo overtook him.

‘Stop!’ said he, almost in a whisper. ‘You know me better than I know myself. I cannot leave you thus. If I thought I was of any good to you——’

‘I suppose I should go through all this, to keep a thing I didn’t care for. That is so like me!’ observed Sebastian.

‘Yes,’ said Hugo, with a half-laugh, half-choke, or sob; ‘I never thought of that.’

‘Of course not. You wish to repay me, as you call it, Hugo. The only way in which you can do it is to let me watch your future, as I have always hoped to do, till you are famous, and I am known as your greatest friend, eh?’

Hugo smiled faintly.

‘Your mother despises me,’ he began.

Sebastian shrugged his shoulders.

‘My dear boy, you must have seen that my mother is by no means graciously disposed towards any one or anything that I may have the misfortune to be fond of. As I like you better almost than any one, she naturally dislikes you proportionately. It is not a pleasant thing to have to say, but it is true. Surely, if you and I understand each other, it does not matter what outsiders think of us.’

‘No,’ said Hugo, and once more there was heartiness and confidence in his tone. ‘Forgive me my folly. It is over now.’

‘I thank you for making such a sacrifice to me.... When I came into the room it was to see what you were doing, as you didn’t appear at dinner. And, behold, nearly an hour has passed. The carriage will be here in ten minutes.’

‘I don’t think I shall go.’

‘Pray do, though, or I shall have to think that this reconciliation is only a sham one after all. Besides, Helena’s beaux yeux will not turn very amiably towards me, if I come without you.’

‘It depends upon yourself how Helena’s beaux yeux regard you,’ said Hugo; ‘but I will go. It would be insulting to her if I did not. I’ll get ready now.’

‘I must do the same,’ said Sebastian, leaving the room.

Hugo proceeded to dress himself. He found himself looking back upon the afternoon, when he had sat playing waltzes, as if it had been separated by years from the evening, and his present self was a stranger to himself of yesterday.

It was quite true. These few short hours had transformed him from a boy to a man. The process, which in some cases is one of such prolonged, lingering growth, had been with him effected at a leap, a single bound. The change proved itself most in the fact that he accepted the cross laid upon him; he felt himself possessed of that goodly, manly virtue, the ability to wait; two days ago he would have tried to rush away from pain and difficulty—now he could shake hands with them. As he dressed, he planned his course as it should be, subject to circumstances; not with the furious, fitful temper of an hour ago, but with calm, manly reasonableness and judgment.

When the carriage came round they stood in the hall, and Mrs. Mallory looked curiously at his pale, altered, composed countenance; but she saw in an instant, by the look that passed between him and Sebastian, that all was perfectly clear between them. The sweet accord of two noble natures was a thing beyond her power to grasp; but she saw that she had not succeeded in separating them, and recognised that she had done her cause no service by her interference.

CHAPTER XVI.

HOW HELENA CAME INTO HER FORTUNE.

The rooms at Castle Hill were nearly full, and the ball had just begun, when the Oakenrod party arrived. Sebastian offered his arm to his mother, and she took it, both of them having a very strong sense of the fact that the courtesy was a mere outside show, and that they would rather have been any number of miles apart. Followed by Hugo, they penetrated through the large square hall and the coffee-room, to the drawing-room, which blazed in the full splendour of unlimited wax-lights. In the centre of the room, looking very hot and very uncomfortable, they found Mrs. Spenceley alone. Her lord was nowhere to be seen, though her son was stationed at some little distance from her, helping her in the discharge of her duties with a Thanshopian grace and dignity all his own.

Sebastian, when his mother had finished her greetings and congratulations, went up to Mrs. Spenceley, and in his turn paid his devoirs.

The lady bore upon her face distinct traces of uneasiness of mind. There was something terrible and bezarre in the contrast between her expression and her attire. Helena had considerately tried to arrange her dress for her, with the natural sense of beauty and harmony of colour and material which she so strongly possessed. She had endeavoured to soften down the radiant hues contemplated by Mrs. Spenceley, and had succeeded in inducing her rather to dress herself in a magnificent robe of black satin. Diamonds twinkled upon her spacious bosom, and diamond pins fastened her gorgeous lace cap. Here Helena’s efforts had ceased to produce any effect. At this point Mrs. Spenceley’s own taste in dress asserted itself. She had thrown over her shoulders a floating scarf of crimson gauze, intertwined with lines of orient gold, and over which wandered abnormally large bunches of abnormally large grapes—purple grapes, with leaves of the same phenomenal proportions. This treasure had been put on in order, as she explained to Helena, ‘to cover my shoulders and give me a little colour; for, say what you will, a black satin and a white lace cap is not full enough for a woman of my years.’

In despairing resignation Helena had submitted, and the result was the apparition already described, looking, with the troubled, puzzled expression on her highly coloured face and the restless wandering of her gentle dark eyes, altogether so grotesque, that Sebastian’s quick observation instantly suspected something behind the gay show which surrounded them.

‘I am glad to see you, Mr. Mallory,’ she said, giving him her hand, and with an effort giving her attention to him. ‘I hope you’ll enjoy yourself, I’m sure. We’ve done all we could think of to make people enjoy themselves; but it is very provoking, Spenceley’s not coming at the last minute, isn’t it?’

‘I thought I missed Mr. Spenceley. Is he engaged?’

‘Oh, it’s this horrid business, you know. I said to him, I said, “Spenceley, if business is so uncertain, it’s a very sure thing that we oughtn’t to be giving balls in this style;” not but what I am very glad to see you, and I hope you’ll enjoy it,’ she hastened to add. ‘He had to go off to Liverpool early this morning, and he said he might have to come home by Manchester, but he’d try to be with us before we began. However, he hasn’t turned up.’

‘Very likely he has been detained.’

‘I expect so. These are anxious times, and it keeps a man on the strain, with things going first up and then down, and not knowing how anything will turn out,’ said Mrs. Spenceley, lucidly. ‘But aren’t you going to dance, Mr. Mallory? There’s lots of young ladies will be delighted to dance with you. See! there’s little Fanny Kay sitting out—the first dance, too. Do you know her?’

‘Yes, thank you. I don’t think I will dance at present. I’m looking for Miss Spenceley, to congratulate her; but she is not here, I think.’

‘She’s in the ball-room. You see, she had to open the ball, being for her own birthday, and all, and some of them were very anxious to begin. It makes it very awkward, Spenceley’s being away. But you’ll see Helena directly, I dare say. She said she should come straight here when the dance was over.’

‘I think I will go and see if it is over,’ said Sebastian, who saw Hugo leading off a white-robed virgin to the ball-room.

‘Ay, do; I’m sure they must be nearly done by now,’ she replied, drawing her dazzling scarf more closely about her, and obstinately refusing to lessen her fatigue by sitting down.

Sebastian crossed the hall, and at the door of the ball-room met Helena and her partner coming out. She was leaning on the arm of an elderly man, one of the Thanshope magnates, to whose lot it had fallen to guide her through the mazes of a duty-quadrille, by way of opening the ball. Helena looked bored, and the gentleman no less so. They were making straight for the drawing-room, in order to get rid of each other as soon as possible.

Helena did not at once see Sebastian, and he had time to notice how downcast and pale she looked, although so lovely. Mr. Rawson, her partner, was at this moment ‘collared’ in a summary manner by an acquaintance, and appeared particularly anxious to talk with him on congenial subjects. Mr. Mallory, therefore, seized the opportunity to advance and say:

‘Good evening, Miss Spenceley.’

Helena started, and turned quickly to him.

‘Mr. Rawson,’ proceeded Sebastian, ‘I see you are engaged. Allow me to take Miss Spenceley to the drawing-room—or wherever else you please,’ he added, in a lower voice, as Mr. Rawson, with evident gratitude, gave up his charge, and they walked away, her hand resting lightly on his arm.

‘Now he is happy with a friend of his own age,’ remarked Sebastian. ‘I could not find you in the drawing-room, so I came to seek you, in order to offer you my sincere congratulations upon this occasion.’

‘Why so sincere? You speak so emphatically that I begin to doubt your sincerity. Why congratulate me at all?’

‘What a question! I always understood, from your own words, that you looked forward to your twenty-first birthday as a moment of emancipation, when you would not be trodden down any more, and could really show the sex which fails to meet your approval what you think of them, and——’

‘I wish you would not keep talking in that way,’ said Helena. ‘It does not amuse me in the least, and I don’t see what fun there is in it.’

‘Fun! I had no idea of fun! You shock me. I am in the most solemn earnest I beg to be allowed to offer my congratulations to the heroine of the present occasion, and to wish you “many happy returns of this day.” You will permit me to do that?’

‘I am not a heroine, and the present occasion requires anything but congratulations,’ was all Helena said.

Her wonted brilliance and high spirits had quite deserted her, even in the presence of Sebastian Mallory, for whose delectation they were usually wont to flow rather more rapidly than at other times. In this new and more pensive mood Sebastian found the charm, which he had always owned, a strong one. He had never before found her so attractive. Her dress was less splendid, and more airy and girlish than usual. It was white and full and flowing, suggestive of tulle illusion and silvery clouds, and was dotted all over with little bunches of rosebuds. There was a string of pearls around her lovely throat; and, for all her paleness and downcast looks, her beauty came out triumphant.

‘She is a lovely creature!’ he thought, glancing downwards at the serious face and the dark lashes which swept her cheek.

‘Not a heroine!’ he said. ‘You must be one to-night, whether you like it or not. And as for congratulations, I could offer you a hundred reasons why people should congratulate you; but to confine myself to one, you are Helena Spenceley. Don’t you think that is reason enough for congratulation?’

They had wandered into a little anteroom, divided by curtains from one of the other sitting-rooms, and as Sebastian asked the last question they were standing in the middle of the room, and Helena looked at him. Her face was sad, and her eyes were bright with tears.

‘It is of no use; you cannot make me angry to-night, even by laughing at me. But if you want the satisfaction of knowing that your remarks wound me, take it: it is so.’

‘Helena! Miss Spenceley!’ he stammered, in confusion, for his words had not been free from malice, and he knew it. What he had not known was that Helena was in no mood for battle—that she did not even wish to quarrel with him.

‘If you are offended, I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I did not mean anything like what you imagine. And, since you do not choose to be congratulated, I withdraw the congratulations. May I say you have my good wishes?’

‘Not unless you mean it,’ said Helena, coldly; ‘and, when you think how different our thoughts and wishes, and hopes and objects in life are, you will, I hope, hesitate before making more pretty speeches.’

‘You are very severe. I think I had better say no more upon the subject. But,’ he added, with that air of almost affectionate interest which Helena believed she so greatly resented, ‘you are downcast and out of spirits to-night—not as you should be for your own birthday ball. How is it?’

In so matter-of-fact a tone was the question asked, that Helena scarcely felt it strange that he should put it, and began in a docile manner to explain.

‘How can I be otherwise? It is such nonsense. What is the good of having a ball? I don’t want a ball. I wanted to be quiet. I go about every day, from house to house, and see people starving—much better people than I am, or ever shall be—and then I have to come home and see money flung away on a ball—for me—because such an important personage has condescended to live twenty-one years in this horrid, grimy old world; and to put on a dress that has cost—no, I will never reveal all my shame, but I could tear my dress to pieces when I think of a woman whom I saw this afternoon, and who was crying as if her heart would break, because she had to pawn her husband’s and children’s Sunday clothes, and their best tea-things, that she had when she was married. I thought of this dress, which was got on purpose for me at Paris, and which cost about ten times as much as the materials that made it are worth,’ said Helena passionately, ‘and when I put it on, I felt as if I were putting on my shroud.’

‘I am very sorry—only you won’t believe it, because I say so, but surely now it will be different? You must not get morbid. That never does any good. You will have wealth of your own now, and be your own mistress, when you can take your revenge on all these fine clothes, and go about in home-spun, or even sackcloth, if you choose.’

‘Yes,’ said Helena dispiritedly, ‘I know; but I should not like it. I love expensive things, and I hate coarse and common ones. And I am beginning to think that perhaps I am not such a very fit person to have money. I have heard a great deal about money lately, and I don’t fancy it is so easy to manage as I used to think.’

‘Miss Mereweather will assist you,’ he said, half smiling.

‘Don’t name Miss Mereweather to me,’ said Helena, with sudden animation. ‘She has deceived me cruelly. I never was so cut-up about anything.’

‘What has she done?’

‘She has got married,’ said Helena, in a determined voice, as if anxious to get the worst over.

‘Got married!... Why ... and a very good wife she will make, if she has got the right sort of husband. I remember thinking, that evening I met her here, what a capital head of a large establishment she would make....’

‘Did you?’ said Helena, with a curious quaver in her voice, half laughter, half astonishment. ‘Well, you must have been right. She has married a clergyman who is the head of a very large boys’ school—a sort of college.’

‘The very thing for her. I wish, when you write, you would ask if she remembers my insignificance, and offer my warmest congratulations and good wishes.’

‘When I write!’ echoed Helena, scornfully. ‘I wrote to her once, after I heard of it, but never again. I told her my mind.’

‘Did you really? What did you say?’

‘I said she was a traitor to her sex and her cause, and that, as I still held my old opinions, I could not be her friend any longer.’

‘How awful for her! May I ask whether she made any reply?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Helena, her colour rising, ‘she made a very stupid reply.’

‘Won’t you tell me what it was?’

‘No, it was too silly.’

‘I believe you got the worst of it.’

‘At least, it was too ridiculous to repeat.’

‘Perhaps she said, “Wait and see;” or, “Don’t shout till you are out of the wood!” only more elegantly expressed.’

‘She—oh, there is Hugo coming. This is my first dance with him.’

‘Miss Spenceley, will you be very kind to Hugo to-night? Really and truly, he has had a great trouble.’

‘I will. Poor boy!’

‘And have you any dances left?—a waltz? Though I can hardly hope it. You must have been engaged long ago, for the whole evening?’

‘In that case you might have spared yourself the trouble of asking,’ said Helena, rather defiantly; but as their eyes met, hers wavered.

‘Perhaps you have still one left,’ said he, capturing her programme and opening it.

‘It looks very full,’ he said; ‘but—ah, yes! here is one, a waltz—two waltzes. This is extraordinary—my luck, I mean; don’t you think so? And may I——’

He paused, looking inquiringly at her as he held the pencil suspended over the card.

‘Two waltzes!’ exclaimed Helena, innocently. ‘Oh, but that must be a mistake. I know when Mr. Consterdine came just now I told him I had not one left.’

‘No doubt you told him what was good for him,’ said Sebastian, with laudable gravity. ‘At least, we will make it quite sure now. There: “S. M., 6,” and “S. M., 10.” Thank you, very much.’

With a bow and a half-smile he resigned her to Hugo, who came up at that moment to offer congratulations and to claim his dance, while Sebastian walked away to while away the time until ‘Number 6’ should begin.

As he danced only once or twice with any one but Helena, he had ample opportunity of observing the general features of the entertainment, and he soon saw that Helena’s depression was but a part of that obvious more or less throughout the whole assembly. The rooms were dazzling, the decorations were unutterably gorgeous, the brilliance of the lights amounted to an absolute glare, and became oppressive and terrible. On all sides there was evidence of the most lavish expenditure; flowers, furniture, attendants, refreshments, all seemed to cry in loud and blatant voices, ‘Try us; we are of the very best. No stint here, because expense is no object, absolutely none at all.’ It would have been exceedingly amusing, and Sebastian was by no means slow to see the humorous side of ambitious entertainments of that kind; but the amusing part of it was quite overcome and swamped by the great and nameless cloud and oppression that hung over it all. What was the reason of that cloud? Surely not the simple fact that the master of the house was absent. That alone would have been a relief rather than otherwise.

For he came not, and came not, and poor Mrs. Spenceley still looked ill at ease: and at last Sebastian noticed some one else begin to look ill at ease too, and to glance round with a suspicious, watchful air now and then. That person was Frederick Spenceley. Something was wrong, something lay behind it all, thought Sebastian, as he stood in the cool hall after his first dance with Helena, that is to say, between ten and eleven o’clock. During that dance they had quite forgotten to flout each other, or to do anything but enjoy themselves. He had said all he could to raise that nameless cloud from her face, and he had been startled to find what brilliant success had attended his efforts. Helena had soon smiled again, and had half confessed that she had kept the two dances for him, and had even blushed and laughed when he teased her about it. He was thinking of that waltz, and humming the tune to which they had danced as he paced about the hall, while he still seemed to feel Helena lightly resting in his arms, her fleet foot keeping pace with his; and he began to wish that he had not four whole dances to wait before his next one with her came.

‘She is very lovely, and there is something very bewitching about her,’ he said to himself for the second time that evening.

A dance was going on in the ball-room, and the hall at the moment was empty, save for himself. He paused before a huge mirror, which had been raised at one end of it, and in front of which was erected a fragrant pyramid of flowers and ferns, delicate hothouse blossoms, and feathery aromatic leaves. There was a blaze of light all around, and the staircase and part of the gallery running round the second story were reflected in the mirror. Sebastian stood before the pyramid of flowers, and gently first touched one and then the other, and then his eyes fell upon the reflection of his own face, and he was surprised to see how grave it looked; for he did not feel particularly grave at the moment, and that interview with Adrienne Blisset seemed to hang like a dream in the far background of his consciousness, while another face and form, flower-crowned and glowingly beautiful, advanced to the front.

Suddenly he became conscious, as it were, of some shadow crossing the glass, and looking higher, to where the staircase was reflected, he saw the figure of a man stealing carefully, softly, noiselessly up the stairs, keeping well to the wall, with averted face, as if anxious to get as quickly as possible out of all that obtrusive glare of light and stream of dancing sound.

CHAPTER XVII.

HOW MR. SPENCELEY MET HIS DIFFICULTIES.

Sebastian’s first thought naturally resolved itself into the words, ‘A thief in the night;’ some evil-disposed person who thought to penetrate to some of the bedrooms, in the confusion, and perhaps reap a harvest of neglected brooches, watches, or shawl-pins. In such a case, it was his duty at once to warn the servants, and he was in the act of turning to go and do so as quickly as possible, when the figure reached the head of the first flight of stairs, and turned to mount the next. As this happened, Sebastian caught a momentary glimpse of the face. He was long sighted, and not given to making mistakes in the matter of identity. The man who was stealing so quietly up the stairs in such evident fear of detection was, one would suppose, the last person who should need to act in so strange a manner. It was Mr. Spenceley himself, the master of the house.

With great presence of mind Sebastian checked his movement to turn round, and neither started nor stirred, but stood pensively trifling with a fern leaf, as he gave himself time to reflect upon what had happened.

The vague, floating rumours which he had heard, as to the ‘shakiness’ of Mr. Spenceley’s commercial position, recurred to his mind. Probably there was something in them. His own business and that of Mr. Spenceley lay in utterly different lines: he had not come across him in any commercial transactions; but he knew men who had, and who were of opinion that Spenceley was playing rather a dangerous game. During those troublous years some fortunes were made, and many were lost—lost by men who seemed as little likely to fail as Mr. Spenceley of Castle Hill. Sebastian pictured the feelings of his mother, supposing she were to hear any such rumour—his mother who was probably at that moment listening with affecting interest and politeness to some circumlocutory history from the lips of Mrs. Spenceley, à propos either of Fred or of Helena. This was the day on which Helena was to come into—not her whole fortune—that was only to happen at her father’s death, or if she married—but of so much of it as would make her what many people would call a rich woman. Sebastian thought of this, and wondered if the fortune were but

‘A fleeting show

For man’s illusion given.’

His thoughts turned persistently to the girl with whom he had so lately been dancing. It was all in her honour, this ghastly, hollow mockery of an entertainment, with its spectres and shadows flitting and stealing about. All for her! She was crowned with roses, which were indeed the fitting flower for so beautiful a rose as she was herself. Those great pearls round her neck, and those massive bracelets on her slender arm—his mind recalled each item of her dress, and, as it were, every line of her beauty; he saw her standing, as she had stood more than once that evening, with a crowd round her, of friends and well-wishers—for she was popular—who congratulated her, and brought her flowers and bouquets—chiefly roses—the flowers of love and triumph. And ever, as he pictured her thus, that shadowy, stealing figure seemed to lurk and crouch behind them, now uncovering its face a little, and then, with a smile of weird meaning, drawing the veil again. He shuddered a little, and turned hastily towards the ball-room; stood in the doorway and looked. Yes, there was Helena with Hugo; he was glad she was with Hugo; smiling and laughing with him, as they flew swiftly by, past the door, and her perfumed skirts brushed him and sent an odd little thrill through him.

The ball progressed, and the evening drew drearier and drearier; he heard the excuses made by Mrs. Spenceley, and saw the care growing darker upon her brow; he heard the regrets of the guests, and saw the increasing uneasiness of the looks cast about him by Fred, with a strange sense that he alone could, if he chose, point the way upstairs and say, ‘You will find the explanation of all, if you go there and ask.’

As the tenth dance was about to begin, he saw Fred make some excuse to the lady whom he was leading to the ball-room; heard the words, ‘Very sorry—back in a minute.’ The young lady was put on a cushioned bench beside the wall, and Fred quickly departed, with a look of resolution on his face. Sebastian, with Helena on his arm, looked after Spenceley. He was going upstairs. Mallory, throughout all the dance, could not keep himself from wondering what was taking place in one of those upper rooms. What confession, or what revelation? Were things very bad? Was the crisis a very critical one?

‘You have become perfectly silent, Mr. Mallory—not to say morose,’ remarked Helena. ‘And when I was dancing with Hugo, I saw you looking in upon us with a sort of glare. What is the matter?’

‘Oh, nothing! Miss Spenceley, when did you last see your father?’

‘This morning, quite early: you know we have breakfast at eight, because we are business people. He gave me these pearls that I have on for a birthday present, and though I would much rather have had no presents, they were so beautiful, and I am so weak, that I was in ecstasies with them. But papa said he had very important business in Liverpool, and he might have to go to Manchester too. Still, he is very late,’ she added, as they began to dance again.

The waltz was over. Every one was streaming into the supper-room; Helena, with Sebastian, remained in the ball-room, watching the people out, to see that all went, when voices made themselves heard: young men were calling out, ‘I say, Spenceley!’—‘Where’s Fred?’—‘Who’s to sit where?’—‘Fred, Mrs. Spenceley wants to ask you something.’

