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Little Novels

by Wilkie Collins · English · Gutenberg #1630 · 835,738 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Little Novels


Author: Wilkie Collins

Release date: February 1, 1999 [eBook #1630]
                Most recently updated: October 15, 2008

Language: English



*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE NOVELS ***



Produced by James Rusk





LITTLE NOVELS

By Wilkie Collins




MRS. ZANT AND THE GHOST.

I.

THE course of this narrative describes the return of a disembodied
spirit to earth, and leads the reader on new and strange ground.

Not in the obscurity of midnight, but in the searching light of day, did
the supernatural influence assert itself. Neither revealed by a vision,
nor announced by a voice, it reached mortal knowledge through the sense
which is least easily self-deceived: the sense that feels.

The record of this event will of necessity produce conflicting
impressions. It will raise, in some minds, the doubt which reason
asserts; it will invigorate, in other minds, the hope which faith
justifies; and it will leave the terrible question of the destinies of
man, where centuries of vain investigation have left it--in the dark.

Having only undertaken in the present narrative to lead the way along a
succession of events, the writer declines to follow modern examples by
thrusting himself and his opinions on the public view. He returns to
the shadow from which he has emerged, and leaves the opposing forces of
incredulity and belief to fight the old battle over again, on the old
ground.

II.

THE events happened soon after the first thirty years of the present
century had come to an end.

On a fine morning, early in the month of April, a gentleman of middle
age (named Rayburn) took his little daughter Lucy out for a walk in the
woodland pleasure-ground of Western London, called Kensington Gardens.

The few friends whom he possessed reported of Mr. Rayburn (not unkindly)
that he was a reserved and solitary man. He might have been more
accurately described as a widower devoted to his only surviving child.
Although he was not more than forty years of age, the one pleasure which
made life enjoyable to Lucy's father was offered by Lucy herself.

Playing with her ball, the child ran on to the southern limit of the
Gardens, at that part of it which still remains nearest to the old
Palace of Kensington. Observing close at hand one of those spacious
covered seats, called in England "alcoves," Mr. Rayburn was reminded
that he had the morning's newspaper in his pocket, and that he might do
well to rest and read. At that early hour the place was a solitude.

"Go on playing, my dear," he said; "but take care to keep where I can
see you."

Lucy tossed up her ball; and Lucy's father opened his newspaper. He
had not been reading for more than ten minutes, when he felt a familiar
little hand laid on his knee.

"Tired of playing?" he inquired--with his eyes still on the newspaper.

"I'm frightened, papa."

He looked up directly. The child's pale face startled him. He took her
on his knee and kissed her.

"You oughtn't to be frightened, Lucy, when I am with you," he said,
gently. "What is it?" He looked out of the alcove as he spoke, and saw a
little dog among the trees. "Is it the dog?" he asked.

Lucy answered:

"It's not the dog--it's the lady."

The lady was not visible from the alcove.

"Has she said anything to you?" Mr. Rayburn inquired.

"No."

"What has she done to frighten you?"

The child put her arms round her father's neck.

"Whisper, papa," she said; "I'm afraid of her hearing us. I think she's
mad."

"Why do you think so, Lucy?"

"She came near to me. I thought she was going to say something. She
seemed to be ill."

"Well? And what then?"

"She looked at me."

There, Lucy found herself at a loss how to express what she had to say
next--and took refuge in silence.

"Nothing very wonderful, so far," her father suggested.

"Yes, papa--but she didn't seem to see me when she looked."

"Well, and what happened then?"

"The lady was frightened--and that frightened me. I think," the child
repeated positively, "she's mad."

It occurred to Mr. Rayburn that the lady might be blind. He rose at once
to set the doubt at rest.

"Wait here," he said, "and I'll come back to you."

But Lucy clung to him with both hands; Lucy declared that she was afraid
to be by herself. They left the alcove together.

The new point of view at once revealed the stranger, leaning against the
trunk of a tree. She was dressed in the deep mourning of a widow. The
pallor of her face, the glassy stare in her eyes, more than accounted
for the child's terror--it excused the alarming conclusion at which she
had arrived.

"Go nearer to her," Lucy whispered.

They advanced a few steps. It was now easy to see that the lady was
young, and wasted by illness--but (arriving at a doubtful conclusion
perhaps under the present circumstances) apparently possessed of
rare personal attractions in happier days. As the father and daughter
advanced a little, she discovered them. After some hesitation, she left
the tree; approached with an evident intention of speaking; and suddenly
paused. A change to astonishment and fear animated her vacant eyes. If
it had not been plain before, it was now beyond all doubt that she was
not a poor blind creature, deserted and helpless. At the same time, the
expression of her face was not easy to understand. She could hardly
have looked more amazed and bewildered, if the two strangers who were
observing her had suddenly vanished from the place in which they stood.

Mr. Rayburn spoke to her with the utmost kindness of voice and manner.

"I am afraid you are not well," he said. "Is there anything that I can
do--"

The next words were suspended on his lips. It was impossible to realize
such a state of things; but the strange impression that she had already
produced on him was now confirmed. If he could believe his senses, her
face did certainly tell him that he was invisible and inaudible to the
woman whom he had just addressed! She moved slowly away with a heavy
sigh, like a person disappointed and distressed. Following her with his
eyes, he saw the dog once more--a little smooth-coated terrier of the
ordinary English breed. The dog showed none of the restless activity of
his race. With his head down and his tail depressed, he crouched like
a creature paralyzed by fear. His mistress roused him by a call. He
followed her listlessly as she turned away.

After walking a few paces only, she suddenly stood still.

Mr. Rayburn heard her talking to herself.

"Did I feel it again?" she said, as if perplexed by some doubt that awed
or grieved her. After a while her arms rose slowly, and opened with a
gentle caressing action--an embrace strangely offered to the empty air!
"No," she said to herself, sadly, after waiting a moment. "More perhaps
when to-morrow comes--no more to-day." She looked up at the clear blue
sky. "The beautiful sunlight! the merciful sunlight!" she murmured. "I
should have died if it had happened in the dark."

Once more she called to the dog; and once more she walked slowly away.

"Is she going home, papa?' the child asked.

"We will try and find out," the father answered.

He was by this time convinced that the poor creature was in no condition
to be permitted to go out without some one to take care of her.
From motives of humanity, he was resolved on making the attempt to
communicate with her friends.

III.

THE lady left the Gardens by the nearest gate; stopping to lower
her veil before she turned into the busy thoroughfare which leads to
Kensington. Advancing a little way along the High Street, she entered a
house of respectable appearance, with a card in one of the windows which
announced that apartments were to let.

Mr. Rayburn waited a minute--then knocked at the door, and asked if he
could see the mistress of the house. The servant showed him into a room
on the ground floor, neatly but scantily furnished. One little white
object varied the grim brown monotony of the empty table. It was a
visiting-card.

With a child's unceremonious curiosity Lucy pounced on the card, and
spelled the name, letter by letter: "Z, A, N, T," she repeated. "What
does that mean?"

Her father looked at the card, as he took it away from her, and put it
back on the table. The name was printed, and the address was added in
pencil: "Mr. John Zant, Purley's Hotel."

The mistress made her appearance. Mr. Rayburn heartily wished himself
out of the house again, the moment he saw her. The ways in which it
is possible to cultivate the social virtues are more numerous and
more varied than is generally supposed. This lady's way had apparently
accustomed her to meet her fellow-creatures on the hard ground of
justice without mercy. Something in her eyes, when she looked at Lucy,
said: "I wonder whether that child gets punished when she deserves it?"

"Do you wish to see the rooms which I have to let?" she began.

Mr. Rayburn at once stated the object of his visit--as clearly, as
civilly, and as concisely as a man could do it. He was conscious (he
added) that he had been guilty perhaps of an act of intrusion.

The manner of the mistress of the house showed that she entirely agreed
with him. He suggested, however, that his motive might excuse him. The
mistress's manner changed, and asserted a difference of opinion.

"I only know the lady whom you mention," she said, "as a person of the
highest respectability, in delicate health. She has taken my first-floor
apartments, with excellent references; and she gives remarkably little
trouble. I have no claim to interfere with her proceedings, and no
reason to doubt that she is capable of taking care of herself."

Mr. Rayburn unwisely attempted to say a word in his own defense.

"Allow me to remind you--" he began.

"Of what, sir?"

"Of what I observed, when I happened to see the lady in Kensington
Gardens."

"I am not responsible for what you observed in Kensington Gardens. If
your time is of any value, pray don't let me detain you."

Dismissed in those terms, Mr. Rayburn took Lucy's hand and withdrew. He
had just reached the door, when it was opened from the outer side. The
Lady of Kensington Gardens stood before him. In the position which he
and his daughter now occupied, their backs were toward the window. Would
she remember having seen them for a moment in the Gardens?

"Excuse me for intruding on you," she said to the landlady. "Your
servant tells me my brother-in-law called while I was out. He sometimes
leaves a message on his card."

She looked for the message, and appeared to be disappointed: there was
no writing on the card.

Mr. Rayburn lingered a little in the doorway on the chance of hearing
something more. The landlady's vigilant eyes discovered him.

"Do you know this gentleman?" she said maliciously to her lodger.

"Not that I remember."

Replying in those words, the lady looked at Mr. Rayburn for the first
time; and suddenly drew back from him.

"Yes," she said, correcting herself; "I think we met--"

Her embarrassment overpowered her; she could say no more.

Mr. Rayburn compassionately finished the sentence for her.

"We met accidentally in Kensington Gardens," he said.

She seemed to be incapable of appreciating the kindness of his motive.
After hesitating a little she addressed a proposal to him, which seemed
to show distrust of the landlady.

"Will you let me speak to you upstairs in my own rooms?" she asked.

Without waiting for a reply, she led the way to the stairs. Mr. Rayburn
and Lucy followed. They were just beginning the ascent to the first
floor, when the spiteful landlady left the lower room, and called to her
lodger over their heads: "Take care what you say to this man, Mrs. Zant!
He thinks you're mad."

Mrs. Zant turned round on the landing, and looked at him. Not a word
fell from her lips. She suffered, she feared, in silence. Something in
the sad submission of her face touched the springs of innocent pity in
Lucy's heart. The child burst out crying.

That artless expression of sympathy drew Mrs. Zant down the few stairs
which separated her from Lucy.

"May I kiss your dear little girl?" she said to Mr. Rayburn. The
landlady, standing on the mat below, expressed her opinion of the value
of caresses, as compared with a sounder method of treating young persons
in tears: "If that child was mine," she remarked, "I would give her
something to cry for."

In the meantime, Mrs. Zant led the way to her rooms.

The first words she spoke showed that the landlady had succeeded but too
well in prejudicing her against Mr. Rayburn.

"Will you let me ask your child," she said to him, "why you think me
mad?"

He met this strange request with a firm answer.

"You don't know yet what I really do think. Will you give me a minute's
attention?"

"No," she said positively. "The child pities me, I want to speak to the
child. What did you see me do in the Gardens, my dear, that surprised
you?" Lucy turned uneasily to her father; Mrs. Zant persisted. "I first
saw you by yourself, and then I saw you with your father," she went on.
"When I came nearer to you, did I look very oddly--as if I didn't see
you at all?"

Lucy hesitated again; and Mr. Rayburn interfered.

"You are confusing my little girl," he said. "Allow me to answer your
questions--or excuse me if I leave you."

There was something in his look, or in his tone, that mastered her. She
put her hand to her head.

"I don't think I'm fit for it," she answered vacantly. "My courage has
been sorely tried already. If I can get a little rest and sleep, you may
find me a different person. I am left a great deal by myself; and I have
reasons for trying to compose my mind. Can I see you tomorrow? Or write
to you? Where do you live?"

Mr. Rayburn laid his card on the table in silence. She had strongly
excited his interest. He honestly desired to be of some service to
this forlorn creature--abandoned so cruelly, as it seemed, to her own
guidance. But he had no authority to exercise, no sort of claim to
direct her actions, even if she consented to accept his advice. As a
last resource he ventured on an allusion to the relative of whom she had
spoken downstairs.

"When do you expect to see your brother-in-law again?" he said.

"I don't know," she answered. "I should like to see him--he is so kind
to me."

She turned aside to take leave of Lucy.

"Good-by, my little friend. If you live to grow up, I hope you will
never be such a miserable woman as I am." She suddenly looked round at
Mr. Rayburn. "Have you got a wife at home?" she asked.

"My wife is dead."

"And _you_ have a child to comfort you! Please leave me; you harden my
heart. Oh, sir, don't you understand? You make me envy you!"

Mr. Rayburn was silent when he and his daughter were out in the street
again. Lucy, as became a dutiful child, was silent, too. But there are
limits to human endurance--and Lucy's capacity for self-control gave way
at last.

"Are you thinking of the lady, papa?" she said.

He only answered by nodding his head. His daughter had interrupted him
at that critical moment in a man's reflections, when he is on the point
of making up his mind. Before they were at home again Mr. Rayburn had
arrived at a decision. Mrs. Zant's brother-in-law was evidently ignorant
of any serious necessity for his interference--or he would have made
arrangements for immediately repeating his visit. In this state of
things, if any evil happened to Mrs. Zant, silence on Mr. Rayburn's part
might be indirectly to blame for a serious misfortune. Arriving at that
conclusion, he decided upon running the risk of being rudely received,
for the second time, by another stranger.

Leaving Lucy under the care of her governess, he went at once to
the address that had been written on the visiting-card left at the
lodging-house, and sent in his name. A courteous message was returned.
Mr. John Zant was at home, and would be happy to see him.

IV.

MR. RAYBURN was shown into one of the private sitting-rooms of the
hotel.

He observed that the customary position of the furniture in a room
had been, in some respects, altered. An armchair, a side-table, and
a footstool had all been removed to one of the windows, and had been
placed as close as possible to the light. On the table lay a large open
roll of morocco leather, containing rows of elegant little instruments
in steel and ivory. Waiting by the table, stood Mr. John Zant. He said
"Good-morning" in a bass voice, so profound and so melodious that those
two commonplace words assumed a new importance, coming from his lips.
His personal appearance was in harmony with his magnificent voice--he
was a tall, finely-made man of dark complexion; with big brilliant black
eyes, and a noble curling beard, which hid the whole lower part of his
face. Having bowed with a happy mingling of dignity and politeness, the
conventional side of this gentleman's character suddenly vanished; and
a crazy side, to all appearance, took its place. He dropped on his knees
in front of the footstool. Had he forgotten to say his prayers that
morning, and was he in such a hurry to remedy the fault that he had no
time to spare for consulting appearances? The doubt had hardly suggested
itself, before it was set at rest in a most unexpected manner. Mr. Zant
looked at his visitor with a bland smile, and said:

"Please let me see your feet."

For the moment, Mr. Rayburn lost his presence of mind. He looked at the
instruments on the side-table.

"Are you a corn-cutter?" was all he could say.

"Excuse me, sir," returned the polite operator, "the term you use is
quite obsolete in our profession." He rose from his knees, and added
modestly: "I am a Chiropodist."

"I beg your pardon."

"Don't mention it! You are not, I imagine, in want of my professional
services. To what motive may I attribute the honor of your visit?"

By this time Mr. Rayburn had recovered himself.

"I have come here," he answered, "under circumstances which require
apology as well as explanation."

Mr. Zant's highly polished manner betrayed signs of alarm; his
suspicions pointed to a formidable conclusion--a conclusion that shook
him to the innermost recesses of the pocket in which he kept his money.

"The numerous demands on me--" he began.

Mr. Rayburn smiled.

"Make your mind easy," he replied. "I don't want money. My object is to
speak with you on the subject of a lady who is a relation of yours."

"My sister-in-law!" Mr. Zant exclaimed. "Pray take a seat."

Doubting if he had chosen a convenient time for his visit, Mr. Rayburn
hesitated.

"Am I likely to be in the way of persons who wish to consult you?" he
asked.

"Certainly not. My morning hours of attendance on my clients are from
eleven to one." The clock on the mantelpiece struck the quarter-past
one as he spoke. "I hope you don't bring me bad news?" he said, very
earnestly. "When I called on Mrs. Zant this morning, I heard that
she had gone out for a walk. Is it indiscreet to ask how you became
acquainted with her?"

Mr. Rayburn at once mentioned what he had seen and heard in Kensington
Gardens; not forgetting to add a few words, which described his
interview afterward with Mrs. Zant.

The lady's brother-in-law listened with an interest and sympathy, which
offered the strongest possible contrast to the unprovoked rudeness of
the mistress of the lodging-house. He declared that he could only do
justice to his sense of obligation by following Mr. Rayburn's example,
and expressing himself as frankly as if he had been speaking to an old
friend.

"The sad story of my sister-in-law's life," he said, "will, I think,
explain certain things which must have naturally perplexed you. My
brother was introduced to her at the house of an Australian gentleman,
on a visit to England. She was then employed as governess to his
daughters. So sincere was the regard felt for her by the family that the
parents had, at the entreaty of their children, asked her to accompany
them when they returned to the Colony. The governess thankfully accepted
the proposal."

"Had she no relations in England?" Mr. Rayburn asked.

"She was literally alone in the world, sir. When I tell you that she had
been brought up in the Foundling Hospital, you will understand what I
mean. Oh, there is no romance in my sister-in-law's story! She never has
known, or will know, who her parents were or why they deserted her. The
happiest moment in her life was the moment when she and my brother first
met. It was an instance, on both sides, of love at first sight. Though
not a rich man, my brother had earned a sufficient income in mercantile
pursuits. His character spoke for itself. In a word, he altered all the
poor girl's prospects, as we then hoped and believed, for the better.
Her employers deferred their return to Australia, so that she might be
married from their house. After a happy life of a few weeks only--"

His voice failed him; he paused, and turned his face from the light.

"Pardon me," he said; "I am not able, even yet, to speak composedly
of my brother's death. Let me only say that the poor young wife was a
widow, before the happy days of the honeymoon were over. That dreadful
calamity struck her down. Before my brother had been committed to the
grave, her life was in danger from brain-fever."

Those words placed in a new light Mr. Rayburn's first fear that her
intellect might be deranged. Looking at him attentively, Mr. Zant seemed
to understand what was passing in the mind of his guest.

"No!" he said. "If the opinions of the medical men are to be trusted,
the result of the illness is injury to her physical strength--not injury
to her mind. I have observed in her, no doubt, a certain waywardness of
temper since her illness; but that is a trifle. As an example of what
I mean, I may tell you that I invited her, on her recovery, to pay me
a visit. My house is not in London--the air doesn't agree with me--my
place of residence is at St. Sallins-on-Sea. I am not myself a married
man; but my excellent housekeeper would have received Mrs. Zant with the
utmost kindness. She was resolved--obstinately resolved, poor thing--to
remain in London. It is needless to say that, in her melancholy
position, I am attentive to her slightest wishes. I took a lodging
for her; and, at her special request, I chose a house which was near
Kensington Gardens.

"Is there any association with the Gardens which led Mrs. Zant to make
that request?"

"Some association, I believe, with the memory of her husband. By the
way, I wish to be sure of finding her at home, when I call to-morrow.
Did you say (in the course of your interesting statement) that she
intended--as you supposed--to return to Kensington Gardens to-morrow? Or
has my memory deceived me?"

"Your memory is perfectly accurate."

"Thank you. I confess I am not only distressed by what you have told me
of Mrs. Zant--I am at a loss to know how to act for the best. My only
idea, at present, is to try change of air and scene. What do you think
yourself?"

"I think you are right."

Mr. Zant still hesitated.

"It would not be easy for me, just now," he said, "to leave my patients
and take her abroad."

The obvious reply to this occurred to Mr. Rayburn. A man of larger
worldly experience might have felt certain suspicions, and might have
remained silent. Mr. Rayburn spoke.

"Why not renew your invitation and take her to your house at the
seaside?" he said.

In the perplexed state of Mr. Zant's mind, this plain course of action
had apparently failed to present itself. His gloomy face brightened
directly.

"The very thing!" he said. "I will certainly take your advice. If the
air of St. Sallins does nothing else, it will improve her health and
help her to recover her good looks. Did she strike you as having been
(in happier days) a pretty woman?"

This was a strangely familiar question to ask--almost an indelicate
question, under the circumstances A certain furtive expression in
Mr. Zant's fine dark eyes seemed to imply that it had been put with a
purpose. Was it possible that he suspected Mr. Rayburn's interest in
his sister-in-law to be inspired by any motive which was not perfectly
unselfish and perfectly pure? To arrive at such a conclusion as this
might be to judge hastily and cruelly of a man who was perhaps only
guilty of a want of delicacy of feeling. Mr. Rayburn honestly did his
best to assume the charitable point of view. At the same time, it is not
to be denied that his words, when he answered, were carefully guarded,
and that he rose to take his leave.

Mr. John Zant hospitably protested.

"Why are you in such a hurry? Must you really go? I shall have the honor
of returning your visit to-morrow, when I have made arrangements to
profit by that excellent suggestion of yours. Good-by. God bless you."

