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Waynflete

by Christabel R. Coleridge · English · Gutenberg #43149 · 450,676 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Waynflete

Author: Christabel R. Coleridge


        
Release date: July 8, 2013 [eBook #43149]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43149

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAYNFLETE ***

Waynflete
By C.R. Coleridge
Published by A.D. Innes and Co, 31-32 Bedford Street, Strand, London.
This edition dated 1893.

PROLOGUE.

IN 1785.

  "That the character of the inhabitants of any country has much to do
  in forming a distinct devil for that country no man can doubt."

  From "_John Inglesant_."

At ten o'clock at night on the 4th of October, 1785, the master of
Waynflete Hall sat playing at cards with Mr Maxwell of Ouseley, his
neighbour and his enemy.  By the fireside sat Waynflete's brother, the
parson of the parish, and over the chimney, in the light of the candle's
on the card-table, was the picture of his eldest son and heir.  The
squire and the vicar were big, powerful men, with fair, bushy brows, and
faces that told of rough riding and coarse living, hard weather and hard
drinking, the only mark of their gentle blood that frank expectation of
deference and service which marks a ruling class.  The keener, thinner
face of their visitor had the opposite look, that of a man accustomed to
defer, and perhaps to flatter, for his livelihood.  The face of the boy
in the picture was fair and delicate, with eyes that seemed pleading and
entreating for dear life.

Outside, all was dark and dreary, a wild autumn wind sweeping over the
wide Yorkshire moors, and a noisy river, swelled by recent floods,
rushing through the valley in which Waynflete stood.  Within, the
candles and the fire were reflected in panels of polished oak all round
the little octagon-shaped chamber, and showed choice furniture with
slender spindle legs and fine inlaying.  The common mould candles burnt
in heavy silver candlesticks of Corinthian pattern, and the many-times
used cards lay on a pattern of thick twining roses worked in finest
tent-stitch.

On a little side table was placed a shabby leather case, and a small oak
chest with iron hasps and hinges.  On another, within easy reach of the
card-players, was a plentiful supply of port wine and of spirits.

Now and again, when the tall clock in the corner struck a quarter or a
half-hour, the vicar got up and, opening one of the deep-recessed
windows, stared out into the night.  Then he flung the casement back
again in silence, came back to his chair, and he and his brother filled
their glasses full and drank them down.  But Mr Maxwell of Ouseley only
set his lips to his.  At last eleven strokes, quick, sharp, and loud,
rang out from the clock in the corner.  The squire flung his cards down,
and the parson swore a round oath.

"Time gets on," said Maxwell of Ouseley.  "I hope Mr Guy's journey has
not been unduly delayed.  I hope it sincerely."

"Do you, Mr Maxwell of Ouseley?" said the squire.  "Your hope's very
likely to be disappointed, for my son Guy never fulfilled anybody's
hopes in his life.  Not his mother's."

And the squire looked round at the familiar furniture, dropped his rough
hand on the delicate needlework, and looked with his frowning brows at
the picture, the token of his dead wife's love for her first-born son.

"Time yet, time yet," said the parson, and got heavily up once more, and
flung the window open.  The wind rushed in, wailing and howling, and
with it a sound as of a horse galloping on the wet ground.

"He is coming!" cried Maxwell; but the Waynfletes laughed.

"No, no, no!" cried the squire; "that horse never draws bridle.  He has
galloped ever since Guy Waynflete betrayed his friend to King James the
Second, and saved his own dirty skin.  Ye'll hear him, Mr Maxwell, when
you sleep under this roof when the wind's up--and luck's down.  Maybe
ye'll see the traitor's ghost.  My son Guy has seen him--or else he
lied, which is like enough.  Shut the window, brother Godfrey, and snuff
the candles."

"Will you deal again, sir?" said Maxwell of Ouseley.

"No," cried the squire; "cards won't bring the lad back.  Get your book,
brother Godfrey, and read us a prayer.  Pray, man, pray! and Mr Maxwell
can join us."

"With pleasure, sir," said Maxwell of Ouseley, bowing.

"The prayer-book's in the church, brother," said the parson.

Then the squire got up and opened a drawer in the little side table, and
took out a well-worn book with a red cover.

"There's the mother's book," he said.  "Read on.  We'll fight it out to
the last."

Then the parson of the parish turned his heavy chair round towards the
light, and knelt up against the back of it, for his bones were something
too stiff to reach the floor.

"What--what do you want to pray for, brother?" he said.

"What?" cried the squire with an oath, "that my fool of a son may get
here before the clock strikes twelve, and save his honour and his house.
Can't you find a prayer?  Read the first in the book.  The Almighty'll
understand it."

The squire leant his elbows on the card-table and his forehead on his
hands.  Mr Maxwell of Ouseley stood up decorously, and held his
three-cornered hat before his face.

And the parson turned to the evening service, and read it straight
through sonorously.  The words implored pardon and peace, and light in
darkness; but they carried but one prayer up to the throne of Heaven,
"Let him come."

Then the parson began the Litany till he came to the travellers by land
and by water, when he rustled over the leaves of his book, and behold
there was a mark in the prayer for those at sea, which did not run so
ill in a storm of trouble and distress.  "Save, Lord, or else we
perish," he said, and the squire groaned and said, "Amen."

And through the storm and the loud rough voice the clock ticked and
struck, quarter, half-hour, and three quarters, till at last, with his
rough voice shaking and growing thick, and his dull old heart beating
fit to choke him, the parson found himself reading the prayer for "All
sorts and conditions of men."

"Mind, body and estate--"

"Eh-h!" groaned the squire.

"And a happy issue out of all--"

The first note of twelve clanged out, and the parson flung down his
book.

"Lord help us!" he cried, and Mr Maxwell of Ouseley took his hat from
before his face, and waited till the clock had struck twelve.  Then the
squire got up from his chair, and took up the oak chest and set it down
upon the card-table with a heavy thud.  He turned the key in the lock,
and took out a bundle of parchments and laid them down on his dead
wife's needlework, among the cards and the wine-glasses, with her
prayer-book by their side.

Then he drew himself straight up, and bowed.  "Mr Maxwell of Ouseley,"
he said, "these are the terms on which we stand.  This house and estate
were to pass to you, my attorney-at-law, in repayment of the loans ye've
made me, unless my son Guy came back by twelve to-night, ready to sign
such other bonds as ye might please, and to marry your girl whom ye'd
like to make a lady of quality as well as the heiress of ye're gains and
gettings."

"Yes, Mr Waynflete, those were the terms, and I regret--"

The squire turned and swore at him, then went on in the same tone as
before, "But my eldest son Guy, who broke his mother's heart, and was
too late for her deathbed, is _too late_ to save his father, and
himself.  I leave him my curse for a coward and a fool.  And I leave it
for all that come after him to follow in his steps.  And for t'other
one, brother Godfrey, you'd better take and put him into the Church, if
you can; he's a thickhead, but an honest lad.  So there, Attorney
Maxwell, take your own, and the luck ye've earned go with it!"

And Mr Maxwell, still murmuring regrets that he daren't speak aloud,
closed his long fingers over the deeds.  And the parson, the son of the
house, put his handkerchief over his face and wept, while the wind rose
higher and wailed louder, till it seemed as if cries and prayers for
mercy mingled with the thud of the hoofs of the horse that never drew
bridle at any door.

Then Waynflete of Waynflete Hall took up his dead wife's prayer-book and
kissed it, then he walked over to the side table, and stood with his
back to the other two.  "God have mercy on my soul!" said he, and took
something out of the leathern box.  And there was a loud noise and a
heavy fall, and the old drinking, gambling, hard-living squire never
lived to see whether his unlucky son came home too late.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

But in the gloomy mists of the next morning, while the scared household
were watching the body laid out for its last sleep in the room where it
had fallen, there staggered into the midst of them the ruined heir, his
trim locks wild and wet, his fair face marred and degraded, and his eyes
mad with fear.

"The traitor's ghost--or the devil in his shape--stood in my way--I was
coming--" he stuttered in thick, shaking tones.

"To the devil with your ghost!  You're drunk!" shouted the old parson,
and lifted his hand.

The boy cowered, stumbled and fell on the threshold.  He was indeed too
late.

That was what happened at Waynflete Hall, in October, 1785.

PROLOGUE.

IN 1785.

  "That the character of the inhabitants of any country has much to do
  in forming a distinct devil for that country no man can doubt."

  From "_John Inglesant_."

At ten o'clock at night on the 4th of October, 1785, the master of
Waynflete Hall sat playing at cards with Mr Maxwell of Ouseley, his
neighbour and his enemy.  By the fireside sat Waynflete's brother, the
parson of the parish, and over the chimney, in the light of the candle's
on the card-table, was the picture of his eldest son and heir.  The
squire and the vicar were big, powerful men, with fair, bushy brows, and
faces that told of rough riding and coarse living, hard weather and hard
drinking, the only mark of their gentle blood that frank expectation of
deference and service which marks a ruling class.  The keener, thinner
face of their visitor had the opposite look, that of a man accustomed to
defer, and perhaps to flatter, for his livelihood.  The face of the boy
in the picture was fair and delicate, with eyes that seemed pleading and
entreating for dear life.

Outside, all was dark and dreary, a wild autumn wind sweeping over the
wide Yorkshire moors, and a noisy river, swelled by recent floods,
rushing through the valley in which Waynflete stood.  Within, the
candles and the fire were reflected in panels of polished oak all round
the little octagon-shaped chamber, and showed choice furniture with
slender spindle legs and fine inlaying.  The common mould candles burnt
in heavy silver candlesticks of Corinthian pattern, and the many-times
used cards lay on a pattern of thick twining roses worked in finest
tent-stitch.

On a little side table was placed a shabby leather case, and a small oak
chest with iron hasps and hinges.  On another, within easy reach of the
card-players, was a plentiful supply of port wine and of spirits.

Now and again, when the tall clock in the corner struck a quarter or a
half-hour, the vicar got up and, opening one of the deep-recessed
windows, stared out into the night.  Then he flung the casement back
again in silence, came back to his chair, and he and his brother filled
their glasses full and drank them down.  But Mr Maxwell of Ouseley only
set his lips to his.  At last eleven strokes, quick, sharp, and loud,
rang out from the clock in the corner.  The squire flung his cards down,
and the parson swore a round oath.

"Time gets on," said Maxwell of Ouseley.  "I hope Mr Guy's journey has
not been unduly delayed.  I hope it sincerely."

"Do you, Mr Maxwell of Ouseley?" said the squire.  "Your hope's very
likely to be disappointed, for my son Guy never fulfilled anybody's
hopes in his life.  Not his mother's."

And the squire looked round at the familiar furniture, dropped his rough
hand on the delicate needlework, and looked with his frowning brows at
the picture, the token of his dead wife's love for her first-born son.

"Time yet, time yet," said the parson, and got heavily up once more, and
flung the window open.  The wind rushed in, wailing and howling, and
with it a sound as of a horse galloping on the wet ground.

"He is coming!" cried Maxwell; but the Waynfletes laughed.

"No, no, no!" cried the squire; "that horse never draws bridle.  He has
galloped ever since Guy Waynflete betrayed his friend to King James the
Second, and saved his own dirty skin.  Ye'll hear him, Mr Maxwell, when
you sleep under this roof when the wind's up--and luck's down.  Maybe
ye'll see the traitor's ghost.  My son Guy has seen him--or else he
lied, which is like enough.  Shut the window, brother Godfrey, and snuff
the candles."

"Will you deal again, sir?" said Maxwell of Ouseley.

"No," cried the squire; "cards won't bring the lad back.  Get your book,
brother Godfrey, and read us a prayer.  Pray, man, pray! and Mr Maxwell
can join us."

"With pleasure, sir," said Maxwell of Ouseley, bowing.

"The prayer-book's in the church, brother," said the parson.

Then the squire got up and opened a drawer in the little side table, and
took out a well-worn book with a red cover.

"There's the mother's book," he said.  "Read on.  We'll fight it out to
the last."

Then the parson of the parish turned his heavy chair round towards the
light, and knelt up against the back of it, for his bones were something
too stiff to reach the floor.

"What--what do you want to pray for, brother?" he said.

"What?" cried the squire with an oath, "that my fool of a son may get
here before the clock strikes twelve, and save his honour and his house.
Can't you find a prayer?  Read the first in the book.  The Almighty'll
understand it."

The squire leant his elbows on the card-table and his forehead on his
hands.  Mr Maxwell of Ouseley stood up decorously, and held his
three-cornered hat before his face.

And the parson turned to the evening service, and read it straight
through sonorously.  The words implored pardon and peace, and light in
darkness; but they carried but one prayer up to the throne of Heaven,
"Let him come."

Then the parson began the Litany till he came to the travellers by land
and by water, when he rustled over the leaves of his book, and behold
there was a mark in the prayer for those at sea, which did not run so
ill in a storm of trouble and distress.  "Save, Lord, or else we
perish," he said, and the squire groaned and said, "Amen."

And through the storm and the loud rough voice the clock ticked and
struck, quarter, half-hour, and three quarters, till at last, with his
rough voice shaking and growing thick, and his dull old heart beating
fit to choke him, the parson found himself reading the prayer for "All
sorts and conditions of men."

"Mind, body and estate--"

"Eh-h!" groaned the squire.

"And a happy issue out of all--"

The first note of twelve clanged out, and the parson flung down his
book.

"Lord help us!" he cried, and Mr Maxwell of Ouseley took his hat from
before his face, and waited till the clock had struck twelve.  Then the
squire got up from his chair, and took up the oak chest and set it down
upon the card-table with a heavy thud.  He turned the key in the lock,
and took out a bundle of parchments and laid them down on his dead
wife's needlework, among the cards and the wine-glasses, with her
prayer-book by their side.

Then he drew himself straight up, and bowed.  "Mr Maxwell of Ouseley,"
he said, "these are the terms on which we stand.  This house and estate
were to pass to you, my attorney-at-law, in repayment of the loans ye've
made me, unless my son Guy came back by twelve to-night, ready to sign
such other bonds as ye might please, and to marry your girl whom ye'd
like to make a lady of quality as well as the heiress of ye're gains and
gettings."

"Yes, Mr Waynflete, those were the terms, and I regret--"

The squire turned and swore at him, then went on in the same tone as
before, "But my eldest son Guy, who broke his mother's heart, and was
too late for her deathbed, is _too late_ to save his father, and
himself.  I leave him my curse for a coward and a fool.  And I leave it
for all that come after him to follow in his steps.  And for t'other
one, brother Godfrey, you'd better take and put him into the Church, if
you can; he's a thickhead, but an honest lad.  So there, Attorney
Maxwell, take your own, and the luck ye've earned go with it!"

And Mr Maxwell, still murmuring regrets that he daren't speak aloud,
closed his long fingers over the deeds.  And the parson, the son of the
house, put his handkerchief over his face and wept, while the wind rose
higher and wailed louder, till it seemed as if cries and prayers for
mercy mingled with the thud of the hoofs of the horse that never drew
bridle at any door.

Then Waynflete of Waynflete Hall took up his dead wife's prayer-book and
kissed it, then he walked over to the side table, and stood with his
back to the other two.  "God have mercy on my soul!" said he, and took
something out of the leathern box.  And there was a loud noise and a
heavy fall, and the old drinking, gambling, hard-living squire never
lived to see whether his unlucky son came home too late.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

But in the gloomy mists of the next morning, while the scared household
were watching the body laid out for its last sleep in the room where it
had fallen, there staggered into the midst of them the ruined heir, his
trim locks wild and wet, his fair face marred and degraded, and his eyes
mad with fear.

"The traitor's ghost--or the devil in his shape--stood in my way--I was
coming--" he stuttered in thick, shaking tones.

"To the devil with your ghost!  You're drunk!" shouted the old parson,
and lifted his hand.

The boy cowered, stumbled and fell on the threshold.  He was indeed too
late.

That was what happened at Waynflete Hall, in October, 1785.

PART ONE, CHAPTER ONE.

THE FAMILY.

The splendid sunset of a late August day in the year 1885 was staining
the smoky atmosphere which enveloped the manufacturing district of
Ingleby with rich and subtle tints.

Margaret Waynflete sat at an upstairs window of a large square stone
house, looking across a garden, filled with brilliant flowers and
smoke-dulled shrubs, over lovely undulations of wood and field, and
unlovely forms of mill and chimney half veiled in tawny, luminous mist,
Beyond, hill behind hill, and moor above moor, in endless succession,
were lost in grey-gold smoke and fog.  She was an old woman, with a line
strong face of marked outline, and a tall, strong frame, dressed
handsomely in sober and dignified garments suitable to her years and
position.  Her face was wrinkled and weather-beaten, with the look that
comes of facing hard weather through a long life; but it told of perfect
health, of unimpaired strength of mind and body.

Nevertheless Margaret Waynflete was engaged in the religious duty of
"considering her latter end."  So probably she would have expressed
herself, for she was a person who always endeavoured to fulfil any duty
that she recognised, and such consideration was becoming to a woman of
seventy-six.  But what she was really considering was her former life,
and that, not so much with a view to repenting her sins, or regretting
her shortcomings--though if she had such she was truly desirous of
repenting and regretting them--as of shaping the future in such a way
that her past work should not be undone by those who would come after
her.

She had had a life work.  She had attempted something and had done it.
She had lifted her good old name out of the dust, and had restored her
fallen family to its natural station.  And she was intensely proud both
of her family name, of her own success, and of the means by which the
success had been obtained.  When she thought of the day when she should
be laid in the old churchyard at Waynflete, she desired as much that the
business, to which the restored fortunes of the family were owing,
should be honourably and skilfully managed, as that the family name
should be borne with grace and dignity.

"We owe the old place to the business," she said once to her two
great-nephews; "and it's a poor thing to forget the bridge that carries
you over."

Sixty years before Margaret Waynflete had been a fine, strong girl,
intensely conscious of her good blood, though her father was but a
working farmer, and she herself had had a humble education, and spoke
with the strongest accent of her native county.  The family had fallen
so completely that every one but Margaret had forgotten the fact, and it
hardly appeared extraordinary, though it might be sad, when her father's
death left her with the choice of going to service or of working in the
mills with her little brother.

Margaret put her shawl over her head and went to her work every day; a
fair, rosy girl with abundant flaxen hair, and large, finely cut
features.  Her beauty attracted the attention of the mill-owner, Thomas
Palmer, a man no longer young, of humbler origin, and not much better
education than her own, but of rapidly increasing wealth.

He courted Margaret honourably, and she married him on condition that he
would send her little brother Godfrey to school.  Years passed, of
rising fortune which no children came to inherit.  Thomas Palmer's
relations were all well established in businesses of their own, and when
he died he left everything he possessed to his wife, and Godfrey
Waynflete was her natural heir.  Already, a little bit of the old
Waynflete property, which lay in a moorland valley twenty miles away
from Ingleby, had been bought by the wealthy mill-owner, and as time
went on, Margaret, in whose hands the mills prospered, recovered it all,
and when the house itself came into her possession she took her own name
again.  Her brother had married well; but he died young, leaving a son
who bore the other family name of Guy.  He should be the future
Waynflete of Waynflete; but again disappointment came, for Guy was
killed by an accident three years after his marriage.  His young wife
died in giving birth to a second son, and the old great-aunt was left
with two babies, Guy and Godfrey, on whom to fix her long-deferred
hopes.

Sixteen years had passed since that day, during which the business had
been the duty, and the family name the romance of her life.  She loved
both now, as people do love the objects of a life's devotion, with an
imperious demand that those who came after her should love them also;
and now, as she sat in her armchair, and thought of her age, and of
preparing for death, she was really thinking about the two young lads,
whose future fate lay in her power.

The eldest ought to have Waynflete; but it did not suit with her ideas
to make him the squire and his brother the mill-owner, as might have
seemed natural.  The money that had been made in Ingleby Mills ought not
to be diverted from their interests for the support of the Squire of
Waynflete.  He must be a partner in the business, even if the chief
management of it fell to his brother.  And the Squire of Waynflete ought
to be the eldest son.

Such was the view of life maintained by this hard-working old lady, who
had never known an idle day, nor a doubt as to the value of her day's
work.

But she liked the youngest boy the best, and believed that he was the
most likely to follow in her footsteps.  Old people do not always regard
young ones with blind admiration, and Mrs Waynflete appraised her
great-nephews exactly according to her own measure.  She did not know
that there were other scales in the universe differently weighted.

So, as she reviewed her past life, she questioned herself whether all
her payments had been fair, whether she had exacted enough, and not too
much, work from her subordinates; whether she had spent enough money on
improvements, or too much on buying back the last piece of unprofitable
moor that had belonged to the old Waynfletes; whether, on the other
hand, she had ever sacrificed honesty to gain, or failed honourably to
fulfil an obligation.  And in all these respects her conscience was
clear.

And when she thought of the future--she took heaven for granted, as her
well-earned portion; but she could picture nothing but Guy and Godfrey
in her place, and herself somehow cognisant of their actions.  Their
young voices, through the open window, disturbed her meditations, as
they came across the lawn together.

She rapped on the window, and called to them to come up, and in a minute
or two, they were in the handsome, heavily furnished drawing-room, in
which their white tennis-suits hardly looked at home.  They were tall
lads of eighteen and sixteen, like each other, and like their
great-aunt; Godfrey the younger, remarkably so.  He was the taller of
the two, with high cheek-bones and prominent features, light flaxen hair
and large grey eyes, with a certain direct honesty of expression.  He
was still only a big boy, while his brother was slighter, and of more
finished appearance, and more delicate outlines.  His eyes were also of
a light grey, but they were softened by dark eyelashes set thickly on
the lower lids as well as on the upper, which gave them a wistful,
pleading look, quite independent of their owner's intentions, and
inconsistent with his slightly critical smile and reticent manner.