‘Where can Fred be?’ exclaimed Helena, craning her neck to look round. ‘It is very strange in him to go away just now, when he ought to be seeing after things.’

They were standing beside a door of the ball-room; not that leading into the hall, but one which opened into a passage leading to the billiard-room, and thence to the kitchen regions and offices. Almost as Helena spoke, the door was suddenly opened, and a young woman appeared, with frightened face, and widely distended eyes, who, seeing Helena, began, after the manner of her kind, to wring her hands, and exclaim, in much agitation,

‘Oh, Miss Spenceley! Where’s missis? Oh, how dreadful! Oh!’

‘What is the matter?’ demanded Helena in a clear, decided voice.

‘Oh—master, m’! He’s——’

‘Stop!’ said Sebastian, suddenly and sternly, as he took the girl’s arm, and gave it a little shake, to restore her to her senses. ‘Don’t make such a noise! Miss Spenceley, wait here a moment. Come here!’ he added to the girl—one of the housemaids—as he drew her into the passage, and closed the door. ‘Now, what is the matter? Your master has returned. I saw him. Is he ill?’

‘Oh, sir,’ she said, with an hysterical sob, ‘he’s dead! He’s lying on the sofa in his room, and——’

‘Dead!’ repeated Sebastian, and he knew in a moment what it meant. ‘Where is Mr. Fred? Is he with him?’

‘No, sir. I haven’t seen him. I thought he was here.’

Sebastian, with a growing fear that the whole thing was much blacker and more dreadful than he had suspected, bade the young woman wait a moment, while he returned to Helena. He had rapidly reviewed the circumstances, and found there was nothing for it but to go to her. Fred was gone: he did not like to let the idea, ‘absconded,’ shape itself, even in his mind; but all the same, it was there, like an ugly black spectre. To burst upon Mrs. Spenceley with such news would have been in the highest degree inhuman and improper. Helena alone remained to take this fearful burden upon her shoulders.

He found Helena standing in the same place in which he had left her, and the last of the guests disappearing through the hall to the supper-room. Helena was composed and calm, but her eyes, as they met his, told him that she suspected a catastrophe.

‘I want you to come with me,’ said he, drawing her arm through his, and speaking in a low, gentle voice, and then they stood in the passage, with the servant-maid.

‘Show me the room where your master is, and do not speak,’ he said to her; she was crying bitterly, in a cowed and helpless fashion, but was less excited, less inclined to shriek out her dreadful news to every one she met. Helena’s face grew white, but she neither trembled nor spoke, as they followed the girl up the backstairs to a landing-door, which she threw open, and then they found themselves standing on the gallery which formed the landing, and from which all the bedroom doors opened out.

‘Which is your master’s room?’ asked Sebastian.

The maid pointed to a door, and cried more bitterly still, while Helena’s face grew whiter and more set every minute.

‘Have you seen Mr. Fred at all this evening?’

‘I saw him run upstairs, sir, and then I saw him go to his own room; but he’s not there now, and I’ve never seen him since.’

‘Very well, you can go now; but remember, you are to be silent, or it will be worse for you. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir. I won’t say nothing, indeed!’ said the weeping young woman, going away with her muslin apron to her eyes.

He turned to Helena. He felt he must not defer it any longer. There was pity and tenderness in his eyes and in his voice, as he said,

‘Now, Helena, you are brave, and you must be as brave as you can to-night.’

‘Tell me what it is!’ she said; ‘but don’t keep me waiting any longer.’

‘I must keep you waiting just a few moments,’ said he. ‘I want you to sit down here, and not move, while I go to your father’s room—will you?’

‘Yes,’ said Helena, seating herself with a prompt docility which contrasted strangely with her white face and distended eyes.

Sebastian left her, walked into the room, and found it all as he had expected. Mr. Spenceley had committed suicide. He had taken prussic acid, and lay dead upon the couch at the foot of his bed. Sebastian, looking quickly round, saw a written paper lying on the floor at his feet. It was merely a scrap of paper, with the words,

‘Dear Lizzie,—I am a ruined man, and I can’t bear it. I’ve never made you very happy, and the best I can do is to leave you. I don’t know what will be left, but there is always your money of your own, and Nelly’s that I——’

Here it broke off. It was not torn; it was as if the facts had rushed over the man as he wrote these words, and he had failed to pen another syllable. There was no proof that Fred had absconded, or that he knew his father’s fate. Sebastian knew he must put the matter in the best light; but he himself felt an absolute certainty of conviction on the matter.

He took the paper and went out of the room, locking the door and putting the key in his pocket. Helena looked up as he came to her, but said not a word.

‘Helena,’ he began, ‘from what has happened to-night, I fear your father has found that he is ruined.’

‘Is that all?’ said Helena, drawing a long breath of relief.

‘No. That, if true, is the least part of it. Remember what this must have been to your father. Prosperity and success were his very life.’

‘Do you mean that it has killed papa?’ asked Helena with unnatural calm, fixing her eyes upon his face.

‘I wish to spare your mother, or I would not tell you this. It has killed him—that is, he could not bear to live after such a fall. My poor child, your father has destroyed himself.’

‘He has—oh!’ came like a whisper from her white lips. Face, cheeks, brow, lips, were white as the dress she wore. She caught at a chair which stood near and supported herself upon it, looking at him with a stare of blank, utter horror, which he felt to be almost unbearable. For weeks afterwards he was haunted by the vision of the white figure in its cloudy dress; the roses scattered about it, all like one white marble figure, save the dusky hair and eyes which looked coal-black by contrast with her face.

‘Think of your mother,’ said he, feeling that that spell of horror must be broken, and he gently put his arm round her, and placed her in the chair on which she had been leaning. She did not speak for a moment, but at last said,

‘Oh, poor mamma! If she only need not know.’

‘I fear she must know a great deal of it.’

Then Helena put the question which he dreaded.

‘But where can Fred be all this time?’

‘He is not in the house. He may have gone away to see if the failure is complete—if anything remains to be saved,’ said Sebastian; ‘at any rate he is not here.’

‘Ah, yes!’ said Helena, and no suspicion like Sebastian’s conviction even for a moment troubled her mind. He gave her the paper he had found.

‘I have read it; I thought it best,’ said he. ‘And now I want you to go to your own room, and I will send Mrs. Spenceley to you, and ask all these people to go away. You will allow me!’

‘You are very good,’ said Helena, calmly.

‘You must break just what you think fit to Mrs. Spenceley,’ he added. ‘There is no one but you to do it, and she will hear it best from you. For her sake, you will keep up this brave, calm behaviour till the worst is over.’

‘Yes; and then?’

‘Trouble yourself about nothing else to-night. I will see to everything until your brother comes back. I will stay here all night. You need not leave your room again.’

Helena rose without speaking; looked at him with an indescribable expression; her lips moved, as if she would have spoken; but, without a word, she turned and went to her room. Sebastian watched until the door had closed after her, and that silence seemed to leave an enormous want in his heart. There was silence, except a murmur coming from the supper-room. That reminded him of his duty. With another earnest look at that closed door, he went downstairs.

He made his way to Mrs. Spenceley, and asked her to go to her daughter in her room. With a deep flush of terror and foreboding, she went. Neither husband nor son was there to support her. A stranger took her to the foot of the stairs and left her. Sebastian’s soul was quite possessed with the idea of these two women; one telling, the other learning, the extent of their awful calamity, so far as it was known. It haunted him, but he gathered himself together, and easily catching the attention of the startled company, he merely told them that Mrs. and Miss Spenceley wished him to express their great regret at having to leave their guests, in consequence of very distressing news which they had just received. Frederick Spenceley had had to leave home immediately, and he thought, as it was already late, the kindest thing they could do would be to leave the house as soon as possible.

Amidst a wild buzz of inquiries, suggestions, and speculations, the guests dispersed. In an hour the house was quiet, and Helena had gently told her mother the whole truth as far as she knew it.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DOWN IN THE WORLD.

It was not until late in the afternoon of the following day that Sebastian, not forgetting his appointment with Myles Heywood, found it possible to return to his own home.

That was a dreadful day, bringing in its course fresh disclosures of dishonesty on the part of both father and son of the Spenceleys, fresh shame and humiliation to the sorely proved Helena; fresh bursts of wild, hopeless weeping and meaningless questions from her poor mother. Mrs. Spenceley was, of course, perfectly bewildered by everything, and could only reiterate that she had told Spenceley, over and over again, that if business was so precarious, they had no right to be giving balls; and she knew it would turn out badly, she had said so all along. Then a fresh burst of weeping, and the inquiries:

‘Helena, my dear, I s’pose we shall have to leave here. What do you think we shall be allowed to keep? Will everything have to be sold?’

To all of which Helena, pale, composed, and gentle, made answers as soothing as she could.

It was upon her head that the cruellest shame and humiliation naturally fell. Sebastian asked her, almost as soon as he met her in the morning, what friends or relations there were with whom he could communicate on the subject of her father’s death, and to whom he could resign his present authority.

‘But there is Fred,’ said poor, unconscious Helena. ‘He is sure to be back soon. He will come by one of the early trains from Manchester, I am sure.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Sebastian, feeling his task a hard one. ‘And even if he did, it is not right that your friends and relations should not be summoned. Don’t think I wish to withdraw the little assistance I can offer you, but I have no right to the position. It is absolutely necessary that I give the responsibility into some proper hands.’

‘I don’t know of any one except Uncle Robert, and papa and he were not good friends. He is mamma’s brother. I think he would come if we sent for him.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘In Manchester; I will give you his address,’ said Helena.

When she had done so, Sebastian telegraphed to Mr. Robert Bamford, requesting him to come over as soon as possible on urgent business. An answer came to the effect that Mr. Bamford would arrive some time in the afternoon. It was for his appearance that Sebastian waited. He and Helena were in the library. He was trying to explain to her the circumstances which had made it possible for her father to fail, and Helena was giving her best attention, but, with all the goodwill in the world, utterly helpless before the technical business terms and details. Her sad face with its serious, puzzled look, was in sharp contrast with that of the Helena Spenceley whom Sebastian had always hitherto known.

‘You see,’ said she, suddenly looking up at him with a wan attempt at a smile, ‘you had every right to laugh at me when I boasted my business capacities. No one could be more ignorant. I see it now.’

‘It was not unnatural,’ said he, gently. ‘People with a cheque-book and a balance at the banker’s, are apt to think they understand business when they don’t. But it is of no consequence, really. The thing has happened, and if you had known all the secrets of the Stock Exchange you could not have prevented it.’

‘No, I know,’ said Helena, looking wearily round. ‘I wonder if Fred will come back with Uncle Robert. I daresay he has been to consult him. Don’t you think so?’

‘It may be so; at least, your uncle will be able to tell us something about him.’

‘How I wish it was all over,’ she went on, ‘and that we were safely housed in, wherever we go to—some back street in Manchester, I dare say.’

‘Oh, it may not be quite so bad as that.’

‘I never said I thought that would be bad,’ said Helena, leaning her elbows, as if utterly tired out, upon the table, and resting her head upon her hands. Sebastian felt a deep pity stir his heart. She had already suffered so much—she had still so much more, and so much worse to suffer. Perhaps all this pain would make her what people, what he himself, would call ‘more reasonable.’ But she was very sweet in her unreasonableness. It seemed rather sad that she must go through such an ordeal in order that she might become like other people.

At this point a servant announced ‘Mr. Robert Bamford,’ and Helena’s uncle arrived. Now Sebastian felt sure some painful truths would have to be told, and he again looked with a strange strength of compunction at the beautiful, weary, white face of Helena.

Mr. Bamford was a very plain, rough-spoken man indeed, who walked with a heavy step into the room, glanced at Sebastian from a pair of shrewd, dark eyes, and without waiting for an introduction, gave a stiff little nod, and said, ‘Your servant, sir;’ and then turned to his niece with the greeting, ‘Well, Helena, this is a pretty business.’

‘It is very sad, uncle,’ said she, facing him, pale, and with dilated eyes. ‘I think we had better not talk about it, but see what is to be done.’

‘There’s not much left to be done now that yon precious brother o’ yours has given us the slip.’

‘What?’ said Helena, growing paler than before, and putting her trembling hands upon the table to support herself. ‘Fred given you the slip—what do you mean? He has gone to see about papa’s affairs. He—I expected him to come back with you. What has he done?’

There was no defiance in the tone, only apprehension.

‘Done!’ ejaculated Mr. Bamford, plunging his hands into his pockets and almost running about the room in his excitement. ‘Done! Why, he’s taken everything he could lay his hands on in the shape of money or money’s worth, and he’s off—perhaps to America, but certainly to the devil.’

‘Do you mean that Fred has acted dishonourably?’ asked Helena, almost inaudibly, and trembling still more.

‘Dishonourably! Why, you know nothing. Every one in Manchester knows it by this time. There’s been precious little honour wasted on the whole business, my lass. We know what to think when the men make away with themselves one way or another, and leave the women and the debts behind them.’

‘But my father—it was his misfortune—he did not——’

‘The less said about your father’s transactions, for the last six weeks, the better,’ said Mr. Bamford, curtly.

‘Consider Miss Spenceley’s feelings, sir!’ interposed Sebastian, unable to endure seeing Helena’s despair, and feeling a glow almost of hatred towards Mr. Bamford, and what struck him as his brutality. Helena had turned away and covered her face with her hand, as a man might do who is sorely hit on some vital point—it was more a man’s gesture than a woman’s. Neither groan nor cry escaped her, but Sebastian saw that the iron had entered into her soul. That which she endured was the keenest moral anguish—the supremest of all pains. He could understand it. Her beauty was enhanced: the reckless, impetuous girl, with her ‘disorganised’ ideas, which he had laughed at before now, was transformed into the noble woman, who must bear things which only women can or do bear—the punishment for the sins of their masculine shields and protectors. ‘She has had a very severe shock already,’ he went on, ‘and it cannot be necessary to pain her with——’

‘She must know the truth, and the sooner the better,’ said Mr. Bamford, irascibly. ‘If she is a girl of spirit, she will not wish to be deceived, and anyhow her whole life will have to be changed, and come down a peg or two, for the sins of her father shall be visited upon her.’

‘You are very kind, Mr. Mallory,’ said Helena, turning to them again and speaking calmly, though her face had, even in those few minutes, taken an older, worn expression, which shocked Sebastian. ‘I wish to know the worst at once. I can bear it. I did not know there had been anything dishonourable. Go on, uncle. I am not afraid, and I must know what I have to tell my mother.’

‘By ——, the lass has a spirit of her own!’ observed Mr. Bamford. ‘Now that I see what she’s made of, I may try to explain things to her a bit.’

‘Then I will leave you,’ said Sebastian. ‘Miss Spenceley will tell you that I made what arrangements were immediately necessary. I shall take the liberty of calling soon,’ he added to Helena, ‘in the hope that I may be of some assistance to you. May I?’

‘You are very kind,’ she said, still with the same unmoved calm, as she gave him her hand. ‘I shall be glad to see you whenever you call. Perhaps, another time I can thank you better for your goodness; but at present——’

‘Pray do not thank me; there is not the very least necessity,’ said he, as he left the room.

‘Now, Uncle Robert!’ said Helena.

‘Who is that young fellow?’

‘Mr. Sebastian Mallory.’

‘Young Mallory of the Oakenrod, who has been acting the philanthropist since he came from abroad?’

‘Has he? Yes, it is that Mallory.’

‘Any particular friend of yours?’

‘No,’ was the cold response. ‘He happened to hear first of my father’s death last night, and as there was no one else here, and no one to do anything, he has been kind enough to arrange things for me since. I know very little of him.’

‘H’m! ha! Well, we must get to business.’

In a very short time Helena was made acquainted with what had happened, and with the bare and naked outline of her approaching future life. The less said of her brother the better, said Mr. Bamford. He believed that the sum with which he had absconded was about two thousand pounds. As for her father—he softened his tone a little, out of consideration for Helena—he was to blame, too, for not drawing in when first he began to find himself in difficulties; ‘only that would have brought him down in the world, and he couldn’t bear it; so, instead of going one step lower, and then climbing up again when he had a chance, he has waited, till he had to tumble down to the ground, and can never get up again,’ remarked the merchant drily, while Helena listened.

She showed him the scrap of paper which Sebastian had given her.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Bamford; ‘that money of yours is a myth——’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ said his niece, in a deep, almost resentful tone. ‘And if it had been there—every penny—I should not have kept it now, of course.’

‘And what your mother was to have had—it’s all in the business; was, I mean. It has gone with the rest.’

‘I am glad of that too,’ observed Helena, concisely. ‘Then no one will have the power to say that we were well off while other people suffered.’

‘Your wardrobe and jewellery will be your own, of course. Your jewels and your mother’s must be worth a pretty good sum, Helena.’

‘My jewellery will be sold, and mamma’s too.’

‘Please yourself about your own; but if your mother is not your father’s most pressing creditor, I don’t know who is. Of course she will sell her jewels; but she will keep the proceeds, and you will abstain from meddling in matters you don’t understand.’

‘I understand right and wrong, uncle, and I shall do what I feel to be right.’

‘Eh!’ he repeated, with a kind of chuckle: ‘the lass has a spirit in her after all.’

They would have to leave Thanshope. Helena must try to find some employment. He would give them a home until that was accomplished; to his sister as long as she chose to stay with him. If she liked she might keep house for him, but if she chose to also try some means of gaining a livelihood, he would do what he could to help her. More, he thought, they could not expect.

‘Certainly not,’ said Helena, composedly. ‘We have no right to expect so much, and may consider ourselves fortunate in having you for a friend.’

She had always asked for work, she reminded herself when she was alone—real work, necessary work—not the fads with which rich women try to deceive themselves by calling them work. Behold! here was every prospect of as much work as she liked, and yet she found nothing cheering in it. Only—anything to get away from this sham life of sham luxury, sham state, sham riches, sham everything—away from the world’s eyes and those of Sebastian, into obscurity and poverty, which, she felt, would be no shams, but stern realities, with front of brass and eyes of stone.

CHAPTER XIX.

IRREVOCABLE.

‘Good-bye, Heywood, I wish you every success, and you carry the assurance of success in yourself. You will return to England a man of mark.’

‘I trust never to return to England,’ replied Myles, standing up in Sebastian’s study, in the act of going. ‘I am afraid it will seem ungracious to you when I say I don’t care much about success. I want work; I don’t care whether it’s successful or not. There’s a verse in the Bible about “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” There may be many sorts of souls, don’t you think so?’

‘Yes, certainly. But I think time will soften these feelings of yours. Some time you will find yourself wishing to return to England.’

Myles shook his head, with a half-smile, at once melancholy and sceptical. He ever wish to return to the place where Adrienne lived, Sebastian Mallory’s wife! They had left the study, and gone to the hall door.

Straight before them, separated only by the garden and the dirty little river, was the broad, busy street—the beautiful building of the town-hall rose through the dusk before them. Lights twinkled; feet and wheels sped rapidly past. As they paused before the open door, the chimes rang out, clear and melodious; nine struck solemnly, and the old tune which haunted Myles, so interwoven was it with all the most sacred feelings of his life, was borne through the air in broken, fitful gusts of sound.

Sebastian heard it too.

‘Take that as an omen,’ said he, earnestly. ‘The old poet old Martin Usteri, in his homely German town, touched a deeper truth when he wrote that little song of his, than all our present pessimistic sages put together can cram into their learned books. Don’t forget the tune when you are away.’

‘I am not likely ever to forget it,’ said Myles. ‘Good-bye, and thank you. I cannot say more.’

With a pressure of the hand he was gone. Sebastian heard his quick step along the gravel—then he heard the gate open and swing to after him; and then Myles Heywood’s form and footsteps were lost in the general rush along the busy street. Sebastian was left to listen to the last echoes of the chimes, and to hum softly to himself—

‘Freut Euch des Lebens,

Weil noch das Lämpchen glüht!

Pflücket die Rose,

Eh’ sie verblüht.’

Myles was striding quickly homewards. In the hurry, preparation, and excitement of the last two days his mind had regained somewhat its vigour. It was not that he felt at all happier, or satisfied, or contented—not that life appeared much brighter to him, only it had to be lived. He set that formula before his mind, and never allowed a doubt upon the subject to intrude, because he dared not. He felt that his only safe, his only reasonable course of action, was to press forward sternly and as rapidly as possible; to cast from him his old life like a worn-out coat, and begin the new one.

There was the prospect before him of life, struggle, striving, which he knew was worth a hundred of the lives he had been leading, which he knew it was his duty to accept and fulfil. The mere idea of it—of the difficulties to be overcome, and the possibilities to be attained—attracted him and braced him up, even while all he must leave seemed to grow dearer and more desirable as it was thrust farther into the background. There was no turning back now; a delay was what he most dreaded. He had grown a little grim and hard in his resolute pressing forward; even Mary fancied that he left them with a kind of exultation, and grieved the more, even while she felt no surprise.

This evening he walked rapidly up the hilly street, ‘for the last time,’ he kept saying to himself, and hoping so too. How he had loved this prosaic, commonplace, dingy manufacturing town! What memories hung about it! Memories of a childhood spent amongst those he loved, of a youth and young manhood, which had not been without their honest, hearty struggles, strivings, and conquests, as well as their backslidings and failures; memories of a love which had grown upon him, stealing into his heart by such gentle, subtle degrees that he could by no means define them—which love had become the master passion of his earnest heart, with heaven on its side, and chaos on the other. All this he had lived through in grimy, smoky Thanshope, with the everlasting roar of machinery as a sort of chorus; within sound of the melodius, chiming bells. His whole surroundings had ever been earnest and serious as his own thoughts and bent of mind, and he felt that no other home would ever be harmonious to him as this was. Yet he was going to leave it all to-morrow, and his heart beat with a fierce gladness at the thought.

Occupied with such reflections as these, he found himself at his own door, and went into the house. Mary was in the kitchen. All her preparations lay neglected; she sat in her rocking-chair, with her hands before her, looking at nothing, her eyes wet with tears.

‘What ails you, Molly?’

‘Eh, you’re there, Myles! Nothing ails me except thinking o’ what Miss Blisset’s been talking about.’

‘Miss Blisset!’ he echoed in a gentle voice, pausing to look at her. ‘Has she been here?’