He held out his hand: a hand with a smooth surface and a tawny color,
that fervently squeezed the fingers of a departing friend. "Is that man
a scoundrel?" was Mr. Rayburn's first thought, after he had left the
hotel. His moral sense set all hesitation at rest--and answered: "You're
a fool if you doubt it."

V.

DISTURBED by presentiments, Mr. Rayburn returned to his house on foot,
by way of trying what exercise would do toward composing his mind.

The experiment failed. He went upstairs and played with Lucy; he drank
an extra glass of wine at dinner; he took the child and her governess
to a circus in the evening; he ate a little supper, fortified by another
glass of wine, before he went to bed--and still those vague forebodings
of evil persisted in torturing him. Looking back through his past life,
he asked himself if any woman (his late wife of course excepted!) had
ever taken the predominant place in his thoughts which Mrs. Zant had
assumed--without any discernible reason to account for it? If he had
ventured to answer his own question, the reply would have been: Never!

All the next day he waited at home, in expectation of Mr. John Zant's
promised visit, and waited in vain.

Toward evening the parlor-maid appeared at the family tea-table, and
presented to her master an unusually large envelope sealed with black
wax, and addressed in a strange handwriting. The absence of stamp and
postmark showed that it had been left at the house by a messenger.

"Who brought this?" Mr. Rayburn asked.

"A lady, sir--in deep mourning."

"Did she leave any message?"

"No, sir."

Having drawn the inevitable conclusion, Mr. Rayburn shut himself up in
his library. He was afraid of Lucy's curiosity and Lucy's questions, if
he read Mrs. Zant's letter in his daughter's presence.

Looking at the open envelope after he had taken out the leaves of
writing which it contained, he noticed these lines traced inside the
cover:



"My one excuse for troubling you, when I might have consulted my
brother-in-law, will be found in the pages which I inclose. To speak
plainly, you have been led to fear that I am not in my right senses. For
this very reason, I now appeal to you. Your dreadful doubt of me, sir,
is my doubt too. Read what I have written about myself--and then tell
me, I entreat you, which I am: A person who has been the object of a
supernatural revelation? or an unfortunate creature who is only fit for
imprisonment in a mad-house?"



Mr. Rayburn opened the manuscript. With steady attention, which soon
quickened to breathless interest, he read what follows:

VI.

THE LADY'S MANUSCRIPT.

YESTERDAY morning the sun shone in a clear blue sky--after a succession
of cloudy days, counting from the first of the month.

The radiant light had its animating effect on my poor spirits. I had
passed the night more peacefully than usual; undisturbed by the dream,
so cruelly familiar to me, that my lost husband is still living--the
dream from which I always wake in tears. Never, since the dark days of
my sorrow, have I been so little troubled by the self-tormenting fancies
and fears which beset miserable women, as when I left the house, and
turned my steps toward Kensington Gardens--for the first time since my
husband's death.

Attended by my only companion, the little dog who had been his favorite
as well as mine, I went to the quiet corner of the Gardens which is
nearest to Kensington.

On that soft grass, under the shade of those grand trees, we had
loitered together in the days of our betrothal. It was his favorite
walk; and he had taken me to see it in the early days of our
acquaintance. There, he had first asked me to be his wife. There, we had
felt the rapture of our first kiss. It was surely natural that I should
wish to see once more a place sacred to such memories as these? I am
only twenty-three years old; I have no child to comfort me, no
companion of my own age, nothing to love but the dumb creature who is so
faithfully fond of me.

I went to the tree under which we stood, when my dear one's eyes told
his love before he could utter it in words. The sun of that vanished day
shone on me again; it was the same noontide hour; the same solitude
was around me. I had feared the first effect of the dreadful contrast
between past and present. No! I was quiet and resigned. My thoughts,
rising higher than earth, dwelt on the better life beyond the grave.
Some tears came into my eyes. But I was not unhappy. My memory of all
that happened may be trusted, even in trifles which relate only to
myself--I was not unhappy.

The first object that I saw, when my eyes were clear again, was the dog.
He crouched a few paces away from me, trembling pitiably, but uttering
no cry. What had caused the fear that overpowered him?

I was soon to know.

I called to the dog; he remained immovable--conscious of some mysterious
coming thing that held him spellbound. I tried to go to the poor
creature, and fondle and comfort him.

At the first step forward that I took, something stopped me.

It was not to be seen, and not to be heard. It stopped me.

The still figure of the dog disappeared from my view: the lonely scene
round me disappeared--excepting the light from heaven, the tree that
sheltered me, and the grass in front of me. A sense of unutterable
expectation kept my eyes riveted on the grass. Suddenly, I saw its
myriad blades rise erect and shivering. The fear came to me of something
passing over them with the invisible swiftness of the wind. The
shivering advanced. It was all round me. It crept into the leaves of
the tree over my head; they shuddered, without a sound to tell of their
agitation; their pleasant natural rustling was struck dumb. The song of
the birds had ceased. The cries of the water-fowl on the pond were heard
no more. There was a dreadful silence.

But the lovely sunshine poured down on me, as brightly as ever.

In that dazzling light, in that fearful silence, I felt an Invisible
Presence near me. It touched me gently.

At the touch, my heart throbbed with an overwhelming joy. Exquisite
pleasure thrilled through every nerve in my body. I knew him! From the
unseen world--himself unseen--he had returned to me. Oh, I knew him!

And yet, my helpless mortality longed for a sign that might give me
assurance of the truth. The yearning in me shaped itself into words.
I tried to utter the words. I would have said, if I could have spoken:
"Oh, my angel, give me a token that it is You!" But I was like a person
struck dumb--I could only think it.

The Invisible Presence read my thought. I felt my lips touched, as my
husband's lips used to touch them when he kissed me. And that was my
answer. A thought came to me again. I would have said, if I could have
spoken: "Are you here to take me to the better world?"

I waited. Nothing that I could feel touched me.

I was conscious of thinking once more. I would have said, if I could
have spoken: "Are you here to protect me?"

I felt myself held in a gentle embrace, as my husband's arms used to
hold me when he pressed me to his breast. And that was my answer.

The touch that was like the touch of his lips, lingered and was lost;
the clasp that was like the clasp of his arms, pressed me and fell away.
The garden-scene resumed its natural aspect. I saw a human creature
near, a lovely little girl looking at me.

At that moment, when I was my own lonely self again, the sight of the
child soothed and attracted me. I advanced, intending to speak to her.
To my horror I suddenly ceased to see her. She disappeared as if I had
been stricken blind.

And yet I could see the landscape round me; I could see the heaven
above me. A time passed--only a few minutes, as I thought--and the child
became visible to me again; walking hand-in-hand with her father. I
approached them; I was close enough to see that they were looking at
me with pity and surprise. My impulse was to ask if they saw anything
strange in my face or my manner. Before I could speak, the horrible
wonder happened again. They vanished from my view.

Was the Invisible Presence still near? Was it passing between me and
my fellow-mortals; forbidding communication, in that place and at that
time?

It must have been so. When I turned away in my ignorance, with a heavy
heart, the dreadful blankness which had twice shut out from me the
beings of my own race, was not between me and my dog. The poor little
creature filled me with pity; I called him to me. He moved at the sound
of my voice, and followed me languidly; not quite awakened yet from the
trance of terror that had possessed him.

Before I had retired by more than a few steps, I thought I was conscious
of the Presence again. I held out my longing arms to it. I waited in the
hope of a touch to tell me that I might return. Perhaps I was answered
by indirect means? I only know that a resolution to return to the same
place, at the same hour, came to me, and quieted my mind.

The morning of the next day was dull and cloudy; but the rain held off.
I set forth again to the Gardens.

My dog ran on before me into the street--and stopped: waiting to see in
which direction I might lead the way. When I turned toward the Gardens,
he dropped behind me. In a little while I looked back. He was following
me no longer; he stood irresolute. I called to him. He advanced a few
steps--hesitated--and ran back to the house.

I went on by myself. Shall I confess my superstition? I thought the
dog's desertion of me a bad omen.

Arrived at the tree, I placed myself under it. The minutes followed each
other uneventfully. The cloudy sky darkened. The dull surface of the
grass showed no shuddering consciousness of an unearthly creature
passing over it.

I still waited, with an obstinacy which was fast becoming the obstinacy
of despair. How long an interval elapsed, while I kept watch on the
ground before me, I am not able to say. I only know that a change came.

Under the dull gray light I saw the grass move--but not as it had moved,
on the day before. It shriveled as if a flame had scorched it. No flame
appeared. The brown underlying earth showed itself winding onward in
a thin strip--which might have been a footpath traced in fire. It
frightened me. I longed for the protection of the Invisible Presence. I
prayed for a warning of it, if danger was near.

A touch answered me. It was as if a hand unseen had taken my hand--had
raised it, little by little--had left it, pointing to the thin brown
path that wound toward me under the shriveled blades of grass.

I looked to the far end of the path.

The unseen hand closed on my hand with a warning pressure: the
revelation of the coming danger was near me--I waited for it. I saw it.

The figure of a man appeared, advancing toward me along the thin brown
path. I looked in his face as he came nearer. It showed me dimly the
face of my husband's brother--John Zant.

The consciousness of myself as a living creature left me. I knew
nothing; I felt nothing. I was dead.

When the torture of revival made me open my eyes, I found myself on the
grass. Gentle hands raised my head, at the moment when I recovered my
senses. Who had brought me to life again? Who was taking care of me?

I looked upward, and saw--bending over me--John Zant.

VII.

THERE, the manuscript ended.

Some lines had been added on the last page; but they had been so
carefully erased as to be illegible. These words of explanation appeared
below the canceled sentences:

"I had begun to write the little that remains to be told, when it struck
me that I might, unintentionally, be exercising an unfair influence on
your opinion. Let me only remind you that I believe absolutely in the
supernatural revelation which I have endeavored to describe. Remember
this--and decide for me what I dare not decide for myself."

There was no serious obstacle in the way of compliance with this
request.

Judged from the point of view of the materialist, Mrs. Zant might no
doubt be the victim of illusions (produced by a diseased state of the
nervous system), which have been known to exist--as in the celebrated
case of the book-seller, Nicolai, of Berlin--without being accompanied
by derangement of the intellectual powers. But Mr. Rayburn was not
asked to solve any such intricate problem as this. He had been merely
instructed to read the manuscript, and to say what impression it had
left on him of the mental condition of the writer; whose doubt of
herself had been, in all probability, first suggested by remembrance of
the illness from which she had suffered--brain-fever.

Under these circumstances, there could be little difficulty in forming
an opinion. The memory which had recalled, and the judgment which had
arranged, the succession of events related in the narrative, revealed a
mind in full possession of its resources.

Having satisfied himself so far, Mr. Rayburn abstained from considering
the more serious question suggested by what he had read.

At any time his habits of life and his ways of thinking would have
rendered him unfit to weigh the arguments, which assert or deny
supernatural revelation among the creatures of earth. But his mind was
now so disturbed by the startling record of experience which he had just
read, that he was only conscious of feeling certain impressions--without
possessing the capacity to reflect on them. That his anxiety on Mrs.
Zant's account had been increased, and that his doubts of Mr. John Zant
had been encouraged, were the only practical results of the confidence
placed in him of which he was thus far aware. In the ordinary exigencies
of life a man of hesitating disposition, his interest in Mrs. Zant's
welfare, and his desire to discover what had passed between her
brother-in-law and herself, after their meeting in the Gardens, urged
him into instant action. In half an hour more, he had arrived at her
lodgings. He was at once admitted.

VIII.

MRS. ZANT was alone, in an imperfectly lighted room.

"I hope you will excuse the bad light," she said; "my head has been
burning as if the fever had come back again. Oh, don't go away! After
what I have suffered, you don't know how dreadful it is to be alone."

The tone of her voice told him that she had been crying. He at once
tried the best means of setting the poor lady at ease, by telling her
of the conclusion at which he had arrived, after reading her manuscript.
The happy result showed itself instantly: her face brightened, her
manner changed; she was eager to hear more.

"Have I produced any other impression on you?" she asked.

He understood the allusion. Expressing sincere respect for her own
convictions, he told her honestly that he was not prepared to enter
on the obscure and terrible question of supernatural interposition.
Grateful for the tone in which he had answered her, she wisely and
delicately changed the subject.

"I must speak to you of my brother-in-law," she said. "He has told me of
your visit; and I am anxious to know what you think of him. Do you like
Mr. John Zant?"

Mr. Rayburn hesitated.

The careworn look appeared again in her face. "If you had felt as kindly
toward him as he feels toward you," she said, "I might have gone to St.
Sallins with a lighter heart."

Mr. Rayburn thought of the supernatural appearances, described at the
close of her narrative. "You believe in that terrible warning," he
remonstrated; "and yet, you go to your brother-in-law's house!"

"I believe," she answered, "in the spirit of the man who loved me in the
days of his earthly bondage. I am under _his_ protection. What have I
to do but to cast away my fears, and to wait in faith and hope? It might
have helped my resolution if a friend had been near to encourage me."
She paused and smiled sadly. "I must remember," she resumed, "that your
way of understanding my position is not my way. I ought to have told you
that Mr. John Zant feels needless anxiety about my health. He declares
that he will not lose sight of me until his mind is at ease. It
is useless to attempt to alter his opinion. He says my nerves are
shattered--and who that sees me can doubt it? He tells me that my only
chance of getting better is to try change of air and perfect repose--how
can I contradict him? He reminds me that I have no relation but himself,
and no house open to me but his own--and God knows he is right!"

She said those last words in accents of melancholy resignation, which
grieved the good man whose one merciful purpose was to serve and console
her. He spoke impulsively with the freedom of an old friend,

"I want to know more of you and Mr. John Zant than I know now," he said.
"My motive is a better one than mere curiosity. Do you believe that I
feel a sincere interest in you?"

"With my whole heart."

That reply encouraged him to proceed with what he had to say. "When
you recovered from your fainting-fit," he began, "Mr. John Zant asked
questions, of course?"

"He asked what could possibly have happened, in such a quiet place as
Kensington Gardens, to make me faint."

"And how did you answer?"

"Answer? I couldn't even look at him!"

"You said nothing?"

"Nothing. I don't know what he thought of me; he might have been
surprised, or he might have been offended."

"Is he easily offended?" Mr. Rayburn asked.

"Not in my experience of him."

"Do you mean your experience of him before your illness?"

"Yes. Since my recovery, his engagements with country patients have kept
him away from London. I have not seen him since he took these lodgings
for me. But he is always considerate. He has written more than once to
beg that I will not think him neglectful, and to tell me (what I knew
already through my poor husband) that he has no money of his own, and
must live by his profession."

"In your husband's lifetime, were the two brothers on good terms?"

"Always. The one complaint I ever heard my husband make of John Zant was
that he didn't come to see us often enough, after our marriage. Is there
some wickedness in him which we have never suspected? It may be--but
_how_ can it be? I have every reason to be grateful to the man against
whom I have been supernaturally warned! His conduct to me has been
always perfect. I can't tell you what I owe to his influence in quieting
my mind, when a dreadful doubt arose about my husband's death."

"Do you mean doubt if he died a natural death?"

"Oh, no! no! He was dying of rapid consumption--but his sudden death
took the doctors by surprise. One of them thought that he might have
taken an overdose of his sleeping drops, by mistake. The other disputed
this conclusion, or there might have been an inquest in the house. Oh,
don't speak of it any more! Let us talk of something else. Tell me when
I shall see you again."

"I hardly know. When do you and your brother-in-law leave London?"

"To-morrow." She looked at Mr. Rayburn with a piteous entreaty in her
eyes; she said, timidly: "Do you ever go to the seaside, and take your
dear little girl with you?"

The request, at which she had only dared to hint, touched on the idea
which was at that moment in Mr. Rayburn's mind.

Interpreted by his strong prejudice against John Zant, what she had said
of her brother-in-law filled him with forebodings of peril to herself;
all the more powerful in their influence, for this reason--that he
shrank from distinctly realizing them. If another person had been
present at the interview, and had said to him afterward: "That man's
reluctance to visit his sister-in-law, while her husband was living, is
associated with a secret sense of guilt which her innocence cannot
even imagine: he, and he alone, knows the cause of her husband's sudden
death: his feigned anxiety about her health is adopted as the safest
means of enticing her into his house,"--if those formidable conclusions
had been urged on Mr. Rayburn, he would have felt it his duty to reject
them, as unjustifiable aspersions on an absent man. And yet, when he
took leave that evening of Mrs. Zant, he had pledged himself to give
Lucy a holiday at the seaside: and he had said, without blushing, that
the child really deserved it, as a reward for general good conduct and
attention to her lessons!

IX.

THREE days later, the father and daughter arrived toward evening at St.
Sallins-on-Sea. They found Mrs. Zant at the station.

The poor woman's joy, on seeing them, expressed itself like the joy of a
child. "Oh, I am so glad! so glad!" was all she could say when they met.
Lucy was half-smothered with kisses, and was made supremely happy by a
present of the finest doll she had ever possessed. Mrs. Zant accompanied
her friends to the rooms which had been secured at the hotel. She was
able to speak confidentially to Mr. Rayburn, while Lucy was in the
balcony hugging her doll, and looking at the sea.

The one event that had happened during Mrs. Zant's short residence at
St. Sallins was the departure of her brother-in-law that morning, for
London. He had been called away to operate on the feet of a wealthy
patient who knew the value of his time: his housekeeper expected that he
would return to dinner.

As to his conduct toward Mrs. Zant, he was not only as attentive as
ever--he was almost oppressively affectionate in his language and
manner. There was no service that a man could render which he had
not eagerly offered to her. He declared that he already perceived an
improvement in her health; he congratulated her on having decided to
stay in his house; and (as a proof, perhaps, of his sincerity) he had
repeatedly pressed her hand. "Have you any idea what all this means?"
she said, simply.

Mr. Rayburn kept his idea to himself. He professed ignorance; and asked
next what sort of person the housekeeper was.

Mrs. Zant shook her head ominously.

"Such a strange creature," she said, "and in the habit of taking such
liberties that I begin to be afraid she is a little crazy."

"Is she an old woman?"

"No--only middle-aged." This morning, after her master had left the
house, she actually asked me what I thought of my brother-in-law! I told
her, as coldly as possible, that I thought he was very kind. She was
quite insensible to the tone in which I had spoken; she went on from bad
to worse. "Do you call him the sort of man who would take the fancy of a
young woman?" was her next question. She actually looked at me (I might
have been wrong; and I hope I was) as if the "young woman" she had in
her mind was myself! I said: "I don't think of such things, and I don't
talk about them." Still, she was not in the least discouraged; she made
a personal remark next: "Excuse me--but you do look wretchedly pale."
I thought she seemed to enjoy the defect in my complexion; I really
believe it raised me in her estimation. "We shall get on better in
time," she said; "I am beginning to like you." She walked out humming a
tune. Don't you agree with me? Don't you think she's crazy?"

"I can hardly give an opinion until I have seen her. Does she look as if
she might have been a pretty woman at one time of her life?"

"Not the sort of pretty woman whom I admire!"

Mr. Rayburn smiled. "I was thinking," he resumed, "that this person's
odd conduct may perhaps be accounted for. She is probably jealous of any
young lady who is invited to her master's house--and (till she noticed
your complexion) she began by being jealous of you."

Innocently at a loss to understand how _she_ could become an object
of the housekeeper's jealousy, Mrs. Zant looked at Mr. Rayburn in
astonishment. Before she could give expression to her feeling of
surprise, there was an interruption--a welcome interruption. A waiter
entered the room, and announced a visitor; described as "a gentleman."

Mrs. Zant at once rose to retire.

"Who is the gentleman?" Mr. Rayburn asked--detaining Mrs. Zant as he
spoke.

A voice which they both recognized answered gayly, from the outer side
of the door:

"A friend from London."

X.

"WELCOME to St. Sallins!" cried Mr. John Zant. "I knew that you were
expected, my dear sir, and I took my chance at finding you at the
hotel." He turned to his sister-in-law, and kissed her hand with an
elaborate gallantry worthy of Sir Charles Grandison himself. "When I
reached home, my dear, and heard that you had gone out, I guessed that
your object was to receive our excellent friend. You have not felt
lonely while I have been away? That's right! that's right!" he looked
toward the balcony, and discovered Lucy at the open window, staring
at the magnificent stranger. "Your little daughter, Mr. Rayburn? Dear
child! Come and kiss me."

Lucy answered in one positive word: "No."

Mr. John Zant was not easily discouraged.

"Show me your doll, darling," he said. "Sit on my knee."

Lucy answered in two positive words--"I won't."

Her father approached the window to administer the necessary reproof.
Mr. John Zant interfered in the cause of mercy with his best grace. He
held up his hands in cordial entreaty. "Dear Mr. Rayburn! The fairies
are sometimes shy; and _this_ little fairy doesn't take to strangers at
first sight. Dear child! All in good time. And what stay do you make
at St. Sallins? May we hope that our poor attractions will tempt you to
prolong your visit?"

