XXIII…

XXIII

The lights were burning low and dimly in the picture-gallery when he entered it and saw Maryllia there, pacing restlessly up and down, the folds of her dress with the 'diamants' sparkling around her as she moved, like a million little drops of frost on gossamer, while her small head, lifted proudly on its slim arched throat, seemed to his heated fancy, as though crowned with fresh coronals of gold woven from the summer sun. Turning, she confronted him and paused irresolute,--then, with a sudden impulsive gesture, came forward swiftly,--her cheeks flaming crimson,--her lips trembling, and her bosom heaving with its quickened breath like that of a fluttered bird.

"How dare you!" she said, in a low, strained voice--"How dare you!"

He met her eyes,--and in that moment individual and personal considerations were swept aside, and only the Right and the Wrong presented themselves to his mental vision, like witnesses from a higher world, invisible but omnipotent, waiting for the result of the first clash of combat between two human souls. Yielding to his own over-mastering emotion, and reckless of consequences, he caught her two hands lightly in his own.

"And how dare YOU!" he said earnestly,--"Little girl, how dare YOU so hurt yourself!"

They gazed upon one another,--each one secretly amazed at the other's outbreak of feeling,--she grown white and speechless,--he with a swift strong sense of his own power and authority as a mere man, nerving him to the utterance of truth for her sake--for her sake!--regardless of all forms and ceremonies. Then he dropped her hands as quickly as he had grasped them.

"Forgive me!" he said, very softly,--and paused, till recovering more of his self-possession, he continued quietly--"You should not have sent for me, Miss Vancourt! Knowing that I had offended you, I was leaving your house, never intending to enter it again. Why did you summon me back? To reproach me? It would be kinder to spare me this, and let me go my own way!"

He waited for her to speak. But she was silent. Anger, humiliation and wounded pride, mingled with a certain struggling respect and admiration for his boldness, held her mute. She little knew how provocatively lovely she looked as she stood haughtily immovable, her eyes alone flashing eloquent rebellion;--she little guessed that John committed the picture of her fairness to the innermost recording cells of his brain, there to be stored up preciously, and never forgotten.

"I am sorry,"--he resumed--"that I spoke as I did just now at your table--because you are angry with me. But I cannot say that I am sorry for any other reason--"

At this Maryllia found her voice suddenly.

"You have insulted my guests---"

"Ah, no!" said John, almost with a smile--"Women who are habitual smokers are not easily insulted! They are past that, believe me! The fine susceptibilities which one might otherwise attribute to them have been long ago blunted. They do not command respect, and naturally, they can scarcely expect to receive it."

"I do not agree with you!" retorted Maryllia, with rising warmth, as she regained her self-control, and with it her deep sense of irritation--"You were rude,--and rudeness is unpardonable! You said as much as to imply that none of the women present were ladies---"

"None of those who smoked were!"--said John, coolly.

"Mr. Walden! I myself, smoked!"

"You did,"--and he moved a step or two nearer to her, his whole face lighting up with keen emotion--"And why did you? The motive was intended to be courteous--but the principle was wrong!"

"Wrong!" she echoed, angrily--"Wrong?"

"Yes--wrong! Have you never been told that you can do one thing wrong among so many that you do right, Miss Vancourt?" he asked, with great gentleness--"You had it in your power to show your true womanliness by refusing to smoke,--you could, in your position as hostess, have saved your women friends from making fools of themselves--yes--the word is out, and I don't apologise for it!"-- here a sudden smile kindled in his fine eyes--"And you could also have given them all an example of obedience."

"Obedience!" exclaimed Maryllia, astonished,--"What do you mean? Obedience to whom?"

"To me!" replied John, with perfect composure.

She gazed at him, scarcely believing she had heard aright.

"To you?" she repeated--"To you?"

"Why certainly!" said John, wondering even as he spoke at his own ease and self-assurance--"As minister of the parish I am the only person here that is set in authority over you--and the first thing you do is to defy me!"

His manner was whimsical and kindly,--his tone of voice playfully tender, as though he were speaking to some naughty child whom, notwithstanding its temper, he loved too well to scold,--and Maryllia was completely taken aback by this unexpected method of treating her combative humour. Her pretty mouth opened like a rosebud,--she seemed as though she would speak, but only an inarticulate murmur came from her parted lips; while the very faintest lurking suspicion of a smile crept dimpling over her face, to be lost again in the hostile expression of her eyes.