‘Ay, she has so! She only heard tell this morning about poor Ned, and she came down to say how sorry she were. Eh, but she is some and altered; hoo’s gone so quiet, I ne’er saw nowt like it. Hoo were ne’er a noisy one, but now——’

Mary paused a minute.

‘I’d a deal to tell her—all about me and Harry, and poor Ned, and about thy going away.’

‘Yes,’ said Myles, in a dull voice.

‘Hoo fair started when hoo heard thou were going away. Hoo were so surprised. I told her all about it, and hoo said it were much the best thing, and I were to congratulate you. And then hoo said it were a long time since hoo had seen you, and, if you’d time, would you go up to-night and see her, for she’d something she wanted to say to you. If you do go,’ added Mary, ‘you’ll have to go now, or it’ll get too late. It’s after nine.’

‘I don’t think it would be anything very important,’ said her brother, in a measured voice. ‘And I have no time, either. I’ve a lot of things to do to-night.’

‘Won’t you go?’ asked Mary, opening her eyes wide. ‘Not go and say good-bye to her! Such friends as you’ve been!’

‘No,’ repeated Myles. ‘She will understand that I am too busy.’

‘I don’t think hoo’ll understand nowt o’ t’ sort,’ said Mary very emphatically. ‘But go thy own gait! thou knows best.’

He turned away from her, and went upstairs to nail up a box with some books of his own in it, and to put up some few things of furniture which Mary was to take away with her when she went to the Ashworths’ house; and as he worked his heart and his temples throbbed almost to bursting.

Go to her, after what had been said! And, never to mention that, why was he to go to her? To hear something she wanted to tell him! What could that be, but that she was going to marry Sebastian? He was to walk up and hear that from her own lips, and then say good-bye to her, and not betray himself! After what had happened! After he had gone through with his bitter task, accepted favours from Sebastian—all in order that he might never see her again! No! Of course it might be ungrateful, brutal, uncivilised; it was nevertheless the only safe path for him to take—to maintain absolute silence and let her think what she pleased of him. What did it matter? She had Sebastian. He would soon be forgotten; he would take care of that. He knew, he was perfectly conscious all the time, that he was doing wrong. As he drove one nail after another into the box, each stroke of the hammer seemed to say ‘Wrong!’ And, with his eyes open, he did that wrong, because he was utterly miserable, and for the moment utterly indifferent; because he had suffered so much and so long that even his will felt broken, and to deliberately go to her and court still more suffering was more than he could do.

The theory of the freedom of the will, says the latest philosophy, is nonsense, and worse than nonsense. If we seriously follow out such an idea, it leads us into a mad confusion—an insane chaos of impossibilities piled on impossibilities. We have no power to will this or that; we have the power of following and obeying the strongest motives, and acting upon them. It was in strict accordance with this principle that Myles behaved in this crisis of his fate: he followed and obeyed the strongest motives—he stayed at home.

Soon after eight the next morning he left. Later on the same day, Mr. Hoyle, hearing of the disappearance of Frederick Spenceley, was perforce reminded of the words of the preacher, and learnt practically that he had wrought in vain; that, truly, all was vanity.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

THE DAWN OF NEW DAYS.

It was August; the second August since that memorable one in 1862. This year, that of 1864, was in many respects a remarkable one in the annals of commerce, more especially in that branch of it known as the cotton trade.

Strange events had been witnessed; amongst others, a wondering world had looked on at the great ‘scare’ which took place amongst the cotton lords, when the first mistaken rumours of peace were spread. The members of a trade whose greatest friend, it might have been supposed, would be peace, turned pale and trembled when peace was mentioned, and actually wished for the continuance of war; some of them saying that for them the alternative was war or ruin. Things grew somewhat more sane and better balanced, later; but the fact remained, that for once a great industry had seriously inclined her ear unto warlike councils, and had sought therein her profit. Despite all drawbacks, however, this last mighty daughter of civilisation was slowly arousing, and shaking off the paralysis which oppressed her. She stretched her huge limbs, and found that there was still life and vigour in them. Factories were being reopened on every side, and amongst those which were again working full time was that of Sebastian Mallory.

He sat breakfasting one Friday morning, alone, opening his letters, and with the unopened newspapers beside him. He usually breakfasted alone now, and had grown quite accustomed to it. Mrs. Mallory rather avoided his society, and he, when he thought about the matter at all, felt the absence to be a relief rather than otherwise.

Two years may or may not make a great change both in the character and appearance of a man. Sebastian Mallory was somewhat altered in the latter respect since he had parted from Myles Heywood one evening, which, when he thought of it, seemed a long time ago. His face had taken an older, more decided expression; his lips were more firmly closed; his eyes had lost much of their listlessness. He had found plenty of work ready to his hand, and he was not one of those persons whose work decreases. Business accumulated about him. People had discovered that he was useful, capable, and impartial. He did not know himself how great his influence was, or rather he had not known it until a few days before, when, to his great surprise, he had been asked to contest the borough in the Radical interest, so soon as a vacancy should occur. He had promised to take the matter into consideration. In a few days his answer was to be given. He was not wont to waver or vacillate; generally he could sum up the reasons for and against a course, and decide in the most prudent and reasonable way. On this occasion he had not found the matter so easily disposed of. ‘He would, and he would not.’ Many considerations urged him to accept; he could scarcely assign any for declining. The only one which would have been valid—that he felt no desire for a public life, and no wish to increase his present occupations—was absent. He had often felt a strong inclination for such a life; and he knew that he could manage to give time enough to it. The core of the matter was that his heart was not in it. As he read his letters this morning, he thought of the coming interview with his supporters, and had an odd sensation that he absolutely did not know what to say to them, and that it was a case which might appropriately be settled by tossing up.

He laid two of his letters on one side, until the business communications were disposed of, and then he took one of them up. They both bore the Prussian stamp of two and a half groschen, and both were addressed in a German handwriting. He took up the first of them, with a slight smile hovering about his lips, or ever he began to read.

‘Dear Sebastian,’ it began,

‘What an age it is since I heard from you! I look out fervently every day for the postman, and he never comes. I suppose you are busy! How completely changed you are, you who never used to be busy. I am writing this at the midnight hour, because I have news for you. Good news, of course; if it were bad news, I should leave it to travel to you on its own legs. Old Biermann, the Direktor, and I have, so to speak, buried the tomahawk, and sworn an alliance; and he is going to give my little cantata, Hermann u. Dorothea, at the next concert but one. This is a great step in advance. I hardly know what has induced him to be so gracious; but his word is given now, and let him repent him never so much, he will be obliged to carry it out. I need not tell you, however, that I look upon it only as a step, and that my hopes and wishes continue to turn always to the opera. I am not hurrying about it, because I want it to be worth hearing when it is done. Mozart was only eighteen when his first opera (it’s true it was a comic one) was produced, and I am nearly twenty.

‘I am in luck’s way, too. I have earned ten pounds by my own exertions, teaching, in the last six months. It is spread out before me in a beautiful shining row. No money ever looked so charming before. Please remember this, and make your next remittance ten pounds less than usual, or else I shall not feel as if I had really earned it.

‘I cannot give you any news, for there is none; still, I will tell you what happened to me the other day. I was walking in the Hofgarten, when I met a lady walking alone. I looked up, and I thought: ‘Helena Spenceley! How did she come here?’ In the surprise of the moment I did not look at her attentively enough, but raised my cap, held out my hand, and was going to accost her, when she smiled and uttered a rather astonished ‘Mein Herr, you are mistaken!’ She was German, and when she smiled I saw the difference; she had not Helena’s fire and spirit, and yet the likeness was wonderful. The incident set me thinking about these old days. You never mention Helena now. Do you never see her? Tell me when you write. I have never seen any one like her. I suppose you are too busy to think of such things. I used to wonder at your coolness all the time that she was suffering so, in consequence of that wicked father and brother of hers. I used to make her, in my own mind, the heroine of a hundred tragedies and romances, in those days. And yet—forgive me for saying so, I have always said things I ought not to say, to you—I was nothing to her but an enthusiastic boy, to whom she was kind, and you were a great deal—a man—I believe the man. Since I met that lady in the gardens, I have thought a great deal about it, and as I found a little poem the other day, called Hélène, I composed an air for it, and made it into a song; but I shall not sell it. You may have it if you like; but I shall not send it until I hear from you.

‘Ever your devoted
‘Hugo.’

Sebastian put the letter down, the smile fading from his face. The meeting with a strange girl, a passing likeness, had set Hugo’s memory working; had prompted him to write words which seemed striking to Sebastian. He had thought, more than once—often—of Helena Spenceley, but he had never seen her since, with disasters falling thick upon her young head, she, with her mother, had left Thanshope. They had gone to Manchester, he had heard. Once or twice he had asked his mother if she had not heard from Helena, for he remembered that Mrs. Mallory had told him how Helena had been a ‘kind of daughter’ to her; but she had composedly answered ‘No,’ and had added that she did not know their address, and had reason to think they did not wish to keep up any of their old Thanshope acquaintances, which, she feelingly added, was really very natural under the circumstances. At the time of their departure, business had pressed upon Sebastian, as it had continued to press upon him ever since. He had been smarting under the disappointment of his refusal by Adrienne. Helena and her misfortunes had touched him deeply; her calmness, and the real heroism with which she met her fate, had impressed him. He had firmly intended that he should not be one of the Thanshope acquaintances whom they dropped entirely; but, by some means, they had slipped out of his ken, and he had not been able to find them again. Yet, many a time, Helena’s beautiful face had seemed to start up before his eyes, at strange moments: sometimes when he was most busy, sometimes when he was in one of his rare idle moods. Sometimes a song or a strain of music would summon up the vision; sometimes in a busy street, or in a silent hour, it would hover before him. This morning, after reading Hugo’s letter, he saw it more strongly than ever; but with the strength of will which belongs to daylight and activity, he thrust it away, and took up his other letter.

It was from his old friend, Herr Süsmeyer, who asked him if he was never coming to see him again, and added, that he expected his son home some time during the autumn, to take his place in the business. There were further domestic details, and then the remark, ‘Young Heywood, whom you sent here to me, is my right hand, now that I am somewhat laid up; but he has been invaluable ever since he fairly mastered the language. I should like to speak to you about him too. There will have to be some change when Julius returns.’

‘Julius will return, will he?’ murmured Sebastian to himself. ‘And Heywood is invaluable. He has gained the old man’s affections, and has not hardened his heart against him, or indeed against any one but me. But I know the reason, and can forgive him. It is an old story now. Still, if ever I had the chance, I should like to test once again his feelings, and see if he is as stiffnecked as ever.’

He put the letters into his pocket-book, and, having finished breakfast, took his way to his office, pondering as to whether it would be possible for him to get a brief holiday some time during the autumn, run over to Eisendorf, see Herr Süsmeyer, and observe with his own eyes how ‘young Heywood’ was getting on; then go on to where Hugo was studying, and carry him off with him to—Italy, perhaps, or Switzerland. He began to long all at once that he might be able to do so, and to yearn, almost, for the sound of Hugo’s voice; to feel a sudden weariness of this grey, dismal town—this never-ending strife with starvation, this strained suspense, this sensation of standing on the brink of a precipice, which had been present with him, as it was with most men in his position, during all those troubled years. The last two of them he had fought out alone: to-day, for the first time, he felt the battle weary and monotonous—almost ignoble.

‘Please, sir,’ said Ben, who still retained his place in the office, as Sebastian entered it, ‘there’s a message from Mr. Sutcliffe to say he’s very poorly this morning, and can’t come. He’s very sorry, and he hopes he’ll be better to-morrow.’

‘Ill, is he?’ said Sebastian, going into his private room. Mr. Sutcliffe had often been ill lately, and when he came to his work he walked feebly, and coughed a good deal.

‘That’s another question that must be settled, and before long, too,’ reflected Mr. Mallory, a shade of care upon his brow, when he found himself alone. ‘I must have a serious talk with Sutcliffe, but how I’m to manage to make him have assistance, and yet take the same salary, I don’t know. He is so confoundedly conscientious.’

After working doubly hard, in order to make up for Mr. Sutcliffe’s absence, Sebastian found himself, shortly after eleven o’clock, in the train on his way to Manchester, Tuesday and Friday being the market-days in that city: the days when merchants in the streets most do congregate, and when that impressive spectacle, High ’Change, is wont to be even more imposing than usual.

It was a busy day. Sebastian, after going on ’Change and visiting his Manchester office, made certain business calls, and, in the middle of the afternoon, found himself standing in Mosley Street, exactly opposite the Royal Institution.

It was a hot, close, Manchester afternoon. Scarcely a breath of air was stirring. The smoke pressed heavily down upon the thick, yellow air. Faintly the coppery sunbeams tried to struggle through it, and wavered, and seemed to fail. There was a roar and a din in the much-frequented street—all about the great black, grimy-looking buildings, shops, offices, and warehouses. Omnibuses, carts, and lorries were struggling in a ‘lock’ in the middle of the street, and two exhausted-looking policemen were trying to restore order. Sebastian’s next destination was over the way; but, surveying the scene before him, he saw no immediate prospect of getting over the way, and turned round towards the Royal Institution, as if to consult that building as to what he had better do.

Three large boards, covered with placards, caught his eye. ‘Exhibition of Pictures,’ in large letters, stood at the top of the boards, while profuse details followed in smaller print below.

‘The pictures! Why not go in and have a look?’ he reflected, and straightway walked up to the door, paid his shilling, secured a catalogue, and ran up the steps.

It was between three and four in the afternoon. If it had been sultry out of doors, it was much more so within. The rooms felt stiflingly hot, and the blaze of colour upon the walls was oppressive. There were not very many visitors present, and those who had come were going languidly round. The people who had secured seats upon the chairs or divans looked nearly asleep, and those who had not secured such seats were looking enviously at those who had, as if, with a little more provocation, they would forget conventionality and sit down on top of them.

Sebastian glanced critically around. Now and then a picture caught his eye and partially pleased it, but these were few and far between; and he passed rather quickly from one room to another, until he came to the end one of all, which was devoted to water-colours. The first object that met his eye was an empty chair, and he promptly sat down upon it. On examining the wall before him, he found that one oil-painting had been admitted amongst the water-colours, and that it was hung exactly opposite to him. He sat in rapt contemplation of it, feebly endeavouring to guess what it was meant to represent. A drab-coloured lady crouched together, nursing one of her own feet. She was scantily attired, also in drab, and had a peculiar cast of countenance, and an imbecile smile, showing rows of very fine teeth, and was glancing upwards. She was adorned with ropes of pearls of a size and value which must have surprised even the author of ‘Lothair,’ could he have seen them. An opaque veil prevented the colour of her hair from being seen. She was drab; the stones of the palace-steps upon which she reposed were likewise drab. The sand of the banks, the water of the river flowing by, were all drab. Sebastian studied the composition, and shook his head, referring in despair to his catalogue. ‘Cleopatra by the Nile, by ——. Price, one hundred guineas.’ If a little green ticket stuck in the margin of the frame were to be believed, this work of genius was sold.

‘Some fellows do have most awful strokes of luck,’ mused Sebastian. ‘Now, the man who painted this thing—I wonder if he knew how the chances were against his ever sell——’

‘You shan’t!’

‘I shall! I tell you I shall have that picture; it’s mine. I like that little pussy. Mayn’t I have that little pussy, Miss Spenceley?’

‘Well, no, dear, I’m afraid not, unless you can persuade papa to buy it; because, you see, we can’t take the things away.’

‘But I will have it! I want that little pussy for my own!’ And a howl followed.

‘Oh, hush, Jacky, dear! What shall we do if the man comes to turn us out? Come here. We’ll ask papa about the pussy, shall we?’

Sebastian started from his chair, heat, listlessness, ‘Cleopatra by the Nile,’ and everything else forgotten, and turned suddenly round. The group was behind him, close to him—yes, he knew that figure again instantly, even in its present shabbiness, compared with its former splendour. She was bending over an urchin of four or five summers, whose engaging countenance was ominously puckered up in readiness for another burst of infantile music. Two other children, a girl and a boy, both older than the would-be possessor of the pussy-cat, stood by, wrangling with each other as to the possession of another work of art. She still did not turn her face in his direction, but Sebastian, with an eagerness and a pleasure which surprised even himself, exclaimed very audibly,

‘Miss Spenceley, have you forgotten me? Won’t you look at me?’ She started violently from her stooping attitude, and, leaving the recalcitrant Jacky to his fate, at last turned to him.

‘Mr. Mallory, I—I—how you surprised me!’ she stammered, looking at first so pale and startled that he was surprised.

He was shocked too, after the first glance, at the change, the sad, mournful change, in her face.

‘You do know me again,’ he said; ‘at least you might shake hands with me. I fear you are not pleased to renew our acquaintance.’

He had taken her hand, and as his fingers touched hers, Helena’s paleness fled, and crimson dyed her cheeks. Tears rushed to her eyes; her lips opened, but she did not speak. His eyes were still fixed upon her face; he could not remove them; he did not realise that his prolonged gaze distressed her. He felt unaccountably glad to meet her, pleased, excited, light-hearted, as if he had a great deal to say to her and ask her. He forgot all about his engagements—about returning to the station, or going home; he wanted to talk to her, to hear her speak, to find out all about her.

The colour gradually died out of her cheeks, and then became again apparent the change these two years had wrought in her. She was thin, decidedly thin, compared with the full if delicate beauty of past days; there were hollows in her cheeks, and under her great dark eyes; there was a painful line about her lips, and a melancholy, which looked as if it were settled, in her expression. She looked, what he had never thought she could look, patient and subdued—not the impulsive, fiery-hearted girl whom he had known and teased and quarrelled with.

Her dress, he also saw, was sadly altered. Helena had always had a weakness for splendid things: she delighted in a rich colour, a soft silk, a sheeny satin—in all kinds of luxurious, and beautiful, and fashionable things. Formerly people used to laugh at this weakness. Other girls, whose fathers had not been so rich as Mr. Spenceley, used to turn up their noses, and say that she was vulgarly ostentatious; that it was exceedingly bad taste in a girl to dress herself as splendidly as a dowager, and so on. In truth, it had been no bad taste at all. The splendour was part of her nature—one phase of her individuality; it belonged to her as much as her queenly shape and melodious voice.

But now—there was no splendour in that dress, of poor material and last year’s fashion. The silk mantle had been handsome once—perhaps it was a relic of palmier days; now its shape was antiquated, and it was too good for the poorness of the rest of the toilette. The glove on the hand, which Sebastian still continued to hold, had been often mended. Helena looked what she used to have the strongest objection to—poor, shabby, and unprosperous, her good looks faded——

But not gone. No. Sebastian, staring on in the same rude and reprehensible manner, satisfied himself that her beauty was only clouded over, not vanished.

‘Do you know, I have been thinking about you a great deal to-day?’ he said. ‘I had a letter this morning from Hugo von Birkenau: he saw a German lady in the gardens at ——, and thought it was you. Just fancy! He made all sorts of inquiries about you. How fortunate that I happened to look in this afternoon!’

Helena seemed to have nothing to reply. Her face was still downcast; she remained silent.

‘It is nearly two years since we met,’ he urged; ‘and yet you do not say you are glad to see me.’

‘Oh, I am! Very glad,’ murmured Helena.

‘You live in Manchester still?’

‘Yes; mamma and I. We live in Woodford Street——’

She named one of the southern suburbs of Manchester.

‘Do you? That is not far away. How odd that we should never have met!’

‘I don’t think so. Woodford Street is not a fashionable locality.’

‘Is it not? I must remember the name. I asked my mother where you lived, but she said she did not know the address. But now that we have met, I am sure you will allow me to call, will you not?’

‘Our house is so very small; we have so few visitors,’ she began in some embarrassment.

‘But, my dear Miss Spenceley, you do not seriously mean that you could urge that as an objection,’ he exclaimed. ‘You are pleased to chaff me, I think, as you used to do.’

Helena turned abruptly away; her lips set; her eyes fixed upon a water-colour drawing immediately before them.

‘Do you mean that you really would rather I did not come?’ he asked earnestly, and excessively piqued at the idea.

‘If you really wish to come,’ said Helena, rather proudly, ‘of course we shall be happy to see you, but I am sure you will find it very inconvenient. I am engaged until after four o’clock, and mamma——’

‘Until after four? I shall remember that. The evenings are long now, and there are trains going to Thanshope till midnight, you know. How is Mrs. Spenceley?’

‘She is very well, thank you.’

‘Have you been bringing these young people to see the pictures?’ he inquired, for something in Helena’s manner forbade him to make the eager personal inquiries which crowded to his lips.

Now that the first shock and surprise of meeting him again had passed, and she had recovered her self-possession, there was a certain pride and distance of bearing which seemed to require considerable deference on his part. Helena’s troubles had indeed made her into a woman; she had most decidedly quitted the girlish stage. She had probably, thought Sebastian, become a great deal more reasonable, and consequently a great deal less amenable to the influence of other persons—Miss Mereweather, for instance, and himself too. With regard to Miss Mereweather, it might be a matter of rejoicing that Helena had forsworn her tenets, but with regard to himself, perhaps that was not altogether delightful.

‘Yes,’ said Helena, calmly, as she looked at the three children, ‘I have. They are my pupils.’

‘Are they good?’

‘I fancy they are as good as their parents will allow them to be. It all depends upon that.’

‘How so?’ asked Sebastian. Anything to prolong the conversation!

‘Mr. and Mrs. Galloway are supplied with the newest ideas upon all subjects, education included. The new education theory is, that when children are allowed their own way, they always do right; or if they do wrong some one else is to blame for it. That is why I say they are as good as their parents will allow them to be.’

‘And are you generally the “some one else” who is to blame?’ he asked, wishing very much that she would utter some complaint, afford him some chance of offering sympathy or expressing fellow-feeling.

‘Oh no!’ she replied, quite cheerfully. ‘I only come in for my share, and they really are very fond of me; only they show it in rather a funny way. That is why I can’t see any one before four o’clock. I leave them then—reluctantly, of course,’ she added, with a smile which vexed Sebastian, because he could not tell whether it was feigned or not; ‘but still, I leave them.’