He put his flattering little question with an ease of manner which
was rather too plainly assumed; and he looked at Mr. Rayburn with a
watchfulness which appeared to attach undue importance to the reply.
When he said: "What stay do you make at St. Sallins?" did he really
mean: "How soon do you leave us?" Inclining to adopt this conclusion,
Mr. Rayburn answered cautiously that his stay at the seaside would
depend on circumstances. Mr. John Zant looked at his sister-in-law,
sitting silent in a corner with Lucy on her lap. "Exert your
attractions," he said; "make the circumstances agreeable to our good
friend. Will you dine with us to-day, my dear sir, and bring your little
fairy with you?"

Lucy was far from receiving this complimentary allusion in the spirit
in which it had been offered. "I'm not a fairy," she declared. "I'm a
child."

"And a naughty child," her father added, with all the severity that he
could assume.

"I can't help it, papa; the man with the big beard puts me out."

The man with the big beard was amused--amiably, paternally amused--by
Lucy's plain speaking. He repeated his invitation to dinner; and he
did his best to look disappointed when Mr. Rayburn made the necessary
excuses.

"Another day," he said (without, however, fixing the day). "I think
you will find my house comfortable. My housekeeper may perhaps be
eccentric--but in all essentials a woman in a thousand. Do you feel the
change from London already? Our air at St. Sallins is really worthy of
its reputation. Invalids who come here are cured as if by magic. What do
you think of Mrs. Zant? How does she look?"

Mr. Rayburn was evidently expected to say that she looked better. He
said it. Mr. John Zant seemed to have anticipated a stronger expression
of opinion.

"Surprisingly better!" he pronounced. "Infinitely better! We ought both
to be grateful. Pray believe that we _are_ grateful."

"If you mean grateful to me," Mr. Rayburn remarked, "I don't quite
understand--"

"You don't quite understand? Is it possible that you have forgotten our
conversation when I first had the honor of receiving you? Look at Mrs.
Zant again."

Mr. Rayburn looked; and Mrs. Zant's brother-in-law explained himself.

"You notice the return of her color, the healthy brightness of her eyes.
(No, my dear, I am not paying you idle compliments; I am stating plain
facts.) For that happy result, Mr. Rayburn, we are indebted to you."

"Surely not?"

"Surely yes! It was at your valuable suggestion that I thought of
inviting my sister-in-law to visit me at St. Sallins. Ah, you remember
it now. Forgive me if I look at my watch; the dinner hour is on my mind.
Not, as your dear little daughter there seems to think, because I am
greedy, but because I am always punctual, in justice to the cook. Shall
we see you to-morrow? Call early, and you will find us at home."

He gave Mrs. Zant his arm, and bowed and smiled, and kissed his hand
to Lucy, and left the room. Recalling their interview at the hotel in
London, Mr. Rayburn now understood John Zant's object (on that occasion)
in assuming the character of a helpless man in need of a sensible
suggestion. If Mrs. Zant's residence under his roof became associated
with evil consequences, he could declare that she would never have
entered the house but for Mr. Rayburn's advice.

With the next day came the hateful necessity of returning this man's
visit.

Mr. Rayburn was placed between two alternatives. In Mrs. Zant's
interests he must remain, no matter at what sacrifice of his own
inclinations, on good terms with her brother-in-law--or he must return
to London, and leave the poor woman to her fate. His choice, it is
needless to say, was never a matter of doubt. He called at the house,
and did his innocent best--without in the least deceiving Mr. John
Zant--to make himself agreeable during the short duration of his visit.
Descending the stairs on his way out, accompanied by Mrs. Zant, he was
surprised to see a middle-aged woman in the hall, who looked as if she
was waiting there expressly to attract notice.

"The housekeeper," Mrs. Zant whispered. "She is impudent enough to try
to make acquaintance with you."

This was exactly what the housekeeper was waiting in the hall to do.

"I hope you like our watering-place, sir," she began. "If I can be of
service to you, pray command me. Any friend of this lady's has a claim
on me--and you are an old friend, no doubt. I am only the housekeeper;
but I presume to take a sincere interest in Mrs. Zant; and I am indeed
glad to see you here. We none of us know--do we?--how soon we may want a
friend. No offense, I hope? Thank you, sir. Good-morning."

There was nothing in the woman's eyes which indicated an unsettled
mind; nothing in the appearance of her lips which suggested habits of
intoxication. That her strange outburst of familiarity proceeded from
some strong motive seemed to be more than probable. Putting together
what Mrs. Zant had already told him, and what he had himself
observed, Mr. Rayburn suspected that the motive might be found in the
housekeeper's jealousy of her master.

XI.

REFLECTING in the solitude of his own room, Mr. Rayburn felt that the
one prudent course to take would be to persuade Mrs. Zant to leave St.
Sallins. He tried to prepare her for this strong proceeding, when she
came the next day to take Lucy out for a walk.

"If you still regret having forced yourself to accept your
brother-in-law's invitation," was all he ventured to say, "don't forget
that you are perfect mistress of your own actions. You have only to
come to me at the hotel, and I will take you back to London by the next
train."

She positively refused to entertain the idea.

"I should be a thankless creature, indeed," she said, "if I accepted
your proposal. Do you think I am ungrateful enough to involve you in a
personal quarrel with John Zant? No! If I find myself forced to leave
the house, I will go away alone."

There was no moving her from this resolution. When she and Lucy had
gone out together, Mr. Rayburn remained at the hotel, with a mind ill at
ease. A man of readier mental resources might have felt at a loss how to
act for the best, in the emergency that now confronted him. While he was
still as far as ever from arriving at a decision, some person knocked at
the door.

Had Mrs. Zant returned? He looked up as the door was opened, and saw to
his astonishment--Mr. John Zant's housekeeper.

"Don't let me alarm you, sir," the woman said. "Mrs. Zant has been taken
a little faint, at the door of our house. My master is attending to
her."

"Where is the child?" Mr. Rayburn asked.

"I was bringing her back to you, sir, when we met a lady and her little
girl at the door of the hotel. They were on their way to the beach--and
Miss Lucy begged hard to be allowed to go with them. The lady said the
two children were playfellows, and she was sure you would not object."

"The lady is quite right. Mrs. Zant's illness is not serious, I hope?"

"I think not, sir. But I should like to say something in her interests.
May I? Thank you." She advanced a step nearer to him, and spoke her next
words in a whisper. "Take Mrs. Zant away from this place, and lose no
time in doing it."

Mr. Rayburn was on his guard. He merely asked: "Why?"

The housekeeper answered in a curiously indirect manner--partly in jest,
as it seemed, and partly in earnest.

"When a man has lost his wife," she said, "there's some difference of
opinion in Parliament, as I hear, whether he does right or wrong, if
he marries his wife's sister. Wait a bit! I'm coming to the point. My
master is one who has a long head on his shoulders; he sees consequences
which escape the notice of people like me. In his way of thinking,
if one man may marry his wife's sister, and no harm done, where's the
objection if another man pays a compliment to the family, and marries
his brother's widow? My master, if you please, is that other man. Take
the widow away before she marries him."

This was beyond endurance.

"You insult Mrs. Zant," Mr. Rayburn answered, "if you suppose that such
a thing is possible!"

"Oh! I insult her, do I? Listen to me. One of three things will
happen. She will be entrapped into consenting to it--or frightened into
consenting to it--or drugged into consenting to it--"

Mr. Rayburn was too indignant to let her go on.

"You are talking nonsense," he said. "There can be no marriage; the law
forbids it."

"Are you one of the people who see no further than their noses?" she
asked insolently. "Won't the law take his money? Is he obliged to
mention that he is related to her by marriage, when he buys the
license?" She paused; her humor changed; she stamped furiously on the
floor. The true motive that animated her showed itself in her next
words, and warned Mr. Rayburn to grant a more favorable hearing than he
had accorded to her yet. "If you won't stop it," she burst out, "I will!
If he marries anybody, he is bound to marry ME. Will you take her away?
I ask you, for the last time--_will_ you take her away?"

The tone in which she made that final appeal to him had its effect.

"I will go back with you to John Zant's house," he said, "and judge for
myself."

She laid her hand on his arm:

"I must go first--or you may not be let in. Follow me in five minutes;
and don't knock at the street door."

On the point of leaving him, she abruptly returned.

"We have forgotten something," she said. "Suppose my master refuses to
see you. His temper might get the better of him; he might make it so
unpleasant for you that you would be obliged to go."

"_My_ temper might get the better of _me_," Mr. Rayburn replied;
"and--if I thought it was in Mrs. Zant's interests--I might refuse to
leave the house unless she accompanied me."

"That will never do, sir."

"Why not?"

"Because I should be the person to suffer."

"In what way?"

"In this way. If you picked a quarrel with my master, I should be blamed
for it because I showed you upstairs. Besides, think of the lady. You
might frighten her out of her senses, if it came to a struggle between
you two men."

The language was exaggerated; but there was a force in this last
objection which Mr. Rayburn was obliged to acknowledge.

"And, after all," the housekeeper continued, "he has more right over her
than you have. He is related to her, and you are only her friend."

Mr. Rayburn declined to let himself be influenced by this consideration,
"Mr. John Zant is only related to her by marriage," he said. "If she
prefers trusting in me--come what may of it, I will be worthy of her
confidence."

The housekeeper shook her head.

"That only means another quarrel," she answered. "The wise way, with
a man like my master, is the peaceable way. We must manage to deceive
him."

"I don't like deceit."

"In that case, sir, I'll wish you good-by. We will leave Mrs. Zant to do
the best she can for herself."

Mr. Rayburn was unreasonable. He positively refused to adopt this
alternative.

"Will you hear what I have got to say?" the housekeeper asked.

"There can be no harm in that," he admitted. "Go on."

She took him at his word.

"When you called at our house," she began, "did you notice the doors in
the passage, on the first floor? Very well. One of them is the door
of the drawing-room, and the other is the door of the library. Do you
remember the drawing-room, sir?"

"I thought it a large well-lighted room," Mr. Rayburn answered. "And I
noticed a doorway in the wall, with a handsome curtain hanging over it."

"That's enough for our purpose," the housekeeper resumed. "On the other
side of the curtain, if you had looked in, you would have found the
library. Suppose my master is as polite as usual, and begs to be excused
for not receiving you, because it is an inconvenient time. And suppose
you are polite on your side and take yourself off by the drawing-room
door. You will find me waiting downstairs, on the first landing. Do you
see it now?"

"I can't say I do."

"You surprise me, sir. What is to prevent us from getting back softly
into the library, by the door in the passage? And why shouldn't we use
that second way into the library as a means of discovering what may be
going on in the drawing-room? Safe behind the curtain, you will see him
if he behaves uncivilly to Mrs. Zant, or you will hear her if she calls
for help. In either case, you may be as rough and ready with my master
as you find needful; it will be he who has frightened her, and not you.
And who can blame the poor housekeeper because Mr. Rayburn did his
duty, and protected a helpless woman? There is my plan, sir. Is it worth
trying?"

He answered, sharply enough: "I don't like it."

The housekeeper opened the door again, and wished him good-by.

If Mr. Rayburn had felt no more than an ordinary interest in Mrs. Zant,
he would have let the woman go. As it was, he stopped her; and, after
some further protest (which proved to be useless), he ended in giving
way.

"You promise to follow my directions?" she stipulated.

He gave the promise. She smiled, nodded, and left him. True to his
instructions, Mr. Rayburn reckoned five minutes by his watch, before he
followed her.

XII.

THE housekeeper was waiting for him, with the street-door ajar.

"They are both in the drawing-room," she whispered, leading the way
upstairs. "Step softly, and take him by surprise."

A table of oblong shape stood midway between the drawing-room walls. At
the end of it which was nearest to the window, Mrs. Zant was pacing
to and fro across the breadth of the room. At the opposite end of the
table, John Zant was seated. Taken completely by surprise, he showed
himself in his true character. He started to his feet, and protested
with an oath against the intrusion which had been committed on him.

Heedless of his action and his language, Mr. Rayburn could look at
nothing, could think of nothing, but Mrs. Zant. She was still walking
slowly to and fro, unconscious of the words of sympathy which he
addressed to her, insensible even as it seemed to the presence of other
persons in the room.

John Zant's voice broke the silence. His temper was under control
again: he had his reasons for still remaining on friendly terms with Mr.
Rayburn.

"I am sorry I forgot myself just now," he said.

Mr. Rayburn's interest was concentrated on Mrs. Zant; he took no notice
of the apology.

"When did this happen?" he asked.

"About a quarter of an hour ago. I was fortunately at home. Without
speaking to me, without noticing me, she walked upstairs like a person
in a dream."

Mr. Rayburn suddenly pointed to Mrs. Zant.

"Look at her!" he said. "There's a change!"

All restlessness in her movements had come to an end. She was standing
at the further end of the table, which was nearest to the window, in
the full flow of sunlight pouring at that moment over her face. Her eyes
looked out straight before her--void of all expression. Her lips were
a little parted: her head drooped slightly toward her shoulder, in
an attitude which suggested listening for something or waiting for
something. In the warm brilliant light, she stood before the two men,
a living creature self-isolated in a stillness like the stillness of
death.

John Zant was ready with the expression of his opinion.

"A nervous seizure," he said. "Something resembling catalepsy, as you
see."

"Have you sent for a doctor?"

"A doctor is not wanted."

"I beg your pardon. It seems to me that medical help is absolutely
necessary."

"Be so good as to remember," Mr. John Zant answered, "that the decision
rests with me, as the lady's relative. I am sensible of the honor
which your visit confers on me. But the time has been unhappily chosen.
Forgive me if I suggest that you will do well to retire."

Mr. Rayburn had not forgotten the housekeeper's advice, or the promise
which she had exacted from him. But the expression in John Zant's face
was a serious trial to his self-control. He hesitated, and looked back
at Mrs. Zant.

If he provoked a quarrel by remaining in the room, the one alternative
would be the removal of her by force. Fear of the consequences to
herself, if she was suddenly and roughly roused from her trance, was the
one consideration which reconciled him to submission. He withdrew.

The housekeeper was waiting for him below, on the first landing. When
the door of the drawing-room had been closed again, she signed to him
to follow her, and returned up the stairs. After another struggle with
himself, he obeyed. They entered the library from the corridor--and
placed themselves behind the closed curtain which hung over the doorway.
It was easy so to arrange the edge of the drapery as to observe, without
exciting suspicion, whatever was going on in the next room.

Mrs. Zant's brother-in-law was approaching her at the time when Mr.
Rayburn saw him again.

In the instant afterward, she moved--before he had completely passed
over the space between them. Her still figure began to tremble. She
lifted her drooping head. For a moment there was a shrinking in her--as
if she had been touched by something. She seemed to recognize the touch:
she was still again.

John Zant watched the change. It suggested to him that she was beginning
to recover her senses. He tried the experiment of speaking to her.

"My love, my sweet angel, come to the heart that adores you!"

He advanced again; he passed into the flood of sunlight pouring over
her.

"Rouse yourself!" he said.

She still remained in the same position; apparently at his mercy,
neither hearing him nor seeing him.

"Rouse yourself!" he repeated. "My darling, come to me!"

At the instant when he attempted to embrace her--at the instant when Mr.
Rayburn rushed into the room--John Zant's arms, suddenly turning rigid,
remained outstretched. With a shriek of horror, he struggled to draw
them back--struggled, in the empty brightness of the sunshine, as if
some invisible grip had seized him.

"What has got me?" the wretch screamed. "Who is holding my hands? Oh,
the cold of it! the cold of it!"

His features became convulsed; his eyes turned upward until only the
white eyeballs were visible. He fell prostrate with a crash that shook
the room.

The housekeeper ran in. She knelt by her master's body. With one hand
she loosened his cravat. With the other she pointed to the end of the
table.

Mrs. Zant still kept her place; but there was another change. Little by
little, her eyes recovered their natural living expression--then slowly
closed. She tottered backward from the table, and lifted her hands
wildly, as if to grasp at something which might support her. Mr. Rayburn
hurried to her before she fell--lifted her in his arms--and carried her
out of the room.

One of the servants met them in the hall. He sent her for a carriage.
In a quarter of an hour more, Mrs. Zant was safe under his care at the
hotel.

XIII.

THAT night a note, written by the housekeeper, was delivered to Mrs.
Zant.

"The doctors give little hope. The paralytic stroke is spreading upward
to his face. If death spares him, he will live a helpless man. I shall
take care of him to the last. As for you--forget him."

Mrs. Zant gave the note to Mr. Rayburn.

"Read it, and destroy it," she said. "It is written in ignorance of the
terrible truth."

He obeyed--and looked at her in silence, waiting to hear more. She hid
her face. The few words she had addressed to him, after a struggle with
herself, fell slowly and reluctantly from her lips.

She said: "No mortal hand held the hands of John Zant. The guardian
spirit was with me. The promised protection was with me. I know it. I
wish to know no more."

Having spoken, she rose to retire. He opened the door for her, seeing
that she needed rest in her own room.

Left by himself, he began to consider the prospect that was before him
in the future. How was he to regard the woman who had just left him?
As a poor creature weakened by disease, the victim of her own
nervous delusion? or as the chosen object of a supernatural
revelation--unparalleled by any similar revelation that he had heard of,
or had found recorded in books? His first discovery of the place that
she really held in his estimation dawned on his mind, when he felt
himself recoiling from the conclusion which presented her to his pity,
and yielding to the nobler conviction which felt with her faith, and
raised her to a place apart among other women.

XIV.

THEY left St. Sallins the next day.

Arrived at the end of the journey, Lucy held fast by Mrs. Zant's hand.
Tears were rising in the child's eyes.

"Are we to bid her good-by?" she said sadly to her father.

He seemed to be unwilling to trust himself to speak; he only said:

"My dear, ask her yourself."

But the result justified him. Lucy was happy again.




MISS MORRIS AND THE STRANGER.

I.

WHEN I first saw him, he was lost in one of the Dead Cities of
England--situated on the South Coast, and called Sandwich.

Shall I describe Sandwich? I think not. Let us own the truth;
descriptions of places, however nicely they may be written, are always
more or less dull. Being a woman, I naturally hate dullness. Perhaps
some description of Sandwich may drop out, as it were, from my report of
our conversation when we first met as strangers in the street.

He began irritably. "I've lost myself," he said.

"People who don't know the town often do that," I remarked.

He went on: "Which is my way to the Fleur de Lys Inn?"

His way was, in the first place, to retrace his steps. Then to turn to
the left. Then to go on until he found two streets meeting. Then to take
the street on the right. Then to look out for the second turning on the
left. Then to follow the turning until he smelled stables--and there
was the inn. I put it in the clearest manner, and never stumbled over a
word.

"How the devil am I to remember all that?" he said.

This was rude. We are naturally and properly indignant with any man
who is rude to us. But whether we turn our backs on him in contempt,
or whether we are merciful and give him a lesson in politeness,
depends entirely on the man. He may be a bear, but he may also have
his redeeming qualities. This man had redeeming qualities. I cannot
positively say that he was either handsome or ugly, young or old,
well or ill dressed. But I can speak with certainty to the personal
attractions which recommended him to notice. For instance, the tone of
his voice was persuasive. (Did you ever read a story, written by one of
_us_, in which we failed to dwell on our hero's voice?) Then, again,
his hair was reasonably long. (Are you acquainted with any woman who can
endure a man with a cropped head?) Moreover, he was of a good height.
(It must be a very tall woman who can feel favorably inclined toward
a short man.) Lastly, although his eyes were not more than fairly
presentable in form and color, the wretch had in some unaccountable
manner become possessed of beautiful eyelashes. They were even better
eyelashes than mine. I write quite seriously. There is one woman who is
above the common weakness of vanity--and she holds the present pen.

So I gave my lost stranger a lesson in politeness. The lesson took the
form of a trap. I asked him if he would like me to show him the way to
the inn. He was still annoyed at losing himself. As I had anticipated,
he bluntly answered: "Yes."

"When you were a boy, and you wanted something," I said, "did your
mother teach you to say 'Please'?"

He positively blushed. "She did," he admitted; "and she taught me to say
'Beg your pardon' when I was rude. I'll say it now: 'Beg your pardon.'"

This curious apology increased my belief in his redeeming qualities. I
led the way to the inn. He followed me in silence. No woman who respects
herself can endure silence when she is in the company of a man. I made
him talk.

"Do you come to us from Ramsgate?" I began. He only nodded his head.
"We don't think much of Ramsgate here," I went on. "There is not an old
building in the place. And their first Mayor was only elected the other
day!"