"Did you want us, Auntie Waynflete?" said Godfrey, in blunt, boyish
tones, and using the old-fashioned form of address, in which he had been
trained.

"Yes.  I've an invitation for you, which I've a mind you shall accept."

"Are the Rabys giving a dance?" asked Guy, who was becoming an eligible
partner.

"No; this is from Constance Palmer.  Her husband was your great-uncle's
cousin.  She wanted to spend some months in bracing air, so I let
Waynflete to her.  You know the old lease of the house fell in this
spring.  She asks you two to come there for a visit.  You shall go."

"I should like to see Waynflete," said Guy, with some curiosity, while
Godfrey said--

"Is it only an old lady?  Will there be any other fellows there?"

"She isn't old, young gentleman.  There are some little girls--or young
ladies, perhaps you'd call them--that she has brought up.  She says the
neighbours have called on her."

"Is Waynflete much of a place?" asked Guy.  "Why have we never seen it?"

"No, Guy," said Mrs Waynflete.  "It's but a poor place, and while the
house was let to strangers--as, indeed, a good part of the property is
still in the hands of the old tenants--I did not care for you to go
there.  Now, you can both see what you think of it."

Guy gave a quick glance at her, while Godfrey said--

"I don't suppose it's jollier than this."

"Before you go," said the old lady, sitting up in her chair, "there's
something I want to say to you."

"Yes, auntie," said Godfrey, staring at her, while Guy said, "Yes?"
politely.

"You both know how Waynflete has been got back for the family.  By hard
work, and doing of duty, and courage.  When my heart is set on a thing,
lads, I don't fear trouble.  I don't fear man, and I've no need to fear
the devil, since I know I'm in the right.  And I never shall fear what
folks may say of any course I choose to follow.  I'm an old woman, and I
tell you that a single aim always hits the mark."

As she spoke in her strong voice, and looked at the lads with her strong
eyes, Guy felt that the manifesto had a purpose.  Godfrey listened quite
simply as to an improving remark.

"You know how, bit by bit, your great-uncle Palmer and I have got
Waynflete back.  And I've often told you how _my_ great-uncle Guy lost
it?"

"Oh yes, auntie," said Godfrey, cheerfully.  "He got screwed, and then
made up a cock-and-bull story about the family ghost stopping him at the
bridge.  Awful bad lot he must have been.  Then he died, didn't he, and
Maxwell of Ouseley had the place till _he_ went to the bad, and had to
sell it?"

"Yes, he died delirious, and my grandfather was turned out to make his
way in the world.  So you see, 'twas self-indulgence, drinking and
gambling that lost the place, and ruined the family."

"I don't think my namesake deserves all the blame," said Guy.  "His
father, as I understand the story, got him into a pretty tight place."

"He had his chance, Guy, and he lost it by his cowardice--if, as some
think, he was stopped by highwaymen, or by his vicious habits, if he was
drunk.  He was a very fine gentleman, I've heard; played the fiddle,
Guy, and wrote verses; but that was no stand-by in his hour of need."

"The family ghost, himself," said Guy, in a slow, dry voice, "seems to
have been an unpleasant person to know."

"Ay; there was a young Waynflete who betrayed his friend in Monmouth's
rebellion, to save his own life.  He went mad, and shot himself--as the
story runs--so ignorant folk say his ghost haunts Waynflete, and think,
when the wind blows, they hear his horse galloping."

"That Guy who was too late was an awful duffer, if he wasn't drunk!"
said Godfrey.  "I'd have got over the river, ghost or highwayman, or
been killed on the spot."

"It's not a nice story," said Guy.  "I should think Waynflete was
haunted by all their ghosts!"

"Ghost-stories are very proper for old families," said Mrs Waynflete;
"but of course no one believes them.  There, it's a disgraceful story;
take it as a warning.  You'd better get ready for dinner."

She rose and walked out of the room as she spoke, with a quick, firm
step, while Guy laughed rather scornfully.

"What an anachronism the dear old lady is!" he said.  "As if all the
world depended on Waynflete!"

"I don't know what you mean!" said Godfrey, angrily.  "I think she's an
awfully splendid old woman to have stuck to her point all her life and
won it.  Catch a highwayman stopping me!"

"My unlucky namesake said it was a ghost."

"Well, but it wasn't, you know.  There aren't any."

"You're the right heir for Aunt Margaret, Godfrey.  She ought to leave
you Waynflete."

"Why; you're the eldest," said Godfrey; "she says interfering with
natural laws is wicked."

"If primogeniture _is_ a natural law?"

"It's the law of England," said Godfrey, as if that settled the point.

Guy laughed again.

"Ah, Godfrey," he said, "you'll always get past the ghosts!  Well, the
visit will be rather jolly.  I've a great curiosity about Waynflete, and
at least it will be clean.  I agree with Ruskin that smoke is sinful."

"There's a great deal of rot in Ruskin," said Godfrey, "and you ought
not to say things are sinful, when they ain't.  Plenty of things are."

PART ONE, CHAPTER TWO.

THE HOUSE.

Constancy Vyner was sitting at a table, sorting and arranging a little
pile of manuscripts, neatly clipped together, and written in the
distinct upright hand of the modern high-school girl.  She was dressed
in a plain, girlish frock, well cut and well put on, her thick brown
hair hung on her shoulders, and curled over her square low forehead in
vigorous waves, as if every hair was full of elastic life.  Her handsome
eyes, of a clear shade of hazel, looked out under straight brown
eyebrows, from a brown, rosy face with an air of keen and critical
observation; while the straight nose and firm round chin added to her
purposeful look.  She was tall and strongly made for her sixteen years,
and the white, well-shaped hands that held the papers looked as if made
to carry out the work which the well-shaped head would conceive.  The
room in which she sat was as old-fashioned as she herself was modern and
up to date, with small irregular panels, sloping roof, and tiny
casements, through which the evening sun danced in distorted gleams.

"I _think_ I'm doing well," said Constancy aloud to herself, as if
convincing an opponent.  "Ten shillings from the _Guide of Youth_ for
the best essay on Reading.  I'm glad I was so careful as to what books I
mentioned.  One must respect people's prejudices.  I have much the best
chance for all those acrostics and search questions.  The editor of _The
Children's Friend_ has asked me for another story.  This will do.  The
little delicate boy must catch cold in a thunderstorm when his sister
takes him out without leave.  Shall he quite die?  I think not.  The
district-visitor shall save his life.  And this story for _The Penny
Pleasure Giver_.  There mustn't be any moral in that at all!  Altogether
I have got twenty pounds in the last year, and some of the editors write
`Dear Madam,' and don't find out I'm only a little girl!  Something
ought to come out of this place.  It's beautiful copy!" she continued,
leaning back in her chair and glancing round her, while a certain
absorbed receptive look came into her keen eyes, altering her whole
expression.

She jumped up, and swinging herself into the deep high recess of the
little casement, pushed it open and looked out.

Beneath her lay a wild untrimmed garden divide! by a sunk fence from a
large paddock sloping towards a narrow valley, with heathery hills
beyond.  The sky was blue and still, with long streaks of pearly silvery
cloud across the hilltops.  A flight of rooks came home to a group of
tall elm trees beside the house, filling the still air with sound.

"It's awfully jolly and heavenly!" said Constancy, staring at the
dazzling clouds with strong, unfaltering eyes.  "It'll do for a
description."

"What will do for a description?" said an answering voice, like a softer
echo of her own, as another girl, a year or so younger than herself,
came in and stood below the window, lifting up a face of almost exactly
the same shape, more delicate and perhaps less forcible.

"Rooks--peace--brownish meadows, and blue sky," said Constancy.  "Nice
description.  What have you been doing, Florella?"

"Talking to Aunt Constance about the Waynfletes, and the place.  She
says she is glad we have come; the house is gloomy, and she has heard
odd noises.  Oh, Cosy, do you think it could be haunted?"

"That would be luck!" said Constancy, jumping down.  "Oh, I say, even a
little noise would do to begin with!  If I could only get a ghost, and
the way people behaved with a ghost, it would be beautiful!  It would do
for the _Penny Pleasure_.  Now, Flo, remember, you are not to tell
auntie I read all those novels at Weymouth.  One must have lovers, if
one writes a novel, and I never can understand going into raptures about
anybody, so I must get it at secondhand.  Let us come down to tea--the
Waynflete boys will be coming.  Perhaps they can tell us about the
ghost.  I shall investigate it thoroughly, and if ever I am interviewed
by the Psychical Society, I shall take care to give more lucid answers
than most people seem to do."

Constancy and Florella Vyner were the orphan daughters of a man who had
never known how to make his considerable talents marketable, or to adapt
his style to the _Guide of Youth_, or to the _Penny Pleasure Giver_, as
self-interest required.  He lived and died the vicar of a small town
parish, and his two little girls, already motherless and with only a few
thousand pounds between them, came under the care of their mother's
sister, Mrs John Palmer, who had married one of Mrs Waynflete's
connections.  She was a widow, well off and childless, with a house in
London, and she gave all the advantages to Constancy and Florella which
she would have bestowed on her own daughters.  She was very fond of
Florella, and as much so of Constancy as a not very clever aunt was
likely to be of a girl who not only thought that she knew better than
her elders, but, like Prince Prigio, always did.

Constancy did not mean to be the mere society young lady into which her
aunt expected the shining light of the high-school to develop.  She had
definite ambitions, and definite powers to enable her to fulfil them.

"What sort of noises did auntie hear, Flo?" she asked as she put away
her papers.

"She hasn't heard any.  But the servants say there are queer whisperings
and rustlings, and the lodge-keeper told them that one of the old
Waynflete's `walks.'  Oh! what's that?"

"The ghost," said Constancy, laughing, and emerging from behind the
rustling, fresh calendered chintz of the old-fashioned four-post bed.
"You hear a little faint rustle all round you, then _crack_ goes a
panel!  You listen for footsteps, and pit-a-pat up the stairs they come.
The door slowly opens--"

"Don't, Cosy; I don't like it," said Florella, shrinking.

"Stop a moment, I'll show you," cried Constancy, opening a door, and
running along the narrow polished oak passage beyond it.  The younger
girl stood still at the head of the dark old staircase, and looked
timidly around her.  The wind whistled softly round the house, and
stirred the neglected creepers outside, so that they creaked on their
rusty nails, and tapped with their long arms against the windows.  She
felt the bygoneness and unusedness of the place, and a feeling of awe
stole over her.  Suddenly a sound of eerie sobbing and sighing, followed
first by a wild, mournful cry and then by a ringing laugh sounded
through the house.  The next moment Cosy came running down the passage,
laughing still.

"There!  See how easy it is," she said.  "That's how ghost-stories are
hatched.  I can make up a beauty for Waynflete, and study the results.
Bless me! is it ringing the door-bell?  No, that must be the Waynflete
boys arriving.  Come along, Flo, we'll be ready to receive them."

Mrs John Palmer, kind, pretty, and easy-mannered, was a charming
hostess, and the two lads had not been many minutes in the long, low
drawing-room of the ancestral home that was so strange to them before
she had set them quite at their ease.  She pointed out to them the
quaint old furniture, some of which must have been in Waynflete Hall
before it was sold, and praised the old panelling and the low ceiling,
with big black beams running across it.  Then she encouraged them to
talk about themselves, found out that they were both at a great public
school, but that Guy was just going to Oxford.  He was musical, and
meant to read for honours, while Godfrey, besides being well up in the
school, had done everything in the way of athletics which was possible
at sixteen.

Then she proposed that the girls should show them round the place; and
the four young people went out together, across a lawn cut up by
odd-shaped flower-beds, full of old-fashioned flowers, "inconvenient,
but unique," as Constancy said, moving towards the paddock, where they
discovered the possibility of making a tennis-ground.

The two boys were soon congenially employed in stepping it out, and they
all grew intimate over their respective experiences of the game, and of
other occupations and amusements.  Florella was a kind and cheerful
girl, wishful of giving pleasure; and Constancy, though she watched the
two Waynfletes keenly, and "studied" them as she talked with spirit, was
not at all occupied with her own relations to them; and, as Godfrey
remarked afterwards, "was more like a fellow than a girl, except that
she talked about the work her form was doing, which a fellow never
wanted to do."

The four found their way into the old kitchen garden, with lavender and
rosemary bushes nearly as tall as themselves, and wildernesses of
untrimmed raspberries, which, in that northern country, were still
bearing large specimens of red and white berries.  Then, through a gate
in the old stone wall, they came out into the stables and
farm-buildings, picturesque and woefully tumble-down.

"Shabby old place," said Godfrey, contemptuously; but Guy already knew
that the whole scene was fastening itself on his affections.  He had
never liked any other so much.  Constancy watched his soft gazing eyes
and satirical little smile as they turned round to the entrance of the
farmyard where were a pair of large iron gates with handsome stone
gate-posts.  Beyond was the remains of an avenue of elms, leading
through rough, sunlit fields.

"The river is down there," said Constancy.  "I believe this used to be
the entrance."  And Guy instantly thought of his unhappy namesake riding
up to the gates--too late.  A vivid picture presented itself to his
eyes.

"Is that the church?" asked Godfrey, pointing to a little grey building
low down at one side; while Guy said, "Let us go and see where our `rude
forefathers sleep.'"

"Isn't it like a slug?" said Cosy.

The comparison was not romantic, but it was apt.  The long, low,
moss-grown church seemed to cling to the uneven, heaped-up ground.  An
old woman was cleaning it, and the young people went in.

The church was dark, damp, and cold, but a flood of yellow sunlight
streamed through the open door and fell upon a flat stone at the
entrance on which was no name, but only a date, "1785," and two
words--"Too Late."

"Cruel!" ejaculated Guy, and caught himself up.

"Eh, sir," said the old woman, coming forward with a curtsey; "there be
the last o' t'owd Waynfletes, him as saw some'at and died raving.  Here
outside's fayther, as shot hisself, and could na' lie in t'kirkyard,
so's brother, t'vicar, laid un here in t'field and pu'd t'wa' doon, and
built 't oop agen, round 's tomb.  Here a ligs."

She led them out among the heaped-up graves, and showed them a round
excrescence in the churchyard wall, within which was an old-fashioned
oblong tombstone.

A tall, fair-haired, young man, with a lanky figure and stumbling steps,
went before them, as if doing the honours of the dreary neglected place.

"Yon's soft Jem Outhwaite," said the old woman in a whisper.  "He've
seen t'owd genleman--_him as walks_, sir.  He seed un when he wor a
laddie, and went silly.  He maks a bit o' brass by fetchin' and carryin'
fer t'sexton and me."

"Soft" Jem touched his hat and grinned cheerfully.  Guy gave him a
shilling, and the old woman another, with youthful lordliness but he
disliked the sight of these dishonoured graves more than he could have
supposed possible, and the poor delighted softy, tying up his shilling
in an old spotted handkerchief made a vivid impression on him.

PART ONE, CHAPTER THREE.

THE INHERITANCE.

Constancy made Godfrey tell her all the story of the loss of Waynflete,
of the traitor's ghost, and of the Guy who was too late, as they walked
home round the paddock, and looked down over Flete Edge to the river
Flete at the bottom of the valley.  A rough, ill-grown plantation
covered the steep descent, while scattered cottages were planted on the
equally steep hill opposite to them.  Guy studied it with silent
interest, while Godfrey compared it unfavourably with the Ingleby
valley, and scoffed at the legends which he was repeating.

"Ghosts are all bosh," he said, with decision.

"Well, there are some odd noises at Waynflete," said Constancy, as they
reached the house.  "Now, come and see a picture.  It must be this
wretched Guy who was too late."

She took them upstairs to the extreme end of the wing of the house next
the stables.  Here, with windows looking out three ways, was a little
octagon room, with polished oak floor, and scanty old-fashioned
furniture.  Over the chimney was the head of a handsome fair-faced
youth, with the last rays of sun falling on his face.

"I declare, Guy," said Godfrey, "he's uncommonly like you, especially
about the eyes."

"I dare say," said Guy, but the likeness annoyed him.

"He looks very sad, poor fellow," said Florella, softly; while Constancy
looked from one to the other, and thought, "I've got a lot of `study.'"
Rooms had been assigned to the two boys at the other end of this same
wing of the house, opening into each other, as was the way of rooms at
Waynflete.

Godfrey went to bed, thinking that he did not much like these old
legends and old scandals; and as for ghosts, the idea was too
ridiculous!  Still, there were certainly an odd variety of nocturnal
noises at Waynflete--scratch, tap--rats and mice?  Then a low murmuring
and sobbing--the wind?  He stuck his candle in the open window, and the
flame hardly stirred.  There was an interval of silence, and he got into
bed and fell asleep as he ran through in his mind all the causes of
mysterious noises--distant trains, coughing sheep, scraping creepers,
pecking pigeons, whistling wind, scratching mice, etc, etc.

He was awakened by a violent clutch on his shoulder, and starting up
saw, in the stream of moonlight from the window, his brother, half
dressed and deadly pale, who fell on his knees beside him, hiding his
face and grasping him so tightly that he was hardly able to move.

"Guy--I say!  Guy!  Good Lord, what's the matter with you?  Ill?  Got
the nightmare?  I say--let go--I can't stir!"

Guy loosened his hold after a moment or two, but he shook from head to
foot, and Godfrey, tumbling out of the bed, pushed him up on to it, and
stood staring at him as he lay with hidden face.

"What the dickens is the matter with you?  I say, Guy!  Can't you
speak?"

There was no answer, and Godfrey bethinking himself that cold water was
supposed to be an appropriate remedy for sudden ailments, plunged his
sponge into the water-jug, and soused it on his brother's head.  It was
so far effectual that Guy began to fetch his breath again, in long
sobbing gasps, while Godfrey, to his increased horror, felt that there
were tears on the face that was pressed against his hand.

"Oh, I say, Guy!  I say--what is making you such an awful duffer?  What
_is_ the matter with you?"

Poor Guy shivered and trembled, perhaps not finding Godfrey's method
very helpful; but he came more to himself by degrees, asked for some
water to drink, and pulled the coverings round him.

"Didn't you see--him?" he whispered at last.  "See--see what?  Oh, I
say!  Guy, you haven't been dreaming of the ghost?  Oh, I say! how can
you be such a duffer!  You're as bad as when you used to climb into my
crib, and Auntie Waynflete whipped you, after that nursemaid made the
bogie and scared you."  What difference it might have made to Guy
Waynflete if, at that moment of terrible experience he had had some
comprehending friend to soothe and sustain him, it is impossible to say;
as it was, his boyish pride and self-consciousness began to revive,
under his brother's rough dealing; he made an effort to pull himself
together, laughed in an odd, startling way, and said--

"Dreaming!  Yes, of course I was dreaming.  Don't you ever say one word
about it."

"Not I," said Godfrey.  "A nice story it would be to get about.  Now, am
I to go into your room, and sleep with the ghost?  It's getting chilly."

Guy raised himself on his arm, and stared out into the moonlight.

"No," he said, "I'll go back myself.  You'll never hear another word
about it."

He got up, still tremulously, and went away, _shutting the door_ behind
him.

Godfrey was but a boy, with all the callous stupidity of his sixteen
years.  He thought that the incident had been very odd, and rather
disgraceful to Guy's manhood.  He was glad it was over, and he tumbled
back into bed again, and went to sleep.

Guy looked much paler than usual the next morning, but confessed to
nothing amiss.  As he went out with the others to join in trying the new
tennis-ground, he saw Florella, standing a little apart from the others,
evidently just getting over a fit of crying.

"I say--can I help you about anything?" he said, good naturedly.

"No," said Florella, turning upon him a pair of translucent eyes, almost
as steadfast as Constancy's, and even more candid.  "I--I--I've been
helping to do something wrong--that's all."

She ran away before he could speak; but, surprised as he was, there
remained in his mind the feeling that somehow she was a nice little
girl.

Godfrey heard no more of Guy's midnight adventure during the remaining
three days of the visit.  The time passed pleasantly, and the aged vicar
of the parish and one or two of the neighbouring gentlemen called
formally on "Mr Waynflete."  The recognition pleased Guy, or at least
that part of him which was free to care about it.  He had very little to
say to his aunt when they came back about Waynflete, speaking of it in a
satirical, rather contemptuous fashion, which annoyed her very much;
while Godfrey described it fully, though he staunchly declared that he
liked Ingleby best.

Shortly afterwards Guy had a sharp attack of illness.  He had never been
quite so strong as his brother, and he did not recover from its effects
for some time.  Mrs Waynflete had little patience with any ailment less
definite than the measles, and thought him fanciful and self-indulgent.

She was also much put out by Mrs John Palmer's complaints of odd and
unaccountable noises at Waynflete, which upset her nerves and frightened
her servants.  But for these, she would have liked to take the house
again next summer, as the air suited her, and she was glad to be near
her husband's family.  As it was, she did not feel able to settle down
comfortably.

Mrs Waynflete thought Constance Palmer would have had more sense.  She
let Waynflete Hall to a working farmer, with directions to look after
the house carefully, and keep it dry.

Nothing more was heard of mysterious noises, and Guy and Godfrey did not
see the place again for nearly five years, when the farmer's tenancy had
come to an end.

PART ONE, CHAPTER FOUR.

HEREDITARY FOES.

"Very few people appreciate the feeling of a place.  Hardly any one can
feel the London atmosphere," said Constancy Vyner, one Sunday afternoon
nearly five years after the events last recorded, as she sat drinking
tea on a balcony in a square on the London side of Kensington.