‘Won’t you sit down in this chair,’ he said reproachfully, ‘and tell me all about yourself?’ He moved the chair forward for her, for he saw that she looked tired, and indeed she was very tired, and Sebastian looked to her wearied eyes, so kind, so handsome, and so agreeable, that it was with difficulty she maintained her little air of dignified reserve: but the voice within was a powerful one: ‘What right has he to look at me in that gentle, reproachful way, as if he, and not poor mamma and I, had been neglected? It is impertinent, and I won’t submit to it.’

‘No, thank you,’ she said aloud, looking at her watch. ‘It is time to go. We must take a Victoria Park omnibus, and it will pass in three minutes. Come, children! Jacky, Amy, Ted! we must go.’

They came obediently enough, their failing appearing to be in affection towards each other. They lavished affectionate epithets upon their governess, and quarrelled, as Helena said, ‘because I have not three hands;’ but they cast looks of suspicion upon each other, and took every opportunity of falling out.

‘Good afternoon!’ said Helena to Sebastian, and as the children crowded round her and clasped her hands, she was not displeased to see that his face fell. She was glad that he should see that she was not altogether an object of pity.

‘I am going too,’ he said. ‘I will see you into the omnibus. It will save you a little trouble. Come, young lady, take hold of my hand, or you will tear Miss Spenceley to pieces.’

The little girl put her hand in his contentedly enough, merely informing her brothers that they were ‘nasty, selfish things,’ and the procession went downstairs.

As they stood on the top of the steps, waiting for the omnibus, Sebastian, turning once more to Helena, said,

‘You have not told me the number of your house. What is it?’

‘Fifty-seven,’ said Helena. ‘Jacky, dear, if you pull Teddy’s hair again, I’ll make you sit outside the omnibus.’

‘Fifty-seven. Best make a note of it, for fear I should forget it,’ he added, jotting it down, while Helena, with a brave assumption of indifference, looked straight before her, and choked back her tears.

‘You are not engaged until four o’clock on Sundays, are you?’ he suddenly asked.

‘No—but—oh, don’t come on Sunday!’ said Helena in her old tragic manner.

‘I solemnly swear that I will not come on Sunday!’ he said. ‘And equally solemnly I swear I will make you tell me why I am forbidden to come on that day.’

‘Why?’ said Helena, with a kind of half-laugh, not quite free from an hysterical sound—‘why, the reason is simple enough. Because——’

The omnibus is almost more relentless in its punctuality than time and tide. Not another word could be exchanged. They ran down the steps, and went through the ignominious performance of hailing and catching the vehicle. Sebastian, with great presence of mind, did manage to clasp Helena’s hand once more, and to repeat the words,

‘I shall come soon, and not on Sunday.’

Then he stood in the middle of Mosley Street gazing after the omnibus, until an uproar caused him to look up, and he found himself surrounded with infuriated lorrie-drivers, swearing at him for getting into the way, while a hansom cabman had just pulled his horse up on to its very haunches, and was apostrophising him in a manner the reverse of complimentary. Newspaper boys were jeering at him, and an indignant policeman was ordering him to move on.

With an amiable smile, and a murmured general apology, he made his way to the footpath, and then on to the station.

CHAPTER II.

FENCING.

Towards five o’clock on the following Tuesday afternoon, a hansom-cab drove rapidly up that Manchester thoroughfare known as Oxford Street, and the address given by the man who took it had been, ‘Fifty-seven Woodford Street.’

As they spun rapidly along, he looked out wondering on which side of Oxford Street Woodford Street might lie; how far from town, and if it would turn out to be a very poor little street indeed. He remembered Helena’s look of embarrassment, as she said the house was small and uncomfortable. They drove on; the cab passed the Owen’s College, passed the ‘Church of the Holy Name,’ passed some other buildings, and at last turned off to the right.

Sebastian shook his head. ‘Not the best side. Poor little Helena!’ Why did he always think of her as ‘little Helena,’ she who was taller than most women, and whose disdainful head, set upon her long white neck, had been wont to look over the heads of a good many even of the men of Thanshope? Three whole days had passed since he had met her in the Royal Institution—three whole days, and part of a fourth, because she had told him not to come on Sunday.

‘Why wouldn’t she let me come on Sunday?’ he had asked himself many times, and had assigned all kinds of imaginary reasons for the prohibition. The latest was, ‘Perhaps other people, or another person, may be allowed to come on Sunday. I shall make her tell me—if I can. I wonder if I can call one of those old flashing smiles to her face—one of those looks, which ran over it, and made it more beautiful still, if that could be?’

Lost in profound conjecture upon this subject, he forgot to look where they were going, until the cab had traversed several smallish streets, and at last pulled up suddenly before one of a row of moderately sized houses—houses of the kind which would be called ‘respectable.’ It was not a glaring new street: it was neatly kept, and as he jumped out of the hansom and looked up it and down it, he did not see a single barrel-organ—not even a perambulator.

Neither of these things did he behold; but he saw Helena Spenceley herself, just coming up to the gate, walking rather wearily, and looking tired as she pushed it open.

‘She has been walking, and I have been driving,’ he thought, with a strange sensation of guiltiness, as he dismissed the man and joined her.

‘You see, I have kept my word,’ he observed. ‘I have come soon, and I have not come on Sunday.’

‘I am glad to see you,’ said Helena, sedately.

They were airing themselves all this time on the top of the door steps, Mrs. Spenceley’s domestic, or domestics, not seeming to be in any violent hurry to open the front door; but as Sebastian was about to make some further observation, it was suddenly flung (as much as such a modestly proportioned door could be flung) wide open, by a young man whose appearance seemed to indicate that he belonged to some one of the numerous tribe of clerks.

When he saw them he recoiled a step or two, and Sebastian, to his great amusement, saw that he was honoured by the surprised young gentleman with a scowl of peculiar malevolence. Clearing his brow, after a moment, of this unbecoming expression, he addressed himself to Helena.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Spenceley. I hope I see you well.’

‘Very well, thank you. Will you allow me to pass?’

‘You see I am somewhat earlier to-day; in fact two hours earlier than usual. I was, if I must tell the truth, on my way to meet you,’ with great emphasis upon the personal pronoun, and a languishing but fascinating smile.

‘To meet me?’ repeated Helena, with equal emphasis. ‘Pray, on what errand, Mr. Jenkins?’

‘I thought, as the evening was so beautiful, you might possibly not be indisposed for a—a—little walk after tea of course; and if so, I——’

‘I am obliged, but I am engaged this evening, and I never take walks after tea,’ said Helena, with crushing coldness. ‘If you will kindly allow us to pass——’

Mr. Jenkins, plunging his hand into his breast, flattened himself against the wall, and resumed the Giaour-like scowl as Sebastian followed Helena. She opened the door of a back room and invited him in.

‘I am afraid you will find it rather hot,’ said she; ‘these little houses are so thin, you know. They let the heat in, and then it never seems to get out again, somehow. Take that chair,’ and she seated herself languidly upon another. ‘It is our only sitting-room,’ she added, drawing off her gloves, and speaking deliberately, as she looked fixedly at Sebastian, to see how he would take her announcement. ‘It is dining, and drawing-room, morning-room, boudoir, and library. At Castle Hill we had them separately, but here mamma lets the rest of her rooms to lodgers. Mr. Jenkins, who wanted me to go for a walk with him, was one of them.’

‘I see,’ said Sebastian, tranquilly. ‘I also saw that I did not rise in his esteem from the fact that I deprived him of his walk.’

‘Mr. Mallory!’ exclaimed Helena, indignantly, as she lost the languid look and suddenly sat upright, ‘do you insult me by supposing that I ever take my walks abroad with that horrid, presuming little man? But why should you not suppose so?’ she added with a little laugh.

‘I supposed nothing,’ said Sebastian. ‘I only saw that he looked very much disappointed, and I could quite sympathise with him.’

Here he ventured to look at Helena with some meaning in his glance, but was met by a direct gaze of what seemed to him cheerful, blank indifference—a gaze which chilled him; for Helena’s looks and glances had suddenly risen to a place of high importance in his mind. Their interview on Friday, especially the first few minutes of it, haunted him. He could not forget her agitation, nor how she had turned, first pale, and then red as a rose, on meeting him. He had wondered, and had determined to find out, what the agitation meant. He had thought it would be quite easy. The Helena whom he had known in former days had not been adroit in concealing her feelings, but before the present young lady he was obliged to own himself baffled. Her appearance, attitude, expression, were languid and weary; she looked worn, and not very happy, but her manner was composed, and a little hard in its ostentatious cheerfulness. He could not tell what was real and what assumed, and the desire to find out, to break down the reserve, to conquer in short—his besetting foible—grew very strong indeed.

‘Can you drink tea at five o’clock?’ pursued Helena. ‘We have ours at five. Teaching makes me thirsty, and mamma likes her tea at five. Remember, there is no dinner to follow after.’

‘If you invite me to tea, I am sure I shall be delighted to stay.’

‘Then you are invited. Now I must go and take off my things. I will try to find mamma. You will excuse our leaving you alone for a short time.’

‘Pray don’t mention it,’ said Sebastian, and Helena left the room. It was not a lofty room: the doorway was decidedly low, and he thought she would have to stoop to pass under it.

When he was left alone, he glanced round the room. It was rather small, and was over-filled with furniture. Books were scattered about, and in the most shady corner of the room there was a vase containing a carefully preserved nosegay, such as might be bought for a trifle at any greengrocer’s shop in the neighbourhood. Everything was exquisitely neat and orderly, and in little touches here and there he fancied he recognised Helena’s hand despite the plainness, and in some respects even poorness, of the furniture. On the mantelpiece he detected two little vases of Sevres—relics of former splendour, no doubt. There was no piano, he noticed that. Perhaps because it would have filled up the room too much, or perhaps because pianos were rather expensive things to buy or hire. Yet Helena used to sing, and had a very fresh, sweet voice. How well he remembered her on that evening when he had first seen her—in her beauty and splendour, in her costly dress and sparkling necklace and rings. She had sung, ‘Since first I saw your face.’

That seemed a very long time ago!

He hoped it would not be long before Helena came down again. He hoped Mrs. Spenceley would not sit with them all the evening, and he hoped they would not expect him to go away very early.

Presently the door was opened, and, not Helena but her mother came in. Sebastian was as much struck with the change in her as he had been shocked with that in Helena, but in a different way. Mrs. Spenceley looked better, happier, younger, and more contented, than she had done since her husband had made his fortune eighteen years ago. And she looked so because she was so. She did not mind the narrow means, the small house, the two girls, and the constant necessity for her presence in the kitchen. All that was as the breath of life to her, and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Sebastian, with a sigh of relief, felt that here no condolences were needed, no delicate skirting of dangerous ground. He might look cheerful, and ask Mrs. Spenceley with confidence and success how she was. The nature of her answer was visibly written upon her face beforehand.

‘Well, Mr. Mallory, this is a pleasure! I could scarcely believe it when Helena said she had met you, and you were coming to see us. I said, “Eh, he’ll never come, not he!” But she said she thought you would; and she’s right, it seems.’

‘She certainly is. I am very glad to see you looking so well, Mrs. Spenceley.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Mrs. Spenceley, lightly, flinging a purple satin cap-string over her shoulder. ‘I’ve nothing to complain of, thank God! I’ve got on much better than I’d any reason to expect, and I’m thankful for it. It’s hard work sometimes, but I’ve a broad back.’

Which she certainly had.

‘That is very fortunate,’ he said, with becoming solemnity.

‘Yes; I’ve four gentlemen. You’d wonder where we find room to put them all, but the house is more capacious’ (Sebastian conjectured that she meant spacious) ‘than it looks, and we’ve room for them all. Very nice gentlemen they are too; all in business in Manchester, you know. They’re quiet and well-behaved, and they pay up regularly; and,’ she added, dropping her voice, ‘none of your stand-off gents. They are all disposed to be most friendly, all except Mr. Harrison, and he’s engaged to his cousin, who lives in Northumberland. He hears from her regularly twice a week.’

‘Yes,’ said Sebastian, with an air of the deepest interest—the air of one thirsting for more information.

‘But all the others, Mr. Finlay, and Mr. Smithson, and Mr. Jenkins—are most friendly, and quite gentlemen, every one of them. Indeed, Mr. Jenkins,’ she dropped her voice again, ‘is very much interested in Helena.’

‘Is he?’ said Sebastian, still with unfeigned interest.

‘Yes, he is. He’s getting on, too. And a perfect gentleman—on Sundays’—Sebastian leaned eagerly forward—‘on Sundays they often go out into the country for the day, or sometimes even for the week-end; but Mr. Jenkins, never,’ said Mrs. Spenceley, emphatically: ‘Mr. Jenkins dines with us.’

‘Poor Helena!’ thought Sebastian, while he said, ‘Oh, indeed!’

‘Helena said I oughtn’t to have entered into such an arrangement; but I think she’s mistaken, and I think she’ll come to see her mistake in time.’

‘Miss Spenceley does not feel so much interest in Mr. Jenkins, perhaps, as he feels in her!’

‘That I can’t say; but if she does, she conceals it, which is but natural after all.’

‘Quite natural in such a case,’ assented Sebastian.

‘Here’s the tea-things,’ continued Mrs. Spenceley, cheerfully, producing a bunch of keys, and going to a cupboard, whence she drew forth, to speak metaphorically, flagons wherewith to stay her guest, and apples for his comfort—in the dry language of reality, a jar of apple-jelly, and a glass dish containing conserves of a deeper, more sanguinary hue.

While Mrs. Spenceley was half-buried in the depths of the cupboard, Helena came into the room again. She had changed her dress, and attired herself in another relic of splendour, a black silk dress, rich and handsome, if somewhat old-fashioned; and she had tied an orange-coloured ribbon round her neck, and put on a little lace frill, and Sebastian felt that she looked lovely, and began to hate those three gentlemen who were disposed to be so very friendly, with a deadly hatred. Her eyes fell upon the figure of her mother, half in and half out of the cupboard. It was a very funny sight, and when she turned to Sebastian there was a broad smile of amusement upon her face. It looked as if it was the first that had been there for a very long time, and Sebastian felt it only right to smile as genially in return.

Mrs. Spenceley, emerging from the cupboard, summoned them to the table; Sebastian felt as if it were a dream, as he handed Helena her chair, and took his place opposite her. No surroundings, however poor, could take away from the queenly beauty of her face and figure. She was indeed more queenly than she ever had been before, he thought, as he watched her across that simple board. The meal was soon over, and then Mrs. Spenceley, rising, said,

‘Mr. Mallory, you must excuse me if I leave you. I must first go and see about Their teas, and then I’ve promised to go and sit with Mrs. Woodford, next door but one. She’s a great friend of mine. Her husband’s father built most of the houses in this street, and was a rich man, but he never could keep anything, never! and now she pays a rent for the very house her father-in-law built. This world’s full of ups and downs.’

‘It is indeed. Then I shall not see you again this evening?’

‘Well, no. We shall most likely have a little supper together, and so I shall leave Helena and you to have a little chat. But I shall hope to see you again soon, Mr. Mallory, if you don’t mind coming all this way out of town.’

He hastened to assure her that he thought it a very nice drive, and not at all far; and Mrs. Spenceley, disturbed by the sound of a ring at the bell, said,

‘There’s Mr. Finlay! I must go. Good evening, Mr. Mallory.’

She was gone, and they were alone. Helena had taken her work-basket to a little table near the window, and had begun to embroider a little strip of muslin. Sebastian thought the sofa, which was just on the other side of the little table, offered a suitable place for the purposes of confidential conversation, and he went and sat down upon it.

‘Is there no one in Thanshope about whom you wish to inquire, Miss Spenceley?’ he began.

‘I—oh, how rude of me! I have never asked after Mrs. Mallory. How is she?’

‘She is very well, thank you.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Helena, calmly; and Sebastian felt rather uncomfortable, for Mrs. Mallory had not displayed any interest in the Spenceley family since their downfall.

‘Do you see much of the Thanshope people?’ continued Helena, in the same calmly indifferent tone; not a resentful tone, but a politely conventional one, which was much more disagreeable to Sebastian than a resentful one would have been. It implied that Thanshope and all that therein lived had become a name, a memory, a thing of the past to her. ‘Do you visit much?’ she added; ‘go to many parties?’

‘N—no. I am very busy. I am busy all day, and I don’t care much for the Thanshope people. All my near friends, those in whom I took an interest, I have lost.’

‘How very distressing! How has that come to pass?’

‘Hugo von Birkenau has gone to Germany. He is studying music, and intends to make a profession of it. He has begun to give lessons already.’

‘Hugo give lessons!’ cried Helena, looking up surprised.

‘Yes, I will tell you all about it another time. I see you don’t half believe it. But it is true. We have not quarrelled, I am glad to say; but he has gone. He has begun life for himself, and henceforth our paths are divided. There was another. You did not know him. I could scarcely call him one of my friends, but I miss him. He is one interest less. There was Mr. Blisset; he is dead. There was you—at least I hope so.’

‘I don’t think we ever were really friends. I did not like your opinions.’

‘But not enemies?’

‘Well, perhaps not exactly; at least, not at last,’ said Helena with a sudden change in her voice. ‘But,’ she repeated, ‘I did not like your opinions. You shut me—I mean, you denied to women the right to participate in those larger questions which I hold they ought to be interested in as well as men, for the sake both of men and of themselves; and I never would give in to that as long as I live.’

She did not speak vehemently, but with a decision and calmness unlike her old agitation of manner.

‘I wonder how I shall ever make you understand my real views on that subject,’ he said despairingly.

‘You said you had no views on the question. Perhaps, if you had ever tried to find out whether I had any understanding, you might have succeeded in discovering a tiny scrap somewhere very low down. But never mind, it is of no consequence now. I can never help forward the questions I take an interest in, as I once hoped to do; so you need not be afraid of my going astray. I have lost the power.’

‘Miss Spenceley——’

‘I think you have forgotten one of your friends,’ suggested Helena, with a change in her voice, which she could not quite conceal.

‘Have I? Which?’ he asked very meekly.

‘Miss Adrienne Blisset.’

‘Ah, yes! I actually had forgotten her. I never see her now, either.’

‘Does she no longer live in Thanshope?’ asked Helena, bending over her work.

‘She still has Stonegate, but she is scarcely ever there. I think she has taken a dislike to the place. And when she is there, I do not see her. As you say, she is lost to me too, for we once were friends.’

Sebastian’s voice did not change. It was quite steady and composed. Helena still seemed interested in her work, as she said,

‘I should think that must be the greatest loss of all to you.’

‘In some respects it is. At first it was a great loss. Now I feel it less. For two years I have been learning to live alone. Smile scornfully to yourself if you like! You may not believe me, but it is true all the same.’

‘Oh, I can believe that you found it hard to lose Miss Blisset’s society. She was no ordinary young lady. If she had once been your friend, it must have been difficult to resign her. And people spoke of something more than friendship. I heard, often, that you and she were engaged.’

‘Did you? I, too, have heard something of the same kind; but there was no truth in the report. We were never engaged.’

‘Ah! people will talk, you see!’

‘Naturally, but I don’t think they talk so much anywhere as in Thanshope.’

‘Perhaps they haven’t so much cause.’

‘That is rather too bad.’

‘You mean that people are not often so rude to you. I can quite fancy so.’

‘You will agree with me that I have lost all my friends.’

‘You do not seem broken-hearted,’ said Helena. ‘You look well and cheerful.’ She raised her eyes, and surveyed his face, straightly and composedly. Sebastian wished the look had not been so entirely self-possessed.

‘I lead too busy a life to be broken-hearted,’ he replied. ‘Pray don’t suppose that I spend my time in thinking how lonely I am.’

‘I never supposed anything of the kind.’

‘It is simply that I once had friends, and circumstances removed them, and I have not been able to fill up their places. I have worked hard—really hard, and I think I have learnt some good lessons in these sad years.’

‘Yes,’ said Helena, looking up, with the old eager interest in her eyes, the old brightness upon her face. ‘You must indeed have learned some lessons. My greatest trouble in leaving Thanshope was that I lost sight of all my friends that I had made during the distress. I have had no interest like that since then. You have. And you have had other interests too. I saw that they had asked you to be the Radical candidate, when Mr. Lippincott resigned. There is a prospect before you! Have you given your answer yet?’

‘My answer is due to-morrow. And upon my honour, I don’t know what it is going to be. What would you advise?’

‘Mr. Mallory!’

‘Yes?’

‘Why will you persist in saying such things? Do you think it is amusing?’

‘According to you, I must have the most wonderful faculty of amusement that any man possessed. Please, do I think what amusing?’

‘Do you think it amusing to ask questions of that kind?—to solemnly ask advice when you don’t want it? To consult a woman, and a young woman, upon an important step in life? We don’t understand these things—at least you say so, and I choose to take you at your word, so far as you are concerned. I do not choose to be treated as you once treated me, when I was in earnest, and then be appealed to for an opinion. I have no opinion on the question.’

‘I wish I had never opened my lips upon that question. You have never forgiven me, and you never will,’ said he, in a deep tone of mortification. ‘I too was in earnest when I asked you to-night what you advised. I have been vacillating, and considering and wondering what was best, like——’

‘Like a woman.’

‘Like a lonely man who has no counsellor to whom to apply.’

‘How pathetic!’

‘Will you really not give me one word of advice? Would you accept or not?’

‘You do not want my advice. You—it is absurd! You have lots of men to advise you. What can you want my advice for?’

She spoke impatiently. Stung by her tone, words, and manner, he leaned suddenly forward, saying,

‘I do want your advice, Helena. I acted like a consequential fool towards you at one time. When your troubles overtook you, I was made thoroughly ashamed of myself. You behaved like a heroine. Tell me, should I accept or refuse? Give me your opinion, and, by heaven, I will abide by it! I can trust you.’

‘Then accept! With your abilities and your responsibilities, you have no right to refuse.’

‘I shall accept,’ was all he said, and there was silence for a time.

Helena went on working, with how great, how immense an effort, he could not know. He sat and meditated on what he had done, on the fact that he had submitted his conscience to the guidance of a girl’s voice, and that since that voice had spoken, every hesitation, every doubt had vanished. Not a difficulty remained.

‘You will be almost certainly elected,’ said Helena, after a pause. ‘Then your life will be busier than ever. How will you manage?’

‘That is a problem which is even now troubling me. I must have some help. I do not know where to turn for it. I am overwhelmed with business, really.’