"You say I was rude,"--he went on,--"If I was, need you have been rude too?"

She found utterance quickly.

"I was not rude---" she began.

"Pardon me,--you were! Rude to me--and still more rude to yourself! The last was the worst affront, in my opinion!"

"I do not understand you," she said, impatiently--"Your ideas of women are not those of the present day---"

"Thank God, they are not!" he replied--"I am glad to be in that respect, old-fashioned! You say you do not understand me. Now that is not true! You do understand! You know very well that if I was rude in my UNpremeditated speech, you were much more rude in your premeditated act!--that of deliberately spoiling your womanly self by doing what you know in your own heart was--will you forgive me the word?--unwomanly!"

Maryllia flushed red.

"There is no harm in smoking," she said, coldly;--"it is quite the usual thing nowadays for ladies to enjoy their cigarettes. Why should they not? It is nothing new. Spanish women have always smoked--Austrian and Italian women smoke freely without any adverse comment--in fact, the custom is almost universal. English women have been the last, certainly, to adopt it--but then, England is always behind every country in everything!"

She spoke with a hard flippancy,--and she knew it. Walden's eyes darkened into a deeper gravity.

"Miss Vancourt, this England of ours was once upon a time not behind, but BEFORE every nation in the whole world for the sweetness, purity and modesty of its women! That it has become one with less enlightened races in the deliberate unsexing and degradation of womanhood does not now, and will not in the future, redound to its credit. But I am prolonging a discussion uselessly,-- " He waited a moment. "I shall trouble you no more with my opinions, believe me,--nor shall I ever again intrude my presence upon yourself or your guests,"--he continued, slowly,--"As I have already said, I am sorry to have offended YOU,--but I am not sorry to have spoken my mind! I do not care a jot what your friends from London think of me or say of me,--their criticism, good or bad, is to me a matter of absolute indifference--but I had thought--I had hoped---"

He paused,--his voice for the moment failing him. Maryllia looked at his pale, earnest face, and a sudden sense of shamed compunction smote her heart. Her anger was fast cooling down,--and with the swift change of mood which made her so variable and bewitching, she said, more gently:

"Well, Mr. Walden? You thought--you hoped?"

"That we might be friends,"--he answered, quietly--"But I see plainly that is impossible!"

She was silent. He stood very still,--his eyes wandering involuntarily to the painted beauty of 'Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt,' which he had admired and studied so often for many lonely years, and back again along the dimly lit gallery to that unveiled portrait of the young bride who never came home, the mother of the little proud creature who confronted him with such fairy-like stateliness and pretty assertion of her small self in combat against him, and upon whom his glance finally rested with a lingering sadness and pain. Then he said in a low tone:

"Good-night, Miss Vancourt--good-bye!"

At this a cloud of distress swept across her mobile features. "There now!" she said to herself--"He's going away and he'll never come to the Manor any more! I intended to make him quite ashamed of himself- -and he isn't a bit! So like a man! He'd rather die than own himself in the wrong--besides he ISN'T wrong,--oh dear!--he mustn't go away in a huff!"

And with a sudden yielding sweetness and grace of action of which she was quite unconscious, she extended her hands to him--

"Oh, no, Mr. Walden!" she said, earnestly--"I am not so angry as all that! Not good-bye!" Hardly knowing what he did, he took her offered hands and held them tenderly in his own.

"Not good-bye!" she said, trembling a little, and flushing rose-red with a certain embarrassment--"I don't really want to quarrel--I don't indeed! We--we were getting on so nicely together--and it is so seldom one CAN get on with a clergyman!"--here she began to laugh--"But you know it was dreadful of you, wasn't it?--at any rate it sounded dreadful--when you said that English ladies never smoked- --"

"Neither they do,"--declared John resolutely, yet smilingly, "Except by way of defiance!"

She glanced up at him,--and the mirthful sparkle in his eyes was reflected in her own.

"You are very obstinate!" she said, as she drew her hands away from his--"But I suppose you really do think smoking is wrong for women?"

His heart was beating, his pulses thrilling under the influence of her touch, her appealing look and sudden change of manner,--but he was not to be moved from his convictions, though all the world should swim round him in a glamour of blue eyes and gold hair.

"I think so, most certainly!"

"But why?"

He hesitated.