"I shouldn't have thought our atmosphere so ethereal as to be
imperceptible to any one," said a young man who formed one of the party.

"That's a most obvious remark, Mr Staunton; but I didn't mean fogs.  I
don't believe the country ever gives one just such a feel of summer as
there is now.  Hot air, balcony-flowers, rustling brown trees, they're
drier and more papery than country ones; sunny dust, dusty sun, and
people, pavements, and omnibuses, and undergrounds--and smart
fashionable clothes.  It's so summery!  Nobody's got the idea exactly,"
she said.  "Of course Dickens has a London feel; but that's on another
level, ghastly and squalid--or best parlour and hot-buttered toast; nor
does it quite belong to the swells, though it has fashion and the season
in it, too."

"Your idea is coming?" said Mr Staunton, watching her curiously.

"I've got it!" said Constancy, sitting up with a broad smile of
pleasure.  "It's modern--it's democratic.  It's life's fulness, roses,
strawberries, sun, summer--got with some trouble, for the many.  So
there's a little dust.  You have the best of everything--music, parties;
but you go by the underground!"

When Constancy was present, she always took the stage--or, rather,
people gave it to her--she commanded attention.  She was now at college,
thinking, talking, making friends according to her wont, and though her
literary ambitions were necessarily much in abeyance, she wrote, now and
then, an article or short story, which had just the distinction that
wins acceptance, and was not quite like every one else's.

The youngest Miss Staunton was a college friend, and Constancy was
intimate with her family, which consisted of two or three sisters, all
busy with various forms of self-help and self-expression, and of the
brother now present.  The whole party lived harmoniously together, on a
conjunction of small incomes, on terms of mutual independence, and, as
Constancy epigrammatically put it, "went into society in the
underground," and into very good society too, which is no doubt a modern
and democratic development.

"Don't let us collect material for magazine articles," said Violet
Staunton; "but let us settle about the reading party.  Cuthbert has
heard of a jolly old-fashioned place on the moors up above Rilston, in
Yorkshire, within reach of all kinds of fine scenery."

"Rilston!" interposed Constancy.  "We stayed once with Aunt Connie, at a
place near there--Waynflete."

"How odd!" said Violet.  "It was from Mr Waynflete that Cuth heard of
the place."

"Guy Waynflete is a friend of mine," said Mr Staunton.  "I stayed with
him once at Ingleby.  We came upon Moorhead in our walks, and I should
think it might suit for the preparation of future double firsts and
senior-wranglers."

"Thank you, Mr Staunton," said Constancy, frankly rising to the bait.
"I dare say you would expect to find us crocheting antimacassars!"

A little more discussion followed as to ways and means, and as to the
number of the party, which was to consist of Constancy and her sister,
of the eldest and youngest Miss Stauntons, and of two other college
students.

"I should like to see Waynflete again," said Constancy; "it was a lovely
old place--haunted, too.  The family lost it to a villain called
Maxwell, and the old lady who has it now bought it back again."

"I never heard anything of the family history from Waynflete," said
Cuthbert Staunton, "beyond the fact that the old place had been
recovered.  But I believe we are connected with some Yorkshire Maxwells.
Do you know any particulars of the `villain,' Miss Vyner?"

"You, descended from the hereditary foe, and friends with Guy Waynflete,
without knowing it?  How splendid!" said Constancy, sitting upright.
"This is the story."

And with exact memory and considerable force she related the legend of
the loss of Waynflete as she had heard it five years ago from Godfrey;
putting in a vivid description of the eerie old house, and the still
more eerie picture of the unhappy heir, concluding with--

"The eldest one was so like the picture.  He is in the business now,
isn't he?  I heard he didn't take a good degree.  And Godfrey was such a
big boy."

"Well, he is a very big boy still," said Cuthbert Staunton, who had
listened with much interest.  "He is a fine fellow, still at Oxford.
Guy is made of rather complex stuff.  Perhaps you may see him--he is in
London, and I asked him to look in to tell my sisters about this
moorland paradise."

As he spoke there was a movement, and a fair, slight young man came in,
whom Cuthbert greeted cordially, and introduced as Mr Waynflete.

The five years had not greatly changed him.  He had the same slightly
supercilious manner and the same "pretty" wistful eyes, into which, at
the sight of Constancy, there came a startled look.

"I remember Waynflete so well," she said, after the greeting.  "Is it as
delightful as ever?"

"I have never seen it since," said Guy; "but the lease is out this year,
and I believe some of us are to go and inspect it.  Moorhead is eight or
ten miles off--up on the moors."

"Will you tell us about it, Mr Waynflete," said the elder Miss
Staunton.  "We want to go in August.  Is it a place where we are likely
to be shot, or glared at by indignant keepers, if we walk about?  We
shouldn't like to be a grievance--or to be treated as one."

"No," said Guy, with a smile.  "It's only the fringe of the moor, and
there are very few grouse there.  I think you'd be tolerated, even if
you picked bilberries and had picnics."

"That's just what we want to do," said Constancy, "picnics on improved
principles.  But we shall each have an _etna_, we shan't trust to sticks
and a gipsy-kettle."

"I don't know how young ladies amuse themselves when they're not
reading," said Guy.  "But there's nothing to do at Moorhead.  It's two
miles from High Hinton, and four from Kirk Hinton, and nine from
Rilston--and it mostly rains up there.  But Mrs Shipley's very good at
scones and tea-cakes, and the view is first-class of its kind."

"Then, when it rains, we can put on our mackintoshes, and walk two--or
four--miles to buy postage stamps," said Constancy, rising.  "Good-bye,
Kitty, I must be going.  Mind you look up your duties as chaperon and
eldest of the party.  Mr Waynflete, I'm sure my aunt will be delighted
to see you if you like to call.  We are at home on Tuesdays--12, Sumner
Square.  Mr Staunton, perhaps we shall see you too?"

The young men made proper acknowledgments, and when Constancy, with no
ladies' last words, had taken her departure, Guy stated that he wished
to hear the evening service at Westminster, and asked his friend to walk
there with him by way of the Thames Embankment.

PART ONE, CHAPTER FIVE.

INTERESTING.

Cuthbert Staunton was a man with a history, and rather a sad one.  He
had been engaged to be married to a girl who had died within a week of
the wedding-day.  In the first shock of his trouble, he threw up his
appointment, a recorder-ship which had been obtained for him by some
legal connections, and went off on an aimless wandering, which greatly
exhausted his small means, and put him out of the running for the prizes
of life.  He quieted down in time, however, his trouble receded into the
background, and he came back to the family home, settled down, as his
sisters said, into a regular old bachelor, with set little tastes and
set little ways, a quiet, contented face, and a very kind heart.  He had
much cultivation and some literary power, and felt himself more
fortunate than he could have hoped in being employed by his University
as an Extension lecturer on literature and modern history.  In this way
he obtained interesting occupation, and a sufficient addition to his
income for his very moderate wants.

Now, at two and thirty, no one would have suspected him of having had a
"Wanderjahr" in his life; but perhaps it was from an under-sense of
sympathy with a not very lucky person that he had taken to Guy
Waynflete; when he had met him first abroad, and then at Oxford, a year
or two before the present occasion.

For Guy was a person who did not get on well with life, he experienced
and caused a great many disappointments.  Once or twice at important
examinations some sudden illness had come in his way and spoiled his
chances.  Such, at least, was his own account of his ill success, when
he was pressed to give one.  With other engagements he was apt, his
friends said, to fail to come up to the scratch.  If he undertook to
play cricket, sometimes he did not turn up, and sometimes he played
badly.  He was musical enough to be a coveted member of various clubs
and societies, but his performances could never be calculated on, and
were sometimes brilliant and sometimes disappointing.  There were times
when his friends could make nothing of him, and no one felt really to
know him.  Cuthbert Staunton did not know much about him, he suspected
him of more uncertain health than he chose to confess, and had
discovered that the home life was not smooth for him.  But he did not
want to bring his own past into the present, or to inquire into Guy's.
He found him congenial, in spite of the eight or nine years between
them, and did not think that his various shortcomings were due to any
discreditable cause.

"You are doing your London?" he said, as they started.

"Yes," said Guy, "I've hardly ever been in town.  You know we haven't
many friends who can be said to be in London society.  Most of the
Ingleby neighbours come up for three weeks to a good hotel, and do
pictures and theatres, and visit each other a little.  I am sent up now
to `make my way' with some of our city business connections."

"By the way," said Staunton, "what Maxwells were those who seem to have
been rather unpleasantly connected with your family history?  My mother
was a Yorkshire Maxwell."

"Was she?" said Guy.

He was quite silent for a noticeable moment, then he said, with the
little ring in his voice which people called satirical, "This is very
interesting.  Did your mother come from the Rilston neighbourhood?  When
we've settled the fact, we can consider of our future relations to each
other."

The Stauntons were not people of pedigree; but Cuthbert produced facts
enough to prove that his mother had really belonged to a family which
had originally owned a small estate called Ouseley, not far from
Rilston.

"That's the place," said Guy.

"But as for Waynflete," said Cuthbert, "my forefather must have had to
drop it again pretty quickly.  I suppose he played cards too often.  I
never heard of its having been in the family.  My grandfather Maxwell
was a country doctor, and didn't think family traditions consistent with
hard work.  I never thought about the matter, till Miss Vyner was so
much excited at discovering your hereditary foe."

"I don't myself care about traditions," said Guy, in a slow, soft,
argumentative tone that told of his county.  "I don't, you know,
unfortunately share my aunt's profound respect for the house of
Waynflete.  She is an ancestor worth having, I grant you I think, if she
knew, she'd make a Christian effort to receive you kindly; but we won't
tell her.  As for me, I object to feuds and obligations--and--ghosts,
and heredity's a hobby that's overridden nowadays.  We won't part for
ever."

He turned his soft eyes round on his friend, with a smile, but Staunton,
who had spoken without a serious thought, saw with surprise that he had
thought the avowal necessary.

"Well, my dear boy," he said, "I'm glad you don't say, `Here's Vauxhall
Bridge and there's Vauxhall Bridge Road--take the tram, I take the 'bus.
Farewell.'  But we must hurry up; it's getting late."

When they came into the Abbey, Guy looked all round him in a searching,
attentive way.  He joined in the singing with a voice full and sweet
enough to do justice to his Yorkshire blood, and when it was over, and
they parted, said, as if it was a thing to be thankfully noted, "I have
very much enjoyed it."

When, on the Tuesday afternoon, the two young men appeared in Mrs
Palmer's handsome drawing-room, it was full of other visitors, and their
entertainment fell at first to Florella's share.  Her figure, as she sat
a little apart by a table covered with the usual knick-knacks and
flowers, had a harmonious and pictorial effect which caught Guy's fancy
and remained in his memory.  She was still very like Constancy, but with
softened tints; hair and eyes had not the same bright chestnut hue, but
were of a dim shady brown; she was paler, and though her young outlines
were plump and full, they had an indescribable grace and softness.  She
had Constancy's straight brows and square forehead; but the eyes beneath
were of another but equally modern type, seeking, longing, as the eyes
of Fiametta or of the Blessed Damozel herself, but with this difference:
they were happy as if in faith that a good answer waited their
questioning.  Florella did not talk, or learn, or do, as much as
Constancy; but she knew all about learning and doing, and, in a girlish
way, lived in the face of the questions of her time.  She had one gift,
too, which was likely to bring her much joy, and to this, after a few
commonplaces, Cuthbert turned the conversation.

"And your painting, Miss Vyner?  Has it been getting on?"

"Yes," said Florella, "I have been having lessons."

"May we see?"

Florella, without any excuses or shyness, took a little portfolio from
the table, and showed some sketches of flowers in water-colour.  The
execution was slight and not perfectly skilful; but each little drawing
had a characteristic suggestiveness which freed it entirely from the
inexpressible dulness of most fruit and flower pieces.

A bunch of growing sweet peas labelled, "A tiptoe for a flight," had the
summer breeze blowing through them; "Pure lilies of eternal peace," had
a certain dreamy, unearthly fairness that suggested "airs of heaven,"
and "A bit of green" was a cheerful, struggling plant of flowering musk,
in sooty soil, on a smutty window-sill, with a yellow fog behind it.

"Why, that's just how flowers look against smoke," said Guy.  "They
_glare_ with brightness."

"Ah, that's what I meant!" said Florella, pleased.  "Do you draw, Mr
Waynflete?  You are fond of pictures?"

"I can't draw," said Guy; "but I can _write down_ faces in pen-and-ink
outline.  I can't make pictures.  I don't think I enjoy them."

"Waynflete likes music," said Cuthbert; "that is more in his line."

"Tunes often put drawings into my head," said Florella, simply.  "The
time when I began to do flower pictures was at Waynflete," she added.
"Some of the flowers there looked so wonderfully old; and age is a very
difficult sentiment to convey in a flower!  I never could manage it."

As she spoke, there was a movement among the guests, and Mrs Palmer
caught the name.

"Ah, Waynflete!" she said.  "It was such a delightful old place, and so
bracing.  I should have liked to stay there very much, but the noises
were such a worry.  I declare when I sat in that old drawing-room by
myself in a summer evening, I used to feel quite creepy.  Mr Waynflete,
do tell me if any noises have been heard since?"

Some of the company pricked up their ears.  There are several aspects
under which "ghosts" may be viewed, and there is no question that they
are both fashionable and interesting.  A haunted house and its owner are
not often under notice at once.

Guy did not speak very quickly, and Constancy struck in.

"Aunt Con," she said, "the situation would be quite spoiled if Mr
Waynflete was willing to talk of his own ghost--or his own noises.  Of
course he will not.  It would not be the thing at all."

"It had not struck me that a ghost was interesting," said Guy, dryly.
"As for the noises--"

"Oh," interposed Florella, decidedly; "the noises were all nonsense."

"My dear Flo," said Mrs Palmer, "they are not pleasant when you can't
explain them.  They might be burglars or the servants' friends, or
anything.  But it's a lovely place."

The conversation now developed into ghost-stories, some of a scientific,
others of a romantic type.  Mr Staunton remarking that cock-crow would
be nothing to ghosts nowadays, since they were accustomed to the
searching light of science.

Guy stood by the mantelpiece, and fingered a Dresden-china figure in a
way that gave Mrs Palmer a distinct presentiment of its downfall.

He looked up suddenly, "Did it ever occur to you to wonder," he said, as
a lady concluded a rather ghastly story, of a white lady who brushed by
people on the staircase, and left a cold chill behind her, "whether
contact with us makes the spooks feel hot?"

"Ah, Mr Waynflete," said Mrs Palmer, as there was a general laugh.
"You're very sceptical, I can see.  But you're behind the age."

She was rather glad to shake hands and say good-bye, as she was anxious
to see whether he had damaged the Dresden shepherdess.  But it was quite
safe, even to the fine edges of its gilt roses.

"He is a nice-looking fellow, but his fingers should have been rapped
when he was little to cure him of fidgeting," she said, when they were
alone.  "But I shouldn't think old Mrs Waynflete knew much about
children."

"He didn't like to discuss his ghost," said Constancy; "that was why he
fidgeted.  Family ghosts are personal."

"Cosy," said Florella, as her aunt left the room, "I can't bear to think
of the tricks we played at Waynflete.  We ought to tell.  It's far too
serious a thing to give a place the name of being haunted."

"It was a very curious study," said Cosy; "but, somehow, it did not
frighten people nearly as much as we expected.  And we did not make
nearly all the noises that people fancied they heard."

"We may have set them fancying," said Florella.  "I could have fancied
things myself, after you had been whispering and scuttering about those
passages.  And, remember, I don't feel bound to keep up the idea."

"It was rather disappointing," said Cosy, reflectively; "because the
boys never took any notice.  I don't believe they heard us, the walls
are so thick.  But there, Flo," she added, laughing, "it was just a bit
of fun.  And there are times when I feel as if I _must_--well--kick up a
shindy.  It's the shape in which I feel the fires of youth."

"That's all very well," said Florella.  "You kick up a good many
shindies.  But I don't like making fun of what I don't understand."

"I don't see all the new pseudo-science," returned Constancy.  "I think
it's all a delusion."

"I wonder if Guy Waynflete thinks so," said Florella, thoughtfully, as
she went to dress.

PART ONE, CHAPTER SIX.

GOOD COMRADES.

Under a great copper-beech on the lawn at Ingleby one hot afternoon,
Godfrey Waynflete was enjoying the "summer feeling" on which Constancy
Vyner had expatiated in London, and was spending an idle hour in
teaching his young Skye terrier to jump over a stick.  Rawdon Crawley, a
name appropriate to the creature's hairy simplicity, was a long grey
object, like a caterpillar, with huge pricked black ears, and an
expression which combined guileless innocence and philosophic power.
Nevertheless, when he was coaxed, he ran under the stick, and when he
was threatened, he sat still and sulked, for the perverseness of his
race is fathomless.

"You confounded little obstinate beggar," cried Godfrey, shaking the
stick at him; "you'll have to learn who's master."

Rawdon Crawley wriggled away to some distance, like a snake, then lay
with his face on his paws, looking at his owner.

"Eh, Godfrey, ye're letting that pup get the better of ye!"

"He'd die rather than give in," said Godfrey, as his old aunt came
across the lawn towards him.

The last five years had increased Mrs Waynflete's wrinkles, but she was
still upright, slim, and vigorous, enjoying the presence of her younger
nephew, and, possibly also, the elder one's absence.  The expression is
rather strong; but Guy was so uncongenial to her that his presence could
not be said to add to her happiness.

"Eh, well," she said; "I like a man that can speak up to you, and has
got some grit.  I've no opinion of limp characters."

"Things generally settle themselves if a fellow looks them in the face,"
said Godfrey, cheerfully.

"Ay, but they don't always settle themselves to our liking.  I'd like,
maybe, to look myself back into a young woman; but I'm in my eighty-two,
and there's no help for it."

"Eh, what, auntie?  You're as young as the best of us," said Godfrey,
warmly.

"Why, I've no cause of complaint.  The Lord's given me a long life, and
I've kept my health and my faculties through it all.  But, all the same,
I'm an aged woman, and I might be struck down any day.  So I've asked
Susan Joshua, my cousin Joshua Palmer's widow, to come here and make her
home for a time, and bring Sarah Jane with her.  She was poorly left,
poor thing; and then, if I should have a stroke, there'll be some one to
look after the maids, and make you lads comfortable."

Godfrey was much taken aback, but before he could interpose, she went
on--

"And I've another reason for sending for her, Godfrey.  I've made up my
mind to spend some time at Waynflete before I die.  So she can attend to
the house here while I'm absent."

"At Waynflete, auntie?  But it's not in any sort of order.  Have you
ever seen it?"

"Once, my lad, once," said the old lady, face and voice softening.  "I
made your good uncle take me there for a honeymoon trip, and I said to
him, as we stood on the bridge, and looked up and down the bonnie
valley, `Eh, Mr Thomas, ye'll be wanting a bit of land, as the money
comes in to ye.  Ye wedded me with my shawl over my head, but ye might
be Waynflete of Waynflete yet, if ye liked to try.'  And he said,
`Margaret, if I can give ye your will, my lass, ye shall have it.'  So I
educated myself for this, and I kept his house well, and was as saving
as was fitting for him and me.  But there, Mr Thomas never owned but
Upper Flete Farm before the Lord took him, and it was a lonesome thing
for an old woman like me to set up in a fine house alone; besides that,
I had the mill to attend to.  But now, it's time I took my place before
I die.  Guy can go and see what's wanting."

"Let me go, auntie.  Guy does not care about Waynflete," said Godfrey,
thoughtlessly.

"Eh?" said his aunt.  But here a rapturous bark from Rawdon Crawley, who
had been penitently licking the blacking off his master's boots,
directed attention to Guy's figure at the house door.

He had had a long, hot journey from London, and now threw himself into a
garden-chair, exclaiming with delight at the coolness and shade.

"So you've seen the Miss Vyners again?" said Godfrey, referring to a
note previously received from his brother.

"Yes; they and two of Staunton's sisters are coming down to Moorhead for
a reading party in their vacation."

"A reading party," said Mrs Waynflete.  "Young ladies?"

"That's all quite correct, auntie," said Godfrey.  "Girls go to college
nowadays, and of course they must read for their exams.  They _do_,
generally."

"Eh, well," said the old lady.  "I see no reason against it.  I never
doubted that a woman's brains were as good as a man's.  I could have
taken a degree myself.  I'll ask Constance Palmer to bring them here
before we go to Waynflete.  They can pursue their studies afterwards."

"Waynflete?" said Guy, with a start.

"Yes.  I've been telling your brother,"--here she recapitulated her two
proposals.  "I'll get you to go over, and see if the place is in order."

"Oh yes, Aunt Margaret, if you wish; but I've been some time away from
the mill, and there are one or two matters--"

"I hope you've brought back no new-fangled notions from town,"
interrupted the old lady, sharply.

"Well, I've acquired a few ideas in conversation," said Guy, slowly.
"John Cooper, no doubt, will show me the fallacy of them."

"You'll have to live a long time before you're wiser than John Cooper.
Tea?" as the servant appeared with some for which Guy had asked as he
came through the house.  "I never take tea between meals myself."

"It's new-fangled," said Guy, meekly, "or _was_ once."

"Eh, Godfrey," said Mrs Waynflete, "there's a plant broken in the
ribbon border.  That's Crawley, I'll be bound.  He needs a whipping."
But her tone, as she walked over to the border, had lost all its
asperity.  Godfrey and his dog were privileged offenders.