‘Are you? I wonder at you wasting your precious hours here,’ said Helena, and the moment after she had said it her face became crimson.

‘You think the time wasted, and you wonder that I should waste it here?’ said Sebastian, and looked at her steadily.

Helena did, at this point, show a return of her former sensibility. The flush remained high in her cheeks. Her eyes fell, and her hands trembled as she resumed her work. Sebastian was much too good a tactician to lessen the value of the sign he had wrung from her, by coming to her assistance with any casual remark. He remained perfectly silent, till Helena, apparently finding the situation disturbing, started up, exclaiming impatiently.

‘How hot it is! Oh, how hot! My needle gets sticky, and I can’t work with a sticky needle.... When you are elected—and you are sure to be elected—you will, as you say, be very busy; but what an interesting kind of business! I shall often think——’

She stopped suddenly.

‘Never mind my life,’ said he, beginning to see where the power on his side, and the weakness on hers, really lay. ‘Tell me something about your own.’

‘About mine—my life!’ said Helena, with a laugh. ‘That would indeed be an exciting history—too much for your nerves altogether, I fear.’

‘Tell me, or I shall not know how to think of you. It is so annoying not to know the tenor of the life led by some person in whom one takes an interest. What is the name of the parents of your pupils?’

‘Their name is Galloway.’

‘What sort of people are they?’

‘They are rich people.’

‘That is nothing to the point.’

‘They are people with fads, and yet they are very kind to me. I teach their children—as much as they will allow me, that is. They believe in letting the children grow up happy, and never punishing them, which means——’ Helena smiled.

‘Which means that every one else, and you particularly, are to grow up unhappy, and live in a state of eternal punishment,’ said Sebastian, resentfully; ‘disgusting people!’

‘They are not disgusting, and they have a right to bring up their children as they think best.’

Sebastian found that Helena would not complain. She evidently accepted the inevitable resolutely. She had become very reasonable and sensible. He wished she had been less so.

‘Mrs. Spenceley looks well and cheerful,’ said he at last. ‘That must be a comfort to you.’

‘Poor mamma! Yes, it is,’ said Helena, with sudden tenderness. ‘What a great deal she has had to go through, and how brave, and cheerful, and uncomplaining she is. She makes me feel ashamed of myself, and yet I cannot see things in the light in which she sees them.’

‘Mr. Jenkins, for instance, on Sundays.’

‘Oh!’ exclaimed Helena, and then, after a pause, ‘No; mamma and I differ very much on the subject of Mr. Jenkins.’

‘You see, I know why I may not come on Sunday,’ said he, rising.

‘Do you? I thought you would not enjoy Mr. Jenkins’s society, but now, if you like, you may come on Sunday, and have the pleasure of meeting him. We are glad to see our friends, if they care to visit us.’

‘Our friends!’ It was the turn of the eminently reasonable Mr. Mallory to feel most unreasonably annoyed at being classed, along with Mr. Jenkins, as ‘our friends.’ Helena had succeeded in turning the tables very completely upon him. It was useless to try not to feel mortified and snubbed. He felt both; and Helena stood, the picture of unconscious innocence, waiting for him to finish his good-bye.

‘You have changed, Miss Spenceley,’ said he. ‘You have developed the power of being very——’

‘Rude and unkind?’ suggested Helena. ‘Perhaps adversity has soured my temper. It has that effect upon many natures, and I never was one who could endure thwarting as you may remember.’

‘May I be allowed to come again?’ he asked, almost humbly.

‘We shall be happy to see you, whenever your other engagements allow you to call,’ said Helena, quite coolly and distantly. The answer chilled him and stung him, and yet he asked himself, what more would he have had her say?

‘You say you are so very busy,’ she continued remorselessly, ‘and if you accept this invitation to stand, and if Mr. Lippincott resigns, which I suppose he really intends to do now, and the election comes on, your time will indeed be fully occupied.’

‘But I am not forbidden to come when I have time?’

‘Forbidden! Oh no! As I said, we are always glad to see our friends.’

‘Good-bye,’ said he. ‘Remember you are answerable for the step I am going to take.’

‘You say so, but I wonder how it would have been if we had never met,’ said Helena, carelessly. They shook hands, and Sebastian was gone, with the words still echoing after him: ‘I wonder how it would have been, if we had never met!’

‘How indeed?’ he muttered to himself. ‘And how is it to be now that we have met? I don’t know how it will end, but you shall look at me differently from that, Helena, or——’

CHAPTER III.

IN THE RAIN.

It was more than three weeks later. The month of August had almost come to its close. The scene was again the bright and cheerful city of Manchester, on one of its typical days. August was going out, as she often does in Lancashire, with a sullen, streaming rain, which poured on, relentlessly and unceasingly. Helena Spenceley had been struggling all the morning with her pupils, who had turned refractory, and, unable because of the rain to go out, had vented their youthful spirits in a series of experiments upon Miss Spenceley’s endurance. They were not bad children; indeed they had in them ‘the makings’ of very good children, and were, as their governess had informed Sebastian, as good as their parents would allow them to be. They had been allowed to find out that everyone and everything in the establishment was to yield to their comfort and convenience. They knew their power, and used it.

The morning’s lessons were over. Usually, at twelve o’clock, Helena took her pupils for a walk, but to-day that was impossible, so they remained indoors, and she was understood to be amusing them. It was a dreary kind of amusement. She had been feeling weary and exhausted all the morning, and now, the close room, the shouting children rushing wildly about, almost overpowered her. She felt herself growing each moment more numb and stupid. At last the bell rang for Mrs. Galloway’s lunch, and the dinner of Helena and the children. Pell-mell they rushed in, and forgot for a time, in the pleasures of the table, their quarrels and disputes, relating chiefly to the possession of certain precious objects and fetishes, over which they wrangled with ever fresh acrimony and avidity.

The meal was over, and Helena returned to the schoolroom. The children were to remain downstairs for an hour with their mother. Helena took a chair to the window, and, resting her chin upon her hand, looked drearily out upon the streaming rain, the dripping trees, and the misty outlines of other houses in the park. Idle tears filled her eyes, and a lump rose in her throat. She choked both back, and smiled drily and drearily to herself.

‘What a fool I was,’ she thought, ‘to expect him again! It was a passing fancy. He is naturally polite—that means, a little deceitful—and he could not have said anything rough or rude if he had tried. But he will never come again. It is not likely. I was most foolish to be so glad to see him. I might have known it would bring me nothing but pain and sorrow. I wish we had not met again, and then, if I had not had the pleasure, I should not have had the pain either. I had almost given over thinking of him, and now I have nothing else to think of, and he has everything else. Why did he come and spend that one evening, and brighten everything, and take me into another world, and force me to like him? Why did he ask my advice—as if he wanted it? It was too bad, and I was a fool. But I always was that. He is not shallow—no, it is not that. It is simply that his life is a full one, and mine is an empty one, and that what to him is a chance meeting—a passing act of politeness, is to me a great event—a thing to think about. I wish I had a great deal to do—a work, a regular career. Soon, if these miserable, restless feelings do not leave me, I must bestir myself, and find something more absorbing than this teaching. I have been more dissatisfied ever since I knew that he had the prospect of making himself a name and an influence. And I will do something, too. There must be things to be done; there must be some way of curing this sentimental folly—some way of working it out, till nothing is left of it. I will find a way, or I will die.’

She started as the door opened, and Mrs. Galloway, the mother of her pupils, entered.

‘Are you sitting moping, Miss Spenceley? You should never mope,’ said she; ‘it is a very bad habit, and leads to all kinds of follies.’

‘Does it?’ said Helena.

‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Mrs. Galloway, who did not look as if she moped much herself.

She did not either speak or look unkindly; she was only devoid of tact and judgment. She held three books in her hands; and as she spoke she advanced to the window and looked out.

‘I am afraid it is not going to clear up,’ she began, looking first at the rain, and then at the books.

Helena also expressed the same opinion.

‘I am rather in a dilemma,’ continued Mrs. Galloway.

‘Can I be of any help to you?’

‘I was on my way to ask you to do something for me; but I had no idea how very wet it was, and I do not think it fit for you to go.’

‘Was it to go out?’ asked Helena, wondering whether it would not be pleasanter to brave the elements than to return to her task of teaching the little Galloways that day.

‘The fact is, Mr. Galloway forgot to take the books to Mudie’s this morning, and we had arranged to have some reading aloud to-night, and——’

‘I will go and change them for you with pleasure,’ said Helena, almost with animation; ‘only the children——’

‘It will do the children no harm to miss their lessons this afternoon; in the depressed state of the barometer, it is cruelty to make them study. But it is such a day——’

‘Oh, I don’t mind. It will do me no harm; I don’t take cold easily, and I can take an omnibus from Oxford Street, you know.’

‘Really, since you don’t seem to mind, I think——’

‘I will get ready now,’ said Helena.

‘I can lend you a waterproof,’ suggested Mrs. Galloway, to whom it did not seem to occur that a cab would be the most effectual kind of waterproof.

‘I have one, thank you; I am ready now. I will put the books in this strap. Have you put a list with them?’

‘The list is quite ready. Then you will bring the books back here?’

‘Yes,’ said Helena, cheerfully, so pleased at the prospect of escaping the afternoon’s lessons that she would willingly have gone if, in addition to the rain, it had blown a hurricane.

Mrs. Galloway followed her to the hall door, uttering deprecating observations, and Helena, unfurling her umbrella, stepped out into the rain.

After a short walk through the damp, soaking avenues of the park, she at last emerged in Oxford Street, and stood waiting in the wet until an omnibus came by. It was nearly full, but Helena managed to squeeze herself in between two stout ‘Turkish merchants,’ and opposite a fat old woman with a bundle. Who does not know and love the classic atmosphere of a crowded omnibus on a wet, close day?

The omnibus took her to Market Street, from whence she took another walk into Cross Street, and turned into the narrow lane, sacred to Mr. Mudie’s library and fancy shops. Her enthusiasm was beginning to glow less brightly. She felt very wet, very draggled, and very tired—exceedingly tired. She went into the library, and found herself alone there; the young man who came forward to serve her looked almost compassionately at her, and remarked what very bad weather it was. Helena languidly agreed with him, and presented her list. He gave her two heavy massive volumes of travels, and she took them. They would not go into the little strap which had held the three volume novel, and Helena was in that mood in which a trifling inconvenience makes one feel that it would be best to put an end to one’s existence at once.

‘Suppose you were to take only one volume,’ suggested the young man.

‘No, I’ll have both,’ said Helena, stoically, manfully seizing them, and going on her way.

As she left the library some one almost knocked up against her, some one who was going, like herself, towards St. Ann’s Square.

‘Beg your pardon. Oh, Helena—Miss Spenceley! What, in the name of all that is damp, brings you here on such a day?’ asked Sebastian, stopping suddenly and looking at her.

To meet him thus, after her recent reflections, came upon Helena with almost a shock: but she mastered herself quickly, and said,

‘I have only been to the library.’

‘Only been to the library! Suppose you give me those books. I have tried to call at your house again,’ he added, ‘but I have been so awfully busy. You would see all about my acceptance and Mr. Lippincott’s resignation in the papers.’

‘Yes; I did not expect you to call again,’ said Helena, distantly.

‘Did you not? You speak as if you were offended. What have I done?’

By this time they were in the square, near the cab-stand, and it was high time to decide whether they were going in the same direction or not.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Sebastian.

‘To the omnibus office, till a Victoria Park omnibus comes, and then to Mrs. Galloway’s with the books. Where are you going?’

‘I am going to see the pictures again,’ said Sebastian. ‘Don’t you think you had better come and see them too?’

‘I! Oh, I am afraid I have not time,’ said Helena, taken aback by the proposal. ‘It is nearly four o’clock, and the books——’

‘Oh, never mind the books. I am sure you want to see the pictures; and you must explain to me what I have done to offend you, and we can’t do that under an umbrella in the street.’

He signed to an observant cabby, who drove up, and Sebastian politely handed Helena into the vehicle. She did not know why she got into the cab, unless it was because Sebastian looked as if he were quite determined that she should do so, and she did not feel able to resist.

‘Royal Institution,’ said he, and followed her. They drove rapidly away.

‘I ought not to have come; it is very absurd,’ said Helena, uncomfortably.

‘I am quite sure you ought,’ he said, decidedly.

He saw that Helena’s manner was changed. From her gravity and almost monosyllabic answers to his remarks he concluded that she was for some reason offended with him. He did not know that three weeks’ absence and silence had done more to favour his cause than three months’ assiduous courtship would have done.

‘Here we are! Now for the pictures!’ he observed, as they stopped before the Royal Institution.

Helena laughed nervously, and did not know why she laughed. They stopped to leave their umbrellas with the porter, and she found Sebastian unfastening her cloak.

‘Because we shall be here a good while,’ said he, gravely. ‘The pictures are not to be done all in a minute.’

Helena did not resist. It was all very strange—comical almost. She felt as if it had been a pre-arranged meeting, and yet, she solemnly assured herself, that was impossible.

They went up the stairs, bestowing a very scanty meed of attention on the much-talked-of pictures. Sebastian seemed in very high spirits, thought Helena, unconscious that her own cheeks were burning with their old brightness, that the actual sight of her and her eyes had turned her companion’s head; that he had thought more of her than of his work since they had parted; that her face, and her eyes, and an orange-coloured ribbon, had seemed to float before his eyes by day and by night, haunting him in all his business, and intruding themselves in the most solemn of committee meetings or political dinners. She was conscious that whenever she looked at him he seemed to be looking at her, and, she thought, often when she was not looking; that there was something in his eyes and his manner which made her tremble strangely, and that she suddenly felt quite certain that whatever might have been the case in the past, he did not care for Adrienne Blisset now.

On that wet afternoon there were not more than half a dozen persons in all the suite of rooms. They walked through one after another, and would probably have gone on for ever, had they not found that they had come to the last: they were stopped by a wall, and could go no farther.

‘Sit down,’ said Sebastian, suddenly, taking her hand and drawing her to the settee in the middle of the room, which was empty, save for themselves.

‘You know I am in the midst of electioneering?’ said he.

‘I supposed so, from what I read in the papers.’

‘That has been the only reason why I did not call. Twice I have tried to do so, but, with the best will in the world, I could not manage it. And poor Sutcliffe, my manager, is ill, so I have had double duty to do.’

‘I am sure you are busy,’ she repeated mechanically.

‘It is thought that I shall win,’ he added. ‘The Conservatives seem to have got desperate. No local candidate would present himself, so they had down a Q.C. from the Junior Carlton. I don’t fancy he has much chance, though he is a good fellow.’

‘Oh, he will have no chance. You will win. I shall be very glad.’

‘Will you really? You really meant what you said when you told me I had no right to refuse?’

‘I am not in the habit of saying what I don’t mean.’

‘That is true, but you were very brief in your remarks on that occasion. Do you think that I really can do good?’

‘Yes,’ said Helena, crushing down all the ungenerous remarks which occurred to her, and answering him frankly, according to her conviction, ‘I do. I think, with your experience of a different, broader life than most of our young manufacturers have led, and with the practical talents that you have too, you ought to rise to influence. You may do a great deal. I think you have a noble career before you, if you will follow it worthily. And—I—I shall always read with interest of your progress.’

‘You really think this, though you so bitterly opposed me upon some other questions?’ he asked earnestly.

‘Yes, I do. I have seen not the error of my ideas, for I still believe them to be true and just in principle, but I have seen that a man may be utterly against them, and may yet be capable of very great things. I believe this of you. I shall be sorry if I ever hear of your rising and lifting your voice against these ideas that I believe in; but I shall try to think that my cause is not so important as a great many others, and——’

‘But, will you give me a hearing now, while I tell you that my views have changed, too, as much as yours?’

‘Have they? How?’

‘I always did believe that the woman’s cause is man’s. I told you that, even when we most disagreed and least understood each other. During these two years in which I have lived alone, I have learned to feel that still more strongly. I have felt that no friend, no man, could give me the help and sympathy that I wanted; that no man, and no woman, pitted each against the other, could do any good, but that “the twain together well might change the world.” I shall never uplift my voice against those theories of yours, never.’

‘I am glad of that, very glad. It would have hurt me dreadfully; it would have seemed as if—it would have cut me up,’ said Helena.

‘How careful I shall have to be, as to what I say and do, now.’

‘Because of what I have said? You have a larger public than me to think of. You must do what is right—you must say all that you know of the truth.’

‘Helena, will you help me to try and discover what is right and true? I have been wondering for a fortnight whether you would, and sometimes I have dared to hope it. Have I been too bold?’

‘You mean——’ said Helena, with trembling lips and a face which had suddenly grown pale.

‘I mean that for a year, for more, I have loved you unconsciously, Helena; that since I met you three weeks ago, I have known it to my very heart-depths. Will you help me? Will you be my wife?’

‘You forget,’ said she, her face grown still paler, and its expression more pained; ‘you forget.’

‘Forget what?’ he asked, surprised and chilled by the tone, yet unable to think that the expression in her eyes was one of indifference.

‘You forget whom you are asking to be your wife. You——’

‘I am asking Helena Spenceley to be my wife. Who has a word to say against her?’ he asked, his face darkening.

‘You must remember that I am not alone,’ said Helena. ‘There is the past: my father, my brother; oh, it is not to be thought of—for you.’

‘Is that a roundabout way of telling me that you do not love me, and will not marry me?’ he asked, taking her hand, and looking at her until she looked at him. ‘I would rather you said it straight out—I am waiting.’

‘But I cannot say that,’ murmured Helena; ‘I do love you.’

‘Then let the other things take care of themselves,’ said he pleadingly, for something in her face forbade him to draw her to him, or do anything more than plead.

‘No,’ said she. ‘It is not fit that a man like you, in your position, should marry a girl with the—connections—that I have.’

‘You mean this seriously?’

‘I am quite decided about it.’

‘Then good-bye,’ said Sebastian, abruptly rising; ‘I will bear it as best I can.’

He was going, but suddenly turned to her again and stooped over her.

‘Helena,’ he said, and his voice was so changed that she looked up affrighted—‘is it that your pride is stronger than your love? Because, if so, yours is not real love.’

‘My pride!’ she ejaculated.

‘Yes, your pride, which is afraid lest it should be said that I stooped to you? That is the secret of this objection. You would ruin our two lives for the sake of gratifying your pride.’

‘Sebastian!’

‘Helena?’

‘It is not that....’

‘What else is it?’

She was silent, in pain and uncertainty, till he said:

‘My pride is not so great as my love. You have conquered me, Helena. I would go through fire and water to win you. Once more, will you tell me again to go?’

His voice had sunk to a whisper. He was leaning over the settee, and she, with a sudden shiver at the idea his words conjured up, looked up to him. He stooped, by an involuntary, instinctive impulse, and kissed her.

‘Must I go, or may I stay? Answer me, my darling.’

‘Do not go!’ said Helena, almost inaudibly, and Sebastian stayed; but he could not conceal from himself that he had yet much to win, much service to do, before he could call Helena his own.

She loved him; she said so; she felt it, but she was proud: he had been right when he said so. Despite her love, she was half ashamed, half angry at finding herself conquered, and the glance was a shy and wavering one which he met. It was a strange fact, that though he wished very much that Helena would ask him to go home with her, though he had a couple of hours to spare, yet he dared not venture to hint at the invitation. All he could venture upon was to say to her.

‘You will allow me to take you to Mrs. Galloway’s, as it is late?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Helena, rising.

And they went downstairs. Sebastian gave Helena her umbrella, carried her cloak, opened the door for her, in a strange silence. She had just accepted him, and yet he had never felt so completely held at arm’s length before. Helena’s own shyness and timidity effected what the most cunningly laid stratagem could not have accomplished—they raised her lover’s fervent admiration into absolute worship. He called a cab, and in it they drove towards the Victoria Park. When they were nearly there, Sebastian, unable to endure the silence any longer, said.

‘Helena, when may I come to see you? Will you not even look at me?’ he added, almost vehemently. ‘You cannot know how hardly you are treating me.’

‘Hardly!’ she repeated. ‘I—it is so strange. It is a most wonderful feeling.’

‘But pleasant, I hope?’ suggested Sebastian, earnestly.

‘Oh, very!’

‘Then may I come soon to see you? To ask Mrs. Spenceley’s consent——’

‘Oh! there is Mrs. Mallory. I am sure she will object,’ said Helena, suddenly, and with animation.

‘Leave her to me!’ said he, almost impatiently. ‘See, Helena, we are almost at the park, and you have not given me one look, one word, to tell me that you are really mine. I have not deserved to be so treated.’

‘Forgive me!’ said she, suddenly, in a voice of tenderness. ‘I was so unhappy this afternoon before I saw you, and now I am too happy for words. I am afraid of my happiness. Come soon to see me, and I will try to behave better.’

She looked at him at last with an April face, beneath whose showers lay a broad and fathomless heaven of love. Sebastian was satisfied.

‘And may I write?’ he asked.

‘Yes, do!’ returned Helena, and the cab stopped at Mrs. Galloway’s door. Helena and the books got out, and Sebastian Mallory drove away again, to the station—and a meeting.

CHAPTER IV.

A CONQUEST.

‘My dear Mallory, I am glad to see you here at last! Were you unexpectedly detained?’ asked Canon Ponsonby, greeting Sebastian at the door of the room in the town-hall in which the meeting was to be held. It began at half-past seven, and that time had been already past when Sebastian arrived.

‘I was very unexpectedly detained,’ replied the young man, pressing Canon Ponsonby’s hand with a fervour which seemed a little extravagant to that gentleman. ‘But I am quite ready now, quite fit,’ he added. ‘Suppose we go to the platform. They seem to be getting impatient.’