"Well, the act of smoking in itself is not wrong--but the associations of the habit are unfit for womanhood. I know very well that it has become usual in England for ladies to smoke,--most unfortunately--but there are many habits and customs in this country as well as in others, which, because they are habitual, are not the less, but rather the more, pernicious. I confess to a strong prejudice against smoking women."

"But men smoke--why should not women smoke also?" persisted Maryllia.

Walden heard this plea with smiling patience.

"Men,--a very large majority of them too--habitually get drunk. Do you think it justifiable for women to get drunk by way of following the men's example?"

"Why no, of course not!"--she answered quickly--"But drunkenness is a vice---"

"So is smoking! And it is quite as unhealthy as all vices are. There have been more addle-pated statesmen and politicians in England since smoking became a daily necessity with, them than were ever known before. I don't believe in any human being who turns his brain into a chimney. And.--pardon me!--when YOU deliberately put that cigarette in your mouth---"

"Well!" and a mischievous dimple appeared on each soft cheek as she looked up--"What did you think of me? Now be perfectly frank!"

"I will!" he said, slowly, with an earnest gravity darkening in his eyes--"I should not be your true friend if I were otherwise! But if I tell you what I thought--and what I may say I know from long experience all honest Englishmen think when they see a woman smoking--you must exonerate me in your mind and understand that my thoughts were only momentary. I knew that your better, sweeter self would soon reassert its sway!"

Her head drooped a little--she was quite silent.

"I thought,"--he went on, "when I saw you actually smoking, that something strange and unnatural had happened to you! That you had become, in some pitiful way, a different woman to the one that walked with me, not so long ago, and showed me her old French damask roses blossoming in the border!"--he paused an instant, his voice faltering a little,--then he resumed, quietly and firmly--"and that you had, against all nature's best intentions for you, descended to the level of Lady Beaulyon---"

She interrupted him by a quick gesture---

"Eva Beaulyon is my friend, Mr. Walden!"

"No--not your friend!"--he said steadily--"Forgive me! You asked me to speak frankly. She is a friend to none except those of her own particular class and type---"

"To which I also belong,"--said Maryllia, with a sudden flash of returning rebellion--"You know I do!"

"I know you do NOT!" replied Walden, with some heat--"And I thank God for it! I know you are no more of her class and type than the wood lily is like the rank and poisonous marsh weed! Oh, child!--why do you wrong yourself! If I am too blunt and plain in what I say to you, let me cease speaking--but if you ask ME as your friend--as your minister!"--and he emphasised the word--"to tell you honestly my opinion, have patience with my roughness!"

"You are not rough," she murmured,--and a little contraction in her throat warned her of the possible rising of tears--"But you are scarcely tolerant!"

"I cannot be tolerant of the demoralisation of womanhood!"--he said, passionately--"I cannot look on with an easy smile when I see the sex that SHOULD be the saving purity of the world, deliberately sinking itself by its own free will and choice into the mire of the vulgarest social vice, and parting with every redeeming grace, modesty and virtue that once made it sacred and beautiful! I am quite aware that there are many men who not only look on, but even encourage this world-wide debasement of women in order to bring them down on a par with themselves--but I am not one of these. I know that when women cease to be womanly, then the sorrows of the world, already heavy, will be doubled and trebled! When men come to be ashamed of their mothers--as many of them are to-day--there will be but little hope of good for future generations! And the fact that there are many women of title and position like your guest, Lady Beaulyon, who deliberately drag their husband's honour through the dust and publicly glory in their own disgrace, does not make their crime the less, but rather the more criminal. You know this as well as I do! You are not of Lady Beaulyon's class or type--if you were, I should not waste one moment of my time in your presence!"

She gazed at him speechlessly. And now from the drawing room came the sound of Cicely's voice, clear, powerful, and as sweet as legends tell us the voices of the angels are--

"Luna fedel, tu chiama Col raggio ed io col suon, La fulgida mia dama Sul gotico veron!"

"You know," he went on impetuously--"You know I told you before that I am not a society man. I said that if I came to dinner to meet your London friends, I should be very much in the way. You have found me so. A man of my age and of my settled habits and convictions ought to avoid society altogether. It is not possible for him to accommodate himself to it. For instance,--see how old-fashioned and strait-laced I am!--I wish I had been miles away from St. Rest before I had ever seen you smoking! It is a trifle, perhaps,--but it is one of those trifles which stick in the memory and embitter the mind!"

