VII…

VII

Seldom in the placid course of years had St. Rest ever belied its name, or permitted itself to suffer loss of dignity by any undue display of excitement. The arrival of John Walden as minister of the parish,--the re-building of the church, and the discovery of the medieval sarcophagus, which old Josey Letherbarrow always called the Sarky Fagus, together with the consecration ceremony by Bishop Brent,--were the only episodes in ten years that had moved it slightly from its normal calm. For though rumours of wars and various other mishaps and tribulations, reached it through the medium of the newspapers in the ordinary course, it concerned itself not at all with these, such matters being removed and apart from its own way of life and conduct. It was a little world in itself, and had only the vaguest interest in any other world, save perhaps the world to come, which was indeed a very real prospect to most of the villagers, their inherited tendency being towards a quaint and simple piety that was as childlike as it was sincere. The small congregation to which John Walden preached twice every Sunday was composed of as honest men and clean-minded women as could be found in all England,--men and women with straight notions of honour and duty, and warm, if plain, conceptions of love, truth and family tenderness. They had their little human failings and weaknesses, thanks to Mother Nature, whose children we all are, and who sets her various limitations for the best of us,--but, taken on the whole, they were peculiarly unspoilt by the iconoclastic march of progress; and 'advanced' notions of doubt as to a God, and scepticism as to a future state, had never clouded their quiet minds. Walden had taken them well in hand from the beginning of his ministry,--and being much of a poet and dreamer at heart, he had fostered noble ideals among them, which he taught in simple yet attractive language, with the happiest results. The moral and mental attitude of the villagers generally was a philosophic cheerfulness and obedience to the will of God,--but this did not include a tame submission to tyranny, or a passive acceptance of injury inflicted upon them by merely human oppressors.

Hence,--though any disturbance of the daily equanimity of their agricultural life and pursuits was quite an exceptional circumstance, the news of the 'layin' low of the Five Sisters' was sufficient cause, when once it became generally known, for visible signs of trouble. In its gravity and importance it almost overtopped the advent of the new mistress of the Manor; and when on Tuesday it was whispered that 'Passon Walden' had himself been to expostulate with Oliver Leach concerning the meditated murder of the famous trees, and that his expostulations had been all in vain, clouded brows and ominous looks were to be seen at every corner where the men halted on their way to the fields, or where the women gathered to gossip in the pauses of their domestic labour. Walden himself, pacing impatiently to and fro in his garden, was for once more disturbed in his mind than he cared to admit. When he had been told early on Monday morning of the imminent destruction awaiting the five noble beeches which, in their venerable and broadly-branching beauty, were one of the many glories of the woods surrounding Abbot's Manor, he was inclined to set it down to some capricious command issued by the home-coming mistress of the estate; and, in order to satisfy himself whether this was, or was not the case, he had done what was sorely against his own sense of dignity to do,--he had gone at once to interview Oliver Leach personally on the subject. But he had found that individual in the worst of all possible moods for argument, having been, as he stated, passed over' by Miss Vancourt. That lady had not, he said, written to inform him of her intended return, therefore,--so he argued,--it was not his business to be aware of it.

"Miss Vancourt hasn't told me anything, and of course I don't know anything," he said carelessly, standing in his doorway and keeping his hat on in the minister's presence; "My work is on the land, and when timber has to be felled it's my affair and nobody else's. I've been agent on these estates since the Squire's death, and I don't want to be taught my duty by any man."

"But surely your duty does not compel you to cut down five of the finest old trees in England," said Walden, hotly,--"They have been famous for centuries in this neighbourhood. Have you any right to fell them without special orders?"

"Special orders?" echoed Leach with a sneer; "I've had no 'special order' for ten years at least! My employers trust me to do what I think best, and I've every right to act accordingly. The trees will begin to rot in another eighteen months or so,--just now they're in good condition and will fetch a fair price. You stick to your church, Parson Walden,--you know all about that, no doubt!--but don't come preaching to me about the felling of timber. That's my business,--not yours!"

Walden flushed, and bit his lip. His blood grew warm with indignation, and he involuntarily clenched his fist. But he suppressed his rising wrath with an effort.

"You may as well keep a civil tongue in your head, Mr. Leach--it will do you no harm!" he said quietly; "I have no wish to interfere with what you conceive to be your particular mode of duty, but I think that before you destroy what can never be replaced, you should consult the owner of the trees, Miss Vancourt, especially as her return is fixed for to-morrow."

"As I told you before, I know nothing about her return," replied Leach, obstinately; "I am not supposed to know. And whether she's here or away, makes no difference to me. I know what's to be done, and I shall do it."

Walden's eyes flashed. Strive as he would, he could not disguise his inward contempt for this petty jack-in-office,--and his keen glance was, to the perverse nature of the ill-conditioned boor he addressed, like the lash of a whip on the back of a snarling cur.

"I know what's to be done, and I shall do it," Leach repeated in a louder tone; "And all the sentimental rot ever talked in the village about the Five Sisters won't make me change my mind,--no, nor all the sermons on meek and quiet spirits neither! That's my last word, Mr. Walden, and you may take it for what it is worth!"

Walden swung round on his heel and went his way without replying. Outwardly, he was calm enough, but inwardly he was in a white heat of anger. His thoughts dwelt with a passionate insistence on the grand old trees with their great canopies of foliage, where hundreds of happy birds annually made their homes,--where, with every recurring Spring, the tender young leaves sprouted forth from the aged gnarled boughs, expressing the joy of a life that had outlived whole generations of men--where, in the long heats of summer broad stretches of shade lay dense on the soft grass, offering grateful shelter from the noon-day sun to the browsing cattle,--and where with the autumn's breath, the slow and glorious transformation of green leaves to gold, with flecks of scarlet between, made a splendour of colour against the pale grey-blue sky, such as artists dream of and with difficulty realise. All this wealth of God-granted natural beauty,--the growth of centuries,--was to perish in a single morning! Surely it was a crime!--surely it was a wicked and wanton deed, for which, there could be no sane excuse offered! Sorrowfully, and with bitterness, did Walden relate to his gardener, Bainton, the failure of his attempt to bring Oliver Leach to reason,--solemnly, and in subdued silence did Bainton hear the tale.

"Well, well, Passon," he said, when his master had finished; "You doos your best for us, and no man can't say but what you've done it true ever since you took up with this 'ere village,--and you've tried to save the Five Sisters, and if 'tain't no use, why there's no more to be said. Josey Letherbarrow was for walkin' up to the Manor an' seein' Miss Vancourt herself, as soon as iver she gets within her own door,--but Lord love ye, he'd take 'arf a day to jog up there on such feet as he's got left after long wear and tear, an' there ain't no liftin' 'im into a cart nohow. Sez he to me: 'I'll see the little gel wot I used to know, and I'll tell 'er as 'ow the Five Sisters be chalked, an' she'll listen to me--you see if she don't!' I was rather took with the idee myself, but I sez, sez I: 'Let alone, Josey,--you be old as Methusaleh, and you can't get up to the Manor nohow; let Passon try what he can do wi' Leach,'--and now you've been and done your best, and can't do nothin', why we must give it up altogether."

Walden walked up and down, Ms hands loosely clasped behind his back, lost in thought.

"We won't give it up altogether, Bainton," he said; "We'll try and find some other way--"

"There's goin' to be another way," declared Bainton, significantly; "There's trouble brewin' in the village, an' m'appen when Oliver Leach gets up to the woods to-morrow mornin' he'll find a few ready to meet 'im!"

Walden stopped abruptly.

"What do you mean?"

"'Tain't for me to say;" and Bainton pretended to be very busy in pulling up one or two plantains from the lawn; "But I tells ye true, Passon, the Five Sisters ain't goin' to be laid low without a shindy!"

John's eyes sparkled. He scented battle, and was not by any means displeased.

"This is Tuesday, isn't it?" he asked abruptly; "This is the day Miss Vancourt has arranged to return?"

"It is so, sir," replied Bainton; "and it's believed the arrangements 'olds good--for change'er mind as a woman will, 'er 'osses an' groom's arrived--and a dog as large as they make 'em, which 'is name is Plato."

Walden gave a slight gesture of annoyance. Here was a fresh cause of antipathy to the approaching Miss Vancourt. No one but a careless woman, devoid of all taste and good feeling, would name a dog after the greatest of Greek philosophers!

"Plato's a good name," went on Bainton meditatively, unconscious of the view his master was taking of that name in his own mind; "I've 'eard it somewheres before, though I couldn't tell just where. And it's a fine dog. I was up at the Manor this mornin' lookin' round the grounds, just to see 'ow they'd been a-gettin' on--and really it isn't so bad considerin', and I was askin' a question or two of Spruce, and he showed me the dog lyin' on the steps of the Manor, lookin' like a lion's baby snoozin' in the sun, and waitin' as wise as ye like for his mistress. He don't appear at all put out by new faces or new grounds--he's took to the place quite nat'ral."

"You saw Spruce early, then?"

"Yes, sir, I see Spruce, and arter 'ollerin' 'ard at 'im for 'bout ten minutes, he sez, sez he, as gentle as a child sez he: 'Yes, the Five Sisters is a-comin' down to-morrow mornin', and we's all to be there a quarter afore six with ropes and axes.'"

John started walking up and down again.

"When is Miss Vancourt expected?" he enquired.

"At tea-time this arternoon," replied Bainton. "The train arrives at Riversford at three o'clock, if so be it isn't behind its time,--and if the lady gets a fly from the station, which if she ain't ordered it afore, m'appen she won't get it, she'll be 'ere 'bout four."

Instinctively Walden glanced at his watch. It was just two o'clock. Another hour and the antipathetic 'Squire-ess' would be actually on her way to the village! He heaved a short sigh. Forebodings of evil infected the air,--impending change, disturbing and even disastrous to St. Rest suggested itself troublously to his mind. Arguing inwardly with himself, he presently began to think that notwithstanding all his attempts to live a Christian life, after the manner Christianly, he was surely becoming a very selfish and extremely narrow-minded man! He was unreasonably, illogically vexed at the return of the heiress of Abbot's Manor; and why? Why, chiefly because he would no longer be able to walk at liberty in Abbot's Manor gardens and woods,--because there would be another personality perhaps more dominant than his own in the little village, and because--yes!--because he had a particular aversion to women of fashion, such as Miss Vancourt undoubtedly must be, to judge from the brief exhibition of her wardrobe which, through the guilelessness of Mrs. Spruce, had been displayed before his reluctant eyes.

These objections were after all, so he told himself, really rooted in masculine selfishness,--the absorbing selfishness of old bachelorhood, which had grown round him like a shell, shutting him out altogether from the soft influences of feminine attraction,--so much so indeed that he had even come to look upon his domestic indoor servants as obliging machines rather than women,--machines which it was necessary to keep well oiled with food and wages, but which could scarcely be considered as entering into his actual life more than the lawn-mower or the roasting-jack. Yet he was invariably kind to all his dependants,--invariably thoughtful of all their needs,--nevertheless he maintained a certain aloofness from them, not only because he was by nature reserved, but because he judged reserve necessary in order to uphold respect. In sickness or trouble, no one could be more quietly helpful or consolatory than he; and in the company of children he threw off all restraint and was as a child himself in the heartiness and spontaneity of his mirth and good humour,--but with all women, save the very aged and matronly, he generally found himself at a loss, uncertain what to say to them, and equally uncertain as to how far he might accept or believe what they said to him. The dark eyes of a sparkling brunette embarrassed him as much as the dreamy blue orbs of a lily-like blonde,--they were curious dazzlements that got into his way at times, and made him doubtful as to whether any positive sincerity ever could or ever would lurk behind such bewildering brief flashes of light which appeared to shine forth without meaning, and vanish again without result. And in various ways,--he now began to think,-- he must certainly have grown inordinately, outrageously selfish!-- his irritation at the prospective return of Miss Vancourt proved it. He determined to brace himself together and put the lurking devil of egotism down.

"Put it down!" he said inwardly and with sternness,--"put it down-- trample it under foot, John, my boy! The lady of the Manor is perhaps sent here to try your patience and prove the stuff that is in you! She is no child,--she is twenty-seven years of age--a full grown woman,--she will have her ways, just as you have yours,--she will probably rub every mental and moral hair on the skin of your soul awry,--but that is really just what you want, John,--you do indeed! You want something more irritating than Sir Morton Pippitt's senile snobberies to keep you clean of an overgrowth or an undergrowth of fads! Your powers of endurance are about to be put to the test, and you must come out strong, John! You must not allow yourself to become a querulous old fellow because you cannot always do exactly as you like!"

He smiled genially at his own mental scolding of himself, and addressing Bainton once more, said:

"I shall probably write a note to Miss Vancourt this afternoon, and send you up with it. I shall tell her all about the Five Sisters, and ask her to give orders that the cutting down of the trees may be delayed till she has seen them for herself. But don't say anything about this in the village," here he paused a moment, and then spoke with greater emphasis--"I don't want to interfere with anything anybody else may have on hand. Do you understand? We must save the old beeches somehow. I will do my best, but I may fail; Miss Vancourt may not read my letter, or if she does, she may not be disposed to attend to it; it is best that all ways and means should be, tried,--"

He broke off,--but his eyes met Bainton's in a mutual flash of understanding.

"You're a straight man, Passon, and no mistake," observed Bainton with a slow smile; "No beatin' about the bush in the likes o' you! Lord, Lord! What a mussy we ain't saddled with a poor snuffling, addle-pated, whimperin' man o' God like we 'ad afore you come 'ere-- what found all 'is dooty an' pleasure in dinin' with Sir Morton Pippitt up at the 'All! And when there was a man died, or a baby born, or some other sich like calamity in the village, he worn't never to 'and to 'elp,-but he would give a look in when it was all over, and then he sez, sez he: 'I'm sorry, my man, I wasn't 'ere to comfort ye, but I was up at the 'All.' And he did roll it round and round in his mouth like as 'twas a lump o' butter and 'oney--'up at the 'All'! Hor-hor-hor! It must a' tasted sweet to 'im as we used to say,--and takin' into consideration that Sir Morton was a bone- melter by profession, we used to throw up the proverb 'the nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat'--not that it had any bearin' on the matter, but a good sayin's a good thing, and a proverb fits into a fancy sometimes better'n a foot into a shoe. But you ain't a snuffler, Passon!--and you ain't never been up at the 'All, nor wouldn't go if you was axed to, and that's one of the many things what makes you a gineral favourite,--it do reely now!"

Walden smiled, but forbore to continue conversation on this somewhat personal theme. He retired into his own study, there to concoct the stiffest, most clerical, and most formal note to Miss Vancourt that he could possibly devise. He had the very greatest reluctance to attempt such a task, and sat with a sheet of notepaper before him for some time, staring at it without formulating any commencement. Then he began: "The Rev. John Walden presents his compliments to Miss Vancourt, and begs to inform her--"

No, that would never do! 'Begs to inform her' sounded almost threatening. The Rev. John Walden might 'beg to inform her' that she had no business to wear pink shoes with high heels, for example. He destroyed one half sheet of paper, put the other half economically aside to serve as a stray leaflet for 'church memoranda,' and commenced in a different strain.

"Dear Madam,"

"Dear Madam!" He looked at the two words in some annoyance. They were very ugly. Addressed to a person who wore pink shoes, they seemed singularly abrupt. And if Miss Vancourt should chance to resemble in the least her ancestress, Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt, they were wholly unsuitable. A creditor might write 'Dear Madam' to a customer in application for an outstanding bill,-- but to Mary Elia Adelgisa one would surely begin,--Ah!--now how would one begin? He paused, biting the end of his penholder. Another half sheet of notepaper was wasted, and equally another half sheet devoted to 'church memoranda.' Then he began:

"Dear Miss Vancourt,"

At this, he threw down his pen altogether. Too familiar! By all the gods of Greece, whom he had almost believed in even while studying Divinity at Oxford, a great deal too familiar!

"It is just as if I knew her!" he said to himself in vexation. "And I don't know her! And what's more, I don't want to know her! If it were not for this business of the Five Sisters, I wouldn't go near her. Positively I wouldn't!"

A mellow chime from the old eight-day clock in the outer hall struck on the silence. Three o'clock! The train by which Miss Vancourt would arrive, was timed to reach Riversford station at three,--if it was not late, which it generally was. Nebbie, who had been snoozing peacefully near the study window in a patch of sunlight, suddenly rose, shook himself, and trotted out on to the lawn, sniffing the air with ears and tail erect. Walden watched him abstractedly.

"Perhaps he scents a future enemy in Miss Vancourt's dog, Plato!" And this whimsical idea made him smile. "He is quite intelligent enough. He is certainly more intelligent than I am this afternoon, for I cannot write even a commonplace ordinary note to a commonplace ordinary woman!" Here a sly brain-devil whispered that Miss Vancourt might possibly be neither commonplace nor ordinary,--but he put the suggestion aside with a 'Get thee behind me, Satan' inflexibility. "The fact is, I had better not write to her at all. I'll send Bainton with a verbal message; he is sure to give a quaint and pleasant turn to it,--he knew her father, and I didn't;--it will be much better to send Bainton."

Having made this resolve, his brow cleared, and he was more satisfied. Tearing up the last half sheet of wasted note-paper he had spoilt in futile attempts to address the lady of the Manor, he laughed at his failures.

"Even if it were etiquette to use the old Roman form of correspondence, which some people think ought to be revived, it wouldn't do in this case," he said. "Imagine it! 'John Walden to Maryllia Vancourt,--Greeting!' How unutterably, how stupendously ridiculous it would look!"

He shut all his writing materials in his desk, and following Nebbie out to the lawn, seated himself with a volume of Owen Meredith in his hand. He was soon absorbed. Yet every now and again his thoughts strayed to the Five Sisters, and with persistent fidelity of detail his mind's eye showed him the grassy knoll so soft to the tread, where the doomed trees stood proudly and gracefully, clad just at this season all in a glorious panoply of young green,--where, as the poet whose tender word melodies he was reading might have said of the surroundings:

"For moisture of sweet showers, All the grass is thick with flowers."

"Yes, I shall send Bainton up to the Manor with a civil message," he mused--"and he can--and certainly will--add anything else to it he likes. Of course the lady may be offended,--some women take offence at anything--but I don't much care if she is. My conscience will not reproach me for having warned her of the impending destruction of one of the most picturesque portions of her property. But personally, I shall not write to her, nor will I go to see her. I shall have to pay a formal call, of course, in a week or two,--but I need not go inside the Manor for that. To leave my card, as minister of the parish, will be quite sufficient."

He turned again to the volume in his hand. His eyes fell casually on a verse in the poem of 'Resurrection':

"The world is filled with folly and sin; And Love must cling where it can, I say,--For Beauty is easy enough to win, But one isn't loved every day."

He sighed involuntarily. Then to banish an unacknowledged regret, he began to criticise his author.

"If the world and the ambitions of diplomatic service had not stepped in between Lord Lytton and his muse, he would have been a fine poet," he said half aloud;--"A pity he was not born obscurely and in poverty--he would have been wholly great, instead of as now, merely greatly gifted. He missed his true vocation. So many of us do likewise. I often wonder whether I have missed mine?"

But this idea brooked no consideration. He knew he had not mistaken his calling. He was the very man for it. Many of his 'cloth' might have taken a lesson from him in the whole art of unselfish ministration to the needs of others. But with all his high spiritual aim, he was essentially human, and pleasantly conscious of his own failings and obstinacies. He did not hold himself as above the weaker brethren, but as one with them, and of them. And through the steady maintenance of this mental attitude, he found himself able to participate in ordinary emotions, ordinary interests and ordinary lives with small and outlying parishes in the concerns of the people committed to their charge. It is not too much to say that though he was in himself distinctly reserved and apart from the average majority of men, the quiet exercise of his influence over the village of St. Rest had resulted in so attracting and fastening the fibres of love and confidence in all the hearts about him to his own, that anything of serious harm occurring to himself, would have been considered in the light of real fatality and ruin to the whole community. When a clergyman can succeed in establishing such complete trust and sympathy between himself and his parishioners, there can be no question of his fitness for the high vocation to which he has been ordained. When, on the contrary, one finds a village or town where the inhabitants are split up into small and quarrelsome sects, and are more or less in a state of objective ferment against the minister who should be their ruling head, the blame is presumably more with the minister than with those who dispute his teaching, inasmuch as he must have fallen far below the expected standard in some way or other, to have thus incurred general animosity.

"If all fails," mused Walden presently, his thoughts again reverting to the Five Sisters' question,--"If Bainton does his errand awkwardly,--if the lady will not see him,--if any one of the thousand things do happen that are quite likely to happen, and so spoil all chance of interceding with Miss Vancourt to spare the trees,--why then I will go myself to-morrow morning to the scene of intended massacre before six o'clock. I will be there before an axe is lifted! And if Bainton meant anything at all by his hint, others will be there too! Yes!--I shall go,--in fact it will be my duty to go in case of a row."

A smile showed itself under his silver-brown moustache. The idea of a row seemed not altogether unpleasant to him. He stooped and patted his dog playfully.

"Nebuchadnezzar!" he said, with mock solemnity; whereat Nebbie, lying at his feet, opened one eye, blinked it lazily and wagged his tail--"Nebuchadnezzar, I think our presence will be needed to-morrow morning at an early hour, in attendance on the Five Sisters! Do you hear me, Nebuchadnezzar?" Again Nebbie blinked. "Good! That wink expresses understanding. We shall have to be there, in case of a row."

Nebbie yawned, stretched out his paws, and closed both eyes in peaceful slumber. It was a beautiful afternoon;--'sufficient for the day was the evil thereof' according to Nebbie. The Reverend John turned over a few more pages of Owen Meredith, and presently came to the conclusion that he would go punting. The decision was no sooner arrived at than he prepared to carry it out. Nebbie awoke with a start from his doze to see his master on the move, and quickly trotted after him across the lawn to the river. Here, the sole occupant of the shining stream was a maternal swan, white as a cloud on the summit of Mont Blanc, floating in stately ease up and down the water, carrying her young brood of cygnets on her back, under the snowy curve of her arching wings. Walden unchained the punt and sprang into it,--Nebbie dutifully following,--and then divested himself of his coat. He was just about to take the punting pole in hand, when Bainton's figure suddenly emerged from the shrubbery.

"Off on the wild wave, Passon, are ye?" he observed,--"Well, it's a fine day for it! M'appen you ain't seen the corpses of four rats anywhere around? No? Then I 'spect their lovin' relations must ha' been an' ate 'em up, which may be their pertikler way of doin' funerals. I nabbed 'em all last night in the new traps of my own invention. mebbe the lilies will be all the better for their loss. I'll be catchin' some more this evenin'. Lord; Passon, if you was to 'old out offers of a shillin' a head, the rats 'ud be gone in no time,--an' the lilies too!"

Walden absorbed in getting his punt out, only smiled and nodded acquiescingly.

"The train must ha' been poonctual," went on Bainton, staring stolidly at the shining water. "Amazin' poonctual for once in its life. For a one 'oss fly, goin' at a one 'oss fly pace, 'as jes' passed through the village, and is jiggitin' up to the Manor this very minute. I s'pose Miss Vancourt's inside it."

Walden paused,--punt-pole in hand.

"Yes, I suppose she is," he rejoined. "Come to me at six o'clock, Bainton. I shall want you."

"Very good, sir!"

The pole splashed in the water,--the punt shot out into the clear stream,--Nebbie gave two short barks, as was his custom when he found himself being helplessly borne away from dry land,--and in a few seconds Walden had disappeared round one of the bends of the river. Bainton stood ruminating for a minute.

"Jest a one 'oss fly, goin' at a one 'oss fly pace!" he repeated, slowly;--"It's a cheap way of comin' 'ome to one's father's 'Alls-- jest in a one 'oss fly! She might ha' ordered a kerridge an' pair by telegram, an' dashed it up in fine style, but a one 'oss fly! It do take the edge off a 'ome-comin'!--it do reely now."