They ascended the platform, and Sebastian was surprised at the heartiness of the greeting he received. He had not known how popular he was, and in his present mood he felt absolutely touched by these signs of goodwill on the part of the ‘people.’ All things combined to-night to rouse and inspire him. One or two even of his warmest friends and supporters, and most earnest admirers, had said they feared Mallory’s coldness of manner might be mistaken for indifference, that he was a little too prone to betray some of the contempt which he felt for party and party feeling: and had a way, in the extreme philosophy of his radicalism, of saying things which might be mistaken by the uninitiated Thanshope mind for distinctly Conservative expressions. On this occasion, these doubting hearts were agreeably deceived. Sebastian’s tact came strongly into play; he made one of those fortunate speeches, in which the right was happily touched off, and in which the truth was told without disturbing people’s feelings. He felt himself penetrated by an enthusiasm as rare, with him, as it was agreeable. Every now and then he seemed to lose sight of the sea of faces below him, and to see only one; his own voice seemed to die away, while Helena’s voice bade him do what was right, and tell the truth as far as he knew it. Under that influence questions which had hitherto seemed even a little contemptible were suddenly revealed as susceptible of being raised and ennobled; and the effort which he had at first thought of making, chiefly in compliance with the wishes of certain friends, and because he felt (like Myles Heywood) a thirst for constant work wherewith to fill up his life—this effort, not a very hearty or enthusiastic one, was now changed completely by the consciousness that there was not only Sebastian Mallory, indolent and indifferent by nature, to be consulted, but also Helena Spenceley, earnest, vehement, and enthusiastic, who would exult in his success, and be bitterly disappointed by his failure. Indeed, she was so calmly confident that he would win, that he felt he dared not lose. All this combined in his favour that night. There was no want of unanimity in the voice of the meeting. The speaker was so carried away himself that he carried his audience away with him. They separated in the highest good humour with him and themselves—full of confidence in their candidate, and of amiable contempt for his Conservative opponent.

There followed a gathering of some of his friends, and supper at home. Politics, and nothing but politics, engrossed the conversation, and it was late when Sebastian found himself alone. He drew a long breath of relief, but checked it again immediately—as he remembered the interview which was to follow.

‘Best get it over at once,’ he reflected, going to the drawing-room; but finding it empty, he went upstairs and knocked at his mother’s dressing-room door.

‘Who’s there?’ she asked.

‘It is I—Sebastian. May I see you for a few minutes?’

‘Come in!’ was the answer, and Sebastian entered.

Mrs. Mallory was seated before her looking-glass, and her maid was brushing her hair.

‘Be quick, Emma,’ said she; ‘and sit down, Sebastian; I shall be ready directly.’

He threw himself into a low chair by the hearth, and in two minutes was lost in a pleasant, pleasant dream.

‘Now!’ said his mother’s voice at last, and he speedily awoke to reality again.

The lady’s maid had twisted up her mistress’s hair into a loose knot in the gaslight. With the soft frills of her dressing-gown round her neck she looked a very young and handsome woman.

‘What beautiful hair you have, mother!’ he exclaimed, struck with its gloss and abundance. ‘Why do you cover it up with a cap?’

‘Is that all you have come to say?’ she inquired drily. ‘What kind of a meeting did you have?’

‘It appeared very unanimous and successful. Ponsonby said it was, and he ought to know. I wish you had been there. I saw a good many ladies.’

‘Very likely; but not ladies of my opinions.’

‘Ah! I forgot,’ said Sebastian, smiling.

He felt soft-hearted to-night, and hardly noticed his mother’s coolness.

‘Have all those men gone?’

‘Yes; the last of them has departed, and I am glad of it. But I did not come to keep you talking about Radical meetings, mother. I wished particularly to see you to-night; I have something to tell you.’

Mrs. Mallory knew in an instant the nature of the coming communication, and prepared herself to hear something disagreeable. She had not omitted to provide her son with many opportunities of changing his estate. She had had plenty of visitors at her house, and chiefly young lady visitors. None of them had had a hundred thousand pounds, but equally none of them had been quite portionless, and all of them had been more or less good-looking, and what are called ‘nice girls.’ She had seen all her efforts wasted; had seen Sebastian studiously polite and amiable, even putting himself out of the way often to attend her and her visitors when they wanted an escort. She had seen him follow them to concerts and dances and garden-parties; she had seen him play the host—and nothing else—to admiration; and she had seen the look of relief which dawned upon his face when the duty could conscientiously be left, and he could return to his books, his plans, and his business—that business which seemed to have become the very breath of life to him, and from which no girl, however nice, could succeed in drawing him away.

But some one had at last found this power—probably some one whom she would dislike excessively. Most probably he had met Adrienne Blisset again somewhere; had proposed to her a second time, and been accepted. Mrs. Mallory thought she would have preferred him to come and tell her that he was going to marry any one—a barmaid, a milliner—any one rather than ‘that girl,’ whom she hated with a virulence which grew with time.

‘Indeed!’ she made answer, and left him to inflict the blow. It was exactly as she expected.

‘I am going to be married, mother.’

‘To be married?’ she repeated mechanically. She had long ago said that she had no power over her son, but she felt bitter at this proof of the truth of her words.

‘Yes. I hope you will approve my choice.’

‘If your choice is Miss Blisset, Sebastian, I shall never approve it, and so I tell you distinctly.’

‘But it is not Miss Blisset, mother. She refused me two years ago—she would refuse me now, and she would refuse me through all time. Then I was a good deal cut-up about it. Now, I am very glad. No; it is some one whom you used to like very much. At least, I always understood you to say so.’

It is a fact that the idea of Helena Spenceley did not once enter Mrs. Mallory’s mind. She had so come to believe that her son never could, under any circumstances, turn to her former favourite, that since the downfall of Helena and her family she had altogether dismissed them from her thoughts. Even now, as Sebastian paused, she did not think of Helena, but said, after a moment.

‘I cannot imagine whom you mean, Sebastian, and I never could guess things of that kind. Who may the lady be?’

‘Helena Spenceley.’

Mrs. Mallory actually started from her chair.

‘Helena Spenceley! What will you tell me?’

‘You surely cannot disapprove of that. My dear mother, you at one time wished me to marry her. You told me so.’

‘You have the most extraordinary, perverted ideas of right and duty, Sebastian. Can you suppose that I ever wished you to marry a girl whose father committed suicide after behaving in a far from honourable way in his business affairs, and whose brother absconded with a large sum of money which he had stolen, and who is now—who knows where he is, or what he is doing, or what trouble he may cause his relations even yet?’

Sebastian almost smiled at the utter opposition of his mother’s ideas to his own. They never saw but one side each of the other’s nature—not because neither had another side to show, but because of the formation of their respective mental eyes. Yet, for the sake of appearances, he must argue the matter out.

‘Suppose we had married at the time you wished it,’ he suggested. ‘These things would have happened all the same. As it is, they are now nearly forgotten. No one with any feeling would wish to remind her of them. If you could only see her, you would forget them all, in looking at herself. She was always a beautiful girl, but now she is lovelier than ever, and more charming.’

She was silent.

‘Will you not say you approve of this, mother! You know I will not seek a wife with a fortune. If she had happened to have money, well and good; but I would rather have her without, and with the beauty and the love that Helena gives me.’

‘It is a mockery to ask me whether I approve of it. You will do it whether I approve or not.’

‘But if you will approve—if you will hold out your hand to Helena, and accept her as my wife, you will gratify me beyond measure. You know, it is really your fault. You threw Helena in my way at first, and she must have made a much deeper impression upon me than I knew, for a few weeks ago, when I met her unexpectedly, I was scarcely master of myself. It was all over with me from that moment.’

‘And suppose I do not approve?’

‘I should be unspeakably grieved. We are alone in the world, almost. You are the very nearest relative a man can have; but you will agree,’ and he stooped and gently kissed her cheek.

She started. With that kiss seemed to come suddenly to her a great revelation, the revelation of the love which she had thrust obstinately away from her. She had received her son as a child, and had tried to curb and control him; and when he acted as a man, she had enclosed herself within a wall of icy reserve, and had repelled every advance he had made. The truth rushed upon her mind now with overwhelming force. She was a selfish, a profoundly selfish, woman; but somewhere, not quite withered away within her, there lay the remains of a mother’s heart.

‘I am your mother, Sebastian,’ she said, with a sudden tremor in her voice. ‘It is very strange that we should have got on so badly since you came home.... I have had no wish but for your prosperity and well-being, and yet——’

‘I know you have. I fear I have not been all that I might have been to you. Forgive me!’

He refrained, and she noticed it, from even speaking of the other side of the question—from saying, ‘You have deliberately set yourself against every plan and project of mine, until at last, in very self-defence, I have been obliged to be silent, and to keep my hopes and wishes to myself.’ This behaviour was generous, and she knew it was. It appeared that Sebastian did love her, and prized her goodwill. The emotion she felt was not an unpleasant one. And then, as he certainly would marry Helena, she put her hand on his shoulder and said,

‘I consent, Sebastian, though it is a trial. No; I don’t mean that I disapprove of Helena. I know a more lovely girl could not easily be found. It is her—well, never mind! Are you going to be married soon?’

‘Thank you! I thank you from my very heart!’ he exclaimed. ‘My great fear was lest you should be displeased. Shall we be married soon? I do not know in the least. I am obliged to go abroad before the autumn, and if I can persuade Helena, we will be married before then; but I am not sure that I can. She is not by any means inclined to rush into my arms. She is very much changed. She used to be so impulsive, and to betray her feelings so easily; and now, I assure you, her dignity has already almost overwhelmed me more than once.’

‘When you are married, or, at any rate, when you return from abroad, you will want the Oakenrod to yourselves,’ she suggested graciously.

‘My dear mother, I hope you will stay in it exactly as long as you feel disposed to do so. Helena wishes very much to please you,’ he added, drawing a bow at a venture.

‘Does she? When next you see her give her my—my love. Perhaps I had better go and call upon her.’

‘Or I will bring her over here to spend the day with you.’

‘Yes, perhaps that might be better. Has she given up any of her old notions yet?’

‘We both find that our views on these points are considerably modified, so that we are quite able to meet each other and agree together.’

‘I am glad to hear it. I think it must be getting late.’

‘It is indeed. You must excuse me, mother. I seem to have found more than a wife to-day,’ he added, kissing her hands one after the other. ‘Good night.’

Mrs. Mallory drew her son’s face down, and kissed him, strangely moved.

‘Good night, my son. God bless you!’

Sebastian left her. The conquest was won. From that day Augusta Mallory was a happier woman than she had been. There was always a certain distance about the intercourse between her and her son and his family, but there was amity and concord; and later, when Helena won triumphs by her beauty, grace, and spirit, which no money could ever have purchased for her, and when Mrs. Mallory heard on all sides of her beautiful and charming daughter-in-law, she began to think that after all Sebastian had not done so badly, even in a worldly wise point of view; and her respect for him increased accordingly.

In the course of a week the election came off, when the Radical candidate headed the poll by a large majority. Despite the exceeding business of that week, Sebastian had found time to pay several visits at 57 Woodford Street, and there had used such arguments with Helena that she had consented to the early marriage he wished for. Sebastian, Mrs. Mallory, and Canon Ponsonby went over to Manchester one evening, and the next day there was a small wedding at a quiet church in some fields.

Helena was given away by her uncle of the uncompromisingly truthful disposition. Mrs. Mallory looked calmly dignified. Mrs. Galloway was there, subdued by the fact that Helena had taken the liberty to contradict her hypothesis that governesses always make disastrous marriages. Mrs. Spenceley was there too, weeping in an obtrusive manner; and, when it was all over, they returned to their respective dwellings, except Helena and Sebastian, who went to the London Road station, to a compartment in the Euston express marked ‘engaged.’ They were on their way to Germany, but before they arrived at Euston Square Sebastian had told Helena the whole history of his earlier love for Adrienne, and his own misty conjectures as to how things stood between her and Myles Heywood—a recital which aroused the romantic Helena’s most compassionate and interested feelings—and so ended Sebastian’s courtship.

BOOK IV.
QUITS.

CHAPTER I.

‘1st Friend. Well, you’ve tried it: is your problem solved?
2d Friend. I have lived so long in the dark, I do not know.
1st Friend. Out, into the wind and sunshine then, and try!’

What is the difference, save in size, between one manufacturing town and another? How will you say, reader, on the first view, where this town lies to which I am about to lead you? You shall have heard no word of the language of its people, seen none of its customs, only had a quick bird’s-eye view of it, with its long chimneys and its canopy of smoke, its blackened grass and dingy trees. Not to make the survey tedious, let me say that it is no English town, but a German one. Let us not linger longer than is needful in its streets; here is a sloping road that leads to the railway station; and here, after ascending the hill, we are within the great noisy arena.

Amidst the crowd of hurrying passengers and phlegmatic officials, one figure stood perfectly still on the platform, waiting quietly, and looking composedly around him with quick, observant eyes. Whether a German, an Englishman, or even a Frenchman, the casual observer would have found it hard to say until he spoke, and then the accent would have betrayed the Englishman.

He was much changed. The two years of absence, the better outward circumstances, the habit of authority, the necessity of accommodating himself to a life new and strange to him, together with whatever inward thoughts might have had their part in moulding and shaping his mind—all these had had their influence. He was still Myles Heywood; but between him and himself of two years ago there was just the difference that there is between the reflective man and the passionate child.

As he stood waiting, a little round, quick-looking fair-haired German man came up to him and began to talk to him.

‘Now, Mr. Heywood, you have finished your business in the town?’

‘Yes, Herr Sternefeld; I am, as you may see, waiting for the train to Eisendorf.’

‘How goes all there? The old man is in rather feeble health, I hear.’

‘Yes. He has not been strong this summer. He thinks he will be better when the cooler weather comes.’

‘Ah!’ said the little German, ‘and still he keeps grinding away at the business?’

‘Yes,’ said Myles, rather indifferently; ‘or rather, I do. He leaves it pretty much to me at present.’

‘Yes, to be sure,’ said Herr Sternefeld, with a somewhat significant nod and smile. And there’s your train. Herr Süsmeyer will be glad to see you back again. Au revoir!’

He bustled away, and Myles, stepping forward to take his place in the Eisendorf train, soon forgot him.

From the great manufacturing town of ——feld, the home of turbulent spirits and birthplace of social democracy, to the mining and manufacturing village of Eisendorf, was some three quarters of an hour’s railway journey. The way was so thickly set with factories, houses, great collieries, and other evidences of manufacturing industry, that scarcely had these been left behind, and a strip of green grass and some distant hills been allowed a chance of showing themselves in a purer air, than they too were swamped, as it were. More collieries, more great buildings, cranes, hoists, and a canal, became dominant in the landscape, while the train rolled into Eisendorf.

Myles got out of the train, and left the station. Going quickly in the September evening through the busy main street, he presently turned aside and went down a kind of alley, at the end of which light and trees were visible. It was the way into a restauration and Biergarten, much frequented by the middle and better class of Eisendorf. Here, on almost every evening in the week, music was to be heard, and here, beneath the trees, one might sit and take one’s supper.

This was apparently Myles’s intention, for he walked through the lighted garden, seated himself at one of the tables, and gave an order to a waiter, who presently returned bearing a dish, a table-cloth, and all the other paraphernalia of a supper.

Myles did not spend a long time over this meal. The table was soon clear again, with the exception of the indispensable bottle of yellow wine, and the accompanying green glass. He leaned his elbows upon the table before him and stared dreamily forward across the garden, beyond the groups of merry guests—young men and girls, and whole families, with Vater and Mutter in full amplitude; he seemed to see none of them. The band in the orchestra, fifty yards away, were playing soft strains; the lamps twinkled with a mild, pleasant brightness; the trees above them looked ink-black by contrast. The sky beyond was like a vault of violet crystal, and the lamp-like stars beamed out mildly here and there. The breeze rustled gently now and then, but it was a very gentle breeze, with nothing of the storm in its breath. All around was the hum of laughter and talk, and the murmur of flirtation; now and then the clanking of spurs and the rattling of swords as the company was reinforced ever and anon by fresh specimens of the inevitable lieutenant; it was all very pleasant, very calm and peaceful. Myles, somewhat languid after a long day’s business in the de-oxygenised atmosphere of the offices and warehouses of a large town, felt, at the moment, perfectly neutral; neither glad nor sorry, but content, so far as he was anything, to sit still, with his arms on the table, taking an occasional drink of his pleasant, if not strong, straw-coloured Neckar wine, and listening to the whispers of the band, as one instrument after another died away in the final bars of a little serenade of Haydn’s. He would have been content to stay there for an indefinite time, for Myles had arrived at that mental state in which a man finds it easiest and pleasantest to go on doing the same thing. Whether the thing were work or idlenesss was almost immaterial to him, when he had once begun it. It was the effort of turning his attention from one thing to another which brought mental pain and inconvenience. All day he had wrought hard, and asked nothing better than to continue doing so. So long as he could go on, he was almost at ease. But when the work was over—when the offices were closed, and men had finished their toil, and were going home to ‘play them’—to use an idiom of his own native dialect—then it was that despondency seized him; then it was that he felt a sudden blank, an emptiness, a sense of being lost and unprovided for; then it was that the effort to find some other pastime, something else with which to fill his thoughts, was a dull pang which he dreaded continually. It was this feeling of desolation that kept him sitting up till all hours of the night, with book and dictionary open before him, studying or reading until his eyelids fell over his weary eyes, and he could go upstairs, certain that he would fall asleep as soon as he tumbled into bed. It was this which made him dread to awaken in the night watches, or to lie awake with nothing to do; this that, as soon as he opened his eyes in the morning, made him rise instantly and begin to do something. He had got an unconquerable horror of those hours of silent thought and meditation which had once been a joy and a privilege to him, as they are and must be to all robust, properly ripening minds.

It was for this reason that, being tired with his work, soothed with eating and drinking, and pervaded by a feeling of quiet calm and contentment unusual with him, he felt reluctant to move, and sat on, his handsome bronzed face set in a gravity that amounted to solemnity, and a fixed listlessness in his dark and brilliant eyes. Soon, he knew, the transient pause would be over—for the contentment was abnormal—soon the aching sense of desolation and unrest would return, and he would have to awake again.

Very soon, indeed, the spell was broken. A party of young men, strolling through the gardens, saw him, greeted him, and sat down beside him. They began to talk—persisted in drawing his attention to this girl and that girl, and in asking him if he had heard this piece of gossip or the other.

They were well-conditioned, kind-hearted young fellows enough; they had liked him, and had treated him with friendliness ever since his advent amongst them, and they continued to seek his company, in spite of his unvarying sedateness and gravity. Myles, in these latter days, was courtesy itself to all who merited courtesy; if Adrienne Blisset could have heard the yea, yea and nay, nay of his daily communication at present, she would have been quite unable to accuse him of being ‘scornful’ or ‘disdainful,’ as she once had done. What she might have felt about the little air of proud, absent, patient indifference, who shall say?

Despite absence and indifference, Myles was very well liked amongst the better sort of the young men of Eisendorf. They were of various nationalities; chiefly, however, German, Dutch, and English, with a sprinkling of French. They were all engaged in commercial pursuits, with the exception of one or two young professional men, and an occasional ‘lieutenant’—that much-laughed-at, much-abused equivalent of the English curate. It was known—Myles had never attempted to make any secret of it—that he had left a workman’s situation in an English town, to come and be the overlooker at Herr Süsmeyer’s works—that since then he had rapidly risen to the post of manager and headman; that Herr Süsmeyer had greatly attached himself to him; and it was thought more than probable that Herr Süsmeyer’s son, Julius, would never abandon his favourite occupation of travelling in foreign lands, and that when Herr Süsmeyer had provided for the said Julius, he would most likely retire, and leave his business in the hands of Myles Heywood, who—so every one agreed—was quite the most proper person to succeed to it.

Myles happened to know better—to know that Julius Süsmeyer was even then on his way home, with every intention of devoting himself to the career of a merchant, but, at Herr Süsmeyer’s request, he had not named the fact.

He sat, this evening, listening to the talk and jesting of the others for some little time, and then rose.

‘Why are you going?’ cried one of them. ‘Why not stay here? The evening has only just began. It’s only nine o’clock. I expect we shall have some dancing in the Saal when the concert is over.’

‘Thanks,’ said Myles, with a gleaming smile which lighted up his dark face; ‘dancing is not in my line, as you know.’

‘No,’ said a young Englishman, laughing. ‘One would almost as soon expect to see old Michel Angelo’s Juliano de Medici step from his pedestal and begin to dance, as you, Heywood.... Now that I look at you,’ he added, thoughtfully, putting his head on one side, ‘there is a likeness actually; at least about the nose and mouth. Look here! If you were to put your hand across your face so——’

‘And twist my other arm into a commanding position—thus—you would see a man in the attitude of Michel Angelo’s ‘Pensiero’ Medici, and that would be all. Good night!’

‘Odd fish, Heywood!’ murmured his countryman, shaking his head. ‘I wonder if he was ever less solemn than he is now.’

The object of that speculation took his way out of the gardens and the town, walking northwards, along a road leading to that suburb in which lived most of the more wealthy and distinguished inhabitants of Eisendorf. He walked for half an hour or more, till he arrived at the house of Herr Süsmeyer, the largest and pleasantest of all these residences. He went up the dark garden walk, and pulled the bell; soon the great door was thrown open, and he was in the presence of his chief, a delicate, kindly-looking old man, with a gouty foot laid up on a stool before him, and a crutched stick leaning against the table which stood hard by his easy-chair. The table was covered with books and papers; a reading-lamp cast a softened light over the page which the old man was reading. He was quite alone; there was perfect rest and perfect stillness around him.

He glanced up over his spectacles, and laid down his book, as if well satisfied when he found who his visitor was.

‘So late!’ said he. ‘I had hardly expected to see you to-night, after your long day’s work. What business in ——feld?’

Myles entered into details as to the business he had done, with an incidental disquisition upon the state of trade in general at that time. Then the conversation drifted off into other channels.

‘Your holiday-time will soon be here,’ observed Herr Süsmeyer; ‘you mean to spend it in Berlin, I think you said?’

‘I shall go to Berlin, amongst other places,’ said Myles, who had assumed the very attitude which the young Englishman had wished him to take, and who sat, his hand half across his face, looking out, through the open window, into the darkness of the garden. ‘I suppose I shall wander from one place to another. I do not much care where I go. You know it is your doing, sir, that I am going at all.’

‘I wonder that you should go to Berlin, from one town to another. I should have thought the green woods and fresh air of Thüringen, or——’

Myles shook his head.

‘No; I don’t care about the country. It is dull.’

‘Or to England, to see your friends?’

The young man started.