Around them the air seemed to break and divide into pulsations of melody as Cicely sang:

"Diro che sei d'argente D'opale, d'ambra e d'or, Diro che incanti il vento, E che innamori i fior!"

"You have seemed to me such an ideal of English womanhood!"--he went on dreamily, hardly aware how far his words were carrying him--"The sweet and fitting mistress of this dear old house, richly endowed as it is with noblest memories of the noble dead! Their proud and tender spirit has looked out of your eyes--or so I have fancied;-- and you are naturally so kind and gentle--you have been so good to the people in the village,--they all love you--they all wish to think well of you;--for you have proved yourself practically as well as emotionally sympathetic to them. And, above all things, you have appeared so pre-eminently delicate and dainty in your tastes--so maidenly!--I should as soon have expected to see the Greek Psyche smoking as you!"

She took a swift step towards him, and laid her hand on his arm.

"Can't you forget it?" she said.

He looked at her. Her eyes were humid, and her lips trembled a little.

"Forget what?" he asked gently.

"That I smoked!"

He hesitated a second.

"I will try!"

"You see!"--went on Maryllia, coaxingly--"we shall have to live in the same parish, and we shall be compelled to meet each other often- -and it would never do for you to be always thinking of that cigarette! Now would it?"

He was silent. The little hand on his arm gave an insistent pressure.

"Of course when you conjure up such an awful picture as Psyche smoking, I know just how you feel about it!" And her eyes sparkled up at him with an arch look which, fortunately for his peace of mind, his own eyes did not meet,--"And naturally you must hold very strong opinions on the subject,--dreadfully strong! But then--nobody has ever thought me at all like Psyche before--so you so--you see!-- " She paused, and John began to feel his heart beating uncomfortably fast. "It's very nice to be compared to Psyche anyhow!--and of course she would look impossible and awful with a cigarette in her mouth! I quite understand! She couldn't smoke,--she wouldn't!--and-- and--I won't! I won't really! You won't believe me, I expect,--but I assure you, I never smoke! I only did it this evening, because,-- because,--well!--because I thought I ought to defend my own sex against your censure--and also perhaps--perhaps out of a little bit of bravado! But, I'm sorry! There! Will you forgive me?"

Nearly, very nearly, John lost his head. Maryllia had used the strongest weapon in all woman's armoury,--humility,--and he went down before it, completely overwhelmed and conquered. A swirl of emotion swept over him,--his brain grew dizzy, and for a moment he saw nothing in earth or heaven but the sweet upturned face, the soft caressing eyes, the graceful yielding form clad in its diaphanous draperies of jewelled gossamer,--then pulling himself together with a strong effort which made him well-nigh tremble, he took the small hand that lay in white confidence on his arm, and raised it to his lips with a grave, courtly, almost cold reverence.

"It is you to forgive ME, Miss Vancourt!"--he said, unsteadily. "For I am quite aware that I committed a breach of social etiquette at your table,--and--and--I know I have taken considerable liberty in speaking my mind to you as I have done. Even as your minister I fear I have overstepped my privileges---"

"Oh, please don't apologise!" said Maryllia, quickly--"It's all over, you know! You've said your say, and I've said mine--and I'm sure we both feel better for it. Don't we?"

John smiled, but his face was very pale, and his eyes were troubled. He was absorbed in the problem of his own struggling emotions--how to master them--how to keep them back from breaking into passionate speech,--and her bewitching, childlike air, half penitent, half mischievous, was making sad havoc of his self-possession.

"We are friends again now,"--she went on--"And really,--really we MUST try and keep so!"

This, with a quaint little nod of emphatic decision.

"Do you think it will be difficult?" he asked, looking at her more earnestly and tenderly than he himself was aware of.

She laughed, and blushed a little.

"I don't know!--it may be!" she said--"You see you've twice ruffled me up the wrong way! I was very angry--oh, very angry indeed, when you coolly stopped the service because we all came in late that Sunday,--and to-night I was very angry again---"

"But I was NOT angry!" said John, simply--"And it takes two to make a quarrel!"

She peeped at him from under her long lashes and again the fleeting blush swept over her fair face.

"I must go now!"--she said--"Won't you come into the drawing-room?-- just to hear Cicely sing at her very best?"

"Not to-night,"--he answered quickly--"If you will excuse me---"

"Of course I will excuse you!" and she smiled--"I know you don't like company."

"I very much DISLIKE it!" he said, emphatically--"But then I'm quite an unsociable person. You see I've lived alone here for ten years--- "

"And you want to go on living alone for another ten years--I see!" said Maryllia--"Well! So you shall! I promise I won't interfere!"

He looked at her half appealingly.

"I don't think you understand,"--he said,--then paused.

"Oh yes, I understand perfectly!" And she smiled radiantly. "You like to be left quite to yourself, with your books and flowers, and the bits of glass for the rose-window in the church. By the bye, I must help you with that rose-window! I will get you some genuine old pieces--and if I find any very rare specimens of medieval blue or crimson you'll be so pleased that you'll forget all about that cigarette--you know you will!"

"Miss Vancourt,"--he began earnestly--"if you will only believe that it is because I think so highly of you--because you have seemed to me so much above the mere society woman that I---I---"

"I know!" she said, very softly--"I quite see your point of view!"

"You are not of the modern world,"--he went on, slowly--"Not in your heart--not in your real tastes and sentiments;--not yet, though you may possibly be forced to become one with it after your marriage---"

"And when will that be?" she interrupted him smiling.

His clear, calm blue eyes rested upon her gravely and searchingly.

"Soon surely,--if report be true!"

"Really? Well, you ought to know whether the date has been fixed yet,"--she said, very demurely--"Because, of course YOU'LL have to marry me!"

Something swayed and rocked in John's brain, making the ground he stood upon swerve and seem unsteady. A wave of colour flushed his bronzed face up to the very roots of his grey-brown hair. Maryllia watched him with prettily critical interest, much as a kitten watches the rolling out of a ball of worsted on which it has just placed its little furry paw. Hurriedly he sought in his mind for something to say.

"I---I---don't quite understand,"--he murmured.

"Don't you?" and she smiled upon him blandly--"Surely you wouldn't expect me to be married in any church but yours, or by any clergyman but you?"

"Oh, I see!" And Maryllia mentally commented--'So do I!'--while he heaved a sigh unconsciously, but whether of relief or pain it was impossible to tell. Looking up, he met her eyes,--so deep and blue, so strangely compassionate and tender! A faint smile trembled on her lips.

"Good-night, Mr. Walden!"

"Good-night!" he said; then suddenly yielding to the emotion which mastered him, he made one swift step to her side--"You will forgive me, I know!--you will think of me presently with kindness, and with patience for my old-fashioned ways!--and you will do me the justice to believe that if I seemed rude to your guests, as you say I was, it was all for your sake!--because I thought you deserved more respect from them than that they should smoke in your presence,--and also, because I felt--I could not help feeling that if your father had been alive he would not have allowed them to do so,--he would have been too precious of you,--too careful that nothing of an indecorous or unwomanly nature should ever be associated with you;-- and--and--I spoke as I did because it seemed to me that someone SHOULD speak!--someone of years and authority, who from the point of experience alone, might defend you from the contact of modern vulgarity;--so--so--I said the first words that came to me--just as your father might have said them!--yes!--just as your father might have spoken,--for you--you know you seem little more than a child to me!--I am so much older than you are, God help me!"

Stooping, he caught her hands and kissed them with a passion of which he was entirely unconscious,--then turned swiftly from her and was gone.

She stood where he had left her, trembling a little, but with a startled radiance in her eyes that made them doubly beautiful. She was pale to the lips;--her hands,--the hands he had kissed, were burning. Suddenly, on an impulse which she could not have explained to herself, she ran swiftly out of the picture-gallery and into the hall where,--as the great oaken door stood open to the summer night,--she could see the whole flower-garlanded square of the Tudor court, gleaming like polished silver in the intense radiance of the moon. John Walden was walking quickly across it,--she watched him, and saw him all at once pause near the old stone dial which at this season of the year was almost hidden by the clambering white roses that grew around it. He took off his hat and passed his hand over his brows with an air of dejection and fatigue,--the moonlight fell full on the clear contour of his features,--and she drew herself and her sparkling draperies well back into the deep shadow of the portal lest he should catch a glimpse of her, and, perhaps,--so seeing her, return--

"And that would never do!" she thought, with a little tremor of fear running through her which was unaccountably delicious;--"I'm sure it wouldn't!--not to-night!"