And with a kind of short grunt at the vanity and disappointment of human expectations, he went his way to the kitchen garden, there to 'chew the cud of sweet and bitter memory' over the asparagus beds, which were in a highly promising condition.

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VIII

The one-horse fly, going at a one-horse fly pace, had made its way with comfortable jaunting slowness from Riversford to St. Rest, its stout, heavy-faced driver being altogether unconscious that his fare was no less a personage than Miss Vancourt, the lady of the Manor. When a small, girlish person, clad in a plain, close-fitting garb of navy-blue serge, and wearing a simple yet coquettish dark straw hat to match, accosted him at the Riversford railway station with a brief, 'Cab, please,' and sprang into his vehicle, he was a trifle sulky at being engaged in such a haphazard fashion by an apparently insignificant young female who had no luggage, not so much as a handbag.

"Wheer be you a-goin'?" he demanded, turning his bull neck slowly round--"I baint pertikler for a far journey."

"Aren't you?" and the young lady smiled. "You must drive me to St. Rest,--Abbot's Manor, please!"

The heavy-faced driver paused, considering. Should he perform the journey, or should he not? Perhaps it would be wisest to undertake the job,--there was the 'Mother Huff' at the end of the journey, and Roger Buggins was a friend of his. Yes,--he would take the risk of conveying the humbly-clad female up to the Manor; he had heard rumours that the old place was once again to be inhabited, and that the mistress of it was daily expected;--this person in the blue serge was probably one of her messengers or retainers.

"My fare's ten shillings," he observed, still peering round distrustfully; "It's a good seven mile up hill and down dale."

"All right!" responded the young woman, cheerfully; "You shall have ten shillings. Only please begin to go, won't you?"

This request was accompanied by an arch smile, and a flash of blue eyes from under the dark straw hat brim. Whereat the cumbrous Jehu was faintly moved to a responsive grin.

"She ain't bad-looking, neither!" he muttered to himself,--and he was in a somewhat better humour when at last he ondescended to start. His vehicle was a closed one, and though be fully expected his passenger would put her head out of the window, when the horse was labouring up-hill, and entreat him to go faster,--which habit he had found by experience was customary to woman in a one-horse fly,- -nothing of the kind happened on this occasion. The person in the blue serge was evidently both patient and undemonstrative. Whether the horse crawled or slouched, or trotted,--whether the fly dragged, or bumped, or jolted, she made no sign. When St. Rest was reached at last, and the driver whipped his steed into a semblance of spirit, and drove through the little village with a clatter, two or three people came to the doors of their cottages and looked at the vehicle scrutinisingly, wondering whether its occupant was, or was not Miss Vancourt. But a meaning wink from the sage on the box intimated that they need not trouble themselves,--the 'fare' was no one of the least importance.

Presently, the fine old armorial gates of the drive which led up to Abbot's Manor were reached,--they were set wide open, this having been done according to Mrs. Spruce's orders. A woman at the lodge came hastily out, but the cab had passed her before she had time to see who was in it. Up through the grand avenue of stately oaks and broad-branching elms, whose boughs, rich with the budding green, swayed in the light wind with a soft rustling sound as of sweeping silks on velvet, the unostentatious vehicle jogged slowly,--it was a steady ascent all the way, and the driver was duly considerate of his animal's capabilities. At last came the turn in the long approach, which showed the whole width of the Manor, with its ancient rose-brick frontage and glorious oaken gables shining in the warm afternoon sunlight,--the old Tudor courtyard spreading before it, its grey walls and paving stones half hidden in a wilderness of spring blossom. Here, too, the gates were open, and the one-horse fly made its lumbering and awkward entrance within, drawing up with a jerk at the carved portico. The young person in blue serge jumped out, purse in hand.

"Ten shillings, I think?" she said; but before the driver could answer her, the great iron-clamped door of the Manor swung open, and a respectable retainer in black stood on the threshold.

"Oh, will you pay the driver, please?" said the young lady, addressing this functionary; "He says his fare is ten shillings. I daresay he would like an extra five shillings for himself as well," and she smiled--"Here it is!"

She handed the money to the personage in black, who was no other than the former butler to Sir Morton Pippitt, now at the Manor on temp'ry service,' and who in turn presented it with an official stateliness to the startled fly-man, who was just waking up to the fact that his fare, whom he had considered as a person of no account whatever, was the actual mistress of the Manor.

"Drive out to the left of the court," said the butler imperatively; "Reverse way to which you entered."

The submissive Jehu prepared to obey. The young person in blue serge smiled up at him.

"Good afternoon!" said she.

"Same to you, mum!" he replied, touching his cap; "And thank ye kindly!"

Whereat, his stock of eloquence being exhausted, he whipped up his steed to a gallop and departed in haste for the 'Mother Huff,' full of eagerness to relate the news of Miss Vancourt's arrival, further embellished by the fact that he had himself driven her up from the station, 'all unbeknown like.'

Miss Vancourt herself, meanwhile, stepped into her ancestral halls, and stood for a moment, silent, looking round her with a wistful, almost pathetic earnestness.

"Tea is served in the morning-room, Madam," said the butler respectfully, all the time wondering whether this slight, childlike- looking creature was really Miss Vancourt, or some young friend of hers sent as an advance herald of her arrival. "Mrs. Spruce thought you would find it comfortable there."

"Mrs. Spruce!" exclaimed the girl, eagerly; "Where is she?"

"Here, ma'am-here, my lady," said a quavering voice-and Mrs. Spruce, presenting quite a comely and maternal aspect in her best black silk gown, and old-fashioned cap, with lace lappets, such as the late Squire had always insisted on her wearing, came forward curtseying nervously.

"I hope, ma'am, you've had a pleasant journey--"

But her carefully prepared sentence was cut short by a pair of arms being flung suddenly round her, and a fresh face pressed against her own.

"Dear Mrs. Spruce! I am so glad to see you! You knew me when I was quite a little thing, didn't you? And you knew my father, too! You were very fond of my father, weren't you? I am sure you were! You must try to be fond of me now!"

Never, as Mrs. Spruce was afterwards wont to declare, had she been so 'took back,' as by the unaffected spontaneity and sweetness of this greeting on the part of the new mistress, whose advent she had so greatly feared. She went, to quote her own words, 'all of a fluster like, and near busted out cryin'. It was like a dear lovin' little child comin' 'ome, and made me feel that queer you might have knocked me down with a soap-bubble!'

Whatever the worthy woman's feelings were, and however much the respectable butler, whose name was Primmins, might have been astonished in his own stately mind at Miss Vancourt's greeting of her father's old servant, Miss Vancourt herself was quite unconscious of any loss of dignity on her own part.

"I am so glad!" she repeated; "It's like finding a friend at home to find you, Spruce! I had quite forgotten what you looked like, but I begin to remember now--you were always nice and kind, and you always managed so well, didn't you? Yes, I'm sure you did! The man said tea was in the morning-room. You come and pour it out for me, like a dear old thing! I'm going to live alone in my own home now for always,--for always!" she repeated, emphatically; "Nobody shall ever take me away from it again!"

She linked her arm confidingly in that of Mrs. Spruce, who for once was too much astonished to speak,--Miss Vancourt was so entirely different to the chill and reserved personage her imagination had depicted, that she was quite at a loss how to look or what to say.

"Is this the way?" asked Maryllia, stepping lightly past the stuffed knight in armour; "Yes? I thought it was! I begin to remember everything now! Oh, how I wish I had never gone away from this dear old home!"

She entered the morning-room, guiding Mrs. Spruce, rather than being guided by her,--for as that worthy woman averred to Primmins at supper that self-same night: "I was so all in a tremble and puspration with 'er 'oldin' on to my arm and takin' me round, that I was like the man in the Testymen what had dumb devils,--and scarcely knew what ground my feet was a-fallin' on!" The cheerful air of welcome which pervaded this charming, sunny apartment, with its lattice windows fronting the wide stretch of velvety lawn, terrace and park-land, delighted Maryllia, and she loosened her hold on Mrs. Spruce's arm with a little cry of pleasure, as a huge magnificently coated Newfoundland dog rose from his recumbent position near the window, and came to greet her with slow and expansive waggings of his great plumy tail.

"Plato, my beauty!" she exclaimed; "How do you like Abbot's Manor, boy? Eh? Quite at home, aren't you! Good dog! Isn't he a king of dogs?" And she turned her smiling face on Mrs. Spruce. "A real king! I bought him because he was so big! Weren't you frightened when you saw such a monster?--and didn't you think he would bite everybody on the least provocation? But he wouldn't, you know! He's a perfect darling--as gentle as a lamb! He would kill anyone that wanted to hurt me--oh, yes of course!--that's why I love him!"

And she patted the enormous creature's broad head tenderly.

"He's my only true friend!" she continued; "Money wouldn't buy HIS fidelity!" Here, glancing at Mrs. Spruce, she laughed merrily. "Dear Mrs. Spruce! You DO look so uncomfortable!--so--so warm! It IS warm, isn't it? Make me some tea!--tea cools one, they say, though it's hot to drink at first. We'll talk afterwards!"

Mrs. Spruce, with inaudible murmurings, hastened to the tea-tray, and tried to compose her agitated nerves by bringing her attention to bear on the silver tea-kettle which Primmins had just brought in, and in which the water was beginning to bubble, in obedience to the newly-kindled flame of the spirit-lamp beneath.

Maryllia, meanwhile, stepped out on the grass terrace in front of the window, with the dog Plato at her side, and looked long and earnestly at the fair stretch of woodland scenery before her. While she thus stood absorbed, Mrs. Spruce stole covert glances at her with increased wonder and bewilderment. She looked much younger than her twenty-seven years,--her childlike figure and face portrayed her as about eighteen, not more. She stood rather under than over the medium height of woman,--yet she gave the impression of being taller than she actually was, owing to the graceful curve of her arched neck, which rose from her shoulders with a daintily-proud poise, marking her demeanour as exceptional and altogether different to that of ordinary women. Her back being turned to Mrs. Spruce for the moment, that sagacious dame decided that she was 'real stately, for all that she was small,' and also noted that her hair, coiled loosely in a thick knot, which pushed itself with rebellious fulness beyond the close-fitting edge of the dark straw hat she wore, was of a warm auburn gold, rippling here and there into shades of darker brown. Suddenly, with a decided movement, she turned from the terrace and re-entered the morning-room.

"Tea ready?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am!--yes, miss--my lady--it's just made--perhaps it's best to let it draw a bit--"

"I don't like it strong!" said Maryllia, sitting down, and leisurely taking off her hat; "And you mustn't call me 'my lady.' I'm not the daughter of an earl, or the wife of a knight. If I were Scotch, I might say 'I'm Mclntosh of Mclntosh'; or some other Mac of Mac,--but being English, I'm Vancourt of Vancourt! And you must call me 'Miss,' till I become 'Ma'am.' I don't want to bear any unnecessary dignities before my time! In fact, I think you'd better call me Miss Maryllia, as you used to do when my father was alive."

"Very well, ma'am--miss--Miss Maryllia," faltered Mrs. Spruce, fumbling distractedly with the tea-things, and putting cream and sugar recklessly into three or four cups without thinking; "There! Really, I don't know what I am a-doin' of--do you like cream and sugar, my dear?--beggin' your parding--Miss Maryllia?"

"Yes, I like cream and sugar both," replied the young lady with a mirthful gleam in her eyes, as she noted the old housekeeper's confusion; "But don't spoil the tea with either! If you put too much cream, you will make the tea cold,--if you put too much sugar, you will make it syrupy,--you must arrive at the juste milieu in a cup of tea! I am VERY particular!"

Poor Mrs. Spruce grew warmer and redder in the face than ever. What was the 'juste milieu'? Often and often afterwards did she puzzle over that remarkable phrase.

"I think," continued Maryllia, with a dimpling smile, "if you put one lump of sugar in the cup and two brimming tea-spoonfuls of cream, it will be exactly right!"

Gladly, and with relief, Mrs. Spruce obeyed these explicit instructions, and handed her new mistress the desired refreshment with assiduous and respectful care.

"You are a dear!" said Maryllia, lazily taking the cup from her hand; "Just the kindest and nicest of persons! And good-tempered? I am sure you are good-tempered, aren't you?"

"Pretty well so, Miss," responded Mrs. Spruce, now gaining courage to look at the fair smiling face opposite her own, more squarely and openly; "Leastways, I've been told I keeps my 'ead under any amount of kitchen jawin'. For, as you may believe me, in a kitchen where there's men as well as women, an' a servants' 'All leadin' straight through from the kitchen, jawin' there is and jawin' there must be, and such bein' the Lord's will, we must put up with it. But it wants a 'ead to keep things straight, and I generally arranges pretty well, though I'll not deny but I'm a bit flustered to-day,-- howsomever, it will soon be all right, and any think that's wrong, Miss, if you will be so good as to tell me--"

"I will!" said Maryllia, sweetly; and she leaned back in her chair, whimsically surveying the garrulous old dame with eyes which Mrs. Spruce then and there discovered to be 'the most beautiful blue eyes ever seen,'--"I will tell you all I do like, and all I don't like. I'm sure we shall get on well together. The tea is perfect,--and this room is exquisite. In fact, everything is delightful, and I'm so happy to be in my own home once more! I wish I had never left it!"

Her eyes darkened suddenly, and she sighed. Mrs. Spruce watched her in submissive silence, realising as she gazed that Miss Maryllia was 'a real beauty and no mistake.' Why and how she came to that conclusion, she could not very well have explained. Her ideas of feminine loveliness were somewhat hazy and restricted. She privately considered her own girl, Kitty, 'the handsomest lass in all the country-side' and she had been known to bitterly depreciate what she called 'the pink and white dolly-face' of Susie Prescott, the acknowledged young belle of the village. But there was an indefinable air of charm about her new lady which was quite foreign to all her experience,--a bewildering grace and ease of manner arising from high education and social cultivation, that confused her and robbed her of all her usual self-sufficiency; and for once in her life she checked her customary volubility and decided that it was perhaps best to say as little as possible till she saw exactly how things were going to turn out. Miss Maryllia was very kind,--but who could tell whether she was not also capricious? There was something slightly quizzical as well as sweet in her smile,-- something subtle--something almost mysterious. She had greeted her father's old servant as affectionately as a child,--but her enthusiasm might be only temporary. So Mrs. Spruce vaguely reflected as she stood with her hands folded on her apron, waiting for the next word. That next word came with a startling suddenness.

"Oh, you wicked Spruce! How could you!"

And Maryllia, springing up from her chair, made a bound to the opposite corner of the room, where there was a tall vase filled with peacocks' feathers. Gathering all these in her hand, she flourished them dramatically in the old housekeeper's face.

"The most unlucky things in the world!" she exclaimed; "Peacocks' feathers! How could you allow them to be in this room on the very day of my return! It's dreadful!--quite dreadful!--you know it is! Nothing is quite so awful as a peacock's feather!"

Mrs. Spruce stared, gasped and blinked,--her hand involuntarily wandered to her side in search for convenient 'spasms.'

"They've always been 'ere, Miss," she stammered; "I 'adn't no idee as 'ow you wouldn't like them, though to tell the truth, I 'ave 'eard somethin' about their bein' onlucky---"

"Unlucky! I should think so!" replied Maryllia, holding the objectionable plumes as far away from herself as possible,--"No wonder we've been unfortunate, if these feathers were always in the old house! No wonder everything went wrong! I must break the spell at once and for ever. Are there more of these horrible 'witch-eyes' in any of the rooms?"

Poor Mrs. Spruce made a great effort to cudgel her memory. She was affected by 'a palpitation,' as she expressed it. There was her newly-arrived mistress confronting her with the authoritative air of a young empress, holding the bunch of glittering peacocks' plumes aloft, like a rod uplifted for summary chastisement, and asking her to instantly remember whether there were any more 'horrible witch- eyes' about. Mrs. Spruce had never before heard such a term applied to the tail-sheddings of the imperial fowl,--but she never forgot it, and never afterwards saw a peacock's feather without a qualm.

"I couldn't say, Miss; I'm not sure--" she answered flutteringly; "But I'll have every 'ole and corner searched to-morrow---"

"No, to-night!" said Maryllia, with determination; "I will not sleep in the house if ONE peacock's feather remains in it! There!" Her brows were bent tragically;--in another moment she laughed; "Take them away!" she continued, picking up Mrs. Spruce's apron at the corners and huddling all the glittering plumage into its capacious folds; "Take them all away! And go right through the house, and collect every remaining feather you can find--and then--and then---"

Here she paused dubiously. "You mustn't burn them, you know! That would be unluckier still!"

"Lor! Would it now, Miss? I never should 'ave thought it!" murmured Mrs. Spruce plaintively, grasping her apronful of 'horrible witch- eyes'; "What on earth shall I do with them?"

Maryllia considered. Very pretty she looked at that moment, with one small finger placed meditatively on her lips, which were curved close like a folded rosebud. "You must either bury them, or drown them!" she said at last, with the gravest decision; "If you drown them, you must tie them to a stone, so that they will not float. If you bury them, you must dig ten feet deep! You must really! If you don't, they will all come up again, and the eyes will be all over the place, haunting you!" Here she broke into the merriest little laugh possible. "Poor Spruce! You do look so miserable! See here-- I'll tell you what to do! Pack them ail in a box, and I will send them to my aunt Emily! She loves them! She likes to see them stuck all over the drawing-room. They're never unlucky to her. She has a fellow-feeling for peacocks; there is a sort of affinity between herself and them! Pack up every feather you can find, Spruce! The box must go to-night by parcel's post Address to Mrs. Fred Vancourt, at the Langham Hotel. She's staying there just now. Will you be sure to send them off to-night?"

She held up her little white hand entreatingly, and her blue eyes wonderfully sweet and childlike, yet grave and passionate, looked straight into the elder woman's wrinkled apple face.

"When she looked at me like that, I'd a gone barefoot to kingdom- come for her!" Mrs. Spruce afterwards declared to some of her village intimates--"And as for the peacocks' feathers, I'd a scrubbed though the 'ole 'ouse from top to bottom afore I'd a let one be in it!"

To Maryllia she said:

"You may take my word for it, Miss! They'll all go out of the 'ouse 'fore seven o'clock. I'll send them myself to the post."

"Thank you, so much!" said Maryllia, with a comical little sigh of relief. "And now, Spruce, I will go to my bedroom and lie down for an hour. I'm just a little tired. Have you managed to get a maid for me?"

"Well, Miss, there's jest a gel-she don't know anythink much, but she's 'andy and willin' and 'umble, and quick with her needle, and tidy at foldin', and got a good character. She's the best I could do, Miss. Her name is Nancy Pyrle--I'll send her to you directly."

"Yes, do!" answered Miss Vancourt, with a little yawn; "And show me to my rooms;--you prepared the ones I told you--my mother's rooms?"

"Yes, Miss," answered Mrs. Spruce in subdued accents; "I've made them all fresh and sweet and clean; but of course the furniture is left jest as it was when the Squire locked 'em all up after he lost his lady--"

Maryllia said nothing, but followed the housekeeper upstairs, the great dog Plato in attendance on her steps. On reaching the bedroom, hung with faded rose silk hangings, and furnished with sixteenth century oak, she looked at everything: with a curious wistfulness and reverence. Approaching the dressing-table, she glanced at her own reflection in the mirror; but fair as the reflection was that glanced back at her, she gave it no smile. She was serious and absorbed, and her eyes were clouded with a sudden mist of tears. Mrs. Spruce took the opportunity to slip away with her collection of peacocks' feathers, and descended in haste to the kitchen, where for some time the various orders she issued caused much domestic perturbation, and fully expressed the chaotic condition of her own mind. The maid, Nancy Pyrle, was hustled off to 'wait on Miss Vancourt upstairs, and don't be clumsy with your 'ands, whatever you do!'--Primmins, the butler, was sent to remove the tea-things from the morning-room,--at which command he turned round somewhat indignantly, asking 'who are you a-orderin' of; don't you think I know my business?'--Spruce himself, unhappily coming by chance to the kitchen door to ask if it was really true that Miss Vancourt had arrived, was shrilly told to 'go along and mind his own business,'-- and so it happened that when Bainton appeared, charged with the Reverend John Walden's message concerning the Five Sisters, he might as well have tried to obtain an unprepared audience with the King, as to see or speak with the lady of the Manor. Miss Vancourt had arrived--oh yes, she had certainly arrived, Mrs. Spruce told him, with much heat and energy; but she was tired and was lying down, and certainly could not be asked to see anyone, no matter what the business was. And to make things more emphatic, at the very time that Bainton was urging his cause, and Mrs. Spruce was firmly rejecting it, Nancy Pyrle came down from attendance on her mistress and said that Miss Vancourt was going to sleep a little, and she did not wish to be disturbed till she rang her bell.

"Oh, and she's beautiful!" said Nancy, drawing a long breath,--"and so very kind! She showed me how to do all she wanted--and was that patient and gentle! She says I'll make quite a good maid after a bit!"

"Well, I hope to the Lord you will!" said Mrs. Spruce with a sniffy "For it's a chance in a 'undred, comin' straight out of the village to a first situation with, a lady like Miss Vancourt. And I 'ope you'll profit by it! And if you 'adn't taken the prize for needlework in the school, you wouldn't 'ave 'ad it, so now you sees what good it does to serve your elders when you're young." Here she turned to Bainton, who was standing disconsolately half in and half out of the kitchen doorway. "I'm real sorry, Mr. Bainton, that you can't see our lady, more 'specially as you wishes to give a message from Passon Walden himself--but you jest go back and tell 'im 'ow it is;--Miss Vancourt is restin' and can't be disturbed nohow."

Bainton twirled his cap nervously in his hand.

"I s'pose no one couldn't say to her quiet-like as 'ow the Five Sisters be chalked?--"

Mrs. Spruce raised her fat hands with a gesture of dismay.

"Lor' bless the man!" she exclaimed; "D'ye think we're goin' to worrit Miss Vancourt with the likes o' that the very first evenin' she's set foot in 'er own 'ouse? Why, we dussn't! An' that there great dog Plato lyin' on guard outside 'er door! I've 'ad enough to- day with peacocks' feathers, let alone the Five Sisters! Besides, Oliver Leach is agent 'ere, and what he says is sure to be done. She won't worry 'erself about it,--and you may be pretty certain he won't be interfered with. You tell Passon Walden I'm real sorry, but it can't be 'elped."

Reluctantly, Bainton turned away. He was never much disposed for a discussion with Mrs. Spruce,--her mind was too illogical, and her tongue too persistent. Her allusion to peacocks' feathers was unintelligible to him, and he wondered whether 'anythink she's been an' took' had gone to her head. Anyway, his errand was foiled for the moment. But he was not altogether disheartened. He determined not to go back to Walden with his message quite undelivered.

"Where there's a will, there's a way!" he said to himself. "I'll go and do a bit of shoutin' to Spruce,--deaf as he is, he's more reasonable-like than his old 'ooman!"

With this resolve, he went his way by a short-cut through Abbot's Manor gardens to a small thatched shelter in the woods, known as 'the foresters' hut,' where Spruce was generally to be found at about sunset, smoking a peaceful pipe, alone and well out of his wife's way.

Meanwhile, Maryllia Vancourt, lying wide awake on her bed in the long unused room that was to have been her mother's, experienced various chaotic sensations of mingled pleasure and pain. For the first time in her life of full womanhood she was alone,-- independent,--free to come or go as she listed, with no one to gainsay her wishes, or place a check on her caprices. She had deliberately thrown off her aunt's protection; and with that action, had given up the wealth and luxury with which she had been lavishly surrounded ever since her father's death. For reasons of her own, which she considered sufficiently cogent, she had also resigned all expectations of being her aunt's heiress. She had taken her liberty, and was prepared to enjoy it. She had professed herself perfectly contented to live on the comparatively small patrimony secured to her by her father's will. It was quite enough, she said, for a single woman,--at any rate, she would make it enough.

And here she was, in her own old home,--the home of her childhood, which she was ashamed to think she had well-nigh forgotten. Since her fifteenth year she had travelled nearly all over the world; London, Paris, Vienna, New York, had each in turn been her 'home' under the guidance of her wealthy perambulating American relative; and in the brilliant vortex of an over-moneyed society, she had been caught and whirled like a helpless floating straw. Mrs. 'Fred' Vancourt, as her aunt was familiarly known to the press paragraphist, had spared no pains to secure for her a grand marriage,--and every possible advantage that could lead to that one culminating point, had been offered to her. She had been taught everything; that could possibly add to her natural gifts of intelligence; she had been dressed exquisitely, taken about everywhere, and 'shown off' to all the impecunious noblemen of Europe;--she had been flattered, praised, admired, petted and generally spoilt, and had been proposed to by 'eligible' gentlemen with every recurring season,--but all in vain. She had taken a singular notion into her head--an idea which her matter-of-fact aunt told her was supremely ridiculous. She wanted to be loved.

"Any man can ask a girl to marry him, if he has pluck and impudence!" she said; "Especially if the girl has money, or expectations of money, and is not downright deformed, repulsive and ill-bred. But proposals of marriage don't always mean love. I don't care a bit about being married,--but I do want to be loved--really loved!--I want to be 'dear to someone else' as Tennyson sings it,-- not for what I HAVE, but for what I AM."

It was this curious, old-fashioned notion of wanting to be loved, that had estranged Maryllia from her wealthy American protectress. It had developed from mere fireside argument and occasional dissension, into downright feud, and its present result was self- evident. Maryllia had broken her social fetters, and had returned to her own rightful home in a state which, for her, considered by her past experience, was one of genteel poverty, but which was also one of glorious independence. And as she restfully reclined under the old rose silk hangings which were to have encanopied that perished beauty from which she derived her own fairness, she was conscious of a novel and soothing sense of calm. The rush and hurry and frivolity of society seemed put away and done with; through her open window she could hear the rustling of leaves and the singing of birds;--the room in which she found herself pleased her taste as well as her sentiment,--and though the faintest shadow of vague wonder crossed her mind as to what she would do with her time, now that she had gained her own way and was actually all alone in the heart of the country, she did not permit such a thought to trouble her peace. The grave tranquillity of the old house was already beginning to exert its influence on her always quick and perceptive mind,--the dear remembrance of her father whom she had idolised, and whose sudden death had been the one awful shock of her life, came back to her now with a fresh and tender pathos. Little incidents of her childhood and of its affection, such as she thought she had forgotten, presented themselves one by one in the faithful recording cells of her brain,--and the more or less feverish and hurried life she had been compelled to lead under her aunt's command and chaperonage, began to efface itself slowly, like a receding coast-line from a departing vessel.

"It is home!" she said; "And I have not been in a home for years! Aunt Emily's houses were never 'home.' And this is MY home--my very own; the home of our family for generations. I ought to be proud of it, and I WILL be proud of it! Even Aunt Emily used to say that Abbot's Manor was a standing proof of the stuck-up pride of the Vancourts! I'm sure I shall find plenty to do here. I can farm my own lands and live on the profits--if there are any!"

She laughed a little, and rising from the bed went to the window and leaned out. A large white clematis pushed its moonlike blossom up to her face, as though asking to be kissed, and a bright red butterfly danced dreamily up and down in the late sunbeams, now poising on the ivy and anon darting off again into the mild still air.

"It's perfectly lovely!" said Maryllia, with a little sigh of content; "And it is all my own!"

She drew her head in from the window and turned to her mirror.

"I'm getting old," she said, surveying herself critically, and with considerable disfavour;--"It's all the result of society 'pressure,' as they call it. There's a line here--and another there"--indicating the imaginary facial defects with a small tapering forefinger--"And I daresay I have some grey hairs, if I could only find them." Here she untwisted the coil at the back of her head and let it fall in a soft curling shower round her shoulders--"Oh, yes!--I daresay!" she went on, addressing her image in the glass; "You think it looks very pretty--but that is only an 'effect,' you know! It's like the advertisements the photographers do for the hairdressers; 'Hair- positively-forced-to-grow-in-six-weeks' sort of thing. Oh, what a dear old chime!" This, as she heard the ancient clock in the square turret which overlooked the Tudor courtyard give forth a mellow tintinnabulation. "What time is it, I wonder?" She glanced at the tiny trifle of a watch she had taken off and placed on her dressing- table. "Quarter past seven! I must have had a doze, after all. I think I will ring for Nancy Pyrle"--and she suited the action to the word; "I have not the least idea where my clothes are."

Nancy obeyed the summons with alacrity. She could not help a slight start as she saw her mistress, looking like 'the picture of an angel' as she afterwards described it, in her loose white dressing- gown, with all her hair untwisted and floating over her shoulders. She had never seen any human creature quite so lovely.

"Do you know where my dresses are, Nancy?" enquired Maryllia.

"Yes, Miss. Mrs. Spruce unpacked everything herself, and the dresses are all hanging in this wardrobe." Here Nancy went to the piece of furniture in question. "Which one shall I give you, Miss?"

Maryllia came to her side, and looked scrutinisingly at all the graceful Parisian and Viennese flimsies that hung in an. orderly row within the wardrobe, uncertain which to take. At last she settled on an exceedingly simple white tea-gown, shaped after a Greek model, and wholly untrimmed, save for a small square gold band at the throat.

"This will do!" she decided; "Nobody's coming to dine; I shall be all alone--"

The thought struck her as quaint and strange. Nobody coming to dinner! How very odd! At Aunt Emily's there was always someone, or several someones, to dinner. To-night she would dine all alone. Well! It would be a novel experience!

"Are there any nice people living about here?" she asked Nancy, as that anxious young woman carefully divested her of her elegant dressing-gown; "People I should like to know?"

"Oh, I don't think so, Miss," replied Nancy, quite frankly, watching in wonder the dexterity and grace with which her mistress swept up all her hair into one rich twist and knotted it with two big tortoiseshell hairpins at the back of her head. "There's Sir Morton Pippitt at Badsworth Hall, three miles from here--"

Maryllia laughed gaily.

"Sir Morton Pippitt! What a funny name! Who is he?"

"Well, Miss, they do say he makes his money at bone-melting; but he's awful proud for all that--awful proud he is--"

"Well, I should think so!" said Maryllia, with much solemnity; "Bone-melting is a great business! Does he melt human bones, Nancy?"

"Oh, lor', Miss, no!" And Nancy laughed, despite herself; "Not that I've ever heard on--it's bones of animals he melts and turns into buttons and such-like."

"Man is an animal, Nancy," said Maryllia, sententiously, giving one or two little artistic touches to the loose waves of hair on her forehead; "Why should not HIS bones be turned into buttons? Why should HE not be made useful? You may depend upon it, Nancy, human bones go into Sir Morton What's-his-name's stock-pot. I shouldn't wonder if he had left his own bones to his business in his will!

"'Imperial Caesar dead and turned to clay, May stop a hole to keep the wind away!'

That's so, Nancy! And is the gentleman who boils bones the only man about here one could ask to dinner?"

Nancy reflected.

"There's the Passon--" she began.

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Maryllia, with a little shrug of impatience; "Worse than the bone-boiler!--a thousand times worse! There! That will do, Nancy! I'll stroll about till dinner's ready."

She left the room and descended the stairs, followed by the faithful Plato, and was soon to be seen by various retainers of the curious and excited household, walking slowly up and down on the grass terrace in her flowing white draperies, the afterglow of the sinking sun shining on her gold-brown hair, and touching up little reddish ripples in it,--such ripples as were painted by the artist of Charles the Second's day when he brushed into colour and canvas the portrait of Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt. Primmins, late butler to the irascible Sir Morton Pippitt, was so taken with the sight of her that he then and there resolved his 'temp'ry service' should be life-long, if he could manage to please her; and little Kitty Spruce being permitted by her mother to peep at the 'new lady' through the staircase window, could only draw a long breath and ejaculate: "Oh! Ain't she lovely!" while she followed with eagerly admiring eyes the gossamer trail of Maryllia's white gown on the soft turf, and strained her ears to catch the sound of the sweet voice which suddenly broke out in a careless chansonette:

"Tu m'aimes, cherie? Dites-moi! Seulement un petit 'oui,' Je demande a toi! Le bonheur supreme Vient quand on aime, N'est-ce-pas cherie? 'Oui'!"

"She's singin' to herself!" said the breathless Kitty, whispering to her mother; "Ain't she jest smilin' and beautiful?"

"Well, I will own," replied Mrs. Spruce, "she's as different to the lady I expected as cheese from chalk, which they generally says chalk from cheese, howsomever, that don't matter. But if I don't mistake, she's got a will of 'er own, for all that she's so smilin' and beautiful as you says, Kitty; and now don't YOU go runnin' away with notions that you can dress like 'er or look like 'er,--for when once a gel of YOUR make thinks she can imitate the fashions and the ways of a great lady, she's done for, body and soul! YOU ain't goin' to wear white gowns and trail 'em up an' down on the grass, nor 'ave big dogs a-follerin' up an' down while you sings in a furrin langwidge to yerself; no, not if you was to read all the trashy story-books in the world--so you needn't think it. For there ain't no millionaires comin' arter you, as they doos in penny novels,--nor nothink else what's dished up in newspapers; so jes' wear your cotton frocks in peace, an' don't worry me with wantin' to look like Miss Maryllia, for you never won't look like 'er if ye tried till ye was dead! Remember that, now! The Lord makes a many women,--but now and again He turns out a few chice samples which won't bear copyin.'. Miss Maryllia's one of them samples, and we must take 'er with prayer and thanksgivin' as sich!"

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IX

Maryllia's first solitary dinner in the home of her ancestors passed off with tolerable success. She found something not altogether unpleasant in being alone after all. Plato was always an intelligent, well-behaved and dignified companion in his canine way, and the meal was elegantly served by Primmins, who waited on his new mistress with as much respect and zeal as if she had been a queen. A sense of authority and importance began to impress itself upon her as she sat at the head of her own table in her own dining-hall, with all the Vandykes and Holbeins and Gainsboroughs gazing placidly down upon her from their gilded frames, and the flicker of many wax candles in old silver sconces glancing upon the shields, helmets, rusty pikes and crossed swords that decorated the panelling of the walls between and above the pictures.

"Fancy! No gas and no electric light! It is simply charming!" she thought, "And so becoming to one's dress and complexion! Only there's nobody to see the becomingness. But I can soon remedy that. Lots of people will come down and stay here if I only ask them. There's one thing quite certain about society folk--they will always come where they can be lodged and boarded free! They call it country visiting, but it really means shutting up their houses, dismissing their servants, and generally economising on their housekeeping bills. I've seen SUCH a lot of it!"

She heaved a little sigh over these social reminiscences, and finished her repast in meditative silence. She had not been accustomed to much thinking, and to indulge in it at all for any length of time was actually a novelty. Her aunt had told her never to think, as it made the face serious, and developed lines on the forehead. And she had, under this kind of tutelage, became one of a brilliant, fashionable, dress-loving crowd of women, who spend most of their lives in caring for their complexions and counting their lovers. Yet every now and again, a wave of repugnance to such a useless sort of existence arose in her and made a stormy rebellion. Surely there was something nobler in life--something higher-- something more useful and intelligent than the ways and manners of a physically and morally degenerate society?

It was a still, calm evening, and the warmth of the sun all day had drawn such odours from the hearts of the flowers that the air was weighted with perfume when she wandered out again into her garden after dinner, and looked up wistfully at the gables of the Manor set clear against a background of dark blue sky patterned with stars. A certain gravity oppressed her. There was, after all, something just a little eerie in the on-coming of night in this secluded woodland place where she had voluntarily chosen to dwell all alone and unprotected, rather than lend herself to her aunt's match-making schemes.

"Of course," she argued with herself, "I need not stay here if I don't like it. I can get a paid companion and go travelling,--but, oh dear, I've had so much travelling!--or I can own myself in the wrong to Aunt Emily, and marry that wretch Roxmouth,--Oh, no! I COULD not! I WILL not!"

She gave an impatient little stamp with her foot, and anon surveyed the old house with affectionate eyes.

"You shall be my rescue!" she said, kissing her hand playfully to the latticed windows,--"You shall turn me into an old-fashioned lady, fond of making jams and pickles, and preserves and herbal waters! I'll put away all the idiotic intrigues and silly fooling of modern society in one of your quaint oaken cupboards, and lock them all up with little bags of lavender to disinfect them! And I will wait for someone to come and find me out and love me; and if no one ever comes--" Here she paused, then went on,--"If no one ever comes, why then--" and she laughed--"some man will have lost a good chance of marrying as true a girl as ever lived!--a girl who could love-- ah!" And she stretched out her pretty rounded arms to the scented air. "HOW she could love if she were loved!"

The young moon here put in a shy appearance by showing a fleck of silver above the highest gable of the Manor.

"A little diamond peak, No bigger than an unobserved star, Or tiny point of fairy scimitar; Bright signal that she only stooped to tie Her silver sandals ere deliciously She bowed unto the heavens her timid head, Slowly she rose as though she would have fled."

"There's no doubt," said Maryllia, "that this place is romantic! And romance is what I've been searching for all my life, and have never found except in books. Not so much in modern books as in the books that were written by really poetical and imaginative people sixty or seventy years ago. Nowadays, the authors that are most praised go in for what they call 'realism'--and their realism is very UNreal, and very nasty. For instance, this garden,--these lovely trees,--this dear old house--all these are real--but much too romantic for a modern writer. He would rather describe a dusthole and enumerate every potato paring in it! And here am I--I'm real enough--but I'm not a bad woman--I haven't got what is euphoniously called 'a past,' and I don't belong to the right-down vicious company of 'Souls.' So I should never do for a heroine of latter-day fiction. I'm afraid I'm abnormal. It's dreadful to be abnormal! One becomes a 'neurotic,' like Lombroso, and all the geniuses. But suppose the world were full of merely normal people,--people who did nothing but eat and sleep in the most perfectly healthy and regular manner,--oh, what a bore it would be! There would be no pictures, no sculpture, no poetry, no music, no anything worth living for. One MUST have a few ideas beyond food and clothing!"

The moon, rose higher and shed a shower of silver over the grass, lighting up in strong relief the fair face upturned to it.

"Now the 'Souls' pretend to have ideas," continued Maryllia, still apostrophising the bland stillness; "But their ideas are low,-- decidedly low,--and decidedly queer. And that Cabinet Ministers are in their set doesn't make them any the better. I could have been a 'Soul' if I had liked. I could have learnt a lot of wicked secrets from the married peer who wanted to be my 'affinity,'--only I wouldn't. I could have got all the Government 'tips,' gambled with them on the Stock Exchange, and made quite a fortune as a 'Soul.' Yet here I am,--no 'Soul,'--but only a poor little body, with something in me that asks for a higher flight than mere social intrigue. Just a bit of a higher flight, eh, Plato? What do you think about it?"

Plato the leonine, waved his plumy tail responsively and gently rubbed his great head against her arm. Resting one hand lightly on his neck, she moved towards the house and slowly ascended the graduating slopes of the grass terrace. Here she was suddenly met by Primmins.

"Beg your pardon, Miss," he said, with an apologetic air, "but there's an old man from the village come up to see you--a very old man,--he's had to be carried in a chair, and it's took a couple of men nigh an hour and a half to bring him along. He says he knew you years ago--I hardly like to send him away--"

"Certainly not!--of course you mustn't send him away," said Maryllia, quickening her steps; "Poor old dear! Where is he?"

"In the great, hall, Miss. They brought him through the courtyard and got him in there, before I had time to send them round to the back entrance."

Maryllia entered the house. There she was met by Mrs. Spruce, with uplifted hands.

"Well, it do beat me altogether, Miss," she exclaimed, "as to how these silly men, my 'usband, too, one of the silliest, beggin' your parding, could bring that poor old Josey Letherbarrow up here all this way! And he not toddled beyond the church this seven or eight years! And it's all about those blessed Five Sisters they've come, though I told 'em you can't nohow be worrited and can't see no one-- "

"But I can!" said Maryllia decisively; "I can see anyone who wishes to see me, and I will. Let me pass, Mrs. Spruce, please!"

Mrs. Spruce, thus abruptly checked, stood meekly aside, controlling her desire to pour forth fresh remonstrances at the unseemliness of any person or persons intruding upon the lady of the Manor at so late an hour in the evening as half-past nine o'clock. Maryllia hastened into the hall and there found an odd group awaiting her, composed of three very odd-looking personages,--much more novel and striking in their oddity than anything that could have been presented to her view in the social whirl of Paris and London. Josey Letherbarrow was the central figure, seated bolt upright in a cane arm-chair, through the lower part of which a strong pole had been thrust, securely nailed and clamped, as well as tied in a somewhat impromptu fashion with clothes-line. This pole projected about two feet on either side of the chair to accommodate the bearers, namely Spruce and Bainton, who, having set their burden down, were now wiping their hot faces and perspiring brows with flagrantly coloured handkerchiefs of an extra large size. As Maryllia appeared, they abruptly desisted from this occupation and remained motionless, stricken with sudden confusion and embarrassment. Not so old Josey, for with unexpected alacrity he got out of his chair and stood upright, supporting himself on his stick, and doffing his old straw hat to the light girlish figure that approached him with the grace of kindliness and sympathy expressed in its every movement.

"There she be!" he exclaimed; "There be the little gel wot I used to know when she was a babby, God bless 'er! Jes' the same eyes and 'air and purty face of 'er! Welcome 'ome to th' owld Squire's daughter, mates! D'ye 'ear me!" And he turned a dim rolling eye of command on Spruce and Bainton--"I sez welcome 'ome! And when I sez it I'spect it to be said arter me by the both of ye,--welcome 'ome!"

Spruce, unable to hear a word of this exordium, smiled sheepishly,-- and twirling the cap he held, put his coloured handkerchief into it and squeezed it tightly within the lining. Bainton, with the impending fate of the Five Sisters in view, judged it advisable not to irritate or disobey the old gentleman whom he had brought forward as special pleader in the case, and gathering his wits together he spoke out bravely.

"Welcome 'ome, it is, Josey!" he said; "We both sez it, and we both means it! And we 'opes the young lady will not take it amiss as 'ow we've come to see 'er on the first night of 'er return, and wish 'er 'appy in the old 'ouse and long may she remain in it!"

Here he broke off, his eloquence being greatly disturbed by the gracious smile Maryllia gave him.

"Thank you so much!" she murmured sweetly; and then going up to Josey Letherbarrow, she patted the brown wrinkled hand that grasped the stick. "How kind and good of you to come and see me! And so you knew me when I was a little girl? I hope I was nice to you! Was I?"

Josey waved his straw hat speechlessly. His first burst of enthusiasm over, he was somewhat dazed, and a little uncertain as to how he should next proceed with his mission,

"Tell 'er as 'ow the Five Sisters be chalked;" growled Bainton in an undertone.

But Josey's mind had gone wandering far afield, groping amid memories of the past, and his aged eyes were fixed on Maryllia with a strange look of wonder and remembrance commingled.

"Th' owld Squire! Th' owld Squire!" he muttered; "I see 'im now--as broad an' tall and well-set up a gentleman as ever lived--and sez he: 'Josey, that little white thing is all I've got left of the wife I was bringin' 'ome to be the sunshine of the old Manor.' Ay, he said that! 'Its eyes are like those of my Dearest!' Ay, he said that, too! The little white thing! She's 'ere,--and th' owld Squire's gone!"

The pathos of his voice struck Maryllia to the heart,--and for the moment she could not keep back a few tears that gathered, despite herself, and glistened on her long lashes. Furtively she dashed them away, but not before Bainton had seen them.

"Well, arter all, Josey's nothin' but a meanderin' old idgit!" he thought angrily: "'Ere 'ave I been an' took 'im for a wise man wot would know exackly 'ow to begin and ask for the sparin' of the old trees, and if he ain't gone on the wrong tack altogether and made the poor little lady cry! I think I'll do a bit of this business myself while I've got the chance--for if I don't, ten to one he'll be tellin' the story of the wopses' nest next, and a fine oncommon show we'll make of ourselves 'ere with our manners." And he coughed loudly--"Ahem! Josey, will you tell Miss Vancourt about the Five Sisters, or shall I?"

Maryllia glanced from one to the other in bewilderment.

"The Five Sisters!" she echoed; "Who are they?"

Here Spruce imagined, as he often did, that he had been asked a question.

"Such were our orders from Mr. Leach," he said, in his quiet equable voice; "We's to be there to-morrow marnin' quarter afore six with ropes and axes."

"Ropes and axes shall not avail against the finger of the Lord, or the wrath of the Almighty!" said Josey Letherbarrow, suddenly coming out of his abstraction; "And if th' owld Squire were alive he wouldn't have had 'em touched--no, not he! He'd ha' starved sooner! And if the Five Sisters are laid low, the luck of the Manor will lay low with 'em! But it's not too late--not too late!"--and he turned his face, now alive in its every feature with strong emotion, to Maryllia--"Not too late if the Squire's little gel is still her father's pride and glory! And that's what I've come for to the Manor this night,--I ain't been inside the old 'ouse for this ten 'ear or more, but they's brought me,--me--old Josey,--stiff as I am, and failin' as I am, to see ye, my dear little gel, and ask ye for God's love to save the old trees wot 'as waved in the woodland free and wild for 'undreds o' years, and wot deserves more gratitude from Abbot's Manor than killin' for long service!"

He began to tremble with nervous excitement, and Maryllia put her hand soothingly on his arm.

"You must sit down, Josey," she said; "You will be so tired standing! Sit down and tell me all about it! What trees are you speaking of? And who is going to cut them down! You see I don't know anything about the place yet,--I've only just arrived--but if they are my trees, and you say my father would not have wished them to be cut down, they shan't be cut down!--be sure of that!"

Josey's eyes sparkled, and he waved his battered hat triumphantly.

"Didn't I tell ye?" he exclaimed, turning round upon Bainton; "Didn't I say as 'ow this was the way to do it?--and as 'ow the little gel wot I knew as a baby would listen to me when she wouldn't listen to no one else? An' as 'ow the Five Sisters would be spared? An' worn't I right! Worn't I true?"

Maryllia smiled.

"You really must sit down!" she said again, gently persuading him into his chair, wherein he sank heavily, like a stone, though his face shone with alertness and vigour. "Primmins!" and she addressed that functionary who had been standing in the background watching the little scene; "Bring some glasses of port wine." Primmins vanished to execute this order. "Now, you dear old man," continued Maryllia, drawing up an oaken settle close to Josey's knee and seating herself with a confidential air; "you must tell me just what you want me to do, and I will do it!"

She looked a mere child, with her fair face upturned and her rippling hair falling loosely away from her brows. A great tenderness softened Josey's eyes as he fixed them upon her.

"God Almighty bless ye!" he said, raising his trembling hand above her head; "God bless ye in your uprisin' and downlyin',--and make the old 'ouse and the old ways sweet to ye! For there's naught like 'ome in a wild wandering world--and naught like love to make 'appiness out of sorrow! God bless ye, dear little gel!--and give ye all your 'art's desire, if so be it's for your good and guidin'!"

Instinctively, Maryllia bent her head with a pretty reverence under the benediction of so venerable a personage, and gently pressed the wrinkled hand as it slowly dropped again. Then glancing at Bainton, she said softly:

"He's very tired, I'm afraid!--perhaps too tired to tell me all he wishes to say. Will you explain what it is he wants?"

Bainton, thus adjured, took courage.

"Thank ye kindly, Miss; and if I may make so bold, it's not what he wants more'n wot all the village wants and wot we've been 'opin' against 'ope for, trustin' to the chance of your comin' 'ome to do it for us. Passon Walden he's a rare good man, and he's done all he can, and he's been and seen Oliver Leach, but it ain't all no use,-- -"

He paused, as Maryllia interrupted him by a gesture.

"Oliver Leach?" she queried; "He's my agent here, I believe?"

"Jes' so, Miss--he was put in as agent arter the Squire's death, and he's been 'ere ever since, bad luck to 'im! And he's been a-cuttin' down timber on the place whenever he's took a mind to, askin' no by- your-leaves, and none of us 'adn't no right to say a wurrd, he bein' master-like--but when it comes to the Five Sisters--why then we sez, if the Five Sisters lay low there's an end of the pride and prosperity of the village, an' Passon Walden he be main worrited about it, for he do love trees like as they were his own brothers, m'appen more'n brothers, for sometimes there's no love lost twixt the likes o' they, and beggin' your pardon, Miss, he sent me to ye with a message from hisself 'fore dinner, but you was a-lyin' down and couldn't be disturbed nohow, so I goes down to Spruce"--here Bainton indicated the silent Spruce with a jerk of his thumb--"he be the forester 'ere, under Mr. Leach's orders, as deaf as a post unless you 'ollers at him, but a good-meanin' man for all that--and I sez, 'Spruce, you and me 'ull go an' fetch old Josey Letherbarrow, and see if bein' the oldest 'n'abitant, as they sez in books, he can't get a wurrd with Miss Vancourt, and so 'ere we be, Miss, for the trees be chalked"--and he turned abruptly to Spruce and bellowed--"Baint the trees chalked for comin' down to-morrow marnin'? Speak fair!"

Spruce heard, and at once gave a lucid statement.

"By Mr. Leach's orders, Miss," he said, addressing Maryllia; "The five old beech-trees on the knoll, which the village folk call the 'Five Sisters,' are to be felled to-morrow marnin'. They've stood, so I'm told, an' so I b'lieve, two or three hundred years--"

"And they're going to be cut down!" exclaimed Maryllia. "I never heard of such wickedness! How disgraceful!"

Spruce saw by the movement of her lips that she was speaking, and therefore at once himself subsided into silence. Bainton again took up the parable.

"He's nigh stone-deaf, Miss, so you'll 'scuse him if he don't open his mouth no more till we shouts at him--but what he sez is true enough. At six o'clock to-morrow marnin'--"

Here Primmins entered with the port wine.

"Primmins, where does the agent, Leach, live?" enquired Maryllia.

"I really couldn't say, Miss. I'll ask--"

"'Tain't no use askin'," said Bainton; "He lives a mile out of the village; but he ain't at 'ome nohow this evenin' bein' gone to Riversford town for a bit o' gamblin' at cards. Lor', Miss, beggin' yer pardon, gamblin' with the cards do get rid o' timber--it do reely now!"

Maryllia took a glass of port wine from the tray which Primmins handed to her, and gave it herself to old Josey. Her mind had entirely grasped the situation, despite the prolix nature of Bainton's discourse. A group of historic old trees were to be felled by the agent's orders at six o'clock the next morning unless she prevented it. That was the sum total of the argument. And here was something for her to do, and she resolved to do it.

"Now, Josey," she said with a smile, "you must drink a glass of wine to my health. And you also--and you!" and she nodded encouragingly to Spruce and Bainton; "And be quite satisfied about the trees--they shall not be touched."

"God bless ye!" said Josey, drinking off his wine at a gulp; "And long life t'ye and 'appiness to enjoy it!"

Bainton, with a connoisseur's due appreciation of a good old brand, sipped at his glass slowly, while Spruce, hastily swallowing his measure of the cordial, wiped his mouth furtively with the back of his hand, murmuring: "Your good 'elth, an' many of 'em!"

"Wishin' ye long days o' peace an' plenty," said Bainton, between his appreciative sips; "But as fur as the trees is consarned, you'll'scuse me, Miss, for sayin' it, but the time bein' short, I don't see 'ow it's goin' to be 'elped, Oliver Leach bein' away, and no post delivered at his 'ouse till eight o'clock--"

"I will settle all that," said Maryllia--"You must leave everything to me. In the meantime,"--and she glanced at Spruce,--then appealingly turned to Bainton,--"Will you try and make your friend understand an order I want to give him? Or shall I ask Mrs. Spruce to come and speak to him?"

"Lord love ye, he'll be sharper to hear me than his wife, Miss, beggin' yer pardon," said Bainton, with entire frankness. "He's too accustomed to her jawin' an' wouldn't get a cleat impression like. Spruce!" And he uplifted his voice in a roar that made the old rafters of the hall ring. "Get ready to take Miss Vancourt's orders, will ye?"

Spruce was instantly on the alert, and put his hand to his ear.

"Tell him, please," said Maryllia, still addressing Bainton, "that he is to meet the agent as arranged at the appointed place to-morrow morning; but that he is not to take any ropes or axes or any men with him. He is simply to say that by Miss Vancourt's orders the trees are not to be touched."

These words Bainton dutifully bellowed into Spruce's semi-closed organs of hearing. A look first of astonishment and then of fear came over the simple fellow's face.

"I'm afraid," he at last faltered, "that the lady does not know what a hard man Mr. Leach is; he'll as good as kill me if I go there alone to him!"

"Lord love ye, man, you won't be alone!" roared Bainton,--"There's plenty in the village 'ull take care o' that!"

"Say to him," continued Maryllia steadily, noting the forester's troubled countenance, "he must now remember that I am mistress here, and that my orders, even if given at the last moment, are to be obeyed."

"That's it!" chuckled Josey Letherbarrow, knocking his stick on the ground in a kind of ecstasy,--"That's it! Things ain't goin' to be as they 'as been now the Squire's little gel is 'ome! That's it!" And he nodded emphatically. "Give a reskil rope enough an' he'll 'ang hisself by the neck till he be dead, and the Lord ha' mercy on his soul!"

Maryllia smiled, watching all her three quaint visitors with a sensation of mingled interest and whimsical amusement.

"D'ye hear? You're to tell Leach," shouted Bainton, "that Miss Vancourt is mistress 'ere, and her orders is to be obeyed at the last moment! Which you might ha' understood without splittin' my throat to tell ye, if ye had a little more sense, which, lackin', 'owever, can't be 'elped. What are ye afeard of, eh?"

"Mr. Leach is a hard man," continued Spruce, anxiously glancing at Maryllia; "He would lose me my place if he could--:"

Maryllia heard, and privately decided that the person to lose his place would be Leach himself. "It is quite exciting!" she thought; "I was wondering a while ago what I should do to amuse myself in the country, and here I am called upon at once to remedy wrongs and settle village feuds! Nothing could be more novel and delightful!" Aloud, she said,--

"None of the people who were in my father's service will lose their places with me, unless for some very serious fault. Please"--and she raised her eyes in pretty appeal to Bainton, "Please make everybody understand that! Are you one of the foresters here?"

Bainton shook his head.

"No, Miss,--I'm the Passon's head man. I does all his gardening and keeps a few flowers growin' in the churchyard. There's a rose climbin' over the cross on the old Squire's grave what will do ye good to see, come another fortnight of this warm weather. But Passon, he be main worrited about the Five Sisters, and knowin' as 'ow I'd worked for the old Squire at 'arvest an,' sich-like, he thought I might be able to 'splain to ye--"

"I see!" said Maryllia, thoughtfully, surveying with renewed interest the old-world figure of Josey Letherbarrow in his clean smock-frock. "Now, how are you going to get Josey home again?" And a smile irradiated her face. "Will you carry him along just as you brought him?"

"Why, yes, Miss--it'll be all goin' downhill now, and there's a moon, and it'll be easy work. And if so be we're sure the Five Sisters 'ull be saved--"

"You may be perfectly certain of it," said Maryllia interrupting him with a little gesture of decision--"Only you must impress well on Mr. Spruce here, that my orders are to be obeyed."

"Beggin' yer pardon, Miss--what Spruce is afeard of is that Leach may tell him he's a liar, and may jest refuse to obey. That's quite on the cards, Miss--it is reely now!"

"Oh, is it, indeed!" and Maryllia's eyes flashed with a sudden fire that made them look brighter and deeper than ever and revealed a depth of hidden character not lacking in self-will,--"Well, we shall see! At any rate, I have given my orders, and I expect them to be carried out! You understand!"

"I do, Miss;" and Bainton touched his forelock respectfully; "An' while we're joggin' easy downhill with Josey, I'll get it well rubbed into Spruce. And, by yer leave, if you hain't no objection, I'll tell Passon Walden that sich is your orders, and m'appen he'll find a way of impressin' Leach straighter than we can." Maryllia was not particularly disposed to have the parson brought into her affairs, but she waived the query lightly aside.

"You can do as you like about that," she said carelessly; "As the parson is your master, you can of course tell him if you think he will be interested. But I really don't see why he should be asked to interfere. My orders are sufficient."

A very decided ring of authority in the clear voice warned Bainton that here was a lady who was not to be trifled with, or to be told this or that, or to be put off from her intentions by any influence whatsoever. He could not very well offer a reply, so he merely touched his forelock again and was discreetly silent. Maryllia then turned playfully to Josey Letherbarrow.

"Now are you quite happy?" she asked. "Quite easy in your mind about the trees?"

"Thanks be to the Lord and you, God bless ye!" said Josey, piously; "I'm sartin sure the Five Sisters 'ull wave their leaves in the blessed wind long arter I'm laid under the turf and the daisies! I'll sleep easy this night for knowin' it, and thank ye kindly and all blessin' be with ye! And if I never sees ye no more--"

"Now, Josey, don't talk nonsense!" said Maryllia, with a pretty little air of protective remonstrance; "Such a clever old person as you are ought to know better than to be morbid! 'Never see me no more' indeed! Why I'm coming to see you soon,--very soon! I shall find out where you live, and I shall pay you a visit! I'm a dreadful talker! You shall tell me all about the village and the people in it, and I'm sure I shall learn more from you in an hour than if I studied the place by myself for a week! Shan't I?"

Josey was decidedly flattered. The port wine had reddened his nose and had given an extra twinkle to his eyes.

"Well, I ain't goin' to deny but what I knows a thing or two--" he began, with a sly glance at her.

"Of course you do! Heaps of things! I shall coax them all out of you! And now, good-night!--No!--don't get up!" for Josey was making herculean efforts to rise from his chair again. "Just stay where you are, and let them carry you carefully home. Good-night!"

She gave a little salute which included all three of her rustic visitors, and moved away. Passing under the heavily-carved arched beams of oak which divided the hall from the rest of the house, she turned her head backward over her shoulder with a smile.

"Good-night, Ambassador Josey!"

Josey waved his old hat energetically.

"Good-night, my beauty! Good-night to Squire's gel! Good-night--"

But before he could pile on any more epithets, she was gone, and the butler Primmins stood in her place.

"I'll help give you a lift down to the gates," he said, surveying Josey with considerable interest; "You're a game old chap for your age!"

Josey was still waving his hat to the dark embrasure through which Maryllia's white figure had vanished.

"Ain't she a beauty? Ain't she jest a real Vancourt pride?" he demanded excitedly; "Lord! We won't know ourselves in a month or two! You marrk my wurrds, boys! See if what I say don't come true! Leach may cheat the gallus, but he won't cheat them blue eyes, let him try ever so! They'll be the Lord's arrows in his skin! You see if they ain't!"

Bainton here gave a signal to Spruce, and they hoisted up the improvised carrying-chair between them, Primmins steadying it behind.

"There ain't goin' to be no layin' low of the Five Sisters!" Josey continued with increasing shrillness and excitement as he was borne out into the moonlit courtyard; "And there ain't goin' to be no devil's work round the old Manor no more! Welcome 'ome to Squire's gel! Welcome 'ome!"

"Shut up, Josey!" said Bainton, though kindly enough--"You'll soon part with all the breath you've got in yer body if ye makes a screech owl of yerself like that in the night air! You's done enough for once in a way,--keep easy an' quiet while we carries ye back to the village--ye weighs a hundred pound 'eavier if ye're noisy,--ye do reely now!"

Thus adjured, Josey subsided into silence, and what with the joy he felt at the success of his embassy, the warm still air, and the soothing influence of the moonlight, he soon fell fast asleep, and did not wake till he arrived at his own home in safety. Having deposited him there, and seen to his comfort, Spruce and Bainton left him to his night's rest, and held a brief colloquy outside his cottage door.

"I'm awful 'feard goin' to-morrow marnin' up to the Five Sisters with ne'er a tool and ne'er a man,--Leach 'ull be that wild!" said Spruce, his rubicund face paling at the very thought--"If I could but 'ave 'ad written instructions, like!"

"Why didn't you ask for 'em while you 'ad the chance?" demanded Bainton testily; "It's too late now to bother your mind with what ye might ha' done if ye'd had a bit of gumption. And it's too late for me to be goin' and speakin' to Passon Walden. There's nothin' to be done now till the marnin'!"

"Nothin' to be done till the marnin'," echoed Spruce with a sigh, catching these words by happy chance; "All the same, she's a fine young lady, and 'er orders is to be obeyed. She ain't a bit like what I expected her to be."

"Nor she ain't what I bet she would be," said Bainton, heedless as to whether his companion heard him or not; "I've lost 'arf a crown to my old 'ooman, for I sez, sez I, 'She's bound to be a 'igh an' mighty stuck-up sort o' miss wot won't never 'ave a wurrd for the likes of we,' an' my old 'ooman she sez to me: 'Go 'long with ye for a great silly gawk as ye are; I'll bet ye 'arf a crown she won't be!' So I sez 'Done,'--an' done it is. For she's just as sweet as clover in the spring, an' seems as gentle as a lamb,--though I reckon she's got a will of 'er own and a mind to do what she likes, when and 'ow she likes. I'll 'ave a fine bit o' talk with Passon 'bout her as soon as iver he gives me the chance."

"Ay, good-night it is," observed Spruce, placidly taking all these remarks as evening adieux,--"Yon moon's got 'igh, and it's time for bed if so be we rises early. Easy rest ye!"

Bainton nodded. It was all the response necessary. The two then separated, going their different ways to their different homes, Spruce having to get back to the Manor and a possible curtain- lecture from his wife. All the village was soon asleep,--and eleven o'clock rang from the church-tower over closed cottages in which not a nicker of lamp or candle was to be seen. The moonbeams shed a silver rain upon the outlines of the neatly thatched roofs and barns--illumining with touches of radiance as from heaven, the beautiful 'God's House' which dominated the whole cluster of humble habitations. Everything was very quiet,--the little hive of humanity had ceased buzzing; and the intense stillness was only broken by the occasional murmur of a ripple breaking from the river against the pebbly shore.

Up at the Manor, however, the lights were not yet extinguished. Maryllia, on the departure of 'Ambassador Josey' as she had called him, and his two convoys, had sent for Mrs. Spruce and had gone very closely with her into certain matters connected with Mr. Oliver Leach. It had been difficult work,--for Mrs. Spruce's garrulity, combined with her habit of wandering from the immediate point of discussion, and her anxiety to avoid involving herself or her husband in trouble, had created a chaotic confusion in her mind, which somewhat interfered with the lucidity of her statements. Little by little, however, Maryllia extracted a sufficient number of facts from her hesitating and reluctant evidence to gain considerable information on many points respecting the management of her estate, and she began to feel that her return home was providential and had been in a manner pre-ordained. She learned all that Mrs. Spruce could tell her respecting the famous 'Five Sisters'; how they were the grandest and most venerable trees in all the country round--and how they stood all together on a grassy eminence about a mile and a half from the Manor house and on the Manor lands just beyond the more low-lying woods that spread between. Whereupon Maryllia decided that she would take an early ride over her property the next day,--and gave orders that her favourite mare, 'Cleopatra,' ready saddled and bridled, should be brought round to the door at five o'clock the next morning. This being settled, and Mrs. Spruce having also humbly stated that all the peacock's feathers she could find had been summarily cast forth from the Manor through the medium of the parcels' post, Maryllia bade her a kindly good-night.

"To-morrow," she said, "we will go all over the house together, and you will explain everything to me. But the first thing to be done is to save those old trees."

"Well, no one wouldn't 'ave saved 'em if so be as you 'adn't come 'ome, Miss," declared Mrs. Spruce. "For Mr. Leach he be a man of his word, and as obs'nate as they makes 'em, which the Lord Almighty knows men is all made as obs'nate as pigs--and he's been master over the place like--"

"More's the pity!" said Maryllia; "But he is master here no longer, Spruce; I am now both mistress and master. Remember that, please!"

Mrs. Spruce curtseyed dutifully and withdrew. The close cross- examination she had undergone respecting Leach had convinced her of two things,--firstly, that her new mistress, though such a childlike-looking creature, was no fool,--and secondly, that though she was perfectly gentle, kind, and even affectionate in her manner, she evidently had a will of her own, which it seemed likely she would enforce, if necessary, with considerable vigour and imperativeness. And so the worthy old housekeeper decided that on the whole it would be well to be careful--to mind one's P's and Q's as it were,--to pause before rushing pell-mell into a flood of unpremeditated speech, and to pay the strictest possible attention to her regular duties.

"Then m'appen we'll stay on in the old place," she considered; "But if we doos those things which we ought not to have done, as they sez in the prayer-book, we'll get the sack in no time, for all that she looks so smilin' and girlie-like."

And so profound were her cogitations on this point that she actually forgot to give her husband the sound rating she had prepared for him concerning the part he had taken in bringing Josey Letherbarrow up to the Manor. Returning from the village in some trepidation, that harmless man was allowed to go to bed and sleep in peace, with no more than a reminder shrilled into his ears to be 'up with the dawn, as Miss Maryllia would be about early.'

Maryllia herself, meanwhile, quite unconscious that her small personality had made any marked or tremendous effect upon her domestics, retired to rest in happy mood. She was glad to be in her own home, and still more glad to find herself needed there.

"I've been an absolutely useless creature up till now," she said, shaking down her hair, after the maid Nancy had disrobed her and left her for the night. "The fact is, there never was a more utterly idle and nonsensical creature in the world than I am! I've done nothing but dress and curl my hair, and polish my face, and dance, and flirt and frivol the time away. Now, if I only am able to save five historical old trees, I shall have done something useful;-- something more than half the women I know would ever take the trouble to do. For, of course, I suppose I shall have a row,--or as Aunt Emily would say 'words,'--with the agent. All the better! I love a fight,--especially with a man who thinks himself wiser than I am! That is where men are so ridiculous,--they always think themselves wiser than women, even though some of them can't earn their own living except through a woman's means. Lots of men will take a woman's money, and sneer at her while spending it! I know them!" And she nestled into her bed, with a little cosy cuddling movement of her soft white shoulders; "'Take all and give nothing!' is the motto of modern manhood;--I don't admire it,--I don't endorse it; I never shall! The true motto of love and chivalry should be 'Give all--take nothing'!"

Midnight chimed from the courtyard turret. She listened to the mellow clang with a sense of pleased comfort and security.

"Many people would think of ghosts and all sorts of uncanny things in an old, old house like this at midnight;" she thought; "But somehow I don't believe there are any ghosts here. At any rate, not unpleasant ones;--only dear and loving 'home' ghosts, who will do me no harm!"

She soon sank into a restful slumber, and the moonlight poured in through the old latticed windows, forming a delicate tracery of silver across the faded rose silken coverlet of the bed, and showing the fair face, half in light, half in shade, that rested against the pillow, with the unbound hair scattered loosely on either side of it, like a white lily between two leaves of gold. And as the hours wore on, and the silence grew more intense, the slow and somewhat rusty pendulum of the clock in the tower could just be heard faintly ticking its way on towards the figures of the dawn. "Give all--take nothing--Give--all--take--no--thing!" it seemed to say;--the motto of love and the code of chivalry, according to Maryllia.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

X

A thin silver-grey mist floating delicately above the river Rest and dispersing itself in light wreaths across the flowering banks and fields, announced the breaking of the dawn,--and John Walden, who had passed a restless night, threw open his bedroom window widely, with a sense of relief that at last the time had come again for movement and action. His blood was warm and tingling with suppressed excitement,--he was ready for a fight, and felt disposed to enjoy it. His message to Miss Vancourt had apparently failed,--for on the previous evening Bainton had sent round word to say that he had been unable to see the lady before dinner, but that he was going to try again later on. No result of this second attempt had been forthcoming, so Walden concluded that his gardener had received a possibly curt and complete rebuff from the new 'Squire-ess,' and had been too much disheartened by his failure to come and report it.

"Never mind!--we'll have a tussle for the trees!" said John to himself, as after his cold tubbing he swung his dumb-bells to and fro with the athletic lightness and grace of long practice; "If the villagers are prepared to contest Leach's right to destroy the Five Sisters, I'll back them up in it! I will! And I'll speak my mind to Miss Vancourt too! She is no doubt as apathetic and indifferent to sentiment as all her 'set,' but if I can prick her through her pachydermatous society skin, I'll do it!"

Having got himself into a great heat and glow with this mental resolve and his physical exertions combined, he hastily donned his clothes, took his stoutest walking-stick, and sallied forth into the cool dim air of the as yet undeclared morning, the faithful Nebbie accompanying him. Scarcely, however, had he shut his garden gate behind him when Bainton confronted him.

"Marnin', Passon!"

"Oh, there you are!" said Walden--"Well, now what's going to be done?"

"Nothin's goin' to be done;" rejoined Bainton stolidly, with his usual inscrutable smile; "Unless m'appen Spruce is 'avin' every bone broke in his body 'fore we gets there. Ye see, he ain't got no written orders like,--and mebbe Leach 'ull tell him he's a liar and that Miss Vancourt's instructions is all my eye!"

"Miss Vancourt's instructions?" echoed Walden; "Has she given any?"

"Of coorse she has!" replied Bainton, triumphantly; "Which is that the trees is not to be touched on no account. And she's told Spruce, through me,--which I bellowed it all into his ear,--to go and meet Leach this marnin' up by the Five Sisters and give him 'er message straight from the shoulder!"

Walden's face cleared and brightened visibly.

"I'm glad--I'm very glad!" he said; "I hardly thought she could sanction such an outrage--but, tell me, how did you manage to give her my message?"

"'Tworn't your message at all, Passon, don't you think it!" said Bainton; "You ain't got so fur as that. She's not the sort o' lady to take a message from no one, whether passon, pope or emp'rur. Not she! It was old Josey Letherbarrow as done it." And he related the incidents of the past evening in a style peculiar to himself, laying considerable weight on his own remarkable intelligence and foresight in having secured the 'oldest 'n'abitant' of the village to act as representative and ambassador for the majority.

Walden listened with keen interest.

"Yes,--Leach is likely to be quarrelsome," he said, at its conclusion; "There's no doubt about that. We mustn't leave Spruce to bear the brunt of his black rage all alone. Come along, Bainton!--I will enforce Miss Vancourt's orders myself if necessary."

This was just what Bainton wanted,--and master and man started off at a swinging pace for the scene of action, Bainton pouring forth as he went a glowing description of the wonderful and unexpected charm of the new mistress of the Manor.

"There ain't been nothin' like her in our neighbourhood iver at all, so fur as I can remember," he declared. "A' coorse I must ha' seed her when I worked for th' owld Squire at whiles, but she was a child then, an' I ain't a good hand at rememberin' like Josey be, besides I never takes much 'count of childern runnin' round. But 'ere was we all a-thinkin' she'd be a 'igh an' mighty fashion-plate, and she ain't nothin' of the sort, onny jest like a little sugar figure on, a weddin'-cake wot looks sweet at ye and smiles pleasant,--though she's got a flash in them eyes of her which minds me of a pony wot ain't altogether broke in. Josey, he sez them eyes is a-goin' to finish up Leach,--which mebbe they will and mebbe they won't;--all the same they's eyes you won't see twice in a lifetime! Lord love ye, Passon, ain't it strange 'ow the Almighty puts eyes in the 'eads of women wot ain't a bit like wot he puts in the 'eads of men! We gets the sight all right, but somehow we misses the beauty. An' there's plenty of women wot has eyes correct in stock and colour, as we sez of the flowers,--but they're like p'ison berries, shinin' an' black an' false-like,--an' if ye touch 'em ye're a dead man. Howsomever when ye sees eyes like them that was smilin' at old Josey last night, why it's jest a wonderful thing; and it don't make me s'prised no more at the Penny Poltry-books wot's got such a lot about blue eyes in 'em. Blue's the colour--there's no doubt about it;--there ain't no eye to beat a blue one!"

Walden heard all this disjointed talk with a certain impatience. Swinging along at a rapid stride, and glad in a sense that the old trees were to be saved, he was nevertheless conscious of annoyance,- -though by whom, or at what he was annoyed, he could not have told. Plunging into the dewy woods, with all the pungent odours of moss and violets about his feet, he walked swiftly on, Bainton having some difficulty to keep up with him. The wakening birds were beginning to pipe their earliest carols; gorgeously-winged insects, shaken by the passing of human footsteps from their slumbers in the cups of flowers, soared into the air like jewels suddenly loosened from the floating robes of Aurora,--and the gentle stir of rousing life sent a pulsing wave through the long grass. Every now and again Bainton glanced up at the 'Passon's' face and murmured under his breath,--'Blue's the colour--there ain't nowt to beat it!' possibly inspired thereto by the very decided blue sparkle in the eyes of the 'man of God' who was marching steadily along in the 'Onward Christian Soldiers' style, with his shoulders well back, his head well poised, and his whole bearing expressive of both decision and command.

Out of the woods they passed into an open clearing, where the meadows, tenderly green and wet with dew, sloped upwards into small hillocks, sinking again into deep dingles, adorned with may-trees that were showing their white buds like little pellets of snow among the green, and where numerous clusters of blackthorn spread out lovely lavish tangles of blossom as fine as shreds of bleached wool or thread-lace upon its jet-like stems. Across these fields dotted with opening buttercups and daisies, Walden and his 'head man about the place' made quick way, and climbing the highest portion of the rising ground just in front of them, arrived at a wide stretch of peaceful pastoral landscape comprising a fine view of the river in all its devious windings through fields and pastures, overhung at many corners with ancient willows, and clasping the village of St. Rest round about as with a girdle of silver and blue. Here on a slight eminence stood the venerable sentinels of the fair scene,-- the glorious old 'Five Sisters' beeches which on this very morning had been doomed to bid farewell for ever to the kind sky. Noble creatures were they in their splendid girth and broadly-stretching branches, which were now all alive with the palest and prettiest young green,--and as Walden sprang up the thyme-scented turfy ascent which lifted them proudly above all their compeers, his heart beat with mingled indignation and gladness,--indignation that such grand creations of a bountiful Providence should ever have been so much as threatened with annihilation by a destructive, ill-conditioned human pigmy like Oliver Leach,--and gladness, that at the last moment their safety was assured through the intervention of old Josey Letherbarrow. For, of course Miss Vancourt herself would never have troubled about them. Walden made himself inwardly positive on that score. She could have no particular care or taste for trees, John thought. It was the pathetic pleading of Josey,--his quaint appearance, his extreme age--and his touching feebleness, which taken all together had softened the callous heart of the mistress of the Manor, and had persuaded her to stay the intended outrage.

"If Josey had asked her to spare a gooseberry bush, she would probably have consented," said Walden to himself; "He is so old and frail,--she could hardly have refused his appeal without seeming to be almost inhuman."

Here his reflections were abruptly terminated by a clamour of angry voices, and hastening his steps up the knoll, he there confronted a group of rough rustic lads gathered in a defensive half-circle round Spruce who, white and breathless, was bleeding profusely from a deep cut across his forehead. Opposite him stood Oliver Leach, livid with rage, grasping a heavy dog-whip.

"You damned, deaf liar!" he shouted; "Do you think I'm going to take YOUR word? How dare you disobey my orders! I'll have you kicked off the place, you and your loud-tongued wife and the whole kit of you! What d'ye mean by bringing these louts up from the village to bull- bait me, eh? What d'ye mean by it? I'll have you all locked up in Riversford jail before the day's much older! You whining cur!" And he raised his whip threateningly. "I've given you one, and I'll give you another--"

"Noa, ye woan't!" said a huge, raw-boned lad, standing out from the rest. "You woan't strike 'im no more, if ye wants a hull skin! Me an' my mates 'ull take care o' that! You go whoam, Mister Leach!-- you go whoam!--you've 'eerd plain as the trees is to be left stannin'--them's the orders of the new Missis,--and you ain't no call to be swearin' yerself black in the face, 'cos you can't get yer own way for once. You're none so prutty lookin' that we woan't know 'ow to make ye a bit pruttier if ye stays 'ere enny longer!"

And he grinned suggestively, doubling a portentous fist, and beginning to roll up his shirt sleeves slowly with an ominous air of business.

Leach looked at the group of threatening faces, and pulled from his pocket a notebook and pencil.

"I know you all, and I shall take down your names," he said, with vindictive sharpness, though his lips trembled--"You, Spruce, are under my authority, and you have deliberately disobeyed my orders--"

"And you, Leach, are under Miss Vancourt's authority and you are deliberately refusing to obey your employer's orders!" said Walden, suddenly emerging from the shadow east by one of the great trees, "And you have assaulted and wounded Spruce who brought you those orders. Shame on you, man! Riversford jail is more likely to receive YOU as a tenant than any of these lads!" Here he turned to the young men who on seeing their minister had somewhat sheepishly retreated, lifting their caps and trampling backward on each other's toes; "Go home, boys," he said peremptorily, yet kindly; "There's nothing for you to do here. Go home to your breakfasts and your work. The trees won't be touched--"

"Oh, won't they!" sneered Leach, now perfectly white with passion; "Who's going to pay me for the breaking of my contract, I should like to know? The trees are sold--they were sold as they stand a fortnight ago,--and down they come to-day, orders or no orders; I'll have my own men up here at work in less than an hour!"

Walden turned upon him.

"Very well then, I shall ask Miss Vancourt to set the police to watch her trees and take you into custody;" he said, coolly; "If you have sold the trees standing, to cover your gambling debts, you will have to UNsell them, that's all! They never were yours to dispose of;--you can no more sell them than you can sell the Manor. You have no permission to make money for yourself out of other people's property. That kind of thing is common thieving, though it MAY sometimes pass for Estate Agency business!"

Leach sprang forward, his whip uplifted,--but before it could fall, with one unanimous yell, the young rustics rushed upon him and wrested it from his hand. At this moment Bainton, who had been silently binding Spruce's cut forehead with a red cotton handkerchief, so that the poor man presented the appearance of a melodramatic 'stage' warrior, suddenly looked up, uttered an exclamation, and gave a warning signal.

"Better not go on wi' the hargyment jes' now, Passon!" he said,-- "'Ere comes the humpire!"

Even as he spoke, the quick gallop of hoofs echoed thuddingly on the velvety turf, and the group of disputants hastily scattered to right and left, as a magnificent mare, wild-eyed and glossy-coated, dashed into their centre and came to a swift halt, drawn up in an instant by the touch of her rider on the rein. All eyes were turned to the slight woman's figure in the saddle, that sat so easily, that swayed the reins so lightly, and that seemed as it were, throned high above them in queenly superiority--a figure wholly unconventional, clad in a riding-skirt and jacket of a deep soft violet hue, and wearing no hat to shield the bright hair from the fresh wind that waved its fair ripples to and fro caressingly and tossed a shining curl loose from the carelessly twisted braid. Murmurs of 'The new Missis!' 'Th' owld Squire's darter!'--ran from mouth to mouth, and John Walden, seized by a sudden embarrassment, withdrew as far as possible into the shadow of the trees in a kind of nervous hope to escape from the young lady's decidedly haughty glance, which swept like a flash of light, round the assembled group and settled at last with chill scrutiny on the livid and breathless Oliver Leach.

"You are the agent here, I presume?"

Maryllia's voice rang cold and clear,--there was not a trace of the sweet and coaxing tone in it that had warmed the heart of old Josey Letherbarrow.

Leach looked up, lifting his cap half reluctantly.

"I am!"

"You have had my orders?"

Leach was silent. The young rustics hustled one another forward, moved by strong excitement, all eager to see the feminine 'Humpire' who had descended upon them as suddenly as a vision falling from the skies, and all wondering what would happen next.

"You have had my orders?" repeated Maryllia;--then, as no answer was vouchsafed to her, she looked round and perceived Bainton. To him she at once addressed herself.

"Who has struck Spruce?"

Bainton hesitated. It was an exceedingly awkward position. He looked appealingly, as was his wont, up into the air and among the highest branches of the 'Five Sisters' for 'Passon Walden,' but naturally could not discover him at that elevation.

"Come, come!" said Maryllia, imperatively--"You are not all deaf, I hope! Give me a straight answer, one of you! Who struck Spruce?"

"Mister Leach did!" said the big-boned lad who had constituted himself Spruce's defender. "We 'eerd down in the village as 'ow you'd come 'ome, Miss, and as 'ow you'd give your orders that the Five Sisters was to be left stannin', and we coomed up wi' Spruce to see 'ow Leach 'ud take it, an' 'fore we could say a wurrd Leach he up wi' his whip and cut Spruce across the for'ead as ye see--"

Maryllia raised her hand and silenced him with a gesture. "Thank you! That will do. I understand!" She turned towards Leach; "What have you to say for yourself?" "I take no orders from a servant," replied Leach, insolently; "I have managed this estate for ten years, and I give in my statements and receive my instructions from the firm of solicitors who have it in charge. I am not called upon to accept any different arrangement without proper notice."

Maryllia heard him out with coldly attentive patience.

"You will accept a different arrangement without any further notice at all," she said; "You will leave the premises and resign all management of my property from this day henceforward. I dismiss you, for disobedience and insolence, and for assaulting my servant, Spruce, in the execution of his duty. And as for these trees, if any man touches a bough of one of them without my permission, I will have him prosecuted! Now you know my mind!".

She sat proudly erect in her saddle, while the village hobbledehoys who had instinctively gathered round her, like steel shavings round a magnet, fairly gasped for breath. Oliver Leach dismissed! Oliver Leach, the petty tyrant, the carping, snarling jack-in-office, cast out like a handful of bad rubbish! It was like a thunderbolt fallen from heaven and riving the earth on which they stood! Bainton heard, and could scarcely keep back a chuckle of satisfaction. He longed to make Spruce understand what was going on, but that unfortunate individual was slightly stunned by Leach's heavy blow, and sitting on the grass with his head between his two hands, was gazing, in a kind of stupefaction at the 'new Missis'; so that any 'bellowing' into his ear was scarcely possible.

Leach himself stared blankly and incredulously,--his face crimsoned with a sudden rush of enraged blood and then paled again, and changing his former insolent tone for one both fawning and propitiatory, he stammered out:

"I am very sorry--I--I beg your pardon, Madam!--if you will give yourself a little time to consider, you will see I have done my duty on this property all the time I have been connected with it. I hope you will not dismiss me for the first fault!--I--I--admit I should not have struck Spruce,--but--I--I was taken by surprise--I--I know my business,--and I am not accustomed to be interfered with--" Here his pent-up anger got the better of him and he again began to bluster. "I have done my duty--no man better!" he said in fierce accents. "There's not an acre of woodland here that isn't in a better condition than it was ten years ago--Ah!--and bringing in more money too!--and now I am to be turned off for a parcel of village idiots who hardly know a beech from an elm! I'll make a case of it! Sir Morton Pippitt knows me--I'll speak to Sir Morton Pippitt--"

"Sir Morton Pippitt!" echoed Maryllia disdainfully; "What has he to do with me or my property?" Here she suddenly spied Walden, who, in his eagerness to hear every word that passed had, unconsciously to himself, moved well out of the sheltering shadow of the trees--"Are YOU Sir Morton Pippitt?"

A broad grin, deepening into a scarcely suppressed titter, Went the round of the gaping young rustics. Walden himself smiled,--and recognising that the time had now come to declare himself, he advanced a step or two and lifted his hat.

"I have not that pleasure! I am the minister of this parish, and my name is John Walden. I'm afraid I am rather a trespasser here!--but I have loved these old trees for many years, and I came up this morning,--having heard what your orders were from my gardener Bainton,--to see that those orders were properly carried out,--and also to save possible disturbance--"

He broke off. Maryllia, while he spoke, had eyed him somewhat critically, and now favoured him with a charming smile.

"Thank you very much!" she said sweetly; "It was most kind of you! I wonder--" And she paused, knitting her pretty brows in perplexity; "I wonder if you could get rid of everybody for me?"

He glanced up at her in a little wonderment.

"Could you?" she repeated.

He drew nearer.

"Get rid of everybody?--you mean?--"

She leaned confidentially from her saddle.

"Yes--YOU know! Send them all about their business! Clergymen can always do that, can't they? There's really nothing more to be said or done--the trees shall not be touched,--the matter is finished. Tell all these big boys to go away--and--oh, YOU know!"

A twinkle of merriment danced in Walden's eyes. But he turned quite a set and serious face round on the magnetised lads of the village, who hung about, loth to lose a single glance or a single word of the wonderful 'Missis' who had the audacious courage to dismiss Leach.

"Now, boys!" he said peremptorily; "Clear away home and begin your day's work! You're not wanted here any longer. The trees are safe,-- and you can tell everyone what Miss Vancourt says about them. Bainton! You take these fellows home,--Spruce had better go with you. Just call at the doctor's on the way and get his wound attended to. Come now, boys!--sharp's the word!"

A general scrambling movement followed this brief exordium. With shy awkwardness each young fellow lifted his cap as he shambled sheepishly past Maryllia, who acknowledged these salutes smilingly,- -Bainton assisted Spruce to rise to his feet, and then took him off under his personal escort,--and only Leach remained, convulsively gripping his dog-whip which he had picked up from the ground where the lads had thrown it,--and anon striking it against his boot with a movement of impatience and irritation.

"GOOD-morning, Mr. Leach!" said Walden pointedly. But Leach stood still, looking askance at Maryllia.

"Miss Vancourt," he said, hoarsely; "Am I to understand that you meant what you said just now?"

She glanced at him coldly.

"That I dismiss you from my service? Of course I meant it! Of course I mean it!"

"I am bound to have fair notice," he muttered. "I cannot collect all my accounts in a moment--"

"Whatever else you may do, you will leave this place at, once;" said Maryllia, firmly,--"I will communicate my decision to the solicitors and they will settle with you. No more words, please!"

She turned her mare slowly round on the grassy knoll, looking up meanwhile at the lovely canopy of tremulous young green above her head. John Walden watched her. So did Oliver Leach,--and with a sudden oath, rapped out like a discordant bomb bursting in the still air, he exclaimed savagely:

"You shall repent this, my fine lady! By God, you shall! You shall rue the day you ever saw Abbot's Manor again! You had far better have stayed with your rich Yankee relations than have made such a home-coming as this for yourself, and such an outgoing for me! My curse on you!"

Shaking his fist threateningly at her, he sprang down the knoll, and plunging through the grass and fern was soon lost to sight.

The soft colour in Maryllia's cheeks paled a little and a slight tremor ran through her frame. She looked at Walden,--then laughed carelessly.

"Guess I've given him fits!" she said, relapsing into one of her Aunt Emily's American colloquialisms, with happy unconsciousness that this particular phrase coming from her pretty lips sent a kind of shock through John's sensitive nerves. "He's not a very pleasant man to meet anyway! And it isn't altogether agreeable to be cursed on the first morning of my return home. But, after all, it doesn't matter much, as there's a clergyman present!" And her blue eyes. danced mischievously; "Isn't it lucky you came? You can stop that curse on its way and send it back like a homing pigeon, can't you? What do you say when you do it? 'Retro me Sathanas,' or something of that kind, isn't it? Whatever it is, say it now, won't you?"

Walden laughed,--he could not help laughing. She spoke, with such a whimsical flippancy, and she looked so bewitchingly pretty.

"Really, Miss Vancourt, I don't think I need utter any special formula on this occasion," he said, gaily. "You have done a good action to the whole community by dismissing Leach. Good actions bring their own reward, while curses, like chickens, come home to roost. Pray forgive me for quoting copybook maxims! But, for the curse of one ill-conditioned boor, you will have the thanks and blessings of all your tenantry. That will take the edge of the malediction; don't you think so?"

She turned her mare in the homeward direction, and began to guide it gently down the slope. Walking by her side, John held back one of the vast leafy boughs of the great trees to allow her to pass more easily, and glanced up at her smilingly as he put his question.

She met his eyes with an open frankness that somewhat disconcerted him.

"Well, I don't know about that!" she replied. "You see, in these days of telepathy and hypnotic suggestion, there may be something very catching about a curse. It's just like a little seed of disease;--if it falls on the right soil it germinates and spreads, and then all manner of wicked souls get the infection. I believe that in the old days everybody guessed this instinctively, without being able to express it scientifically,--and that's why they ran to the Church for protection agaiast curses, and the evil eye, and things of that sort. See how some of the old Scottish curses cling even to this day! The only way to take the sting out of a curse is to get it transposed"--and she smiled, glancing meditatively up into the brightening blue of the sky. "Like a song, you know! If it's too low for the voice you transpose it to a higher key. I daresay the Church was able to do that in the days when it had REAL faith--oh!-- I beg your pardon!--I ought not to say that to a man of your calling."

"Why not?" said Walden; "Pray say anything you like to me, Miss Vancourt;--I should be a very poor and unsatisfactory sort of creature if I could not bear any criticism on my vocation. Besides, I quite agree with you. The early Church had certainly more faith than it has now."

"You're not a bit like a parson," said Maryllia gravely, studying his face with embarrassing candour and closeness; "You look quite a nice pleasant sort of man."

John Walden laughed again,--this time with sincere heartiness. Maryllia's eyes twinkled, and little dimples came and went round her mouth and chin.

"You seem amused at that," she said; "But I've seen a great deal of life--and I have met heaps and heaps of parsons--parsons young and parsons old--and they were all horrid, simply horrid! Some talked Bible--and others talked the Sporting Times--any amount of them talked the drama, and played villains in private theatricals. I never met but one real minister,--that is a man who ministers to the poor,--and he died in a London slum before he was thirty. I believe he was a saint; and if he had lived in the days of the early Church, he would certainly have been canonised. He would have been Saint William--his name was William. But he was only one William,--I've seen hundreds of them."

"Hundreds of Williams?" queried Walden suggestively.

This time it was Maryllia who laughed,--a gay little laugh like that of a child.

"No, I guess not!" she answered; "Some of them are real Johnnies! Oh dear me!"--and again her laughter broke forth; "I quite forgot! You said YOUR name was John!"

"So it is." And he smiled; "I'm sorry you don't like it!"

She checked her merriment abruptly, and became suddenly serious.

"But I do like it! You mustn't think I don't. Oh, how rude I must seem to you! Please forgive me! I really do like the name of John!"

He glanced up at her, still smiling.

"Thank you! It's very kind of you to say so!"

"You believe me, don't you?" she said persistently.

"Of course I do! Of course I must! Though unhappily a Churchman, I am not altogether a heretic.'"

The smile deepened in his eyes,--and as she met his somewhat quizzical glance a slight wave of colour rose to her cheeks and brow. She drew herself up in her saddle with a sudden, proud movement and carried her little head a trifle higher. Walden looked at her now as he would have looked at a charming picture, without the least embarrassment. She appeared so extremely young to him. She awakened in his mind a feeling of kindly paternal interest, such as he might have felt for Susie Prescott or Ipsie Frost. He was not even quite sure that he considered her in any way out of the common, so far as her beauty was concerned,--though he recognised that she was almost the living image of 'the lady in the vi'let velvet' whose portrait adorned the gallery in Abbot's Manor. The resemblance was heightened by the violet colour of the riding dress she wore and the absence of any head-covering save her own pretty brown-gold hair.

"I'm glad I've saved the old trees," she said presently, checking her mare's pace, and looking back at the Five Sisters standing in unmolested grandeur on their grassy throne. "I feel a pleasant consciousness of having done something useful. They are beautiful! I haven't looked at them half enough. I shall come here all by myself this afternoon and bring a book and read under their lovely boughs. Just now I've only had time to cry 'rescue.'" She hesitated a moment, then added:" I'm very much obliged to you for your assistance, Mr. Walden!--and I'm glad you also like the trees. They shall never be touched in my lifetime, I assure you I--and I believe--yes, I believe I'll put something in my last will and testament about them--something binding, you know! Something that will set up a block in the way of land agents. Such trees as these ought to stand as long as Nature will allow them."

Walden was silent. Somehow her tone had changed from kind playfulness to ordinary formality, and her eyes rested upon him with a cool, slightly depreciatory expression. The mare was restless, and pawed the green turf impatiently.

"She longs for a gallop;" said Maryllia, patting the fine creature's glossy neck; "Don't you, Cleo? Her name is Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Isn't she a beauty?"

"She is indeed!" murmured Walden, with conventional politeness, though he scarcely glanced at the eulogised animal.

"She isn't a bit safe, you know," continued Maryllia; "Nobody can hold her but me! She's a perfectly magnificent hunter. I have another one who is gentleness itself, called Daffodil. My groom rides her. He could never ride Cleo." She paused, patting the mare's neck again,--then gathering up the reins in her small, loosely- gloved hand, she said: "Well, good-morning, Mr. Walden! It was most kind of you to get up so early and come to help defend my trees! I am ever so grateful to you! Pray call and see me at the Manor when you have nothing better to do. You will be very welcome!"

She nodded gracefully to him, and a few loose curls of lovely hair fell with the action like a web of sunbeams over her brow. Smiling, she tossed them back.

"Good-bye!" she called.

He raised his hat,--and in another moment the gallop of Cleopatra's swift hoofs thudded across the grass and echoed over the fields, gradually diminishing and dying away, as mare and rider disappeared within the enfolding green of the Manor woods. He stood for a while looking after the vanishing flash of violet, brown and gold, scudding over the turf and disappearing under the closely twisted boughs of budding oak and elm,--and then started to walk home himself. His face was a study of curiously mingled expressions. Surprise, amusement, and a touch of admiration struggled for the mastery in his mind, and he was compelled to admit to himself, albeit reluctantly, that the doubtfully-anticipated 'Squire-ess' was by no means the sort of person he had expected to see. Herein he was at one with Bainton.

"'Like a little sugar figure on a wedding-cake, looking sweet, and smiling pleasant!'" thought Walden, humorously recalling his gardener's description; "Scarcely that! She has a will of her own, and--possibly--a temper! A kind of spoilt child-woman, I should imagine; just the person to wear all the fripperies Mrs. Spruce was so anxious about the other day, and quite frivolous enough to squeeze her feet into shoes a couple of sizes too small for her. Beautiful? No,--her features are not regular enough for actual beauty. Pretty? Well,--perhaps she is!--in a certain sense,--but I'm no judge. Fascinating? Possibly she might be--to some men. She certainly has a sweet voice, and a very charming manner. And I don't think she is likely to be disagreeable or discourteous. But there is nothing remarkable about her--she's just a woman--with a bright smile,--and a touch of American vivacity running through her English insularity. Just a woman--with a way!"

And he strode on, his terrier trotting soberly at his heels. But he was on the whole glad he had met the lady of the Manor, because now he no longer felt any uneasiness concerning her. His curiosity was satisfied,--his instinctive dislike of her had changed to a kindly toleration, and his somewhat morbid interest in her arrival had quite abated. The 'Five Sisters' were saved--that was a good thing; and as for Miss Vancourt herself,--well!--she was evidently a harmless creature who would most likely play tennis and croquet all day and take very little interest in anything except herself.

"She will not interfere with me, nor I with her," said Walden with a sigh of satisfaction and relief; "And though we live in the same village, we shall be as far apart as the poles,--which is a great comfort'"

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XI

Meanwhile, Maryllia cantered home through the woods in complacent and lively humour. The first few hours of her return to the home of her forefathers had certainly not been lacking in interest and excitement. She had heard and granted a village appeal,--she had stopped an act of vandalism,--she had saved five of the noblest trees in England,--she had conquered the hearts of several village yokels,--she had thrust a tyrant out of office,--she had been cursed by the said tyrant, a circumstance which was, to say the very least of it, quite new to her experience and almost dramatic,--and,--she had 'made eyes' at a parson! Surely this was enough adventure for one morning, especially as it was not yet eight o'clock. The whole day had yet to come; possibly she might be involved later on in still more thrilling and sensational episodes,--who could tell! She carolled a song for pure gaiety of heart, and told the rustling leaves and opening flowers in very charmingly pronounced French that

"Votre coeur a beau se defendre De s'enflammer,--Le moment vient, il faut se rendre, Il faut aimer!"

Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, curveted and pranced daintily at every check imposed on her rein, as became an equine royalty,--she was conscious of the elastic turf under her hoofs, and glad of the fresh pure air in her nostrils,--and her mistress shared with her the sense of freedom and buoyancy which an open country and fair landscape must naturally inspire in those to whom life is a daily and abounding vigorous delight, not a mere sickly brooding over the past, or a morbid anticipation of the future. The woods surrounding Abbot's Manor were by no means depressing,--they were not dark silent vistas of solemn pine, leading into deeper and deeper gloom, but cheery and picturesque clumps of elm and beech and oak, at constant intervals with hazel-copse, hawthorn and eglantine,--true English woods, suggestive of delicate romance and poesy, and made magical by the songs of birds, whose silver-throated melodies are never heard to sweeter advantage than under the leafy boughs of such unspoilt green lanes and dells as yet remain to make the charm and glamour of rural England. Primroses peeped out in smiling clusters from every mossy nook, and the pale purple of a myriad violets spread a wave of soft colour among the last year's fallen leaves, which had served good purpose in keeping the tender buds warm till Spring should lift them from their earth-cradles into full-grown blossom. Maryllia's bright eyes, glancing here and there, saw and noted a thousand beauties at every turn,--the chains of social convention and ordinance had fallen from her soul, and a joyous pulse of freedom quickened her blood and sent it dancing through her veins in currents of new exhilaration and vitality. With her multi- millionaire aunt, she had lived a life of artificial constraint, against which, despite its worldly brilliancy, her inmost and best instincts had always more or less rebelled;--now,--finding herself alone, as it were, with Mother Nature, she sprang like a child to that great maternal bosom, and nestled there with a sense of glad refreshment and peace.

"What dear wildflowers!" she murmured now, as restraining Cleopatra's coquettish gambols, she rode more slowly along, and spied the bluebells standing up among tangles of green, making exquisite contrast with the golden glow of aconites and the fragile white of wood-anemones,--"They are ever so much prettier than the hot-house things one gets any day in Paris and London! Big forced roses,--great lolling, sickly-scented lilies, and orchids--oh dear! how tired I am of orchids! Every evening a bouquet of orchids for five weeks--Sundays NOT excepted,--shall I ever forget the detestable 'rare specimens'!"

A little frown puckered her brow, and for a moment the lines of her pretty mouth drooped and pouted with a quaintly petulant expression, like that of a child going to cry.

"It was complete persecution!" she went on, crooning her complaints to herself and patting Cleopatra's arched neck by way of accompaniment to her thoughts--"Absolute dodging and spying round corners after the style of a police detective. I just hate a lover who makes his love, if it is love, into a kind of whip to flog your poor soul with! Roxmouth here, Roxmouth there, Roxmouth everywhere!- -he was just like the water in the Ancient Mariner 'and not a drop to drink.' At the play, at the Opera, in the picture-galleries, at the races, at the flower-shows, at all the 'crushes' and big functions,--in London, in Paris, in New York, in St. Petersburg, in Vienna,--always 'ce cher Roxmouth'--as Aunt Emily said;--money no consideration, distance no object,--always 'ce cher Roxmouth,' stiff as a poker, clean as fresh paint, and apparently as virtuous as an old maid,--with all his aristocratic family looming behind him, and a long ancestry of ghosts in the shadow of time, extending away back to some Saxon 'nobles,' who no doubt were coarse barbarians that ate more raw meat than was good for them, and had to be carried to bed dead drunk on mead! It IS so absurd to boast of one's ancestry! If we could only just see the dreadful men who began all the great families, we should be perfectly ashamed of them! Most of them tore up their food with their fingers. Now we Vancourts are supposed to be descended from a warrior bold, named Robert Priaulx de Vaignecourt, who fought in the Crusades. Poor Uncle Fred used to be so proud of that! He was always talking about it, especially when we were in America. He liked to try and make the Pilgrim-Father- families jealous. Just as he used to boast that if he had only been born three minutes before my father, instead of three minutes after, he would have been the owner of Abbot's Manor. That three minutes' delay and consideration he took about coming into the world made him the youngest twin, and cut off his chances. And he told me that Robert the Crusader had a brother named Osmond, who was believed to have founded a monastery somewhere in this neighbourhood, and who died, so the story goes, during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, though there's no authentic trace left of either Osmond or Robert anywhere. They might, of course, have been very decent and agreeable men,--but it's rather doubtful. If Osmond went on a pilgrimage he would never have washed himself, to begin with,--it would have destroyed his sanctity. And as for Robert the warrior bold, he would have been dreadfully fierce and hairy,--and I'm quite sure I could not possibly have asked him to dinner!"

She laughed at her own fancies, and guided her mare under a drooping canopy of early-flowering wild acacia, just for the sheer pleasure of springing lightly up in her saddle to pull off a tuft of scented white blossom.

"The fact is," she continued half aloud, "there's nobody I can ask to dinner even now as it is. Not down here. The local descriptions of Sir Morton Pippitt do not tempt me to make his acquaintance, and as for the parson I met just now,-why he would be impossible!-- simply impossible!" she repeated with emphasis--" I can see exactly what he's like at a glance. One of those cold, quiet, clever men who 'quiz' women and never admire them,--I know the kind of horrid University creature! A sort of superior, touch-me-not-person who can barely tolerate a woman's presence in the room, and in his heart of hearts relegates the female sex generally to the lowest class of the animal creation. I can read it all in his face. He's rather good- looking--not very,--his hair curls quite nicely, but it's getting grey, and so is his moustache,--he must be at least fifty, I should think. He has a good figure--for a clergyman;--and his eyes--no, I'm not sure that I like his eyes--I believe they're deceitful. I must look at them again before I make up my mind. But I know he's just as conceited and disagreeable as most parsons--he probably thinks that he helps to turn this world and the next round on his little finger,--and I daresay he tells the poor village folk here that if they don't obey him, they'll go to hell, and if they do, they'll fly straight to heaven and put on golden crowns at once. Dear me! What a ridiculous state of things! Fancy the dear old man in the smock who came to see me last night, with a pair of wings and a crown!"

Laughing again, she flicked Cleopatra's neck with the reins, and started off at an easy swinging gallop, turning out of the woods into the carriage drive, and never checking her pace till she reached the house.

All that day she gave marked evidence that her reign as mistress of Abbot's Manor had begun in earnest. Changing her riding dress for a sober little tailor-made frock of home-spun, she flitted busily over the old house of her ancestors, visiting it in every part, peering into shadowy corners, opening antique presses and cupboards, finding out the secret of sliding panels in the Jacobean oak that covered the walls, and leaving no room unsearched. The apartment in which her father's body had lain in its coffin was solemnly unlocked and disclosed to her view under the title of 'the Ghost Room,'--whereat she was sorrowfully indignant,--so much so indeed that Mrs. Spruce shivered in her shoes, pricked by the sting of a guilty conscience, for, if the truth be told, it was to Mrs. Spruce's own too-talkative tongue that this offending name owed its origin. Quietly entering the peaceful chamber with its harmless and almost holy air of beautiful, darkened calm, Maryllia drew up the blinds, threw back the curtains, and opened the latticed windows wide, admitting a flood of sunshine and sweet air.

"It must never be called 'the Ghost Room' again,"--she said, with a reproachful gravity, which greatly disconcerted and overawed Mrs. Spruce--"otherwise it will have an evil reputation which it does not deserve. There is nothing ghostly or terrifying about it. It is a sacred room,--sacred to the memory of one of the dearest and best of men! It is wrong to let such a room be considered as haunted,--I shall sleep in it myself sometimes,--and I shall make it bright and pretty for visitors when they come. I would put a little child to sleep in it,--for my father was a good man, and nothing evil can ever be associated with him. Death is only dreadful to the ignorant and the wicked."

Mrs. Spruce wisely held her peace, and dutifully followed her new mistress to the morning-room, where she had to undergo what might be called quite a stiff examination regarding all the household and housekeeping matters. Armed with a fascinating little velvet-bound notebook and pencil, Maryllia put down all the names of the different servants, both indoor and outdoor (making a small private mark of her own against those who had served her father in any capacity, and those who were just new to the place), together with the amount of wages due every month to each,--she counted over all the fine house linen, much of which had been purchased for her mother's home-coming and had never been used;--she examined with all a connoisseur's admiration the almost priceless old china with which the Manor shelves, dressers and cupboards were crowded,--and finally after luncheon and an hour's deep cogitation by herself in the library, she wrote out in a round clerkly hand certain 'rules and regulations,' for the daily routine of her household, and handed the document to Mrs. Spruce,--much to that estimable dame's perturbation and astonishment.

"These are my hours, Spruce," she said--"And it will of course be your business to see that the work is done punctually and with proper method. There must be no waste or extravagance,--and you will bring me all the accounts every week, as I won't have bills running up longer than that period. I shall leave all the ordering in of provisions to you,--if it ever happens that you send something to table which I don't like, I will tell you, and the mistake need not occur again. Now is there anything else?"--and she paused meditatively, finger on lip, knitting her brows--"You see I've never done any housekeeping, but I've always had notions as to how I should do it if I ever got the chance to try, and I'm just beginning. I believe in method,--and I like everything that HAS a place to be in IN its place, and everything that HAS a time, to come up to its time. It saves ever so much worry and trouble! Now let me think!--oh yes!--I knew there was another matter. Please let the gardeners and outdoor men generally know that if they want to speak to me, they can always see me from ten to half-past every morning. And, by the way, Spruce, tell the maids to go about their work quietly,--there is nothing more objectionable than a noise and fuss in the house just because a room is being swept and turned out. I simply hate it! In the event of any quarrels or complaints, please refer them to me--and--and--" Here she paused again with a smile-- "Yes! I think that's all--for the present! I haven't yet gone through the library or the picture-gallery;--however those rooms have nothing to do with the ordinary daily housekeeping,--if I find anything wanting to be done there, I'll send for you again. But that's about all now!"

Poor Mrs. Spruce curtseyed deferentially and tremulously. She was not going to have it all her own way as she had fondly imagined when she first saw the apparently child-like personality of her new lady. The child-like personality was merely the rose-flesh covering of a somewhat determined character.

"And anything I can do for you, Spruce, or for your husband," continued Maryllia, dropping her business-like tone for one of as coaxing a sweetness as ever Shakespeare's Juliet practised for the persuasion of her too tardy Nurse--"will be done with ever so much pleasure! You know that, don't you?" And she laid her pretty little hands on the worthy woman's portly shoulders--"You shall go out whenever you like--after work, of course!--duty first, pleasure second!--and you shall even grumble, if you feel like it,--and have your little naps when the midday meal is done with,--Aunt Emily's housekeeper in London used to have them, and she snored dreadfully! the second footman--QUITE a nice lad--used to tickle her nose with a straw! But I can't afford to keep a second footman--one is quite enough,--or a coachman, or a carriage;--besides, I would always rather ride than drive,--and my groom, Bennett, will only want a stable-boy to help him with Cleo and Daffodil. So I hope there'll be no one downstairs to tease you, Spruce dear, by tickling YOUR nose with a straw! Primmins looks much too staid and respectable to think of such a thing."

She laughed merrily,--and Mrs. Spruce for the life of her could not help laughing too. The picture of Primmins condescending to indulge in a game of 'nose and straw' was too grotesque to be considered with gravity.

"Well I never, Miss!" she ejaculated--"You do put things that funny!"

"Do I? I'm so glad!" said Maryllia demurely--"it's nice to be funny to other people, even if you're not funny to yourself! But I want you to understand from the first, Spruce, that everyone must feel happy and contented in my household. So if anything goes wrong, you must tell me, and I will try and set it right. Now I'm going for an hour's walk with Plato, and when I come in, and have had my tea, I'll visit the picture-gallery. I know all about it,--Uncle Fred told me,"--she paused, and her eyes darkened with a wistful and deepening gravity,--then she added gently--"I shall not want you there, Spruce,--I must be quite alone."

Mrs. Spruce again curtseyed humbly, and was about to withdraw, when Maryllia called her back.

"What about the clergyman here, Mr. Walden?"--she asked--"Is he a nice man?--kind to the village people, I mean, and good to the poor?"

Mrs. Spruce gave a kind of ecstatic gasp, folded her fat hands tightly together in front of her voluminous apron, and launched forth straightway on her favourite theme.

"Mr. Walden is jest one of the finest men God ever made, Miss," she said, with solemnity and unction--"You may take my word for it! He's that good, that as we often sez, if m'appen there ain't no saint in the Sarky an' nowt but dust, we've got a real live saint walkin' free among us as is far more 'spectable to look at in his plain coat an' trousers than they monks an' friars in the picter-books wi' ropes around their waistses an' bald crowns, which ain't no sign to me o' bein' full o' grace, but rather loss of 'air,--an' which you will presently see yourself, Miss, as 'ow Mr. Walden's done the church beautiful, like a dream, as all the visitors sez, which there isn't its like in all England--an' he's jest a father to the village an' friends with every man, woman, an' child in it, an' grudges nothink to 'elp in cases deservin', an' works like a nigger, he do, for the school, which if he'd 'ad a wife it might a' been better an' it might a' been worse, the Lord only knows, for no woman would a' come up 'ere an' stood that patient watchin' me an' my work, an' I tell you truly, Miss Maryllia, that when your boxes came an' I had to unpack 'em an' sort the clothes in 'em, I sent for Passon Walden jest to show 'im that I felt my 'sponsibility, an' he sez, sez he: 'You go on doin' your duty, Missis Spruce, an' your lady will be all right'--an' though I begged 'im to stop, he wouldn't while I was a- shakin' out your dresses with Nancy--"

Here she was interrupted by a ringing peal of laughter from Maryllia, who, running up to her, put a little hand on her mouth.

"Stop, stop, Spruce!" she exclaimed--"Oh dear, oh dear I Do you think I can understand all this? Did you show the parson my clothes- -actually? You did!" For Mrs. Spruce nodded violently in the affirmative. "Good gracious! What a perfectly dreadful thing to do!" And she laughed again. "And what is the saint in the Sarky?" Here she removed her hand from the mouth she was guarding. "Say it in one word, if you can,--what is the Sarky?"

"It's in the church,"--said Mrs. Spruce, dauntlessly proceeding with her flow of narrative, and encouraged thereto by the sparkling mirth in her mistress's face--"We calls it Sarky for short. Josey Letherbarrow, what reads, an' 'as larnin', calls it the Sarky Fagus, an' my Kitty, she's studied at the school, an' SHE sez 'it's Sar-KO- fagus, mother,' which it may be or it mayn't, for the schools don't know more than the public-'ouses in my opinion,--leastways it's a great long white coffin what's supposed to 'ave the body of a saint inside it, an' Mr. Walden he discovered it when he was rebuildin' the church, an' when the Bishop come to conskrate it, he sez 'twas a saint in there an' that's why the village is called St. Rest--but you'll find it all out yourself. Miss, an' as I sez an' I don't care who 'ears me, the real saint ain't in the Sarky at all,--it's just Mr. Walden himself,--"

Again Maryllia's hand closed her mouth.

"You really must stop, Spruce! You are the dearest old gabbler possible--but you must stop! You'll have no breath left--and I shall have no patience! I've heard quite enough. I met Mr. Walden this morning, and I'm sure he isn't a saint at all! He's a very ordinary person indeed,--most ordinary--not in the very least remarkable. I'm. glad he's good to the people, and that they like him--that's really all that's necessary, and it's all I want to know. Go along, Spruce!--don't talk to me any more about saints in the Sarky or out of the Sarky! There never was a real saint in the world--never!--not in the shape of a man!"

With laughter still dancing in her eyes, she turned away, and Mrs. Spruce, in full possession of restored nerve and vivacity, bustled off on her round of household duty, the temporary awe she had felt concerning the new written code of domestic 'Rules and Regulations' having somewhat subsided under the influence of her mistress's gay good-humour. And Maryllia herself, putting on her hat, called Plato to her side, and started off for the village, resolved to make the church her first object of interest, in order to see the wondrous 'Sarky.'

"I never was so much entertained in my life!" she declared to herself, as she walked lightly along,--her huge dog bounding in front of her and anon returning to kiss her hand and announce by deep joyous barks his delight at finding himself at liberty in the open country--"Spruce is a perfect comedy in herself,--ever so much better than a stage play! And then the quaint funny men who came to see me last night,--and those village boys this morning! And the 'saintly' parson! I'm sure he'll turn out to be comic too,--in a way--he'll be the 'heavy father' of the piece! Really I never imagined I should have so much fun!"

Here, spying a delicate pinnacle gleaming through the trees, she rightly concluded that it belonged to the church she intended to visit, and finding a footpath leading across the fields, she followed it. It was the same path which Walden had for so many years been accustomed to take in his constant walks to and from the Manor. It soon brought her to the highroad which ran through the village, and across this it was but a few steps to the gate of the churchyard. Laying one hand on her dog's neck, she checked the great creature's gambols and compelled him to walk sedately by her side, as with hushed footsteps she entered the 'Sleepy Hollow' of death's long repose, and went straight up to the church door which, as usual, stood open.

"Stay here, Plato!" she whispered to her four-footed comrade, who, understanding the mandate, lay down at once submissively in the porch to wait her pleasure.

Entering the sacred shrine she stood still,--awed by its exquisite beauty and impressive simplicity. The deep silence, the glamour of the soft vari-coloured light that flowed through the lancet windows on either side,--the open purity of the nave, without any disfiguring pews or fixed seats to mar its clear space,--(for the chairs which were used at service were all packed away in a remote corner out of sight)--the fair, slender columns, springing up into flowering capitals, like the stems of palms breaking into leaf- coronals,--the dignified plainness of the altar, with that strange white sarcophagus set in front of it,--all these taken together, composed a picture of sweet sanctity and calm unlike anything she had ever seen before. Her emotional nature responded to the beautiful in all things, and this small perfectly designed House of Prayer, with its unknown saintly occupant at rest within its walls, touched her almost to tears. Stepping on tip-toe up to the altar- rails, she instinctively dropped on her knees, while she read all that could be seen of the worn inscription on the sarcophagus from that side-'In Resurrectione--Sanctorum--Resurget.' The atmosphere around her seemed surcharged with mystical suggestions,--a vague poetic sense of the super-human and divine moved her to a faint touch of fear, and made her heart beat more quickly than its wont.

"It is lovely--lovely!" she murmured under her breath, as she rose from her kneeling attitude--"The whole church is a perfect gem of architecture! I have never seen anything more beautiful in its way,- -not even the Chapel of the Thorn at Pisa. And according to Mrs. Spruce's account, the man I met this morning--the quizzical parson with the grey-brown curly-locks, did it all at his own expense--he must really be quite clever,--such an unusual thing for a country clergyman!"

She took another observant survey of the whole building, and then went out again into the churchyard. There she paused, her dog beside her, shading her eyes from the sun as she looked wistfully from right to left across the sadly suggestive little hillocks of mossy turf besprinkled with daisies, in search of an object which was as a landmark of disaster in her life.

She saw it at last, and moved slowly towards it,--a plain white marble cross, rising from a smooth grassy eminence, where a rambling rose, carefully and even artistically trained, was just beginning to show pale creamy buds among its glossy dark green leaves. Great tears rose to her eyes and fell unheeded, as she read the brief inscription--'Sacred to the Memory of Robert Vancourt of Abbot's Manor,' this being followed by the usual dates of birth and death, and the one word 'Resting.' With tender touch Maryllia gathered one leaf from the climbing rose foliage, and kissing it amid her tears, turned away, unable to bear the thoughts and memories which began to crowd thickly upon her. Almost she seemed to hear her father's deep mellow voice which had been the music of her childhood, playfully saying as was so often his wont:--"Well, my little girl! How goes the world with you?" Alas, the world had gone very ill with her for a long, long time after his death! Hers was too loving and passionately clinging a nature to find easy consolation for such a loss. Her uncle Frederick, though indulgent to her and always kind, had never filled her father's place,--her uncle Frederick's American wife, had, in spite of much conscientious tutelage and chaperonage, altogether failed to win her affection or sympathy. The sorrowful sense that she was an orphan, all alone as it were with herself to face the mystery of life, never deserted her,--and it was perhaps in the most brilliant centres of society that this consciousness of isolation chiefly weighed upon her. She saw other girls around her with their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters,--but she--she, by the very act of being born had caused her mother's death,--and she well knew that her father's heart, quietly as he had endured his grief to all outward appearances, had never healed of that agonising wound.

"I think I should never have come into the world at all,"--she said to herself with a sigh, as she returned over the fields to the Manor--"I am no use to anybody,--I never have been of any use! Aunt Emily says all I have to do to show my sense of proper feeling and gratitude to her for her care of me is to marry--and marry well-- marry Lord Roxmouth, in short--he will be a duke when his father dies, and Aunt Emily would like to have the satisfaction of leaving her millions to enrich an English dukedom. Nothing could commend itself more favourably to her ideas--only it just happens my ideas won't fit in the same groove. Oh dear! Why can't I be 'amenable' and become a future duchess, and 'build up' the fortunes of a great family? I don't know I'm sure,--except that I don't feel like it! Great families don't appeal to me. I shouldn't care if there were none left. They are never interesting at the best of times,--perhaps out of several of them may come one clever man or woman,--and all the rest will be utter noodles. It isn't worth while to marry Roxmouth on such dubious grounds of possibility!"

Entering the Manor, she was conscious of some fatigue and listlessness,--a touch of depression weighed down her naturally bright spirits. She exchanged her home-spun walking dress for a tea- gown, and descended somewhat languidly to the morning-room where tea was served with more ceremoniousness than on the previous day, Primmins having taken command, with the assistance of the footman. Both men-servants stole respectful glances at their mistress, as she sat pensively alone at the open window, looking out on the verdant landscape that spread away from the terrace, in undulations of lawn, foliage and field to the last border of trees that closed in Abbot's Manor grounds from the public highway. Both would have said had they been asked, that she was much too pretty and delicate to be all alone in the great old house, with no companion of her own age to exchange ideas with by speech or glance,--and, with that masculine self-assurance which is common to all the lords of creation, whether they be emperors or household domestics, they would have opined that 'she ought to be married.' In which they would have entirely agreed with Maryllia's 'dragon' Aunt Emily. But Maryllia's own mind was far from being set on such themes as love and marriage. Her meditations were melancholy, and not unmixed with self-reproach. She blamed herself for having stayed away so long from her childhood's home, and her father's grave.

"I might have visited it at least once a year!" she thought with sharp compunction--"I never really forgot,--why did I seem to forget?"

The sun was sinking slowly in a glory of crimson and amber cloud, when, having resolved upon what she was going to do, she entered the picture-gallery. Softly she trod the polished floor,--with keen quick instinct and appreciative eyes, she noted the fine Vandyke portraits,--the exquisite Greuze that shone out, star-like, from a dark corner of the panelled walls,--and walking with measured pace she went straight up to the picture of 'Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt'--and gazed at it with friendly and familiar eyes.

"I know YOU quite well!"--she said, addressing the painted beauty-- "I have often dreamed about you since I left home! I always admired you and wanted to be like you. I remember when I must have been about seven or eight years old, I ran in from a game in the garden one summer's afternoon, and I knelt down in front of you and I said: 'Pray God make little Maryllia as pretty as big Mary Elia!' And I think,--I really do think--though of course I'm not half or quarter as pretty, I'm just a little like you! Just a very, very little! For instance my hair is the same colour--almost--and my eyes--no! I'm sure I haven't such beautiful eyes as yours--I wish I had!"

Her lovely ancestress appeared to smile,--if she could have spoken from the canvas that held her painted image she might have said:-- "You have eyes that mirror the sunshine,--you have life, and I am dead,--your day is still with you--mine is done! For me love and the world's delight are ended,--and whither my phantom fairness has fled, who knows! But you are a vital breathing essence of beauty--be glad and rejoice in it while you may!"

Some thought of this kind would have suggested itself to an imaginative beholder had such an one stood by to compare the picture with its almost twin living copy. Maryllia however had a very small stock of vanity,--she was only pleasantly aware that she possessed a certain grace and fascination not common to the ordinary of her sex, but beyond that, she rated her personal charms at very slight value. The portrait of Mary Elia Adelgisa made her more seriously discontented with herself than ever,--and after closely studying the picturesque make of the violet velvet riding-dress which the fair one of Charles the Second's day had worn, and deciding that she would have one 'created' for her own adornment exactly like it, she turned towards the other end of the gallery. There hung that preciously guarded mysterious portrait of her dead mother, which she herself had never gazed upon, covered close with its dark green baize curtain,--a curtain no hand save her father's had ever dared to raise. She remembered how often he had used to enter here all alone and lock the doors, remaining thus in sorrow and solitude many hours. She recalled her own childish fears when, by chance running in to look at the pictures for her own entertainment, or to play with her ball on a rainy day for the convenience of space and a lofty ceiling, she was suddenly checked and held in awe by the sight of that great gilded frame enshrining the, to her, unknown presentment of a veiled Personality. Her father alone was familiar with the face hidden behind that covering which he had put up with his own hands,--fastening it by means of a spring pulley, which in its turn was secured to the wall by lock and key. Ever since his death Maryllia had worn that key on a gold chain hidden in her bosom, and she drew it out now with a beating heart and many tremours of hesitation. The trailing folds of her pretty tea-gown, all of the filmiest old lace and ivory-hued cashmere, seemed to make an obtrusive noise as they softly swept the floor,--she felt almost as though she were about to commit a sacrilege and break open a shrine,--yet--

"I must see her!" she said, whisperingly--"I shall not offend her memory. I have never done anything very wrong in my life,--if I had, I should have reason to be afraid--or ashamed,--and then of course wouldn't dare to look at her. I have often been silly and frivolous and thoughtless,--but never spiteful or malicious, or really wicked. I could meet my father if he were here, just as frankly as if I were still a little girl,--and I think he would wish me to see his Dearest now! His Dearest! He always called her that!"

With the breath coming and going quickly through her parted lips, she stepped slowly and timidly up to that corner in the wall behind the picture, where the fastenings of the spring pulley were concealed, and fitted the key into the padlock which guarded it. The light of the setting sun threw a flame of glory aslant through the windows, and filled the gallery with a warm rush of living colour and radiance; and as she removed the padlock, and came to the front of the picture to pull the curtain-cord, she stood, unconsciously to herself, in a pure halo of gold, which intensified the brown and amber shades of her hair and the creamy folds of her gown, so that she resembled 'an angel newly drest, save wings, for heaven,' such as one may see delineated on the illuminated page of some antique missal. Her hand trembled, as at the first touch on the pulley the curtain began to move,--inch by inch it ascended, showing pale glimmerings of white and rose,--still higher it moved, giving to the light a woman's beautiful hand, so delicately painted as to seem almost living. The hand held a letter, and plainly on the half unfolded scroll could be read the words:

"Thine till death, ROBERT VANCOURT."

Another touch, and the whole covering rolled up swiftly to its full height,--while Maryllia breathless with excitement and interest gazed with all her soul in her eyes at the exquisite, dreamy, poetic loveliness of the face disclosed. All the beauty of girlhood with the tenderness of womanhood,--all the visions of young romance, united to the fulfilled passion of the heart,--all the budding happiness of a radiant life,-all the promise of a perfect love;-- these were faithfully reflected in the purely moulded features, the dark blue caressing eyes, and the sweet mouth, which to Maryllia's fervid imagination appeared to tremble plaintively with a sigh of longing for the joy of life that had been snatched away so soon. Arrayed in simplest white, with a rose at her breast, and her husband's letter clasped in her hand, the fair form of the young bride that never came home gathered from the sunset-radiance an aspect of life, and seemed to float forth from the dark canvas like a holy spirit of beauty and blessing. Shadow and Substance--dead mother and living child--these twain gazed on each other through cloud-veils of impenetrable mystery,--nor is it impossible to conceive that some intangible contact between them might, through the transference of a thought, a longing, a prayer, have been realised at that mystic moment. With a sudden cry of irresistible emotion Maryllia stretched out her arms, and dropping on her knees, broke out into a passion of tears.

"Oh mother, mother!" she sobbed--"Oh darling mother! I would have loved you!"

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XII

In such wise, under the silent benediction of the lost loving dead, the long-deserted old Manor received back the sole daughter of its ancestry to that protection which we understand, or did understand at one time in our history, as 'Home.' Home was once a safe and sacred institution in England. There seemed no likelihood of its ever being supplanted by the public restaurant. That it has, in a great measure, been so supplanted, is no advantage to the country, and that many women, young and old, prefer to be seen in gregarious over-dressed hordes, taking their meals in Piccadilly eating-houses, rather than essay the becoming grace of a simple and sincere hospitality to their friends in their own homes, is no evidence of their improved taste or good breeding. Abbot's Manor was in every sense 'Home' in the old English sense of the word. Its ancient walls, hallowed by long tradition, formed a peaceful and sweet harbour of rest for a woman's life,--and the tranquil dignity of her old-world surroundings with all the legends and memories they awakened, soon had a beneficial effect on Maryllia's impressionable temperament, which, under her aunt's 'social' influence, had been more or less chafed and uneasy. She began to feel at peace with herself and all the world,--while the relief she experienced at having deliberately severed herself by both word and act from the undesired attentions of a too-persistent and detested lover in the person of Lord Roxmouth, future Duke of Ormistonne, was as keen and pleasurable as that of a child who has run away from school. She was almost confident that the fact of her having thrown off her aunt's protection together with all hope of inheriting her aunt's wealth, would be sufficient to keep him away from her for the future. "For it is Aunt Emily's money he wants--not me;" she said to herself--"He doesn't care a jot about me personally--any woman will do, provided she has the millions. And when he knows I've given up the millions, and don't intend ever to have the millions, he'll leave me alone. And he'll go over to America in search of somebody else--some proud daughter of oil or pork or steel!--and what a blessing that will be!"

Meanwhile, such brief excitement as had been caused in St. Rest by the return of 'th' owld Squire's gel' and by the almost simultaneous dismissal of Oliver Leach, had well-nigh abated. A new agent had been appointed, and though Leach had left the immediate vicinity, having employment on Sir Morton Pippitt's lands, he had secured a cottage for himself in the small outlying hamlet of Badsworth. He also undertook some work for the Reverend 'Putty' Leveson in assisting him to form an entomological collection for the private museum at Badsworth Hall. Mr. Leveson had a singular fellow-feeling for insects,--he studied their habits, and collected specimens of various kinds in bottles, or 'pinned' them on cardboard trays,--he was an interested observer of the sprightly manners practised by the harvest-bug, and the sagacious customs of the ruminating spider,--as well as the many surprising and agreeable talents developed by the common flea. Leach's virulent hatred of Maryllia Vancourt was not lessened by the apparently useful and scientific nature of the employment he had newly taken up under the guidance of his reverend instructor,--and whenever he caught a butterfly and ran his murderous pin through its quivering body at Leveson's bland command, he thought of her, and wished vindictively that she might perish as swiftly and utterly as the winged lover of the flowers. Every small bright thing in Nature's garden that he slew and brought home as trophy, inspired him with the same secret fierce desire. The act of killing a beautiful or harmless creature gave him pleasure, and he did not disguise it from himself. The Reverend 'Putty' was delighted with his aptitude, and with the many valuable additions he made to the 'specimen' cards and bottles, and the two became constant companions in their search for fresh victims among the blossoming hedgerows and fields. St. Rest, as a village, was only too glad to be rid of Leach's long detested presence to care anything at all as to his further occupations or future career,--and only Bainton kept as he said 'an eye on him.'

Bainton was a somewhat curious personage,--talkative as he showed himself on most occasions, he was both shrewd and circumspect; no stone was more uncommunicative than he when he chose. In his heart he had set Maryllia Vancourt as second to none save his own master, John Walden,--her beauty and grace, her firm action with regard to the rescue of the 'Five Sisters,' and her quick dismissal of Oliver Leach, had all inspired him with the most unbounded admiration and respect, and he felt that he now had a double interest in life,--the 'Passon'--and the 'lady of the Manor.' But he found very little opportunity to talk about his new and cherished theme of Miss Vancourt and Miss Vancourt's many attractions to Walden,--for John always 'shut him up' on the subject with quite a curt and peremptory decision whenever be so much as mentioned her name. Which conduct on the part of one who was generally so willing to hear and patient to listen, somewhat surprised Bainton.

"For," he argued--"there ain't much doin' in the village,--we ain't always 'on the go'--an' when a pretty face comes among us, surely it's worth looking at an' pickin' to pieces as 'twere. But Passon's that sharp on me when I sez any little thing wot might be interestin' about the lady, that I'm thinkin' he's got out o' the habit o' knowin' when a face is a male or a female one, which is wot often happens to bacheldors when they gits fixed like old shrubs in one pertikler spot o' ground. Now I should a' said he'd a' bin glad to 'ear of somethin' new an' oncommon as 'twere,--he likes it in the way o' flowers, an' why not in the way o' wimmin? But Passon ain't like other folk--he don't git on with wimmin nohow--an' the prettier they are the more he seems skeered off them."

But such opinions as Bainton entertained concerning his master, he kept to himself, and having once grasped the fact that any mention of Miss Vancourt's ways or Miss Vancourt's looks appeared to displease rather than to entertain the Reverend John, he avoided the subject altogether. This course of action on his part, if the truth must be told, was equally annoying to Walden, who was in the curious mental condition of wishing to know what he declined to hear.

For the rest, the village generally grew speedily accustomed to the presence of the mistress of the Manor. She had fulfilled her promise of paying a visit to Josey Letherbarrow, and had sat with the old man in his cottage, talking to him for the better part of two hours. Rumour asserted that she had even put the kettle on the fire for him, and had made his tea. Josey himself was reticent,--and beyond the fact that he held up his head with more dignity, and showed a touch of more conscious superiority in his demeanour, he did not give himself away by condescending to narrate any word of the lengthy interview that had taken place between himself and 'th' owld Squire's little gel.' One remarkable thing was noticed by the villagers and commented upon,--Miss Vancourt had now passed two Sundays in their midst, and had never once attended church. Her servants were always there at morning service, but she herself was absent. This occasioned much whispering and head-shaking in the little community, and one evening the subject was openly discussed in the bar-room of the 'Mother Huff' by a group of rustic worthies whose knowledge of matters theological and political was, by themselves, considered profound. Mrs. Buggins had started the conversation, and Mrs. Buggins was well known to be a lady both pious and depressing. She presided over her husband's 'public' with an air of meek resignation, not unmixed with sorrowful protest,--she occasionally tasted the finer cordials in the bar-room, and was often moved to gentle tears at the excellence of their flavour,--she had a chronic 'stitch in the side,' and a long smooth pale yellow countenance from which the thin grey hair was combed well back from the temples in the frankly unbecoming fashion affected by the provincial British matron. She begun her remarks by plaintively opining that "it was a very strange thing not to see Miss Vancourt at church, on either of the Sundays that had passed since her return--very strange! Perhaps she was 'High'? Perhaps she had driven into Riversford to attend the 'processional' service of the Reverend Francis Anthony?"

"Perhaps she ain't done nothing of the sort!"--growled a thick-set burly farmer, who with a capacious mug of ale before him was sucking at his pipe with as much zeal as a baby at its bottle--"Ef you cares for my 'pinion, which, m'appen you doan't, she's neither Low nor 'Igh. She's no Seck. If she h'longed to a Seck, she wouldn't be readin' on a book under the Five Sisters last Sunday marnin' when the bells was a-ringin' for church time. I goes past 'er, an' I sez 'Marnin,' mum!' an' she looks up smilin'-like, an' sez she: 'Good- marnin!' Nice day, isn't it?' 'Splendid day, mum,' sez I, an' she went on readin', an' I went on a walkin'. I sez then, and I sez now, she ain't no Seck!"

"Example," sighed Mrs. Buggins, "is better than precept. It would be more decent if the lady showed herself in church as a lesson to others,--if she did so more lost sheep might follow!"

"Hor-hor-hor!" chuckled Bainton, from a corner of the room--"Don't you worrit yourself, Missis Buggins, 'bout no lost sheep! Sheep allus goes where there's somethin' to graze upon,--leastways that's my 'speriemce, an' if there ain't no grazin' there ain't no sheep! An' them as grazes on Passon Walden, gittin' out of 'im all they can to 'elp 'em along, wouldn't go to church, no more than Miss Vancourt do, if they didn't know wot a man 'e is to be relied on in times o' trouble, an' a reg'lar 'usband to the parish in sickness an' in 'elth, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, till death do 'im part. Miss Vancourt don't want nothin' out of 'im as all we doos, an' she kin show 'er independence ef she likes to by stayin' away from church when she fancies, an' readin' books instead of 'earin' sermons,--there ain't no harm in that."

"I'm not so sure that I agree with you, Mr. Bainton,"--said a stout, oily-looking personage, named Netlips, the grocer and 'general store' dealer of the village, a man who was renowned in the district for the profundity and point of his observations at electoral meetings, and for the entirely original manner in which he 'used' the English language; "Public worship is a necessary evil. It is a factor in vulgar civilisations. Without it, the system of religious politics would fall into cohesion,--absolute cohesion!" And he rapped his fist on the table with a smartness that made his hearers jump. "At the last meeting I addressed in this division, I said we must support the props. The aristocracy must bear them on their shoulders. If your Squire stays away from church, he may be called a heathen with propriety, though a Liberal. And why? Because he makes public exposure of himself as a heathen negative! He is bound to keep up the church factor in the community. Otherwise he runs straight aground on Cohesion."

This oratorical outburst on the part of Mr. Netlips was listened to with respectful awe and admiration.

"Ay, ay!" said Roger Buggins, who as 'mine host' stood in his shirt sleeves at the entrance of his bar, surveying his customers and mentally counting up their reckonings--"Cohesion would never do-- cohesion government would send the country to pieces. You're right, Mr. Netlips,--you're right! Props must be kep' up!"

"I don't see no props in goin' to church,"--said Dan Ridley, the little working tailor of the village--"I goes because I likes Mr. Walden, but if there was a man in the pulpit I didn't like, I'd stop away. There's a deal too many wolves in sheep's clothing getting ordained in the service o' the Lord, an' I don't blame Miss Vancourt if so be she takes time to find out the sort o' man Mr. Walden is before settin' under him as 'twere. She can say prayers an' read 'em too in her own room, an' study the Bible all right without goin' to church. Many folks as goes to church reg'lar are downright mean lyin' raskills--and don't never read their Bibles at all. Mebbe they does as much harm as what Mr. Netlips calls Cohesion, though I don't myself purfess to understand Government language, it bein' too deep for me."

Mr. Netlips smiled condescendingly, and nodded as one who should say--'You do well, my poor fellow, to be humble in my presence!'-- and buried his nose in his tankard of ale.

"Mebbe Cohesion's got hold o' my red cow"--said the burly farmer who had spoken before--"For she's as ailin' as ever she was, an' if I lose her, I loses a bit o' my livin.' An' that's what I sez an' 'olds by, no church-goin' seems to 'elp us in a bit o' trouble, an' it ain't decent or Christian like, so it 'pears, to pray to the Almighty for the savin' of a cow. I asked Passon Walden if 'twould be right, for the cow's as valuable to me as ever my wife was when she was alive, if not more, an' he sez quite pleasant-like--'Well no, Mister Thorpe, I think it best not to make any sort of special prayer for the poor beast, but just do all you can for it, and leave the rest to Providence. A cow is worldly goods, you see--and we're not quite justified in praying to be allowed to keep our worldly goods.' 'Ain't we!' I sez--'Is that a fact? He smiled and said it was. So I thanked him and comed away. But I've been thinkin' it over since, an' I sez to myself--ef we ain't to pray for keepin' an' 'avin' our worldly goods, wot 'ave we got to pray for?"

"Oh Mr. Thorpe!" ejaculated Mrs. Buggins, almost tearfully--"It is not this world but the next, that we must think of! We must pray for our souls!"

"Well, marm, I ain't got a 'soul' wot I knows on--an' as for the next world, if there ain't no cattle farmin' there, I reckon I'll be out o' work. Do you count on keepin' a bar in the 'eavenly country?"

A loud guffaw went the round of the room, and Mrs. Buggins gasped with horror.

"Oh, Roger!" she murmured, addressing her portly spouse, who at once took up the argument.

"You goes too fur--you goes too fur, Mister Thorpe!" he said severely--"There ain't no keepin' bars nor farmin' carried on in the next world, nor marrying nor givin' in marriage. We be all as the angels there."

"A nice angel you'll make too, Mr. Buggins!" said Farmer Thorpe, as he sent his tankard to be refilled,--"Lord! We won't know you!"

Again the laugh went round, and Mrs. Buggins precipitately retired to her 'inner parlour' there to recover from the shock occasioned to her religious feelings by the irreverent remarks of her too matter- of-fact customer. Meanwhile Dan Ridley, the tailor, had again reverted to the subject of Miss Vancourt.

"There's one thing about her comin' to church,"--he said; "If so be as she did come it 'ud do us all good, for she's real pleasant to look at. I've seen her a many times in the village."

"Ah, so have I!" chorussed two or three more men.

"She's been in to see Adam Frost's children an' she gave Baby Hippolyta a bag o' sweeties,"--said Bainton. "An' she's called at the schoolhouse, but Miss Eden, she worn't in an' Susie Prescott saw her, an' Susie was that struck that she 'adn't a wurrd to say, so she tells us, an' Miss Vancourt she went to old Josey Letherbarrow's straight away an' there she stayed iver so long. She ain't called at our house yet."

"Which 'ouse might you be a-meanin', Tummas?" queried Farmer Thorpe, with a slow grin--"Your own or your measter's?"

"When we speaks in the plural we means not one, but two,"--rejoined Bainton with dignity. "An' when I sez 'our' I means myself an' Passon, which Miss Vancourt ain't as yet left her card on Passon. He went up in a great 'urry one afternoon when he knowed she was out,-- he knowed it, 'cos I told 'im as 'ow I'd seen her gallopin' by on that mare of hers which, they calls Cleopatra-an' away 'e run like a March 'are, an' he ups to the Manor and down again, an' sez he, laughin' like: 'I've done my dooty by the lady' sez he--'I've left my card!' That was three days ago, an' there ain't been no return o' the perliteness up to the present--"

Here he broke off and began to drink his ale, as a small dapper man entered the bar-room with a brisk step and called for 'a glass of home-brewed,' looking round on those assembled with a condescending smile. All of them knew him as Jim Bennett, Miss Vancourt's groom.

"Well, mates!" he said with a sprightly air of familiarity--"All well and hearty?"

"As yourself, Mr. Bennett,"--replied Roger Buggins, acting as spokesman for the rest, and personally serving him with the foaming draught he had ordered. "Which, we likewise trusts your lady is well?"

"My lady enjoys the hest of health, thank you!" said Bennett, with polite gravity. And tossing off the contents of his glass, he signified by an eloquent gesture and accompanying wink, that he was 'good for another.'

"We was just a-sayin' as you come in, Mr. Bennett," observed Dan Ridley, "that we'd none of us seen your lady at church yet on Sundays, Mebbe she ain't of our 'persuasion' as they sez, or mehbe she goes into Riversford, preferrin' 'Igh services---"

Bennett smiled a superior smile, and leaning easily against the bar, crossed his legs and surveyed the company generally with a compassionate air.

"I suppose it's quite a business down here,--goin' to church, eh?" he queried--"Sort of excitement like--only bit of fun you've got-- helps to keep you all alive! That's the country way, but Lord bless you!--in town we're not taking any!"

Bainton looked up,--and Mr. Netlips loosened his collar and lifted his head, as though preparing himself for another flow of 'cohesion' eloquence. Farmer Thorpe turned his bull-neck slowly round, and brought his eyes to bear on the speaker.

"How d'ye make that out, Mr. Bennett?" he demanded. "Doan't ye sarve the A'mighty same in town as in country?"

"Not a bit of it!" replied Bennett airily--"You're a long way behind the times, Mr. Thorpe!--you are indeed, beggin' your pardon for sayin' so! The 'best' people have given up the Almighty altogether, owing to recent scientific discoveries. They've taken to the Almighty Dollar instead which no science can do away with. And Sundays aren't used any more for church-going, except among the middle-class population,--they're just Bridge days with OUR set-- Bridge lunches, Bridge suppers,--every Sunday's chock full of engagements to 'Bridge,' right through the 'season.'"

"That's cards, ain't it?" enquired Dan Ridley.

"Just so! Harmless cards!" rejoined Bennett--"Only you can chuck away a few thousands or so on 'em if you like!"

Mr. Netlips here pushed aside his emptied ale-glass and raised his fat head unctuously out of his stiff shirt-collar.

"Are we to understand," he began ponderously, "that Miss Vancourt is addicted to this fashion of procrastinating the Lord's Day?"

Bennett straightened his dapper figure suddenly.

"Now don't you put yourself out, Mr. Netlips, don't, that's a good feller!" he said in sarcastically soothing tones--"There's no elections going on just at present--when there is you can bring your best leg foremost, and rant away for all you're worth! My lady don't gamble, if that's what you mean,--though she's always with the swagger set, and likely so to remain. But you keep up your spirits!- -your groceries 'ull be paid for all right!--she don't run up no bills--so don't you fear, cards or no cards! And as for procrastinating the Lord's Day, whatever that may be, I could name to you the folks what does worse than play Bridge on Sundays. And who are they? Why the clergymen theirselves! And how does they do worse? Why by tellin' lies as fast as they can stick! They says we're all going to heaven if we're good,--and they don't know nothing about it,--and we're all going to hell if we're bad, and they don't know nothing about that neither! I tell you, as I told you at first, in town we've got beyond all that stuff--we're just not taking any!"

He paused, and there was a deep silence, while he drank off his second glass of ale. The thoughts of every man present were apparently too deep for words.

"You're a smart chap!" said Bainton at last, breaking the mystic spell and rising to take his leave--"An' I don't want to argify with ye, for I'spect you're about right in what you sez about Sunday ways in town--but I tell ye what, young feller!--you've got to 'ave a deal o' patience an' a deal o' pity for they poor starveling sinners wot gits boxed up in cities an' never ain't got no room to look at the sky, or see the wide fields with all the daisies blowin' open to the sun. No wonder they're so took up wi' their scinetific muddlins over worms an' microbes an' sich-like, as to 'ave forgot what the Almighty is doin' in the workin' o' the Universe,--but it's onny jest like poor prisiners in a cell wot walks up an' down, up an' down, countin' the stones in the wall with scinetific multiplication-like, an' 'splainin' to their poor lonely selves as how many stones makes a square foot, an' so many square feet makes a square yard, an' on they goes a-walkin' their mis'able little round an' countin' their mis'able little sums, an' all the time just outside the prison the flowers is all bloomin' wild an' the birds singin', an' the blue sky over it all with God smilin' behind it. That's 'ow 'tis, Mr. Bennett!" and Bainton looked into the lining of his cap as was his wont before he put it on his head--"I believe all you say right enough, an' it don't put me out nohow--I've seen too much o' natur to be shook off my 'old on the Almighty--for there's no worm wot ain't sure of a rose or some kind o' flower an' fruit somewhere, though m'appen the poor blind thing don't know where to find it. It's case o' leadin' on, an' guidin' beyond our knowledge, Mr. Bennett,--an' that's wot Passon Walden tells us. HE don't bother us wi' no 'hows' nor 'whys' nor 'wherefores'--he says we can FEEL God with us in our daily work, an' so we can, if we've a mind to! Daily work and common things shows Him to us,--why look there!"-- here he pulled from his pocket a small paper-bag, and opening it, showed some dry loose seed--"There ain't nothin' commoner than that! That's pansy seed--a special stock too,--well now, if you didn't know how common it is, wouldn't it seem a miracle as wonderful as any in the Testymen, that out o' that handful o' dust like, the finest flowers of purple an' yellow will come?--ay! some o' them two to three inches across, an' every petal like velvet an' silk! If so be you don't b'lieve in a God, Mr. Bennett, owin' to town opinions, you try the gardenin' business! That'll make a man of ye! I allus sez if Adam had stuck to the gardenin' business an' left the tailorin' trade alone we'd have all been in Eden now!"

His eyes twinkled, as glancing round the company, he saw that his words had made an impression and awakened a responsive smile--"Good- night t'ye!" And touching Bennett on the shoulder in passing, he added: "You come an' see me, my lad, when you feels like goin' a bit in the scinetific line! Mebbe I can tell ye a few pints wot the learned gentlemen in London don't know. Anyway, a little church- goin' under Passon Walden won't do you no 'arm, nor your lady neither, if she's what I takes her for, which is believin' her to be all good as wimmin goes. An' when Passon warms to his work an' tells ye plain as 'ow everything's ordained for the best, an' as 'ow every flower's a miracle of the Lord, an' every bird's song a bit o' the Lord's own special music, it 'eartens ye up an' makes ye more 'opeful o' your own poor mis'able self--it do reely now!"

With another friendly pat on the groom's shoulder, and a cheery smile, Bainton passed out, and left the rest of the company in the 'Mother Huff' tap-room solemnly gazing upon one another.

"He speaks straight, he do," said Farmer Thorpe, "An' he ain't no canter,--he's just plain Tummas, an' wot he sez he means."

"Here's to his 'elth,--a game old boy!" said Bennett good- humouredly, ordering another glass of ale; "It's quite a treat to meet a man like him, and I shan't be above owning that he's got a deal of right on his side. But what he says ain't Orthodox Church teaching."

"Mebbe not," said Dan Kidley, "but it's Passon Walden's teachin', an' if you ain't 'eard Passon yet, Mister Bennett, I'd advise ye to go next Sunday. An' if your lady 'ud make up her mind to go too just for once---"

Bennett gave an expressive gesture.

"She won't go--you may depend on that!" he said; "She's had too much of parsons as it is. Why Mrs. Fred--that's her American aunt--was regular pestered with 'em coming beggin' of her for their churches and their windows and their schools and their infants and their poor, lame, blind, sick of all sorts, as well as for theirselves. D'rectly they knew she was a millionaire lady' they 'adn't got but one thought--how to get some of the millions out of her. There was three secretaries kept when we was in London, and they'd hardly time for bite nor sup with all the work they 'ad, refusin' scores of churches and religious folks all together. Miss Maryllia's got a complete scare o' parsons. Whenever she see a shovel-hat coming she just flew! When she was in Paris it was the Catholics as wanted money--nuns, sisters of the poor, priests as 'ad been turned out by the Government,--and what not,--and out in America it was the Christian Scientists all the time with such a lot of tickets for lectures and fal-lals as you never saw,--then came the Spiritooalists with their seeances; and altogether the Vancourt family got to look on all sorts of religions merely as so many kinds of beggin' boxes which if you dropped money into, you went straight to the Holy-holies, and if you didn't you dropped down into the great big D's. No!--I don't think anyone need expect to see my lady at church--it's the last place she'd ever think of going to!"

This piece of information was received by his hearers with profound gravity. No one spoke, and during the uncomfortable pause Bennett gave a careless 'Good-night!'--and took his departure.

"Things is come to a pretty pass in this 'ere country," then said Mr. Netlips grandiosely, "when the woman who is merely the elevation of the man, exhibits in public a conviction to which her status is unfitted. If the lady who now possesses the Manor were under the submission of a husband, he would naturally assume the control which is govemmentally retaliative and so compel her to include the religious considerations of the minority in her communicative system!"

Farmer Thorpe looked impressed, but slightly puzzled.

"You sez fine, Mr. Netlips,--you sez fine," he observed respectfully. "Not that I altogether understands ye, but that's onny my want of book-larnin' and not spellin' through the dictionary as I oughter when I was a youngster. Howsomever I makes bold to guess wot you're drivin' at and I dessay you may be right. But I'm fair bound to own that if it worn't for Mr. Walden, I shouldn't be found in church o' Sundays neither, but lyin' flat on my back in a field wi' my face turned up to the sun, a-thinkin' of the goodness o' God, and hopin' He'd put a hand out to 'elp make the crops grow as they should do. Onny Passon he be a rare good man, and he do speak to the 'art of ye so wise-like and quiet, and that's why I goes to hear him and sez the prayers wot's writ for me to say and doos as he asks me to do. But if I'd been unfort'nit enough to live in the parish of Badsworth under that old liar Leveson, I'd a put my fist in his jelly face 'fore I'd a listened to a word he had to say! Them's my sentiments, mates!--and you can read 'em how you like, Mr. Netlips. God's in heaven we know,--but there's onny churches on earth, an' we 'as to make sure whether there's men or devils inside of 'em 'fore we goes kneelin' and grubbin' in front of 'uman idols--Good-night t'ye!"

With these somewhat disjointed remarks Farmer Thorpe strode out of the tap-room, whistling loudly to his dog as he reached the door. The heavy tramp of his departing feet echoed along the outside lane and died away, and Roger Buggins, glancing at the sheep-faced clock in the bar, opined that it was 'near closin' hour.' All the company rose and began to take their leave.

"Church or no church, Miss Vancourt's a real lady!" declared Dan Bidley emphatically--"She may have her reasons, an' good ones too, for not attending service, but she ain't no heathen, I'm sartin' sure o' that."

"You cannot argumentarially be sure of what you do not know," said Mr. Netlips, with a tight smile, buttoning on his overcoat--"A heathen is a proscription of the law, and cannot enjoy the rights of the commons."

Dan stared.

"There ain't no proscription of the law in stayin' away from church," he said--"Nobody's bound to go. Lords nor commons can't compel us."

Mr. Netlips shook his head and frowned darkly, with the air of one who could unveil a great mystery if he chose.

"Compulsion is a legal community," he said--"And while powerless to bring affluence to the Christian conscience, it culminates in the citizenship of the heathen. Miss Vancourt, as her father's daughter, should be represented by the baptized spirit, and not by the afflatus of the ungenerate! Good-night!"

Still puckering his brow into lines of mysterious suggestiveness, the learned Netlips went his way, Roger Buggins gazing after him admiringly.

"That man's reg'lar lost down 'ere,"--he observed--"He oughter ha' been in Parliament."

"Ah, so he ought!" agreed Dan Ridley--"Where's there's fog he'd a made it foggier, and where's there's no understandin' he'd a made it less understandable. I daresay he'd a bin Prime Minister in no time- -he's just the sort. They likes a good old muddler for that work-- someone as has the knack o' addlin' the people's brains an' makin' them see a straight line as though'twere crooked. It keeps things quiet an' yet worrity-like--first up, then down--this way, then that way, an' never nothin' certain, but plenty o' big words rantin' round. That's Netlips all over,--it's in the shape of his 'ed,--he was born like it. I don't like his style myself,--but he'd make a grand cab-nit minister!"

"Ay, so he would!" acquiesced Buggins, as he drew the little red curtains across the windows of the tap-room and extinguished the hanging lamp--"Easy rest ye, Dan!"

"Same to you, Mr. Buggins!" responded the tailor cheerfully, as he turned out into the cool sweet dimness of the hawthorn-hedged lane in which the 'Mother Huff' stood--"I make bold to say that church or no church, Miss Vancourt's bein' at her own 'ouse 'ull be a gain an' a blessing to the village."

"Mebbe so," returned Buggins laconically,--and closing his door he barred it across for the night, while Dan Ridley, full of the half- poetic, half philosophic thoughts which the subjects of religion and religious worship frequently excite in a more or less untutored rustic mind, trudged slowly homeward.

During these days, Maryllia herself, unconscious of the remarks passed upon her as the lady of the Manor by her village neighbours, had not been idle, nor had she suffered much from depression of spirits, though, socially speaking, she was having what she privately considered in her own mind 'rather a dull time.' To begin with, everybody in the neighbourhood that was anybody in the neighbourhood, had called upon her,--and the antique oaken table in the great hall was littered with a snowy array of variously shaped bits of pasteboard, bearing names small and great,--names of old county families,--names of new mushroom gentry,--names of clergymen and their wives in profusion, and one or two modest cards with the plain 'Mr.' of the only young bachelors anywhere near for fifteen miles round. Nearly every man had a wife--"Such a pity!" commented Maryllia, when noting the fact--"One can never ask any of them to dinner without their dragons!"

Most of the callers had paid their 'duty visits' at a time of the afternoon when she was always out,--roaming over her own woods and fields, and 'taking stock' as she said, of her own possessions,--but on one or two occasions she had been caught 'in,' and this was the case when Sir Morton Pippitt, accompanied by his daughter Tabitha, Mr. Julian Adderley, and Mr. Marius Longford were announced just at the apt and fitting hour of 'five-o'clock tea.' Rising from the chair where she had negligently thrown herself to read for a quiet half hour, she set aside her book, and received those important personages with the careless ease and amiable indifference which was a 'manner familiar' to her, and which invariably succeeded in making less graceful persons than she was, feel wretchedly awkward and unhappy about the management of their hands and feet. With a smiling upward and downward glance, she mastered Sir Morton Pippitt's 'striking and jovial personality,'--his stiffly-carried upright form, large lower chest, close-shaven red face, and pleasantly clean white hair,--"The very picture of a Bone-Melter"--she thought--"He looks as if he had been boiled all over himself--quite a nice well- washed old man,"--her observant eyes flashed over the attenuated form of Julian Adderley with a sparkle of humour,--she noticed the careful carelessness of his attire, the artistic 'set' of his ruddy locks, the eccentric cut of his trousers, and the, to himself, peculiar knot of his tie.

"The poor thing wants to be something out of the common and can't quite manage it," she mentally decided, while she viewed with extreme disfavour the feline elegance affected by Mr. Marius Longford, and the sleek smile, practised by him 'for women only,' with which he blandly admitted her existence. To Miss Tabitha Pippit she offered a chair of capacious dimensions, amply provided with large down cushons, inviting her to sit down in it with a gentleness which implied kindly consideration for her years and for the fatigue she might possibly experience as a result of the drive over from Badsworth Hall,--whereat the severe spinster's chronically red nose reddened more visibly, and between her thin lips she sharply enunciated her preference for 'a higher seat,--no cushions, thank you!' Thereupon she selected the 'higher seat' for herself, in the shape of an old-fashioned music-stool, without back or arm-rest, and sat stiffly upon it like a draper's clothed dummy put up in a window for public inspection. Maryllia smiled,--she knew that kind of woman well;--and paying only the most casual attention to her for the rest of the time, returned to her own place by the open windows and began to dispense the tea, while Sir Morton Pippitt opened conversation by feigning to recall having met her some two or three years back. He was not altogether in the best of humours, the sight of his recently dismissed butler, Primmins, having upset his nerves. He knew how servants 'talked.' Who could tell what Primmins might not say in his new situation at Abbot's Manor, of his former experiences at Badsworth Hall? And so it was with a somewhat heated countenance that Sir Morton endeavoured to allude to a former acquaintance with his hostess at a Foreign Office function.

"Oh no, I don't think so," said Maryllia, lazily dropping lumps of sugar into the tea-cups--"Do you take sugar? I ought to ask, I know,--such a number of men have the gout nowadays, and they take saccharine. I haven't any saccharine,--so sorry! You do like sugar, Mr. Adderley? How nice of you!" And she smiled. "None for you, Mr. Longford? I thought not. You, Miss Pippitt? No! Everybody else, yes? That's all right! The Foreign Office? I think not, Sir Morton,--I gave up going there long ago when I was quite young. My aunt, Mrs. Fred Vancourt, always went--you must have met her and taken her for me, I always hated a Foreign Office 'crush.' Such big receptions bore one terribly--you never see anybody you really want to know, and the Prime Minister always looks tired to death. His face is a study in several agonies. Two or three years ago? Oh no,--I don't think I was in London at that time. And you were there, were you? Really!"

She handed a cup of tea with a bewitching smile and a 'Will you kindly pass it?' to Julian Adderley, who so impetuously accepted the task she imposed upon him of acting as general waiter to the company, that in hastening towards her he caught his foot in the trailing laces of her gown and nearly fell over the tea-tray.

"A thousand pardons!" he murmured, righting himself with an effort-- "So clumsy of me!"

"Don't mention it!" said Maryllia, placidly--"Will you hand bread- and-butter to Miss Pippitt, Do you take hot cake, Sir Morton?"

Sir Morton's face had become considerably redder during this interval, and, as he spread his handkerchief out on one knee to receive the possible dribblings of tea from the cup he had begun to sip at somewhat noisily, he looked as he certainly felt, rather at a loss what next to say. He was not long in this state of indecision, however, for a bright idea occurred to him, causing a smile to spread among his loose cheek-wrinkles.

"I'm sorry my friend the Duke of Lumpton has left me," he said with unctuous pomp. "He would have been delighted--er--delighted to call with me to-day--"

"Who is he?" enquired Maryllia, languidly.

Again Sir Morton reddened, but managed to conceal his discomfiture in a fat laugh.

"Well, my dear lady, he is Lumpton!--that is enough for him, and for most people--"

"Really?--Oh--well--of course!--I suppose so!" interrupted Maryllia, with an expressive smile, which caused Miss Tabitha's angular form, perched as it was on the high music-stool, to quiver with spite, and moved Miss Tabitha's neatly gloved fingers to clench like a cat's claws in their kid sheaths with an insane desire to scratch the fair face on which that smile was reflected.

"He is a charming fellow, the Duke-charming-charming!" went on Sir Morton, unconscious of the complex workings of thought in his elderly daughter's acidulated brain! "And his great 'chum,' Lord Mawdenham, has also been staying with us--but they left Badsworth yesterday, I'm sorry to say. They travelled up to London with Lady Elizabeth Messing, who paid us a visit of two or three days--"

"Lady Elizabeth Messing!" echoed Maryllia, with a sudden ripple of laughter--"Dear me! Did you have her staying with you? How very nice of you! She is such a terror!"

Mr. Marius Longford stroked one of his pussy-cat whiskers thoughtfully, and put in his word.

"Lady Elizabeth spoke of you, Miss Vancourt, several times," he said. "In fact"--and he smiled--"she had a good deal to say! She remembers meeting you in Paris, and--if I mistake not--also at Homburg on one occasion. She was surprised to hear you were coming to live in this dull country place--she said it would never suit you at all--you were altogether too brilliant--er--" he bowed--" and er- -charming!" This complimentary phrase was spoken with the air of a beneficent paterfamilias giving a child a bon-bon.

Maryllia's glance swept over him carelessly.

"Much obliged to her, I'm sure!" she said--"I can quite imagine the anxiety she felt concerning me! So good of her! Is she a great friend of yours?"

Mr. Longford looked slightly disconcerted.

"Well, no," he replied--"I have only during these last few days-- through Sir Morton--had the pleasure of her acquaintance--"

"Mr. Longford is not a 'society' man!" said Sir Morton, with a chuckle--"He lives on the heights of Parnassus--and looks down with scorn on the browsing sheep in the valleys below! He is a great author!"

"Indeed!" and Maryllia raised her delicately arched eyebrows with a faint movement of polite surprise--"But all authors are great nowadays, aren't they? There are no little ones left."

"Oh, yes, indeed, and alas, there are!" exclaimed Julian Adderley, flourishing his emptied tea-cup in the air before setting it back in its saucer and depositing the whole on a table before him; "I am one of them, Miss Vancourt! Pray be merciful to me!"

The absurd attitude of appeal he assumed moved Maryllia to a laugh.

"Well, when you look like that I guess I will!" she said playfully, not without a sense of liking for the quaint human creature who so willingly made himself ridiculous without being conscious of it-- "What is your line in the small way?"

"Verse!" he replied, with tragic emphasis--"Verse which nobody reads--verse which nobody wants--verse which whenever it struggles into publication, my erudite friend here, Mr. Longford, batters into pulp with a sledge-hammer review of half-a-dozen lines in the heavier magazines. Verse, my dear Miss Vancourt!--verse written to please myself, though its results do not feed myself. But what matter! I am happy! This village of St. Rest, for example, has exercised a spell of enchantment over me. It has soothed my soul! So much so, that I have taken a cottage in a wood--how melodious that sounds!--at the modest rent of a pound a week. That much I can afford,--that much I will risk--and on the air, the water, the nuts, the berries, the fruits, the flowers, I will live like a primaeval man, and let the baser world go by!" He ran his fingers through his long hair. "It will be an experience! So new--so fresh!"

Miss Tabitha sniffed sarcastically, and gave a short, hard laugh.

"I hope you'll enjoy yourself!" she said tartly--"But you'll soon tire. I told you at once when you said you had decided to spend the summer in this neighbourhood that you'd regret it. You'll find it very dull."

"Oh, I don't think he will!" murmured Maryllia graciously; "He will be writing poetry all the time, you see! Besides, with you and Sir Morton as neighbours, how CAN he feel dull? Won't you have some more tea?"

"No, thank you!" and Miss Pippitt rose,--"Father, we must be going. You have not yet explained to Miss Vancourt the object of our visit."

"True, true!" and Sir Morton got out of his chair with some difficulty--"Time flies fast in such fascinating company!" and he smiled beamingly--"We came, my dear lady, to ask you to dine with us on Thursday next at Badsworth Hall." No words could convey the pomposity which Sir Morton managed to infuse into this simple sentence. To dine at Badsworth was, or ought to be, according to his idea, the utmost height of human bliss and ambition. "We will invite some of our most distinguished neighbours to meet you,--there are a few of the old stock left--" this as if he were of the 'old stock' himself;--"I knew your father--poor fellow!--and of course I remember seeing you as a child, though you don't remember me--ha- ha!--but I shall be delighted to welcome you under my roof--"

"Thanks so much!" said Maryllia, demurely--"But please let it be for another time, will you? I haven't a single evening disengaged between this and the end of June! So sorry! I'll come over to tea some day, with pleasure! I know Badsworth. Dear old place!--quite famous too, once in the bygone days--almost as famous as Abbot's Manor itself. Let me see!" and she looked up at the ceiling musingly--"There was a Badsworth who fought against the Commonwealth,--and there was another who was Prime Minister or something of that kind,--then there was a Sir Thomas Badsworth who wrote books--and another who did some wonderful service for King James the First--yes, and there were some lovely women in the family, too--I suppose their portraits are all there? Yes--I thought so!"--this as Sir Morton nodded a blandly possessive affirmative-- "How things change, don't they? Poor old Badsworth! So funny to think you live there! Oh, yes! I'll come over--certainly I'll come over,--some day!"

Thus murmuring polite platitudes, Maryllia bade her visitors adieu. Sir Morton conquered an inclination to gasp for breath and say 'Damn!' at the young lady's careless refusal of his invitation to dinner,--Miss Tabitha secretly rejoiced.

"I'm sure I don't want her at Badsworth," she said within herself, viciously--"Nasty little insolent conceited thing! I believe her hair is dyed, and her complexion put on! A regular play-actress!"

Unconscious of the spinster's amiable thoughts, Maryllia was holding out a hand to her.

"Good-bye!" she said--"So kind of you to come and see me! I'm sure you think I must be lonely here. But I'm not, really! I don't think I ever shall be,--because as soon as I have got the house quite in order, I am going to ask a great many friends to stay with me in turn. They will enjoy seeing the old place, and country air is such a boon to London people! Good-bye!"--and here she turned to Marius Longford--"I'm afraid I haven't read any of your books!--anyway I expect they would be too deep for me. Wouldn't they?"

"Lord Roxmouth has been good enough to express his liking for my poor efforts," he replied, with a slight covert smile--"I believe you know him?"

"Oh, quite well--quite too well!" said Maryllia, without any discomposure--"But what he likes, I always detest. Unfortunate, isn't it! So I mustn't even try to read your works! You, Mr. Adderley"--and she laughingly looked up at that gentleman, who, hat in hand, was pensively drooping in a farewell attitude before her,-- "you are going to stop here all summer, aren't you? And in a cottage! How delightful! Anywhere near the Manor?"

"I am not so happy as to have found a domicile on this side Eden!" murmured Adderley, with a languishing look--"My humble hut is set some distance apart,--about a mile beyond the rectory."

"Then your best neighbour will be the parson," said Maryllia, gaily- -"So improving to your morals!"

"Possibly--possibly! "assented Adderley--" Mr. Walden is not exactly like other parsons,--there is something wonderfully attractive about him--"

"Something wonderfully conceited and unbearable, you mean!" snapped out Sir Morton--"Come, come!--we must be off! The horses are at the door,--can't keep them standing! Miss Vancourt doesn't want to hear anything about the parson. She'll find him out soon enough for herself. He's an upstart, my dear lady--take my word for it!--a pretentious University prig and upstart! You'll never meet HIM at Badsworth!--ha-ha-ha! Never! Sorry you can't dine on Thursday! Never mind, never mind! Another time! Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" and with a slight further exchange of salutations Maryllia found herself relieved of her visitors. Of all the four, Adderley alone looked back with a half-appealing smile, and received an encouraging little nod for his pains--a nod which said 'Yes--you can come again if you like!' The wheels of the Pippitt equipage crunched heavily down the drive, and as the grating sound died away, clear on the quiet air came the soft slow chime of the church-bells ringing. It was near sunset,--and Walden sometimes held a short simple service of evening prayer at that hour. Leaning against the open window Maryllia listened.

"How pretty it is!" she said--"It must be the nearness of the river that makes the tone of the bells so soft and mellow! Oh, what an insufferable old snob that Pippitt is! And what a precious crew of 'friends' he boasts of! Lumpton, who, when he was a few years younger, danced the skirt-dance in women's clothes for forty pounds a night at a New York restaurant!--Mawdenham, who pawned all his mother's jewels to pay his losses at Bridge--and Lady Elizabeth Messing, who is such an abandoned old creature that her own married daughters won't know her! Oh, dear! And I believe the Knighted Bone- Boiler thinks they are quite good style! That literary man, Longford, was a most unprepossessing looking object,--a friend of Roxmouth's too, which makes him all the more unpleasant. And of course he will at once write off and say he has seen me. And then-- and then-dear me! I wonder where Sir Morton picks these people up! He doesn't like the parson here evidently--'a pretentious University prig and upstart'--what a strong way of putting it!--very strong for such a clean-looking old man! 'A pretentious University prig and upstart' are you, Mr. Walden!" Here, smiling to herself, she moved out into the garden and called her dog to her side--"Do you hear that, Plato? Our next-door neighbour is a prig as well as a parson!- -isn't it dreadful!" Plato looked up at her with great loving brown eyes and wagged his plumy tail. "I believe he is,--and yet--yet all the same, I think--yes!--I think, as soon as a convenient opportunity presents itself, I'll ask him to dinner."

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