‘No—oh, certainly not,’ said he. ‘The last place I should wish to go to. No, Herr Süsmeyer; with your introductions and through your kindness, I shall meet with friends in Berlin and other places, and shall see a great deal that is interesting, and which I have long wished to see. I shall come back here refreshed and ready for work again, until your son——’

‘We can talk about that when Julius arrives. Time enough, time enough! I hate changes,’ said Herr Süsmeyer. ‘Meanwhile, I have had very good news to-day—excellent news.’

‘Indeed!’

‘Yes; a letter from Sebastian Mallory.’

‘Ah! Is he coming, then?’

‘He is coming—yes, but not alone,’ said Herr Süsmeyer, a smile of much satisfaction playing upon his face. He will bring his bride with him. What do you think of that? He says I must see her. But you say nothing; you did not know?’

‘His bride!’ repeated Myles, in a low voice. ‘No, I did not know. But—when does he come?’

‘In a few days. They are already at Cologne. They will travel through Düsseldorf and ——feld, and come here for two nights only. Then they are going on. It is their wedding tour. I have already given orders,’ continued the old man, ‘to receive them. I must make much of my friend Sebastian. It is as if a child of my own brought his bride to see me. I have ordered the guest-chambers to be prepared, which have not been used since the death of my blessed Amalie, my wife.’

Thus the good old man prosed on, with childlike pleasure in the prospect of meeting ‘his’ Sebastian again, and of seeing his bride, so engrossed in the anticipation that he did not even look at his listener, who sat still, composed and pale, hearing distinctly all that was said, and occupied, he too, in picturing the scene: how Sebastian Mallory would lead forward his bride, who would be glad that his old friends were pleased to welcome her. Myles could exactly realise how she would go up to good old Herr Süsmeyer with both hands held out, and eyes shining with happiness, and he—perhaps he need not be there at all; but, at any rate, if he only kept sufficiently in the background he would not be observed, and he could bear his pain alone. This stroke had been long delayed, but it had come at last—as he knew it must. Those words he had heard spoken in the Thanshope Park had held good. Why there had been so long an interval he could not tell; he had often wondered, had many a time sought the papers through with sickening anxiety, and had never yet seen what he expected and dreaded to see. But at last all uncertainty was over. He could never doubt again: and now, he thought to himself, life would be much easier to live, for he had too much sense to bewail his lot when he knew what it was; it was uncertainty which was so wearing, and no doubt it was uncertainty which had caused all his mental pain and distress. Now, certainly, things would be better.

Thus consoling himself, he rose to take his leave of Herr Süsmeyer, who shook hands with him, and thanked him for calling, and said.

‘You know, you too must see Mr. Mallory. He will wish to see you; indeed, he says so in this letter.’

‘Yes, I shall see him, of course,’ said Myles.

Then he went away—walked back to town to his lodgings; found his lamp burning, and his books open as he had left them; said to himself,

‘Now, at last, I can study with a mind at ease,’ and straightway prepared to do so.

In vain! Echoes from a life that he had tried to believe lived out thronged in his mind, and resounded there. Faces seemed to flash past him and voices to ring in his ears. All sorts of scenes vividly recurred to his mind: always he and she were together; always there was exquisite delight mingling with his pain, till he recalled the scene in which Frederick Spenceley had come scowling through the committee-room, in the great distress. It was after that that his life had become so intolerable to him. His thoughts wandered off to the Spenceleys in general. Of course he had heard of the great failure; of Mr. Spenceley’s suicide; of Fred’s dishonourable flight. What was the wretched fellow doing now? he wondered. And there had been others: a good, homely-looking mother, who seemed ill at ease under her greatness; and a daughter—he remembered her too—the most beautiful girl in Thanshope, so every one had said, and Myles also had been compelled to give her his meed of admiration when he saw her, day after day, working with Adrienne Blisset. He had often thought what a contrast they formed—like a beautiful crimson rose and a white violet: the one with her fair hair and delicate, pale face; the other with dusky locks and great dark eyes, the rich colour that came and went, the vivid life in every movement, the splendid attire. Yes, he remembered her—she was most beautiful; but to him a violet was more exquisite and precious than the most gorgeous rose, and it seemed other people shared the same opinion.

CHAPTER II.

ROSE OR VIOLET?

Two days later, Myles took his way, in the evening, towards Herr Süsmeyer’s house. The travellers had arrived, he had heard, early in the forenoon. There had been a ceremonious Mittagessen, or midday dinner, at which different treasured friends of Herr Süsmeyer’s had been present—friends also of Sebastian in former days. Myles, too, had received a pressing invitation to be there; but, feeling that he would much rather descend of his own free will into the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and there spend the remainder of his natural life, than sit a long three hours (for German congratulatory dinners are not amongst the briefest of ceremonies) at Herr Süsmeyer’s table under the proposed circumstances, he had declined, on the plea that it was a very busy day at the works, and he could not possibly be spared before evening. At the evening meal (the Abendbrod), Herr Süsmeyer insisted that he should be present; and Myles, not quite sure, when it came to the point, that the last arrangement was not worse than the first, had perforce consented.

The house was lighted up, he saw, as he approached. There were lights in the windows of those guest-chambers which had once been the pride of her life to the selige Amalie of Herr Süsmeyer. There, in that house, under that roof, he was to meet Adrienne again—no longer the girl whom he might dare to love because she was free, but as the wife of Sebastian Mallory, henceforth to be looked upon with other eyes. A rush of recollections, sweet and bitter, alike filled his mind for a moment, and were very strong.

But his will was still stronger. He had not endured his years of sorrow, trial, and probation, to emerge, at the last, a weaker and worse man than he had been at first. He was prepared to endure the pain that awaited him, piene forte et dure though it might be—to endure and perhaps, in the end to conquer it; to bear it, moreover, so that it and its cause should be known to himself alone.

It was with a feeling of sadness, but without any of bitterness, that he entered the house. He felt clearly and distinctly that he could meet his successful rival without a feeling of grudging or ill-will.

He was ushered into the large commodious room which was Herr Süsmeyer’s library, and in which he always sat when alone, or with intimate friends. Myles, going in, saw his old master in his gala dress of faultless black cloth and dazzling linen, his gouty foot laid up on the stool before him; his best-pleased smile upon his face, looking up to where Sebastian Mallory stood talking, his elbow resting on the top of the piano. There was no one else in the room. Sebastian, who was looking towards the door, changed his position quickly as Myles came in, and went to meet him with outstretched hand.

‘Ah, Heywood, I am glad to see you again. We were talking about you at this instant.’

Myles found it strangely hard at first to return the greeting, but he sternly beat back the grudging feeling which momentarily raised its head, and spoke with cordiality. How well Sebastian looked! How happy! How self-possessed, and at harmony with life and circumstances, naturally, thought Myles. He had everything to make him so. He was little changed. Perhaps there was a degree more of animation or abruptness in his manner; a little more of the active combatant, and less of the amused bystander, looker-on at the world’s game. That was natural too, thought Myles, and to be expected, while Sebastian was thinking he had never seen any man with manner, expression, almost appearance, so completely changed as this ‘revolutionary weaver,’ as Hugo von Birkenau had once called him. He could scarcely realise the excessive change which had taken place. All the old froward defiance appeared to have vanished, and instead there was

‘The reason calm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill,’

which were the qualities he himself most highly prized in man and woman. They stood patent on his ex-workman’s broad brow, in his steady eyes, and upon his firmly, though not sourly, set lips. Sebastian was divided between pleased surprise and self-congratulation on his own foresight; for, from the first, he had hoped and expected to see Myles turn into something of this kind.

Occupied with these feelings, the two young men scarcely spoke, but left Herr Süsmeyer to do the talking, which was exactly what he wished. The first thing that really roused them to reality again was a remark of Herr Süsmeyer’s:

‘Your dear wife (Ihre liebe Frau) is absent a long time, mein Bester.’

‘Oh,’ said Sebastian, with a sudden flash of the eyes, which did not escape Myles, ‘she will not be long. I told her at what time you took your supper. She was resting when I saw her.’

‘So!’ said Herr Süsmeyer, adding, for the hundredth time, ‘I trust she finds herself accommodated with all she wants upstairs.’

‘Oh, everything, thank you. She says she thinks German hospitality is the most delightful she ever had.’

‘German hospitality!’ thought Myles. ‘Strange! She passed her happiest years in Germany; she told me so.’

While he was marvelling at this (to him) peculiar remark of Sebastian’s, the rustle of a silken gown became audible on the polished floor of the passage; she was coming now.

‘There she is!’ said Sebastian, catching the sound too, and starting forward to open the door.

‘I hope I’m not very late,’ said a voice—(silvery, though not the voice)—and it was just at that moment that Myles began to wonder if he were labouring under some wild and extraordinary hallucination—whether long brooding and the last blow had really driven him mad.

He was conscious, but in a dream-like, unreal manner, of rising, as Sebastian led a lady into the room—a lady who laughed a happy laugh. He was conscious, also dreamily, of seeing a figure which had been in his thoughts quite lately—a tall, superbly shaped, queenly figure—not the figure of Adrienne; of seeing a lovely face, glowing with a soft flush of health and happiness; of meeting eyes which, for darkness and fire, might match his own; of seeing a long, white throat, a dress of silk and lace, rings flashing on white hands, and a dazzling smile making the brilliant whole more brilliant still. Nothing like a sweet violet, indeed, but a rich and gorgeous rose, in the full pride of its queenly beauty.

‘Helena, this is Mr. Heywood, of whom you have often heard me speak. Heywood, Mrs. Mallory.’

(‘How fearfully he stared at me, dear!’ said Helena afterwards. ‘He is really a very remarkable-looking young man, and I liked him when I talked to him; but he stared most alarmingly at first.’)

Myles was still dimly aware that the brilliant vision, which he kept expecting to see fade away like a dissolving view, to be followed by that of Adrienne, held out her hand graciously, saying something about ‘My husband has often told me about you,’ or words to that effect; and that he took the hand and bowed over it—very creditably, considering his state of mind. Then Sebastian placed a chair for—yes, his wife—it must be his wife, Myles argued within himself, and the conversation was taken up, and he listened to it in silence for a time, gradually comprehending that he had been labouring under a delusion, but a different delusion than he had imagined. By and by he became able to answer some remark addressed to him by Helena, and then she continued to talk to him, and Myles found himself being drawn out to show to the best advantage, saying clever things which he had had no idea that he could say, until they were elicited by the tact and sympathy of a woman like Helena. Still, he could not altogether get rid of the sensation that he was in a dream, and he continued to feel so for the rest of the evening.

When he was going away, Sebastian asked him if he could see him on the following morning.

‘At any time you please,’ said Myles.

‘Then I will call at the works in the forenoon. I can soon say what I have to say.’

On that understanding they parted.

CHAPTER III.

WHICH WINS?

The following forenoon, while it was yet early, Myles saw Sebastian coming through the great yard, towards the office where he sat. His face wore an expression of gravity—even of trouble—and he frowned thoughtfully as he came along.

Myles took him into his private room. He could not help thinking of how he had received him on that eventful morning when he came driving up to the office at Thanshope with Hugo beside him, and Myles smiled a little sadly at the change.

‘You came on business, perhaps,’ suggested Myles.

‘Yes; but I had no idea myself, until about an hour ago, how pressing the business was. Herr Süsmeyer and I were talking about you last evening before you came. He tells me his son is on his way home, and that he intends devoting himself to business.’

‘Yes; I believe that is true.’

‘Under those circumstances, I presume, your position would be somewhat changed.’

‘Certainly. It would naturally become more subordinate.’

‘Will you like that?’

Myles shrugged his shoulders.

‘Herr Süsmeyer was talking to me about it. He gave me a very high character of you. He very much regrets your having to take a secondary position. He says he would be very sorry to part with you for many reasons, but not if you left him to your own advantage.’

‘Does Herr Süsmeyer want to get rid of me?’ asked Myles.

‘On the very contrary. He only wishes to see your position improved. I may as well come to the point. You would hear that I have been returned as the representative of Thanshope, in Parliament.’

‘Yes. I think the Thanshope people showed their good sense there, at any rate,’ said Myles, with a smile.

‘Let us hope so. But you will easily understand that such a position will take me away from home a good deal, and make me unable to attend to my business as fully as I have done.’

‘Naturally,’ said Myles, with a sudden, quick glance upwards, as he first saw the drift of Sebastian’s remarks. His face flushed, and he rose from his chair, pacing about the room.

‘For some time Mr. Sutcliffe has been quite unfit for the post he held—I mean, as regards bodily health. I have wanted very much to provide him with an assistant, but did not know how to manage it without hurting his feelings. My conversation with Herr Süsmeyer decided me to ask you to take the post. Since then—in fact, this very morning—I have a telegram from Wilson with the news of poor Sutcliffe’s death. I cannot tell you how sorry I am. I liked him well. Such faithful probity, such diligence, and such capacity, are not found in one man in a hundred. But, long ago, I thought I had discovered them all in you, and my errand to you this morning is to ask if you will take Mr. Sutcliffe’s post in my business. Your energy, vigour, and the talents for business which Herr Süsmeyer tells me you have, would be invaluable to me, and without doubt the connection would be an advantageous one for you. What do you say?’

Myles had come to a stop in his restless walk, his hands plunged in his pockets, his brows knit, his eyes somewhat downcast. He did not look elated. His first words were not an explicit answer to Sebastian’s question.

‘I think you are the most generous man I ever knew, sir,’ he said at last, almost abruptly.

‘That is beside the question. There is no talk of generosity, but of a business connection, a contract entered into by us for our mutual advantage.’

‘It would at least be very much to my advantage. Have you not considered that there are plenty of men, employers like yourself, who would be glad to see sons of theirs placed with you, and would furnish capital too, as a premium?’

‘Mon Dieu! yes, I know. I have had hints to that effect from more than one already. It does not suit me to do anything of the kind. I don’t want a young gentleman with capital, whom I shall have to teach. I want a business man, who can really take commercial care off my shoulders when cares of another kind are laid upon them. I am not a fellow to do things in a hurry. The whole matter has been well considered, and it is a great object with me to secure you. As to terms, we could come to some satisfactory arrangement, I doubt not. What I want to know now is, will you come to me, and take the place of manager of my business?’

Again Myles began to pace the room, biting his lip and frowning desperately.

‘You must think me strangely callous and indifferent, not to jump at such an offer,’ he began.

‘No; I see you don’t want to come. I know your reasons. No,’ he added, as Myles started, ‘not your very reason, but I know that when you left Thanshope it was in the hope never to see it again; and that desire has not yet changed.’

‘No it has never changed,’ he owned.

‘But, if I guess rightly, there is no actual, tangible obstacle to your return. It is a strong private feeling of repugnance on your own part, arising from some cause or causes to me unknown. Is it not so?’

‘Yes, it is so.’

‘Well; still I ask you to come. Come and try, at least. Fight it down, and come and revisit your city of the dead. Come and try whether there may not be new life hidden for you there.’

Myles shook his head.

‘There is not that,’ said he.

‘Then, to put it in another light, come because I ask you, to oblige me. Surely all that wrath and misunderstanding which once existed between us is burnt out for ever now. I am certain we can act together in most things. And—excuse me, I have no wish to be impertinent—but let me tell you that Stonegate is always empty now; and if it were not, I have introduced you to my wife.’

Myles turned abruptly away. Stonegate always empty! Whether empty or inhabited, he had forfeited all right to approach it.

‘With the best wishes in the world for friendship, that would have divided us, would it not?’ continued Sebastian, who, when he took up the probe, was not wont to lay it down again, with the operation half finished, deterred by the anguished face or fainting mien of the patient.

‘Yes,’ was the only answer.

‘But it is gone. I know not what life may hold for you in the future; I do know that you have suffered in the past, and that places where one has had that kind of suffering are haunted, and full of ghosts; but again I urge you—come! I think you are leading a morbid, foolish life here, rendered, by the motives which prompt it, not a particularly healthy one, and——’

‘Say no more, sir. I will come. I knew I should come, as soon as you asked me. No wish of yours could be other than a command to me now. It was only that I could not force myself to say yes. But now I say it. I will go whenever you like—that is, whenever Herr Süsmeyer will spare me.’

‘That is spoken as I hoped you would speak,’ said Sebastian, heartily. ‘Let us shake hands upon it.’

‘On my agreement to take you for my lawful master, and serve you faithfully and honestly,’ said Myles, with rather a forced smile, as he grasped Sebastian’s hand.

‘I suppose that is the foundation of all such agreements, but I trust we shall be something more worthy of us both than mere master and servant. At least, you need not be afraid of rusting. I have dozens of plans which I have never had time or assistants to carry out. Now, with my wife, and I hope you to help me too, I shall get along splendidly.’

‘I am glad to hear there is plenty of work,’ said Myles. ‘I was to have left here in a couple of days for a holiday. Suppose I went to Thanshope direct, instead of Berlin, and the other places I had thought of. That would leave the field clear to Herr Süsmeyer and his son, and I could get to work at once.’

‘Better take the holiday first, hadn’t you?’ said Sebastian. ‘It may be long enough before you have the chance of another.’

‘Thank you; but I would much rather go straight to work. The holiday was none of my seeking. It was Herr Süsmeyer’s doing.’

‘Very well. I will telegraph to Wilson that you will be there in a few days, and he must have the books ready for you. I will just give you an idea of how we stand at present, and leave you to shake down before I come back, eh?’ said Sebastian, with as much nonchalance as if he had been proposing nothing more difficult than that they should take a stroll together. He knew, this astute young man, the kind of nature he was dealing with. To have proposed coming to Thanshope with Myles, and there standing by him and smoothing out his way for him, would have been in the highest degree distasteful to the latter. The charge imposed upon him was a heavy one; it promised him arduous and incessant occupation for some time, at least until Sebastian’s return from abroad. Already the idea of Thanshope looked less like a grim phantom. The way became more practicable. He brightened visibly, to Sebastian’s private amusement.

‘Yes. How soon will you return?’

‘It is impossible to say. It will depend a great deal upon the reports you send me. This is my wedding tour, really, though it has had a queer beginning, and I think my wife has a right to complain of being dragged about to German manufacturing towns in order to settle business matters, when I promised to take her to the Italian Lakes. We shall try to go on there, and to Switzerland, and make a regular holiday of it, before coming back to settle really to business. You will do the best you can.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Myles. ‘I hope and think that my reports will allow you to take a pretty long holiday.’

‘Then I can go,’ said Sebastian. ‘We leave to-morrow morning. Suppose you come up to Herr Süsmeyer’s to supper to-night, as you did last night, and we will take an hour afterwards for business—yes? And now I must be off.’

These rapidly made arrangements were all faithfully carried out. In less than a week Myles, armed with Sebastian’s explanations and instructions, was on his way to Thanshope.

CHAPTER IV.

‘Yet, ere the phantoms flee,

Which that house, and heath, and garden, made dear to thee erewhile,

Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free

From the music of two voices, and the light of one sweet smile.’

It would be difficult to overrate the completeness of the change which had supervened, in both the outer and inner life of Myles Heywood, between the time when he had left his native town, and now, when he returned to it.

He was very busy, very quiet, and very lonely. Sebastian had acted with the soundest wisdom in leaving his new manager to take his place alone, and alone to fight down the obstacles which he encountered, alone to strike back the ill-will, the jealousy, and the insubordination—all of which things raised their heads and gaped upon him with their mouths on his first assumption of his new office.

Myles had accepted the post calmly, but he had known perfectly well that he assumed no light task. It would have been comparatively easy, if there had not been the envy and prejudices of old friends to be overcome. Thanks to the first-rate management of Mr. Sutcliffe, and to Sebastian’s own ubiquitous eye, the whole machine was in complete working order; but this, perhaps, only left all the more room for smaller spites and jealousies to make themselves felt. There was, first of all, Wilson, the faithful old cashier who had once been Myles’s superior: he was a first-rate accountant and bookkeeper, but no manager or man of business, and utterly devoid of the faculty of arranging or regulating things. None knew it better than himself, yet it was something of a trial to his feelings to see the young fellow, whom he had known from the time when he had begun life as a ‘half-time’ of eleven, placed over him. In justice to both the men, it must be said that this little jealousy soon wore off. Myles won Wilson’s heart by his manner of treating him with scrupulous respect in the presence of third persons, and without pretensions of any kind when alone with him. Wilson, too, was an intelligent man, who knew a clever man of business when he met him. Myles very soon proved his perfect capacity for his post, and after that Wilson’s soreness was at an end. He backed up ‘Mr. Heywood’ on every possible occasion, and suffered no appeal from the said Mr. Heywood’s behests.

Myles found it a somewhat more difficult matter to dispose of others, old comrades of his own, who were working away in the same old places, no higher than they ever had been; and who, unable to rise themselves, were lost in astonishment that he should be put over their heads. Some of them were strongly inclined to be provokingly familiar; first jocosely, and then maliciously, insubordinate; utterly unconscious of the mental gulf between him and them. But the stronger brain and will of the man who had risen beyond them was able to check these manifestations of feeling. One or two sharp examples, and a most unequivocal demonstration that no nonsense would be endured, reduced them to their natural places. Ever afterwards he had the name amongst them of having become hard, inconsiderate, and a fine gentleman. He knew it and regretted it, but accepted it as inevitable, remembering the time when he had resented the fact that the law did not compel all men to live on the same level.

The new manager’s eyes appeared to be ubiquitous—nothing escaped them; but good work and good conduct were as keenly noted by him as bad, and he let the approval be as distinctly felt as the displeasure. There was, moreover, another thing which soon began to tell more than all the others put together: he was utterly unconscious of deserving ill-will; he was so evidently bent upon work, hard work, and nothing but work, and not upon hectoring it over those who had become his subordinates, that distrust gradually subsided. Sneers and scoffs had no effect whatever upon him; they were ignored in a manner so complete as to recoil with disconcerting effect upon their originators. That grave absorbed face, those eyes which noted everything, that ready presence of mind, that seemingly unwearying, untiring strength, that utter disregard of the amount of work which fell upon his own shoulders, soon began to tell upon individuals, and, through them, upon the mass.

Myles wrote Sebastian regular accounts of his business transactions, hoping they met with his approval. He never named any disputes with the work-people, leaving his master to infer that he was, as the latter had said, ‘shaking down’ to his new work.