This point of view seemed to be new to him. He made no attempt to
dispute it; he only looked around him, and said: "Sandwich is a
melancholy place, miss." He was so rapidly improving in politeness, that
I encouraged him by a smile. As a citizen of Sandwich, I may say that we
take it as a compliment when we are told that our town is a melancholy
place. And why not? Melancholy is connected with dignity. And dignity
is associated with age. And _we_ are old. I teach my pupils logic, among
other things--there is a specimen. Whatever may be said to the contrary,
women can reason. They can also wander; and I must admit that _I_ am
wandering. Did I mention, at starting, that I was a governess? If not,
that allusion to "pupils" must have come in rather abruptly. Let me make
my excuses, and return to my lost stranger.

"Is there any such thing as a straight street in all Sandwich?" he
asked.

"Not one straight street in the whole town."

"Any trade, miss?"

"As little as possible--and _that_ is expiring."

"A decayed place, in short?"

"Thoroughly decayed."

My tone seemed to astonish him. "You speak as if you were proud of its
being a decayed place," he said.

I quite respected him; this was such an intelligent remark to make. We
do enjoy our decay: it is our chief distinction. Progress and prosperity
everywhere else; decay and dissolution here. As a necessary consequence,
we produce our own impression, and we like to be original. The sea
deserted us long ago: it once washed our walls, it is now two miles away
from us--we don't regret the sea. We had sometimes ninety-five ships in
our harbor, Heaven only knows how many centuries ago; we now have one
or two small coasting vessels, half their time aground in a muddy little
river--we don't regret our harbor. But one house in the town is daring
enough to anticipate the arrival of resident visitors, and announces
furnished apartments to let. What a becoming contrast to our modern
neighbor, Ramsgate! Our noble market-place exhibits the laws made by the
corporation; and every week there are fewer and fewer people to obey the
laws. How convenient! Look at our one warehouse by the river side--with
the crane generally idle, and the windows mostly boarded up; and perhaps
one man at the door, looking out for the job which his better sense
tells him cannot possibly come. What a wholesome protest against the
devastating hurry and over-work elsewhere, which has shattered the
nerves of the nation! "Far from me and from my friends" (to borrow the
eloquent language of Doctor Johnson) "be such frigid enthusiasm as shall
conduct us indifferent and unmoved" over the bridge by which you enter
Sandwich, and pay a toll if you do it in a carriage. "That man is
little to be envied (Doctor Johnson again) who can lose himself in
our labyrinthine streets, and not feel that he has reached the welcome
limits of progress, and found a haven of rest in an age of hurry."

I am wandering again. Bear with the unpremeditated enthusiasm of a
citizen who only attained years of discretion at her last birthday. We
shall soon have done with Sandwich; we are close to the door of the inn.

"You can't mistake it now, sir," I said. "Good-morning."

He looked down at me from under his beautiful eyelashes (have I
mentioned that I am a little woman?), and he asked in his persuasive
tones: "Must we say good-by?"

I made him a bow.

"Would you allow me to see you safe home?" he suggested.

Any other man would have offended me. This man blushed like a boy, and
looked at the pavement instead of looking at me. By this time I had made
up my mind about him. He was not only a gentleman beyond all doubt, but
a shy gentleman as well. His bluntness and his odd remarks were, as I
thought, partly efforts to disguise his shyness, and partly refuges in
which he tried to forget his own sense of it. I answered his audacious
proposal amiably and pleasantly. "You would only lose your way again,"
I said, "and I should have to take you back to the inn for the second
time."

Wasted words! My obstinate stranger only made another proposal.

"I have ordered lunch here," he said, "and I am quite alone." He stopped
in confusion, and looked as if he rather expected me to box his ears. "I
shall be forty next birthday," he went on; "I am old enough to be your
father." I all but burst out laughing, and stepped across the street, on
my way home. He followed me. "We might invite the landlady to join
us," he said, looking the picture of a headlong man, dismayed by the
consciousness of his own imprudence. "Couldn't you honor me by lunching
with me if we had the landlady?" he asked.

This was a little too much. "Quite out of the question, sir--and you
ought to know it," I said with severity. He half put out his hand.
"Won't you even shake hands with me?" he inquired piteously. When
we have most properly administered a reproof to a man, what is the
perversity which makes us weakly pity him the minute afterward? I was
fool enough to shake hands with this perfect stranger. And, having done
it, I completed the total loss of my dignity by running away. Our dear
crooked little streets hid me from him directly.

As I rang at the door-bell of my employer's house, a thought occurred to
me which might have been alarming to a better regulated mind than mine.

"Suppose he should come back to Sandwich?"

II.

BEFORE many more days passed I had troubles of my own to contend with,
which put the eccentric stranger out of my head for the time.

Unfortunately, my troubles are part of my story; and my early life mixes
itself up with them. In consideration of what is to follow, may I say
two words relating to the period before I was a governess?

I am the orphan daughter of a shopkeeper of Sandwich. My father died,
leaving to his widow and child an honest name and a little income of L80
a year. We kept on the shop--neither gaining nor losing by it. The truth
is nobody would buy our poor little business. I was thirteen years old
at the time; and I was able to help my mother, whose health was then
beginning to fail. Never shall I forget a certain bright summer's day,
when I saw a new customer enter our shop. He was an elderly gentleman;
and he seemed surprised to find so young a girl as myself in charge
of the business, and, what is more, competent to support the charge. I
answered his questions in a manner which seemed to please him. He soon
discovered that my education (excepting my knowledge of the business)
had been sadly neglected; and he inquired if he could see my mother. She
was resting on the sofa in the back parlor--and she received him there.
When he came out, he patted me on the cheek. "I have taken a fancy to
you," he said, "and perhaps I shall come back again." He did come back
again. My mother had referred him to the rector for our characters in
the town, and he had heard what our clergyman could say for us. Our only
relations had emigrated to Australia, and were not doing well there.
My mother's death would leave me, so far as relatives were concerned,
literally alone in the world. "Give this girl a first-rate education,"
said our elderly customer, sitting at our tea-table in the back parlor,
"and she will do. If you will send her to school, ma'am, I'll pay for
her education." My poor mother began to cry at the prospect of parting
with me. The old gentleman said: "Think of it," and got up to go.
He gave me his card as I opened the shop-door for him. "If you find
yourself in trouble," he whispered, so that my mother could not hear
him, "be a wise child, and write and tell me of it." I looked at the
card. Our kind-hearted customer was no less a person than Sir Gervase
Damian, of Garrum Park, Sussex--with landed property in our county as
well! He had made himself (through the rector, no doubt) far better
acquainted than I was with the true state of my mother's health. In four
months from the memorable day when the great man had taken tea with us,
my time had come to be alone in the world. I have no courage to dwell
on it; my spirits sink, even at this distance of time, when I think of
myself in those days. The good rector helped me with his advice--I wrote
to Sir Gervase Damian.

A change had come over his life as well as mine in the interval since we
had met.

Sir Gervase had married for the second time--and, what was more foolish
still, perhaps, at his age, had married a young woman. She was said
to be consumptive, and of a jealous temper as well. Her husband's only
child by his first wife, a son and heir, was so angry at his father's
second marriage that he left the house. The landed property being
entailed, Sir Gervase could only express his sense of his son's conduct
by making a new will, which left all his property in money to his young
wife.

These particulars I gathered from the steward, who was expressly sent to
visit me at Sandwich.

"Sir Gervase never makes a promise without keeping it," this gentleman
informed me. "I am directed to take you to a first-rate ladies'
school in the neighborhood of London, and to make all the necessary
arrangements for your remaining there until you are eighteen years
of age. Any written communications in the future are to pass, if you
please, through the hands of the rector of Sandwich. The delicate health
of the new Lady Damian makes it only too likely that the lives of her
husband and herself will be passed, for the most part, in a milder
climate than the climate of England. I am instructed to say this, and to
convey to you Sir Gervase's best wishes."

By the rector's advice, I accepted the position offered to me in this
unpleasantly formal manner--concluding (quite correctly, as I afterward
discovered) that I was indebted to Lady Damian for the arrangement which
personally separated me from my benefactor. Her husband's kindness and
my gratitude, meeting on the neutral ground of Garrum Park, were
objects of conjugal distrust to this lady. Shocking! shocking! I left a
sincerely grateful letter to be forwarded to Sir Gervase; and, escorted
by the steward, I went to school--being then just fourteen years old.

I know I am a fool. Never mind. There is some pride in me, though I am
only a small shopkeeper's daughter. My new life had its trials--my pride
held me up.

For the four years during which I remained at the school, my poor
welfare might be a subject of inquiry to the rector, and sometimes even
the steward--never to Sir Gervase himself. His winters were no doubt
passed abroad; but in the summer time he and Lady Damian were at home
again. Not even for a day or two in the holiday time was there pity
enough felt for my lonely position to ask me to be the guest of the
housekeeper (I expected nothing more) at Garrum Park. But for my pride,
I might have felt it bitterly. My pride said to me, "Do justice to
yourself." I worked so hard, I behaved so well, that the mistress of the
school wrote to Sir Gervase to tell him how thoroughly I had deserved
the kindness that he had shown to me. No answer was received. (Oh, Lady
Damian!) No change varied the monotony of my life--except when one of
my schoolgirl friends sometimes took me home with her for a few days at
vacation time. Never mind. My pride held me up.

As the last half-year of my time at school approached, I began to
consider the serious question of my future life.

Of course, I could have lived on my eighty pounds a year; but what a
lonely, barren existence it promised to be!--unless somebody married me;
and where, if you please, was I to find him? My education had thoroughly
fitted me to be a governess. Why not try my fortune, and see a little
of the world in that way? Even if I fell among ill-conditioned people, I
could be independent of them, and retire on my income.

The rector, visiting London, came to see me. He not only approved of
my idea--he offered me a means of carrying it out. A worthy family,
recently settled at Sandwich, were in want of a governess. The head of
the household was partner in a business (the exact nature of which it
is needless to mention) having "branches" out of London. He had become
superintendent of a new "branch"--tried as a commercial experiment,
under special circumstances, at Sandwich. The idea of returning to my
native place pleased me--dull as the place was to others. I accepted the
situation.

When the steward's usual half-yearly letter arrived soon afterward,
inquiring what plans I had formed on leaving school, and what he could
do to help them, acting on behalf of Sir Gervase, a delicious tingling
filled me from head to foot when I thought of my own independence. It
was not ingratitude toward my benefactor; it was only my little private
triumph over Lady Damian. Oh, my sisters of the sex, can you not
understand and forgive me?

So to Sandwich I returned; and there, for three years, I remained with
the kindest people who ever breathed the breath of life. Under their
roof I was still living when I met with my lost gentleman in the street.

Ah, me! the end of that quiet, pleasant life was near. When I lightly
spoke to the odd stranger of the expiring trade of the town, I never
expected that my employer's trade was expiring too. The speculation had
turned out to be a losing one; and all his savings had been embarked
in it. He could no longer remain at Sandwich, or afford to keep a
governess. His wife broke the sad news to me. I was so fond of the
children, I proposed to her to give up my salary. Her husband refused
even to consider the proposal. It was the old story of poor humanity
over again. We cried, we kissed, we parted.

What was I to do next?--Write to Sir Gervase?

I had already written, soon after my return to Sandwich; breaking
through the regulations by directly addressing Sir Gervase. I expressed
my grateful sense of his generosity to a poor girl who had no family
claim on him; and I promised to make the one return in my power by
trying to be worthy of the interest he had taken in me. The letter was
written without any alloy of mental reserve. My new life as a governess
was such a happy one that I had forgotten my paltry bitterness of
feeling against Lady Damian.

It was a relief to think of this change for the better, when the
secretary at Garrum Park informed me that he had forwarded my letter
to Sir Gervase, then at Madeira with his sick wife. She was slowly and
steadily wasting away in a decline. Before another year had passed, Sir
Gervase was left a widower for the second time, with no child to console
him under his loss. No answer came to my grateful letter. I should
have been unreasonable indeed if I had expected the bereaved husband to
remember me in his grief and loneliness. Could I write to him again, in
my own trumpery little interests, under these circumstances? I thought
(and still think) that the commonest feeling of delicacy forbade it. The
only other alternative was to appeal to the ever-ready friends of the
obscure and helpless public. I advertised in the newspapers.

The tone of one of the answers which I received impressed me so
favorably, that I forwarded my references. The next post brought my
written engagement, and the offer of a salary which doubled my income.

The story of the past is told; and now we may travel on again, with no
more stoppages by the way.

III.

THE residence of my present employer was in the north of England. Having
to pass through London, I arranged to stay in town for a few days to
make some necessary additions to my wardrobe. An old servant of the
rector, who kept a lodging-house in the suburbs, received me kindly, and
guided my choice in the serious matter of a dressmaker. On the second
morning after my arrival an event happened. The post brought me a
letter forwarded from the rectory. Imagine my astonishment when my
correspondent proved to be Sir Gervase Damian himself!

The letter was dated from his house in London. It briefly invited me to
call and see him, for a reason which I should hear from his own lips. He
naturally supposed that I was still at Sandwich, and requested me, in a
postscript, to consider my journey as made at his expense.

I went to the house the same day. While I was giving my name, a
gentleman came out into the hall. He spoke to me without ceremony.

"Sir Gervase," he said, "believes he is going to die. Don't encourage
him in that idea. He may live for another year or more, if his friends
will only persuade him to be hopeful about himself."

With that, the gentleman left me; the servant said it was the doctor.

The change in my benefactor, since I had seen him last, startled and
distressed me. He lay back in a large arm-chair, wearing a grim black
dressing-gown, and looking pitiably thin and pinched and worn. I do
not think I should have known him again, if we had met by accident. He
signed to me to be seated on a little chair by his side.

"I wanted to see you," he said quietly, "before I die. You must have
thought me neglectful and unkind, with good reason. My child, you have
not been forgotten. If years have passed without a meeting between us,
it has not been altogether my fault--"

He stopped. A pained expression passed over his poor worn face; he
was evidently thinking of the young wife whom he had lost. I
repeated--fervently and sincerely repeated--what I had already said
to him in writing. "I owe everything, sir, to your fatherly kindness."
Saying this, I ventured a little further. I took his wan white hand,
hanging over the arm of the chair, and respectfully put it to my lips.

He gently drew his hand away from me, and sighed as he did it. Perhaps
_she_ had sometimes kissed his hand.

"Now tell me about yourself," he said.

I told him of my new situation, and how I had got it. He listened with
evident interest.

"I was not self-deceived," he said, "when I first took a fancy to you
in the shop. I admire your independent feeling; it's the right kind of
courage in a girl like you. But you must let me do something more for
you--some little service to remember me by when the end has come. What
shall it be?"

"Try to get better, sir; and let me write to you now and then," I
answered. "Indeed, indeed, I want nothing more."

"You will accept a little present, at least?" With those words he took
from the breast-pocket of his dressing-gown an enameled cross attached
to a gold chain. "Think of me sometimes," he said, as he put the chain
round my neck. He drew me to him gently, and kissed my forehead. It
was too much for me. "Don't cry, my dear," he said; "don't remind me of
another sad young face--"

Once more he stopped; once more he was thinking of the lost wife. I
pulled down my veil, and ran out of the room.

IV.

THE next day I was on my way to the north. My narrative brightens
again--but let us not forget Sir Gervase Damian.

I ask permission to introduce some persons of distinction:--Mrs.
Fosdyke, of Carsham Hall, widow of General Fosdyke; also Master
Frederick, Miss Ellen, and Miss Eva, the pupils of the new governess;
also two ladies and three gentlemen, guests staying in the house.

Discreet and dignified; handsome and well-bred--such was my impression
of Mrs. Fosdyke, while she harangued me on the subject of her children,
and communicated her views on education. Having heard the views before
from others, I assumed a listening position, and privately formed my
opinion of the schoolroom. It was large, lofty, perfectly furnished
for the purpose; it had a big window and a balcony looking out over
the garden terrace and the park beyond--a wonderful schoolroom, in my
limited experience. One of the two doors which it possessed was left
open, and showed me a sweet little bedroom, with amber draperies and
maplewood furniture, devoted to myself. Here were wealth and liberality,
in the harmonious combination so seldom discovered by the spectator of
small means. I controlled my first feeling of bewilderment just in time
to answer Mrs. Fosdyke on the subject of reading and recitation--viewed
as minor accomplishments which a good governess might be expected to
teach.

"While the organs are young and pliable," the lady remarked, "I regard
it as of great importance to practice children in the art of reading
aloud, with an agreeable variety of tone and correctness of emphasis.
Trained in this way, they will produce a favorable impression on others,
even in ordinary conversation, when they grow up. Poetry, committed to
memory and recited, is a valuable means toward this end. May I hope that
your studies have enabled you to carry out my views?"

Formal enough in language, but courteous and kind in manner. I relieved
Mrs. Fosdyke from anxiety by informing her that we had a professor of
elocution at school. And then I was left to improve my acquaintance with
my three pupils.

They were fairly intelligent children; the boy, as usual, being slower
than the girls. I did my best--with many a sad remembrance of the far
dearer pupils whom I had left--to make them like me and trust me; and
I succeeded in winning their confidence. In a week from the time of my
arrival at Carsham Hall, we began to understand each other.

The first day in the week was one of our days for reciting poetry, in
obedience to the instructions with which I had been favored by Mrs.
Fosdyke. I had done with the girls, and had just opened (perhaps I ought
to say profaned) Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," in the elocutionary
interests of Master Freddy. Half of Mark Antony's first glorious speech
over Caesar's dead body he had learned by heart; and it was now my duty
to teach him, to the best of my small ability, how to speak it. The
morning was warm. We had our big window open; the delicious perfume of
flowers in the garden beneath filled the room.

I recited the first eight lines, and stopped there feeling that I must
not exact too much from the boy at first. "Now, Freddy," I said, "try if
you can speak the poetry as I have spoken it."

"Don't do anything of the kind, Freddy," said a voice from the garden;
"it's all spoken wrong."

Who was this insolent person? A man unquestionably--and, strange to
say, there was something not entirely unfamiliar to me in his voice.
The girls began to giggle. Their brother was more explicit. "Oh," says
Freddy, "it's only Mr. Sax."

The one becoming course to pursue was to take no notice of the
interruption. "Go on," I said. Freddy recited the lines, like a dear
good boy, with as near an imitation of my style of elocution as could be
expected from him.

"Poor devil!" cried the voice from the garden, insolently pitying my
attentive pupil.

I imposed silence on the girls by a look--and then, without stirring
from my chair, expressed my sense of the insolence of Mr. Sax in clear
and commanding tones. "I shall be obliged to close the window if this is
repeated." Having spoken to that effect, I waited in expectation of an
apology. Silence was the only apology. It was enough for me that I had
produced the right impression. I went on with my recitation.

           "Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest
           (For Brutus is an honorable man;
           So are they all, all honorable men),
           Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
           He was my friend, faithful and just to me--"

"Oh, good heavens, I can't stand _that!_ Why don't you speak the last
line properly? Listen to me."

Dignity is a valuable quality, especially in a governess. But there
are limits to the most highly trained endurance. I bounced out into
the balcony--and there, on the terrace, smoking a cigar, was my lost
stranger in the streets of Sandwich!

He recognized me, on his side, the instant I appeared. "Oh, Lord!" he
cried in tones of horror, and ran round the corner of the terrace as if
my eyes had been mad bulls in close pursuit of him. By this time it
is, I fear, useless for me to set myself up as a discreet person in
emergencies. Another woman might have controlled herself. I burst into
fits of laughter. Freddy and the girls joined me. For the time, it
was plainly useless to pursue the business of education. I shut up
Shakespeare, and allowed--no, let me tell the truth, encouraged--the
children to talk about Mr. Sax.

They only seemed to know what Mr. Sax himself had told them. His father
and mother and brothers and sisters had all died in course of time.
He was the sixth and last of the children, and he had been christened
"Sextus" in consequence, which is Latin (here Freddy interposed) for
sixth. Also christened "Cyril" (here the girls recovered the lead) by
his mother's request; "Sextus" being such a hideous name. And which
of his Christian names does he use? You wouldn't ask if you knew him!
"Sextus," of course, because it is the ugliest. Sextus Sax? Not the
romantic sort of name that one likes, when one is a woman. But I have
no right to be particular. My own name (is it possible that I have not
mentioned it in these pages yet?) is only Nancy Morris. Do not despise
me--and let us return to Mr. Sax.

Is he married? The eldest girl thought not. She had heard mamma say to a
lady, "An old German family, my dear, and, in spite of his oddities, an
excellent man; but so poor--barely enough to live on--and blurts out the
truth, if people ask his opinion, as if he had twenty thousand a year!"
"Your mamma knows him well, of course?" "I should think so, and so do
we. He often comes here. They say he's not good company among grown-up
people. _We_ think him jolly. He understands dolls, and he's the best
back at leap-frog in the whole of England." Thus far we had advanced in
the praise of Sextus Sax, when one of the maids came in with a note
for me. She smiled mysteriously, and said, "I'm to wait for an answer,
miss."