"Going to Waynflete is a jolly idea," said Godfrey; "but Cousin Susan
and Sarah Jane will be confounded bores, if they're to stay here for
good."

"They will so," said Guy.  "As for Waynflete, it's a great move for my
aunt at her age."

"Oh, she's up to anything.  I say, do you remember waking me up because
you had the nightmare.  You ate too many raspberries with those jolly
girls in the old fruit-garden.  That story would be a fortune to the
fellows who _go_ in for spooks.  Do you ever see ghosts now?"

"If I do, I shall not come to you for protection.  You threw too much
cold water on that early effort of my subliminal self to rise into
consciousness."

"I say, I don't go in for that jargon.  Give me a good square ghost with
a sheet and a turnip, not all that psychical rot."

"If ever you do see a ghost, my boy, it will certainly be a sheet and a
turnip, and by George, how it'll frighten you!"

Godfrey was boy enough to rise to this bait; though he did not like his
brother very much nor get on very smoothly with him, his growls were not
much more serious than those of Rawdie at the end of a stick.  He was
too prosperous to be discontented with his surroundings.

When Constancy came down with her aunt to the Mill House--Florella had a
previous engagement, and did not accept the invitation--she found plenty
of contrasts to study, and she studied each with equal zest.

She was never tired and never bored, she was ready to play tennis from
four till eight, and then, after supper, as was customary at Ingleby
parties, to dance from nine to twelve.  She waltzed with Godfrey as
untiringly as if all her brains were in her feet.  She made him coach
her up in all the ways of grouse shooting, and then she roused him to
fury, by wondering how long the barbaric desire to kill something would
survive in the English gentleman.  She made much of Rawdie, till a
certain proverb occurred frequently to the mind of his master.  But she
also went over the mills with Guy, and learned how to tell good wool
from bad, and what were the processes of conversion into broadcloth and
tweed.  She picked his brains about her own special subjects, or his.
She had been writing an article on English musical instruments, she had
worked it all up from books, but there was a bit about music itself.

"What it does for humanity," she said; "as it does nothing for me, I
have to guess it all.  You are musical, have I got it right?  I don't
have these experiences, you know.  There are such a splendid lot of
things to do and to think of, I can't tell how people have time for
feelings."

Guy was apparently as willing to discuss music as Godfrey to defend the
game laws, and it was impossible to say whether Constancy preferred his
languid, satirical courtesy and soft, preoccupied eyes, or Godfrey's
overflowing vitality, and look as of a vigorous young Viking, with his
exaggeration of the high, marked family features, and of the family
fairness, so that his old school nickname of "Towhead" was still
extremely appropriate.  The rosy, round-faced Sarah Jane, who desired to
be called Jeanie, and blushed whenever Guy or Godfrey spoke to her, and
was always wondering how familiar she ought to be with so-called
cousins, looked on in amaze.  When Constancy called Godfrey a
Philistine, Jeanie thought that a flippant allusion was being made to
Scripture characters, and when she talked of writing an article, as
simply as of making a pincushion, the allusion appeared as a social
_faux pas_ to Jeanie's idea of propriety.  If Constancy was so unlucky
as to possess an unpopular taste, she had better have said nothing about
it.  But the young men did not appear to be repelled, and were both of
them on most friendly terms with the visitor, while they regulated their
conduct to Jeanie with a propriety and skill which any chaperon might
have envied.  They were aware of a crowded background of Palmer aunts
and cousins, and, though they did not think it becoming to make
objections to her introduction to the family, they were agreed on the
point of their relations towards her.  Jeanie was a good little girl;
but she knew quite well which "cousin's" attention to Constancy meant as
she called it, "something particular;" she knew quite well which of the
two was the most interesting to herself.

But Constancy took the young men much for granted.  She was more struck
with Mrs Waynflete than with either of them.

Cousin Susan Joshua--it was the custom in the Palmer family to call the
wives by their Christian names attached to those of their husbands--
limited her intercourse with "Aunt Waynflete," to receiving her
commands; "Constance John," as she submitted to be called with a shrug,
to sympathetic and polite commonplaces, Jeanie was far too much afraid
of her hostess to say anything but, "Yes, aunt," and "Very well, aunt;"
but Constancy talked and listened by the hour together.  Her imagination
was caught by the stately, flaxen-haired old woman whose strong
personality was impressed on every detail of the life around her, whose
household must breakfast at eight, and go to bed at ten, go to church on
Sunday afternoon, and stay at home on Sunday evening, as by the law of
the Medes and Persians.  She heard, more than any one else had ever
done, of old Margaret's early struggles, of her strong purpose, and of
how the only birthright of which she had been actively conscious had
been won at last, since of that she was more than worthy.  Constancy
noted keenly how impatient she was of any change in the methods of her
prime; she saw plainly how Guy's indifferent manner irritated her, and
how Godfrey was the kind of youth that pleased her.  It was to
Constancy's credit that she could bridge over sixty years, and see a
point of view so alien to her young modern spirit; and Mrs Waynflete
was flattered by her preference as age must be by the admiration of
brilliant youth.

Godfrey looked on delighted, and drew quite false conclusions; for, if
Constancy loved Rawdie, and admired Mrs Waynflete, it was for their own
sakes and not for his.

The hour and the maiden had come for the happy, prosperous youth.  The
vigorous inspiring companionship filled him with delight, the roses of
that summer were redder and its sun warmer than he had ever known.  Love
came upon him with a rush of joyful hope, and, as was natural to him,
his passion became a purpose, which he expected to fulfil.  He would
work hard for a degree, for she would scout a failure.  He must win her;
but Guy--He was furiously jealous when Guy obtained a monograph on the
"Music of the Greeks," and presented it to Miss Vyner, though it was
given openly in the family circle.  Godfrey could not dare to give her a
bunch of the dark red dog roses of the north country, which he had heard
her admire.

He was "over head and ears in love,"--no other expression could express
his condition--and when she went to join her friends at Moorhead, and
her aunt tired, as she said in private, of making talk for Mrs Joshua,
betook herself to Harrogate, only hopes of speedy meetings modified his
despair.

The girls' reading party must come over both to Ingleby and to
Waynflete, and Cousin Susan and Jeanie would both want to see the
spinster housekeeping at Moorhead.

But before these visits took place, the situation, already strained,
between Guy and his aunt was intensified in an unexpected manner.

PART ONE, CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE CUPBOARD IN THE WALL.

Guy had really returned from London with a "new-fangled idea," or,
rather, with plans for carrying out one long entertained, and with more
courage than usual for putting it forward.  He liked the business, and
had no lack of ideas concerning it; but during the two years that he had
been at work in the mill his position there had become more and more
difficult.  He could not feel himself a nobody, and he knew what ought
to be done; but his aunt had given him no place and no authority; to use
the idiom of his county, "he had no say in the work," and Mrs Waynflete
thought so little of his powers or of his character that she never
received his suggestions with favour.  She distrusted him, and he knew
it, and to a certain extent he knew why.  But he was quite sure of his
ground now, and as soon as the visitors had departed, he proceeded to
unfold his mind.

He told her, with as much delicacy as he could, but with something of
her own tenacity, that in his opinion the two faithful old managers were
hardly up to the requirements of the day.  He thought that more pains
should be taken to follow the changes of fashion, and that besides
producing broadcloth and plain tweed, certain classes of fancy goods
should be undertaken.  This would involve an outlay for machinery suited
for weaving patterns, and it might also be necessary to engage an
overseer who could superintend the production of this class of goods;
some extension of the premises might also be required.  If his aunt
disliked the notion of alterations in the old mills, there was a little
mill near which had been worked in a small and unsuccessful way by a man
without sufficient capital to carry it on, who would gladly let it to
"Palmer Brothers," as the Ingleby firm was still called, from Mr
Thomas's father and uncle.  Guy adduced facts and figures, and made it
plain that he knew what he was talking about; and, in short, showed more
of the old lady's own faculty for business than she had ever given him
credit for.

But one of the principles of Palmer Brothers had always been that it was
a risky and unsound way of doing business to follow the changes and
chances of fashion.  People would always want broadcloth and tweed, but
fancy goods might lie on hand, and fail to find a market; and, in short,
did not suit with Palmer's way of doing business.

Old Mrs Waynflete sat in her chair in what was called the library at
the Mill House, though it contained very few books.  She watched the
pale, slight youth before her with the most absolute want of respect for
his personality, with an innate distrust for his facts and figures, and
yet feeling with the first painful pangs of old age that she could not
entirely grasp the argument.  Guy was talking of conditions unknown to
her.  Surely the day had not come when she and her good old servants
were unable to judge what was the best for the business.  Surely this
lad could not have pointed out to her what she had failed to see for
herself.  Surely he could not be in the right.

"Is there any other matter you want to find fault with?" she said.  "I'd
like to hear your true opinion."

Guy hesitated a little; but, quiet as he looked, he had the obstinacy of
his race, and he could not resist giving his true opinion.

"Well," he said, "I don't think the mills are as popular with the
work-people as they were once.  There are modern ways of attending to
their health and their comfort, in which we're deficient.  Ventilation,
and so on.  But a small outlay would set all that to rights.  One must
move with the times."

"So you think John Cooper and Jos Howarth are past their work?"

"Not exactly.  I think Cooper's a good old fellow.  Howarth I'm not so
sure of."

"You seem very sure of yourself, Guy.  Late hours and days away from
business were not the way to make a fortune in my time."

Guy flushed up.

"I should do my best," he said; "and I believe--I am sure--that I am not
incapable of carrying out these plans.  And one thing more I wish to
say, Aunt Waynflete.  After Christmas, Godfrey will be coming in to the
business.  As things are now, there is no scope for both of us.  With
the scheme I propose, there would be plenty to do--if you allow us to do
it."

"You need not to think that all the ideas come first into your head, my
lad.  I have thought of that.  There'll be an agent wanted for
Waynflete."

Now, this was a remark which it was nearly impossible for Guy to answer.
He was the natural heir of Waynflete, but Waynflete was in the old
lady's own power, and she had never dropped a word as to her intentions
regarding it.  He could not assume that Waynflete concerned him rather
than Godfrey; and yet, if it did not, the whole principle of his aunt's
life would be falsified.  Besides, the idea was most distasteful to him.
He said hurriedly and unwisely--

"Waynflete is hardly enough of a place to occupy a man's whole time, in
any case."

"Well," said Mrs Waynflete, "you have said your say, and I'll consider
my answer.  But I've known the business forty years before you were
born, my lad, after all."

It was the way of the Waynfletes to hide their real selves from each
other as carefully as if each one had been plotting treason.  They
erected quickset hedges round their hearts and souls, as if to be
misunderstood was needful to their self-respect.  Guy said no more, and
withdrew, and he never spoke a word to Godfrey of what had passed
between his aunt and himself.

The next day, just before luncheon, Jeanie was gathering flowers on the
lawn, when a door in the wall that led to the mills opened, and Guy
dashed in, with so white and wild a look, and a step at once so hurried
and so faltering, that she ran up to him, exclaiming--

"Guy!  Are you ill?  What is the matter?"  Guy looked at her, as she
said afterwards, as if he did not see her, and hurried in and upstairs
without a word, and as she followed, scared and puzzled, she heard him
shut and lock his bedroom door behind him.  Turning away in distress and
alarm, she met Godfrey strolling along in the sunshine, with Rawdie at
his heels, and a book under his arm, a picture of idle holiday
enjoyment.

"Oh," he said, in answer to her appeal, "Guy is like that if he has a
headache.  He likes to be let alone; he never wants anything."

Jeanie still looked doubtful.

"People don't generally look so with a headache," she said.  "Does he
often have such bad ones?"

"No," said Godfrey; "only once in a way.  He'll be all right in an hour
or two.  Let him alone."

Jeanie thought it a very odd headache; but no more was said, though,
from Mrs Waynflete's face when Guy did not appear at luncheon, it might
have been argued that his sudden illness told against his plans.

She put on her bonnet, and took her way down to the mill with a step
that was still firm, though slower than of old, and asked for John
Cooper.  She was no unusual visitor, and had never let her hold of the
business drop; and as she sat down in the little office, and cast her
still keen blue eyes round her, it was more than ever difficult to
believe, more than ever distasteful to feel, that her day was almost
done.  The two old men who had long managed the business, though some
years younger than herself, now seemed like contemporaries.  She had
worked under their fathers in her girlhood, she had seen them rise in
office under her husband, she had now worked with them for many years,
and with them she felt at one.

Partly from this, and partly, perhaps, from the incautiousness of old
age, before many minutes had passed, she had made John Cooper aware,
both of Guy's plans and of his strictures.  It was so natural to discuss
the crude ideas of the youth with her experienced old friend.

John Cooper was very much taken by surprise.  The reticent and cautious
Guy had never betrayed how carefully he had been "takin' notes."  Had
this lad really put his finger on the weak places?  John Cooper was much
too careful to commit himself to a direct contradiction.

"Well, Mrs Waynflete," he said; "Mr Guy is young, and young folks like
to have something to show for their opinions.  But, there's been many
new fashions since you and I began to work the business.  The old master
never held with following the fashion."

"You can be making changes every year if you do."

"So you can do, Mrs Waynflete; so you can.  Eh, but I've seen changes."

"Mr Guy has a notion of business, too," said the old lady.

"Did ye see Mr Guy when he came home, ma'am?" said John Cooper,
suddenly.

"No; he had a bit of headache, and went to his room.  Young men aren't
as tough as they used to be."

There was a silence.  The old man watched the lady over the
writing-table between them.  He, too, was a vigorous old grey-head, with
a hard mouth and keen eyes wrinkled up close.  The little room was full
of bills and letters and safes.  A stray ray of afternoon sun shot
through the small-paned window, and showed the dusty air and the dusty
floor, and the well-arranged contents of the dusty shelves.

John Cooper crossed the little room, and stood in the streak of
sunshine.  It shone upon his well-known grey hair, on his shrewd,
weather-beaten face, and glittered on a small key left in a little oak
cupboard in the wall.  John Cooper opened the cupboard, and the sun shot
in and sparkled with sudden brilliant reflections on something inside.

"Eh, what have you there?" said Mrs Waynflete.

John Cooper took out a tall brandy-bottle, nearly empty, and a glass
still containing some drops of spirit, and set them on the table.

"Mr Guy left the key by mistake," he said.

"John Cooper!  What do you mean?"

No asseveration could have added to the abrupt force of the intonation,
as Mrs Waynflete sat upright, grasping the arms of her wooden chair,
and looking straight at the manager.

"Mr Guy keeps that cupboard close locked.  But to-day he left it
swinging open, when he went home--with a headache."

"Did ye see him go?"

"I came in at the door here, Mrs Waynflete, and Mr Guy staggered past
me, and never saw me.  He went stumbling out and up the lane.  Hurrying
and reeling as he went--as once and again I've seen him before."

Mrs Waynflete's brown old face grew a shade paler, she still held by
the arms of the chair, as she rapidly weighed what had been said.

It seemed to her that the fact of the young man's possessing a bottle of
spirits was as nothing compared with the secrecy with which he had
concealed it.  Nor would he be the first in the house of Waynflete to
fall a victim to such a temptation.

On the one hand, Mrs Waynflete had seen it in her father, and feared it
for her brother; on the other, there was nothing in Guy's look or ways
to suggest it, save the occasional attacks of illness, as to which he
was always mysterious and secretive.

"Lock up the cupboard," she said, "and give me the key.  And ye'll not
say a word of this matter."

"Nay, not to Joshua Howarth, nor to young Jos, nor to my own John Henry.
It's no matter for talking of."

Mrs Waynflete put the key in her pocket, rose, and standing at her full
height, said--"Good day to you," and walked away with firm, unfaltering
step, across the paved entrance, up the bit of lane that led to the
garden wall.  She went in through the gate and across the garden, and
upstairs to Guy's room, at which she knocked sharply.

"Guy, I wish to come in."

The door was unfastened, and Guy stood there in great surprise.

"Aunt Margaret!" he said.  "What is it?  I am much better.  I am coming
down for some tea."

Mrs Waynflete put him aside with her hand, entered the room, and shut
the door.

It was a large, comfortable room, with a bookcase and a good supply of
books, a writing-table, a sofa and an armchair, besides the little iron
bed in the corner, and it was brilliantly light, for there was not a
curtain or a hanging of any sort in the room.  Such was Guy's taste.  He
looked pale still, but quite himself, and there was nothing peculiar in
his manner, as he repeated--

"What is it, Aunt Margaret?"

"This," said his aunt, as she sat down in the armchair, and held out the
key.

"What is it that you mean?" said Guy, with a sudden look of being on his
guard, and much in the tone of her own question to John Cooper.

"You left your cupboard open, Guy, and John Cooper, very properly,
locked it up, and gave me the key.  What should a lad of your age do
with a bottle of brandy?"

"Confound John Cooper's meddling impertinence!" said Guy, passionately.
"It is nothing to him or to any one what I choose to keep there."

"That depends upon the use you make of it."

"Has John Cooper been setting it about that I've been drinking?" said
Guy, with an angry laugh.  "Is that--is _that_ what it looks like?"

He caught himself up with a start, and turning away to the window, stood
staring out of it, while his aunt said--

"It's a matter I'll have cleared up, Guy, before I answer all your
questions of this morning.  I've known many young fellows take a drop
too much in company.  That wasn't thought so much of when I was young.
But it's different nowadays; and what that bottle of brandy means, if it
means anything at all, is a very different matter again."

Whether Guy was struggling with temper or embarrassment, or whether he
really did not know what to say, he was silent for some time.  At last
he turned round, and said ungraciously--"On my word and honour, I don't
drink.  I have never been drunk in my life--yet."

"Then what does this mean?" still holding out the key.

"Sometimes--very seldom--I get faint or dizzy--with a headache--I hate a
fuss, and I can set myself right with a little brandy."  There was
something in the extreme reluctance with which the answer was given that
justified suspicion.

"You ought to see a doctor, if that is so," said Mrs Waynflete, with
much reason; "and when I hear what he says, I'll think of what you say."

"As you please, Aunt Margaret," said Guy.  "If my word is not to be
taken, I don't care in the least to be cleared by another person's."

"You ought to care how your character stands in my eyes," said Mrs
Waynflete.  "Take back your key.  I shall judge for myself."

She looked keenly at the young man standing in the sunlight.  It was
obvious that now, at any rate, he was fully master of himself, and Mrs
Waynflete had lived too much with men, and knew their ways too well, not
to perceive that there was nothing in his look to substantiate the
charge against him.

Suddenly he looked round at her, in a curious, furtive way--a look which
he withdrew at once as she met it, but which startled her.  She had
caught the glance of fear and suspicion.

"Time will show," she said, as she left the room.  "But I'll have it all
made clear to me, before I trust matters in your hands."

When left alone, Guy hastily locked his door again, then flung himself
down on the sofa.

"Oh, I am a fool, a fool!" he cried to himself.  "God knows what will
become of me!"

He turned his face downwards with a gesture of despair.  There was no
one to help him, and he could not help himself.

PART ONE, CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD.

After a few moments Guy recalled himself from his despair, and, turning
his face to the light of the open window, began, with what courage he
might, to consider the situation.  A shameful charge had been brought
against him, and an untrue one, and yet the truth was so inexpressibly
galling to him that he could hardly bring himself to contradict the
falsehood.

Drinking, especially in secret, was a degrading vice; but, however
sinful, it was natural, being shared by thousands of poor miserable
fellows.  But the secret curse of Guy's life was, he thought, peculiar
to himself, alien from and repugnant to happier folk.  It was worse than
wicked, it was abnormal.  He himself would have pitied, but he would not
have liked, certainly not have respected, another man who--Even to
himself he would not think the fact in quotable words.  That he could
and did bear his hard fate in secret was all that preserved for him a
shadow of self-respect.

A crisis had now, however, come, and his instinctive decisions must be
reconsidered.  He got up, and, unlocking his desk, took from its most
secret corner a little pen-and-ink drawing, and, laying it on the table,
sat down, and leaning on his elbows, looked it full in the face.  For it
was a face "written down," as he had phrased it to Florella Vyner,--a
face almost identical with his own, and with the picture of his unhappy
namesake, but neither framed by the close-cut hair of the present day
nor by the powdered peruke of the Guy who was too late, but set in wild,
fair locks that hung loosely round it, while, through the misery of the
large, mournful eyes, there was a look of malice, fitting the Guy
Waynflete who had betrayed his friend, and whose apparition had, by
tradition, caused the second Guy to die disgraced and ruined.  The
present Guy sat and gazed at it, till the likeness grew in his own face,
and he tried to force his trembling lips into the contemptuous smile
which he felt himself to deserve.  Once, as he believed, he had seen
this fatal face with his bodily eyes, and since then the fear of it, the
sense of its unseen presence, the influence of it, was enough to shake
his manhood and shatter his nerves, was altogether irresistible to him.
He never knew when he might wake from sleep with this awful dread upon
him.  Never had he been able to stand up against it.

The code of the British schoolboy, backed by the reserve of proud and
canny Yorkshire, is not calculated to deal with an abnormal strain on a
delicate nervous system.

When Guy first "saw the ghost," if it may be so phrased, at Waynflete,
he had felt its effect upon him simply as a disgrace; and, though he
knew somewhat better now, his instincts had never allowed him to treat
it otherwise.  A reasonable man might have consulted a doctor, and found
out how to deal with his own nerves; but down below all Guy's opinions
on the subject, all the explanations which he gave himself, there was an
awful conviction of the personality and reality of this thing, which
seemed half his double and half his evil genius; and what could any
doctor do for that?--while he entertained the most utter disbelief in
the genuineness of all modern scientific inquiries into such matters.
What! analyse this frightful thing for other people's benefit?--have his
experiences printed?--be regarded as a person possessing an enviable
faculty denied to others?  No; no one who knew what "seeing a ghost" was
like could undergo such torture!  They were all humbugs.  While, as for
religious help or consolation, Guy feared spiritual impressions or
spiritual efforts; and whether his trouble was the work of his own
fancy, a possession of the devil, or a revelation from the unseen, it
put him in a different relation to all supernatural questions to that of
his fellows.  He kept altogether apart from the subject, never joined in
religious discussions, nor let himself speculate on religious questions.
He feared, also, all his finer impulses; they touched on the terrible
and tender point.

As he was liable to nervous headaches on other occasions than when the
fear of a spiritual presence overwhelmed him, he usually attributed all
disturbance that he could not conceal to such a cause.  Nobody troubled
about a headache.  Fainting or palpitations might lead to questions, and
be supposed to be dangerous.  Of course all this was crude and young and
foolish in the extreme; but it was instinctive to a nature, one part of
which was so antagonistic to the other.  It never could have continued
if he had belonged to people of ordinary insight or experience; but the
spiritual terrors, to which he was subject, were very uncertain in their
recurrence, and, in fact, were usually apt to come upon him at some
crisis which excited his nerves; and, in his ordinary life at college,
he had suffered less from them than at home, when, certainly, his
grand-aunt and his brother were not likely to suspect them.

But what was he to do now?  If he told, if he could so far oppose his
instincts, his aunt would think him a liar, like the other Guy--or mad?
That last might be.  It was a view of the matter which had not escaped
him.  As for drinking, well, he might be driven to that before the end.
There were times when the brandy was tempting.  That was another
ancestral ghost that might be more dreadful than the first.

But he could not confute the charge, and, besides--here a much simpler
part of the Waynflete nature came into play--he was not going to notice
such confounded insolence on Cooper's part, or such suspicious mistrust
on that of his great-aunt.

He locked up the picture, and then, perceiving that it was still only
five o'clock, and that the mill had not yet "loosed," he took up his hat
and went down there, walking in upon the astonished John Cooper, with as
cool a manner as if nothing had passed.

"Step into my room, will you?" he said.  "There are two or three letters
that I left this morning."

Then, as the old manager took up and turned over the letters indicated,
not knowing what to say, and feeling his statements to Mrs Waynflete
considerably invalidated by the young gentleman's look and manner, Guy
deliberately unlocked the cupboard, took out the brandy-bottle, and held
it up to the light.

"Nearly empty," he said, in his soft, mocking voice.  "Here, Joe Cass,"
to the office boy, "just run down to the Lion, and ask for a bottle of
the best French brandy--for me.  Bring it back with you."

"Lord! sir!" exclaimed Cooper, as the boy departed staring; "if you _do_
want brandy, you'd a deal better bring it down from the house yourself,
than send the boy on such errands!"

"Perhaps Mrs Waynflete wouldn't give it to me; and you see, I like to
have it, to `put to my lips, when I feel so dispoged.'  Take half a
glass of the remains of this?  No?  Then I will.  Now, as to that
colonial contract--"

Guy poured out the remainder of the brandy and drank it off.  He felt
revived by it, and went on with the details of the colonial contract
with the most accurate clearness, till the boy came back, when he took
the bottle, locked it up, put the key in his pocket, and gave Joe the
old bottle to throw away.

"Well, Mr Guy," said Cooper, desperately; "I ask your pardon if I
mistook your condition; but I'd as soon see my own son with a locked-up
brandy-bottle as you--at your age.  Eh, my lad, it's a grand mistake
ye're making."

"I shan't let the business go to the dogs in consequence, if I've ever a
hand in it," said Guy, but with more softness; "but just make up your
mind that I don't care a--" Here Guy used an expression which appeared
to Cooper almost as bad a breach of business propriety as the brandy,
and added with much bathos, "I don't care a brass farthing what any one
thinks."

This act of schoolboy defiance was the refuge of Guy's manhood, which
had not learned a better mode of self-assertion.  His soft eyes had a
somewhat evil look as he watched his routed enemy, and then went back to
the house, where he was unusually lively at dinner, and through the
evening.

But either the brandy or the excitement revenged itself next day with a
real headache, so violent that he could not lift up his head, and which
left him pale and languid and without spirits for any more defiance of
consequences.  Moreover, Mrs Waynflete decreed that he was to go with
her to Waynflete.

Guy resented the proposal as an act of mistrust, and dreaded it from the
bottom of his soul.  He resisted it, and offended his aunt more bitterly
than he had ever done before, since he could only put forward
indifference to and contempt of Waynflete and its interests.

And after all, Howarth, the second manager, had a violent attack of
gout, and Guy's presence at Ingleby could hardly be dispensed with.  So
he remained, in semi-disgrace, with Cousin Susan Joshua to keep house
for him.  Jeanie went up to Waynflete with the rest of the party.

He had got no answer to his proposals, and no definite authority for the
mill.  Nevertheless, he made his presence felt there, and people began
to feel that he was master.

PART ONE, CHAPTER NINE.

"GO BACK, MY LORD, ACROSS THE MOOR."

"Cousin Susan," said Guy, a few days after he had been left behind at
Ingleby, "I promised Miss Vyner that she and her friends should see the
mills.  If it suits you, I should like to ride over to Moorhead, and ask
them to come down next Thursday, and have luncheon here.  Then I would
take them round."

"Yes, my dear Guy; yes, certainly.  I think it would be most proper,
under the circumstances; and with my being here, there can be no
objection.  I'm glad you've given me the hint, my dear Guy."

Guy thought his very straightforward request had been something more
than a hint.  He had made it partly because he was extremely dull, and
wanted a little variety, and partly because he did not choose to
acquiesce in the idea that he was out of favour.  Most of Guy's actions
at this time were marked by a certain note of defiance.

He set off on a fresh breezy afternoon, when great clouds flung great
shadows over the open moor, and the dark green of the bilberry and the
purple of the heather were in full glory of contrast.  He rode slowly
uphill, over wide roads with low grey walls on either side, behind which
grew oats and turnips, past strong-looking stone villages, all white and
grey and wind swept, till the land grew poorer and more open, and turf,
mixed with furze and heather, began to appear, and at length he turned
over the top, and came out upon the great rolling moors, here clear and
sunny, there veiled in the smoke and fog of distant centres of human
life.

As he drew near the end of his ride, he saw a figure sitting on some
rough ground by the roadside, and looking up and away at a broken
hillock of rock and heather, which, owing to the falling away of the
ground behind, was relieved against the sky.

By the pose of her head and the lines of her figure he at once
recognised Florella Vyner, and as he came near she saw him, and rising,
answered his greeting with a smile as he dismounted beside her.

"I have ridden over," said Guy, "with a message from Mrs Joshua Palmer,
to ask if your sister still cares to show Ingleby Mills to her friends.
My aunt and my brother are at Waynflete, but I have been left behind.
And I hope, too, that Moorhead is satisfactory?"

"Oh yes," said Florella, "we are delighted with it.  It suits us quite.
The others are all very near by.  Would you like to take your horse to
the farm, and then come and join us?  You will see them a few steps
further on."

"There's Bill Shipley," said Guy, looking up the road.  "I'll ask him to
take Stella."

He came back after giving his horse to the boy, with a brighter and
sweeter look on his face than it often wore.  "May I look first at the
drawing?  What have you found out about the moor flowers?"

"Oh, they are so difficult--look at those harebells on the top of the
road, swinging about in the wind--blue against blue.  It is such
heavenly colour.  But I can't paint them!  I haven't begun to try.  I'm
seeing them!"

"I see," said Guy.  "Yes, the sky seems to show through.  But what do
they say?  Your pictures all say something.  Are they moor spirits?"

"Well," she said, "I don't think I quite know.  But what I want to say
is `living blue,'--you know the hymn?--

  "`Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
  All dressed in living green.'

"That gives one such a feeling of spring."

"Yes," said Guy, "things growing.  And `living blue'?"

"Well," said Florella, looking up at the harebells, "I think it must
mean thoughts--spirit, soul, growing and springing, perhaps.  They are
so very ethereal!"

Florella had much of Constancy's self-possession.  In her it showed in a
calm simplicity of manner, absolutely without effort or constraint.  Guy
forgot himself also, for him a rare pleasure.

"I see," he said, "I hope you'll get them done."

"But they _shine_ so," she said; "one can't make them glisten.  And the
heather is very difficult, too.  But that I have tried."

She showed her sketch-book, containing more flower studies and a few
landscapes.

"I should like to sketch," said Guy, as he looked, and made a few
comments.

"But you could, I think, because you can see.  And it is very
interesting.  It is impossible to think of anything in the world but the
thing you are drawing.  That is all I have.  My sister and all of them
are just behind the harebell rock--shall we come?"

Guy followed, and in a few minutes they were looking down on a cheery
group gathered in a hollow of the ground--five skirts and hats among the
heather.  One or two little puffs of steam showed where the
sophisticated "Etnas" were boiling the water, and in the midst
Constancy, in a red blouse and brown cap, was evidently concluding an
argument.

"Very likely we might like it as well as they did, if we had the same
opportunities."

"Cosy! you're a traitor.  As if we want young men to come and interrupt
us, like those dreadful girls in--"

"Mr Waynflete," said Florella, descending upon the party.

Violet Staunton, who was the last speaker, sank into the heather with a
gasp, and a sensation ran through the party.  Constancy stood up and
held out her hand.

"Mr Waynflete, we are abusing Miss Austen's heroines for liking
visitors.  But, you know, we promised to give you some tea."

Guy coloured and smiled.  He felt a little shy, but much as if he had
stepped into a fairy-ring.  Away from his own people and his
perplexities, he was like another person, bright and gay, and was soon
giving his invitation, and asking if Cuthbert Staunton had made his
holiday plans, or if he could come to Ingleby for a bit, while he helped
to hand round the tea and the tea-cakes, for the merits of which he had
vouched in London.  Thus, at his ease, he had a gentle, friendly manner
and a pleasant face, as he dealt with the eccentricities of an "Etna"
which refused to boil.  Florella felt as if her short, childish
intercourse with him had been longer and more recent.

"There!" he said, in a low, half-shy voice, as he glanced at Constancy,
"I'm sure Mr Elton could not have made himself more useful."

"It is humiliating," said Constancy; "but that `Etna' beat us!  Would it
if we had the franchise?"

Constancy did most of the talking.  Florella sat silent and looked, as
she mostly did, happy.  The other girls thought that Cosy need not have
made it so evident that she was amused by the intruding visitor.
Presently a trap was seen coming along the rough, narrow road.  One man
only was in it, and as the sound of the wheels attracted his attention,
Guy looked up and said, in a tone of surprise--

"That's Godfrey!"

Another moment or two, and they saw the dog-cart stop at the farm; the
driver dismounted, picked a long and hairy object off the seat beside
him, together with a large basket, and came over the heather with long
striding steps.  In a minute Godfrey and Rawdon Crawley appeared at the
top of the hollow.

"My aunt has sent me," he began, but at sight of Guy a cloud fell upon
his handsome, joyous face, his air of happy expectation faded entirely,
and he paused in his speech.  Constancy again came to the rescue.  She
introduced him all round, remarked with cool amusement on the odd chance
that had sent both brothers to see them at once, and as Godfrey refused
her tea, offered it to Rawdie, who had greeted first her and then Guy
with simple cordiality.  Guy fell silent, and watched his brother with
slightly lifted brows, as if a new idea had struck him.  He was quite
cool, and not at all put out.

"Has Aunt Margaret asked the ladies to Waynflete?" he said.

"Yes, on Tuesday.  She thought the Miss Vyners would like to see it
again."

"Immensely," said Constancy.  "She promised me to ask us."

Guy, still looking slightly amused, got up and said that he had the
longer ride, and must get back, and would expect to see them all on
Thursday at Ingleby.

"Tell my aunt I'll come over to Waynflete on Tuesday by the first train
in the morning," he said as he made his farewells, and went to get his
horse.

Godfrey was desperate.  He hated all the other ladies who surrounded
Cosy.  He hated Guy, who had, he thought, come with the same object as
himself.  He could hardly bring himself to refer to the basket which he
had filled that morning with all the fruits and flowers which he had
thought Constancy might recollect seeing at Waynflete.  When he did
bring it forward, he muttered, that his aunt had sent it, which was not
true.

Cosy dived into it.

"White raspberries!" she exclaimed.  "Now, didn't they grow just by the
gate into the stables?  I hope that lovely garden is as untidy as ever."

"It's worse, I think," said Godfrey, more amiably; "but there are plenty
of raspberries ready for you to pick."

"Delightful!" said Cosy, and Godfrey's brows smoothed till he looked as
friendly as Rawdie.

Presently they all walked back to the house together, and Constancy
showed him the long, low sitting-room, full of their books and
writing-materials.  She took his visit to herself, and entertained him
in the most cheerful fashion.  But she expressed great pleasure at Guy's
invitation to Ingleby, and finally sent Godfrey away when his cart was
ready, with a perplexed and appealing look in his grey eyes, and a
puzzled wrinkle on his brows, even while she lifted Rawdie into the cart
and kissed his nose tenderly, telling him to look out for her on Tuesday
morning at Waynflete.

"Constancy," cried Violet, "you abominable girl!  You behaved worse than
any of the Miss Bennets, or Emma Woodhouse either.  I'm sure those young
men must have thought you were delighted to see them."

"Well, I didn't mind them.  I could not summon the daughters of the
plough and bind them in chains, could I?  You are all so narrow minded."

"Narrow minded?"

"Yes; you should take everything as it comes.  The Miss Bennets couldn't
exist without morning callers; but if we can't stand half an hour of
them, we make them of equal importance.  And besides, you know, they
represent a side of life which exists.  We must ignore nothing."

"It's a most contemptible side," said Violet.  "And besides, if Cuthbert
knows, he _will_ laugh at us.  I do want him to see we mean business."

"I mean business," said Cosy; "if by business you mean reading; but I
like to study life all round."

"Yes," said the elder Miss Staunton, "just as you like to study opinions
all round, and consider smiling, views which, if they were true, would
send one out into a moral and spiritual wilderness.  You see the force
of nothing."

"If so, there must be an awfully stupid piece in me," said Constancy, as
if rather struck.

"But, after all, you know, whatever is true, the world has got along
somehow hitherto, and I suppose it will continue to do so; so why
worry."

"Look here," said Florella, "if we quarrel over the young men, we shall
be more like the Miss Bennets than ever.  We belong, you know, a little
to the Waynfletes through Aunt Connie, and we knew them long ago.  I am
going back to my harebells.  Violet, will you come?"

A great many young women aspired to the friendship of Constancy Vyner,
and courted her, as girls do court each other.  Florella's friends did
not make her of so much importance; but they told her all their
troubles.

PART ONE, CHAPTER TEN.

"THE ONE MAID FOR ME."

When old Margaret Waynflete drove up to the door of Waynflete Hall in
the Rilston fly--for the old stables were not calculated for the
accommodation of valuable horses--she never thought of herself in a
picturesque light, nor felt, as Godfrey and even Jeanie in a measure
did, for her, that this was the moment for which she had lived.

But she looked round her with the most lively curiosity.  When she sat
down in the low, crowded, old-fashioned drawing-room, she did not admire
it, nor feel comfortable as she drank her cup of tea and looked about
her.  She scolded Godfrey and Jeanie for expressing anxiety as to the
effect upon her of the unwonted journey; for she felt quite strong and
vigorous, even while she repeated to herself that it was right for her
to see Waynflete before she died.  And see it she did, for she inspected
the old house from attic to cellar.  She went over the gardens and
outbuildings, she had herself driven up and down the steep sides of the
Flete Valley and through the shabby village, she attended service in the
picturesque old church, where a newly arrived young vicar, himself
aghast at the condition of his church and parish, only struck her as an
unpleasing contrast to the old rector of Ingleby.  She liked none of it
very much.  She _was_ an old woman, and she could not take to new
surroundings.  Ingleby was home.  Waynflete was for the next generation.
All the neighbourhood called upon her, and paid attention to her and
her nephew.

Godfrey was well aware that his position, as apparent master of the
house, was an awkward one.  He would also have preferred Jeanie's
absence; the new neighbourhood would draw conclusions, which his
downright old aunt would never have anticipated.  He meant, when the
visit of the Moorhead party was safely over, to write to Guy and to
offer to change places with him; but, when he found him at Moorhead
before him, inviting Constancy to Ingleby, and proposing to come to
Waynflete to meet her, all other thoughts were swallowed up in angry
jealousy.  All places were the same to him where she was not, and he
could only think of keeping his chance of seeing her some time without
Guy's interference.  Guy appeared early on the appointed Tuesday.  He
could only, he said, stay one night, as Staunton was coming to him on
the next day.

"As you kindly allowed me to ask him, Aunt Margaret," he said,
punctiliously.

"I've no objection to Mr Staunton, you can bring him over," said Mrs
Waynflete.  But whatever her own feelings as to the new home were, she
watched keenly for Guy's impressions of it.

He said no word to gratify her; but in that perfect summer day, he, in
his turn, noted every detail.

The old house, with the deep and varied tinting of its lichen-covered
tiles and bushy creepers, seemed to him, as he stood in the garden, and
looked at it intently, to be full of character and individuality.

In his secret heart, he thought, as he had thought before, that the
place had a charm altogether its own.  How he should like its quaintness
and its beauty if it ever was his own, and if--Nay, how he did like it
now, and how oddly he felt himself to be a son of its soil--to be,
somehow, akin to it.  Guy was in all ways sensitive and impressionable,
open to the influences that surrounded him, to every change of scene and
atmosphere.  He wandered round the flower-beds, and looked for the
quaint "old" flowers of which Florella had spoken.  Could he find any to
show her?  Yes; there were columbines of odd, dull, artistic tints,
roses of sorts unheeded by the horticulturist, and sundry blossoms,
somewhat belated in the keen northern air, of which the ignorant Guy
knew nothing.

As he looked, Rawdon Crawley began to bark; the sound of wheels was
heard, and a waggonette, full of straw hats and bright dresses, drove up
the rough ill-kept road that led to the house.  Guy, half-smiling, held
a little back, as he saw his brother press forward eagerly; he was
amused at the idea of Godfrey in love, not having ceased to regard him
as a schoolboy.  He was not in love himself; but even for him, as he
came forward, it was Constancy who held the stage, looking handsome and
happy, a concentration of life.

"I am perfectly convinced," she said, looking round, after the greetings
were over, "that this place breathes out a story.  It quite _talks_ with
characteristicness!"

"I should like to think that you had to do with the story of it," said
Godfrey, feeling his ears hot with the sense of self-committal.

Constancy looked at him, and at that moment there entered into her a
particularly charming and engaging little demon, who recommended himself
to her in a form which disguised his old and well-known features, and
made him come out quite new.  Godfrey was betraying himself in every
word and look; but to Constancy, whose even pulses had never yet beat
quicker for any emotion whatever, his boyish passion did not present
itself in a serious light.  She might study this side of life a little,
it would be amusing and instructive.  It has been amusing, ever since
Cleopatra angled for fishes.

The result of her study was that Godfrey spent a day of chequered but
tumultuous bliss, and that the story of the old house mingled itself
inextricably with her own.

For Guy the hours passed so pleasantly that he forgot his dread of the
coming night.  Not being in any way conscious, he asked Florella to come
and look for subjects among the flowers, quite easily.  And she came,
remembering them much better than he did, looking for old favourites,
and showing him which she had formerly tried to paint.

"I cannot do the harebells," she said.  "I have drawn them; but the
colour and the light is altogether impossible, and I have had to come
down to a little bunch in the rock--quite earthly--but they just recall
the others.  Perhaps some day, when I have practised a great deal, I may
be able to paint the heavenly ones."

"You made me _see_ them," said Guy.

"That's something, isn't it?" she said.  "But that's why drawing is so
good.  It teaches one to see."

There was plenty of general chatter, and the whole party strolled about,
ate fruit, and picked flowers together.

A tall fair young man was rather feebly sweeping the garden path.  He
touched his cap as the party passed him, and said, in a cracked, but
cordial voice, "There's rasps down yonder, sir, for t'yoong leddies."

Guy recognised him, with a start of distaste, as the "soft" lad he had
seen in the churchyard.

"Thank you, Jem," said Godfrey, "we'll look for them.  This way, isn't
it, Jeanie?"

Jeanie was very shy, and very much afraid of these "clever girls;" she
secretly disliked the thought of them.  But it was pleasing to find how
open they were to raspberries and Morelia cherries, and, in the
afternoon she felt a pride in showing them over the house, and pointing
out the pictures and other curiosities.

Guy avoided this part of the entertainment, on the excuse of making
arrangements about the time of return, and as he came back from
interviewing the driver of the waggonette, he found that Florella was in
the garden, sketching a bit of snap-dragon on the top of the low wall
that divided it from the fruit-garden.  Guy made for her pretty blue
dress, which reminded him of her blue harebells.

"Do you like the flowers better than the house?" he said.

"I did not much want to go over the house," she answered; "and if you
please, Mr Waynflete, I think I should like to tell you why."

"Why, have you any reason?" said Guy, startled.

"Yes," she answered.  "Of course it is a very silly thing, and my sister
never thought of it but as the merest joke; but I have always felt it
was more wrong than we knew.  When we were here, we used to hide and
make odd noises, to see whether we could make people think it was the
ghost."

"What?" exclaimed Guy.  "What did you do?"

"Why--nothing very much," said Florella, "after all.  But we rustled
about when we thought the maids would hear us, and stamped along the
passages to make footsteps, and hid when any one was coming, and
Constancy pretended to sob and cry, and then we watched to see how
people would take it; we never dressed up, you know, it was only noises.
Of course there was a notion that there _were_ noises, or no one would
have noticed."

"And didn't--did no one find you out?"

"No.  I don't think that really we frightened any one very much.  Of
course, I always knew it was naughty, and that Aunt Connie would be
angry if she knew.  But, as we went on doing it, I got to have a feeling
of what it would have been like if it had been true; perhaps I
frightened myself, for we didn't make all the noises that we heard.  And
I don't know, Cosy did it quite simply; but I got to feel as if there
was something _profane_ in playing tricks with things one could not
understand, and it has always been on my conscience.  So, as you were
here when we did it, and as you belong to the place, I thought I would
confess, for really I have always felt it more wrong than many things
I've been punished for."

"Why do you think that?" said Guy, quickly.

"Why, I suppose taking false and silly views of great subjects is one of
the chief things that prevent people from being really good.  Then you
_can't_ see."

"If you don't mind," said Guy, "will you come with me and look at that
picture?"

He could hardly tell what prompted the request; but he felt that he
could better bear the sight of the picture with her than alone.

Florella agreed, though a little surprised, and they followed the rest
of the party into the house and upstairs.  They heard their voices as
they made the round, but the little octagon room was empty.

"Look at him," said Guy, "and tell me _just_ what you see in his face.
Yes," as she glanced at him, "I know he is like me.  But if you were
drawing that face--like a flower--what should you try to show?"

"He looks very unhappy," said Florella.  "He wanted some one to help
him."

"He had no one.  He was a victim to himself or his fate.  Don't you
think he looks rather a despicable fellow?"

"No; but he looks as if he did so need to be helped.  Yes; he does look
like a person who might fail in a desperate crisis."

"As he did," said Guy.  "A man with that face must, you know.  Isn't
that what you see?"

"I suppose," said Florella, suddenly and simply, "that if he had really
realised the presence of God, he could have borne--even the ghost."

"Why?" said Guy, abruptly.

"It would be a spiritual power, great enough to conquer the spiritual
fear," she answered.

"I wish I could have masses said for his soul," said Guy.  "If we were
Roman Catholics, I'd ask you to pray for him."

"Well, I will," she answered.  "He is living, somewhere, and I am sure
it is right to pray for him."

"Thank you," said Guy, earnestly.

There was a call, and they hurried away to join the others.  They had
forgotten both themselves and each other.  It was only afterwards that
Florella realised that she had said unusual things, or Guy that he had
heard them.  But strange to each other they never could be again.

Constancy and Godfrey had thought of each other, and of the effect they
were producing on each other, all day long.  Nevertheless, they parted
as "Strangers yet."

PART ONE, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

"STRIVING FOR DEAR EXISTENCE."

In the soft interrupted stillness of the summer night Godfrey Waynflete
leant out of his window, and lived over again the hours of the day.  The
country stillness was constantly broken by the whirr of a bat, the
twitter of a disturbed sparrow, or by the homely sounds of cattle and
poultry in the farm and fields close by.  But Godfrey neither heard nor
heeded.  He was deaf to the sounds within the house, the occasional
strain and creak of the old boards and panels, the patter of rats and
mice, which constantly disturbed the slumbers of Rawdie, who slept on a
mat in his master's room.  His blood was all on fire; sleep was
impossible to him.  He could think of nothing but that in two days he
would meet Constancy again at Ingleby.  It did not seem possible to
Godfrey that so intense a desire should fail to work its own fulfilment.
No one and nothing should stand in the way of this demand of his spirit
for the thing it craved.  The whole world was widened, transformed,
glorified.  Constancy--_Cosy_.  How the name suited her!  The memories
of that old boyish visit started into life, till the old house seemed to
thrill with her presence.

"Talk of haunting," thought Godfrey, laughing to himself.  Constancy was
the presence that filled Waynflete through and through.  There was no
room there for any ghosts!  Then suddenly, without warning, there fell
upon him a doubt, a fear, a presentiment of disappointment, a change of
spirit so complete that it was almost as if a sudden change of
atmosphere had swept through the room, and chilled him.  A moment before
his joy had had hardly a misgiving, now he suddenly felt utterly without
hope.

He started upright, and pulled the casement to, for the night-air felt
all at once chilly.  He shook himself together, and began to pull off
his coat, when Rawdie sat up in the moonlight, and began to howl as if
he thought his last hour had come.

"Confound you, Rawdie, hold your tongue!" cried Godfrey, himself
reviving, when the door leading into the next room opened, and Guy stood
there, fully dressed.

"What, the deuce is the matter with Rawdie?" he said, sharply.

"It's the moon, I suppose," said Godfrey, pulling vainly at the curtain.
"He's got the nightmare this time, instead of you!  I never knew him
howl at the moon before.  Here Rawdie, Rawdie!  Hold your noise!  Shut
up!"

Rawdie jumped into his master's arms, his howls subsiding into whines
and whimpers.

Guy stood leaning against the door, watching them.  He set his teeth
hard, as, in the broad white streak of moonlight, the Presence which he
feared took, as it seemed to him, visible shape.  It was not now a face
flashing into his own, but a shadowy figure, with averted head, moving
across the room, as if in hurried, timorous flight.  Guy's pulses stood
still, but this time his nerves held their own.  He waited, and the
figure, the _impression_, passed him quickly by, through the doorway,
into the room he had just left.  Guy shut the door suddenly upon Godfrey
and Rawdie, and stood with his back against it--looking.  Then the
figure turned the never-to-be-forgotten face full upon him, and it was
to him as if his own eyes looked back on him, with malicious scorn of
himself; as if this scared and hunted creature were an aspect of
himself.  He crouched and cowered against the wall, and gazed back at
the spectre, but he felt that the sight, if sight it were, was as
nothing to the inward experience of the soul of which it was the
expression, the despair, the degradation of irresistible fear.

Whether it was a second or an hour before the moonlight had gone from
the room, and with it the impression, Guy could not tell; but he knew at
once when it was gone, and stumbling towards the bed, threw himself down
on it.

There was a candle burning, but the room swam and darkened before his
eyes, he was deadly faint, and as the life came back to him a little,
the panic which was wont to come upon him, overwhelmed him, and he
trembled and hid his face.  It passed sooner than usual, much sooner
than usual self-command came back, though the throbbing of his heart
forced him to be quite still, and took all his strength away.  As the
power of thought slowly came back to him, the memory of Florella's words
came back also.  The Presence of the Divine Spirit!  Could that become
real to the soul?

Guy knew what one spiritual experience was, and he did not deceive
himself into thinking that he had ever known this other.  If the door of
his soul was open to the unseen, no such messenger had ever sought
entrance; indeed, he had done his best to bar the way.

But now, over his bewildered spirit there swept another vision, new and
fair, the vision of a human sympathy that might make the weak strong.
If this wise girl could know--could _see_?  Before the hope of her
helpfulness, his foolish pride would give way.  He could nerve himself
to confession.  The next moment he knew that to lay his burden on the
innocent soul of another, to seek a love which must suffer in his
suffering, would be of all cowardly methods of escape the most
contemptible.  He must try to think more clearly.  He managed to stand
up, and to find the brandy, which, with most pitiful foresight, he had
brought with him.  He had drunk it before he suddenly felt how
significant was the eagerness with which he took it.  It was another
terror, indeed, and he threw himself down again on the bed and lay half
dozing, till with the daylight and the singing of the birds, he started
awake, with his nerves all ajar, and without energy enough to undress
and go to bed properly.

He managed, however, to make his appearance downstairs, where Rawdie's
cheerful bark recalled the poor little dog's terror of the night before.
Guy picked him up, and looked into his cairn-gorm coloured eyes, but no
change had come into them.  Godfrey, too, was eating his breakfast, and
making Jeanie talk about Constancy.

Guy played with his tea-cup, and made critical remarks on the young
ladies, till the trap that he had ordered to take him to the station
appeared, when he cut short his farewells, and went off hastily, without
giving his aunt time to say that she wished him to come back again
shortly.

As he grew calmer with the increasing distance, he took a resolution,
which was the first beginning of a struggle against his fate.

Cuthbert Staunton arrived in due time, in a holiday humour, and having
plenty of conversation, he occupied Mrs Palmer's attention until the
hour came for the two young men to wish her good night, and betake
themselves to a room devoted to the use of Guy and Godfrey, where they
could talk and smoke at their leisure.

"Yours is a charming climate," said the visitor, "where any one may
light a fire in August with a clear conscience.  Short of southern
moonlight, etc, there is nothing so delightful."

"Sit down in front of it," said Guy; "we're generally glad of one here,
and it looks cheerful.  Now, I'm expecting you to put me up to all the
newest lights--one gets rusty down here.  About the spooks, for
instance, the Miss Vyners were talking of in London.  I want to examine
into them a bit.  Did you ever come across a fellow who had seen one--by
any chance?"

"No," said Staunton.  "I should like to come across a first-hand one,
very much."

"Well, here's your chance, then.  I have--twice."

"Seen a man who has seen one?"

"No, better than that, seen the genuine article, myself.  I--I want to
know how to manage him.  It seems the correct thing, nowadays, to
entertain ghosts and imps of all kinds."

"I don't know any, personally," said Cuthbert, purposely echoing Guy's
bantering tone, though he noticed the matches he struck in vain, and the
suppressed excitement of his manner.  "But I should like to hear your
experiences very much."

"He paid me a visit last night," said Guy.

"And what is he like?"

Guy left off trying to light his pipe, and leant back in a corner of the
big chair in which he was lounging.  The plunge was made.  He was shaken
to pieces with the effort, but he still endeavoured to maintain a tone
of indifference.

"I think I'll have to tell you a little family history," he said; "if it
won't bore you."

"Not at all.  Tell me just as you can--as you like."

"Well, but you know, I believe, about the old traitor who drank himself
to death from remorse, and naturally, haunted his descendants.  Some of
them drank, and, in fact, there was always an inclination to an
occasional good-for-nought.  Well, then came the Guy who was too late--
my namesake--so, by the way, was the traitor--that story you know, too.
I don't believe my father, or grandfather, were quite all my aunt could
have wished.  They died young, you know; but I'm not aware that they
ever saw the ghost.  But, five years ago, when we went to Waynflete, to
see Mrs John Palmer, I did."

"You saw the ghost of your ancestor?"

"Well!  I had seen Guy's picture; I was full of it, and full of seeing
the place for the first time, and the face flashed upon me just like the
picture.  The picture's _like me_, you know; absurdly so.  I saw him--
plain as I see you.  Well, that once wouldn't have mattered, it would
only have been a queer thing.  But--"

"But that was not the only time?" said Cuthbert.

"I never _saw_ him again till last night, but--I--_feel_ him.  I wake up
half mad with fear.  I have dreamed of him.  I don't know what it is,
the fit seizes me, and when I've scourged the folly out of me, I faint,
or my heart gets bad.  I haven't quite been able to hide that; but no
one knows why.  No one knows that I am afraid of my own shadow!"

"Gently, my dear boy," said Staunton, kindly.  "Keep quiet for a minute.
It's hard work telling me; makes your heart beat now, doesn't it?"

"Let me get through it.  These fits have come and knocked me up, over
and over--muffed my exam--for my degree--made a fool of me, times out of
number.  But, last night--he was there--the whole of him, _myself_ in
that queer old dress, as one might look when one's chance was over, and
one wanted others to share one's disgrace.  I saw him; but, oh, my God,
Cuthbert!  It's not the _seeing_; but no other Presence is ever so
real--so close!  So, I'm catching at a rope.  He'll have me; I shall
have to follow him--but--I'm trying to fight."

Guy had dropped all his pretence at indifference; he spoke in short,
stifled whispers, his eyes dilated with fear.

Cuthbert laid his hand on the fingers that were clutching the arm of the
chair, and said gently, "I am very glad you have told me.  You'll feel
better soon.  It is very bad for you to suffer without any help."

Guy clung to the warm, human clasp, it was unexpectedly comforting.
Then he whispered, "I don't drink, you know, _yet_.  But he'll drive me
to it.  He's ruining my life!"

Cuthbert did not speak for some moments.  Then he said, "Of course,
there is more than one view to be taken of these things."

"Oh yes, I might be mad--or lying."

"Well, I don't feel driven to those conclusions.  Do you mind being
questioned a little?"

"No; I think I should like it.  I've felt so much alone."

"Yes.  You feel more afraid of the terror that seizes on you
unexpectedly, than of the--thing itself?"

"Yes," said Guy, hesitating; "at least, I mind _feeling_ he is there,
more than seeing him.  That's a detail."

"Try to tell me what you mean by _feeling_."

"I can't.  It's another sense."

"And do you feel nothing else with this sense?"

"No," said Guy, decidedly.  "Nothing.  And, many things that I could
like--"

"Yes.  Try and tell me.  I think I shall understand."

"Yes; oh, you're so kind.  I've always felt he never would come where
you were.  Some people fret me, even in the next room.  But, music now--
that might lift one away from him, but he stops it; he always stops what
I care most for.  I could bear it, but my body won't; that betrays me."

"Yes, that wants careful looking to.  Now, my boy, try and tell me what
your own view of the matter is.  What you think most likely to be true
about it."

Guy looked up with pitiful puzzled eyes.

"Ask me more questions," he said.

"Ever read up the subject?"

"No, I began; but I daren't--"

"You feel sure it is something besides your own nerves?"

"Yes."

"Something or somebody outside yourself?"

"Outside myself?  I don't know that."

Guy suddenly caught Cuthbert's hand again and pressed it hard against
his forehead, as if to steady his brain.  Then he spoke more clearly.

"I don't know if what comes over me is my ancestor himself, or the fiend
that tempted him, or my own worst self.  As for the vision, I'm not so
much afraid of _that_."

"Then what you want is to be able to resist this influence?"

"Yes, before it ruins me, body and soul."

"Well, you must let me think it over.  Depend upon it, I'll not leave
you alone to fight the battle.  Now, you'll sleep to-night?"

"Oh yes, I am not frightened now," said Guy, simply.

"Well then, we'll go to bed, and talk it over again to-morrow.  But you
must come up to town with me and see a doctor, you need only tell him
that your nerves have had a shock.  But I wouldn't avoid the general
subject.  Such experiences are not altogether exceptional."

"Nervous affections, in fact," said Guy, dryly.

"Well, sometimes, you know.  Anyway, there are safer remedies than
brandy, if your heart gives you trouble.  And mind, come to me at any
time, or send for me.  Bring it into the light of day."

Guy felt soothed by the kindness, and he knew that the advice was good.
But, all the same, he knew that it was Florella who had touched the
heart of his trouble.

"You're awfully kind," he said, gratefully.

"I know the look of trouble," answered Cuthbert; "and fate hasn't left
me many anxieties.  I'm quite free to worry about you."

Guy's eloquent eyes softened.  The fellow-feeling was better than the
reasoning.  But as he got up to go to bed, he said in his usual
self-contained voice, "You know, Rawdie saw him too, and had
palpitations."

PART TWO, CHAPTER ONE.

A BIG SITUATION.

Florella Vyner lay awake in the cool misty light of a moorland morning,
and thought, not for the first time, of her conversation with Guy
Waynflete.  She had the power of intense and steady contemplation, that
was the faculty that enabled her to "see," and when she woke to the
sense of the unusualness of what had passed, she felt quite certain that
the circumstances were also unusual enough to justify the words which
she had spoken.  They had surprised herself; and now, on the day when
she would see Guy again she divined that he had been speaking of
himself.  It was he who suffered spiritual fear, he whose soul was in
danger, and needed prayers to help it.  A sense of awe came upon her.
Guy believed that she saw; but she felt herself to have been hitherto
blind.  She had entered into a spiritual conflict, and, suddenly, she
knew that it was a real one.  "Pray for his soul."  What a tremendous
thing she had promised!  And oh! how tremendous must be the Power whom
she had invoked.

There came upon Florella a moment when "this earth we hold by seemed not
earth," a moment when she did indeed "see."

Her sister's voice startled her.

"It's not going to be a fine day.  Never mind, wet mist is
characteristic of Ingleby."  Constancy was sitting up in bed.  Her
abundant hair fell over her shoulders in thick vigorous waves, her hands
were clasped round her knees.

"Cosy," said Florella, with sisterly straightforwardness, "I hope you're
going to behave better than you did at Waynflete."

"I haven't done any harm," said Cosy, with entire good humour.  "Why
should you all grumble?  I haven't read an hour the less, nor given up a
discussion, nor got a bit tired of being here.  But I won't be only one
sort of girl.  People who have brains can manage a situation."

"I should have thought their brains ought to tell them when a situation
was too big for them to manage."

"Really, Flo!  You do say extremely clever things sometimes.  Yes, so
they ought.  But this isn't a big situation, though Godfrey Waynflete is
a _very_ big young man."

"No, it isn't," said Florella, beginning to get up.  "You're simply
flirting, and talking fine about it.  But, I don't think Godfrey
Waynflete _is_ flirting, and you may find that the situation grows."

"Well!  I'll see if I can grow up to it," said Constancy.  "But you
know, in these days a girl like me is much more likely to flirt too
little than too much."

Godfrey appeared at the carriage door as they drove up to the Mill
House, full of hearty greetings, big, bright and boyish as ever, but
with a certain glow in face and manner which was unmistakable as
Constancy sprang out, and lifting Rawdie, kissed him between his eyes.

Guy stood behind, looking on with repressed amusement, for he had not
yet perceived that it was a "big situation."  He acted host, and showman
to the mill.  He was pale, but so self-contained and like himself that
Cuthbert could have thought the agitated confidence of the night before
had been a dream.  But Florella felt quite sure of her surmise regarding
him, though he said no word to recall it to her.

Constancy had no intention but of spending another pleasant day in
studying the "other side of life," and in teasing her companions; but
she did not know with whom she had to deal.  If Godfrey had been either
old enough to understand her, or timid enough to hesitate and lose his
chance, she might have appeared to "manage the situation."  But he began
the day with a definite purpose, and laid his plans to suit it.  The wet
weather was much against him, as he could not offer himself to her,
either when walking round the mill, or when sitting in the drawing-room,
with Cousin Susan acting hostess.  He did not, however, mean to be
baffled, and while the whole party were listening to Guy's explanation
of the looms, as well as the noise they made permitted, he said to her,
with decision--

"I want you to come and see this," and as she complied, he led her
quickly out of the long, many-windowed room, where the hands were
working, into another where the great bales of wool were stored ready
for use.

The windows were wide open, with the wet air blowing through, there was
a strong smell of oily wool; but Godfrey, with a soft, persistent step,
led her round the piled-up bales, into a little open space between them.
The window looked across miles of misty, smoky country, and the
ceaseless roar of the machinery was softened by distance, so that they
could hear themselves speak.

"I don't see anything to look at here," said Constancy, "and I want to
understand how the weaving is done."

"There is nothing to see," said Godfrey.  "I brought you here on purpose
to tell you something.  I--I love you.  I mean to work with all there is
of me to be worthy of you.  I've only that one object in life, and I
shall never have another.  I--I've thought you liked me a little.  You
do--Constancy, don't you?  You will, won't you?  You know that I care
for nothing else in the world but you."

He came close to her, taking her hands and looking down at her, with
eyes to which his eagerness lent a sort of fierce determination.

Constancy's heart gave a great throb as the blood rushed to her face,
but startled as she was, she held her own.

"Now you are spoiling everything that is so extremely pleasant.  You
know quite well I never thought of anything of that sort.  We have had
such a very good time.  Now, don't say any more.  I never meant--"

"You must have meant it at Waynflete; you meant me to believe it."

"Now, you are making a great deal too much of things.  Why, you know, I
have my work at college--"

"If you care a bit for me, what does that matter?"

Godfrey's face darkened, and filled with passionate desire.

"You don't care for me?" he said, hoarsely.

"Well, no," she said, "not in that way.  I'm not sentimental; and you--
we--are much too young to think of such nonsense.  Let us find the
others."

Godfrey stood in her path for a moment.  He was smarting, not only under
her refusal, but under her deliberate ignoring of his depth of feeling.

"I _am_ young," he said, "young enough to wait, and I will _make_ you
care.  The love I offer you is worth a great deal more than you pretend
to think.  I'll--I'll make you see that yet.  Allow me--to show you the
way back to the others."

He stood aside and pointed the way, forcing his manner into rigid
politeness, but his face white, and his eyes fixing hers.  His whole
nature rose against defeat, though, as he fell behind her, he felt so
miserable that, boy as he was, his throat ached, and unshed tears stung
his eyelids.

Constancy felt strange thrills.

She dashed into the midst of the others, as they came out, and
breathlessly remarked on the beauty of the bridge they were crossing,
"So picturesque," she said.

"If the stream was clean," said Guy.

"Well, you often call a dirty child picturesque; why not a dirty river,
with a tree and a barn, or whatever it is?  I think it's beautiful."

"Beauty that is marred," said Guy.

"Then it has more human interest," said Constancy.  "It is another
aspect of what I said about the summeriness of London."

She dashed into the discussion, and talked brilliantly, rousing both Guy
and Cuthbert Staunton to talk too, while Godfrey hung behind, angered
more than ever.  He was obliged occasionally to speak, and even to hand
tea-cups and open doors for the ladies.  Such is the power of
civilisation.  As she talked and smiled and managed, into her complex
mind there flashed new ideas, and new knowledge.  She had learned ever
so much by that queer little interview.  All kinds of new "mind stuff"
had come into her head.  She had conceived her part of the scene very
badly--but certainly--it was an experience, and as they drove home
through the rainy mist, the experience translated itself into all sorts
of forms.  Godfrey had held the door of the waggonette for her; had
given her her wraps, had offered all politeness, but he had neither
spoken to her, nor touched her hand.

"Yes," she thought, as she laid her head on her pillow, "I can't be
sorry for any experience.  It's quite different from reading about it."

Then suddenly, as she lay in the darkness, she not only knew, but felt;
something new and strange did indeed sweep over her, an overwhelming
_might be_.  Her spirit fell before it, and she hid her face, and cried.

"Cosy, did you find the situation bigger than you expected?" said
Florella.

Constancy was silent till she could trust her voice, then said,
abruptly--

"Yes; I wasn't skilful.  Never mind, I'll manage better another time.  I
think it was inevitable--really."

"And you don't--"

"Don't reciprocate?  No!  It would upset all my ideas to marry before
I'm twenty-five.  And oh--you know, Flo, the Waynfletes are a fine type,
and so on; but, dear me, one belongs to another century, another world,
another universe.  I don't know where the dividing line is exactly; but
there's a mighty deep one somewhere."

"Perhaps he'll cross it--now."

"He did beat the record for the wide jump at his college!" said Cosy.
"But he's just like his great-aunt.  How _could_ one marry a person who
thinks it signifies so dreadfully _what_ one thinks about everything.
It's not that such as we think differently; but we don't think it
matters much what we think, and they do."

"Poor Godfrey Waynflete!" said Florella.  "He certainly thinks it
matters what you think about him."

"Good night," said Cosy, ending the conversation.

PART TWO, CHAPTER TWO.

CROSSING THE FLETE.

Almost before the waggonette had driven away from the door, Godfrey
turned, round to his brother.

"I shall catch the last train," he said.

"The last train!  Now?  How do you mean to get from Kirk Hinton?"

"I can walk."

"In this weather?  You'll reduce Rawdie to a mass of pulp."

"He can stop with you.  Good night," said Godfrey, ramming on his hat,
and marching off through the driving rain, while Guy shrugged his
shoulders, and detained Rawdie.

"Ha, ha! you poor little beggar, you're nowhere," he said.  "You'll have
to put up with me."

Kirk Hinton was a little station on the branch line which connected
Rilston with the junction for Ingleby.  It was four miles from Moorhead,
and six from Waynflete, and as it contained no sort of conveyance, it
was necessary for travellers to make arrangements beforehand if they
desired to be carried to their destination.

Godfrey had ordered a trap to meet him on the next morning; but now
there was nothing for it but to walk up hill and down dale through the
pouring rain, and chew the cud of his bitter thoughts as he went.

The field path to Waynflete was of the roughest, and led over rain
washed stony tracks, through copse-wood and thicket, down to the bottom
of Flete Dale, where the Flete beck was crossed by a rough wooden bridge
near which was the Dragon, the little old public-house which had been
there from time immemorial.  On the other side of the river a steep
ascent led up to Flete Edge, beyond which lay the Hall.  The road from
Kirk Hinton took a much more gradual route, and crossed the Flete by
another bridge at the end of the old avenue at the back of the house.

Godfrey was way-wise; but he had never taken the walk before, and he was
confused by the storm and the darkness, and by his own miserable
thoughts.

He had not given up his point.  No; he was not defeated.  He would
neither avoid Constancy nor cease to recommend himself to her.  He would
meet her on every possible opportunity; he would not give way an inch.
He would succeed unless--other fellows--?  There were other fellows, of
course.  There was Guy.

Godfrey stumbled through a great clump of brambles and bushes, over a
low wall and down a rough field to the riverside, where he dimly saw the
bridge in the uncertain light.  He felt chilled and miserable; his
resolute hope failed him.  There was Guy.  She always liked Guy, and he
always roused himself to talk and laugh with her.  Godfrey's angry
spirit exaggerated these memories of friendly intercourse.  His heart
sank lower and lower.  He paused on the bridge, and listened to the
dreary roar of the wind through the wide plantations, and to the
swirling rush of the stream beneath him.  He could not see anything
distinctly, but driving mist and swaying trees; but he came up out of
the gloomy hollow as much convinced of his brother's imaginary rivalry
as if the fiend, or the spirit, who had stood in the path of his unlucky
ancestor, and so wrecked the fortunes of succeeding generations, had
whispered the deluding suggestion into his ear.

How he reached the house he hardly knew, and then he wondered how he
could account to his aunt for his sudden return.

Mrs Waynflete, however, kept no count of his movements; she took no
notice till the first train the next morning brought over the Ingleby
stable-boy with Rawdie, Godfrey's bag, and a note from Guy, in which he
stated that he would not be able to come to Waynflete at present, as he
was going on "a little outing" with Staunton.  Godfrey felt certain that
the little outing was to Moorhead, and when he read as a conclusion,
"Cheer up, old boy; there's worse luck in the world than yours," he felt
as if Guy was mocking his trouble.

Mrs Waynflete was angry at the message.  She thought Guy neglectful and
indifferent to the place she loved so well.  In those days, when the
novelty of her surroundings destroyed her sense of accustomed comfort,
she thought much.  She was too good a woman of business to have left the
future unprovided for, and she had long ago made a will in which the
Waynflete property, together with certain investments, and half the
share in the profits of Palmer Brothers was left to Guy, while the other
half share made a fair younger son's portion for Godfrey.

But now, how could she trust Guy, either with the property or with the
business?  Was he not too likely to ruin both?  Could she rely on him to
carry on the work she had so bravely begun?  She distrusted him deeply,
and he did nothing to remove her distrust.  She had always kept her will
in her own hands; it would be easy to destroy it.  But then, if anything
happened to her, everything would be in confusion.  An idea occurred to
her, which in its simplicity and independence attracted her strongly.
She would have another will made, in which Godfrey's name was
substituted for that of Guy, and then she would keep both at hand.  At
any moment it would be easy to destroy one of them, much easier than to
alter it, or to draw out a new one in a hurry, and she would put Guy to
certain tests, and judge him accordingly.  She would drive into Rilston
and see the solicitor there this very afternoon, for it struck her that
she did not wish to explain the workings of her mind to the old family
man of business who had made the will now in force.

At luncheon-time she was unusually silent, while Jeanie questioned
Godfrey as to the events of the day before, and at last remarked, as she
cut up her peach, "How funny it is that Guy should be such friends with
Mr Staunton!"

"Why?" said Mrs Waynflete, abruptly.  "Mr Staunton seems a very
well-conducted young man."

"Oh yes, aunt; but don't you know that he is descended from the wicked
old Maxwell who ruined the Waynfletes.  Constancy Vyner told us all
about it.  She said it was so interesting--to be friends with your
hereditary foe."

"What's that?" said the old lady.  "I ought to have been told, Godfrey;
it's a very singular fancy on the part of your brother."

"Oh, I dare say Guy has very good reasons for the friendship," said
Godfrey, sulkily.

Mrs Waynflete made no reply.  She released Jeanie from the duty of
accompanying her on her afternoon drive, and before she started, she
wrote a note to Guy.

She drove into Rilston, gave her directions to the solicitor, and
arranged to have the new will made out, and brought for her signature on
the next day.  Then she went back, and, dismissing her carriage at the
bridge, prepared to inspect the needful repairs that were being made in
the farm-buildings and stables.

Godfrey, hanging listlessly about, saw her tall, upright figure, walking
steadily over the bridge, and then, whether she caught her foot in a
stone, or lost her balance, suddenly she tripped and fell.

With a shout of dismay he rushed towards her.

"Auntie!  Auntie Waynflete!  Are you hurt?"

"No, my dear, no; gently, don't be in such a hurry," she said
imperatively, having already got up on her hands and knees.

Godfrey put his strong young arms round her, and lifted her on to her
feet, holding her carefully, and entreating her to tell him if she was
hurt; while she told him sharply not to make a fuss about nothing, even
though, to her own great vexation, she was so tremulous as to be obliged
to lean on his arm, and let him lead her back to the house.

"No," she said.  "No, I don't want to lie down, and I don't want a glass
of brandy and water, and I don't want the doctor.  I want to sit down in
my chair, and see if my bones are in their right places."

Jeanie now appeared, fussing about, and very anxious to do the right
thing, but the old lady would not even have her bonnet taken off, and
hunted the two young people out of sight, asking them if they thought
she had had a stroke, just as they were whispering to each other that,
at any rate, it was nothing of that sort.  They peeped at her from
behind the creepers through the open window, and discussed whether they
ought to send for the doctor.  But, as Godfrey said, he didn't know if
there was a doctor to send for, such a person having rarely been seen
within the walls of the Mill House; and, besides, to act for Aunt
Waynflete was a new departure which neither dared undertake.

In the mean time, old Margaret, to her own great annoyance, found
herself shedding tears.  She was more shaken than she had guessed.  She
dried them rapidly, and then walked cautiously round the room, to see
whether she was really herself and unhurt.

"The Lord be praised, there's no harm done!" she said.  "But I've had a
warning; and, please God, I'll take it, and prepare for my latter end.
I'm an old woman, and should mind my steps, and not be mooning over the
future or the past, when I should be picking my way.  If my nephew Guy,
like others before him, is but poor stuff, Godfrey's a different sort.
I'll keep my eyes open."

She appeared to be none the worse for her accident in the anxious if
inexperienced eyes of Godfrey and Jeanie, who scarcely dared to ask her
how she felt.

The new will was brought to her, and was duly signed and witnessed.  She
locked it away with the former one, and with other business papers, in a
table-drawer in her bedroom.  She was prepared now for any emergency;
but, in her heart, she was far from satisfied, and, in the solitude of
the thoughts of age, she weighed the two young men against each other
with a sincere desire to judge them aright.  All the settled
convictions, and all the saddest experiences of her life, told against
Guy.  All her affection, all her inclination, swayed towards Godfrey.
And yet, angry as she was with her elder nephew, the tones of his voice,
the set of his mouth when he had spoken his mind to her, recurred to her
keen judgment, and she doubted still.

On the day after the signing of the new will, she received the following
answer to her note to Guy.

  "Mill House, Ingleby,--

  "September 16.

  "Dear Aunt Margaret,--

  "I shall not, of course, invite my friend to stay in your house again,
  now that I am aware of your sentiments on the subject; but I will
  avail myself of your permission to leave matters as they stand for the
  present, as I should be unwilling to involve myself in so ludicrous an
  explanation.  Family feuds appear to me entirely out of date.  I fear
  I shall not be able to come over to Waynflete at present, as I cannot
  leave Staunton, and you probably will not care to see him there.

  "Your affectionate nephew,--

  "Guy Waynflete."

This judicious and conciliatory epistle was put away by Mrs Waynflete,
with the two wills in her table-drawer.

It appeared to her that Guy, with a frivolity not new in her experience,
scorned the sentiments and the convictions which had ruled her life.

PART TWO, CHAPTER THREE.

MINISTERS OF GRACE.

Cuthbert Staunton took Guy up to London to the house in Kensington to be
inspected by a well-known doctor, who was also a personal friend of his
own.

Guy despatched his petulant little note to his aunt before he started,
and, perhaps, it was edged by his own discomfort, for he could hardly
endure to be the subject of discussion and inquiry, and, the immediate
effect of the night at Waynflete having passed off, held himself with
difficulty to his resolution.

"You may trust me to tell him nothing against your wish," said Staunton,
beforehand.

"I don't think you could tell him much," said Guy, oddly.  "But," he
added, "I wish to tell him that I am afraid of the brandy."

The man of science, when told that he suffered from palpitations and
exhaustion after any "nervous strain," the expression substituted by
Cuthbert for Guy's straightforward "when I am frightened," and also of
this means of remedy, made due examination of him, and asked various
questions, eliciting that he was easily tired, and that his heart did
throb sometimes after over-fatigue or over-hurry, "but not to signify at
all, that didn't matter."

And could he foretell when periods of nervous excitement were likely to
occur, so as to avoid them?

"No," said Guy; and then he added, while his lips grew a little white,
"I want to be told how to deal with the effects of it so that the remedy
mayn't be worse than the thing itself.  No one can help me as to the
cause."

"Ah!" said the doctor, thoughtfully.  Then he gave various directions as
to avoiding fatigue, worry, or excitement.  A winter abroad would be
good, change of scene and occupation.  There was no serious mischief at
work at present; but there was need of great care and consideration.
And with a gravity showing that he understood one part of the matter,
severe restrictions were laid on the use of brandy and everything
analogous to it, and other prescriptions substituted.  "Mr Waynflete
mustn't be alarmed about himself; care for a year or two would make all
the difference.  He would grow stronger, and the nervous strain would
lessen in proportion."

Guy looked back at him, but said nothing; and as he took leave, Cuthbert
remained for a minute or two.

"That young fellow is a good deal out of health," said the doctor.
"Hasn't he a mother or any one to look after him?"

"Not a soul capable, except me," said Staunton.  "I'm going to do it as
well as I can, and he will let me."

"Well, remember this: whether he can avoid nervous shocks or no, _he
must not have them_.  And he can't be too much afraid of the brandy.
Get him out of whatever oppresses him.  It's the only plan.  The heart
is weak, and the brain--excitable."

"Should you like a spell abroad?" said Staunton, as they sat at luncheon
at his club.

"I could not go," said Guy.  "That would mean giving up having any
concern with the business.  And I haven't enough money."

"But if Mrs Waynflete knew that it was a matter of health--You must
really let your friends know that you have to be careful."

It was a new idea to Guy that the effects of his attacks were of
importance in themselves, and naturally an unwelcome one.  He looked
rather obstinate, and went on eating his salad.  After a minute or two,
he said--

"I will do what I come to think is right.  No one else can quite know."

"No; but don't you see, my dear boy, that whatever strengthens your
constitution altogether will help you to--to--contend with your
trouble--and make it less likely to attack you?"

"Yes," said Guy, slowly.  "What other people say does help one to
think."

"Well, there's no hurry to decide," said Cuthbert.  "You still think you
would like to go down to-night?  Certainly, there isn't much on at
present here.  What shall we do this afternoon?"

A friend of Staunton's here turned up and pressed on their acceptance
some tickets for a morning performance of Hamlet, in which he was
interested.

"Should you like to go, Guy?" said Cuthbert; "there would be plenty of
time to dine afterwards, and get our train."

Guy thought that he would like it, and it was not till they were sitting
in the stalls that it struck his friend that Hamlet was not calculated
to divert his mind from the subject that engrossed it.  Still, it must
be familiar to him.

But Cuthbert failed to realise that, though Guy believed himself to have
"read Shakespeare," it is possible for a country-bred youth, brought up
in an unliterary and non-play-going family, to bring an extremely fresh
interest to bear on our great dramatist, and though Guy was not quite in
the condition of the lady who, in the middle of the murder scene in
Macbeth, observed tearfully to her friend, "Oh dear, I am afraid this
cannot end well!" he was but dimly prepared for what he was going to
see.  He gave an odd little laugh as the ghost crossed the stage, but
watched intently and quietly.

"What do you think of it?" said Cuthbert, in a pause.  "He's not so bad,
is he?"

"He says some very remarkable things," said Guy, seriously.  "Things
that seem true; but I never thought of them.  Don't you suppose the
ghost was _there_, watching for him to act, often though he couldn't see
him?"

"Well, really," said Cuthbert; "I do think you have made a new remark on
Hamlet.  I never heard that suggestion.  We can go, you know, if you're
bored, any time."

"No," said Guy; "I like it."

Guy had the faculty of calling up distinct mental pictures.  It was the
method by which he thought, and the moving scene stamped itself, as
plays sometimes will, both on his eyes and on his memory.  When they
came out into the daylight he felt bewildered as if the world outside
was the unreal one.

"The ghost didn't do much good," he said; while Cuthbert, wishing he had
had more forethought, talked lightly and critically about the acting,
concerning which Guy was not critical at all.

When they set off on their night journey, Guy grew quiet, and presently
fell asleep.  He looked tired, and the heavy eyelashes and the
wistfulness, which, in sleep, his mouth seemed to share, made him seem
younger than usual, and more in need of help.  Suddenly he moved and
started, while a look of shrinking terror came into his face.  Cuthbert
roused him, and he opened his eyes and caught his breath.

"Dreaming of the play?" said Cuthbert, lightly.

"No," said Guy.  He leant back in his corner, and seemed slowly to
master himself, for presently he gave a little smile, and said, "I'm all
right, thank you."

Cuthbert thought that he could see exactly what the sort of thing was
now, and how it came about.  Presently Guy began to talk about Hamlet,
asking many well-worn questions, and a few more unexpected ones.
Cuthbert, who had been working up all the criticisms for a set of
lectures, felt as he answered him rather like an orthodox, but
personally inexperienced professor of religion in the presence of an
earnest young inquirer.

After a little while, Guy said reflectively, "It is odd that he found it
so hard to obey the ghost, rather than to resist him.  I don't much
think Shakespeare ever felt one himself."

This tone of calm consideration of the psychological truth of Hamlet
nearly made Cuthbert laugh, even while he was thinking of how to manage
the young visionary beside him.  It was years since his easy life had
been invaded by so much anxiety for any one, years since he had had so
lively an interest.

Guy fished out the right volume of "Shakespeare" from among the books
that played propriety in a glass bookcase in the dining-room at Ingleby,
when he had finished his supper at two o'clock in the morning, and took
it upstairs with him.

On the next afternoon, perhaps happily to change the current of his
thoughts, they were engaged to Mrs Raby's garden party at Kirkton Hall,
a big house between Ingleby and Kirk Hinton, and the source of much of
the gaiety of the neighbourhood.  On arriving, after the long drive,
they beheld Godfrey's flaxen head towering above the other tennis
players as he prepared to play a match with Miss Raby, who was the
champion lady-player of the district, against her brother and Constancy
Vyner, who turned to Guy with a cordial and friendly greeting.  She
looked fresh and bright, and quite at her ease in Godfrey's presence.
Indeed, she had told her sister that she came on purpose to show that
she could "manage the situation."  She had written Godfrey, instead of
Geoffrey of Monmouth, three times in her Modern History notes that
morning, and she spent much time in telling herself that she could never
return his feelings.

And now, with boy and girl defiance, and yet with instincts old as the
earth on which they stood, the one thing for which each of the pair
longed was to conquer the other.

The play in that notable set was discussed by tennis-lovers for all the
rest of the season, and the players never heeded the darkening of the
sky, and the increasing weight of the air.  Cosy's hand was as steady
and her aim as direct as if no inner consciousness existed, she put into
her skilled play every atom of force that she possessed.  As for
Godfrey, he was as mad as a Berserker, and he looked like one.

The game, owing to the equality of the players, was very long, and it
by-and-by became evident to Florella that Miss Raby was getting tired,
and was no longer playing at her best.

They were playing the last game of the set.  "Thirty all" was called as,
without a moment's warning, down fell a torrent of thunder, rain, and
hail, enough to stop the most ardent players.  Yet half a dozen more
strokes--Miss Raby stepped back, exclaimed, "Oh, what a pity; we must
declare the match drawn," and fled to the house, while Mr Raby snatched
up and held over her a lovely and useless white lace parasol.

Constancy and Godfrey stood opposite each other for a moment in the
drenching rain, both at once exclaiming, "Too bad!"

Then she laughed and scudded off with lifted skirt, while Godfrey felt a
sense of baffled anger which even defeat would not have brought to him.

Then he had to walk rationally back to the house, and change his things,
for the notes of a waltz suddenly sprang up.  A big hall with a polished
floor was cleared for dancing, fruit and ice were being handed round,
and nobody cared very much for the thunderstorm.

Guy, looked out for the harebell blue gown, which he always associated
with Florella.  It did not occur to him that she had very few smart
frocks at Moorhead.  He asked her to dance, and it was not till they had
spun two or three times round the dark polished floor that his heart
began to throb and flutter, and that it struck him that this was
probably the sort of "exertion" forbidden to him.  He felt miserable,
and wished, not for the first time, that he had never spoken of his
troubles.  It was more endurable, locked up as it were in the cupboard
in the wall, than now when it mixed itself up with his ordinary life.
But the slight discomfort could not signify, the chief thing was to
conceal it.  He would go on dancing, and presently get some champagne.
Florella, however, stopped of her own accord in the deep recess of a
window.

"I'm not a very good dancer," she said, in her composed way.  "You know
I haven't been out very much yet."

"Don't you care for it?" said Guy, rather breathlessly.

"I like it a little," she said; "and it is lovely to watch, especially
on a dark floor--crumb-cloths have no beauty."

The light was streaming in under the storm-clouds through the narrow
windows in dull yellowish rays, the flying figures passed in and out of
the shadow, against a background of polished oak.

"I suppose," said Guy, "that you like painting better than dancing?"

"Oh, well," said Florella, in a tone that showed her to be Cosy's
sister; "to say that is either a truism or a very priggish remark.  You
might as well ask if one liked strawberry ice best or poetry.  But I
like looking on best of all--feeling pictures."

"Do tell me what you mean?" said Guy, eagerly.

Florella was always impelled to talk, or, perhaps more truly, to think
by Guy.  She was drifting again into talk that belonged only to him, and
that she would not have held with any one else.

"I don't quite know what else to say," she answered.  "It is not exactly
seeing things or noticing them.  It is feeling the picture in them.
This dance has a picture in it.  Often I don't feel so about things that
are very beautiful."

"Did you ever see Hamlet?" said Guy, apparently with an abrupt change of
subject.

"Oh yes, more than once.  Have you seen the new Hamlet?"

"I saw it yesterday.  I wish you'd tell me the meaning--what you see
inside that."

"Oh," said Florella, laughing.  "That's what many people have tried to
see."

"I have read it all through to-day," said Guy, naively.  "What puzzles
me is how, as the ghost was real, Hamlet had any doubt about him."

"Why, you see he thought that it might be an evil spirit taking his
father's shape."

"But if he had really _felt_ it, he must have known whether it was good
or evil.  Seeing a ghost isn't like seeing a person outside you.  Didn't
you know that the other day when you spoke of the only thing that could
have helped--Guy Waynflete?"

She flushed a deep crimson.  There was something overwhelming to her in
the conversation, and she could hardly speak.  "That came into my mind,"
she said.  "I never thought of it before."

"But you believe it?"

"Yes."

The rain was ceasing, and the dusty, misty light grew clearer and more
radiant.  The waltz finished in a glow of sunshine.  Somehow the ghost
and his own condition went right out of Guy's head.  He took Florella to
eat peaches, and began to talk to her in a more ordinary way, while the
strain of their previous intercourse lifted itself from her spirit.
They felt quite intimate and at home with each other, so much so that
Guy explained why he did not ask her to waltz again, quite simply and
without effort, admitting that he had been told to be careful.  It
seemed quite natural to tell her what he had been unwilling to own to
himself.

He had hardly ever felt so happy, and when he was at ease, there was
something sweet and bright in his face and manner which had a great
charm.

Constancy, who paid him a gratifying amount of attention, told herself
many times that he was much more agreeable than his brother.  Certainly
Godfrey looked neither sweet nor bright.  He danced with Jeanie because
there was no occasion to make conversation for her, and glowered at
Constancy, and when Guy, certainly in rather an off-hand way, told him
of his visit to London, and of the doctor's opinion, he only looked
savage, and said--

"You don't seem as if there was much the matter with you to-day;" an
answer which Cuthbert thought brutal, but which did not strike Guy as at
all singular.

Godfrey had intended to say much to Guy about the advisability of coming
to Waynflete, and taking his place as the elder brother, but he was
unable to express it amiably, so his honourable scruples took the form
of remarking--

"I can't think why you're such a fool as to annoy Aunt Waynflete by
having Staunton with you.  You ought to come over, and of course she
doesn't want to see him."

"I am not going to make myself absurd," said Guy, coldly.  "What do I
care who Staunton's great-grandfather was?  He has been very kind to
me."

"There's a great deal in bad blood," said Godfrey, obstinately.  "It's
sure to come out.  He'll come across you somehow."

"There's not much to choose between our great-grandfathers," said Guy.
"I'd just as soon have his as ours."

The agreeable little discussion was interrupted, and Guy only laughed as
Godfrey was called away.

But it might have been a different person who said suddenly to Staunton,
as they drove back to Ingleby in the moonlight--

"Cuthbert, the doctor thought I should get well, if I do take care,
didn't he?"

"Oh yes, certainly.  But you mustn't play tricks with yourself."

"Well," said Guy, seriously and cheerfully, "I mean to try; and,
somehow, I think there's a chance for me, altogether."

Guy slept that night without dream or disturbance; but for Florella
there was no sleep for a long time.  A whole rush of thoughts filled her
mind; of ghosts and demons, black spirits and white, bad and good
angels.  She did not feel "creepy," or in any way personally concerned,
but she mentally realised, or, as she called it, "saw" all sorts of
eerie situations.  Guy Waynflete--she did not try in her thoughts to
separate the generations--seemed to have been pursued by an evil power.
Was there no good angel to help him?

Florella saw--as she saw the thought in her pictures--the radiant image,
all light and wings and glory, the instinctive presentment of a heavenly
being which was her spiritual and artistic inheritance.  Perhaps, in the
light of that fair fancy, she fell asleep; but suddenly there was no
outward vision any more, but a great awe and a passionate yearning
within.  A voice seemed to cry from the depths, "Oh, helping is so
hard--so _hard_!  There is no _angelness_ left.  It takes it all.  My
wings can't be smooth and tidy!"  Florella woke right up in the morning
sunshine.  The vision was over, but she did not forget it.

PART TWO, CHAPTER FOUR.

THROWING DOWN THE GAUNTLET.

Shortly after this day at the Rabys, Mrs Joshua Palmer went up to
Waynflete ostensibly because she thought that she could be of some use
to Aunt Waynflete in getting comfortably settled in there, and in
finally arranging her household if, as seemed likely, she remained there
for the winter, but really moved by something in her daughter's letters
which excited her anxiety.  It would not do at all to have "anything"
between Godfrey and Jeanie, at their age.  By-and-by, if anything really
came of the fancy, things might be different.

Guy and his friend were therefore left alone at Ingleby, and two or
three weeks passed without much outward event, but of much inward
importance.

Guy, whether wisely or unwisely, plunged into the study of such
experiences as his own, and their possible explanations.  He had no
difficulty in these days in finding material, and he brought to bear on
the subject an amount of acute intelligence and reasoning power for
which Staunton had hardly given him credit.  He puzzled him a good deal
by his ridicule of some recorded stories, and his keen interest in
others.  He mastered the point of the various theories, stating and
criticising them with much force, and the discussions were certainly so
far good for him that he lost some of his sense of unique and shameful
experience.  But Cuthbert saw that he tested everything by an
incommunicable and inexplicable sense, and he never uttered any definite
conviction as regarded himself.  He had no "nervous attacks" as Cuthbert
called them; but whether the terrible night at Waynflete had done him
permanent harm, or whether the strain was more continuous than appeared,
he was certainly far from strong, and suffered from any extra exertion,
so that the need of care was evident enough.

"I believe I was a fool to set you upon all this reading," said
Cuthbert, one day.  "You'll wear yourself out with it when I have to
leave you."

"It would be very difficult to be alone," said Guy, thoughtfully.

"It's out of the question.  You're not fit for the mill or for the hard
winter here.  You ought to have a sea-voyage, or something of that sort.
Or, at any rate, come and stay on the south coast somewhere where I
could make my headquarters while I'm lecturing, and see you now and
then."

"There are a great many things I can't quite tell you," said Guy, after
a pause, "and they don't only concern myself.  It's all right about the
reading, but I've got something to do to-day.  It's quite simple, only
rather hard.  And I know `he' doesn't want me to do it."

Guy had said nothing so personal since his first confession, and, as he
got up languidly, and prepared to return to the mill for his afternoon
work, giving his friend an odd, half-smiling look, as he moved away,
Cuthbert felt an uncomfortable thrill.

It startled him to feel that Guy's conviction lay absolutely untouched
by all his recent study.  There was something inscrutable behind the
pathetic eyes, and what was it?  Was the boy "mad north-north west?" or
would he at last compel belief in the incredible?  Horatio, Cuthbert
thought, had a great advantage in having actually seen the ghost that
haunted Hamlet.

Then he remembered making some remark to Guy on the "objective"
character of this famous apparition, and Guy had answered, "But they
only saw it, as you see a house or a tree.  I don't suppose it made much
difference to them."

Guy betook himself to the mill, and called John Cooper into the room
where the bottle of brandy was still locked up in the cupboard in the
wall.  He had often been as conscious of its presence there, as he could
have been of that of the ghost; every morning he thought about it more
and more persistently, and every evening when he went away he knew that
the day's victory had left him with less strength for the morrow's
conflict.

Now, when he went up to the cupboard, and turned the key in the lock,
and, with his keen ears heard the old manager's step crossing the
court--it was to him as if another hand pushed the lock back--and
another than himself suggested a different reason for the summons.  But
he stood still, leaning against the wall, till the old man came into the
room.

Then he put up his hand, and let the door swing open.

"John Cooper," he said, "take that out, and take it away with you.  I'll
own you had right on your side.  But you shouldn't have cackled about it
to Mrs Waynflete."

"Well now," said Cooper, in a rougher echo of the young man's slow,
musical voice, "I've thought of that myself.  I'm glad you've come to a
better mind about it, Mr Guy, for I'd not be willing to see the old
missus disappointed in your future."

"She don't expect much," said Guy.  "Now then," after Cooper had taken
the brandy-bottle out of the cupboard, and set it beside a file of
bills.  "Now that you see I'm not going to send the business and myself
to the dogs, shut the door, I've something to say."

John Cooper obeyed, and Guy sat down by the table.

"Now then," he repeated, "we are going to the dogs, and you know it.
Let's look it in the face."

"Eh, Mr Guy, trade's fluctuating.  We'll pull round without letting th'
owd lady know there's aught wrong."

"Look here," said Guy, opening a paper, "d'ye think I've no brains in my
head?  Look at the number of orders for this year, and last year, and
ten years back.  Look at the receipts.  What's the use of spending money
on setting all those out-of-date old looms in order?  Where's the sense
of manufacturing the sort of goods people don't want, instead of what
they do?  Is that the way these mills were run sixty years ago, when old
Mr Thomas managed the business?"

"He got the new looms, sir."

"Exactly so; and wouldn't he have seen long ago that they were worn out.
Look here, John, we'll have to pull up, and put our shoulders to the
wheel, or we'll have Palmer Brothers down among the failures before many
months are over."

"Eh, Mr Guy, for the Lord's sake don't say so.  Don't mention such a
thing.  'Tis those new mills over Rilston way--and the price of coals--
and trade being bad ever since the Government--Eh, my lad, just think of
your old auntie, seeing all her life work undone, and having to sell the
property she's so proud over."

Here Guy started slightly, as the old man's voice choked.

"But we're not going to fail," he said.  "We're going to fight it out
and pull through; that is, if you back me up."

John Cooper stared at him incredulously.  Besides his natural surprise
that this "laddie" was old enough to have a say in the matter, and
besides his not unjustifiable suspicions of him, Guy's delicate outlines
and look of ill-health--in fact, his whole air--was so unlike that of
the powerful old woman who had so long held the reins, that the
identical form of the lines into which his lips set, was unperceived,
and the sudden, keen glance that came through the silky black lashes,
from the usually absent eyes, was startling.

"You know well enough, sir," said Cooper shakily, "that there's nought I
wouldn't do for the old lady and the business.  She's been a grand
character all her days, and if there's a curse on the Waynfletes, she
set her teeth against it when she was but a slip of a lass, with rosy
cheeks and eyes that could look the sun down."

"Ay?" said Guy.  "What d'ye mean by a curse on the Waynfletes?"

"Well, sir, of course it's only a manner of speech; but there were
plenty to say that Margaret Waynflete'd bring Palmers her own ill luck.
Now, I say, Margaret never brought ill luck to any man; and Mr Thomas
had the best of good fortune when he took her with her shawl over her
head and without a penny.  Bad luck'll never overtake her now in her old
age."

"It will, unless we set our teeth against it pretty hard.  I'm going to
tight.  Now, look here, it all depends on what money or credit can be
produced now.  In a few months it will be too late.  I'm going to make
my aunt attend to what I have to say; and, if I can, get her to trust
me.  For she'll have to trust me with all she has, and make me the
master, or down we shall go.  And what you've got to do, is to tell her
honestly, from the bottom of your soul, that _you_ trust me, and know
I've got her own grit in me.  So now, I give you my solemn word of
honour that I'll never touch a drop of strong drink till `Palmer
Brothers' is itself again, and Waynflete safe; and, if I fail, may I
become part of the curse myself.  So here goes!"

He took up the brandy-bottle, and threw it out of the window, down into
the shallow, dark-dyed stream below.  They heard it crack against the
stony bottom.

"Now then," said Guy, "will you back me up?"

"Lord, Mr Guy!  That was unnecessary behaviour," said the bewildered
Cooper; "and very strong language to use.  But I'll go along with you.
You've brought me to look the Lord's will in the face--which isn't easy
at seventy-eight--for there's not a matter of four years between me and
the missus.  But I'll serve you faithful, Mr Guy; and if the Almighty
means us to fail--"

"But He don't," said Guy.  "It's quite another sort of person that means
it.  Now sit down, and we'll talk business."

As Guy marshalled his figures and his facts, asked penetrating
questions, and prepared the statement to which Mrs Waynflete must at
all costs be made to hearken, Cooper, who had a hard enough head of his
own, silently gave in and yielded his whole allegiance.  Only when the
interview was over, he said, pleadingly--

"You'll be gentle, Mr Guy?  For it don't come easy to old folks to turn
their minds upside down.  It is easy for a young lad like you to act."

"Think so?" said Guy, with a queer, sad look.  "Well, I'll do what I
can."

He was much more tired than was good for him, as he came in to the
study, in the rapidly increasing darkness of the autumn afternoon.
Cuthbert was not there, and all his sense of courage and energy failed
him; for, the more resolutely a nervous strain is encountered, the less
power of resistance is left.  He grew drowsy in the dusk, then roused up
suddenly to the agony of panic-fear, to the intolerable sense of his
enemy within him.  He might cover eyes and ears, but it entered by no
such avenues--anything to drown--to bury it.  There was whisky in the
cupboard.  He staggered to his feet, and the next moment Cuthbert's hand
was on his shoulder.

"Steady, my boy, steady.  What is it?  Lie down again.  I am here;
you'll be better in a minute."

Guy clung to the hand of flesh and blood as if he had been drowning.  He
hid his face, not hearing one word that Cuthbert said.  He was not
merely suffering terror, but struggling, fighting to free himself, to
escape, to _separate_ himself from the influence that seemed to be upon
him, resisting and opposing it with all his strength.  "Oh, help--help!"
he gasped.

"Yes--yes, my dear boy.  Lie still.  It will pass off directly."

And very soon, in two or three minutes, as Cuthbert counted time, the
agony seemed to cease, and Guy dropped back, deadly faint, but with
closed eyes and smooth brow.

Cuthbert brought him, as soon as he let go his desperate hold, some of
the remedy provided by the doctor, and tended him with a care and
kindness altogether new to him.

"It's _much_ better with you here," said Guy, presently, as if
half-surprised.

"Of course it is.  You were so tired; no wonder a bad dream upset you."

Guy lifted his heavy eyes for a moment, and looked at him.

"A _very_ bad dream," he said drily.  "It's over now."

"Tell me what it was?"

"He came, that's all.  No, I can't tell you.  You don't understand; but
you help."

Cuthbert did not think him fit for an argument, and sat by him in
silence.  He felt that the sight of Guy's agony had tried his own nerves
somewhat.  It was an odd turn of fate, he thought, that brought a quiet,
everyday person like himself, to whom no great heights or depths, either
of character or of fortune, were likely to come, who held steady,
unexciting opinions, and expected no revelations about anything, to be
guide, philosopher, and friend, to this strange being, for whom the
balance swung with such frightful oscillations.

Guy was very quiet all the evening, submitting with a little surprise to
his friend's precautions, but evidently finding it comfortable to have
done with concealment.

Only, the last thing of all, he looked at Cuthbert with his mocking
smile on his lip--"What a `softy' I should be," he said, "if this was
what you think it!"

PART TWO, CHAPTER FIVE.

THE MOTHER'S BOOK.

Some few days before the stay at Moorhead came to an end, Kitty Staunton
received a letter, which surprised her greatly, as it came from a person
of whose existence she had never previously heard.  It was signed
"Catherine Maxwell," and began, "My dear young cousin," and stated that
the writer had heard from her old friend Mrs Raby that the Miss
Stauntons were staying at Moorhead, and that, as she believed them to be
her cousin George Maxwell's grandchildren, it would give her great
pleasure to make their acquaintance; would they come over and spend the
day with her at her little cottage at Ousel well, bringing with them any
of their young friends who cared for the drive?

Kitty and Violet being curious and interested, and Florella being
inclined for the expedition, the three set off one fine brisk morning;
over the moors on the opposite side to Kirk Hinton, and came to a little
cold, fresh village, high up on the side of a narrow valley.  Here in a
cold, fresh little house, with latched doors painted with thin white
paint, and deeply recessed windows looking into a little garden full of
hardy plants, now turning brown and yellow with the autumn frosts, they
found an apple-cheeked old lady dressed in a shot-silk gown of so old a
style that it was just about to come again into fashion.  She spoke with
so strong a northern accent that the London girls caught what she said
with difficulty; but she made them most heartily welcome, gave them some
very thin and long-legged fowls for dinner, followed up by curds and
red-currant jelly.  Then she showed them sundry curiosities, which they
knew how to admire.  There was a filigree basket, like to the one which
Rosamond of the Purple Vase made for her cousin's birthday, and for
which she was so unmercifully snubbed by the common sense of her
unfeeling parents.  There were engravings in oval frames, bits of Leeds
china, an old spinning-wheel, and finally, a quaintly shaped card-table,
which on being opened, displayed, instead of green cloth, an exquisitely
worked pattern of faded roses in the very finest tent-stitch.

"And that, cousin love," she said, "was in Waynflete Hall when it
belonged to my great-grandfather Maxwell."

"Really!" said Kitty, with much interest.  "Our brother Cuthbert is
staying with Mr Guy Waynflete at Ingleby now.  It was through him that
we came to Moorhead."

Miss Maxwell looked quite awestruck.

"Well, well," she said, "young people's ways are different.  I should
never have made myself known to Mrs Waynflete, nor should I think of
calling at Waynflete, even if I visited at that distance.  Not that I
keep up old grudges, my love, but there's a delicacy in such matters."

"Cuthbert knew Mr Waynflete a long time before they knew about any
former connection.  I don't think it troubles them, they are great
friends."

"Ah!" said Miss Maxwell.  "_Guy_, too, I hope--"

"Cousin Catherine," said Violet, boldly; "I am sure you can tell us
delightful old stories of the two families.  Do!  Tell us about the
ghost and the Guy Waynflete who never got back in time.  Have we got a
ghost as well as the Waynfletes?"

"Oh no, love," said Miss Maxwell, "our family was never of that kind;
and indeed, when there's so much drinking and dissipation as there was
among the Waynfletes, there's no need of ghosts to bring ruin.  And I'm
sure your brother will always remember, that it was all in the way of
business my great-grandfather obtained the place."

"And how did he lose it again?" asked Violet.

"My dear, through business misfortunes," said Miss Maxwell, with
dignity.  "And Ouseley, which is only a few miles up the valley, was
sold in my father's time.  But I've been thinking, there are no Ouseley
Maxwells left but me.  And I have a few old letters which perhaps your
brother ought to have."

"I'm sure Cuthbert would be delighted to come and see them and you,"
said Kitty.

"Oh no, Cousin Catherine," interposed Violet; "do let us see them.  We
can tell Cuth, or give them to him; but old family letters, especially
about Waynflete and the ghosts, would be quite too awfully jolly."

Miss Maxwell looked at the blooming girl with her outspoken voice and
her straight-looking eyes, her sailor hat, and her boyish jacket, as if
she had never thought of any one like her before; she sighed and looked
solemn, but pulled out the drawer of the card-table, and took therefrom,
with great mystery, two or three yellow-looking letters, an old
Prayer-book, and a very dirty pack of cards, and on one of these she
pointed out a dark stain.  "My loves," she whispered; "this was stained
on that fatal night with Squire Waynflete's life blood."

Violet became suddenly serious, and Florella could hardly help crying
out in protest against touching these things which seemed to her full of
a living trouble.

Miss Maxwell opened the Prayer-book which was bound in red morocco, most
delicately tooled and gilt.  On the title-page was written "Margaret
Waynflete" and the dates of the births of her two sons.  "Guy Waynflete,
born June 19th, 1760," and then "My Pretty Baby;" then "Godfrey
Waynflete, 1764," and then in the same pointed, careful hand--

"The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him."

Florella could not speak a word, and when the book was handed to her to
look at, she laid her hand on it with a soft, reverent touch.

Then Miss Maxwell with some ceremony opened the two papers, and begged
Kitty to read them aloud.

The first was in the hand of this long dead Margaret Waynflete, and was
evidently the brief commencement of a journal or diary.

_February 10th_, 1785.--My son Guy has gone to London.

_February 12th_.--We have killed another little Pig.

_February 13th_.--Attorney Maxwell is more Obliging than I like to See.

_February 14th_.--My Brother Godfrey did begin by Mistake the Funeral
Service instead of the Marriage, for an honest couple.  This Comes of
Carousing.  Alas!

_March 25th_.--My Chittyprat Hen has a Fine Brood.  There be no letter
from my son Guy, which angers his Father.  My poor Boy.  He is better
even in Town than Here.  Does God indeed permit the Spirit of His wicked
Ancestor to Trouble Him?  Alas! there is Wickedness Enough Alive.

_April 15th_.--The Pain at my Heart is great, I have nigh Swooned with
it.  N.B.--To distil lavender and drop Into it Cloves, for a Cordial.
Death would be No evil, but for my two Sons, but this House would be no
Home.

Here the brief record suddenly stopped, only lower down on the page were
faintly and unsteadily written the words, "My dear son."

"There _was_ the ghost then, you see," said Violet, in awestruck tones.
"Oh, go on, Kitty.  It _is_ interesting."

"There's no more," said Kitty.  "The other paper is quite different."

This was dated October 10th, 1785, and began--

"I, George Maxwell, Attorney-at-law, feel it incumbent upon me for the
Establishment of my Character as an Honest Man, to state in writing what
passed after the Shocking and Lamentable Suicide of Guy Waynflete,
Esquire, of Waynflete Hall, which Property is legally mine by the Terms
of the Bond between Us.  Since there be not wanting envious Persons to
say that!  Took advantage of young Mr Waynflete's Illness, which
Prevented his Return at the Given Date.  When he Arrived in the Early
Morning, he was Undoubtedly in liquor, which was his Custom, therefore
His Stat

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