Outside that work his life was rather colourless. Mary and Harry no longer lived at Thanshope. Harry had found work in a manufacturing village some five miles distant; he lived in a cottage on the borders of an open moor, where the air was pure, free, and bracing. He had grown, physically, much stronger in consequence of the change, and thought that his hearing, if not actually better, did not become worse so rapidly as when he lived in the town. Occasionally, on a Sunday, Myles would go over to see them, and nurse his sister’s little boy on his knee, feeling a passion of tenderness which he could not express for the little round-faced thing, with its large, solemn, dark eyes—like his own, Mary said, with affectionate pride. He would walk with Harry over the moors, and gratify him by shouting descriptions of his foreign life into his failing ears. But, except for this one day in the week, they were lost to him; their incessant toil, and his own, preventing further intercourse.

Very often his dead brother occupied a place in his mind. Poor Ned! What a life he could have given him now! He could have had him to live with him, and bought him books and pictures, and given him music, and made his existence a poetry to him. But it was too late: Edmund slept his quiet sleep, killed off by the want and the sorrow which had been too much for them all, at the time of the great distress.

One face was missing—that of Hoyle, his old enemy. Myles made some casual inquiries about him one day, and heard that he had left Thanshope about a year ago. He never knew the part the man had played between him and Adrienne.

The young men who had once been friends of his (it seemed as if it must be hundreds of years ago), and to whose debating society he had once belonged, received him with a mixture of timidity and admiration. Many of them had advocated—perhaps still did so—the Proudhonistic theory—‘all property is a crime.’ At one time Myles had believed and ardently advocated the same delusion. He had lived faster and grown faster than these old friends of his, and now they were divided between embarrassment at his open support of one of the most flagrant property-holders of the district, and admiration of his cleverness, which had swept such gains into his own lap. Myles felt little sympathy with them, and had the uncomfortable sensation that while they were shy of discussing things before his face, they were very voluble, and chiefly about himself, behind his back.

He found his most congenial associate in Mr. Lyttleton, the Factory Inspector of Thanshope and some surrounding towns, who lived in Thanshope—a middle-aged, highly educated man, who was attracted, the first time he saw him, by the keen yet sombre countenance of Mr. Mallory’s new manager; and who, when he learnt the outlines of Myles’s history, became still more interested in him, asked him to his house, and there introduced him to some young professional men, of a higher class, taken all in all, than those he had known in Eisendorf. The benefit was mutual, and Myles’s circle of acquaintances, if not of intimates, thus gradually extended. Almost everywhere he pleased, but everywhere there was the constant wonder why Heywood was so reserved, so almost melancholy in manner, and so sparing in speech; ‘much more like a Spanish grandee,’ observed a young doctor to Mr. Lyttleton, ‘than a man who has risen from the ranks of the working-men. I can’t make the fellow out.’

Very few people could make the fellow out, though many seemed to find a decided pleasure in trying to do so.

Thus time passed until Sebastian and his wife came home, and then Myles found that ‘master and servant’ was indeed far from expressing the relation which Mallory wished to exist between them. Sebastian’s regard, once won, was dealt out with no niggard hand. He had got Myles to yield to his will; now it seemed he wished for more than respect—regard. The best part of Myles’s nature responded to the call; his liking warmed each day, till it grew to an affection, reserved and reticent indeed in outward show, but inwardly glowing as warmly as Sebastian himself could desire. The former ill-will had burnt itself out. Master and man were on a footing of perfect amity and accord. The more Myles heard of Sebastian’s plans, thoughts, and schemes, the better he liked them, and the wiser he felt them to be. He could appreciate them now; three years ago he could only have scoffed at them. He entered heartily into them all; he worked unremittingly till Sebastian declared he was afraid of his energy, and refused rest, saying he neither required nor desired it. Whatever his own private and personal hopes, thoughts, or wishes (if he had any), he kept them strictly and entirely to himself. Helena was very kind to him, and they were very good friends; she, woman like, always thinking of that background in his life, that hinted love-story, of which Sebastian had given her some glimpses. Occasionally she and her husband would speak of it.

‘Sebastian, you know him best, and what he is capable of. Do you think he is in love with that girl yet?’

‘I think, most reverend matron, that he is in love with that girl—who, by-the-by, is rather older than yourself—yet.’

‘Then why doesn’t he find her out and propose to her?’

‘I have not asked him.’

‘He cannot think she is too good for him.’

‘I should not be surprised if he did.’

‘Absurd!’

‘Pray take it upon yourself to tell him so. No doubt you will succeed in convincing him.’

‘You are ridiculous, sir.’

When he, Myles, had by any chance a leisure hour, he would go—even after the nights had grown dark, and frosts of winter had set in—up the dreary length of Blake Street to the wicket of the empty Stonegate, and, leaning upon that support, would stand gazing at the emptiness and the desolation of it. No one lived there. A woman came some few times in the week, and spent the day there, lighting fires and throwing open shutters and windows; but that was all. It had always, at the best of times, been a dreary-looking, sad, cold place, but now it was forlorn in its mournfulness. If it had not been so utterly lonely, Myles would not have gone there. No one he knew ever came past. He had his watch-post to himself, and probably found some kind of mournful, unsatisfactory joy in his vigils. Always it remained the same—empty, closed, desolate—always void of her presence—always without sign or indication that it would ever again be gladdened by it. Her name had never been mentioned, either by him or his friends. He was absolutely ignorant of where she was, or how; of what she was doing, whether she were happy or sad; of every fact and circumstance connected with her.

CHAPTER V.

‘Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen;
Du, du, liegst mir im Sinn;
Du, du, machst mir viel Schmerzen—
Weiss’ nicht wie gut ich Dir bin!’

The spell—the long silence—was broken at last. One evening towards the end of April, when he had been seven months in Thanshope, he first had any news of Adrienne. The Mallorys were in London, and had been there since the opening of Parliament in the beginning of February. Myles had had all the work and responsibility at home laid upon his shoulders. His work for the day was over, and, the evening being fine and the air pleasant, he turned out for his usual stroll up Blake Street. As he came nearer to the house, he saw a man standing in the garden, and as he approached still nearer, he recognised the man; he was Brandon, Mr. Blisset’s old servant and factotum.

The windows in the front of the house were all open, and glittering in the rays of an April sunset—mild and cool. Brandon was standing, looking meditatively towards that sunset, and towards the moors to which it formed a flaming background. His hands were in his pockets, and he was softly whistling a tune.

Myles paused, and the man turned round. There was a mutual recognition. Brandon had been three days in the town, and had heard all the gossip there was—all about Myles’s changed position; and while he looked pleased to see an old acquaintance, he touched his cap as to a superior. Myles, wishing him good evening, rested his elbow on the gate, and said.

‘Are you living in Thanshope?’

‘No, sir. I only came here for a few days on business.’

Myles was gratified that he could at once satisfy the deep yearning that lay at his heart—to ask after Adrienne—and at the same time do what was natural and to be expected; for who, if not her uncle’s old servant, should know anything about her? He therefore inquired.

‘Do you ever hear anything of Miss Blisset now, since Mr. Blisset’s death?’

Brandon looked surprised.

‘Hear of her, sir! I’m in her service.’

‘In her service?’ repeated Myles mechanically.

‘Yes, when my late master died, Miss Blisset was good enough to say that she particularly wished me to remain with her, unless I had other views, which I had not. I have served her and her family for thirty years, and I hope never to serve any other.’

‘I had no idea you had remained with her. I am glad to hear it. She must require a person to—an old servant, who will be like a friend to her as well.’

‘Miss Blisset was so kind as to say, when she asked me to remain, that she looked upon me as a friend. My wife and I are the only servants she has.’

‘Ah! How is Miss Blisset—or rather, how was she when you left her?’

‘She was quite well, sir, thank you.’

‘Does she live in England?’

‘At present she is living in London, and we have been at Florence and Dresden.’

‘Indeed! Does she mean to stay in London?’

‘I think she will stay until autumn. Then she is going abroad with some friends. I am not sure where, but I think to Italy. Most likely she will take either my wife or me with her, and leave the other behind.’

‘Then she does not think of coming to Thanshope at all?’

‘No. Her lease of this house expires directly, and she is not going to renew it. She has seen Mr. Mallory in London, and made arrangements to give it up. I have come to see about storing the furniture.’

‘Yes. When shall you be returning?’

‘In about three days, sir, I expect.’

‘The house will then be empty.’

‘Yes.’

There was a pause. Myles’s heart was beating. Brandon was looking at him inquiringly, as if he awaited some further word or some message to be delivered to his mistress. But Myles dared not send any message. He could not forget how he had ignored her own message to him, though head and heart alike cried out that he was wrong. In ordinary concerns he was clear-headed and practical enough: where his love for Adrienne stepped in, his nature seemed changed; he became timid, nervous, and lost all self-confidence. To have sent a mere conventional phrase of compliments or kind regards, would, it seemed to him, have been deliberate, insolent bravado—after what had passed. If he could have seen her, if she would have spoken to him, he might have confessed his fault and begged her pardon; but there was no word, no message that he could send through even the most trusted of old servants—through any third person.

After a few more words with Brandon, he wished him good night and moved on, leaving that worthy man to think how ill-mannered he was. ‘And he used to sit and look at my young lady in a way that any one must have noticed,’ thought Brandon, rather indignantly.

Myles walked homewards, deciding in his own mind that he would not go near Blake Street again until after Brandon should be gone. He pictured Adrienne in London, with plenty of friends, visiting the Mallorys, happy—the man had given no sort of hint that she was not happy. Suppose he happened to be in London, to be in the same room with her, to pass her in the street! He had forfeited the right to claim her acquaintance; he did not think he would have the courage to address her. He had made a great mess, a horrible mistake, when he repulsed that advance of hers; for that it had been an advance there could be now no doubt, since there had never been anything between her and Sebastian Mallory. What a shock, what offence, that behaviour of his must have caused her! The dead silence which had supervened on her part showed how she must have taken it.

His heart ached a good deal as he walked towards his home. What profited him all this solitary, lonely prosperity? If he could have exchanged it all for one more of those evenings at Stonegate in the old days—for one more of those glances from Adrienne, which used to intoxicate him with their half-frank, half-timid expression—he would have flung all he had to the winds, and begun life again to-morrow, if he could have seen her once again betrayed into such a look, such a tone, as that with which she had said, ‘Oh, Myles!’ one Sunday afternoon. But that would never be. She too had found that Thanshope was not the place for her. She would never come to Stonegate again. When next he saw it, it would be empty, dismantled, a shell. He wondered—and immediately felt eager that it should be so—whether Sebastian Mallory would let him have Stonegate. There was no other place in which he cared to live. A fear seized him, lest it might already have been promised to some one else. He hastened his steps, and as soon as he got in wrote to Sebastian, and dropped the letter with his own hand into the letter-box. He had written urgently. If Mr. Mallory had not already disposed of Stonegate, might he, Myles Heywood, become its tenant, at whatever rent Mr. Mallory pleased, even to the half of his income? Repairs and everything of that kind (he mixed up business and sentiment in a hurried jumble) were to be his concern, and his alone. And might he have an answer soon? He did not care whether the reasons of his eagerness were guessed or not by Sebastian.

By return of post he had an answer:

‘Dear Heywood—I am glad to find there is something you seem to care much about, outside business. Since Miss Blisset is leaving Stonegate, I could have no other tenant so desirable as you, and I assure you applications have not flowed in with the rapidity you seem to think. You are at liberty to take possession as soon as she vacates, which I suppose will be in a few days from now. It is not a residence which I should have exactly chosen out from amongst all others, but chacun à son goût.—Yours truly,

‘S. M.’

Myles carried this note about with him in his breast-pocket, as if it had been a magic talisman. He studiously adhered to his resolution not to go near Blake Street till the three days of which Brandon had spoken should have elapsed, but the shadow of the deserted house ‘haunted him like a passion’—a longing, intense and increasing, concentrated his thoughts upon that ‘house, and heath, and garden,’ the ‘phantoms’ of which had been ‘so dear to him erewhile.’

Not until the fourth evening after this interview with Brandon did he again take his way along the familiar street.

It was even such an evening as that earlier one. The air was mild, the sun, now declining, had been bright—all nature smiled. It was growing dusk as he drew near the house. Why was his heart so low? Why had he such a great sensation of loneliness—of being cast adrift? Why did sad words of a sad song ring in his ears, and seem to be borne in whispers to him with each breath of wind—

‘Away! away! to thy sad and silent home!

Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth!

Watch the dim shades, as like ghosts they go and come,

And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.’

‘The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall fall about thine head,

The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet,

But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,

Ere midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace may meet.’

He felt the idea dreadfully prophetic; he felt as if that were the fate he had selected for himself, as he at last rested his arms upon the homely wicket of that lonesome abode, and looked towards the front of the house.

He was prepared for closed shutters, melancholy wisps of straw and scraps of paper, doors bolted and barred—such as mark, with a brand not to be mistaken, the deserted house. What he beheld was an open door and an open window—the window to the right hand; he could see that the hall was stripped of its fittings, that the windows were curtainless, but the house was not empty—as yet, its hearth was not ‘desolated.’

What is that moving within the room? A figure; perhaps one of ‘the dim shades, as like ghosts they go and come.’ So dull are our senses, when night is falling, that even he did not recognise whose form it was; it was not to a sight, but to a sound, that his nerves suddenly thrilled, and his senses became tense and alert.

As he stood, a chord was struck upon a piano within—another. A slight shiver shook him, but still he was not convinced until a voice floated out—the softly melodious voice which he knew in every fibre of his heart, not loudly, but with a subdued intensity of feeling which made him also absolutely tremble. For the song she sang brought hopes, doubts, fears—and again, wild and tremulous, chaotic hopes, crowding into his mind. It was the homely old German Volkslied—

‘Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen.’

To every word his heart throbbed, as she apostrophised, with the abandon of one who believes herself unheard and unlistened to, that absent one—

‘Thou, love, shrined in my heart,

Thou, love, shrined in my mind!’

and sang how he ‘caused her much pain, and knew not how much he was loved.’ A pause after that, till she went on to the second verse—

‘So, love, e’en as I love thee,

So, so, by thee I’d be loved.’

‘For,’ said the song, ‘I must ever be drawn most tenderly towards thee.’

(‘Die, die, zärtlichsten Triebe

Fühle ich ewig auf Dich.’)

Towards thee—towards whom? Her voice vibrated, almost failed, as she went on with a sad, pondering accent, to the wonder expressed in the third verse, as to whether he, that absent one of the careless spirit, might be trusted, as he might trust to her; and the notes swelled out again—

‘Weiss’ nicht wie gut ich Dir bin.’

Myles’s head had sunk down upon his arms. The wonder, the mystery, the wild hope, that came surging over his heart almost unmanned him, and still the voice floated out, as she sang the last verse of the song. Could it be? Might he dare to hope that, as she chose that hour, that place, that song in which to express her feeling, that it was he—for she was singing now—

‘My love, when in the distance
In dreams thy face I see,
My heart, with fond insistance,
Turns evermore to thee.’

Whose face? Her voice had faltered with the energy of her own feeling, on the last lines—

‘Dann, dann, wünsch ich so gerne,

Dass uns die Liebe vereint!’

She sang the last cadences again, as if she could not leave them, as if weary of waiting and separation—

‘Ja, ja, ja, ja!

Dass uns die Liebe vereint!’

With a heart full of the wildest, most chaotic doubt, wonder, surmise, Myles stood, his head raised again, his dark eyes burning, as their wont was when he was agitated, upon the open window. The dusk was too deep now for him to see anything in the room.

His brain, his heart, all of him, were thrilling with the aspiration conveyed in the last untranslatable words of the song—the passionate, simple, primitive—

‘Dass uns die Liebe vereint!’

He saw nothing, heard nothing, until a footstep paused, as if arrested in surprise, beside him—a figure interposed itself between his eyes and the window at which he was gazing.

‘Adrienne!’

The name fell, like a sigh, without his will or wish, almost without his knowledge, from his lips. He scarcely knew himself, or where he was, or anything, except that she stood there, and had paused, stopped, was looking at him. It was light enough to see that she had recognised him on coming close to him, and that, when their eyes met, she was trembling.

When she looked into his face, her own turned paler, and a startled ‘Oh!’ fell from her lips.

For a moment they both stood silent thus. Then Myles, seeing that she still trembled and looked startled, remembered suddenly where he was, and how it all was. He bared his head and stood before her, saying, in a low voice,

‘Pardon me! I forgot! I will not intrude. I did not know you were here.’

He had turned to go, was absolutely moving, when she herself opened the wicket wide, and said, in an indescribable tone,

‘Will you leave me without one word, as before?’

The tremulous appeal was a command. He entered the garden, looking at her, as if awaiting a direction from her. But at last he said,

‘It was that which made me fear to look at you. I can scarcely believe you will speak to me. Do you mean,’ he added, with a sudden appeal in his voice—‘do you mean that I may come in, and—talk to you?’

For all answer Adrienne held out her right hand, and closed the wicket with the other, so that they stood together within the garden.

Myles took that hand, but he could not at first speak.

‘Miss Blisset, I behaved unpardonably—like a ruffian—two years ago. I do not deserve your forgiveness.’

They had been moving towards the house, and they now stood in the almost dismantled drawing-room, by the open piano.

‘At first,’ said Adrienne, in a voice which still trembled, ‘I thought I never could forgive you. It was cruel on your part——’

‘It was brutal—unpardonable.’

‘No; you were mad with grief—I knew it afterwards—and you could not know what it was I had to say to you.’

‘What was it?’ he asked, below his breath.

‘It was to say good-bye, and something more—to say that I feared I had been unkind! I had seemed to desert you—in your trouble, but that it had never been so in reality, for I had thought of you constantly; and,’ she added steadily, ‘to tell you, too, that I had heard something—that some report had been set going about you and me——’

‘You heard that! It was to spare you that—it was because I was almost mad at the thought——’

‘It was to tell you that I prized your friendship beyond all those slanders, and that nothing could ever shake it. I did wish to tell you that; but after you were gone, after you had left me in that manner, Myles, I dared not write.’

‘Fool that I was! But I have been paying the price of my folly for two years without ceasing. Till seven months ago I believed you were going to marry Sebastian Mallory. You may suppose I was anxious for nothing so much as to be silent—to hear nothing of you.’

Adrienne made no answer, till Myles said,

‘And now you are going to leave Thanshope?’

‘Yes, for ever.’

‘You have come to say good-bye to the old place?’

‘I never meant to come. Brandon found some difficulties about the arrangements I wished him to make, and telegraphed for me. I came this afternoon, and am leaving again to-morrow morning.’

Adrienne had lost her self-command as he gained more of his. Her voice shook uncontrollably, as she leaned her elbow on the top of the piano.

‘I shall always feel happy that I have been able to see you, to tell you that, whether you forgave me or not, I have repented, and do repent, my churlishness, and to thank you for your—your unspeakable kindness to a rough, stupid, clumsy fellow like me,’ said he. ‘Your great goodness and your gentle influence will go with me through my life; and—may you never know a sorrow or a care as long as you live!’

The aspiration appeared useless, for Adrienne had buried her face in her hands, and was weeping with a quiet sorrow that had something of despair in it.

‘But before I go,’ he added, ‘will you answer me a question? Perhaps I have no right to ask it, but I must, I have been listening to your singing; I heard every word.’

‘Yes,’ was the almost inaudible answer.

‘Tell me if you had some one in your mind when you sang that song.’

‘Yes,’ said Adrienne, still scarce above her breath.

‘You had!’ he exclaimed, and forgot the solemn farewell, the almost benediction, he had just bestowed upon her, while he hurried his words out desperately. ‘Oh, Adrienne! forgive me if I am too presumptuous; but have mercy! Tell me, when you sang ‘Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen’.... But I am too bold—I——’

‘Do not look at me so strangely!’ she began, raising her tear-stained face. ‘Tell me——Ah!’ she suddenly exclaimed, as with one movement they clasped each other, ‘it is you, Myles—it was always you; but you were so dreadfully proud.’

‘Do you mean,’ he asked, after a long pause, ‘that if I had come to you that night—if I had forgotten myself, and told you, as I felt sure I should, that I loved you, and that no “friendship” could be anything but a wretched mockery to me—do you mean that then you would have taken me, ruined and wretched, and without one bright thought or one hope for the future?’

‘If you had come then, and told me all that, you need not have gone away without hope, and I should have spent a different two years than I have done. But it is all right now,’ she added. ‘The probation is over, my love, and you have borne it bravely.’

‘If you think so, it must be so; but at the time, I assure you, I felt anything but brave. Now I feel—I feel at rest,’ said Myles.

There was silence. The darkness gathered. The air blew softly in at the window, and bore with it the faint sound of an old tune, in broken, melodious chimes.

THE END.

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Transcriber’s note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Spelling of surnames names were standardized

Other spelling was retained as in the original except for the following changes:

Page 113: “Another murmer indicative” | “Another murmur indicative”
Page 138: “exclaimed Alkibiades” | “exclaimed Alcibiades”
Page 140: “nor was he reasurred” | “nor was he reassured”

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Table of Contents

- PROBATION

- BOOK I. PRIDE AND PLENTY.

- CHAPTER I.

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER III.

- CHAPTER IV.

- CHAPTER V.

- CHAPTER VI.

- CHAPTER VII.

- CHAPTER VIII.

- CHAPTER IX.

- CHAPTER X.

- CHAPTER XI.

- CHAPTER XII.

- CHAPTER XIII.

- CHAPTER XIV.

- CHAPTER XV.

- CHAPTER XVI.

- CHAPTER XVII.

- CHAPTER XVIII.

- CHAPTER XIX.

- FOOTNOTES:

- BOOK II. THE STORM.

- CHAPTER I.

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER III.

- CHAPTER IV.

- CHAPTER V.

- CHAPTER VI.

- CHAPTER VII.

- CHAPTER VIII.

- CHAPTER IX.

- CHAPTER X.

- CHAPTER XI.

- CHAPTER XII.

- CHAPTER XIII.

- CHAPTER XIV.

- CHAPTER XV.

- CHAPTER XVI.

- CHAPTER XVII.

- CHAPTER XVIII.

- CHAPTER XIX.

- BOOK III.

- CHAPTER I.

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER III.

- CHAPTER IV.

- BOOK IV. QUITS.

- CHAPTER I.

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER III.

- CHAPTER IV.

- CHAPTER V.

- BENTLEY’S FAVOURITE NOVELS.

- Transcriber’s note

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE