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Caught in a Trap

by John C. Hutcheson · English · Gutenberg #34247 · 633,913 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Caught in a Trap

Author: John C. Hutcheson


        
Release date: November 8, 2010 [eBook #34247]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34247

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAUGHT IN A TRAP ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Volume 1, Chapter I.

AMONGST THE PLUNGERS.

"Hullo!  Markworth.  How lucky!  Why you are just the man I want; you're
ubiquitous, who'd have thought of seeing you in town?" said Tom
Hartshorne, of the --th Dragoons, cheerily, as he sauntered late one
summer afternoon into a private billiard-room in Oxford-street, where a
tall, dark-complexioned, and strikingly-handsome man, was knocking the
balls about in his shirt-sleeves, and trying all sorts of fancy shots
against the cushions--The sole occupant of the room was he, with the
exception of the marker, who was looking on in a desultory sort of way
at the strokes of the player from his thronelike chair underneath the
scoring board.

"Hullo!  Tom, by all that's holy!  And what brings you to Babylon?  I
left Boulogne last week, and ran up to see what the `boys' were after;
so here I am, quite at your service.  What can I do for you, Tom?  Are
you hard up, in a row, or run away with your neighbour's wife?  Unbosom
yourself, _caro mio_."

"No, I'm all right, old chap; but nothing could be better.  By Jove!
it's the very thing!"

"Who?  Why?  What?  Enlighten me, Tom."

"Well, you see, Markworth, I've got to go down to-morrow for my annual
week to my mother's place in Sussex.  It will be so awfully slow; just
fancy, old chap, a whole week in that dreary old country house, with no
company, no shooting, no fishing, no anything!  Why, it's enough to kill
a fellow!"

"Poor Tom," observed Markworth, sympathisingly.

"Yes; but that's not the worst either, old chap.  My mother is very
cranky, you know, and the house itself is as dull as ditch-water.  You
have to go to bed and get up by clockwork; and if one should be late at
dinner, or in turning in, why, it is thought more of by the ruling
powers than the worst sin in the decalogue.  Besides, I have to keep
straight and humour the old lady--for I am quite dependent on her until
I come of age; and, though she's very fond of me in her sort of way, she
cuts up rough sometimes, and would stop supplies in a moment if I should
offend her."

"Dutiful infant!  I pity your sorrows, Tom; but what can I do to help
you?"

"I'm just coming to that; but we may as well have a game by the way,
while we're talking."

"Certainly; how many points shall I give you?  The usual number, eh?
Score up, fifteen to spot, marker," he said, turning to the little man,
who, with a face of dull impassiveness, was sitting bolt upright, like
Neptune with his trident, holding the billiard-rest in a perpendicular
position, apparently hearing nothing, although his eyes twinkled every
now and then.  "You lead, Tom, of course."

"All right, here goes; but, to return to what we were speaking about.
You can help me very much, Markworth."

"Can I?  That's a good cannon, you mustn't play all through like that,
Tom, or you'll beat me easily; but, go on, and tell me what you want."

"Ha! yes--you see I've got one saving clause in my predicament.  My
mother says I may bring some one down with me, and I don't know who the
deuce to take--for any of our fellows would ruin me in half a day with
the old lady, by talking slang, or flirting with the maids, or something
else."

"And you want me to go and victimise myself for a week?  Much obliged,
I'm sure."

"Nonsense, Markworth.  By Jove! that's a ripping hazard in the middle
pocket; you've got the red in baulk, too, and the game's all in your
hands.  You are really the only fellow I'd ask, and it would be a
perfect godsend to have you.  It won't be so dull for the two of us
together, and I'm sure you'll be able to pull me out of many a scrape
with the old lady, for she's just your sort, and you can tackle her like
one o'clock; only talk to her about the `Ologies' old country families,
and the peerage, and you'll be all right.  She never speaks of anything
else.  Besides, there's a Miss Kingscott down there--a governess, or
companion, or something of the sort to my sister--whom I've never yet
seen, as she only came there this year.  I daresay you can make love to
her."

"Thank you, especially after the warning about the maids!"

"But you'll come, won't you?"

"I can't promise, Tom.  There, that stroke ends the game; let's finish
billiards: they're too slow.  What are you going to do to-night, Tom?"

"A lot of us are going to have a quiet little dinner party at Lane's.
The old colonel has been awfully jolly, and let away nearly the whole
squad on leave together.  Will you come?  There'll be Harrowby, Miles--
in fact all the boys.  We'll have lansquenette afterwards, and then you
and I can talk over about running down to the country.  Do come, there's
a good fellow."

"Well, I will; what time do you dine?"

"Sharp seven; so don't be late."

"I'll be there.  Ta-ta, now, for I've got a lot of letters to write.
I'm stopping at the `Tavistock' by the way, in case I don't turn up and
you want to find me."

They had emerged from the billiard-room, and now stood in the street.

"But you must come, I shall expect you and will take no excuse.  I'm
going to call on some jolly girls whom I met at the Woolwich hop last
night.  So good-bye till seven--sharp, mind!"

"All right," answered the other, as Tom Hartshorne hailed a hansom, and
was quickly whirled off to his destination in Bruton Street, where the
Miss Inskips, two pretty and fast young ladies of the period, dwelt with
their mamma, a widowed dame.

Allynne Markworth was not so much a type, as a specimen, of a curious
class of men constantly to be met with in London society, and of whom
society knows next to nothing.  No one knew where he came from, who were
his progenitors, or what he did; and yet he suffered in no respect from
this self-same ignorance of the world around him, in which he lived and
moved and had his being, as any other of its more regular units.

He always dressed well, lived well, and seemed to have a fair share of
the loaves and fishes which Providence often so unequally bestows.
Having the _entree_ of good houses, he knew "everybody," and everybody
knew him; but if you asked any of the men who knew him, and were
constantly meeting him about, who Markworth was, the general answer you
would get would be, "'Pon my soul, I don't know."  Perhaps Tom
Hartshorne knew more about him and was more intimate with him than
anyone else, but even he had long ceased to puzzle his budding brains
over any analysis of his friend: he was a "good fellow," and "a clever
fellow, by Jove," and that was enough for him.  Tom, however, never
dreamt of calling Markworth by his Christian name, and no one else could
have approached that phase of intimacy.

To tell the truth Allynne Markworth lived by his wits.  He was a
_Chevalier d'Industrie_ in a certain sense of the term, although in a
slightly more moral degree; and ran the race set before him by preying
on the weaknesses, follies, and ignorances of human nature in the
abstract, as evinced amongst his fellows in the concrete.

He was a good billiard player, and knew as well when to hide his play as
"any other man."  Many a stray sovereign did he pick up in lives after
pool at Phillipps', even when he could not get a bet on, which he was
never loth to take.  The Hanover Square Club acknowledged his supremacy
at whist, and happy was he who was his partner when guinea points were
the rule.  Being a good judge of horseflesh, he of course kept a book on
the principal events of the year: rare in "hedging" he was seldom known
to come out a loser.

With all these little strings to his bow, it is no wonder that Markworth
managed to get along pretty comfortably; and although he toiled not nor
yet did he spin, I much question whether King Solomon if clad _en regle_
to the nineteenth century would have been better dressed, taking Poole
as a criterion.  Add to this that Allynne Markworth was a well-bred,
handsome man of thirty to thirty-five--although his right age would have
been rather hard to discover--and had a certain plausibility of manner
which prevented one at first from noticing the somewhat sinister
expression about his eyes and mouth; and the surprising thing would have
been that he did _not_ get on.  Generally he had plenty of money; and
when he had not he absented himself from society until his coffers were
replenished in some secret way or other.

At this time, however, he had been for some months undergoing a run of
ill-luck.  The year had opened badly by the failure of a bubble company
in which he was deeply interested; then, again, men were fighting shy of
him at billiards, and it cost him more work for a sovereign than it was
worth, and guinea points at whist were becoming rare events even amongst
the most reckless _habitues_ of the club; to climax his misfortunes, he
had made a very losing book on the Derby, and although he paid it up--
for to be a defaulter would have ruined him in his set--he had to leave
London early in the season in consequence of not having the wherewithal
to prosecute the war.

When he had gone away at the end of May he told Tom Hartshorne that he
would be detained away on the continent on business for months; and yet
here he was back again before the end of July.  The fact was he came
back money-hunting, and was so pressed now that he hardly knew where to
turn.  He had made up his mind that unless he married a fortune,
discovered a gold mine, or tumbled into some wonderful luck, that his
"little game," as he expressed it, would be "all up."  He was glad to
meet Tom Hartshorne so very opportunely at the present juncture, for he
thought that he might be put in the way of some plan for changing
events--and at the worst a little good card playing in the evening might
place him in the position of being able "to look about him."

Punctually at seven o'clock he showed himself up at Lane's Hotel, where
some half-a-dozen men of Tom's regiment were assembled in a cosy little
room up-stairs, well lighted, and with snow-white-cloth-covered-table,
all duly prepared and laid out for the contemplated feast.

Dragoon officers or "Plungers"--indeed, all cavalry men--are pretty much
alike, and unlike the remainder of the Army List.  The mild, "gushing"
comet, dashing "sub," and massive captain, full-fledged and silky as to
hair and drooping moustache--not forgetting general apathy of
expression--of one troop, or regiment, resemble those of another, even
as the proverbial "two peas," and it would sorely tax one's powers of
diagnosis to discriminate between the members of a party like those
assembled for the present "quiet little dinner, you know."

Tom Hartshorne--no one who ever spoke two words with him could call him
anything else but "Tom"--was the only exception to this rule; the others
were all men of a class, "classy," without any distinctive
individuality.  He, however, was of a different stamp.  Of
middle-height, thick-set, fair-haired, and open face--Saxon all over--
his was the native mould, thorough British metal, that makes our strong
and plucky athletes of the Isis and the Cam, who struggle each year for
aquatic supremacy, like the strong _Gyas fortisque Cloanthus_ of
Virgil's Aenead--that long line of heroes celebrated for every deed of
daring, from Richard the "Lion-hearted" down to the last gallant
recipient of the Victoria Cross: men of which stamp, thank God, live yet
among us!

A thorough gentleman, his nature was as open as the day, which you could
readily see for yourself by one glance into his truthful face, and clear
blue eyes, although perhaps concealed partly by that slight upper-crust
or veneer of egotism and affectation, which generally hides the better
qualities of young men on first entering into life, and just released
from their "mother's apron string" and the trammels of home and school.

Tom Hartshorne was little more than nineteen, and it was a wonder, with
his bringing up, that he was what he was; but nothing could altogether
taint the sterling stuff of which he was composed.  He was one who could
pass through the lighter follies of military life unscathed, and only
wanted some strong impetus, some ardent motive to bring him out in his
true colours.  Tom Hartshorne had made the acquaintance of Markworth
about a year previous to the meeting with which the story opens--in fact
just after he had been gazetted to his cornetcy, and had taken to him at
once--and Markworth had apparently taken to him, a sort of chemical
affinity of opposing forces.

It may be thought strange that natures so dissimilar should agree, but
so it was.  The Latin proverb is often curiously wrong; instead of
_similes similibus curantur_, the prefix _dis_ should be added, and then
the axiom would be complete.  When Tom first met Markworth, who had
received an invitation to the mess of the --th, he was struck with him,
and on introduction came to like him greatly, for he was so clever, so
agreeable, so different to the men he had previously met that he could
not fail to be impressed; you always find young men take to a man of the
world, particularly if he be like such a man as Markworth was.

The little dinner at Lane's passed off well, and the young Plungers
enjoyed themselves to their heart's core, now that they were not under
the jaundiced eye of their stern major, who envied them all their strong
digestions and perfect livers; and, it is to be feared, they drank a
little more champagne than was good for some of them.  At the table
Markworth was placed alongside a brother sub of Tom's, who was most
communicative over his wine, talking in a low confidential voice with
his elder companion, whom he wished to convince of his "mannishness," of
horses, dogs, and women, as befitted a noble young soldier.

During a pause in the conversation Markworth thought he might gain some
information, and having an opportunity of putting in a word, asked--

"By the way, do you know any of Tom's people?"

"Know them?  By Jove! yes.  Catch me there again, that's all!"

"Why--how--what's the matter?" asked Markworth.  "I thought everybody
liked Tom?"

"So they do; he's a brick.  But Tom ain't his mother and his sister."

"Certainly not," answered the other, agreeing with the indisputable
fact; "but what of them?"

"Well, the fact is Tom asked me down there last Christmas, and I never
spent such a time in my life.  They are very well connected, but see no
people at all.  The mother is a regular Tartar.  There is also a sort of
half idiot sister older than Tom.  She has a pile of money left her, by
the way; not a bad chance for any one in search of an heiress, who
doesn't care about beauty and brains, and that sort of thing!"

"The devil she has?"

"Yes, by Jove! a regular pot of money; twenty thou' or more, I'm told.
There's no elder son and nobody else, so Tom will inherit all the
property when the old lady hooks it.  There you have the family.  I
stopped with them two days, but it nearly killed me.  Men of the world
like us, you know, can't stand that sort of thing.  Of course I had to
plead regimental business, and get away.  I remember the old lady--a
regular she cat by Jove!--saying that she hoped my mamma--curse her
impudence--would teach me better manners before she let me go out again.
Did you ever hear of such a thing?"

"Ha! ha! ha! a pleasant old lady, Harrowby; I do not wonder at your
dignity being hurt.  I must look out for her if I ever tackle her."

"What, are you thinking of going down?  Take my advice, don't: you'll be
sick of it."

"Yes, I may.  Tom asked me, and perhaps I'll see some fan," responded
Markworth--and there the conversation dropped.

Later on, when he wished Tom Hartshorne "good-night," in reply to his
repeated invitation, he promised to go.

"And we'll start on Friday," said Tom, gleefully; "that will be the day
after to-morrow, you know."

"All right, I'm your man.  Call for me at the `Tavistock' at twelve, and
we can start as soon after as you like."

"Done.  That will just give us time to catch the 2:30 train.
Good-night, old fellow!"

And they parted.

The next morning Mr Allynne Markworth took a solitary walk citywards.
After passing through Temple Bar and the then--undesolated--Fleet
Street, he ascended the hill of Ludgate; and turning into a thin row of
straggling and seedy old buildings, found himself within the precincts
of Doctor's Commons, sacred to the archives of marriage--one cannot
always say love--and death!

Here, having previously invested the sum of one shilling in current coin
of the realm, he received permission to examine the "Last will and
testament of one Roger Hartshorne, deceased, of the county of Sussex,
gentleman," the perusal of which document appeared to give him much
internal satisfaction.  His task did not take him long, and he was soon
retracing his steps.

On the day after he went down to Sussex, as agreed, with Tom Hartshorne.

Volume 1, Chapter II.

THE SUSSEX DOWAGER.

Only a simple, and yet special name and appellation--

  "Mrs Hartshorne,
  The Poplars."

That is all.

Nothing much in the name certainly, at first sight, nor yet such a very
extraordinary address, either in the nomenclature of the mansion, or in
its surroundings; but the two taken together were something entirely out
of the common.  Mrs Hartshorne by herself, or the Poplars, considered
merely as a residence, were neither of them grand or startling
phenomena; but one could not well do without the other, and the dual in
unity formed a complete and unique integrity.  In other words, "Mrs
Hartshorne, of the Poplars," was an "institution" in the land, to quote
an Americanism, although neither a thing of beauty nor a joy for ever.
She was a _rara avis in terris_, a millionaire Hecate, a rich and
slightly-over-middle-aged eccentric, a Xantipical Croesus--no less a
personage, in fact, than the "Sussex Dowager."

Far and wide throughout this county--over a considerable portion of
which she owned manorial rights of vassalage, and ruled with sovereign
sway in the matter of leases and titheholds and rackrents--amongst the
lesser farmers and villagers she was known by this title; although, it
must be confessed, her more intimate dependents and rustic neighbours
dubbed her by far less elegant sobriquets.

Any one meeting her about the country lanes, where she was to be found
at all hours, would have taken Mrs Hartshorne to be a shabby little
dried-up, poor old woman.  She always dressed in dark grey garments of
antediluvian cut, somewhat brown and rusty from age and wear.  Her
bonnet was a marvellous specimen of the hideous old coal-scuttle form
used by our grandmothers.  She always carried a reticule of similar
date, which, by her demeanour when emporting it, might have contained a
hundred death-warrants, or keys of dungeons--if she had lived some three
centuries or so ago: a bulgy umbrella in all weathers, wet or fine:
thick shoes of rough country make: dark woollen gloves; and no veil to
disguise the thin sharp features and piercing bead-like black eyes,
overhung with bushy grey eyebrows, and the wrinkled forehead above,
covered with scanty white locks, braided puritanically on each side, and
there you have Mrs Hartshorne.

She was not a handsome old woman, nor a prepossessing old woman, nor
would her face impress you as being either benevolent or pious; but
shrewdness, cleverness, and hardness of set purpose, were ingrained in
every line of its expression; and in truth--she was a hard, shrewd,
clever old woman.

A quarter of a century seems a somewhat long time to look back, but
twenty-five years ago Mrs Hartshorne was a young and handsome woman.
Time had not dealt kindly with her as he does to some: none would dream
of calling hers a graceful or a winning old age.  She seemed to wrestle
with the Destroyer, instead of ignoring his approach as most of us do,
and quietly and placidly submitting to his encroachments.  The result
was not to her advantage.  Every line on her face, every crow's-foot in
the corners of her twinkling little eyes, every wrinkle on her careworn
brow, every silvery hair on her head, marked the issue of some
unsuccessful struggle; and the strong passions of her nature, even as
they had embittered her life, seemed now, when her youth was passed, to
war with death.

She had a quick way of speaking, running her words and sentences into
one another, so that they resembled one of those compound, Dutch
jaw-breaking words that occupy several lines in extent, and almost fill
up a paragraph.  Her temper was not a sweet one.  It might suit "namby
pamby," milk-and-water, bread-and-butter girls--"hussies," she would
have called them--to mince their words and moderate their utterances;
but she, "thank God, was none of those!"  She said what she meant, sharp
and straight to the point, and did not care what any one thought about
it.  Her voice, mode of speech, and general manner, resembled the
barking of a wiry little Scotch terrier, and terrified most with whom
she had any dealings.  "Good Lord!" as old Doctor Jolly, the most
hearty, jovial, loud and cheery-voiced of country surgeons--the only
visitor who had entrance within her gates, and who used at fixed
intervals to beard the lioness in her den--used to say; "but she has a
temper.  I would not be her husband, or her son, or her daughter for
something!  God bless my soul! sir, but she could hold a candle to the
devil himself."  And so she could, and hold her own, too!

Old Roger Hartshorne--the "squire"--had married her late in life some
twenty-five years ago, and brought her home to the Poplars in all state
and ceremony as befitted the lady of so great a landowner.  The old
squire was a very good-natured, liberal sort of man, whose only
amusement was in following the harriers--there were no hounds and
scarlet-coated foxhunters in those parts--and he was generally liked
throughout the county, for he kept a sort of open house, and was
hail-fellow-well-met with everyone; but when he married--and no one knew
where he picked up his wife, people said that _she_ married him--all
this was changed.  A new _regime_ was instituted, and the sporting
breakfasts, and hunting dinners, and open-house festivities at the
Poplars became as a thing of the past.  Mrs Hartshorne said she would
not have any such "scandalous goings on" in her house: she wasn't going
to be "eaten out of house and home."  Every expense of the _menage_ was
cut down.  Instead of some seven or eight grooms and gardeners and
domestic servants, only three were retained--an old woman to mind the
house, an old butler, whom the squire insisted on keeping, and a groom
and gardener, who combined both situations in one.  When the children
came--a girl and a boy--the squire thought things would be altered; but
they were not.  Mrs Hartshorne said they must save, and pinch and pinch
more now for them--although goodness knows the estate was rich enough;
and shortly after the birth of Tom, the old squire died, worn out it was
said by the temper and treatment of his wife.  It was, perhaps, a happy
release to Roger of that Ilk, for the poor old gentleman had been sadly
changed since his marriage, and used to look a piteous spectacle when he
took his solitary rides around the village lanes on his old cob, the
sole relict of his handsome stud which he had been proudly fond of
displaying across country.

With the death of the squire, Mrs Hartshorne became more saving and
pinching, and miserly than ever.  The first thing she did was to dismiss
the old butler, who had been in the family for some forty years, saying
she "could not afford to support a lazy, useless pauper;" the next was
to tell the bailiff and estate agent that their services were no longer
required, for "she would have no curious eyes prying into her property,
and telling everyone how much she was worth."  The house was almost shut
up and buried in seclusion, and no one but Doctor Jolly ever went there.
_He_ said he "would not be denied by any woman in creation," and
although the "dowager," as she now came to be termed, used to put on her
most vinegar-like expression for him, and address him in the snappiest
and most provoking and insulting manner, he would call at the Poplars at
least once a month in obedience to the promise he had given to the old
squire on his death-bed to "look after his poor children."  It must be
said that Mrs Hartshorne tolerated the doctor in a sort of way--her
way; and if she liked anyone, liked him who was a favourite with the
whole county round.  She had said to him when he first used to come,
that she supposed he "came there because he might charge for his visits,
and get something by it;" but when she found this was not the case, and
that Doctor Jolly had no base intentions towards her money bags, she
tolerated him, and allowed him to come and go as he pleased, without
bestowing on him more than her customary amount of sweet temper.

When Tom grew old enough he was sent to school, only coming home for one
week every year by express stipulation with the proprietor of the
school! and when he became eighteen, at his earnest wish, and after
continual wranglings with the old lady--who was passionately fond of
him, although at the same time possessing an inordinate affection for
money--he was allowed to go into the army.  His mother said that he
would "ruin her" when she gave an order on her banker to the doctor, who
was Tom's guardian, for the sum required for his commission and outfit,
but she did not behave illiberally, and gave master Tom a very fair
allowance, satisfying her conscience by raising all the rents of her
poorer tenants, and grinding down the household expenses more than ever.
Of Tom she was not only fond but proud: it was the only one womanly
trait in her character; and although she was not a very motherly kind of
woman, and did not display her affection in the manner customary to the
feminine sex--ruling her household, even Tom, with a rod of iron and a
stern sense of duty--yet her son was very much attached to her,
notwithstanding he did not exhibit any strong partiality for visiting
her.  He knew that the less he saw of her the better: they both
understood each other well.

The daughter, however, Mrs Hartshorne hated and disliked in the
strongest manner possible.  She grew up uncared for, except as regarded
frequent and summary corrections for childish misdemeanours; and if it
had not been for the boy Tom she would have been altogether neglected.
Little Susan was an eyesore to her mother in consequence of her being
the only one provided for in Roger Hartshorne's will independently of
the mother, to whom all the rest of the property, excepting of course
the entail, was bequeathed without reservation.  Mrs Hartshorne
considered her own child as a species of interloper or invader of her
rights, and treated her accordingly with neglect and almost cruelty when
the squire was no longer able to look after and protect her.  The very
fondness of the old man for his little girl had been even an additional
incentive for her ill-treatment.  When Susan had reached her fifteenth
year--she was little more than a year older than Tom--the dislike of her
mother culminated in an accident, which indeed might be characterised in
worse terms, that somewhat checked the ill-treatment and harshness she
had previously suffered.  She had done some trifling thing or other one
day which had offended her mother to fury, and she consequently, after
beating her most unmercifully, had locked her up all one night in a
solitary part of the house by herself.  The little thing was of a very
nervous, tender organisation; and the fright she suffered in the lonely
darkness throughout the long hours of the night drove away her poor
little wits.  When the child was let out the next day she was in a
raging fever, and when she recovered from that, thanks to old Doctor
Jolly (who was unremitting in his care, after frightening the mother by
declaring her to be almost a murderess), she was never herself again.
She remained quietly passive under any or every treatment of the mother
"half-silly," as the poor folks say, and half-silly she was now still,
although she was almost one-and-twenty.  Her mental disorder was of a
pathetic description--a sort of melancholia, and although her mother had
procured governesses for her, and she knew, like a parrot, as much as
most girls of her age in the matter of education, she never exhibited
any likes or dislikes, or preferences, except for music, of which she
was passionately fond: everything else that was taught her she learnt in
a machine-like way.  Susan would spend hours each day, particularly in
the evening, playing on an old chamber-organ, which occupied one of the
disused rooms of the house, wild, weird, melancholy melodies which
appeared to soothe her, and give her the only sense of enjoyment she
seemed to possess.  Tom and Doctor Jolly were the only people she cared
to see; her mother she disliked greatly, and had a sort of trembling fit
whenever she came across her or passed her in the passages of the house;
and the old female domestics she barely tolerated, although she liked
old George, a simple, uneducated Sussex countryman (the county is great
for its "chawbacons"), who now did all the odd jobs and outdoor work
about the house since the establishment had been reduced.

Mrs Hartshorne always had a governess or special person to look after
Susan, and she was careful to put down all the expenses of the said
individual to be charged against and deducted from the portion which her
daughter was to inherit in accordance with the terms of the squire's
will.

These governesses were always being changed, for few persons, even those
who have taught themselves to submit, as governesses have to teach
themselves, could long bear with the temper of the dowager.  A new face
was consequently ever coming and going within the narrow range of Susan
Hartshorne's horizon.

Doctor Jolly used to say that perhaps some sudden shock of grief or joy
might restore the poor girl to the full possession of her senses.

"But then," he would remark, "I don't know how that is going to happen,
unless the old lady kicks the bucket."

Thus was Mrs Hartshorne placed, and it must be owned that a skeleton
such as she had in her closet would not tend to sweeten her disposition.
Hard and stern she was with all around her.  She was her own farm
agent, her own bailiff, her own man of business.  If she had been
entirely alone she would probably have had not a soul in the house with
her, not even a domestic.  She collected her own rents, and was never
forgetful of a farthing owed to her.  When the leases granted by the
squire expired she would not let them be renewed, but kept her tenants
under fear and trembling, with only a year's certainty of possession of
their homes; and she waxed rich, did the dowager, and had by this time a
goodly pile of ready money at her bankers'.  This was all for Tom, and,
faith! the young sir would have a splendid inheritance when the dowager
departed for the happy hunting grounds.  The squire's property, before
the advent of Mrs Hartshorne, had been worth some ten thousand a year.
It was now worth nearly half as much again, and the savings of the
yearly income amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds.  "A very
comfortable little sum of ready money, sir!" as the doctor would say.

The residence of the dowager was situated about a mile from the
picturesque little village of Hartwood, which boasted not only of a
special little station to itself on the S.C. Rail, but also of its own
little church, quite independent of the sacred episcopal edifice general
to the parish under whose jurisdiction it came.  The dowager owned the
church as well as the village, and the right of presentation being in
her gift, she had recently inducted the most extreme Ritualistic divine
she could procure into the pulpit of Hartwood, just purely out of
opposition to the rector of the district, whom she disliked, and who was
supposed to be of strong evangelical principles.

The Poplars--there can be no mistake in saying it--was an extremely ugly
house.  Its architecture was neither Gothic nor Norman, Elizabethan or
Tudor; it was an heterogeneous pile of stones and brickwork, scrambled
together without any style or design.  Inside it was comfortable enough,
and roomy and rambling; without it seemed nothing but a collection of
eaves and chimneys, and its sole redeeming point consisted in the lofty
and spreading poplar trees which surrounded it on all sides, as well as
gave it its name, and concealed its native ugliness from strangers and
passers-by.

There you have "The Poplars" and its mistress.

Volume 1, Chapter III.

THE FISH AND THE HOOK.

"Het-wood!" shouted the guard vehemently, as the train in which Tom
Hartshorne and Markworth had left London drew up at a little wayside
station, closely adjoining Hartwood village, the spire of whose church
could be seen near at hand, amidst a group of lofty elm trees which
surrounded it--and "Het-wood!  Het-wood!  Het-wood!" burst a tribe of
porters and railway men, after that official, chorusing in full cry to a
musical accompaniment of door-slammings and steam-escapements.

"Here we are at last," ejaculated Tom, poking his head out of the window
of one of the carriages as soon as they fairly stopped.

"Are we?  Then the Lord be praised!  Beastly long journey.  More than
two hours for only sixty or seventy miles!" responded his companion,
stepping on to the platform, where they and their luggage were quickly
deposited--the only arrivals for the little village--while the iron
horse again grunted and puffed on its toilsome way with its string of
cattle pens behind it.

"Good day, sir," said the station-master, touching his hat respectfully
to Tom; "do you want a trap, sir?"

"No, thanks, we'll walk over; but will you send up our things for us,
Murphy?"

"Certainly, sir; one of the men shall go at once with them.  Here,
Peter! shoulder them there bags, and follow Mister Hartshorne up
t'ouse."

"It's much jollier to walk, Markworth," remarked Tom, as they left the
station, and he led the way over a stile into a little bypath across a
field; "it's a lovely afternoon, and we'll get there in half the time we
should if we drove by the road."

"All right, my boy, I'm agreeable," answered Markworth.

So they sauntered on, walking in a narrow foot-wide track, through acres
of gleaming green fields of oats and wheat, with their wavy motion, like
the sea, and their rustling tops, one of the railway porters following
closely behind them, weighed down apparently by two heavy
travelling-bags he carried, although, probably, he thought them but a
trifle.

A pleasant walk it was on a fine summer day.

Presently Markworth could see a gaunt, grim stone wall in front of them,
with a mass of tall, melancholy-looking, waving poplar trees behind it,
all in a clump together.

"There's the place," said Tom.  "We'll be there in no time.  We can go
through that side-door," pointing to a small gateway cut through the
wall.  "You must not mind, old chap, what my mother says, you know, at
first.  I told you she was a queer fellow, you know, and she will seem
rough to you at first."

"I sha'n't mind, bless you, Tom--I oughtn't to be afraid of any woman at
my time of life, my hearty."

In another minute they had arrived at the small door they had been
making for, and Tom rang the bell with a sonorous peal.

After waiting about a quarter of an hour, and ringing some three times,
the gate was at length opened by George, the Dowager's "man of all
work," an honest, tall, beaming-looking countryman, who stood at the
entrance with a broad grin of pleasure on his rustic face.

"Whoy!  Lor sakes, measter Tummus!  It beant you, be it?  Well, to be
sure!"

"Yes, it's me, sure enough, George.  How are the rheumatics?"

"Och! they be foine, sur?"

"Nice day, George, ain't it?  Good for the crops, eh?"

"Yees, _surely_! it's a foine day when the soon shoines! that it be,
sur!  Ho! ho! ho."  And George laughed a heavy, earthy sort of laugh,
which partook of the nature of the clay in which he delved--it was so
warm, and yet lumpish, and seemed to stick in his throat and be unable
to come out, although his mouth was certainly opened wide enough to
permit of its exit.  It may be mentioned that this was one of George's
time-honoured jokes about the sun and the weather, indeed the only one
he ever knew of; and he would repeat it some twenty times a day, if
anyone gave him the cue, each time being as much amused with it, and
struck with its novelty and wit as if that were the first time he
propounded it.

A sharp, querulous voice, which belonged to somebody evidently not far
distant, here suddenly interposed--

"What are you standing jabbering and grinning there like a baboon for,
man?  Begone to your work man!  Do you think I keep your idle carcass
and pay your wages for you to be kicking your heels in the air all day
and doing nothing?  Begone to your work, man, and let my son in; if I
ever catch you jabbering away like this again, out you go bag and
baggage!"

Here it must be noted that the speaker did not pause a second in the
delivery of this harangue--not a stop, such as have been put here for
the sake of legibility, occurred between the words--the whole sentence
rattled out as one word--a word fiery, hot, strong, and by no means
sweet.

"Lor sakes! here's the missus!" ejaculated George, in sudden terror; and
clutching his spade, which he had put down to open the gate, he
disappeared amidst the shrubbery much sooner and with a quicker movement
than he had evidently acted the part of Janitor.

The Dowager it was, without a doubt--for her presence had quickly
followed her words, and she now stood before the pair in all her
imposing appearance with an irritated face, and her piercing eyes fixed
on them enquiringly.

She was the first to break the short silence that ensued.

"Well, and so you have come at last, Thomas!  There, shake hands! that
will do.  I wonder you have been able to tear yourself away from all
your jackanape companions--a lot of reckless spendthrifts and conceited
puppies, every one of them--to come and see your ugly old mother at
last.  I am so old, and, having no airs and graces to receive you like
other people--all lies to be sure--that I wonder you do come at all!  I
suppose it is only because you want money--money, money, money, like the
whole tribe of them--bloodsuckers all.  But who's this fellow with you?"
she said, abruptly, turning round on Markworth as if she were going to
snap him up.  "Who is he, and what does he want, shoving himself in?"

Tom hastened to introduce him, saying that he was an old friend, Mr
Allynne Markworth, who had been very kind to him, and whom he had
ventured to invite down according to the express stipulation of his
mother.

"Humph!" she muttered, "oh! that's it, is it; why did you not say so
before instead of letting him stand staring there like an idiot?  But
you never had a head, Thomas, and never will as long as you live!  You
are only fit to be a lazy soldier to flaunt about all day in a patchwork
uniform and do nothing.  The only sense you ever have shown was in
selecting your profession!  So this is Mr Markworth, is it?  Humph!  I
daresay he's like the rest of them--all calf's head and shrimp sauce!
How do you do, Mr Markworth?"  She now spoke without the former
asperity, and curtseyed low in an old-fashioned manner.  "Any friend of
my son is welcome to my house, poor as it is!  Please go on and lead the
way, Thomas, with your friend, you will find a room ready prepared for
him, and you know your own.  We dine at the regular hour, five o'clock,
and it only wants half-an-hour to that, so don't be late.  I don't want
any dressing or fal-lalling!"  The old lady then turned into the
shrubbery, evidently after the recreant George, and she muttered to
herself as she ambled along, "He's taller than Thomas, and a handsome
puppy; but I don't like him--he's a rogue, or I'll eat my boots."

There was no need for such an unusual repast on the part of the Dowager;
she might have been wider from the mark in her casual conjecture.

Punctually at five o'clock the tones of some huge clanging old bell
clanked through the house, proclaiming the hour; and Tom tapping at
Markworth's door, told him that dinner was ready.  The latter at once
appeared outside as elaborately dressed as if he were going to attend a
Lord Mayor's banquet.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Tom, turning his companion round and gazing upon
him with eyes of wonder; "why, what on earth led you to get yourself up
so fearfully?" as he led the way to the dining-parlour--a long, low,
dismal room on the ground floor.

"I always mind little things," replied the other; "I never sacrifice
appearances:" in truth he never did.

Tom, on the way down in the train, had explained all about his sister's
infirmity--that she was "Not quite right here, you know," tapping his
forehead significantly; so Markworth was not surprised to see a tall,
pale, slim-looking girl seated at the table with her eyes bent down on
her plate.  She looked up in a sort of painful wonder when they entered,
which changed into a pleased, unmeaning smile when she recognised Tom,
and immediately again dropped her eyes.

She was dressed in a scarlet dress, made of some stuffy material.  Her
one weakness--if weakness it were--was for bright colours; she had often
told Tom that they made her "feel warm and happy."  Poor child!  So she
always wore scarlet or light-blue, or orange--the former hue was her
favourite one, and she had evidently put on that dress to-day in honour
of Tom, to show that she was glad and happy to see him.

Susan Hartshorne looked older perhaps than she really was; she had
beautiful features, but her face was without expression, save that
Markworth could perceive--for he had been intently watching her--an
occasional careworn or agonised look pass across it whenever her mother
spoke, which she did every now and then in sharp accents to the old
woman servant who waited on them at table.  The Dowager had taken no
notice of Markworth in a conversational sense, although she eyed him
frequently, except to mutter "coxcomb!" in an underbreath (which he
however distinctly heard), when he first entered the room, and once to
ask him to be helped to some dish before her.

The meal was a good one.  The old lady received a portion of her rents
"in kind," and was never at a loss for fresh poultry, fish, or
vegetable, not to speak of game; but it was soon over, for the presiding
genius evidently looked upon it in the light of a serious business which
was not to be trifled with.  When the last dish had been brought in and
removed, the dowager got up from her seat and stalked majestically out
of the room, followed silently by her daughter, who seemed to glide
rather than move.

"Rum old party, ain't she?  But she's good, though, and I like her in my
way, you know, the same as she does me," observed Tom.

"Yes," said Markworth, neither affirmatively nor in a questioning tone
of voice, but with a mixture of both inflections.  "Where, however, is
that governess you were talking about to me?"

"Oh!  Miss Kingscott!  'Pon my soul I don't know.  Let's go and hunt her
up; I have not seen her yet."

Just then they heard the melancholy notes of an organ in the distance,
as they turned into the passage.

"That's Susan," observed her brother.  "I daresay Miss Kingscott is with
her."

They followed the strains, which grew louder as they penetrated into the
back and apparently deserted quarters of the house.

"Here we are," said Tom, as he opened the door of the room from whence
the music proceeded.

A dark, haughty, ladylike girl, clad in rustling black silk, stood up
and faced the door as they entered.

"Miss Kingscott, I presume?"  Tom asked, bowing politely with his usual
frankness.

"Whew!  By jingo!" ejaculated Markworth, between his teeth.  "I'm
blessed if it isn't Clara!"

Volume 1, Chapter IV.

MISS KINGSCOTT.

"Who was Miss Kingscott?"

"Aye, that would be telling, sure," as a native of the Emerald Isle says
when you question him about anything he does not care to disclose.  But
few persons could give you any satisfactory answer to your enquiry, not
even the sharp, shrewd old dowager in whose employ she now was.  She
might tell you that Miss Kingscott was a governess, a lady's companion--
regarding her in the light of a saleable article of furniture--and that
she came to her well recommended, and that she supposed she knew what
she professed to teach, and was worth her wages, or she would not be
hired; but she personally thought her "a bold hussie," and that was all.
Knowledge has its limits, and there Mrs Hartshorne ceased.

Who was Miss Kingscott?  An easy question on the face of it, but one
requiring a very complicated answer.  Who was she?  Why, _une fille
errante_, a nobody's child, a sort of female Bedouin, whose hand was
against every man's--and woman's also--as she thought theirs to be
against her.  A woman young, beautiful, and, beyond all, clever, and not
only very clever but heartless, and as devoted to self as she was _sans
coeur_.  One who could take her part--aye, and play her part--before the
world; a fair face with a devil's heart--that is if a devil does have a
heart--and great keen basilisk eyes.  One who might be anything and
everything, for you could hardly judge her as to what _role_ would suit
her best, or rather suit her purpose best.  A child yesterday, a woman
to-day--nay, she could never have been a child.  Only a governess now
mayhap, but she might be _miladi_ to-morrow if she plays her cards well.
Pshaw! she always played her cards well, for there's a rare little
plotting head on her well-formed shoulders.  Miss Kingscott, _entendez
vous_, is a clever woman; one day she may be any character she please,
and God knows what the next.

Now to sketch her personal attributes.  In the ante-passport abolition
days an employe in the _Bureau des Passeportes_ might have put her down
as follows: _Des yeux--gris; nez--aquilin; teint--pale; cheveux--noirs;
et taille moyenne_.  In plain English she was a girl--woman that is--of
some five feet two in height, of pale--strange the French have no
distinction between pale and sallow--complexion, and with black hair and
grey eyes.  Grey eyes the Gallic officer would call them, but that would
not describe them; they were basilisk eyes, eyes that had a depth of
cunning, and treachery, and entrancement in them, which no colour term
would express.

Ten years ago Clara Joyce--she had lately adopted the name of Kingscott,
bequeathed her by a maiden aunt, who left her nothing else but her
patronymic, which she could wear or not as she pleased, for there was no
one living to question her right to the same--filled the position of
English governess at a _Pensionat des Filles_ in the _Rue des
Courcelles_ in Paris.  The school was a famous one, and is a famous one
still, so we must not be too particular about names or dates exactly.

Her previous life had been one of hardship, slavery, and neglect.  Her
parents had died when she was quite young, and she was placed at school,
not to learn merely her education like her mates, but to learn her
profession.  She was to be a governess, and her earlier years were but a
training for what she had afterwards to go through.  First, she was a
scholar _pur et simple_; next, she became a sort of general drudge, or
female usher, as she grew older; and then her aunt--when the harpy who
watched over her budding intellects grew tired of her temper, and
declared her to be sufficiently taught to be able to teach others,--told
her she could do nothing more for her, having recommended her to a
situation, where she was engaged to teach every possible and impossible
grace and accomplishment at starvation rate, and _ma tante_ washed her
hands metaphorically of her.  This aunt of hers, who was the only
relative that Clara Joyce ever remembered coming across, was by no means
the sort of person to impress anyone with the idea of domestic
affection, so houseless, homeless, and friendless, the girl had been all
her school life, and houseless, homeless, and friendless she was when
turned out into the world.

The very marrow of her nature had been frozen by her surroundings, and
the life of a governess was not one to imbue her with any better
feelings, although it increased her knowledge of human nature.  One
situation after another she filled in England until she was fairly sick
of her country, and she eagerly accepted the position offered her in the
_pensionat_ in Paris, thinking that it might throw her into a fresh
field and improve her chances of rising in the social scale.  She had
been an _intriguante_ early, her experiences of life already had
deepened her convictions that in order to succeed she must skilfully
manoeuvre the wires, looking upon her fellows as puppets; but even then
if she had had a fair chance--good heavens! how many of us are there not
crying out for a fair chance--Clara Joyce would have turned out a very
different person from the Clara Kingscott, of our story; but it was not
to be.

At the time she entered the _pensionat_ she was barely twenty years of
age--she was now consequently just thirty--a handsome girl, although
somewhat thin and pale, from the hard life and harder living she had
gone through; and she now determined more than ever to take advantage of
her looks and chances, literally to husband her resources.  To endeavour
in fact by a wealthy marriage--she had read and was told that eligible
_partis_ were much sooner picked up on the continent than in the more
calculating Britain--to rid herself for ever of her working life, and be
above the danger of want, which, poor _intriguante_, she had already
gone through, and the necessity for drudgery.

She had no romance in her nature, no absurd ideas on the subject of love
and happiness which the more benighted of us sometimes imagine to be
indissolubly connected with the married state; but, taking her as she
was, and putting such thoughts out of consideration, Clara Joyce, if she
had had the chance, as has been before suggested, might have made a most
exemplary wife for some one, and turned out, perhaps, a highly correct
and eminently respectable mother of a family.  Consider, now, she was
brought up to slave for others, to subdue her own private feelings and
wishes, to conceal her own thoughts and opinions, to enact a series of
petty deceptions and tell white lies every day.  How many are there not
of our noble army of British matrons who go through the same parts every
day?  Fancy how Joan has to wheedle old Darby, and laugh at his stale
jokes and "keep up appearances," and slave for the children, so that her
life is one long drudgery, the same as Clara's.  _Ma foi_! there are
slaves and slaves, many whose black skins are hidden by a white mask,
and whose chains clank beneath their silk or merino gowns.

French life with its manners and customs pleased our young _debutante_.
Although as a matter of course, _mademoiselles les etudiantes_ were
carefully looked after, yet she had plenty of liberty allowed her, for
she so "got round" the _directrice_ of the school that she was nearly
her own mistress; and she was not slow to employ her spare time in
seeing as much as she could of the gay city, its habits, and its
visitors.  _Madame la Directrice_ would have been shocked if she had
known that her timid little modest English teacher, "such a quiet little
thing, _pauvre enfante_!" often went to fetes by herself, _sans
chaperone_, and had been even seen in one of those monstrous places--a
theatre!  The _gouvernante_ was a shrewd, cautious little actress, and
_Madame la Directrice_ was as blind, bah! as a mole.  It was easy enough
to make up a little story of relations to be seen, and to show letters
of invitation imploring a certain demure English teacher to visit her
poor aunt, who was all alone in Paris.  And then the _pauvre enfante_
was so regular in coming back.  She was always in at the fixed hour
every evening she went out--so quiet, so punctual.  Madame never dreamt
of such things as bribing a _concierge_!

While Clara Joyce was thus busying herself in investigating human
nature, a certain young Englishman came to Paris, and in one of her
excursions he made her acquaintance.  _Monsieur l'Anglais_ was tall and
handsome and rich.  He had plenty of money, and was liberal, and was
looked upon as a _milord_ at least by those with whom he associated.
The young Englishman, however, was as shrewd and clever as the
_gouvernante_.  Need it be said that his name was one with which we are
already acquainted?  It was Allynne Markworth.

Clara Joyce was an elegant, pretty girl, and the way he made her
acquaintance was in itself an additional charm.  Markworth was attracted
by her, and courted her society.  He had then a little romance in him,
and was to a certain extent in love with her; but the girl was as
cautious as he was enamoured.  She thought that at last she had
succeeded in picking up her eligible _parti_, not only a wealthy one,
but a young and handsome one also, a regular pearl of price.  But, like
all young players, she underrated her adversary, and let him see her
hand too soon.  Markworth was not one to be caught so easily.  He was
one, also, who was marketing on his good looks, and contemplated
matrimony only through the diamond light of a fortune.  He was not going
to sacrifice himself for a pretty English governess, who had only her
graces to recommend her, and not a sou of _dot_!  He laughed at her when
she spoke of the hymeneal altar; and so poor Clara Joyce--one cannot
help pitying a clever woman who lays herself out to win and loses in the
end--had made her _coup_ and missed it just by a fluke!

She had staked her all, her _petit rouleau_ of a heart on "black," and
here _noir perd et passe le coup_, as the gentleman, who presides over a
queer looking long table divided into red and black squares as to its
surface, at Homburg, says mechanically as he rakes in the little piles
of glittering coin and quires of _billets de banque_, while the unlucky
gamesters gaze on him ruefully, and bite their nails in disgust.

The girl was furious against him.  She railed at him, she threatened
him, she vowed vengeance, but he did not care a jot.  He had not
committed himself.  He was too wary for that, and what did he care?  She
bored him, he said, and so he took himself off, and left her to her own
machinations.  But Clara was not one to be insulted or injured with
impunity.  She had vowed vengeance, and she intended to have it.  She
interested herself about Markworth.  She wrote to England about him.
She found out many little things about him which he never thought any
one would recollect, or know here in Paris, at all events.  By her
indefatigable exertions, she discovered after a year's spying, and
seeking, and enquiry, that Markworth was on the eve of marriage with a
millionairess--a besotted old widow of a Lyons manufacturer, who adored
Englishmen, especially if they were _milords_, and the young lady
communicated with the friends of the _devotee_.  Through information she
gave, the match was broken off, and Markworth learnt who had spoiled his
little game.  He could not do much, however; he could only expose her at
the Pension, and then there was a fine blow up with Madame Bonchose, the
_Directrice_.  Of course Clara had to leave--such a "little snake in the
grass," as Madame called her.  But she had had her revenge.  Not that
she was satisfied yet.  That was only the first of a series of attacks
she planned.  She intended to be Mr Allynne Markworth's evil star
through life.  It was an unlucky day for him, according to the Fates,
when he came across her orbit and discovered Clara Joyce.

After leaving the _Pensionat des Filles_ in disgrace, she next became a
_Femme de Chambre_ to a Marquise of questionable reputation, with whom
she remained some two years, travelling about and increasing her
knowledge of the world.  But she had not forgotten Markworth, not she,
and was ready to lay her hand on him again whenever she had the
opportunity.

Time passed, and she came back once more to England.  Her aunt died, so
she assumed her name; and, as Miss Kingscott now, she took a situation
once more in an English family at a cathedral town in the south.  She
knew _he_ was in London now, and she wanted to be near him.  She was so
fond of him, you see!

But she had another little game, too, to watch over.  One day Doctor
Jolly had come to visit at the house where she was employed as a
governess, and where she was about leaving, on account of the breaking
up of the household.  Doctor Jolly was impressed with her, and our
heroine, having made enquiries, thought there might be worse lots in
life than being a rich doctress: so she made eyes at him, and set her
cap coquettishly.

The doctor mentioned that Mrs Hartshorne was in want of a lady
companion for her daughter, and said he would recommend her.

Miss Kingscott was agreeable.  She had heard there was an only son--Poor
Tom!--and who knew what might turn up?  Besides, she would be near the
doctor, and consequently have him to fall back upon.

And so she came to be domesticated at The Poplars.  The old lady
squabbled with her, but she gave her as much as she got; and the
dowager, pleased with having some one worth quarrelling with, retained
her.

Susan, of course, was passive in her hands, and the son of the house she
had not yet seen, so she bided her time, and diligently cultivated old
Jolly, whose cheery "How-de-do!" to her would be heard afar, echoing
through the poplar trees when he came to visit at the house, which he
now did much oftener than before.

She was surprised, naturally, to see Markworth at the present juncture,
but not so much as he was.  He of course had not recognised her new
name, which, indeed, he had never heard of before; and would have been
as pleased--aye! more so--to have met his Satanic Majesty now than his
quondam Parisian love--the little English governess.

"Damn her!" he growled, _sotto voce_ to himself; "what the devil brings
her here to spoil my game?"

Volume 1, Chapter V.

COUNTING THE COST.

"Miss Kingscott, I presume?" said Tom, bowing politely, as the lady gave
a Parthian glance, sharp, quick, and incisive, of mingled recognition
and command-to-keep-his-own-counsel-until-further-orders at her
_soi-disant_ lover Markworth, who stood in the rear of his companion,
and who, although he was startled at her appearance, was too much the
cool man of the world to give expression aloud to his astonishment.
"Humph!" he thought unto himself, as he pulled his wits together.  "I'm
to keep dark, I suppose," and he adopted an air of well-bred
indifference.

Miss Kingscott smiled bewitchingly on the young squire.

"I am Tom Hartshorne," continued that gentleman, in a warm, friendly
manner.  "You have been very kind to my sister, and I hope we shall be
friends."

This was a pleasant little fiction, by the way, on Tom's part, as he had
no previous knowledge whatever of Miss Kingscott's kindness, or the
reverse, but the young officer was of a gallant disposition.

"Oh, indeed!" said the lady, with an air of agreeable surprise.  "And so
you are Mr Tom.  I am sure dear Susan has spoken often enough to me
about you.  I am only Miss Hartshorne's governess, you know, but I've no
doubt we will be good friends as far as our respective positions will
allow."

Humility was one of her cards, you see, but it was thrown away on Tom:
he was more shocked than pleased, as others more purse-proud might have
been, at the contrast drawn.

"This is my friend Allynne Markworth," he went on, hurriedly; "we ran
down together for a week to dissipate the London dust.  He and I are
great friends, so I hope that we'll all be jolly together."

Both inclined as if they had never seen each other before.  Mr
Markworth was remarkably deferential, with a concealed sneer on his
lips, and the governess sweeping in her condescension.

Some little commonplace expressions and conversation then passed between
the party, and you would have thought it the most delightful trio in the
world.

All the while Susan Hartshorne was aloof from the party, seated in a
corner of the half-furnished and half-lighted room, for the outside
shutters were partially closed, and it looked as if it had not been
inhabited for years--most probably a fire had not been lighted in its
old grate since the squire's death.  She was playing on an
antique-looking organ, with its zigzag rows of metal pipes which nearly
filled up one end of the apartment, a fitful sort of air which rose and
fell every now and then with a shriek like the last despairing moan of
one of the lost spirits in Dante's Inferno.  Presently she ceased
playing, and coming up to the others touched Tom on the arm.

"Come, brother," she said, in a low, soft voice, without any inflexion
in it; and, taking no notice of either the governess or Markworth, she
led him gently towards the door.  "You must see my garden," she
continued, speaking to him as if they were alone, just in the same quiet
tones.

"I'll be back presently; pray excuse me," said Tom, as he went out; and
Markworth and Miss Kingscott were left alone.

The former was the first to speak.

"So we've changed names, have we?  Clara Joyce is dead, and Miss
Kingscott reigns in her stead?"

"Mr Allynne Markworth, however, is still flourishing, I see," she
replied, in accents whose sarcasm was bitter enough and apparent enough
without glancing at her scornful flashing eyes.

"Yes, small blame to you; but I don't think you'll play any more tricks
with me again.  Well, that's long ago, and I can `forgive and forget;' I
shan't rake up the past if you won't.  You are here under an assumed
name, and--but what's it to be, Clara, peace or war between us?"

"Or you'll unmask me, eh?  You will tell all about the silly English
teacher-girl who was _eprise_ of a swindling vagabond, and the mistress
of whose school was so very correct as to discharge her without a
character, will you?  You'd like to get me turned out from here, the
house of your rich country friends, would you?" she spoke rapidly and
with intense bitterness.  "Bah!  I do not fear you, Allynne Markworth,
any more than I do that baby-faced, idiot girl who has just left the
room!"

"What's the use of going on like that, Clara?  Who said that I was going
to injure you, or that you were afraid of me?  By Jove!  I know to my
cost you're not.  Why can't you be calm and look at things reasonably?
You and I may be able to assist each other, and it's better for us to be
friends than enemies."

"I care as little for your enmity as I do for the valuable friendship
you gave me formerly.  There can be little in common between us.
Besides, even if I had the inclination, I don't see how either you can
help me, or I you."

"But you can help me very much."

"Ha!  I thought you wanted something!  No, there can be no accord
between us.  You are a man of the world, and I am, myself!"  (here she
laughed bitterly) "so let us each go our own way in peace or in war,
just as you please--it's indifferent to me."

"What nonsense!" said Markworth.  "It is not indifferent to you.  You
can assist me here in this very house, and, if you do, it will be to
your advantage."

"Of course, you don't gain anything by it?"

"If my scheme succeeds, you shall share the profits."

"You will take the lion's share, I have no doubt! and if you fail?"

"I alone will bear the loss."

"How generous you are!"

"Well, do you consent to join forces? is it settled?  Am I to tell Mrs
Hartshorne--how pleased she'll be to hear it!--the character of the
governess she has got for her daughter, or are we to form an operative
alliance!"

"Markworth, you are a villain!"

"Granted," he said, calmly.  "Do you agree?"

"I suppose I must," she replied.  "You are not to interfere with me? and
I--"

"Will assist me to the best of your ability.  That's a bargain; I
thought you would be reasonable, Clara."

"But what do you want me to do?" she asked, after a slight pause, fixing
her eyes searchingly on his face.

"It is nothing criminal.  You will not have to commit yourself in any
way.  I don't want you to do anything, in fact; I only want you to keep
in the background, and not spoil sport.  Will you do it?"

"Agreed," she answered.  "And your grand scheme is--"

"Marriage," he said, curtly.  "Well, it won't be your first attempt in
that way at all events!  Of course, there's a fortune in view, or you
would not try that speculation.  But who's the lady--not me, I presume?"
she enquired, with another of those short bitter laughs which sounded so
strangely from her lips.

"Not exactly!" he sneered; "I don't think you and I would just suit one
another.  Listen," he resumed, quietly, looking towards the door, and
drawing closer to her, and sinking his voice as he spoke, "The girl is
here--you understand?"

"I confess I do not see your drift," she said, wishing to draw him on to
a full disclosure.

"Pshaw!  Clara, you are not a fool; you understand me well enough."

"Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't."

"Your eyes are not so blind that you cannot see when it is to your own
interests.  But there's no use in beating about the bush or mincing
matters; you know this girl here."

"What!  Susan Hartshorne--that poor idiot?" she exclaimed with
well-acted amazement and horror.

"That same and no other," replied Markworth, positively blushing at
being obliged actually to confess his own villainy.  "But she's not an
idiot, she's only foolish--half-silly; and there's no harm in it," he
continued, half apologetically.

"And you want to marry her?" said the other.

"I do not _want_ to marry her; I _mean_ to marry her!" answered
Markworth, quite himself again, and with his usual coolness and _sang
froid_, "and you must help me.  Listen!  That girl has a fortune of
twenty thousand pounds.  I am so hard run for money that unless I get
some before the present month is up, I shall be ruined--that girl has
money which she does not want, and can never feel the need of--do you
follow me?--consequently I mean to marry that girl.  Nobody cares for
her here; her mother, I daresay, will be glad to get rid of her, and the
girl will suffer no loss."

"You will take care of her, I suppose!" said the governess, in her
pleasant biting way.

"Yes, I will take care of her--as good care, I daresay, as she gets
now."

"Well, and supposing I lent myself to your purposes, what am I to get--
what is to be my share in the transaction?  You don't suppose I am going
to assist you and risk my situation for nothing?"

"I tell you what, Clara, if you help me in the affair I'll give you two
hundred pounds; I can't give you more now, and I'll have hard work to
get that, for I daresay I will have to go through a long law suit before
I can get her fortune, and spend most of it, perhaps, in doing so, even
if I do succeed in marrying the girl and getting her off."

"It's little enough! but how shall I know that you will pay me?--you
have cheated me before, Markworth, and I would not trust your word for
sixpence."

"You need not if you don't like, but I'll act fairly in the matter.  I
will give you a hundred before I get the girl away, and another hundred
after I am married to her.  There, will that do?  If I don't pay you,
you can expose the whole affair; and if you go back on me you will
implicate yourself afterwards; so it serves both our purposes to act
squarely.  Do you know what the girl's age is?"

"Yes, twenty-one; I saw her age in the old family Bible, which Mrs
Hartshorne keeps up-stairs in her own room."

"Well I wish you would get me a look at it, or find out the exact date
of her birthday for me--it's important."

"I will let you know either this evening or to-morrow, better say
to-morrow."

"That will do.  Then the bargain is concluded between us.  All I want
you to do now is to help me gain the girl over, she looks tractable
enough--and help me to get her away quietly.  I'll give you the hundred
before I get her off; then as soon as I marry her you shall get the
other century.  I can't help keeping my word to you, for you see it
suits my own interest.  It's little enough I want you to do.  If all
goes well it will run hard if I don't succeed and get the fortune, and
I'll remember you afterwards.  Do you agree--is it a settled thing
between us?"

"Yes," said she, apparently reflecting a moment.  "I suppose that will
do, for if you don't pay me I shall then be able to disclose the whole
transaction."

"Precisely," he answered, complacently, "You can have me indicted for
conspiracy and what not! but there'll be no fear of that.  We will not
quarrel, Clara; what suits my book will suit yours."

Besides consulting Roger Hartshorne's will he had obtained legal advice
on his contemplated marriage before coming down to The Poplars.

"Very well, if you are sensible you will play fair in the undertaking,
and I shall be satisfied.  If you keep your word I shall assist you; at
all events _I_ am not going to marry the girl, so I shan't have anything
to complain of if I get my money."

"I will pay you, never fear! and you must keep to your bargain, and
allow me to work my own way with the girl, and assist me in the end to
get her off.  Don't forget to let me know to-morrow her right age, and
write down the date of her birth--it might be useful to me.  But about
the girl herself, she is not really mad, is she?"

"I thought you yourself told me just now she was not."

"Bother! don't be so aggravating, Clara; you ought to know the girl, and
be able to tell me about her."

"You need not alarm yourself, Mr Allynne Markworth," replied Miss
Kingscott, with a sneer; "on the contrary, allow me to congratulate you.
You have tumbled into luck's way, and appear to have fallen upon your
legs as usual.  The girl is only, as you said, half-silly, and without
being exactly an idiot can be made to do anything you and I please--that
is, by judicious management."

She was going to say something further, but at this moment Tom
re-entered the room, and, of course, the conversation was dropped.

"I was just asking Miss Kingscott if she liked croquet, and, Tom, do you
know--can you believe it, she has never heard of that flirtative and
fascinating game?" said Markworth, in his usual free and elegant manner.

"Really!" said Tom.  "Then we must enlighten her.  Markworth is the
prince of croquetters, you know, Miss Kingscott"--turning to her, and
that lady seemed pleased for the information, and transfixed poor Tom
with her beautifully expressive eyes.

"Fine girl," he said presently to Markworth, as they went out of the
room to smoke their cigars in the garden.

"Ya-a-s," he replied, spinning out his answer as if he had not quite
made up his mind on the subject; "but she's no chicken."

He was right, and he ought to know, at all events.  Miss Kingscott was
"no chicken," either in years or in strength of mind.

The evening passed quietly with Tom and his visitor, neither the
governess nor Susan being seen again, and the old dowager was especially
gracious as bed-time drew nigh.  This was fixed at an early hour--ten
o'clock.

Markworth was presently in his room, and as he undressed he moralised on
the events of the day, and the progress of his plot.

"Rum, wasn't it?" he soliloquised, "meeting Clara here; but it is a
decided pull in my favour.  The thing is regularly _en train_ now, and
must come off soon.  The girl is passable enough, and at all events I
don't care.  I must risk Tom's anger; but I don't suppose he will mind
it much--he's soft, and I can manage him as I like.  There's only the
old lady, and I hardly know how to wheedle her yet, she's so downright
and plain spoken.  By Jove! of all the characters I ever met she's one!"

In the midst of his meditations a loud authoritative rap came to the
door.

"Your light?" said a thin, sharp voice, which he instantly recognised as
Mrs Hartshorne's.

He opened the door, and nearly burst out laughing at the odd figure
which presented itself.  It was the dowager, clothed in a long white
garment, and with an immense frilled night-cap on her head, and two or
three candlesticks in one hand, and a huge bunch of keys in the other.

"What are you staring like a stuck pig at?  Give me your candlestick!
All the lights in my house go out at half-past ten o'clock every night.
That's my rule, and I won't break it for anyone, I don't care who!  Give
me your light."

Markworth handed the candlestick to the old lady, who presently
retreated down the passage with her arms outstretched, looking like the
Witch of Endor.

"No chance of a cigar here," he said to himself, as he closed the door
once more, and jumped into bed.  "She would smell it at once; I'd back
her nose against a pointer's any day.  She's a rum un; of all the
characters, by Jove!  I ever met, she is one!"

And he turned in his bed and slept the sleep of the just, in which the
wicked equally share.

Volume 1, Chapter VI.

CONCERNING CERTAIN YOUNG PERSONS.

It came to pass on the following Sunday, two days after their arrival,
that Tom and his friend went to church along with the dowager, as
befitted respectable people, and a family of state in the county.  Not
to the parish church, where the Rev. Jabez Heavieman preached his
ponderous sermons, and warned his congregation of their approaching
perdition, and the damnation of their souls, in his cus
omary evangelical style.  Oh, no! but to the
altogether-of-a-different-sort-of-a-doctrine little edifice in Hartwood
village, which specially belonged to the Sussex Dowager.  Indeed she
regarded not only the church as her own peculiar property, but also its
officiating clergyman, clerk, school children, nay, even the very future
hopes of salvation of the worshippers who frequented it.

Hartwood Church was as unpretending a building as to its style as The
Poplars.

It was a small ungainly-looking, low-roofed structure, oblong with a
stone cross at one end, and a short square tower at the other.  It was
built of rough stone, and had apparently been constructed with a
deficient supply of mortar; and a small abutment, which it had on one
side for the requirements of the porch and vestry-room, had more the
semblance of a shed attached to a farmhouse than anything else.  It was
an old church, too, probably much older than the one belonging to the
parish; and its little churchyard, encircled by rude wooden palings,
contained some monuments and tombstones, which were grey with age and as
rough as when they were first hewn from the quarry, telling how "John
Giles, aetat 95," and "Richard Chawbacon, aetat 104," both of whom
departed this life Anno Domini 16 hundred and something, were there
entombed.  All the Hartshorne family, too, from Geoffrey Hartshorne, who
founded the race and belonged to the Roundhead party in the days of
Cromwell, down to the last old squire, there rested their bones in
peace.  One peculiarity of the churchyard, however, consisted in the
great age to which its inhabitants had attained before shaking off this
mortal coil.  Ninety years was a comparatively early time for any of the
former citizens of Hartwood to dream of sleeping with his fathers; and
although you occasionally came across an inscription sacred to the
memory of a young man of seventy or thereabouts, the majority of the
departed were mostly centenarians.

The interior of the church was very different to what you might have
expected from the outside view.  The dowager, to do her justice, was not
mean in all things; and, although she would screw her tenants down and
pinch her household, she could occasionally--very occasionally it must
be confessed--be not only liberal but grand in her views, that is when
it suited her book.  She had had the church newly fitted up some short
time before, when her High Church fever and devotion to Ritualism had
first begun; and all its columns and crossbeams and rough rafters, which
could be seen within, were newly varnished and resplendent in their
graining.  The chancel, too, was a wonder of blue and gold, and she had
also presented a novel reading-desk or _lectern_, consisting of a brass
eagle with outstretched wings, which stood in the centre of the aisle,
and presented quite a grand appearance.

The pews were not what one generally calls pews at all: they were a
series of high-backed benches, armed at each end, and placed in rows
down the middle of the aisle facing the pulpit and chancel, those at the
side being arranged at right angles, so that the lateral pews faced each
other; this position must be borne in mind, as it accounts for a
trifling circumstance which led to the origin of the present chapter.

Slowly and majestically Mrs Hartshorne marched into the church, and
slowly and majestically Tom marched after her, carrying her large
prayer-book and Bible of the size originally distributed by the
Religious Tract Society--a service generally performed by the henchman
"Jarge," as he pronounced his own name--while Markworth brought up the
rear of the procession.

The dowager's pew was immediately opposite the pulpit, and, of course,
facing the side pews on the other side behind the reading-desk, the
front one of which was devoted to the use of the incumbent for the time
being and his family, in case he had any.

Up the aisle in its onward and solemn progress the procession passed,
and the dowager was soon ensconced in the extreme upper corner of the
pew, with her devotional exercises arranged before her on the
_prie-Dieu_, and her hands folded on her lap, now deprived of their
customary woollen envelopes, as prim as you please.  "Primness was no
name for it, sir," as Markworth said afterwards to Tom; "her position
was--yes, sir, statuesque, by Jove!"  The guest sat bodkin between the
two, while Tom occupied the corner--by the place where the door should
have been if there had been one--from which point he could command a
portion of the clerical pew, otherwise obscured from general
observation, at least on this side of the house, by the reading-desk.

Tom, I am sorry to say, was not particularly devout in church.  He would
keep his eyes straying from his book, and yet his attention did not
wander over the whole edifice, for he looked straight in front of him,
and none but a very curious observer could have detected his lack of
devotional zeal.  His mother did not notice it, for she was apparently
plunged heart and soul into the liturgy, although really making up her
mind as to the feasibility of raising Farmer Grigg's rent upon having
seen the daughters of that unfortunate worthy, who were esteemed the
belles of the village, come into church with new bonnets and actually
silk dresses! "when I can not afford them, the brazen hussies."  As for
Markworth he was wondering what a rum lot the Chawbacons were, and how
funny they all looked clean washed and scraped, and with their
elaborately-braided white smock-frocks on over their black trowsers,
looking as if they had donned surplices, or, as he hit upon a better
illustration, as if they had put on their night-shirts--I beg pardon,
_robes de chambre_--and come out by mistake instead of going to bed.  So
Tom had it all his own way.

Tom was observant, but it was nothing so very noticeable that attracted
his attention.  It was only a bonnet! only a little coquettish
arrangement of ribbons and lace, and very little crown to it, if any,--
only one of those tiny specimens of Madame Charles or Leroux, handiwork
which you can see any day in Leicester Square, and which though
apparently so trifling are worth far more than their weight in gold--as
poor Paterfamilias knew to his cost.  It is a dainty, demure little
article enough, but nothing in it is there to warrant this wrapt
attention on Tom's part.

Can he be considering how two ribbons can be held together in that
artful mode by a mere straw? is he a disciple of the millinery art?  No,
that would not make the gallant young officer gaze so entrancingly, and
cause the ruddy flush of excitement to colour his budding cheek!  Master
Tom is not so simple as that, although he may be a most ingenuous youth.
The bonnet has a wearer who will keep her eyes bent down as earnestly
as Tom persists in raising his from his book, and fixing them over the
way, except now and then an occasional blushing little look across, and
then once more down deep into the service again.  It is a pretty little
bonnet and has a pretty little owner, as Tom thinks.  He "considers it a
shame," but he cannot help letting his enquiring optics travel over the
way.  Young rogue! how he enjoys seeing the colour which his too-earnest
gaze calls up--the pink signal of maidenly reserve, pleasure, coyness,
consciousness.

There is no blame attached to Tom, those heavenly violet eyes have done
it all.  He could not help it even if he would.  Tom is hopelessly in
love--love at first sight--with pretty Lizzie Pringle, Mrs Hartshorne's
young incumbent's sister.  He is thoroughly in for it, as much as if he
had known her for months or years.

It is all very well for you, Monsieur Cynic, or you, Madame Artless, to
say that there is no such thing as "love at first sight."  Of course it
is foolish, but it is not impossible; Cupid, my dear sir or madam, is a
most erratic as well as _erotic_ young gentleman, and plays some strange
pranks sometimes.  A glance from a pair of bright eyes will some times,
one glance, effect a wonderful metamorphosis in even the sternest
misogynists, create a revolution, ruin an empire.  Look at history,
Monsieur Cynic, and answer me if you dare.  Nay, my dear sir, it is not
impossible, not even improbable.  A single word, one look between
sympathetic souls, often establishes that cordial affinity which years
of intercourse, and dictionaries of words, and oceans of sighs will not
create between others who have not met their mental kindred.  Philosophy
cannot argue against Cupidon; he laughs Plato and his platitudes to
scorn.  _Dixi_!  I have spoken.  Tom has fallen in love, and it was a
clear case of love at first sight, with Lizzie Pringle just the girl he
was ordained--in a non-clerical sense--to fall in love with.

She was as nice a little thing as you could conceive--slim, petite, with
dark brown hair nearly black, such heavenly violet eyes with liquid
depths, and the most ravishing little rosebud of a mouth and piquante
little nose possible for any one but a fairy to possess; she was so
winning, innocent, pretty a specimen of God's gift to man, that the fact
is Master Tom would have deserved being called an _eingebornen knarren_,
adopting the German text for fool, if he had _not_ fallen a victim
immediately to her violet eyes.  And then she was dressed so
bewitchingly--not in gaudy contrasts, or in the extreme of the _mode_,
but so neatly and in such a ladylike manner that she must have attracted
even wiser heads than his.

Of course she saw him looking at her--of course she did!  "What a rude
staring fellow he is to be sure!" she said to herself mentally, and
resolved not to look that way again but to fix her attention sternly on
the Thirty-nine Articles; still she would have just one peep
more.--"There he is again, the great rude creature!  What nice blue eyes
he has, and such a little love of a moustache! and what on earth can he
find to look at so persistently over here?"  And down would go the long
dark lashes again, and a little conscious blush would rise, and even the
tender little ears and supple white neck would be encrimsoned.  "It must
be Mister Tom," she determined, "that dark ugly man that went in with
Mistress Hartshorne could not be him; but he is a very naughty fellow to
be staring at a young lady like that."  Yet she would go on to excuse
him to herself.  "Perhaps he does not know any better, poor fellow; he's
very young" (she was just seventeen mind you), "and when I know him I
will tell him what I think of his rudeness."  And then she would wonder
to herself whether she ever would know him, and it sent a pang to her
little heart when she thought she might not, and then Master Tom would
catch her eye, and the tell-tale blush would hang out its pink flag
again, and there would be a little flush of happiness, and so _da capo_.
Just picture to yourself, Corydon, your little flirtation or _grande
passion_ with Phyllis, and you can easily fill up all the blanks and
imagine the rest.

The Reverend Herbert Pringle, B.A., Oxon, who now filled the living at
Hartwood, was a very young man; but a very great man in his own
estimation, and in that of some others also, as to family, talents, and
ritualistic attainments in the church.  He was the cousin, twice
removed, of Sir Boanerges Todhunter the great anti-taxpayer and member
of the Opposition, belonged to the extensive High Church party at
Oxford, had gained some celebrity at the Union Debating Club; and here
he was now the regular incumbent (for a term of only five years be it
known, for the Sussex Dowager liked always to have a hold on her tenants
in the matter of leases, and stretched her authority to the livings she
had in her gift) of a respectable church in a good county, where he
could do as he pleased--at an age when the majority of his compeers
would be struggling along perhaps in their first curacies.

He had reason to be proud of himself; and really, putting aside a
certain priggishness of manner and affectation of style, he was not such
a very bad fellow.  Take him out of the church, and he would have been a
regular jolly fellow, who would have got along capitally in a mess room
or in a hunting county, for he was dearly inclined to horseflesh, and
had kept his two hunters at Swain's before he had "gone in" for the High
Church party of "young Oxford."  He was a short, well-built,
straw-whiskered man of some eight and twenty, although almost boyish in
manner and in face.  He had pleased the dowager by the way in which he
had officiated as curate during the long illness of the late incumbent,
and she had determined to put him in the vacant pulpit, if only out of
opposition, as has been observed before, to the Reverend Jabez
Heavieman, whom she cordially detested.

Herbert Pringle had therefore tumbled upon a snug thing.  "His lines had
fallen in pleasant places," so here he was inducted into the living of
Hartwood.  His first step was to set up housekeeping, in order to do
which he had to bring his favourite little sister Lizzie from school to
"keep house" for him, and then he set about making further improvements
in his district, for which he had _carte blanche_ from the dowager, who,
whenever she heard of some fresh innovation, thought to herself, "I
wonder what that old hypocrite"--alluding to the Reverend Jabez--"thinks
of that now!"

The restoration of the church was effected at the new incumbent's
especial request; and the brass lectern was given by the old lady
because the young divine had munificently presented a huge painted
window, the subject of which was a large cross, erected just over the
chancel.  Then a new harmonium was got in place of a wretched old
"spinet," which had previously done duty for an organ, and a choir was
regularly established from amongst the school children that sang the
responses in church now every Sunday, its members clad in little dirty
white surplices.

He was all in favour of ceremonials, was the Reverend Herbert Pringle;
and although he perhaps "meant well" according to his judgment, he was
very affected, and "High Church" all through the service--to the intense
astonishment of the farmers and poor labourers, who used to wonder at
the new style of worship adopted in their old church, and be perplexed
with all the bowings and genuflections, and especially with the
white-surpliced choir.

To give him his due, however, he did not preach a bad sermon, and had a
very effective way of appealing to the pockets of his hearers when any
charity required his aid; but he read always in a light, jocular,
hurried manner, as if he were under an engagement to get over a certain
portion of ground in a fixed time, and he always said, or intoned,
"Awe-men" instead of Amen at the end of the prayers.

He had now been in possession of his cure for more than six months, and
consequently felt at home in it.  His improvements, too, had now been
got accustomed to; and although he was thought somewhat queer in his
notions by the heavy agriculturists around him, he was pretty well liked
on the whole.  As for his sister Lizzie, she was idolised by poor and
rich around: to tell the truth, it is my opinion that a good deal of her
brother's popularity arose from his connection with the young lady with
the violet eyes.

Tom's bad behaviour continued all through the service, and his eyes were
not still even during the eloquent discourse which the young divine
afterwards delivered, on the "Vanity of human wishes"--would that Tom
could have applied the text!  In going out of the church, he allowed his
mother and Markworth to go on in front, and hung back in the rear.  He
could see that his charmer had not yet stirred from her pew, although
nearly all the congregation were out, and he wondered what made her
linger.

Fortunately, he was not long kept in suspense.  He passed our old friend
"Jarge" in the porch, and incontinently asked that individual "who was
the young lady in the rector's pew?"

"Lor sakes!  Measter Tummus, don't you know un?  Whoi, thet's the
porsun's seestur; that be Missy Pringle, Measter Tummus!"

"Thank you, George," answered our hero; and how overjoyed he felt as he
walked along after the others.  He knew Pringle well, although he was
not aware that he had a sister; and "of course I can easily get
introduced," he thought very naturally.

The following Monday, strange to say, Tom begged Markworth to excuse him
for some little time, as he had to pay a visit, and he set off alone to
the parsonage.

Naturally he was "only going to pay a regular call;" it was only proper
that he should pay a visit to his friend Pringle, whom he had not seen
"since last year, by Jove!" and to congratulate him on his
ecclesiastical preferment.  That was all!  And so Master Tom rode up to
the parsonage on one of the old horses, which the dowager had retained
in the stables--probably on account of its not being fit for farm-work--
the very next morning after seeing Lizzie.

Pringle was glad to see him, and his sister was introduced to the "young
squire," who tried to make himself as agreeable as possible, but was
painfully embarrassed during his entire visit; and yet, before he had
gone away, Lizzie thought him "such a nice fellow," and she was "oh,
what a darling" to him.--The two young things were drinking deep
draughts of love which were intoxicating them and drawing them nearer
and nearer to each other in a sort of rose-coloured Paradise, which the
mere presence of the one conjured up to the other.  And then he had to
go, and it was pleasant to go, merely to have those taper fingers in
his, which pressure sent a thrill of sweet electricity through his
frame, while even she trembled and blushed--and then came the pang of
parting.

On the morrow, he had to come and see "Pringle's new fishing rod," and
show him his own, for it would be so jolly to fish from the lawn at the
back of the parsonage, that ran down to the little river which contained
such capital perch! and of course he could not help meeting her again,
and she wanted to see the "poor little fish that were caught!"

Bless you, my darling, there were other fish caught that morning besides
perch!  How hackneyed, and yet how novel are the windings and twistings
in the fairy land of Love's Young Dream!

It was all over with them.

Volume 1, Chapter VII.

"SOWING THE WIND."

The nominal week, which had been mentioned as the duration of
Markworth's stay at The Poplars, passed pleasantly enough for Tom at all
events.  So pleasantly indeed, that he did not keep count of the days as
they glided by, for he was continually dropping in at the parsonage "to
see Pringle," and was, long before the following Friday arrived, over
head and ears in the little pit of love which Lizzie's bright eyes had
excavated in his heart.  The dowager was still trotting about grinding
down her tenants, and laying up riches which she did not know who would
gather.  Miss Kingscott had made the best use of her opportunities in
two short interviews which she had had with the somewhat amorous doctor,
and had yet contrived to cast sheep's eyes on the young squire, whom she
had hopes of captivating; while Markworth was steadily trying to gain
the confidence of the poor half-demented girl, around whom he had
already set his snares.  All, all the members in fact of our drama, were
recklessly engaged in the vineyard of Aeolus, all were with lavish hand
sowing to the wind, never dreaming of the crop they should reap.

Susan Hartshorne's strong passion for music had early been taken
advantage of by Markworth as a means towards the end he had in view.

Music was, strange to say, for such a character, one of his fortes,
indeed it was a hobby with him; and he was not only a first-rate player
in the mere sense of mechanical dexterity, but was also a thorough
musician at heart.

The pathology of the human mind is a wonderful and intricate study, and
it is a remarkable fact, with all our spread of knowledge and science,
with the vast new fields of thought which are freshly opened every day
in the educated world, what trifling advance we have made in the
analysis of the mainspring and moving power that sets in motion the
train of thought itself!  Medical jurisprudence has only of late become
a special study, and the psychology of the human mind, one of its most
important branches--more than a mere ramification as it is often held--
is at best only a dead letter as yet to those who affect any
acquaintance with the subject.  Mental insanity is one of those topics,
like the physiology of dreams, which embraces a large area for research
and investigation; and even the best and latest of the physicians who
have made this division of medical knowledge their especial field for
enquiry, confess to what a very short distance their knowledge carries
them.  Hence, until very lately, not only was there no remedial
treatment pursued, but arbitrary incarceration, strait-waistcoats, and
chains, comprised all medical procedure towards our lunatics.  Thank
goodness, however, the broad light of science, reason, and common sense,
has tended to dispel the black ignorance displayed by our forefathers
towards our mental as well as bodily ills.  Formerly drastics and
phlebotomy, adopted alternately, were supposed to cure every disease and
ailment of the human body, but that day is past now; and, so as in
surgery and physic, a new path has been opened for the treatment of
insanity.  It is yet in its infancy; but many species of mania now
deemed hopeless will before long, probably, succumb before judicious and
efficacious ministering.

One of the most hopeless forms of insanity, according to eminent
authorities on the subject, is melancholia, but even this gives way
under proper treatment.  In cases of this kind, patients are but too
often neglected, and the cure is left, ignorantly, to work out itself,
which generally ends unsuccessfully; whereas, if the patient under
treatment were led out of themselves as it were, their affliction
ignored, and treated to just the company and influences which appear to
affect them most, I believe in nine cases out of ten of so called
settled melancholia, the unfortunate sufferer would be turned out cured
after a time.

Susan Hartshorne was suffering from this species of mental infliction.
Her case certainly was not a very extreme one; and if she had been
removed from her home at the time she first lost her wits, and been
under gentle treatment and care (as Doctor Jolly recommended) instead of
being kept at the place where all her surroundings, and especially her
mother's presence, kept the great fright she had undergone continually
before her, she would have been cured long since.  Even as it was, she
was every month gaining fresh mental stamina from the outside influences
at work upon her: now that Markworth specially devoted himself to her,
as he did, and gradually caused her budding intellect and intelligence
to expand instead of warping them, she changed more and more for the
better every day.  Markworth told Tom that he was interested in the
case--as indeed he was on more accounts than one--and if left to himself
he would cure her completely.  The mother, too, seemed interested, as
she could not but perceive the change in Susan, and thanked Markworth in
her way, by dropping some of her brusquerie, and also by avoiding her
daughter so as not to frighten her, and make her shrink back within
herself by her presence and appearance--Markworth had drawn her
attention to the point.  As for Miss Kingscott, of course in fulfilment
of her compact, she did not interfere with him at all, and allowed him
to mould her charge as he pleased, although she watched him narrowly,
and bided her time.

Allynne Markworth had now become domesticated to a certain extent at The
Poplars.  The first week flew away rapidly, even with him, he had so
much to plan, and to take such pains to get his plot _en train_; while
with Tom the time had disappeared since he knew Lizzie as one day.  Mrs
Hartshorne, too, was so glad to have her son at home, although she
seemed rather unsympathetic mother, that she tolerated Markworth at
first for his sake; and he had played his cards so well, and studied her
little weaknesses so fully, and kept himself so much out of the way,
that she at length looked upon it as a matter of course that he should
remain when Tom hinted at stopping.  "It is such nice weather,"
explained that young deceiver, "and so jolly down here, Markworth, and
the Inskips are coming down this week, that I wish you would stay on--
that is, if you are not fearfully bored with us all."  It was very
strange, was it not, that Tom had not remembered the fact of the Inskips
coming down before?

"Not at all, my dear fellow," answered Markworth; "I like this place
very much; and your mother and I get on very well now, although she did
not certainly like me at first;" he could not help laughing over the
recollection of his first meeting and introduction to the dowager, Tom
sharing in his merriment.

"Well, I am glad you will stop.  It is much better here than being in
town, and I begin to like a country life," observed Tom, thinking of
violet eyes and pastoral rusticity.

"So do I, Tom; it is far better than all the racket we could have up in
London.  I am very glad I came down, but we'll, no doubt, have lots of
gaiety when the Inskips come--not that I care about it, for I am really
interested in the case of your sister."

"Thank you, old fellow; I am sure you are very kind to take all that
trouble about Susan.  Well, it's agreed that we stay on now that we are
here, at least for a week or two.  My leave won't be up until September,
and even then I daresay I could get an extension, for the colonel's an
old trump."

"Agreed," responded Markworth; "when you are tired of me you can turn me
out, you know, but I daresay the old lady would take that trouble off
your hands."  And they both laughed again at such a possibility, which
without joking the dowager was fully capable of doing by herself.  And
so their stay at The Poplars was decided upon, and Markworth had plenty
of time in which to perfect his plans.

Susan's love of music had done much, probably, to preserve her mind from
altogether closing up within itself: and her fondness for gardening and
flowers was also beneficial to her case.

The first, Markworth had perceived at once; and he quickly set to work
upon that foundation to gain a hold upon her, and draw her out of
herself.

He used to go up-stairs to the old room where the organ was, and play
some of those wonderful fugues of Beethoven, and saddening chords from
the "Lieder ohne Worte," that would nearly make angels weep; and the
affected girl used to follow him, and draw near, as if spell-bound,
whilst he was playing, and try and imitate him after he had left his
seat before the keys.

Then he began to speak gently to her, only, perhaps, a sentence now and
then, for she was fearfully timid and frightened of strangers, but after
a time she learned to know him, and would reply.  No sort of
conversation, of course, could be carried on with her, for her intellect
was just like that of a young child's, although she had learned things
by wrote, like a parrot, and could imitate whatever she saw another do.
After a time she would voluntarily seek Markworth, and ask him to play
the organ in her pleading way; and she would sit quietly for hours to
hear him.  If he smiled on her she looked happy: if he frowned, or
raised his voice, her face would wear a tearful and frightened aspect.

The garden used to be one of her favourite resorts.  Here she would
wander up and down before Markworth came, speaking to herself, as if she
were carrying on a conversation with someone else.  Here she had flowers
of which she was passionately fond, treating them as if they were living
things, and crying over them should a leaf be broken off, or a branch
blown down.  Old George used to take especial pains over "Missy's"
garden, and she always used to go out and watch him at work, and be
continually inciting him to dig up the earth around her plants.  When
Markworth began his care, however, Susan changed a great deal in her
habits.  She at first gave up the garden, and only would go to the
organ-room; but when he brought a flute out and used to play an air of
which she was especially fond, in and about her favourite haunts in the
shrubbery, she got to come out again, ceased her imaginary dialogues,
and grew more expressive and brighter.  Insane people always seem
affected by wind instruments.

Markworth took care, however, never to play the flute when the dowager
was about the premises, as she "hated that odious tooting thing even
worse than the jackass that played it"--she said.

Miss Kingscott used to accompany Susan, and consequently the three were
very much together, for Tom was nearly always out now by himself, as he
could not get Markworth to accompany him to the Pringles; and when he
was at home he used to flirt with the governess under his mother's very
nose, and leave Susan even more in Markworth's hands.

The devil, they say, is never so black as he is painted, and, perhaps,
Markworth was not altogether so selfish or so wicked in his motives as
one might suppose.  He was really interested, deeply so, in the peculiar
case of Susan Hartshorne; and having read a great deal on insanity and
its cure, he had certain theories of his own on the subject which made
him glad of the opportunity for reducing them to practice.  If he had
not known that the poor girl was the heiress to twenty thousand pounds,
and had not circumstances so strangely placed Clara Joyce--he could not
think of her even by her new name--in the house to assist him, he would
never have dreamt of his plot, nor have attempted to carry it out after
he saw the subject, or rather object, of it; and yet, perhaps, he would
still have tried to put her in the way of recovering her reason without
a thought of recompense.  As it was, he was now working with a double
object, and the success which he met with startled him, while it
emboldened him to persevere in his design.

In a short time there was such a perceptible change in Susan that anyone
not in the habit of seeing her frequently would have noticed it at once;
and soon she was altogether different from what she had been.  Her eyes
began to have some expression in them; how different they looked from
their former dull appearance; and she would now look anyone in the face
instead of hanging down her head as she formerly did.  Dr Jolly was one
of the first to perceive the alteration, and complimented Miss Kingscott
on the change one day.

"Bless my soul, ma'am! why, nobody would recognise her again.  It's
positively wonderful.  By Gad! madam, you deserve a medal for it.  I
would not have believed such a change could have taken place unless I
had seen it myself."

Whereupon Miss Kingscott half declined the credit of the cure, but in
such a way as to make the doctor repeat his compliments.

"Bless my soul, ma'am! it's no use telling me that, I know better.  It's
wonderful, and you deserve every credit--yes, ma'am, by Gad! ma'am, you
do.  Good-bye, Miss Kingscott; I shall call soon again to see your
patient, for she is yours now, you know, ma'am.  Go-o-od-morning."

And the doctor took himself off, with an elaborate farewell adieu.  He
would have kissed his hand, it is believed, only that the old dowager
was standing looking out at the window, and might have called him an old
fool as likely as not.

Volume 1, Chapter VIII.

DAMON AND PYTHIAS.

He is not a very romantic Damon is Doctor Jolly, nor is he at the
present time to be seen under favourable circumstances, or in the most
picturesque of situations.

The fact is, Dr Jolly has got an attack of the gout, "his old friend,"
as he calls that hereditary and choleric disease; and here he is, seated
in his snug parlour--he knew how to live well and be comfortable did the
doctor--with his feet in a pail of cold water, like Patience on a
monument smiling at grief; (one can't help quoting the "noble bard.") He
was pursuing a rather violent method for reducing the inflammation in
his pedal extremities in order that he might be able to go out and pay
his usual pharmaceutical round of visits, and he was writhing and
swearing inwardly, most probably, and often aloud, from the pain of the
gout and remedy combined.

"Bless my soul!  Deb!" he exclaimed, as irascibly as his natural good
temper would allow, to his sister Deborah, our Pythias, who was in the
room along with him.  "Bless my soul!  Whew I what a twinge.  Confound
the gout, Deborah!"

"Confound it with all my heart, Richard, if it will do you any good,"
she replied, calmly, drawing the thread through the heel of a stocking
which she was darning; "but you know, Richard, it's your own fault.  You
_will_ drink that port wine, and you must take the consequences."

"Bosh, Deb; don't preach.  Why, I only drank two glasses yesterday at
lunch, and--"

"How about the bottle after dinner?"

"Well, you know, Pringle was here, and hospitality you know, Deb,
hospitality you know--"

"Hospitality won't preserve your health, Richard."

"True Deb, quite true; but I couldn't help it, and the gout's getting
better now, the pain's nearly gone.  Whew! there's another twinge.
Confound the gout, I say!"

Damon was a stout, florid, jolly-looking--there is no other word so
expressive--man of forty-five or thereabouts; Pythias--some apology is
due for her sex in carrying out the classical metaphor, although when
you know her better you will acknowledge the propriety of the allusion--
was some five years the elder, as she could look back with complacency
or otherwise on her fiftieth birthday.  She was tall and ungainly, and
her face was so set and deficient of mobility that it looked as if it
were carved out of mahogany, to which wood indeed its colour bore some
resemblance.  She evidently took after her male parent more than her
mother, and her brother was right when he called her a "chip of the old
block."

Damon was genial and hearty; Pythias cold and formal, as befitted an
austere virgin of her years; but both possessed the same kind heart, and
you would rarely find such a good-natured pair, who were so fond of each
other, and so considerate and charitable in every sense of the word, to
those around them.

Doctor Jolly was emphatically one of the jolliest country-practitioners
in the country, and had one of the best practices, and was better liked
than any other disciple of Aesculapius in the county.  For miles round
the farmers and well-to-do, as well as poorer people, knew his pleasant
weather-beaten face and hearty voice.  He "was so sociable and
pleasant-like," as the country folk would say; and his well-known portly
form--he rode about sixteen stone--and cheery "How de-do!" used to be
eagerly welcomed when he came riding round on his thorough-bred
heavy-weight hunter, with his two favourite little black and tan
terriers, "Huz, and Buz his brother," scudding at its heels.

He and his sister had lived together at Bigton for many years past.  The
doctor had succeeded his father, and he his father, as far back as lay
within the memory of "the oldest inhabitant"--the practice with its
connection having been kept in the family for nearly a century.

Bigton is a very quiet rising little watering place, situated some five
or six miles from The Poplars and Hartwood village, at the mouth of the
river, wherein Tom Hartshorne was catching his perch under the eyes of
Miss Lizzie.  Bigton is by no means an ostentatious sort of place: it
lacks self-assertion, and is content to occupy a back seat, as it were,
in the assembly of "Fashionable Resorts," when, if it would but only put
itself forward it might be bidden to "come up higher."

It is really a pleasant little place, and has all the requirements to
make it an agreeable retreat for the hot summer months, when one longs
for the seaside with that intense ardour which only a Londoner knows.
Bigton has a pier--a shabby little pier it must be confessed--a sort of
esplanade, which is as long as that of its Brobdignagian rival, where
George's Pavilion, that hideous monstrosity, used once to attract
admirers--an excellent beach of fine grey sand, and a splendid common,
all covered with gorse and furze, whereon juveniles can play "the
criquette," as Monsieur Jeune France calls our national game.  Beyond
that, it has a splendid country around for jaunts and pic-nics; and, as
for antiquities, why, is it not within a decent drive of one of the most
historic old castles in the kingdom, a castle which has its ancient old
keep still in preservation, and which was one of the few Royalist
strongholds that held out successfully against the Puritan general and
his myrmidon Roundheads?

Yet, with all these advantages, Bigton has not yet become a favourite
with the multitude who annually adjourn to the seaside, and this neglect
is not by any means complained of by the quiet few who wish to avoid the
racket of a fashionable watering place, and come down here in order to
have a quiet enjoyable holiday.  The fact is, Bigton reckons for its
standing more upon the support of its residents than on stray birds of
passage; and, of these, it has a larger proportion perhaps than some of
its better known and more highly cracked-up rivals.  It has nice trim
rows of terraces facing the sea, and plenty of comfortable detached
houses which are generally let to people who stay for mouths, and even a
year or two, instead of hiring for merely a six week's occupation.
Bigton is therefore busy all the year round, instead of having a season
of three months, and being a necropolis for the rest of the year:
indeed, the annual visitors who come down in summer do not alter the
look of the place much: it is too respectable a town to bother itself
about casual tourists or London holiday-makers.  In the summer the
landholders and great people of the surrounding country come from their
inland homes, and take lodgings for the bathing: so Bigton is very
exclusive and keeps entirely to its own set.

Among not only the residents--returning to our story--but also the
regular visitors, Doctor Jolly was a general favourite, and the doctor
supreme of the locality; and he was as good a surgeon and physician as
he was a favourite.  He was not the man to nurse a hypochondriacal
patient by giving him various bottles of medicine containing coloured
water, or pills "as before," consisting of harmless dough.  No, he would
tell them to get out and take plenty of exercise and mayhap dip in the
sea, and above all to get good food and plenty of it.  No gruel and
arrowroot from him.  "All damned slops and dishwater," he would say; but
a mutton chop three times a day, and a glass or two of really good port
wine.  "Stop, I'll send you over some of my own, and you may bet your
boots that that's prime stuff," he would offer with a knowing wink of
his eye, riding off to escape a denial.

He was a jolly, good-natured man, and such a really good minister to the
ills of human nature, that he had it all his own way at Bigton, and
almost throughout the entire county.  His practice was so large, that he
had to ride miles every day to do justice to his patients; and yet he
would hire no assistant, except a mild, gentlemanly pupil, whom he kept
to do the home business in his surgery.

"Catch me!" he would say, "having a fellow to cut me out with all the
pretty girls and old ladies!  No, sir, as long as I can cross a horse,
no other sawbones shall rule here but myself.  I'm hanged if they shall,
sir?"

One or two other medical men had tried rashly to set up to him in
opposition at Bigton; but never getting anyone who was ill to patronise
them, they had to give up at length in disgust.  One, indeed, still hung
on, as he had bought a house and could not sell it; but he had to take
to the coal trade to support his family.  Not that Doctor Jolly grudged
him a living, for no matter what he said, he would cheerfully have lent
his brother practitioner a helping hand; but then no one would let
anyone else visit them in Bigton but our Damon, so the poor--
Othello's-occupation's-gone-M.D. had to buy and sell chaldrons of the
best Wallsend and Seaborne, and fed his family in that way.

Dr Jolly's house was one of the best and nicest kept mansions in
Bigton, for the doctor loved to live well, as he could afford it; and
his sister Deborah was one of the most valuable housewives that could be
cited.  It was a long, low, old-fashioned house, with a splendid garden
and paddock adjoining, for the doctor's horses, of which he kept three--
he used to follow the harriers in the time of the old squire, Roger
Hartshorne--but he was getting too heavy for that now, besides having
too much to do.  Now he was devoted to poultry and pet deer, pet hares,
pet dogs, pet animals of all kinds, even cats, and had all his
out-houses, yards, and paddocks filled with his various adopted
nurslings.

It was a wonder, considering his disposition, that he had remained a
bachelor so long; but then he had his sister Deborah to take care of
him, and as he would say, "Bless my soul, man, what more do I want?"
His old friends who had known him for years would hint at a
disappointment in early life; but I don't think care sat heavily on the
doctor's brow, as it does on some of us, for he lived well, and enjoyed
life as he found it, and did not seem inclined to give up his present
life for all the unknown sea of troubles into which matrimony might
plunge him.  Perhaps he saw too much and too many of the gentler sex to
hazard a selection, but the probable reason was that he was too
comfortable as he was.  He and his sister pulled along capitally as
Damon and Pythias, as they had in fact done all their lives; both were
freely outspoken to each other; and if Deborah had the pre-eminence
within, the doctor was master out of doors.

The doctor relished good cheer, and gave capital dinner parties, as he
was the most hospitable man in the county.  He had had one the evening
before, and hence his slight attack of the gout; its invariable
consequence this morning.  He said he had inherited the aristocratic
infliction from his sire, along with a good digestion and his practice;
but perhaps Pythias, or Deborah, was not far wrong in ascribing it to
his love of good living and partiality for port.  The gout made him
swear a little, but he did not really mean anything by it: if all our
oaths were as harmless as his, the recording angel who watches over that
special failing of human nature would have a sinecure.

"Confound the gout, Deb!" he exclaimed, as that sharp twinge caught him
in his left foot, and made him writhe with ill-concealed agony.
"Confound the gout!  I'll drink no more of that infernal port! that is,"
he added, shortly afterwards, as the pain subsided, "not beyond a glass
or two at lunch; and perhaps a bottle after dinner, eh, Deb?  Ho! ho!
ho!"  And he laughed his jolly cheery laugh, as he took his feet out of
the tub of water, in which they had been hitherto reposing; and, drawing
on his boots with difficulty, prepared himself for setting out on his
morning round of visits.

"Better now, Richard?" enquired Pythias, as he stood up fully
caparisoned in the matter of his lower extremities.

"Yes, Deb, all right now; the plaguey thing has gone away for the
present, and won't trouble me again till next time.  My `off stepper' is
somewhat sore still, but it'll be as sound as sixpence by the time I get
back."

"Are you going far, Richard?"

"Well, I think I'll pay a call at the dowager's, and all about Hartwood;
and as I shan't be back in time for lunch, I'll drop in and feed at
Pringle's--uncommon pretty little girl his sister is.  Bless my soul!
Deb, she's enough to make one think of marrying, although I suspect that
sly dog Tom Hartshorne's after her--we old fellows have got no chance."

"Take care, Richard.  She would probably jump to have you.  I know what
girls are!  But how is that poor girl Susan Hartshorne getting on?"

"Really, Deb, do you know I think she has been looking much brighter
lately.  I have observed this within the last week or so--there is a
decided change for the better.  She has lost nearly all that frightened
look she used to have; and I would not be surprised if she eventually
recovered her mind.  It's a sad pity, Deb, bless my soul! a sad pity!
She was a nice child--confound that old woman! and she's now such an
interesting-looking girl--a sad pity that old hag frightened her senses
away."

"What do you think is the reason of this change in her?" asked Deborah.

"Well, I can hardly tell, Deb; you see, Tom has been down, and there's
that friend of his, too--don't like him--and she has seen more company
than usual--all these things may have something to do with it; but I
think that the improvement is all due to that new governess, Miss
Kingscott--by Jove! she is a fine girl if you like, a--"

"Take care, Richard, take care!" she said, as Doctor Jolly went out of
the room, after poking about vainly in every direction for his gloves.

He mounted his horse which the groom held at the door, and as he rode
away, he murmured to himself, "Dooced fine girl!  I wouldn't be
surprised if the artful jade caught me after all!"  And off he cantered
down the street, bowing affably, and waving his hand with a cordial
"How-de-do!" to everyone he met, for he knew everybody, on his way to
Hartwood.

Volume 1, Chapter IX.

AN OLD CAMPAIGNER.

The London season had ended: so Lady Inskip, having packed up her
baggage waggons, gathered her _impedimenta_ around her, and mustered her
forces, consisting of her two grown-up daughters, her only son, a young
imp of twelve summers; her maid, a knowing abigail; and lastly, though
by no means least, herself--put her regiment in marching order; and
sallied down with metaphorical bands playing and colours flying to the
quiet little watering place of Bigton, to prosecute a sort of
son-in-law-hunting war during the summer solstice.

For be it known, Lady Inskip was a campaigner--one, too, who had fought
many a fray on many a field, from the era of her first battle when she
had, with an equally adept old mother for an ally, striven for a husband
and a title, and an establishment in life, and had won the three
combined in the person of her departed spouse, the late Sir John O'Gaunt
Inskip, Bart.--down to her last little skirmish in Mayfair, where she
had attempted to float off her two remaining daughters--her eldest she
had gotten rid of handsomely some time before.  She had then and there
been routed disastrously, before she could draw up her forces for a
regular pitched battle; but it was not her fault, or from lack of
perseverance or want of judgment on her part, as she had been unable to
fix upon any special young or old gentleman--it did not matter which--
whom she deemed or doomed as eligible for her matrimonial projects.

She was not daunted, however: not she!  She was too old and experienced
a campaigner for that, and had regularly changed her front mapped out
her _carte du pays_, and planned out an entirely new disposition of her
forces before coming down to Bigton.  She contemplated a bold stroke,
somewhat like Napoleon's procedure at Austerlitz, or, better still, his
invasion of Egypt; and had determined to follow the tactics of other
experienced commanders, and "carry the war into Africa."

It was not a very colossal adversary against whom she schemed and
plotted, and collected such munitions of war--it was only Tom
Hartshorne--poor Tom, whom she had met in London, and who seemed
inclined for a mild flirtation with her pensive Laura, and lively, not
to say "larky," Carry--especially at the last Woolwich Artillery ball,
when his attentions had been "really quite marked!"  That unfortunate
young officer having sauntered through a quadrille with Laura, and told
the exuberant Carry, after a waltz, that she was "a stunner to go."  He
certainly, however, criminated himself to some extent, by calling the
next day at their house in town, and playing pretty to, and chaffing
both girls.

Mr Thomas Hartshorne she had found out--strange what wonderful
perspicacity and knowledge of the means, standing, and expectations of
wooers and would-be sons-in-law, mothers with marriageable daughters
have!--was in a very good position, and was the presumptive heir to the
present proprietress of The Poplars.

She had made up her mind, therefore, to secure him at all hazards for
one of her "dear, darling, girls."  He was, consequently, the object of
her present visit to Bigton.  Tom was the game marked down _in esse_,
although goodness knows, with the hopeful ground of a watering place to
work upon, and its heterogeneous crowds of visitors, and its romantic
opportunities, who and how many, without agitating Mormonism, might not
be the victims _in posse_!

Lady Inskip was the widow of a Scotch baronet, who had married her for
her good looks rather than her fortune--unlike the generality of his
countrymen--for a very limited trousseau was all she brought him; and
even now, some twenty years after her marriage, she was still what
Doctor Jolly would, and did, call "a fine figure of a woman, sir, by
Gad!"

Her two daughters were very nice, presentable girls; Laura a sort of
languid beauty, and Carry "gushing," and a trifle inclined to be fast.
The boy, Mortimer, was an obstinate, headstrong, young cub, just of that
age when boys are peculiarly obnoxious and always in the way and
disagreeable.  He was, naturally enough, the spoilt pet of his mother,
and for a young baronet had all the graces and follies of the position
which he would be required to fill.  But we need not go on to
particularise all the points of Lady Inskip's _menage_.

Suffice it to say, that she came down to Bigton very shortly after Tom
had left town.  You may wager a trifle, if you are inclined to woo
Fortune in that way, that she was previously acquainted with his
destination before she moved her Lares and Penates; and now that she was
here, you may depend that she would leave no stone unturned to secure
her object.

She took a pleasant little cottage on the Esplanade, about half a mile
or so from the town, for a year, and had it fitted up elegantly and
decorated so as to make it a perfect bijou of a place.  If you watch a
spider, you will always observe what a magnificent web he spins before
he hunts about or lays in wait for his prey; see what a gorgeous
centre-piece he has to his prismatic castle!  Depend upon it that the
spider is certain that his parlour is well-furnished before he invites
the fly to "walk in," as is detailed in the lines of the harrowing
ballad sacred to childhood.

Well, Lady Inskip had a nice little house, nicely furnished, with a nice
little garden all mignionette and passion flowers, and a nice little
croquet lawn, where nice little games of flirtation could be played by
suitable nice young gentlemen with her nice dear darling girls.  In fact
it was all "nice"--that adjective so dear to the heart of the gentler
sex, and so lavishly used by them--and so the old campaigner having
entrenched herself within these fortifications, continuing our military
descriptive, prepared to battle for and on behalf her of two daughters
Laura and Caroline, as aforesaid.

She had not been in the place two days, before she knew "all about
everybody."  How Captain Curry Cucumber, who lived at the big red brick
house, "just as you passed the common, you know," was an old returned
East India officer (and who was seventy years old if he was a day), was
immensely rich, and had come home with a lakh of rupees to marry and
settle down.  He had an "awful temper in course," as his landlady said,
and swore dreadful at his "pore black man," but then he had a sweet
yellow face, and his widow would be left very comfortably off.  Then she
learnt too of our old friend the doctor, how he was a gay young
bachelor; and of course she found out all about Mrs Hartshorne, and her
place and her ways and her oddities.  She learnt also of the Revd.
Herbert Pringle, and his little church at Hartwood: and as he was a
relative of the great Sir Boanerges Todhunter, and was a young man with
a good living, and probably had property of his own, she made up her
mind to patronise him, especially as he was the protege of the dowager.

Accordingly she and her tender daughters and the young Sir Mortimer
attended divine service at Hartwood the first Sunday of her stay at
Bigton, and she was so wonderfully pleased with the performances of the
ritualistic rector--he was "so like that dear Aminadab, at St.
Barnabas'," that she made up her mind to go there always in future, and
not to patronise the Reverend Jabez, of Bigton.

She met Tom after church.  She was "delighted to see him," and made him
promise to call next day and bring the Reverend Herbert Pringle, on his
mentioning that he was a great friend and a nice fellow.  The dowager
having bundled out of church immediately the service was over, Lady
Inskip had then had no opportunity to make her acquaintance, although
she assured Tom she was "longing to know her," but as she was an old
lady, she, Lady Inskip, said she would do herself the honour of paying a
visit at The Poplars very shortly.

She was _so_ glad to see Mr Markworth, too, "quite an unexpected
pleasure to see him down here," when she was really mortally afraid of
that worthy, who she could readily perceive, with a woman's mental
keenness of vision, had taken her measure and thoroughly understood her
plans and tactics.  Altogether Lady Inskip was delighted with
everything, as, fortunately for her peace of mind, she had not seen the
pretty Lizzie Pringle, and was unaware of Tom's present infatuation
about that young lady, which anyone "with half an eye," except those
personally concerned, would have at once recognised.

She drove back to Bigton, in a very pleasant frame of mind, at peace
with her daughters, herself and everything around her; and her smart
little equipage--a park phaeton and pair of ponies--caused much
excitement amongst the rustics along the road.

Master Tom, not being averse to renewing his flirtation with Miss Carry
and her sister, notwithstanding his being enthralled by Lizzie,
determined to pay a call at the Inskip's little cottage, on the Bigton
esplanade, a morning or two after, and proposed to Markworth that he
should accompany himself and Pringle.

"No, thanks," replied that gentleman, "none of my lady schemer for me!
Look out for her, Tom!  She's an awful old pythoness, and would wheedle
the devil himself into marrying one of her plain daughters.  Why, she
nearly caught Harrowby `of yours' the other day, and I believe she came
down here after you."

"Never fear, Markworth," answered Tom, as he went off to call on
Pringle, in order to get him to go, and also perhaps to have a glimpse
of Lizzie, to act as a sort of charm against witchery from the Inskip
girls.  "Never fear, my boy!  I saw her game in London, and shan't be
caught.  But they are jolly girls, that little Carry is up to chaff no
end; and they will make this place gayer by coming down.  There'll be
nothing but pic-nics and croquet presently, if I know them aright," and
he walked off to get his horse, which George was grooming to make it
look respectable.

Pringle was a very dapper little man.  A perfect little exquisite, and
no one was so particular as to the parting of his hair, the curl of his
whiskers, and the general "nattiness" of his turn out, as himself.  He
had seen the fair Laura and Caroline in church, and their presence had
lent a perceptible tone to the pronunciation of his "awe-men," and the
delivery of his sermon.  He saw they were well dressed, but when he
learnt that Tom knew them, and beyond that, that they were the daughters
of a baronet, and their mother a "lady in her own right," he was most
anxious to make their acquaintance.  Lizzie told him laughingly not to
lose his heart over the belles, and suggested that he would be quite
irresistible when she saw him so particular about the various points of
his toilet this morning; but he thought it no laughing matter, I can
assure you.  He had all the elaborate priggishness of a young man fresh
from college, and was more bent on making an impression than on
pleasing.  To tell the truth he had mixed very little in the world, and
the feeling of being a man and occupying a responsible position was
quite a novel one to him.

He was ready long before the hour Tom had fixed for calling for him on
his way to Bigton, and was walking up and down the verandah in front of
the parsonage, waiting impatiently, and flicking the flies off his pony,
which stood ready saddled for the start.

"By Jove!" he said (he had not been able to break himself of that
expression, more suited to the laity, which he had picked up at Oxford),
"I wish he would come: we shall be too late!" and at that moment Tom
rode in at the gate.  After passing a little time speaking to Lizzie,
who told him, too, not to "lose his heart," to which little shot Tom
replied in a low voice--they had become intimate now, you see--that he
had lost his already, which caused Miss Violet Eyes to blush, of course
from sorrow; they at length rode off, and the promised visit was made to
Lady Inskip, at Laburnum Cottage.

Poor Pringle was dreadfully embarrassed during the time he was under the
eyes of the three ladies, and the "young imp" Mortimer caused him to
lose what little self-possession he had, by making some observation on
the parting of his back hair, asking him what was the perfume on his
"rag," alluding to his pocket-handkerchief, and finally by playfully
pulling away his chair as he was going to sit down.  He blushed all the
time of his stay, although Lady Inskip was very affable to him, and the
girls expressed the most intense admiration for his little church and
all its belongings.  The only easy moment he had when he could speak
clearly was when "the darling girls," as their mother called them, came
out on the lawn to admire his dapple pony, and called it "a little
duck:" then Pringle had longed in his inmost heart to be that pony, for
he was enraptured with the langour and beauty of Laura.  Carry
frightened him with her chaffy tongue, and by the way she went on with
Tom, who seemed quite "at home," as he generally made himself at most
places.

The young men left after a lengthy stay, and the ladies very naturally,
canvassed them on their departure.

"What a nice fellow--regularly jolly fellow Tom Hartshorne is!" said
Miss Caroline, "but the parson's a spoon!"

"My dear Carry!" interposed Lady Inskip, "I do really wish you would not
talk in those horrid slang terms!  It is quite shocking!  Mr Hartshorne
is a very nice gentleman, of course, and I think Mr Pringle the same
thing.  He's very quiet naturally; you cannot expect a clergyman,
Caroline, to be as gay and `jolly,' as you call it, as a young officer.
I'm surprised at you, miss."

"He preaches delightfully!" observed the beauty languidly, "and I think
him very nice; he was only bashful!"

"I suppose at the sight of you, Laura?" said the pert Miss Carry.  "But
he has one good point about him, and that is his pony.  I wonder if it
is up to my weight?" a very natural enquiry, as she probably weighed
considerably heavier than the owner of the animal, and was what an
outspoken individual would have termed "a bouncer."

"I'm glad he's coming again; we shall have some croquet," continued the
elder sister.  "Yes, my dears," said the mother.  "We must make him at
home; he's a very nice young man."  She had already looked upon the
Oxonian as "eligible," and was bent on making him a captive of her bow
and spear.

"Well, for my part, I think him a donkey, and do not care whether he
comes or not."

"Caroline!  Caroline!  Is this the return you make me for all I have
done for you, and planned and schemed on my bended knees! ungrateful
girl!" said Lady Inskip plaintively, as if she was going to cry.

"Oh, don't go on, ma, any more.  We know all that!  Laura can have the
white-choker if she likes: I will cultivate Tom."

"Bless you my child!" said the mother, "you are rash and impetuous, but
you have a good heart."

Volume 1, Chapter X.

A CALL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Doctor Jolly trotted along the road from Bigton to Hartwood, with Huz
and Buz his brother, cantering at his horse's heels, and making short
predatory excursions every now and then into neighbouring gardens and
farmyards on the way, to the apoplectic scaring and bewilderment of
sundry unhappy fowls and ducks.  In about half an hour, as he always
rode at a sharp pace, he had reached The Poplars to make his weekly
visit.

"How-de-do!" he shouted to Tom, when he was half a mile off, seeing him
at the gate; and presently the stout doctor was dismounting from his
quadruped with extreme difficulty, owing to the still painful gout, and
limping up the steps of the dowager's mansion.

"So you are here again, are you?" observed that lady with her customary
acrimony, from the open window of the dining-room, which faced the
entrance gate.  "Why, you're always running here, now; you'd better come
and live here at once; it would, at all events, save your gouty legs
some exertion."

"Bless my soul!  Mrs Hartshorne, why you are looking as blooming as a
daisy.  I wish I could wear like you, madam; why you must be sixty, if
you are a day!"

"I'll outlast you at all events, Mister Jolly," said the old lady, as
our friend the doctor, who hated being called "Mister" instead of by his
medical title, walked into the house.

"And how's Susan?" he asked, as he entered the room.

"There she is with her governess, and you can see for yourself,"
snappishly returned the dowager, walking out, and leaving the doctor
with Miss Kingscott and her charge.

Susan looked greatly improved, and timidly offered her hand as he went
up to her in his hearty way.

"And how are we to-day?" he said kindly.

She, to his great astonishment, not only looked him in the face, but
answered him, which she had seldom or ever done before.

"Very well, I thank you," she said, quietly.

It was not much, certainly; not more, perhaps, than a well-trained
parrot might have said, but, then, it was a decided improvement to her
former apathy.  She immediately afterwards, however, left the room, as
she heard Markworth playing on the organ up-stairs; and Miss Kingscott
and the doctor were alone.

"By Gad, madam!" exclaimed the doctor, as soon as she had gone--he did
not mean to give Miss Kingscott "brevet rank," but he always addressed
every woman, young or old, as "Madam."

"By Gad, madam! it's positively wonderful.  What an improvement;
couldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it!  But where has she gone
to now--who's that thrumming the old organ?"

"That must be Mr Markworth, I believe," she answered, "and you must
compliment him on Susan's improvement: she's always with him, and he
seems quite devoted to her.  It is really quite charming to see them
together."

Who would have dreamt of their joint conspiracy from the way she spoke?

"Really?" enquired our Aesculapius.  "To tell you the truth, madam, I
don't like that fellow at all.  I'm never deceived in a face; and, if I
do not make a mistake, madam, that man is a scoundrel as certain as God
made little apples."

I do not know why it was, but the doctor always seemed desirous of
connecting the name of the deity with miniature specimens of the
forbidden fruit whenever he wanted to qualify a strong assertion.

"Dear me, doctor!" interposed the lady, "your language is very strong."

"Not a bit of it, madam; not a bit more than he deserves.  By Gad,
madam! he must have some object to gain; he would not take all that
trouble for nothing.  I know human nature, madam, and he is either going
to marry the old lady, or something else.  Ho! ho! ho! what a fine pair
they would make!"

And the doctor sniggered over his own joke, and laughed so contagiously
that Miss Kingscott could not but follow suit.

The doctor presently, however, returned to business.  He had been
thinking of this young lady all the way over from Bigton.  He had
asserted to himself over and over again that she was "a dooced fine
girl," as if some one else had been disputing the point with him; and
now that he was in her presence she not only looked finer and more
beautiful than ever, but he had one of the best opportunities for
speaking to her alone he had ever had before, or could have wished for.

She looked very refined and ladylike as she stood there in the shaded
dining-room, clad in a light morning dress.  Her regular features and
pale complexion gave an air of dignified beauty to her face which her
height and figure well carried out.  Altogether she was very charming,
and looked so loveable on the present occasion, in appearance, that she
would have captivated a man even less in love than the doctor, and led
him on to the inevitable "pop!"

Aesculapius was a long time beating about the bush.  Although he was
generally free and easy in his speech, the doctor was now tongue-tied
when he most wanted to speak, and his already ruddy face was more
"peonified" than ever--if I may be allowed to coin that word--while his
heart thumped against his ribs "like a pestle against the sides of a
pill mortar," as he expressed it professionally.

"Ha! hum! a fine morning, madam--a fine morning!  Don't you think so?"

Miss Kingscott assented, of course.  She saw his embarrassment, and
wished to lead him on to an _eclaircissement_; but she could scarcely
refrain herself from smiling at the ludicrous endeavours of the doctor
to hide his nervousness, which was unmistakeably increasing.

"Yes, madam, it's a fine day; but hot, madam.  Don't you think so?"

"Certainly, doctor, I think it is warm," answered the lady,
confirmatively.

And, indeed, any one looking into his face could not but agree with the
remark.

"Warm, madam, is no term for it, it is confoundedly hot!  But I beg your
pardon, madam, were you ever in love?" he blurted out abruptly, after a
great effort, bolting into his subject, as it were.

"Good gracious me, doctor?" said Miss Kingscott, with a charmingly acted
surprise, and blushing embarrassment.  "What a strange question for you
to ask!"

"Not at all, madam--not at all.  I said the weather was hot.  Don't you
see, madam? and it is hot.  I asked you about love--and love is hot.
There's my proposition, you see the connection between the two?"

And the doctor's face glowed with perspiration.

"I do not follow your argument," said the governess, calmly.  "You seem
to arrive very rapidly at your deductions; but what has the result to do
with me?" she asked, with ingenuous innocence.

"A good deal, madam--a good deal.  How fearfully warm it is!  You see,
madam, before you an old man."

"Not so very old, doctor, I'm sure," she interrupted, looking
bewitchingly into his perspiring countenance.

"Well, well," he continued, in a gratified tone, "perhaps not exactly an
old man; but I'm not a young one.  Still, if it wasn't for the
confounded gout, I daresay I should be as young and skittish as the best
of them."

"Oh!  I'm so sorry for that horrid gout--and I do pity you so when I see
you in pain," condoled Miss Kingscott, thinking of the doctor being
"skittish," as if she had heard of an elephant dancing a hornpipe.

"Are you really--do you really?" he asked eagerly, a flush of joy
overspreading his already flushed and perspiring face.  "Well, I tell
you what, madam, I'm in love."

And the doctor heaved a portentous and languishing sigh, which quivered
through his colossal frame which shook like a mould of jelly.

"Are you really, doctor?  I am sure I hope the young lady is nice, for
your sake; and I hope she will make you a good wife," she replied,
ignoring the doctor's nervousness until she got him to the point.

"You are very kind, madam, very kind; but you are always kind--you can't
help it, for it is in your nature.  Infernally hot, is it not, madam?"

"Very warm," said the lady, encouragingly.

"Bless my soul! madam, so it is.  But, madam, Miss Kingscott that is--"

"Well?" she encouraged him, her eyes sparkling with ill-concealed fun at
the doctor's predicament.

"You sly little creature!  Why, you are laughing at me all the time!"

"Oh! dear no; but who's the young lady, doctor?  You have not told me
her name yet, and I'm dying to know."

"You wicked little baggage! you know all the time."

"How can I? when you have not yet told me."

"By Gad! women are the most provoking creatures under the sun."

"Not _all_, doctor," she pleaded, demurely, tapping the carpet
impatiently with her foot.

"Well, perhaps not all; but dooced near it.  I am an old fool!  Here am
I bungling about and can't say what I mean!"

"Can I help you, doctor?"

"I wish you would, and tell me what to say to you, young baggage!"

"Do be calm, doctor.  Suppose I'm the old lady now, and that you were
talking to me--I am not so very young you know, either."

And she looked so demurely grave and elderly, that Aesculapius was
charmed anew.

"Well, I must say it.  It's better to have it out, like a bad tooth;
there's no good in keeping it in my head.  I'm an old fool I know,
madam; but I am really in earnest now, and I want you to listen
seriously to me for a moment.  The fact is, madam, Miss Kingscott that
is--how fearfully warm it is!"

At that moment, just when he was trembling on the verge of his
disclosure, the shrill tones of Mrs Hartshorne's voice was heard
without.

"George!  George!" she cried to the faithful servitor (she pronounced
his name indeed _Jodge_!  _Jodge_! speaking in her usual rapid manner,
with quick utterance).  "Who's that at the gate?  Don't you let anybody
in, man!"

And our friends inside could hear her feet scrunching the gravel as she
walked towards the gate in order to see who it was; so they went to the
window also to look on, and the interesting conversation I have just
detailed, was abruptly broken off at the indefinite point it had
reached.

"Plaise, marm," replied the rustic voice of George, "it's a leddy, marm,
and she says as how she's coomed to say un."

"I don't know any ladies, and don't want to know any, either; I wonder
who is the flaunting creature?  Get back to your work, you grinning
baboon!  I'll speak to the woman myself."

At the gate, seated in her pony carriage, and accompanied by her two
daughters, all dressed out and equipped in their state-costume for the
payment of calls, was Lady Inskip.  She looked astounded--for she had
heard every word of the dialogue between the dowager and her henchman;
and not only she had heard it, but her daughters also; and the grinning
page, covered with sugar-loaf buttons, who sat perched on a mushroom
sort of seat that sprang out as a sort of excrescence from behind the
equipage.  The old campaigner was surprised and astounded: but she tried
to appear cool and collected as befitted her dignity: the languid Laura
was as apathetic as ever; and the fast Carry seemed inclined to follow
the Buttons example and laugh aloud.

The dowager, in another moment, was on the scene of operations, and
addressed the campaigner who sat in her pony carriage, with her forces
drawn up in _echelon_ behind the gate.

"Who are you, woman; and what do you want?"

"My name is Lady Inskip," answered the veteran, with bridling dignity.
"I presume I have the honour of addressing Mistress Hartshorne?"

"I don't know you--that's my name; what do you want, woman?  My time is
valuable, and I can't stop cackling with you all day."

"You might be a little more polite, madam," said Lady Inskip, with
freezing politeness and sarcasm.  "I came with my daughters just to pay
a customary call of civility, and I expected, at all events, to be
treated like a lady, by a lady, whom I expected to meet here; but I now
find out I am mistaken."

"Is that all?  Then you and your daughters can just take yourselves off,
with all your flauntings and finery!  I don't want any grand people
coming about me!  _I_ never go to see anybody, and I don't want anybody
to come and see me.  Quite a pity, isn't it, after you had bedizened
yourself so finely too?"

"Laura!" exclaimed Lady Inskip, ignoring the presence of the dowager, "I
think we had better drive home, and leave this vulgar woman to herself.
Perhaps," she said, turning to the dowager as she whirled the ponies
round, "you will have the civility to give that letter to your son, it
contains an invitation to a pic-nic.  I suppose we need not hope for the
pleasure of your sweet company?"

"I don't want any of your pic-nics, or jakanapes, or your impudence!"
said the downright old woman, raising her shrill voice even more
piercingly.  "I will give the letter to my son.  If he cares about
running after you, _I_ don't.  Go!  You said you were going home, and
the sooner you go the better, for you don't come in here, my lady!"
Then, considering the engagement terminated, she slammed-to the gate
menacingly, and turned on her way back to the house, leaving the
discomfitted campaigner to retreat at her leisure.

Our friends, the doctor and the governess, had heard the whole of the
interview, and much amused they were over it, too, I promise you; but it
stopped the coming proposal.  Miss Kingscott was rather pleased at this,
for she thought there was still some hope of gaining over Master Tom,
the young squire, and she did not wish either to finally accept or
reject the doctor until she knew which was the best card to play.

He, on his way home, was also pleased that he had not fully committed
himself.

"It would never have done for Deb," he considered; "she would never have
liked it.  At all events, I was just stopped in time, though, and a miss
is as good as a mile.  But I am a damned old fool!  That's a fact."

He kept to his promise with Pythias, did Damon, and drank a bottle of
port to himself that day after dinner, shaking his head as he muttered
to himself every now and then, while, with half-cocked eye, he held up
his glass to the light--

"It's a lucky escape; but I'm a confounded old fool!"

Twice he bethought him of telling Deborah all about it; but she looked
so comfortable and composed, as she sat there darning his socks, that he
thought it would be a pity to disturb and agitate her.  So his dreams,
when he retired to rest, were very wild indeed, and he passed altogether
a sleepless night.--So much for the doctor's love-making.

Volume 1, Chapter XI.

DES BEAUX YEUX.

No words can paint the mingled rage and mortification that filled the
heart of Lady Inskip as she drove away from The Poplars, after her
interview with the dowager.

"The Jezabel!" she said, in a voice of anger, "I've never been so
scandalously treated in my life.  You need not laugh, miss!" she fired
out on Carry, who was exploding in fits of laughter at the humorous
nature of the rencontre.  "You need not laugh, miss; it is no laughing
matter to see your mother insulted!  But what can you expect from a
vulgar boor but abuse?  I ought to have known that before I laid myself
open to such treatment.  I don't think I can ask that young Hartshorne
to my house again after this."

"Good gracious! ma," said Carry; "why what has he got to do with it?
I'm sure he's a very nice fellow, and he is not accountable for his
mother's actions."

"Well," said the old campaigner, mollifying somewhat, as she got further
from the scene of her defeat, and allowed her better judgment to
prevail; "perhaps he's not to blame, and I am sure I never said so.  He
can come of course to the pic-nic, now he is invited; but I am sorry I
left the note with that old cat, after all.  Never mind, it's done now,
and there's no use in regretting it.  He is a good match; and if you
listen to my words, Carry," she leaned over and said confidentially to
her daughter, so that Buttons might not overhear, "instead of giggling
so foolishly, and play you cards well, you will secure him in spite of
that Jezabel, his mother.  Not that I am afraid of her, or twenty like
her," Lady Inskip said to herself consolingly, now that a distance of
road lay between them.

But where was Master Tom all this while?

Well, you must understand that Mr Thomas Hartshorne, of Her Majesty's
Plungers, was, and had been all the morning, learning the craft of
fly-fishing on the banks of the little stream that ran by the bottom of
the parsonage, under the apt tuition of the incumbent's sister.  The
young reverend himself had long since gone out for his parochial duties,
such as enquiring after farmer Giles' rheumatism, and the widow Blake's
asthma, intending also to do himself the honour of calling on Lady
Inskip on his way home, for Pringle had been much struck by the charming
Laura the more he saw of her, and wanted to see more still.

It was most surprising what a violent and indefatigable interest that
previously indolent young man Tom had taken in the piscatorial art.

He who had before declared Isaac Walton an old humbug, and who had
professed his agreement with the dogmatic old doctor Johnson's
assertion, that fishing consisted of "a worm at one end of a rod and a
fool at the other," now used to sally out every morning nearly from The
Poplars, with his fishing-tackle on his shoulder down to the parsonage,
telling Markworth, whom he used to faintly persuade to accompany him,
that it was "the best sport in the world, old fellow."

He went to the incumbent's grounds because it was the "finest spot in
the county for perch," and Pringle was "a brother angler, and such a
jolly good fellow, you know."  Those were his only reasons, of course!

Hartwood parsonage was the beau ideal of a snug little country lodge; a
long, straggling, one-storied cottage form of house, all ingles and
corners and slanting roofs, and covered with roses, jessamine, and
clematis.

It had low, diamond-paned French windows, opening down to the ground; so
that one could walk out into the trim-inclined but wild planted flower
garden--Lizzie's especial pride--and on to the smooth velvetty lawn
beyond, that sloped down to the water's edge, bordered with hanging
branches of weeping willows, and sappy, luscious, green osiers, that
sprang like ostrich plumes from the quiet pools and crinks into which
the stream widened here and there.

The parsonage had a "fine walled-in kitchen garden," as house agents
advertise, devoted to spruce rows of cabbages and arrogant cauliflowers,
each of which weighed more than a good-sized Christmas turkey; and
fruit-clustered pear and apple and peach trees, all nailed up and
trained along the walls, like a giant's palms spread out with the
fingers extended.  Beyond the kitchen garden the walls were overhung
with rich green ivy, which took off the stuck-up appearance it might
have had like most enclosures, and gave the place a much, more
picturesque aspect.  But it was in the flowery plaisance, marked out on
each side by a thick laurel shrubbery, that Lizzie's handiwork shone
out.

This commenced just under the windows of the house, round which it
extended, and spread out to where it joined the lawn, from which it was
separated by a sort of strawberry island, and a hedge-row of box, tall,
up-grown, and cut in queer, fantastic shapes.

In Lizzie's flower garden, which she had specially looked after since
she came to keep house for her brother, there was the most lavish
display.  Tiger lilies and jonquills, sunflowers and pale-faced
narcissi, vied with each other for effect; and the great charm of the
whole lay in the utter absence of any set form or arrangement--roses and
lilies all grew together in the most charming confusion, with sundry
creepers twining around them; it was only on account of there being no
weeds visible, that you did not set down this wilderness of flowers to
be totally neglected.

Other effects were not wanting to complete the picture.  Here on a
summer afternoon you would hear a pet robin punctually begin his sweet
song, at "four of the clock precisely," from his favourite perch on a
spreading fir tree that overhung the eaves of the house--a little robin
that used to hop down every morning to the adjacent window of the
parlour, to receive his matutinal crumbs from Lizzie's hand.  The
"chuck! chuck! chuck!" of the black bird too, would be also heard from
the laurel shrubbery; and the rival strains of the yellow-hammer from
the neighbouring medlar tree.  The latter gentleman would commence his
lay with a "whirr," like an alarm clock running down, and end with a
sort of chorus like the concluding bars of "Green grow the Rushes O!"
The Beccaficoes, too, or English ortolan, very like the thrush, would
assemble here in the hot months of the year, and did not fail to leave
evidences of their partiality for the fruit tree which received the
Saviour's curse.

Tom Hartshorne had explored all this paradise long before, in the
company of Miss Lizzie; and he was now, as I said, under her tuition,
looking at her tying on some artificial May-fly or other ichneumon to
his line.

It was a beautiful morning--not yet twelve--and the air was balmy, and
scented with new-mown hay and flowers; while bees were buzzing around,
and birds singing in the air, the lark, chief songster, above them all;
altogether, Master Tom was situated under very romantic circumstances,
and his handsome Saxon face and honest blue eyes looked and shone out
happy in the extreme.

Lizzie was dressed in a dainty little muslin dress, picked out with some
lilac tinge, and her little hat was thrown on coquettishly, half off and
half on; while her bright pretty little face was unclouded, and there
was a depth of tenderness in the deep violet eyes that glanced up every
now and then to Tom.

She had just succeeded in tying on the fly, and looked up suddenly in a
triumphant, saucy little way, in Tom's face.  He was very close to her,
for he had to watch very narrowly to see how the work was done, and he
stooped at the time she looked up; and she said, "There, sir!"

They were very close together, and their eyes met, and Tom was stooping,
and, naturally, as those sweet little tempting rosebud lips were so
near, he--

Well, what would you do if a very pretty girl was very close to you,
male reader, under the same circumstances?  What reply would you make?

Very well, Tom did it!

Just at that moment, Lady Inskip was driving round the road which
skirted by the parsonage garden, to pay a visit, and leave an
invitation, at the house of our friend, the young incumbent.  It was not
long after her encounter with the dowager, and Lady Inskip was still
wrath: her observation being keen, and the pony carriage high, she could
therefore see the little meeting between Tom and Lizzie over the wall.

She saw it all, my dear sir; and her sense of propriety was so shocked,
that, instead of calling, as she intended, on the Pringles, she only
left the invitation and drove on homewards.

Here she had been twice defeated this morning!  The dowager had routed
her at The Poplars, and "that artful little minx" had presumed to poach
upon her manor--was actually making love to Master Tom, whom she had
designed for her own Carry.  It was absolutely startling!  She did not
know what to do.  Fortunately, she thought, no one had observed the
pleasant little episode in the garden--so indelicate!--but herself, as
her daughters, riding on the front seat, had had their backs turned at
the time, so she would keep it to herself, and determine what was to be
done.

One thing, at all events, she resolved to do, and that was to speak to
the Reverend Herbert Pringle privately, and in confidence, about his
sister.  He was a most gentlemanly young man, and could not be offended
at her mentioning the subject, especially as she would put it to him,
since she was old enough to be his mother--at least, his mother-in-law!

Fortune favoured the old campaigner in her object.  Our friend, the
incumbent, having visited and cheered his poor people, by asking affably
as to their healths, returned homewards by way of Laburnum Cottage, to
see the Inskips, determining to himself that that was the shortest way
round, although it was at least five miles out of his way.

Lady Inskip only arrived a few moments before him, and so he caught her
when she was red hot on the subject just then rampant in her heart.

When she had flattered him sufficiently, and after he had basked in the
sunshine of Laura's smiles, he rose to leave, and Lady Inskip
accompanied him herself to the door, and on to the grass plot beyond,
and the gate, where stood his dapple-grey pony with his reins flung over
the post to keep him from straying.  When the girls saw their mother
follow Clericus without, they made up their minds that she was going to
"ask his intentions," and much did the lively Carry chaff her sister
therenent.  The campaigner's motive was, however, a very different one.

"You will excuse me, Mr Pringle, I'm sure, but I am an old woman, you
know, and I take such a motherly interest in you--(very motherly!)--that
you will forgive me for asking you a question?"

Poor Clericus, himself, trembled at this introduction, as I believe his
idea of what was coming was very similar to those of the girls inside.

"Oh, certainly, Lady Inskip, certainly!" he said, with a sort of
dead-alive alacrity.

"Is your sister engaged to Mr Tom Hartshorne?" said the old campaigner;
and Pringle was immensely relieved.

"Oh dear, no!" he responded, this time cheerfully enough.  "Oh dear, no,
Lady Inskip, what made you suppose so?"

And, thereupon, my lady spoke, and told what she had seen; and, although
Pringle was not very angry at first, nor did he look upon the affair as
anything serious, the campaigner presently persuaded him that it was his
duty to speak to his sister.  He, of course,--so she explained--could
not be aware how a young girl would be talked about if she were allowed
_carte blanche_ to flirt with every young man she came across.  Poor
Lizzie! as if she would have done so--and that it was very unfortunate
the poor girl had no mother to warn her, and so on.  But it was his duty
as her brother, and not only on that account, but as a clergyman also--
so the campaigner put it--to speak earnestly at once, and have the thing
broken off.

Herbert Pringle promised to do so, and rode home very sadly, for he
loved his little sister very much in his way, and hated the business of
talking so seriously to her, besides not knowing how to set about it.

Let us return to our lovers; our poor tender sheep, into whose fold such
a great gaunt wolf had now penetrated.

They did not hear the wheels of the old campaigner's chaise as it passed
round by the garden wall, nor did they see her grim eyes surveying them
above it, and taking notes of their propinquity--not they!

When Master Tom committed himself in the way I have hinted at, little
Lizzie blushed crimson, and hung down her head so that he could not see
her face.

"Oh, how could you?  How could you?" she stammered out, nearly crying.

"Forgive me!  I beg your pardon: I could not help it"--and Tom was going
to tell his love, and disclose all the feelings that filled his heart,
when, at that moment, my Lady Inskip rang the bell to leave her note, as
already detailed.

Before Tom could catch her so as to hold her, Lizzie darted off, like a
startled fawn, towards the house, and the opportunity was lost.

The next day she was not in when he called round, and Pringle visited
him the day after that, instead of his visiting him; and so, although he
was not spoken to, no opportunities were put in the way of their meeting
alone.

Both Tom and Lizzie were looking forward to the pic-nic with heartfelt
longing, for the former, at least, determined to speak then.

Oh, Love!  Love!  When will thy course run smooth?

Volume 1, Chapter XII.

"THE BEGINNING OF THE END."

Markworth's plot was now nearly ripe for execution.

When he had been down at The Poplars some weeks now, he said one morning
at the breakfast table that he must run up to town for a day or two, as
he had some important business to transact; so excusing himself to the
Hartshornes, mother and son, the former of whom did not look as if she
would break her heart if he never returned, he said he supposed he had
better start at once and come down on the next day, Saturday, so as to
be in time for the contemplated pic-nic on the following Tuesday, which
Tom would not hear of his missing.

"You'll be sure to be back in time, old fellow," said the latter, as he
wished Markworth good-bye; and the train glided off from the little
station to which they had walked in company across the fields.
"There'll be heaps of fun, for Harrowby and a lot of the fellows will be
down, and I want you to draw out the campaigner, or she'll be making a
dead set at me, and--"

"You'll have other fish to fry, and will want to attend to someone else,
eh?  I quite understand it all, my boy; I'm not so blind as some people
think, Master Tom.  However, I'll spare your blushes and your
explanations: don't be alarmed, my boy, I'll be back in plenty of time
for the pic-nic, and will take care to occupy my lady's attention so as
to leave you to your own devices.  Good-bye, old chap."

"Good-bye, old fellow," said Tom; and Markworth was soon whizzing on his
way to London.

Arrived in town, he first directed his steps to the private
billiard-room where he and his friend first made the acquaintance of the
reader.

His object was to enlist the services of the little old-fashioned
marker, who we had previously seen watching the game.

This man, Joe Begg by name, although only known to the sporting world
who frequented the room by his Christian name alone, was an accomplice
and ally of Markworth.  When our friend would manage to get hold of a
nice pigeon for plucking, Joe Begg used to be of the greatest service.
He had a peculiarly dexterous way of running up the score, and also a
pleasant and most unaccountable manner of sneezing just when Markworth's
opponent would be making some important stroke.  It was most unfortunate
of course, and the victim would meet with so much sympathy, and the
marker would apologise so earnestly with tears in his eyes for the
unfortunate cold in the head, "which takes me most unexpected, sir," as
he would explain, that poor pigeon could not but allow that it was an
accident, and accept the _amende honorable_ by continuing his play.
When neophyte went away, after his vanity had been flattered by his
being allowed _nearly_ to win and his losing "rather hot, you know, by
Jove?" he did not know that Markworth and the marker generally came to
an understanding, which always resulted in the former offering and the
latter accepting sundry substantial tokens of esteem and regard.

It was not to make use of his aid in the matter of billiards and by-play
that Markworth now sought the company of Joe Begg.  It was for something
much more important and vastly different, although of a similar nature.

He wanted a witness for the contemplated marriage, and he could not
think of anyone better qualified to assist him than Joe.  He was just
the man, for he had been always faithful to Markworth's interests, and
could be as "close as wax," although he would naturally require a
"consideration."

"Well, Joe, how's business," he said, as he walked into the
billiard-room, when, as was usual at such an early hour of the day, the
marker was all alone.

"Very dull, Mister Markworth, very dull!  Why, sir, I haven't made a bob
at pool for the last three weeks.  Everybody's out of town, and those
City fellows as comes in are afeared to bet a tizzy on a dead certainty.
Can I do anything for you to-day, Mister Markworth?"

"Not to-day, Joe; but I will want you shortly."

"All right, sir, whenever you want me you've only got to speak, and I'm
there."

"I thought I could rely on you, Joe.  The fact is, I shall want you to
be a witness to a marriage between a lady and myself."

"How much will you stand?"

"I'll do the thing handsomely.  I tell you what, I will give you a fiver
after it's all over, because I shall want you to swear to it perhaps in
evidence afterwards."

"I'm your man, sir," replied the marker, with alacrity; "swear to
anything for that sum.  When is the little affair coming off?"

"I can't say yet, Joe.  Maybe in a week, maybe not for a month; but when
I want you I shall write here and let you know.  Mind!  You must be
ready at once to accompany me when I write for you."

"I'm fly, sir," responded Joe, with a cunning movement of his left
eyelid, more expressive than an ordinary wink.  "I'll be ready any time;
and perhaps, sir, as the business is partickler, it'll be worth more
than a fiver, who knows?"

"I shan't forget you, Joe; we won't quarrel about terms," answered
Markworth, meaningly, and he then went away, for he had even more
important arrangements to make.

He paid a second visit to the dingy purlieus of Doctors Commons.

This time not to the deed depository of the dead, but to the legal
portals of Hymen, where Cupid sits enthroned on the bench, in all the
majesty of the law, with a horsehair wig and a pair of clerical bands,
to issue licenses to marry and for giving in marriage.

It was now Friday, and the pic-nic was to come off at Bigton on the
ensuing Tuesday, so Markworth determined that he would manage to get
Susan Hartshorne away from The Poplars on that day, as he would be less
liable to observation and detection; and taking her up to London, could
have the marriage solemnised on the succeeding day.  Tuesday, strange to
say, was the very day, the 27th of August, according to the information
of Miss Kingscott, retailed from the Family Bible, when the girl would
be of legal age, one and twenty, and entitled to the free disposal of
her money.

He accordingly got a license made out without much trouble, by means of
a little stretch of the imagination--called perjury in courts of law--
and the initiatory step for his design was taken.  If everything went
well, he would before that day week be the husband of Susan Hartshorne,
and master of her twenty thousand pounds.  He had well weighed every
step in his programme; he had studied every possible consequence to
himself; and he saw no reason to anticipate failure when everything
pointed to success.

After leaving Doctors Commons he went to some old lodgings of his in a
retired street in Bloomsbury, where he was well-known, and a set of
rooms always kept vacant for him, for his comings and goings were so
irregular that no one knew when to expect him.  None of his West End
friends knew of his ever living here, for he always gave an hotel as an
address; and to tell the truth, he had often been comfortably installed
in these same Bloomsbury lodgings when the world thought him travelling
on the Continent, or shooting grouse on the moors.

His appearance was therefore looked upon as a usual thing, and no
surprise was manifested; for his ways had always been inscrutable, and
as he checked curiosity and was a good and regular paying lodger, he
could do as he liked.  He had always done so from the first, and his
landlady never bothered herself about him or his business, "it was no
concern of hers, he always paid his rent, and that was all she cared
about," she said.

He stopped here that night, and went away the next morning, telling Mrs
Martin, the landlady, that he was going to bring "his sister" to town on
the following Tuesday, and would require the rooms to be ready for her
reception.  This was the first time she had ever heard of his having a
sister; but he might have brought twenty so long as he paid his rent.  I
believe a regular London lodging-house keeper is more of a cosmopolitan
than any other person in the world.  She will take in anybody with a
decent supply of luggage, and who is tolerably regular in the payment of
his or her weekly bills--the wandering Jew, Calcraft, or Eugene Aram.
It is all the same to the proprietors of the "apartments" whether her
tenant be Jew or Gentile, gentleman or "snob," criminal or honest man;
she has but one standard for social position, morality or nationality,
and that is a pecuniary one.  A lodger may be forgiven everything, even
seventy times seven, if he only pays his rent regularly; that is the
_ultima ratio_ to which appeal is made--it is practical and works well!

These preliminary arrangements being seen to, Markworth walked down
through Lincoln's Inn Fields, across into Chancery Lane, and paid a
visit to some dingy, tumble-down looking chambers close to the projected
site for the new Law Courts, which are to be built at some era dim in
futurity.  A brass plate was on the door, with the names "Solomonson and
Isaacs, solicitors," engraved thereon.

His business was with the senior partner, who greeted him as an old
client or customer, which indeed he was.  Solomonson was not at all
averse to transact business, even on the Jewish Sabbath.

"Vell, Mishter M," said the Jew, who was part money lender, part lawyer,
and all rogue.  "Doesh de leetel affairsh go on?  Have you got de mad
girlsh yet.  I vants to see her Mishtressh M'sh--"

"Not yet, Shylock; but everything's in train, and I shall do it before
the week is out.  But you told me right, I hope, about the law; I would
not like to commit a felony?"

"You are all rightsh, Mishter M'sh.  Leave de cashe in dese hands and ve
vill see you trough!"

"I rely upon you then, and will let you conduct the whole affair,--but I
must have some money to carry the thing through, Solomonson.  How much
can you let me have on my own security?"

"I vill letsh you ave two hundredsh pound.  S'help me Gadsh, Mishter
M'sh! itsh all I've got!"

"Nonsense, Shylock! you can't fool me like that," replied Markworth, and
he tried unsuccessfully to get more out of the Jew.  He had to be
contented for the present with a couple of hundreds.  Solomonson knew,
however, the stake for which he was playing, and told him that as soon
as he was really married to Susan Hartshorne he would advance him more.
Until then he would not let him have another penny.  So Markworth was
forced to content himself with what he had got, and he was not pleased
when he recollected that he would have to give the governess half.

He was, however, provided with the sinews of war, so he wished
Solomonson good day, cheerfully as he went out, and told him he would
soon see him back again.

"Good daysh!" replied the Jew.  "Don't forget to send me the weddingsh
cakesh, my dearsh!  I likesh weddingsh cakesh!"

The last visit Markworth paid before leaving London was to the curate of
a small church in the city, with whom he was acquainted--how he had made
his acquaintance I cannot say; and to this gentleman he made some
explanation about a forthcoming marriage which appeared to be highly
satisfactory to both parties.

Everything was now settled but the great event itself, and so Markworth
returned to Hartwood by the afternoon train.  To shew that he did not
forget even trifles in considering everything for his plot, he bought an
odd volume of the recently revived "Essays and Reviews," at the railway
book stall, for the personal edification of the Dowager Mrs Hartshorne,
who had been speaking of the book in connection with her now favourite
topic of ritualism.  This he presented to her the same evening, much to
her surprise, and peculiarly snappishly-expressed pleasure and thanks.
The old lady had recently been over head and ears in pre-adamite
geology, and nothing interested her so much as a secular essay on
theological truths.

Tom was delighted to see him back in such good time, and planned out all
sorts of pleasant things for the pic-nic, which was in everybody's
thoughts--little knowing how Markworth intended to dispose of his day.
All the Sussex world was going to be there.  A pair of violet eyes
comprised "all the world" to Tom now.

Some time that evening Markworth had a long conversation with Miss
Kingscott, preparing for "the end."  Both--strange anomaly!--had worked
together for once, and not for good.  He gave her a hundred pounds, the
first instalment of the "hush money," and their compact was nearly
completed.

To one who had not marked out every phase in Susan Hartshorne's
treatment, the change that had been worked in her since Markworth had
devoted his energies to her care, was nothing less than marvellous.

From dull, irksome melancholia the patient had been transported to the
fields of reason.  A constantly unchanged vacuity of expression on her
face had given place to mobility of feature.  Instead of void animal
eyes, the windows of the soul now looked out of her face.  From an idiot
she had been changed nearly if not quite into a reasoning being.
Markworth had done all this, aided by Miss Kingscott acting under him
and by his directions.  It is true the girl had only got back the germ
of reason, the reason of a child in nature, and measured by the
experience of years.  But it was a germ which, although now of delicate
growth, and requiring every fostering and care, might yet expand into
the fullness of moral culture.