I opened the note, and read these lines:--

"I am so ashamed of myself, I daren't attempt to make my apologies
personally. Will you accept my written excuses? Upon my honor, nobody
told me when I got here yesterday that you were in the house. I heard
the recitation, and--can you excuse my stupidity?--I thought it was
a stage-struck housemaid amusing herself with the children. May I
accompany you when you go out with the young ones for your daily walk?
One word will do. Yes or no. Penitently yours--S. S."

In my position, there was but one possible answer to this. Governesses
must not make appointments with strange gentlemen--even when the
children are present in the capacity of witnesses. I said, No. Am I
claiming too much for my readiness to forgive injuries, when I add that
I should have preferred saying Yes?

We had our early dinner, and then got ready to go out walking as usual.
These pages contain a true confession. Let me own that I hoped Mr. Sax
would understand my refusal, and ask Mrs. Fosdyke's leave to accompany
us. Lingering a little as we went downstairs, I heard him in the
hall--actually speaking to Mrs. Fosdyke! What was he saying? That
darling boy, Freddy, got into a difficulty with one of his boot-laces
exactly at the right moment. I could help him, and listen--and be sadly
disappointed by the result. Mr. Sax was offended with me.

"You needn't introduce me to the new governess," I heard him say. "We
have met on a former occasion, and I produced a disagreeable impression
on her. I beg you will not speak of me to Miss Morris."

Before Mrs. Fosdyke could say a word in reply, Master Freddy changed
suddenly from a darling boy to a detestable imp. "I say, Mr. Sax!" he
called out, "Miss Morris doesn't mind you a bit--she only laughs at
you."

The answer to this was the sudden closing of a door. Mr. Sax had taken
refuge from me in one of the ground-floor rooms. I was so mortified, I
could almost have cried.

Getting down into the hall, we found Mrs. Fosdyke with her garden
hat on, and one of the two ladies who were staying in the house (the
unmarried one) whispering to her at the door of the morning-room. The
lady--Miss Melbury--looked at me with a certain appearance of curiosity
which I was quite at a loss to understand, and suddenly turned away
toward the further end of the hall.

"I will walk with you and the children," Mrs. Fosdyke said to me.
"Freddy, you can ride your tricycle if you like." She turned to
the girls. "My dears, it's cool under the trees. You may take your
skipping-ropes."

She had evidently something special to say to me; and she had adopted
the necessary measures for keeping the children in front of us, well out
of hearing. Freddy led the way on his horse on three wheels; the girls
followed, skipping merrily. Mrs. Fosdyke opened the business by the
most embarrassing remark that she could possibly have made under the
circumstances.

"I find that you are acquainted with Mr. Sax," she began; "and I am
surprised to hear that you dislike him."

She smiled pleasantly, as if my supposed dislike of Mr. Sax rather
amused her. What "the ruling passion" may be among men, I cannot presume
to consider. My own sex, however, I may claim to understand. The
ruling passion among women is Conceit. My ridiculous notion of my
own consequence was wounded in some way. I assumed a position of the
loftiest indifference.

"Really, ma'am," I said, "I can't undertake to answer for any impression
that Mr. Sax may have formed. We met by the merest accident. I know
nothing about him."

Mrs. Fosdyke eyed me slyly, and appeared to be more amused than ever.

"He is a very odd man," she admitted, "but I can tell you there is a
fine nature under that strange surface of his. However," she went on,
"I am forgetting that he forbids me to talk about him in your presence.
When the opportunity offers, I shall take my own way of teaching you two
to understand each other: you will both be grateful to me when I have
succeeded. In the meantime, there is a third person who will be sadly
disappointed to hear that you know nothing about Mr. Sax."

"May I ask, ma'am, who the person is?"

"Can you keep a secret, Miss Morris? Of course you can! The person is
Miss Melbury."

(Miss Melbury was a dark woman. It cannot be because I am a fair woman
myself--I hope I am above such narrow prejudices as that--but it is
certainly true that I don't admire dark women.)

"She heard Mr. Sax telling me that you particularly disliked him," Mrs.
Fosdyke proceeded. "And just as you appeared in the hall, she was asking
me to find out what your reason was. My own opinion of Mr. Sax, I ought
to tell you, doesn't satisfy her; I am his old friend, and I present him
of course from my own favorable point of view. Miss Melbury is anxious
to be made acquainted with his faults--and she expected you to be a
valuable witness against him."

Thus far we had been walking on. We now stopped, as if by common
consent, and looked at one another.

In my previous experience of Mrs. Fosdyke, I had only seen the more
constrained and formal side of her character. Without being aware of my
own success, I had won the mother's heart in winning the goodwill of her
children. Constraint now seized its first opportunity of melting away;
the latent sense of humor in the great lady showed itself, while I
was inwardly wondering what the nature of Miss Melbury's extraordinary
interest in Mr. Sax might be. Easily penetrating my thoughts, she
satisfied my curiosity without committing herself to a reply in words.
Her large gray eyes sparkled as they rested on my face, and she hummed
the tune of the old French song, _"C'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour!"_
There is no disguising it--something in this disclosure made me
excessively angry. Was I angry with Miss Melbury? or with Mr. Sax? or
with myself? I think it must have been with myself.

Finding that I had nothing to say on my side, Mrs. Fosdyke looked at her
watch, and remembered her domestic duties. To my relief, our interview
came to an end.

"I have a dinner-party to-day," she said, "and I have not seen the
housekeeper yet. Make yourself beautiful, Miss Morris, and join us in
the drawing-room after dinner."

V.

I WORE my best dress; and, in all my life before, I never took such
pains with my hair. Nobody will be foolish enough, I hope, to suppose
that I did this on Mr. Sax's account. How could I possibly care about
a man who was little better than a stranger to me? No! the person I
dressed at was Miss Melbury.

She gave me a look, as I modestly placed myself in a corner, which amply
rewarded me for the time spent on my toilet. The gentlemen came in.
I looked at Mr. Sax (mere curiosity) under shelter of my fan. His
appearance was greatly improved by evening dress. He discovered me in
my corner, and seemed doubtful whether to approach me or not. I was
reminded of our first odd meeting; and I could not help smiling as I
called it to mind. Did he presume to think that I was encouraging him?
Before I could decide that question, he took the vacant place on the
sofa. In any other man--after what had passed in the morning--this would
have been an audacious proceeding. _He_ looked so painfully embarrassed,
that it became a species of Christian duty to pity him.

"Won't you shake hands?" he said, just as he had said it at Sandwich.

I peeped round the corner of my fan at Miss Melbury. She was looking at
us. I shook hands with Mr. Sax.

"What sort of sensation is it," he asked, "when you shake hands with a
man whom you hate?"

"I really can't tell you," I answered innocently; "I have never done
such a thing."

"You would not lunch with me at Sandwich," he protested; "and, after the
humblest apology on my part, you won't forgive me for what I did this
morning. Do you expect me to believe that I am not the special object of
your antipathy? I wish I had never met with you! At my age, a man gets
angry when he is treated cruelly and doesn't deserve it. You don't
understand that, I dare say."

"Oh, yes, I do. I heard what you said about me to Mrs. Fosdyke, and I
heard you bang the door when you got out of my way."

He received this reply with every appearance of satisfaction. "So you
listened, did you? I'm glad to hear that."

"Why?"

"It shows you take some interest in me, after all."

Throughout this frivolous talk (I only venture to report it because it
shows that I bore no malice on my side) Miss Melbury was looking at us
like the basilisk of the ancients. She owned to being on the wrong side
of thirty; and she had a little money--but these were surely no reasons
why she should glare at a poor governess. Had some secret understanding
of the tender sort been already established between Mr. Sax and herself?
She provoked me into trying to find out--especially as the last words he
had said offered me the opportunity.

"I can prove that I feel a sincere interest in you," I resumed. "I can
resign you to a lady who has a far better claim to your attention than
mine. You are neglecting her shamefully."

He stared at me with an appearance of bewilderment, which seemed to
imply that the attachment was on the lady's side, so far. It was of
course impossible to mention names; I merely turned my eyes in the right
direction. He looked where I looked--and his shyness revealed itself,
in spite of his resolution to conceal it. His face flushed; he looked
mortified and surprised. Miss Melbury could endure it no longer. She
rose, took a song from the music-stand, and approached us.

"I am going to sing," she said, handing the music to him. "Please turn
over for me, Mr. Sax."

I think he hesitated--but I cannot feel sure that I observed him
correctly. It matters little. With or without hesitation, he followed
her to the piano.

Miss Melbury sang--with perfect self-possession, and an immense compass
of voice. A gentleman near me said she ought to be on the stage. I
thought so too. Big as it was, our drawing-room was not large enough for
her. The gentleman sang next. No voice at all--but so sweet, such true
feeling! I turned over the leaves for him. A dear old lady, sitting near
the piano, entered into conversation with me. She spoke of the great
singers at the beginning of the present century. Mr. Sax hovered about,
with Miss Melbury's eye on him. I was so entranced by the anecdotes of
my venerable friend, that I could take no notice of Mr. Sax. Later, when
the dinner-party was over, and we were retiring for the night, he still
hovered about, and ended in offering me a bedroom candle. I immediately
handed it to Miss Melbury. Really a most enjoyable evening!

VI.

THE next morning we were startled by an extraordinary proceeding on the
part of one of the guests. Mr. Sax had left Carsham Hall by the first
train--nobody knew why.

Nature has laid--so, at least, philosophers say--some heavy burdens
upon women. Do those learned persons include in their list the burden
of hysterics? If so, I cordially agree with them. It is hardly worth
speaking of in my case--a constitutional outbreak in the solitude of
my own room, treated with eau-de-cologne and water, and quite forgotten
afterward in the absorbing employment of education. My favorite pupil,
Freddy, had been up earlier than the rest of us--breathing the morning
air in the fruit-garden. He had seen Mr. Sax and had asked him when he
was coming back again. And Mr. Sax had said, "I shall be back again next
month." (Dear little Freddy!)

In the meanwhile we, in the schoolroom, had the prospect before us of a
dull time in an empty house. The remaining guests were to go away at the
end of the week, their hostess being engaged to pay a visit to some old
friends in Scotland.

During the next three or four days, though I was often alone with Mrs.
Fosdyke, she never said one word on the subject of Mr. Sax. Once or
twice I caught her looking at me with that unendurably significant smile
of hers. Miss Melbury was equally unpleasant in another way. When
we accidentally met on the stairs, her black eyes shot at me passing
glances of hatred and scorn. Did these two ladies presume to think--?

No; I abstained from completing that inquiry at the time, and I abstain
from completing it here.

The end of the week came, and I and the children were left alone at
Carsham Hall.

I took advantage of the leisure hours at my disposal to write to Sir
Gervase; respectfully inquiring after his health, and informing him
that I had been again most fortunate in my engagement as a governess. By
return of post an answer arrived. I eagerly opened it. The first lines
informed me of Sir Gervase Damian's death.

The letter dropped from my hand. I looked at my little enameled cross.
It is not for me to say what I felt. Think of all that I owed to him;
and remember how lonely my lot was in the world. I gave the children a
holiday; it was only the truth to tell them that I was not well.

How long an interval passed before I could call to mind that I had only
read the first lines of the letter, I am not able to say. When I did
take it up I was surprised to see that the writing covered two pages.
Beginning again where I had left off, my head, in a moment more, began
to swim. A horrid fear overpowered me that I might not be in my right
mind, after I had read the first three sentences. Here they are, to
answer for me that I exaggerate nothing:--

"The will of our deceased client is not yet proved. But, with the
sanction of the executors, I inform you confidentially that you are the
person chiefly interested in it. Sir Gervase Damian bequeaths to you,
absolutely, the whole of his personal property, amounting to the sum of
seventy thousand pounds."

If the letter had ended there, I really cannot imagine what
extravagances I might not have committed. But the writer (head partner
in the firm of Sir Gervase's lawyers) had something more to say on his
own behalf. The manner in which he said it strung up my nerves in an
instant. I can not, and will not, copy the words here. It is quite
revolting enough to give the substance of them.

The man's object was evidently to let me perceive that he disapproved of
the will. So far I do not complain of him--he had, no doubt, good
reason for the view he took. But, in expressing his surprise "at this
extraordinary proof of the testator's interest in a perfect stranger
to the family," he hinted his suspicion of an influence, on my part,
exercised over Sir Gervase, so utterly shameful, that I cannot dwell on
the subject. The language, I should add, was cunningly guarded. Even
I could see that it would bear more than one interpretation, and would
thus put me in the wrong if I openly resented it. But the meaning
was plain; and part at least of the motive came out in the following
sentences:

"The present Sir Gervase, as you are doubtless aware, is not seriously
affected by his father's will. He is already more liberally provided
for, as heir under the entail to the whole of the landed property. But,
to say nothing of old friends who are forgotten, there is a surviving
relative of the late Sir Gervase passed over, who is nearly akin to him
by blood. In the event of this person disputing the will, you will of
course hear from us again, and refer us to your legal adviser."

The letter ended with an apology for delay in writing to me, caused by
difficulty in discovering my address.

And what did I do?--Write to the rector, or to Mrs. Fosdyke, for
advice? Not I!

At first I was too indignant to be able to think of what I ought to
do. Our post-time was late, and my head ached as if it would burst into
pieces. I had plenty of leisure to rest and compose myself. When I got
cool again, I felt able to take my own part, without asking any one to
help me.

Even if I had been treated kindly, I should certainly not have taken the
money when there was a relative living with a claim to it. What did _I_
want with a large fortune! To buy a husband with it, perhaps? No, no!
from all that I have heard, the great Lord Chancellor was quite right
when he said that a woman with money at her own disposal was "either
kissed out of it or kicked out of it, six weeks after her marriage." The
one difficulty before me was not to give up my legacy, but to express my
reply with sufficient severity, and at the same time with due regard to
my own self-respect. Here is what I wrote:

"SIR--I will not trouble you by attempting to express my sorrow on
hearing of Sir Gervase Damian's death. You would probably form your own
opinion on that subject also; and I have no wish to be judged by your
unenviable experience of humanity for the second time.

"With regard to the legacy, feeling the sincerest gratitude to my
generous benefactor, I nevertheless refuse to receive the money.

"Be pleased to send me the necessary document to sign, for transferring
my fortune to that relative of Sir Gervase mentioned in your letter. The
one condition on which I insist is, that no expression of thanks shall
be addressed to me by the person in whose favor I resign the money. I
do not desire (even supposing that justice is done to my motives on this
occasion) to be made the object of expressions of gratitude for only
doing my duty."

So it ended. I may be wrong, but I call that strong writing.

In due course of post a formal acknowledgment arrived. I was requested
to wait for the document until the will had been proved, and was
informed that my name should be kept strictly secret in the interval. On
this occasion the executors were almost as insolent as the lawyer. They
felt it their duty to give me time to reconsider a decision which had
been evidently formed on impulse. Ah, how hard men are--at least, some
of them! I locked up the acknowledgment in disgust, resolved to think
no more of it until the time came for getting rid of my legacy. I kissed
poor Sir Gervase's little keepsake. While I was still looking at it,
the good children came in, of their own accord, to ask how I was. I was
obliged to draw down the blind in my room, or they would have seen the
tears in my eyes. For the first time since my mother's death, I felt the
heartache. Perhaps the children made me think of the happier time when I
was a child myself.

VII.

THE will had been proved, and I was informed that the document was
in course of preparation when Mrs. Fosdyke returned from her visit to
Scotland.

She thought me looking pale and worn.

"The time seems to me to have come," she said, "when I had better make
you and Mr. Sax understand each other. Have you been thinking penitently
of your own bad behavior?"

I felt myself blushing. I _had_ been thinking of my conduct to Mr.
Sax--and I was heartily ashamed of it, too.

Mrs. Fosdyke went on, half in jest, half in earnest. "Consult your own
sense of propriety!" she said. "Was the poor man to blame for not being
rude enough to say No, when a lady asked him to turn over her music?
Could _he_ help it, if the same lady persisted in flirting with him? He
ran away from her the next morning. Did you deserve to be told why he
left us? Certainly not--after the vixenish manner in which you handed
the bedroom candle to Miss Melbury. You foolish girl! Do you think I
couldn't see that you were in love with him? Thank Heaven, he's too poor
to marry you, and take you away from my children, for some time to come.
There will be a long marriage engagement, even if he is magnanimous
enough to forgive you. Shall I ask Miss Melbury to come back with him?"

She took pity on me at last, and sat down to write to Mr. Sax. His
reply, dated from a country house some twenty miles distant, announced
that he would be at Carsham Hall in three days' time.

On that third day the legal paper that I was to sign arrived by post. It
was Sunday morning; I was alone in the schoolroom.

In writing to me, the lawyer had only alluded to "a surviving relative
of Sir Gervase, nearly akin to him by blood." The document was more
explicit. It described the relative as being a nephew of Sir Gervase,
the son of his sister. The name followed.

It was Sextus Cyril Sax.

I have tried on three different sheets of paper to describe the effect
which this discovery produced on me--and I have torn them up one after
another. When I only think of it, my mind seems to fall back into the
helpless surprise and confusion of that time. After all that had passed
between us--the man himself being then on his way to the house! what
would he think of me when he saw my name at the bottom of the document?
what, in Heaven's name, was I to do?

How long I sat petrified, with the document on my lap, I never knew.
Somebody knocked at the schoolroom door, and looked in and said
something, and went out again. Then there was an interval. Then the
door was opened again. A hand was laid kindly on my shoulder. I looked
up--and there was Mrs. Fosdyke, asking, in the greatest alarm, what was
the matter with me.

The tone of her voice roused me into speaking. I could think of nothing
but Mr. Sax; I could only say, "Has he come?"

"Yes--and waiting to see you."

Answering in those terms, she glanced at the paper in my lap. In the
extremity of my helplessness, I acted like a sensible creature at last.
I told Mrs. Fosdyke all that I have told here.

She neither moved nor spoke until I had done. Her first proceeding,
after that, was to take me in her arms and give me a kiss. Having so far
encouraged me, she next spoke of poor Sir Gervase.

"We all acted like fools," she announced, "in needlessly offending him
by protesting against his second marriage. I don't mean you--I mean his
son, his nephew, and myself. If his second marriage made him happy, what
business had we with the disparity of years between husband and wife?
I can tell you this, Sextus was the first of us to regret what he
had done. But for his stupid fear of being suspected of an interested
motive, Sir Gervase might have known there was that much good in his
sister's son."

She snatched up a copy of the will, which I had not even noticed thus
far.

"See what the kind old man says of you," she went on, pointing to the
words. I could not see them; she was obliged to read them for me. "I
leave my money to the one person living who has been more than worthy of
the little I have done for her, and whose simple unselfish nature I know
that I can trust."

I pressed Mrs. Fosdyke's hand; I was not able to speak. She took up the
legal paper next.

"Do justice to yourself, and be above contemptible scruples," she said.
"Sextus is fond enough of you to be almost worthy of the sacrifice that
you are making. Sign--and I will sign next as the witness."

I hesitated.

"What will he think of me?" I said.

"Sign!" she repeated, "and we will see to that."

I obeyed. She asked for the lawyer's letter. I gave it to her, with the
lines which contained the man's vile insinuation folded down, so that
only the words above were visible, which proved that I had renounced my
legacy, not even knowing whether the person to be benefited was a man or
a woman. She took this, with the rough draft of my own letter, and the
signed renunciation--and opened the door.

"Pray come back, and tell me about it!" I pleaded.

She smiled, nodded, and went out.

Oh, what a long time passed before I heard the long-expected knock at
the door! "Come in," I cried impatiently.

Mrs. Fosdyke had deceived me. Mr. Sax had returned in her place. He
closed the door. We two were alone.

He was deadly pale; his eyes, as they rested on me, had a wild startled
look. With icy cold fingers he took my hand, and lifted it in silence to
his lips. The sight of his agitation encouraged me--I don't to this day
know why, unless it appealed in some way to my compassion. I was bold
enough to look at him. Still silent, he placed the letters on the
table--and then he laid the signed paper beside them. When I saw that, I
was bolder still. I spoke first.

"Surely you don't refuse me?" I said.

He answered, "I thank you with my whole heart; I admire you more than
words can say. But I can't take it."

"Why not?"

"The fortune is yours," he said gently. "Remember how poor I am, and
feel for me if I say no more."

His head sank on his breast. He stretched out one hand, silently
imploring me to understand him. I could endure it no longer. I forgot
every consideration which a woman, in my position, ought to have
remembered. Out came the desperate words, before I could stop them.

"You won't take my gift by itself?" I said.

"No."

"Will you take Me with it?"


That evening, Mrs. Fosdyke indulged her sly sense of humor in a new way.
She handed me an almanac.

"After all, my dear," she remarked, "you needn't be ashamed of having
spoken first. You have only used the ancient privilege of the sex. This
is Leap Year."




MR. COSWAY AND THE LANDLADY.

I.

THE guests would have enjoyed their visit to Sir Peter's country
house--but for Mr. Cosway. And to make matters worse, it was not Mr.
Cosway but the guests who were to blame. They repeated the old story of
Adam and Eve, on a larger scale. The women were the first sinners; and
the men were demoralized by the women.

Mr. Cosway's bitterest enemy could not have denied that he was a
handsome, well-bred, unassuming man. No mystery of any sort attached
to him. He had adopted the Navy as a profession--had grown weary of it
after a few years' service--and now lived on the moderate income left
to him, after the death of his parents. Out of this unpromising material
the lively imaginations of the women built up a romance. The men only
noticed that Mr. Cosway was rather silent and thoughtful; that he was
not ready with his laugh; and that he had a fancy for taking long walks
by himself. Harmless peculiarities, surely? And yet, they excited the
curiosity of the women as signs of a mystery in Mr. Cosway's past life,
in which some beloved object unknown must have played a chief part.

As a matter of course, the influence of the sex was tried, under every
indirect and delicate form of approach, to induce Mr. Cosway to open
his heart, and tell the tale of his sorrows. With perfect courtesy, he
baffled curiosity, and kept his supposed secret to himself. The most
beautiful girl in the house was ready to offer herself and her fortune
as consolations, if this impenetrable bachelor would only have taken her
into his confidence. He smiled sadly, and changed the subject.

Defeated so far, the women accepted the next alternative.

One of the guests staying in the house was Mr. Cosway's intimate
friend--formerly his brother-officer on board ship. This gentleman was
now subjected to the delicately directed system of investigation which
had failed with his friend. With unruffled composure he referred the
ladies, one after another, to Mr. Cosway. His name was Stone. The ladies
decided that his nature was worthy of his name.

The last resource left to our fair friends was to rouse the dormant
interest of the men, and to trust to the confidential intercourse of the
smoking-room for the enlightenment which they had failed to obtain by
other means.

In the accomplishment of this purpose, the degree of success which
rewarded their efforts was due to a favoring state of affairs in the
house. The shooting was not good for much; the billiard-table was under
repair; and there were but two really skilled whist-players among the
guests. In the atmosphere of dullness thus engendered, the men not only
caught the infection of the women's curiosity, but were even ready to
listen to the gossip of the servants' hall, repeated to their mistresses
by the ladies' maids. The result of such an essentially debased state
of feeling as this was not slow in declaring itself. But for a lucky
accident, Mr. Cosway would have discovered to what extremities of
ill-bred curiosity idleness and folly can lead persons holding the
position of ladies and gentlemen, when he joined the company at
breakfast on the next morning.

The newspapers came in before the guests had risen from the table. Sir
Peter handed one of them to the lady who sat on his right hand.

She first looked, it is needless to say, at the list of births, deaths,
and marriages; and then she turned to the general news--the fires,
accidents, fashionable departures, and so on. In a few minutes, she
indignantly dropped the newspaper in her lap.

"Here is another unfortunate man," she exclaimed, "sacrificed to the
stupidity of women! If I had been in his place, I would have used my
knowledge of swimming to save myself, and would have left the women to
go to the bottom of the river as they deserved!"

"A boat accident, I suppose?" said Sir Peter.

"Oh yes--the old story. A gentleman takes two ladies out in a boat.
After a while they get fidgety, and feel an idiotic impulse to change
places. The boat upsets as usual; the poor dear man tries to save
them--and is drowned along with them for his pains. Shameful! shameful!"

"Are the names mentioned?"

"Yes. They are all strangers to me; I speak on principle." Asserting
herself in those words, the indignant lady handed the newspaper to Mr.
Cosway, who happened to sit next to her. "When you were in the navy,"
she continued, "I dare say _your_ life was put in jeopardy by taking
women in boats. Read it yourself, and let it be a warning to you for the
future."

Mr. Cosway looked at the narrative of the accident--and revealed the
romantic mystery of his life by a burst of devout exclamation, expressed
in the words:

"Thank God, my wife's drowned!"

II.

To declare that Sir Peter and his guests were all struck speechless,
by discovering in this way that Mr. Cosway was a married man, is to say
very little. The general impression appeared to be that he was mad. His
neighbors at the table all drew back from him, with the one exception of
his friend. Mr. Stone looked at the newspaper: pressed Mr. Cosway's hand
in silent sympathy--and addressed himself to his host.

"Permit me to make my friend's apologies," he said, "until he is composed
enough to act for himself. The circumstances are so extraordinary that
I venture to think they excuse him. Will you allow us to speak to you
privately?"

Sir Peter, with more apologies addressed to his visitors, opened the
door which communicated with his study. Mr. Stone took Mr. Cosway's
arm, and led him out of the room. He noticed no one, spoke to no one--he
moved mechanically, like a man walking in his sleep.

After an unendurable interval of nearly an hour's duration, Sir Peter
returned alone to the breakfast-room. Mr. Cosway and Mr. Stone had
already taken their departure for London, with their host's entire
approval.

"It is left to my discretion," Sir Peter proceeded, "to repeat to you
what I have heard in my study. I will do so, on one condition--that you
all consider yourselves bound in honor not to mention the true names and
the real places, when you tell the story to others."

Subject to this wise reservation, the narrative is here repeated by
one of the company. Considering how he may perform his task to the best
advantage, he finds that the events which preceded and followed Mr.
Cosway's disastrous marriage resolve themselves into certain well-marked
divisions. Adopting this arrangement, he proceeds to relate:

_The First Epoch in Mr. Cosway's Life._

The sailing of her Majesty's ship _Albicore_ was deferred by the severe
illness of the captain. A gentleman not possessed of political
influence might, after the doctor's unpromising report of him, have been
superseded by another commanding officer. In the present case, the
Lords of the Admiralty showed themselves to be models of patience and
sympathy. They kept the vessel in port, waiting the captain's recovery.

Among the unimportant junior officers, not wanted on board under these
circumstances, and favored accordingly by obtaining leave to wait for
orders on shore, were two young men, aged respectively twenty-two and
twenty-three years, and known by the names of Cosway and Stone. The
scene which now introduces them opens at a famous seaport on the south
coast of England, and discloses the two young gentlemen at dinner in a
private room at their inn.

"I think that last bottle of champagne was corked," Cosway remarked.
"Let's try another. You're nearest the bell, Stone. Ring."

Stone rang, under protest. He was the elder of the two by a year, and he
set an example of discretion.

"I am afraid we are running up a terrible bill," he said. "We have been
here more than three weeks--"

"And we have denied ourselves nothing," Cosway added. "We have
lived like princes. Another bottle of champagne, waiter. We have our
riding-horses, and our carriage, and the best box at the theater, and
such cigars as London itself could not produce. I call that making the
most of life. Try the new bottle. Glorious drink, isn't it? Why doesn't
my father have champagne at the family dinner-table?"

"Is your father a rich man, Cosway?"

"I should say not. He didn't give me anything like the money I expected,
when I said good-by--and I rather think he warned me solemnly, at
parting, to take the greatest care of it.' There's not a farthing more
for you,' he said, 'till your ship returns from her South American
station.' _Your_ father is a clergyman, Stone."

"Well, and what of that?"

"And some clergymen are rich."

"My father is not one of them, Cosway."

"Then let us say no more about him. Help yourself, and pass the bottle."

Instead of adopting this suggestion, Stone rose with a very grave face,
and once more rang the bell. "Ask the landlady to step up," he said,
when the waiter appeared.

"What do you want with the landlady?" Cosway inquired.

"I want the bill."

The landlady--otherwise Mrs. Pounce--entered the room. She was short,
and old, and fat, and painted, and a widow. Students of character, as
revealed in the face, would have discovered malice and cunning in her
bright black eyes, and a bitter vindictive temper in the lines about her
thin red lips. Incapable of such subtleties of analysis as these, the
two young officers differed widely, nevertheless, in their opinions of
Mrs. Pounce. Cosway's reckless sense of humor delighted in pretending
to be in love with her. Stone took a dislike to her from the first. When
his friend asked for the reason, he made a strangely obscure answer.
"Do you remember that morning in the wood when you killed the snake?" he
said. "I took a dislike to the snake." Cosway made no further inquiries.

"Well, my young heroes," said Mrs. Pounce (always loud, always cheerful,
and always familiar with her guests), "what do you want with me now?"

"Take a glass of champagne, my darling," said Cosway; "and let me try if
I can get my arm round your waist. That's all _I_ want with you."

The landlady passed this over without notice. Though she had spoken to
both of them, her cunning little eyes rested on Stone from the moment
when she appeared in the room. She knew by instinct the man who disliked
her--and she waited deliberately for Stone to reply.

"We have been here some time," he said, "and we shall be obliged, ma'am,
if you will let us have our bill."

Mrs. Pounce lifted her eyebrows with an expression of innocent surprise.

"Has the captain got well, and must you go on board to-night?" she
asked.

"Nothing of the sort!" Cosway interposed. "We have no news of the
captain, and we are going to the theater to-night."

"But," persisted Stone, "we want, if you please, to have the bill."

"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Pounce, with a sudden assumption of respect.
"But we are very busy downstairs, and we hope you will not press us for
it to-night?"

"Of course not!" cried Cosway.

Mrs. Pounce instantly left the room, without waiting for any further
remark from Cosway's friend.

"I wish we had gone to some other house," said Stone. "You mark my
words--that woman means to cheat us."

Cosway expressed his dissent from this opinion in the most amiable
manner. He filled his friend's glass, and begged him not to say
ill-natured things of Mrs. Pounce.

But Stone's usually smooth temper seemed to be ruffled; he insisted on
his own view. "She's impudent and inquisitive, if she is not downright
dishonest," he said. "What right had she to ask you where we lived when
we were at home; and what our Christian names were; and which of us was
oldest, you or I? Oh, yes--it's all very well to say she only showed a
flattering interest in us! I suppose she showed a flattering interest in
my affairs, when I awoke a little earlier than usual, and caught her in
my bedroom with my pocketbook in her hand. Do you believe she was going
to lock it up for safety's sake? She knows how much money we have got
as well as we know it ourselves. Every half-penny we have will be in her
pocket tomorrow. And a good thing, too--we shall be obliged to leave the
house."

Even this cogent reasoning failed in provoking Cosway to reply. He took
Stone's hat, and handed it with the utmost politeness to his foreboding
friend. "There's only one remedy for such a state of mind as yours," he
said. "Come to the theater."


At ten o'clock the next morning Cosway found himself alone at the
breakfast-table. He was informed that Mr. Stone had gone out for a
little walk, and would be back directly. Seating himself at the table,
he perceived an envelope on his plate, which evidently inclosed the
bill. He took up the envelope, considered a little, and put it back
again unopened. At the same moment Stone burst into the room in a high
state of excitement.

"News that will astonish you!" he cried. "The captain arrived yesterday
evening. His doctors say that the sea-voyage will complete his recovery.
The ship sails to-day--and we are ordered to report ourselves on board
in an hour's time. Where's the bill?"

Cosway pointed to it. Stone took it out of the envelope.

It covered two sides of a prodigiously long sheet of paper. The sum
total was brightly decorated with lines in red ink. Stone looked at the
total, and passed it in silence to Cosway. For once, even Cosway was
prostrated. In dreadful stillness the two young men produced their
pocketbooks; added up their joint stores of money, and compared the
result with the bill. Their united resources amounted to a little more
than one-third of their debt to the landlady of the inn.

The only alternative that presented itself was to send for Mrs. Pounce;
to state the circumstances plainly; and to propose a compromise on the
grand commercial basis of credit.

Mrs. Pounce presented herself superbly dressed in walking costume. Was
she going out; or had she just returned to the inn? Not a word escaped
her; she waited gravely to hear what the gentlemen wanted. Cosway,
presuming on his position as favorite, produced the contents of the two
pocketbooks and revealed the melancholy truth.

"There is all the money we have," he concluded. "We hope you will not
object to receive the balance in a bill at three months."

Mrs. Pounce answered with a stern composure of voice and manner entirely
new in the experience of Cosway and Stone.

"I have paid ready money, gentlemen, for the hire of your horses and
carriages," she said; "here are the receipts from the livery stables
to vouch for me; I never accept bills unless I am quite sure beforehand
that they will be honored. I defy you to find an overcharge in the
account now rendered; and I expect you to pay it before you leave my
house."

Stone looked at his watch.

"In three-quarters of an hour," he said, "we must be on board."

Mrs. Pounce entirely agreed with him. "And if you are not on board," she
remarked "you will be tried by court-martial, and dismissed the service
with your characters ruined for life."

"My dear creature, we haven't time to send home, and we know nobody in
the town," pleaded Cosway. "For God's sake take our watches and jewelry,
and our luggage--and let us go."

"I am not a pawnbroker," said the inflexible lady. "You must either pay
your lawful debt to me in honest money, or--"

She paused and looked at Cosway. Her fat face brightened--she smiled
graciously for the first time.

Cosway stared at her in unconcealed perplexity. He helplessly repeated
her last words. "We must either pay the bill," he said, "or what?"

"Or," answered Mrs. Pounce, "one of you must marry ME."

Was she joking? Was she intoxicated? Was she out of her senses? Neither
of the three; she was in perfect possession of herself; her explanation
was a model of lucid and convincing arrangement of facts.

"My position here has its drawbacks," she began. "I am a lone widow;
I am known to have an excellent business, and to have saved money. The
result is that I am pestered to death by a set of needy vagabonds
who want to marry me. In this position, I am exposed to slanders and
insults. Even if I didn't know that the men were after my money, there
is not one of them whom I would venture to marry. He might turn out a
tyrant and beat me; or a drunkard, and disgrace me; or a betting man,
and ruin me. What I want, you see, for my own peace and protection, is
to be able to declare myself married, and to produce the proof in the
shape of a certificate. A born gentleman, with a character to lose, and
so much younger in years than myself that he wouldn't think of
living with me--there is the sort of husband who suits my book! I'm a
reasonable woman, gentlemen. I would undertake to part with my husband
at the church door--never to attempt to see him or write to him
afterward--and only to show my certificate when necessary, without
giving any explanations. Your secret would be quite safe in my keeping.
I don't care a straw for either of you, so long as you answer my
purpose. What do you say to paying my bill (one or the other of you) in
this way? I am ready dressed for the altar; and the clergyman has notice
at the church. My preference is for Mr. Cosway," proceeded this terrible
woman with the cruelest irony, "because he has been so particular in
his attentions toward me. The license (which I provided on the chance
a fortnight since) is made out in his name. Such is my weakness for Mr.
Cosway. But that don't matter if Mr. Stone would like to take his place.
He can hail by his friend's name. Oh, yes, he can! I have consulted my
lawyer. So long as the bride and bridegroom agree to it, they may be
married in any name they like, and it stands good. Look at your watch
again, Mr. Stone. The church is in the next street. By my calculation,
you have just got five minutes to decide. I'm a punctual woman, my
little dears; and I will be back to the moment."

She opened the door, paused, and returned to the room.

"I ought to have mentioned," she resumed, "that I shall make you a
present of the bill, receipted, on the conclusion of the ceremony. You
will be taken to the ship in my own boat, with all your money in your
pockets, and a hamper of good things for the mess. After that I wash my
hands of you. You may go to the devil your own way."

With this parting benediction, she left them.

Caught in the landlady's trap, the two victims looked at each other in
expressive silence. Without time enough to take legal advice; without
friends on shore; without any claim on officers of their own standing in
the ship, the prospect before them was literally limited to Marriage or
Ruin. Stone made a proposal worthy of a hero.

"One of us must marry her," he said; "I'm ready to toss up for it."

Cosway matched him in generosity. "No," he answered. "It was I who
brought you here; and I who led you into these infernal expenses. I
ought to pay the penalty--and I will."

Before Stone could remonstrate, the five minutes expired. Punctual Mrs.
Pounce appeared again in the doorway.

"Well?" she inquired, "which is it to be--Cosway, or Stone?"

Cosway advanced as reckless as ever, and offered his arm.

"Now then, Fatsides," he said, "come and be married!"

In five-and-twenty minutes more, Mrs. Pounce had become Mrs. Cosway; and
the two officers were on their way to the ship.


_The Second Epoch in Mr. Cosway's Life._

Four years elapsed before the _Albicore_ returned to the port from which
she had sailed.

In that interval, the death of Cosway's parents had taken place. The
lawyer who had managed his affairs, during his absence from England,
wrote to inform him that his inheritance from his late father's "estate"
was eight hundred a year. His mother only possessed a life interest in
her fortune; she had left her jewels to her son, and that was all.

Cosway's experience of the life of a naval officer on foreign stations
(without political influence to hasten his promotion) had thoroughly
disappointed him. He decided on retiring from the service when the ship
was "paid off." In the meantime, to the astonishment of his comrades, he
seemed to be in no hurry to make use of the leave granted him to go on
shore. The faithful Stone was the only man on board who knew that he was
afraid of meeting his "wife." This good friend volunteered to go to the
inn, and make the necessary investigation with all needful prudence.
"Four years is a long time, at _her_ age," he said. "Many things may
happen in four years."

An hour later, Stone returned to the ship, and sent a written message on
board, addressed to his brother-officer, in these words: "Pack up your
things at once, and join me on shore."

"What news?" asked the anxious husband.

Stone looked significantly at the idlers on the landing-place. "Wait,"
he said, "till we are by ourselves."

"Where are we going?"

"To the railway station."

They got into an empty carriage; and Stone at once relieved his friend
of all further suspense.

"Nobody is acquainted with the secret of your marriage, but our two
selves," he began quietly. "I don't think, Cosway, you need go into
mourning."

"You don't mean to say she's dead!"

"I have seen a letter (written by her own lawyer) which announces her
death," Stone replied. "It was so short that I believe I can repeat it
word for word: 'Dear Sir--I have received information of the death of
my client. Please address your next and last payment, on account of
the lease and goodwill of the inn, to the executors of the late Mrs.
Cosway.' There, that is the letter. 'Dear Sir' means the present
proprietor of the inn. He told me your wife's previous history in two
words. After carrying on the business with her customary intelligence
for more than three years, her health failed, and she went to London
to consult a physician. There she remained under the doctor's care.
The next event was the appearance of an agent, instructed to sell the
business in consequence of the landlady's declining health. Add the
death at a later time--and there is the beginning and the end of the
story. Fortune owed you a good turn, Cosway--and Fortune has paid the
debt. Accept my best congratulations."

Arrived in London, Stone went on at once to his relations in the North.
Cosway proceeded to the office of the family lawyer (Mr. Atherton),
who had taken care of his interests in his absence. His father and Mr.
Atherton had been schoolfellows and old friends. He was affectionately
received, and was invited to pay a visit the next day to the lawyer's
villa at Richmond.

"You will be near enough to London to attend to your business at the
Admiralty," said Mr. Atherton, "and you will meet a visitor at my house,
who is one of the most charming girls in England--the only daughter of
the great Mr. Restall. Good heavens! have you never heard of him?
My dear sir, he's one of the partners in the famous firm of Benshaw,
Restall, and Benshaw."

Cosway was wise enough to accept this last piece of information as quite
conclusive. The next day, Mrs. Atherton presented him to the charming
Miss Restall; and Mrs. Atherton's young married daughter (who had been
his playfellow when they were children) whispered to him, half in jest,
half in earnest: "Make the best use of your time; she isn't engaged
yet."

Cosway shuddered inwardly at the bare idea of a second marriage. Was
Miss Restall the sort of woman to restore his confidence?

She was small and slim and dark--a graceful, well-bred, brightly
intelligent person, with a voice exquisitely sweet and winning in
tone. Her ears, hands, and feet were objects to worship; and she had an
attraction, irresistibly rare among the women of the present time--the
attraction of a perfectly natural smile. Before Cosway had been an hour
in the house, she discovered that his long term of service on foreign
stations had furnished him with subjects of conversation which favorably
contrasted with the commonplace gossip addressed to her by other men.
Cosway at once became a favorite, as Othello became a favorite in his
day.

The ladies of the household all rejoiced in the young officer's success,
with the exception of Miss Restall's companion (supposed to hold the
place of her lost mother, at a large salary), one Mrs. Margery.

Too cautious to commit herself in words, this lady expressed doubt and
disapprobation by her looks. She had white hair, iron-gray eyebrows, and
protuberant eyes; her looks were unusually expressive. One evening, she
caught poor Mr. Atherton alone, and consulted him confidentially on the
subject of Mr. Cosway's income. This was the first warning which opened
the eyes of the good lawyer to the nature of the "friendship" already
established between his two guests. He knew Miss Restall's illustrious
father well, and he feared that it might soon be his disagreeable duty
to bring Cosway's visit to an end.

On a certain Saturday afternoon, while Mr. Atherton was still
considering how he could most kindly and delicately suggest to Cosway
that it was time to say good-by, an empty carriage arrived at the villa.
A note from Mr. Restall was delivered to Mrs. Atherton, thanking
her with perfect politeness for her kindness to his daughter.
"Circumstances," he added, "rendered it necessary that Miss Restall
should return home that afternoon."