No one had any idea how poor Susan had improved, for she saw no one to
speak to as yet; and although Tom and Mrs Hartshorne noticed some
change in her, yet the former was too much engaged with observing
another to notice much in his sister, and as for the mother she really,
I believe, did not care either way.  She had so long looked upon Susan
as insane, that the possibility of her ever recovering her reason now
after the lapse of so many years, was put beyond the pale of
consideration altogether.

And so only Markworth and Miss Kingscott knew of her dawning reason;
with them both she spoke now as sensibly as themselves, and as to
Markworth she was his abject slave.

The first reasoning thought that filled the poor girl's vacuous brain
was one of heartfelt devotion to him who had led her out of darkness to
light.  She looked upon him as her saviour, ignorant as she was of a
higher and more powerful God than he; and he was so uniformly kind and
considerate to her, seemingly anticipating her every wish, that one
cannot wonder at her slavish idolatry.  He was her god--her all; she
loved him as a dog would love its master, and everything he did was
right: his word, law.

Markworth's material was now plastic enough.

Volume 1, Chapter XIII.

BROTHER AND SISTER.

"Now, Lizzie, I want to know what all this means?" said the Reverend
Herbert Pringle, B.A., putting on quite a fatherly dignity of manner to
his sister, an evening or two after Lady Inskip had spoken to him.  "I
want to know what all this means."

Lizzie was at the time engaged lifting pots up and down, and poking
about in her little conservatory, which jutted out of the drawing room,
with a trowel and watering-pot, in the manner peculiar to young ladies
of a horticultural tendency.  Her back was turned to her brother, so
that he could not see her face, but a brilliant tinge of pink carnation
coloured her little white neck, and suffused her dainty-cheeks, and
ascended even to the pure white forehead; still she steadfastly kept her
head down, bent apparently on investigating the wonderful mysteries of
some flower with a horribly long Greek name, which she was inspecting.

She must have guessed intuitively what her brother was going to speak
about, but with a woman's noble gift of dissimulation, she asked, with
an air of candour and conscious rectitude--little hypocrite!

"Why, Bertie, dear, what on earth do you mean?"

They are all deceivers, every one; bless you! that's the way with them.
They are tricksters at heart, and conceal their feelings with a sort of
savage deceit, which only a Red Indian besides possesses.  See how
calmly and placidly Miss Dissembler smiles with elegant ease, whilst
Madame Verjuice pierces her little writhing heart through and through
with a malicious sarcasm that wounds her to the core.  She looks as if
she never felt it whilst she is bleeding to death inwardly.  Look at the
poor fainting wife and mother, who with a smile on her lips and death at
heart, cheerfully gives her husband and starving children the last
morsel of bread in the hovel, and says with a martyr-like dissimulation
that she does not want it, she is not hungry.  Bless you they are all
deceivers, every one, from little miss in her teens, who flirts with her
boy lovers, to old Joan of threescore, who still wheedles her venerable
Darby!

"Why, Bertie, what on earth do you mean?" as innocently as you please.

The Reverend Herbert Pringle, B.A., had for the last two days been
puzzling his small amount of brains how to broach the subject to his
sister.  He did not wish to vex her, or hurt her feelings; in fact, he
did not know what to do, it was "such a delicate matter, you know, such
a very delicate matter," that he wished it were settled and done for,
and off his hands.  But still, all the same, he did not know how to
begin.

"Well, humph!" clearing his throat portentously, "the fact is, Lizzie,
you know all about it."

"Really, Bertie," said Lizzie, laughing--oh! such a faint little laugh,
"you are very enigmatical to-day."

"I'm not joking, Lizzie; it's a serious business, a very serious
business.  What is all this going on between you and Tom Hartshorne?"

Poor Lizzie's little defences of affected ignorance and nonchalance at
once broke down, although she bravely struggled on to preserve her
equanimity.

"I'm sure I've nothing to do with Mr Hartshorne.  What _do_ you mean,
Herbert?  Pray explain yourself."

And the young lady drew herself up with a tremendous accession of
dignity to the full height of her little figure.

Herbert Pringle was so disgusted with the dissimulation of the sex as
evinced in the instance of his sister that he felt himself nerved up and
able to go on with the talk before him, so he plunged at once _in medias
res_.

"Here's Lady Inskip been telling me--"

"Oh!  I've got to thank _her_ for interesting herself about me!  I am
sure I am very much obliged to Lady Inskip!"

"You need not interrupt me, Lizzie, and you need not get angry about
Lady Inskip.  She's a most motherly woman, and she spoke very kindly to
me about you.  You see, Lizzie, it's a very hard thing for a fellow to
speak of.  Of course I think girls ought to be allowed to mind their own
affairs of this kind, and it seems rough on my part to interfere; but,
you see, as Lady Inskip very kindly observed, you've no mother to advise
you, and consequently I must take her place."

As he said this, the Reverend Herbert Pringle looked certainly as unlike
a mother as possible.

"Go on, Herbert; let me know all that Lady Inskip has been kind enough
to say of me," said Violet Eyes, now facing her brother, with a full
sense of her dignity, and tapping her foot on the floor with angry
impatience.

"Well, she told me that she saw you and Tom Hartshorne in the garden the
other day as she drove by; and, though I see no harm in it, and
fortunately no one but herself saw it, she said she was very much
shocked, and that you acted as if you were engaged.  Now, Lizzie, you
know I'm very fond of you, and all that sort of thing, but people might
talk, you know, and I want you to put a stop to it."

Lizzie's defences were entirely overthrown.  Her look of indignation
faded off her face, to be replaced by a quick crimson blush, which as
rapidly disappeared and left her features as pale as marble.  She made a
hurried step towards her brother, and fell sobbing on his neck.

"Oh!  Bertie, Bertie!" she sobbed out, between a series of little gasps.

"There, there, don't cry! my darling little Lizzie.  You know I did not
mean to hurt you, my own little sister!" said Herbert, sympathisingly,
patting her head as if he were saying "Poor dog! poor dog!" to a
Newfoundland pup.  And the subject was dropped, Lizzie thus gaining the
victory in the end by having recourse to a woman's strongest safeguard--
tears.  For, as he told Lady Inskip afterwards, "when the waterworks
were turned on he had to give in."  The old campaigner for her part, was
very well satisfied that the topic had been mentioned: that was all she
wanted.

Lizzie went to bed very early that night, pleading a headache, and
really her face was so pale and the deep violet eyes were so sunk in her
head with broad veins of black underneath them, that her assertion was
freely borne out by her appearance.

The poor little heart was deeply troubled: the stricken deer was
grievously wounded.  She was very young, you must remember, and had
fallen into that horrible abyss of love without knowing what she was
doing.  The temptation had been so sweet, the steps she had taken into
that rose-coloured paradise so gradual, that she had not perceived the
drift of their march, so that Tom's sudden act and manner had startled
and frightened her; it was letting in the sunlight on one who has been
blindfolded, and the little secret which she had hugged to her heart
alarmed, while it gave her such sweet ecstasy.

Ever since that morning in the garden, only two days ago--two days! it
seemed more like two years, she had been so much altered--Lizzie had not
been the same.  She had awakened from a long sleep as it were, and
everything round her, every little inconsiderable item in her daily life
bore a new charm to her or had a fresh meaning.  A deeper and more
beautiful light beamed now in her thoughtful eyes; there was a charming
hesitancy in her manner in lieu of the former piquante pert way she had.
In a word, Lizzie was our Lizzie still, but a hundred times more
loveable and prettier from the new love light that encircled her.

She had been watching--eagerly watching, for her next meeting with Tom,
and yet when she thought of him, blushed at her thoughts and trembled
with a sly rapture.  He was so noble--so manly--so handsome!  Just in
fact what most young girls think Corydon when in love.

It was no wonder, then, that the brother's lecture and the idea of the
old campaigner's criticism on her conduct frightened our poor little
maid.

She went up to her little bed tearfully and heavy-hearted, and thought
of chains and dungeons, and all the malicious contrivances of the wicked
for parting true lovers, and she sobbed herself to sleep.  When she woke
up in the morning she was still in the most restless and perturbed state
that her little mind could be in.  "How dared that odious old thing
speak about her, or look at her, or come round at all!"  She would never
see Tom again--and she was longing to see him all the time!

She would not go to the pic-nic--that she wouldn't!

Then she _would_ go, because the aforesaid old odious thing would
imagine that she took it to heart if she stopped away.

But she would _not_ go because that impudent Master Tom would be there,
she thought, with a rising blush and a conscious swelling of the tender
little bosom underneath her muslin dress.

Of course she determined to go!

Volume 1, Chapter XIV.

THAT YOUNG IMP.

The old campaigner's pic-nic had been decided upon by her, not only as a
merrymaking festival, but as a regular strategical _coup_.

She wanted to roll many issues into one, and like a prudent general, she
conned her forces, surveyed their position, and considered her war
_materiel_; all being in train, she determined that as she wanted to
create an impression in the neighbourhood, and bring sundry persons
together without being compelled to go to any great expense, the best
and most efficacious mode she could adopt for carrying out her plans
would be to give a pic-nic.

In the first place she could ask all those people of the vicinity whom
she did not care to specially invite to her own house; in the second, as
everyone would to some extent purvey their own refreshments, no great
outlay would be required on her part; and in the third place this sort
of rustic excursion offers greater advantages and inducements for
judicious love-making, and brings many bashful wooers, such as young
Clericus, to the scratch.

It was under these circumstances and acting with these motives, that
Lady Inskip had made preparations and issued invitations for a grand
pic-nic to come off at Dingle Dell, which was a nice drive from Bigton,
a few weeks after she came down to reside at that festive haunt.

She had by this time thoroughly explored all the capabilities of the
place, and knew just whom to ask and whom to avoid.  The old Indian
officer, Captain Curry Cucumber, had of course an invitation, and so had
Doctor Jolly and his sister, but Deborah said that she never went out to
any such "gallivantings," and declined; the doctor, however, promised to
pick them up in the course of the day after he had made some necessary
calls on his patients.

The people were all to meet together at Laburnum Cottage, and drive from
thence _en cortege_ to the Dingle, so an early hour was fixed for the
rendezvous in order to have a good long day of it.

Soon after eleven, the time appointed, there was quite a goodly muster
of vehicles in front of Lady Inskip's residence.  Tom Hartshorne drove
down in a bright new dog-cart, and being immediately pounced upon by the
campaigner, was made or inveigled into taking Carry with him.  Not that
Tom objected personally to that young lady, who was very agreeable and
naturally glib of tongue, but he sorely wished and had indeed planned
that our little friend Lizzie should be his companion.

In order to prevent this the campaigner had specially called at the
parsonage and taken Miss Lizzie in her own pony chaise with her: the
Reverend Herbert and the languid Laura completed the quartette.  Tom
sadly deplored the absence of Markworth, for he was so well used to the
campaigner, and had such nerve and _sang froid_ that he was capable of
even turning her out of her own carriage.  Lieutenant Harrowby and
Captain Miles, too, of Tom's regiment, who had come over from Brighton
that morning for the _fete_, and who hoped to have complete possession
of the Inskip "girls," as military men usually dub the young ladies of
families, did not seem satisfied with the arrangements for the
procession; and as for Captain Curry Cucumber--who had arrived on the
scene of action dressed in a new pair of nankeen trowsers and a solar
hat, not to mention a blue coat with brass buttons and other portions of
a perfectly gorgeous toilet--he was simply enraged at the want of
deference paid him by Lady Inskip, and had serious thoughts of turning
back at first, although he afterwards suffered himself to be soothed
over by Miss Blandish (spinster, _aetat_ 45-60), and promised to remain
with the company until at least "tiffin" should be over.

At last, however, all things were settled, and "barring" a few
_contretemps_ and heartburnings the whole party started off in great
spirit to drive towards Dingle Dell.

The road was a very pretty one, all through the romantic scenery to be
found in the valley of the swift-running and widening river Biggle, at
the mouth of which, as has been described in its proper place, the
watering place of Bigton, formerly called Biggleton (_vide_ County
Archaeology), was situated.

The day was fine--as fine as a bright August day can be in the country.
_Ergo_ all went merry as the proverbial marriage bell.  The only trouble
Lady Inskip had was with her darling pride--that horrible boy, the young
Sir Mortimer.  He would insist on carrying a wretched old single-barrel
gun with him for the purpose of shooting small birds when they got to
the wood, and of course, as he always managed, he had his own way.
"Such a darling boy," as he was, "but _so_ rash!"  Mortimer persisted in
practising along the road as they drove on, frightening the horses every
now and then, and making everybody feel in terror for their lives.

It was no use that Lady Inskip called out in a half-entreating,
half-commanding voice at intervals, "Oh!  Morti-mer!  Mortimer!" the
young imp would continue his detonating sport, and everyone was heartily
glad when after passing the steep incline which led down from the old
castle of archaeological renown, they crossed the pretty rustic bridge
over the Biggle, and arrived at length at Dingle Dell.

Considering that it was a good two hours' drive or more from Bigton, and
that it was "getting on" in the afternoon, no one was averse to
preparations being at once made for the substantial and real part of the
pic-nic.  All helped with good will to lay the cloth on the smooth green
turf, and unpack the hampers.  Even a smile irradiated the choleric and
saffronised face of the Indian warrior, who was much disgusted when they
sat down to the _al fresco_ banquet that no one had remembered to bring
mango, chutney, or Cayenne pepper, without which he assured Lady Inskip
that even "the best victuals" were not worth the salt that accompanied
them.

The old campaigner very judiciously arranged the various members of her
company around the tablecloth--one cannot exactly say table.  She placed
Tom by the side of Carry, at the extreme opposite end of the "board,"
away from Lizzie, whom she quartered with the gallant lieutenant,
Harrowby, by herself.  Pringle, of course, was placed next Laura; and
although Lady Inskip had been obliged to invite the Rev. Jabez
Heavieman, of Bigton, for appearance's sake, she took very good care
that he should not run foul of our Ritualistic young incumbent, whom he
regarded in much the same light as the devil is supposed to look upon
holy water.

Everything passed off well, and Lady Inskip was in ecstasies; Carry was
apparently having it all her own way with Tom Hartshorne, and Pringle
was most devoted to Laura.  As for Lizzie, she was hopelessly put on one
side, and the campaigner considered "that artful little minx" as done
for and out of her way: nothing could be better.

The banquet was at length finished.

Young Sir Mortimer, having gorged himself sufficiently with cold chicken
and greengage tart, so that his face shone again, went off with his gun
to shoot in the woods, much against the entreaties of his mother, who
fervently implored him "take care, Mortimer, my darling boy, take great
care!"

The others disposed themselves around; some lolling on the grass, others
making a pretence of fishing in the adjacent river: Tom had wandered off
somewhere--Lizzie had disappeared; and our cheery Doctor Jolly, who had
just arrived in time for the feast--"Bless my soul! madam," as he said,
in explanation, "never miss the grub, my lady--never miss my grub,"--was
enjoying a cigar along with the "military swells," as he called them.

When suddenly Lady Inskip's pride and hope, the boy Mortimer, dashed in
amongst them with a scared face, yelling out at the top of his voice--

"Oh! ma, ma!  I've shot and killed somebody!"

The consternation his advent created can be imagined.

"Oh! dear, Morti-mer,--Morti-mer!  I told you so: I told you so!" said
Lady Inskip, bursting into tears.

Carry went into hysterics, entreating everybody to "hold me down! hold
me down!"  Laura fell fainting in the arms of the Reverend Pringle, who
looked hopelessly bewildered.  Miss Blandish, making an ineffectual and
similar attempt to repose on the white waistcoat and nankeen trowsers of
Captain Curry Cucumber, was precipitated by a dexterous and skilful
manoeuvre on the part of that gallant officer, into the salad-bowl, the
Captain muttering horrible imprecations in Hindostanee, such as heaping
curses on the beard of her departed father, and devoutly hoping that
jackasses might sit on her grandmother's grave.

Doctor Jolly alone retained his composure, and darted off, as quickly as
his size and gout would permit him, in the direction from which the
young imp, Mortimer, had come.

What had happened?

Lizzie, after enduring the platitudes of Lieutenant Harrowby until she
was sick of them--the burden of that officer's conversation being
limited apparently to the observations of "Haw! be-y Je-ove!" and
"Doo-ced fine!" to anything and everything around him, including scenery
and lobster salad, managed at last to get away from the company.

She wandered along listlessly amongst the thickly crowded elms and firs
of the forest that crowned the slopes of the dell, musing on her own sad
thoughts, for her heart felt very weary.  Everything had gone wrong with
her that day; Tom had not spoken two words to her, and she did not know
whether he wanted to speak to her at all.  He was very unkind; he might,
at least, have said something after what had passed between them the
other day!  Then, too, the whole thing had bored her, and she wished she
had never come!  Lady Inskip also had been very snappish with her--even
rude, she thought, and though Lizzie, with all her gentleness, was not
"one to be put upon with impunity," and could have held her own against
the campaigner at any other time: still to-day she had quite lost her
natural spirit, and did not try to turn aside a single shaft of the many
hurled by her implacable foe.

Lizzie was sadly out of heart.  Rambling along, she at length came to a
little open glade at some distance from where the picnickers were making
merry.

Here, as she turned round the trunk of a gnarled old elm, all covered
with ivy, which had previously obscured this open glade from her view,
whom should she see, standing there in gloomy solitude, and looking up
at the fleecy white clouds sailing over head, but the very person who
filled her thoughts--Tom Hartshorne himself, and no other.

Now was the time, one would think, for an explanation between the pair;
but the Fates willed it otherwise.

"That young imp," when he left the picnickers, sallied off like a
gallant young sportsman, as he fancied himself, with his "gun upon his
shoulder," and a brandy flask, which he used for a shot pouch, instead
of a "bayonet by his side," in the words of the affecting ballad of
"Jeanette and Jeanot."

He penetrated into the depths of the wood, firing at everything that
happened to be a trifle larger than a butterfly or humble bee; but
although Mortimer thought he took steady aim at the several little
feathered songsters against whom he had murder in his heart, the gun,
which was something like the Irishman's that could "shoot round a
corner," never brought down anything.

At length he came to a dense thicket, just on the borders of the little
open glade where Tom and Lizzie were about to meet.

A particularly fine fat thrush hopped on a twig in the midst of the
thicket; and, as it was only about a yard from the muzzle of his gun,
the young imp was more successful this time.  He fired and brought down
his bird; but he also brought down something else which he had not
bargained for.

Tom was just advancing with outstretched hand towards Lizzie, glad of
the opportunity for which he had been longing all day.

Whiz! bang! more than half the charge of the young imp's shot struck him
in the side, and Tom fell nearly senseless at Lizzie's feet.

She, forgetting all her reserve, bent over him in an agony of terror.

"Oh!  Tom, Tom!" she cried, as she knelt down by his side, their faces
nearly touching, and her hair sweeping across his cheek.  "They have
killed you!  They have killed you!"

And the sun still shone down, and the fleecy clouds still sailed
overhead, and the summer breeze rippled through the trees.

"Lizzie, my darling!  I'm so happy: I wish I could die now," murmured
Tom, in disconnected fragments, and he fainted away outright.

"Oh! he's dead!  He's dead!" cried Lizzie, out aloud, wringing her
hands, bursting into an agony of tears--tears, idle tears!

"Bless my soul!" said the doctor, bursting through the bushes, as he
arrived very opportunely on the scene of action, out of breath with the
haste he had made.  "Bless my soul!  Who's dead, what's dead?  It's all
confounded nonsense," he continued, excitedly, bending down over Tom,
and tearing open his coat and shirt, and feeling his heart.  "Bless my
soul!  He's no more dead than you are, my dear!  The man's only
fainted."

Volume 1, Chapter XV.

END OF "FIRST ACT."

The most powerful logic fails to supply one with any rules or data
whereby to analyse the workings and application of motives.  If we try
within ourselves even to trace back a passing thought to its original
cause and inception, we see how involved and erratic are its wanderings;
and we are obliged to give up the hopeless quest from sheer inability to
follow its course.  No wonder, therefore, that human motives are
difficult to fathom; and although writers of fiction have the
presumptive right to lay bare the inward mechanism which directs and
guides their various characters, and are permitted to exemplify--hanging
their theories and arguments on certain lay-figures more or less
natural--how such and such a train of thought, and such and such a
motive leads on and up to such and such an end; still, it is a very
deceptive argument at the best, and these deductions, however plausible,
are often grievously in fault.  Motives are inscrutable.  The slightest
bias or hitch one way or the other will produce an altogether different
result.  Let us just imagine "what might have been" in the lives of our
heroes and heroines if some new little incident had cropped up, or some
detail or phase been ever-so-little altered; and we cannot but agree, in
the felicitous observation of one of our greatest authors and students
of human nature, that the history of "great events that might have been"
would far outweigh and be more deeply interesting than any history ever

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