The "circumstances" were supposed to refer to a garden-party to be given
by Mr. Restall in the ensuing week. But why was his daughter wanted at
home before the day of the party?

The ladies of the family, still devoted to Cosway's interests,
entertained no doubt that Mrs. Margery had privately communicated with
Mr. Restall, and that the appearance of the carriage was the natural
result. Mrs. Atherton's married daughter did all that could be done: she
got rid of Mrs. Margery for one minute, and so arranged it that Cosway
and Miss Restall took leave of each other in her own sitting-room.

When the young lady appeared in the hall she had drawn her veil down.
Cosway escaped to the road and saw the last of the carriage as it drove
away. In a little more than a fortnight his horror of a second marriage
had become one of the dead and buried emotions of his nature. He stayed
at the villa until Monday morning, as an act of gratitude to his good
friends, and then accompanied Mr. Atherton to London. Business at the
Admiralty was the excuse. It imposed on nobody. He was evidently on his
way to Miss Restall.

"Leave your business in my hands," said the lawyer, on the journey to
town, "and go and amuse yourself on the Continent. I can't blame you for
falling in love with Miss Restall; I ought to have foreseen the danger,
and waited till she had left us before I invited you to my house. But I
may at least warn you to carry the matter no further. If you had eight
thousand instead of eight hundred a year, Mr. Restall would think it an
act of presumption on your part to aspire to his daughter's hand, unless
you had a title to throw into the bargain. Look at it in the true
light, my dear boy; and one of these days you will thank me for speaking
plainly."

Cosway promised to "look at it in the true light."

The result, from his point of view, led him into a change of residence.
He left his hotel and took a lodging in the nearest bystreet to Mr.
Restall's palace at Kensington.

On the same evening he applied (with the confidence due to a previous
arrangement) for a letter at the neighboring post-office, addressed to
E. C.--the initials of Edwin Cosway. "Pray be careful," Miss Restall
wrote; "I have tried to get you a card for our garden party. But that
hateful creature, Margery, has evidently spoken to my father; I am not
trusted with any invitation cards. Bear it patiently, dear, as I do, and
let me hear if you have succeeded in finding a lodging near us."

Not submitting to this first disappointment very patiently, Cosway sent
his reply to the post-office, addressed to A. R.--the initials of Adela
Restall. The next day the impatient lover applied for another letter. It
was waiting for him, but it was not directed in Adela's handwriting.
Had their correspondence been discovered? He opened the letter in the
street; and read, with amazement, these lines:

"Dear Mr. Cosway, my heart sympathizes with two faithful lovers, in
spite of my age and my duty. I inclose an invitation to the party
tomorrow. Pray don't betray me, and don't pay too marked attention to
Adela. Discretion is easy. There will be twelve hundred guests. Your
friend, in spite of appearances, Louisa Margery."

How infamously they had all misjudged this excellent woman! Cosway went
to the party a grateful, as well as a happy man. The first persons
known to him, whom he discovered among the crowd of strangers, were
the Athertons. They looked, as well they might, astonished to see him.
Fidelity to Mrs. Margery forbade him to enter into any explanations.
Where was that best and truest friend? With some difficulty he succeeded
in finding her. Was there any impropriety in seizing her hand and
cordially pressing it? The result of this expression of gratitude was,
to say the least of it, perplexing.

Mrs. Margery behaved like the Athertons! She looked astonished to see
him and she put precisely the same question: "How did you get here?"
Cosway could only conclude that she was joking. "Who should know that,
dear lady, better than yourself?" he rejoined. "I don't understand you,"
Mrs. Margery answered, sharply. After a moment's reflection, Cosway hit
on another solution of the mystery. Visitors were near them; and Mrs.
Margery had made her own private use of one of Mr. Restall's invitation
cards. She might have serious reasons for pushing caution to its last
extreme. Cosway looked at her significantly. "The least I can do is not
to be indiscreet," he whispered--and left her.

He turned into a side walk; and there he met Adela at last!

It seemed like a fatality. _She_ looked astonished; and _she_ said: "How
did you get here?" No intrusive visitors were within hearing, this time.
"My dear!" Cosway remonstrated, "Mrs. Margery must have told you, when
she sent me my invitation." Adela turned pale. "Mrs. Margery?" she
repeated. "Mrs. Margery has said nothing to me; Mrs. Margery detests
you. We must have this cleared up. No; not now--I must attend to our
guests. Expect a letter; and, for heaven's sake, Edwin, keep out of my
father's way. One of our visitors whom he particularly wished to see has
sent an excuse--and he is dreadfully angry about it."

She left him before Cosway could explain that he and Mr. Restall had
thus far never seen each other.

He wandered away toward the extremity of the grounds, troubled by vague
suspicions; hurt at Adela's cold reception of him. Entering a shrubbery,
which seemed intended to screen the grounds, at this point, from a lane
outside, he suddenly discovered a pretty little summer-house among the
trees. A stout gentleman, of mature years, was seated alone in this
retreat. He looked up with a frown. Cosway apologized for disturbing
him, and entered into conversation as an act of politeness.

"A brilliant assembly to-day, sir."

The stout gentleman replied by an inarticulate sound--something between
a grunt and a cough.

"And a splendid house and grounds," Cosway continued.

The stout gentleman repeated the inarticulate sound.

Cosway began to feel amused. Was this curious old man deaf and dumb?

"Excuse my entering into conversation," he persisted. "I feel like a
stranger here. There are so many people whom I don't know."

The stout gentleman suddenly burst into speech. Cosway had touched a
sympathetic fiber at last.

"There are a good many people here whom _I_ don't know," he said,
gruffly. "You are one of them. What's your name?"

"My name is Cosway, sir. What's yours?"

The stout gentleman rose with fury in his looks. He burst out with an
oath; and added the in tolerable question, already three times repeated
by others: "How did you get here?" The tone was even more offensive than
the oath. "Your age protects you, sir," said Cosway, with the loftiest
composure. "I'm sorry I gave my name to so rude a person."

"Rude?" shouted the old gentleman. "You want my name in return, I
suppose? You young puppy, you shall have it! My name is Restall."

He turned his back and walked off. Cosway took the only course now open
to him. He returned to his lodgings.

The next day no letter reached him from Adela. He went to the
postoffice. No letter was there. The day wore on to evening--and, with
the evening, there appeared a woman who was a stranger to him. She
looked like a servant; and she was the bearer of a mysterious message.

"Please be at the garden-door that opens on the lane, at ten o'clock
to-morrow morning. Knock three times at the door--and then say 'Adela.'
Some one who wishes you well will be alone in the shrubbery, and will
let you in. No, sir! I am not to take anything; and I am not to say a
word more." She spoke--and vanished.

Cosway was punctual to his appointment. He knocked three times; he
pronounced Miss Restall's Christian name. Nothing happened. He waited a
while, and tried again. This time Adela's voice answered strangely from
the shrubbery in tones of surprise: "Edwin, is it really you?"

"Did you expect any one else?" Cosway asked. "My darling, your message
said ten o'clock--and here I am."

The door was suddenly unlocked.

"I sent no message," said Adela, as they confronted each other on the
threshold.

In the silence of utter bewilderment they went together into the
summer-house. At Adela's request, Cosway repeated the message that
he had received, and described the woman who had delivered it. The
description applied to no person known to Miss Restall. "Mrs. Margery
never sent you the invitation; and I repeat, I never sent you the
message. This meeting has been arranged by some one who knows that I
always walk in the shrubbery after breakfast. There is some underhand
work going on--"

Still mentally in search of the enemy who had betrayed them, she checked
herself, and considered a little. "Is it possible--?" she began, and
paused again. Her eyes filled with tears. "My mind is so completely
upset," she said, "that I can't think clearly of anything. Oh, Edwin, we
have had a happy dream, and it has come to an end. My father knows more
than we think for. Some friends of ours are going abroad tomorrow--and
I am to go with them. Nothing I can say has the least effect upon my
father. He means to part us forever--and this is his cruel way of doing
it!"

She put her arm round Cosway's neck and lovingly laid her head on his
shoulder. With tenderest kisses they reiterated their vows of eternal
fidelity until their voices faltered and failed them. Cosway filled up
the pause by the only useful suggestion which it was now in his power to
make--he proposed an elopement.

Adela received this bold solution of the difficulty in which they were
placed exactly as thousands of other young ladies have received similar
proposals before her time, and after.

She first said positively No. Cosway persisted. She began to cry, and
asked if he had no respect for her. Cosway declared that his respect was
equal to any sacrifice except the sacrifice of parting with her forever.
He could, and would, if she preferred it, die for her, but while he was
alive he must refuse to give her up. Upon this she shifted her ground.
Did he expect her to go away with him alone? Certainly not. Her maid
could go with her, or, if her maid was not to be trusted, he would apply
to his landlady, and engage "a respectable elderly person" to attend on
her until the day of their marriage. Would she have some mercy on him,
and just consider it? No: she was afraid to consider it. Did she prefer
misery for the rest of her life? Never mind _his_ happiness: it
was _her_ happiness only that he had in his mind. Traveling with
unsympathetic people; absent from England, no one could say for
how long; married, when she did return, to some rich man whom she
hated--would she, could she, contemplate that prospect? She contemplated
it through tears; she contemplated it to an accompaniment of sighs,
kisses, and protestations--she trembled, hesitated, gave way. At an
appointed hour of the coming night, when her father would be in the
smoking-room, and Mrs. Margery would be in bed, Cosway was to knock at
the door in the lane once more; leaving time to make all the necessary
arrangements in the interval.

The one pressing necessity, under these circumstances, was to guard
against the possibility of betrayal and surprise. Cosway discreetly
alluded to the unsolved mysteries of the invitation and the message.
"Have you taken anybody into our confidence?" he asked.

Adela answered with some embarrassment. "Only one person," She
said--"dear Miss Benshaw."

"Who is Miss Benshaw?"

"Don't you really know, Edwin? She is richer even than papa--she has
inherited from her late brother one half-share in the great business in
the City. Miss Benshaw is the lady who disappointed papa by not coming
to the garden-party. You remember, dear, how happy we were when we were
together at Mr. Atherton's? I was very miserable when they took me
away. Miss Benshaw happened to call the next day and she noticed it. 'My
dear,' she said (Miss Benshaw is quite an elderly lady now), 'I am an
old maid, who has missed the happiness of her life, through not having
had a friend to guide and advise her when she was young. Are you
suffering as I once suffered?' She spoke so nicely--and I was so
wretched--that I really couldn't help it. I opened my heart to her."

Cosway looked grave. "Are you sure she is to be trusted?" he asked.

"Perfectly sure."

"Perhaps, my love, she has spoken about us (not meaning any harm)
to some friend of hers? Old ladies are so fond of gossip. It's just
possible--don't you think so?"

Adela hung her head.

"I have thought it just possible myself," she admitted. "There is plenty
of time to call on her to-day. I will set our doubts at rest before Miss
Benshaw goes out for her afternoon drive."

On that understanding they parted.

Toward evening Cosway's arrangements for the elopement were completed.
He was eating his solitary dinner when a note was brought to him. It
had been left at the door by a messenger. The man had gone away without
waiting for an answer. The note ran thus:

"Miss Benshaw presents her compliments to Mr. Cosway, and will be
obliged if he can call on her at nine o'clock this evening, on business
which concerns himself."

This invitation was evidently the result of Adela's visit earlier in the
day. Cosway presented himself at the house, troubled by natural emotions
of anxiety and suspense. His reception was not of a nature to compose
him. He was shown into a darkened room. The one lamp on the table was
turned down low, and the little light thus given was still further
obscured by a shade. The corners of the room were in almost absolute
darkness.

A voice out of one of the corners addressed him in a whisper:

"I must beg you to excuse the darkened room. I am suffering from a
severe cold. My eyes are inflamed, and my throat is so bad that I can
only speak in a whisper. Sit down, sir. I have got news for you."

"Not bad news, I hope, ma'am?" Cosway ventured to inquire.

"The worst possible news," said the whispering voice. "You have an enemy
striking at you in the dark."

Cosway asked who it was, and received no answer. He varied the form of
inquiry, and asked why the unnamed person struck at him in the dark. The
experiment succeeded; he obtained a reply.

"It is reported to me," said Miss Benshaw, "that the person thinks it
necessary to give you a lesson, and takes a spiteful pleasure in doing
it as mischievously as possible. The person, as I happen to know, sent
you your invitation to the party, and made the appointment which took
you to the door in the lane. Wait a little, sir; I have not done yet.
The person has put it into Mr. Restall's head to send his daughter
abroad tomorrow."

Cosway attempted to make her speak more plainly.

"Is this wretch a man or a woman?" he said.

Miss Benshaw proceeded without noticing the interruption.

"You needn't be afraid, Mr. Cosway; Miss Restall will not leave England.
Your enemy is all-powerful. Your enemy's object could only be to provoke
you into planning an elopement--and, your arrangements once completed,
to inform Mr. Restall, and to part you and Miss Adela quite as
effectually as if you were at opposite ends of the world. Oh, you will
undoubtedly be parted! Spiteful, isn't it? And, what is worse, the
mischief is as good as done already."

Cosway rose from his chair.

"Do you wish for any further explanation?" asked Miss Benshaw.

"One thing more," he replied. "Does Adela know of this?"

"No," said Miss Benshaw; "it is left to you to tell her."

There was a moment of silence. Cosway looked at the lamp. Once roused,
as usual with men of his character, his temper was not to be trifled
with.

"Miss Benshaw," he said, "I dare say you think me a fool; but I can draw
my own conclusion, for all that. _You_ are my enemy."

The only reply was a chuckling laugh. All voices can be more or less
effectually disguised by a whisper but a laugh carries the revelation of
its own identity with it. Cosway suddenly threw off the shade over the
lamp and turned up the wick.

The light flooded the room, and showed him--His Wife.


_The Third Epoch in Mr. Cosway's Life._

Three days had passed. Cosway sat alone in his lodging--pale and worn:
the shadow already of his former self.

He had not seen Adela since the discovery. There was but one way in
which he could venture to make the inevitable disclosure--he wrote to
her; and Mr. Atherton's daughter took care that the letter should be
received. Inquiries made afterward, by help of the same good friend,
informed him that Miss Restall was suffering from illness.

The mistress of the house came in.

"Cheer up, sir," said the good woman. "There is better news of Miss
Restall to-day."

He raised his head.

"Don't trifle with me!" he answered fretfully; "tell me exactly what the
servant said."

The mistress repeated the words. Miss Restall had passed a quieter
night, and had been able for a few hours to leave her room. He asked
next if any reply to his letter had arrived. No reply had been received.

If Adela definitely abstained from writing to him, the conclusion would
be too plain to be mistaken. She had given him up--and who could blame
her?

There was a knock at the street-door. The mistress looked out.

"Here's Mr. Stone come back, sir!" she exclaimed joyfully--and hurried
away to let him in.

Cosway never looked up when his friend appeared.

"I knew I should succeed," said Stone. "I have seen your wife."

"Don't speak of her," cried Cosway. "I should have murdered her when I
saw her face, if I had not instantly left the house. I may be the death
of the wretch yet, if you presist in speaking of her!"

Stone put his hand kindly on his friend's shoulder.

"Must I remind you that you owe something to your old comrade?" he
asked. "I left my father and mother, the morning I got your letter--and
my one thought has been to serve you. Reward me. Be a man, and hear what
is your right and duty to know. After that, if you like, we will never
refer to the woman again."

Cosway took his hand, in silent acknowledgment that he was right. They
sat down together. Stone began.

"She is so entirely shameless," he said, "that I had no difficulty in
getting her to speak. And she so cordially hates you that she glories in
her own falsehood and treachery."

"Of course, she lies," Cosway said bitterly, "when she calls herself
Miss Benshaw?"

"No; she is really the daughter of the man who founded the great house
in the City. With every advantage that wealth and position could give
her the perverse creature married one of her father's clerks, who had
been deservedly dismissed from his situation. From that moment her
family discarded her. With the money procured by the sale of her
jewels, her husband took the inn which we have such bitter cause to
remember--and she managed the house after his death. So much for the
past. Carry your mind on now to the time when our ship brought us back
to England. At that date, the last surviving member of your wife's
family--her elder brother--lay at the point of death. He had taken his
father's place in the business, besides inheriting his father's fortune.
After a happy married life he was left a widower, without children;
and it became necessary that he should alter his will. He deferred
performing his duty. It was only at the time of his last illness that he
had dictated instructions for a new will, leaving his wealth (excepting
certain legacies to old friends) to the hospitals of Great Britain and
Ireland. His lawyer lost no time in carrying out the instructions. The
new will was ready for signature (the old will having been destroyed by
his own hand), when the doctors sent a message to say that their patient
was insensible, and might die in that condition."

"Did the doctors prove to be right?"

"Perfectly right. Our wretched landlady, as next of kin, succeeded, not
only to the fortune, but (under the deed of partnership) to her late
brother's place in the firm: on the one easy condition of resuming the
family name. She calls herself "Miss Benshaw." But as a matter of legal
necessity she is set down in the deed as "Mrs. Cosway Benshaw." Her
partners only now know that her husband is living, and that you are
the Cosway whom she privately married. Will you take a little breathing
time? or shall I go on, and get done with it?"

Cosway signed to him to go on.

"She doesn't in the least care," Stone proceeded, "for the exposure.
'I am the head partner,' she says 'and the rich one of the firm;
they daren't turn their backs on Me.' You remember the information I
received--in perfect good faith on his part--from the man who keeps
the inn? The visit to the London doctor, and the assertion of failing
health, were adopted as the best means of plausibly severing the lady's
connection (the great lady now!) with a calling so unworthy of her as
the keeping of an inn. Her neighbors at the seaport were all deceived
by the stratagem, with two exceptions. They were both men--vagabonds who
had pertinaciously tried to delude her into marrying them in the days
when she was a widow. They refused to believe in the doctor and the
declining health; they had their own suspicion of the motives which had
led to the sale of the inn, under very unfavorable circumstances; and
they decided on going to London, inspired by the same base hope of
making discoveries which might be turned into a means of extorting
money."

"She escaped them, of course," said Cosway. "How?"

"By the help of her lawyer, who was not above accepting a handsome
private fee. He wrote to the new landlord of the inn, falsely announcing
his client's death, in the letter which I repeated to you in the railway
carriage on our journey to London. Other precautions were taken to
keep up the deception, on which it is needless to dwell. Your natural
conclusion that you were free to pay your addresses to Miss Restall, and
the poor young lady's innocent confidence in 'Miss Benshaw's' sympathy,
gave this unscrupulous woman the means of playing the heartless trick
on you which is now exposed. Malice and jealousy--I have it, mind, from
herself!--were not her only motives. 'But for that Cosway,' she said (I
spare you the epithet which she put before your name), 'with my money
and position, I might have married a needy lord, and sunned myself in
my old age in the full blaze of the peerage.' Do you understand how she
hated you, now? Enough of the subject! The moral of it, my dear Cosway,
is to leave this place, and try what change of scene will do for you. I
have time to spare; and I will go abroad with you. When shall it be?"

"Let me wait a day or two more," Cosway pleaded.

Stone shook his head. "Still hoping, my poor friend, for a line from
Miss Restall? You distress me."

"I am sorry to distress you, Stone. If I can get one pitying word from
_her_, I can submit to the miserable life that lies before me."

"Are you not expecting too much?"

"You wouldn't say so, if you were as fond of her as I am."

They were silent. The evening slowly darkened; and the mistress came in
as usual with the candles. She brought with her a letter for Cosway.

He tore it open; read it in an instant; and devoured it with kisses.
His highly wrought feelings found their vent in a little allowable
exaggeration. "She has saved my life!" he said, as he handed the letter
to Stone.

It only contained these lines:

"My love is yours, my promise is yours. Through all trouble, through all
profanation, through the hopeless separation that may be before us in
this world, I live yours--and die yours. My Edwin, God bless and comfort
you."


_The Fourth Epoch in Mr. Cosway's Life._

The separation had lasted for nearly two years, when Cosway and Stone
paid that visit to the country house which is recorded at the outset of
the present narrative. In the interval nothing had been heard of Miss
Restall, except through Mr. Atherton. He reported that Adela was leading
a very quiet life. The one remarkable event had been an interview
between "Miss Benshaw" and herself. No other person had been present;
but the little that was reported placed Miss Restall's character above
all praise. She had forgiven the woman who had so cruelly injured her!

The two friends, it may be remembered, had traveled to London,
immediately after completing the fullest explanation of Cosway's
startling behavior at the breakfast-table. Stone was not by nature a
sanguine man. "I don't believe in our luck," he said. "Let us be quite
sure that we are not the victims of another deception."

The accident had happened on the Thames; and the newspaper narrative
proved to be accurate in every respect. Stone personally attended
the inquest. From a natural feeling of delicacy toward Adela, Cosway
hesitated to write to her on the subject. The ever-helpful Stone wrote
in his place.

After some delay, the answer was received. It inclosed a brief statement
(communicated officially by legal authority) of the last act of malice
on the part of the late head-partner in the house of Benshaw and
Company. She had not died intestate, like her brother. The first clause
of her will contained the testator's grateful recognition of Adela
Restall's Christian act of forgiveness. The second clause (after stating
that there were neither relatives nor children to be benefited by the
will) left Adela Restall mistress of Mrs. Cosway Benshaw's fortune--on
the one merciless condition that she did _not_ marry Edwin Cosway. The
third clause--if Adela Restall violated the condition--handed over the
whole of the money to the firm in the City, "for the extension of the
business, and the benefit of the surviving partners."

Some months later, Adela came of age. To the indignation of Mr. Restall,
and the astonishment of the "Company," the money actually went to the
firm. The fourth epoch in Mr. Cosway's life witnessed his marriage to a
woman who cheerfully paid half a million of money for the happiness of
passing her life, on eight hundred a year, with the man whom she loved.

But Cosway felt bound in gratitude to make a rich woman of his wife, if
work and resolution could do it. When Stone last heard of him, he was
reading for the bar; and Mr. Atherton was ready to give him his first
brief.

NOTE.--That "most improbable" part of the present narrative, which
is contained in the division called The First Epoch, is founded on an
adventure which actually occurred to no less a person than a cousin of
Sir Walter Scott. In Lockhart's delightful "Life," the anecdote will be
found as told by Sir Walter to Captain Basil Hall. The remainder of the
present story is entirely imaginary. The writer wondered what such a
woman as the landlady would do under certain given circumstances, after
her marriage to the young midshipman--and here is the result.





MR. MEDHURST AND THE PRINCESS.

I.

THE day before I left London, to occupy the post of second secretary of
legation at a small German Court, I took leave of my excellent French
singing-master, Monsieur Bonnefoy, and of his young and pretty daughter
named Jeanne.

Our farewell interview was saddened by Monsieur Bonnefoy's family
anxieties. His elder brother, known in the household as Uncle David,
had been secretly summoned to Paris by order of a republican society.
Anxious relations in London (whether reasonably or not, I am unable to
say) were in some fear of the political consequences that might follow.

At parting, I made Mademoiselle Jeanne a present, in the shape of
a plain gold brooch. For some time past, I had taken my lessons at
Monsieur Bonnefoy's house; his daughter and I often sang together under
his direction. Seeing much of Jeanne, under these circumstances, the
little gift that I had offered to her was only the natural expression of
a true interest in her welfare. Idle rumor asserted--quite falsely--that
I was in love with her. I was sincerely the young lady's friend: no
more, no less.

Having alluded to my lessons in singing, it may not be out of place
to mention the circumstances under which I became Monsieur Bonnefoy's
pupil, and to allude to the change in my life that followed in due
course of time.

Our family property--excepting the sum of five thousand pounds left to
me by my mother--is landed property strictly entailed. The estates were
inherited by my only brother, Lord Medhurst; the kindest, the best, and,
I grieve to say it, the unhappiest of men. He lived separated from a
bad wife; he had no children to console him; and he only enjoyed at rare
intervals the blessing of good health. Having myself nothing to live on
but the interest of my mother's little fortune, I had to make my own way
in the world. Poor younger sons, not possessed of the commanding ability
which achieves distinction, find the roads that lead to prosperity
closed to them, with one exception. They can always apply themselves to
the social arts which make a man agreeable in society. I had naturally
a good voice, and I cultivated it. I was ready to sing, without being
subject to the wretched vanity which makes objections and excuses--I
pleased the ladies--the ladies spoke favorably of me to their
husbands--and some of their husbands were persons of rank and influence.
After no very long lapse of time, the result of this combination of
circumstances declared itself. Monsieur Bonnefoy's lessons became the
indirect means of starting me on a diplomatic career--and the diplomatic
career made poor Ernest Medhurst, to his own unutterable astonishment,
the hero of a love story!

The story being true, I must beg to be excused, if I abstain from
mentioning names, places, and dates, when I enter on German ground. Let
it be enough to say that I am writing of a bygone year in the present
century, when no such thing as a German Empire existed, and when the
revolutionary spirit of France was still an object of well-founded
suspicion to tyrants by right divine on the continent of Europe.

II.

ON joining the legation, I was not particularly attracted by my chief,
the Minister. His manners were oppressively polite; and his sense of his
own importance was not sufficiently influenced by diplomatic reserve. I
venture to describe him (mentally speaking) as an empty man, carefully
trained to look full on public occasions.

My colleague, the first secretary, was a far more interesting person.
Bright, unaffected, and agreeable, he at once interested me when we were
introduced to each other. I pay myself a compliment, as I consider, when
I add that he became my firm and true friend.

We took a walk together in the palace gardens on the evening of my
arrival. Reaching a remote part of the grounds, we were passed by a
lean, sallow, sour-looking old man, drawn by a servant in a chair on
wheels. My companion stopped, whispered to me, "Here is the Prince,"
and bowed bareheaded. I followed his example as a matter of course. The
Prince feebly returned our salutation. "Is he ill?" I asked, when we had
put our hats on again.

"Shakespeare," the secretary replied, "tells us that 'one man in
his time plays many parts.' Under what various aspects the Prince's
character may have presented itself, in his younger days, I am not able
to tell you. Since I have been here, he has played the part of a martyr
to illness, misunderstood by his doctors."

"And his daughter, the Princess--what do you say of her?"

"Ah, she is not so easily described! I can only appeal to your memory of
other women like her, whom you must often have seen--women who are tall
and fair, and fragile and elegant; who have delicate aquiline noses
and melting blue eyes--women who have often charmed you by their tender
smiles and their supple graces of movement. As for the character of this
popular young lady, I must not influence you either way; study it for
yourself."

"Without a hint to guide me?"

"With a suggestion," he replied, "which may be worth considering. If you
wish to please the Princess, begin by endeavoring to win the good graces
of the Baroness."

"Who is the Baroness?"

"One of the ladies in waiting--bosom friend of her Highness, and chosen
repository of all her secrets. Personally, not likely to attract you;
short and fat, and ill-tempered and ugly. Just at this time, I happen
myself to get on with her better than usual. We have discovered that
we possess one sympathy in common--we are the only people at Court who
don't believe in the Prince's new doctor."

"Is the new doctor a quack?"

The secretary looked round, before he answered, to see that nobody was
near us.

"It strikes me," he said, "that the Doctor is a spy. Mind! I have no
right to speak of him in that way; it is only my impression--and I ought
to add that appearances are all in his favor. He is in the service of
our nearest royal neighbor, the Grand Duke; and he has been sent here
expressly to relieve the sufferings of the Duke's good friend and
brother, our invalid Prince. This is an honorable mission no doubt. And
the man himself is handsome, well-bred, and (I don't quite know whether
this is an additional recommendation) a countryman of ours. Nevertheless
I doubt him, and the Baroness doubts him. You are an independent
witness; I shall be anxious to hear if your opinion agrees with ours."

I was presented at Court, toward the end of the week; and, in the course
of the next two or three days, I more than once saw the Doctor. The
impression that he produced on me surprised my colleague. It was my
opinion that he and the Baroness had mistaken the character of a worthy
and capable man.

The secretary obstinately adhered to his own view.

"Wait a little," he answered, "and we shall see."

He was quite right. We did see.

III.

BUT the Princess--the gentle, gracious, beautiful Princess--what can I
say of her Highness?

I can only say that she enchanted me.

I had been a little discouraged by the reception that I met with from
her father. Strictly confining himself within the limits of politeness,
he bade me welcome to his Court in the fewest possible words, and then
passed me by without further notice. He afterward informed the English
Minister that I had been so unfortunate as to try his temper: "Your new
secretary irritates me, sir--he is a person in an offensively perfect
state of health." The Prince's charming daughter was not of her father's
way of thinking; it is impossible to say how graciously, how sweetly I
was received. She honored me by speaking to me in my own language,
of which she showed herself to be a perfect mistress. I was not only
permitted, but encouraged, to talk of my family, and to dwell on my own
tastes, amusements, and pursuits. Even when her Highness's attention was
claimed by other persons waiting to be presented, I was not forgotten.
The Baroness was instructed to invite me for the next evening to the
Princess's tea-table; and it was hinted that I should be especially
welcome if I brought my music with me, and sang.

My friend the secretary, standing near us at the time, looked at me with
a mysterious smile. He had suggested that I should make advances to the
Baroness--and here was the Baroness (under royal instructions) making
advances to Me!

"We know what _that_ means," he whispered.

In justice to myself, I must declare that I entirely failed to
understand him.

On the occasion of my second reception by the Princess, at her little
evening party, I detected the Baroness, more than once, in the act of
watching her Highness and myself, with an appearance of disapproval in
her manner, which puzzled me. When I had taken my leave, she followed me
out of the room.

"I have a word of advice to give you," she said. "The best thing you can
do, sir, is to make an excuse to your Minister, and go back to England."

I declare again, that I entirely failed to understand the Baroness.

IV.

BEFORE the season came to an end, the Court removed to the Prince's
country-seat, in the interests of his Highness's health. Entertainments
were given (at the Doctor's suggestion), with a view of raising the
patient's depressed spirits. The members of the English legation were
among the guests invited. To me it was a delightful visit. I had again
every reason to feel gratefully sensible of the Princess's condescending
kindness. Meeting the secretary one day in the library, I said that I
thought her a perfect creature. Was this an absurd remark to make? I
could see nothing absurd in it--and yet my friend burst out laughing.

"My good fellow, nobody is a perfect creature," he said. "The Princess
has her faults and failings, like the rest of us."

I denied it positively.

"Use your eyes," he went on; "and you will see, for example, that she is
shallow and frivolous. Yesterday was a day of rain. We were all obliged
to employ ourselves somehow indoors. Didn't you notice that she had no
resources in herself? She can't even read."

"There you are wrong at any rate," I declared. "I saw her reading the
newspaper."

"You saw her with the newspaper in her hand. If you had not been deaf
and blind to her defects, you would have noticed that she couldn't fix
her attention on it. She was always ready to join in the chatter of the
ladies about her. When even their stores of gossip were exhausted, she
let the newspaper drop on her lap, and sat in vacant idleness smiling at
nothing."

I reminded him that she might have met with a dull number of the
newspaper. He took no notice of this unanswerable reply.

"You were talking the other day of her warmth of feeling," he proceeded.
"She has plenty of sentiment (German sentiment), I grant you, but no
true feeling. What happened only this morning, when the Prince was in
the breakfast-room, and when the Princess and her ladies were dressed
to go out riding? Even she noticed the wretchedly depressed state of
her father's spirits. A man of that hypochondriacal temperament suffers
acutely, though he may only fancy himself to be ill. The Princess
overflowed with sympathy, but she never proposed to stay at home, and
try to cheer the old man. Her filial duty was performed to her own
entire satisfaction when she had kissed her hand to the Prince. The
moment after, she was out of the room--eager to enjoy her ride. We all
heard her laughing gayly among the ladies in the hall."

I could have answered this also, if our discussion had not been
interrupted at the moment. The Doctor came into the library in search of
a book. When he had left us, my colleague's strong prejudice against him
instantly declared itself.

"Be on your guard with that man," he said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Haven't you noticed," he replied, "that when the Princess is talking to
you, the Doctor always happens to be in that part of the room?"

"What does it matter where the Doctor is?"

My friend looked at me with an oddly mingled expression of doubt and
surprise. "Do you really not understand me?" he said.

"I don't indeed."

"My dear Ernest, you are a rare and admirable example to the rest of
us--you are a truly modest man."

What did he mean?

V.

EVENTS followed, on the next day, which (as will presently be seen) I
have a personal interest in relating.

The Baroness left us suddenly, on leave of absence. The Prince wearied
of his residence in the country; and the Court returned to the capital.
The charming Princess was reported to be "indisposed," and retired to
the seclusion of her own apartments.

A week later, I received a note f rom the Baroness, marked "private
and confidential." It informed me that she had resumed her duties
as lady-in-waiting, and that she wished to see me at my earliest
convenience. I obeyed at once; and naturally asked if there were better
accounts of her Highness's health.

The Baroness's reply a little surprised me. She said, "The Princess is
perfectly well."

"Recovered already!" I exclaimed.

"She has never been ill," the Baroness answered. "Her indisposition was
a sham; forced on her by me, in her own interests. Her reputation is in
peril; and you--you hateful Englishman--are the cause of it."

Not feeling disposed to put up with such language as this, even when
it was used by a lady, I requested that she would explain herself. She
complied without hesitation. In another minute my eyes were opened to
the truth. I knew--no; that is too positive--let me say I had reason to
believe that the Princess loved me!

It is simply impossible to convey to the minds of others any idea of the
emotions that overwhelmed me at that critical moment of my life. I
was in a state of confusion at the time; and, when my memory tries to
realize it, I am in a state of confusion now. The one thing I can do
is to repeat what the Baroness said to me when I had in some degree
recovered my composure.

"I suppose you are aware," she began, "of the disgrace to which the
Princess's infatuation exposes her, if it is discovered? On my own
responsibility I repeat what I said to you a short time since. Do you
refuse to leave this place immediately?"

Does the man live, honored as I was, who would have hesitated to refuse?
Find him if you can!

"Very well," she resumed. "As the friend of the Princess, I have no
choice now but to take things as they are, and to make the best of them.
Let us realize your position to begin with. If you were (like your elder
brother) a nobleman possessed of vast estates, my royal mistress might
be excused. As it is, whatever you may be in the future, you are nothing
now but an obscure young man, without fortune or title. Do you see your
duty to the Princess? or must I explain it to you?"

I saw my duty as plainly as she did. "Her Highness's secret is a sacred
secret," I said. "I am bound to shrink from no sacrifice which may
preserve it."

The Baroness smiled maliciously. "I may have occasion," she answered,
"to remind you of what you have just said. In the meanwhile the
Princess's secret is in danger of discovery."

"By her father?"

"No. By the Doctor."

At first, I doubted whether she was in jest or in earnest. The next
instant, I remembered that the secretary had expressly cautioned me
against that man.

"It is evidently one of your virtues," the Baroness proceeded, "to
be slow to suspect. Prepare yourself for a disagreeable surprise. The
Doctor has been watching the Princess, on every occasion when she speaks
to you, with some object of his own in view. During my absence,
young sir, I have been engaged in discovering what that object is. My
excellent mother lives at the Court of the Grand Duke, and enjoys
the confidence of his Ministers. He is still a bachelor; and, in the
interests of the succession to the throne, the time has arrived when
he must marry. With my mother's assistance, I have found out that the
Doctor's medical errand here is a pretense. Influenced by the Princess's
beauty the Grand Duke has thought of her first as his future duchess.
Whether he has heard slanderous stories, or whether he is only a
cautious man, I can't tell you. But this I know: he has instructed his
physician--if he had employed a professed diplomatist his motive
might have been suspected--to observe her Highness privately, and to
communicate the result. The object of the report is to satisfy the Duke
that the Princess's reputation is above the reach of scandal; that she
is free from entanglements of a certain kind; and that she is in
every respect a person to whom he can with propriety offer his hand
in marriage. The Doctor, Mr. Ernest, is not disposed to allow you
to prevent him from sending in a favorable report. He has drawn his
conclusions from the Princess's extraordinary kindness to the second
secretary of the English legation; and he is only waiting for a little
plainer evidence to communicate his suspicions to the Prince. It rests
with you to save the Princess."

"Only tell me how I am to do it!" I said.

"There is but one way of doing it," she answered; "and that way has
(comically enough) been suggested to me by the Doctor himself."

Her tone and manner tried my patience.

"Come to the point!" I said.

She seemed to enjoy provoking me.

"No hurry, Mr. Ernest--no hurry! You shall be fully enlightened, if you
will only wait a little. The Prince, I must tell you, believes in his
daughter's indisposition. When he visited her this morning, he was
attended by his medical adviser. I was present at the interview. To do
him justice, the Doctor is worthy of the trust reposed in him--he boldly
attempted to verify his suspicions of the daughter in the father's
presence."

"How?"

"Oh, in the well-known way that has been tried over and over again,
under similar circumstances! He merely invented a report that you were
engaged in a love-affair with some charming person in the town. Don't be
angry; there's no harm done."

"But there _is_ harm done," I insisted. "What must the Princess think of
me?"

"Do you suppose she is weak enough to believe the Doctor? Her Highness
beat him at his own weapons; not the slightest sign of agitation on her
part rewarded his ingenuity. All that you have to do is to help her
to mislead this medical spy. It's as easy as lying: and easier. The
Doctor's slander declares that you have a love-affair in the town. Take
the hint--and astonish the Doctor by proving that he has hit on the
truth."

It was a hot day; the Baroness was beginning to get excited. She paused
and fanned herself.

"Do I startle you?" she asked.

"You disgust me."

She laughed.

"What a thick-headed man this is!" she said, pleasantly. "Must I put
it more plainly still? Engage in what your English prudery calls a
'flirtation,' with some woman here--the lower in degree the better, or
the Princess might be jealous--and let the affair be seen and known by
everybody about the Court. Sly as he is, the Doctor is not prepared
for that! At your age, and with your personal advantages, he will take
appearances for granted; he will conclude that he has wronged you, and
misinterpreted the motives of the Princess. The secret of her Highness's
weakness will be preserved--thanks to that sacrifice, Mr. Ernest, which
you are so willing and so eager to make."

It was useless to remonstrate with such a woman as this. I simply stated
my own objection to her artfully devised scheme.

"I don't wish to appear vain," I said; "but the woman to whom I am to
pay these attentions may believe that I really admire her--and it is
just possible that she may honestly return the feeling which I am only
assuming."

"Well--and what then?"

"It's hard on the woman, surely?"

The Baroness was shocked, unaffectedly shocked.

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed, "how can anything that you do for the
Princess be hard on a woman of the lower orders? There must be an end of
this nonsense, sir! You have heard what I propose, and you know what the
circumstances are. My mistress is waiting for your answer. What am I to
say?"

"Let me see her Highness, and speak for myself," I said.

"Quite impossible to-day, without running too great a risk. Your reply
must be made through me."

There was to be a Court concert at the end of the week. On that occasion
I should be able to make my own reply. In the meanwhile I only told the
Baroness I wanted time to consider.

"What time?" she asked.

"Until to-morrow. Do you object?"

"On the contrary, I cordially agree. Your base hesitation may lead to
results which I have not hitherto dared to anticipate."

"What do you mean?"

"Between this and to-morrow," the horrid woman replied, "the
Princess may end in seeing you with my eyes. In that hope I wish you
good-morning."

VI.

MY enemies say that I am a weak man, unduly influenced by persons of
rank--because of their rank. If this we re true, I should have found
little difficulty in consenting to adopt the Baroness's suggestion.
As it was, the longer I reflected on the scheme the less I liked it. I
tried to think of some alternative that might be acceptably proposed.
The time passed, and nothing occurred to me. In this embarrassing
position my mind became seriously disturbed; I felt the necessity of
obtaining some relief, which might turn my thoughts for a while into a
new channel. The secretary called on me, while I was still in doubt what
to do. He reminded me that a new prima donna was advertised to appear on
that night; and he suggested that we should go to the opera. Feeling as
I did at the time, I readily agreed.

We found the theater already filled, before the performance began. Two
French gentlemen were seated in the row of stalls behind us. They were
talking of the new singer.

"She is advertised as 'Mademoiselle Fontenay,'" one of them said. "That
sounds like an assumed name."

"It _is_ an assumed name," the other replied. "She is the daughter of a
French singing-master, named Bonnefoy."

To my friend's astonishment I started to my feet, and left him without a
word of apology. In another minute I was at the stage-door, and had sent
in my card to "Mademoiselle Fontenay." While I was waiting, I had time
to think. Was it possible that Jeanne had gone on the stage? Or were
there two singing-masters in existence named Bonnefoy? My doubts were
soon decided. The French woman-servant whom I remembered when I was
Monsieur Bonnefoy's pupil, made her appearance, and conducted me to her
young mistress's dressing-room. Dear good Jeanne, how glad she was to
see me!

I found her standing before the glass, having just completed her
preparations for appearing on the stage. Dressed in her picturesque
costume, she was so charming that I expressed my admiration heartily,
as became her old friend. "Do you really like me?" she said, with the
innocent familiarity which I recollected so well. "See how I look in
the glass--that is the great test." It was not easy to apply the test.
Instead of looking at her image in the glass, it was far more agreeable
to look at herself. We were interrupted--too soon interrupted--by the
call-boy. He knocked at the door, and announced that the overture had
begun.

"I have a thousand things to ask you," I told her. "What has made this
wonderful change in your life? How is it that I don't see your father--"

Her face instantly saddened; her hand trembled as she laid it on my arm
to silence me.

"Don't speak of him now," she said, "or you will unnerve me. Come to me
to-morrow when the stage will not be waiting; Annette will give you my
address." She opened the door to go out, and returned.

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