The air was very warm and sultry,--all the windows of the Manor were thrown open for coolness,--and through those of the drawing-room came the lovely vibrations of Cicely's pure fresh voice. She was singing an enchanting melody on which some words of Julian Adderley's, simple and quaint, without having any claim to particular poetic merit, floated clearly with distinct and perfect enunciation--

"A little rose on a young rose-tree Shed all its crimson blood for me, Drop by drop on the dewy grass, Its petals fell, and its life did pass; Oh little rose on the young rose-tree, Why did you shed your blood for me?

"A nightingale in a tall pine-tree Broke its heart in a song for me, Singing, with moonbeams around it spread, It fluttered, and fell at my threshold, dead;-- Oh nightingale in the tall pine-tree, Why did you break your heart for me?

"A lover of ladies, bold and free, Challenged the world to a fight for me, But I scorn'd his love in a foolish pride, And, sword in hand, he fighting died! Oh lover of ladies, bold and free, Why did you lose your life for me?"

And again, with plaintive insistence, the last two lines were repeated, ringing out on the deep stillness of the summer night--

"Oh lover of ladies, told and free, Why did you lose yowr life for me?"

The song ceased with a clash of chords. It was followed by a subdued clapping of hands,--a pause of silence--and then a renewed murmur of conversation. Walden looked up as if suddenly startled from a reverie, and resumed his quick pace across the courtyard,--and Maryllia, seeing him go, advanced a little more into the gleaming moonlight to follow him with her eyes till he should quite disappear.

"Upon my word, a very quaint little comedy!" said a coldly mocking voice behind her--"A modern Juliet gazing pathetically after the retiring form of a somewhat elderly clerical Romeo! Let me congratulate you, Miss Maryllia, on your newest and most brilliant achievement,--the conquest of a country parson! It is quite worthy of you!"

And turning, she confronted Lord Roxmouth.

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XXIV

For a moment they looked at each other. The smile on Roxmouth's face widened.

"Come, come, Maryllia!" he said, easily--"Don't be foolish! The airs of a tragedy queen do not suit you. I assure you I haven't the least objection to your amusing yourself with a parson, if you like! The conversation in the picture-gallery just now was quite idyllic--all about a cigarette and Psyche! Really it was most absurd!--and the little sermon of the enamoured clergyman to his pretty penitent was as unique as it was priggish. I'm sure you must have been vastly entertained! And the final allusion he made to his age--THAT was a masterstroke of pathos!--or bathos? Which? Du sublime au ridicule il n'y'a qu'un pas, Madame!"

Her eyes were fixed unswervingly upon him.

"So you listened!" she said.

"Naturally! One always listens to a comedy if it is played well. I've been listening all the evening. I've listened to your waif and stray, Cicely Bourne, and am perfectly willing to admit that she is worth the training you are giving her. It's the first time I've heard her sing to advantage. I've listened to Eva Beaulyon's involved explanation of a perfectly unworkable scheme for the education of country yokels (who never do anything with education when they get it), on which she is going to extract twenty thousand pounds for herself from the pockets of her newest millionaire- victim. I've listened to the Bludlip Courtenay woman's enthusiastic description of a new specific for the eradication of wrinkles and crowsfeet. I've listened to that old bore Sir Morton Pippitt, and to the afflicting county gossip of the lady in green,--Miss Ittlethwaite is her name, I believe. And, getting tired of these things, I strolled towards the picture-gallery, and hearing your delightful voice, listened there. I confess I heard more than I expected!"

Without a word in response, she turned from him and began to move away. He stretched out a hand and caught her sleeve.

"Maryllia, wait! I must speak to you--and I may as well say what I have to say now and get it over."

She paused. Lifting her eyes she glanced at him with a look of utter scorn and contempt. He laughed.

"Come out into the moonlight!"--he said--"Come and walk with me in this romantic old courtyard. It suits you, and you suit it. You are very pretty, Maryllia! May I--notwithstanding the parson--smoke?"

She said nothing. Drawing a leather case from his pocket, he took a cigar out and lit it.

"Silence gives consent,"--he went on--"Besides I'm sure you don't mind. You know plenty of men who can never talk comfortably without puffing smoke in between whiles. I'm one of that sort. Don't look at me like Cleopatra deprived of Marc Antony. Be reasonable! I only want to say a few plain matter-of-fact words to you---"

"Say them then as quickly as possible, please,"--she replied--"I am NOT a good listener!"

"No? Now I should have thought you were, judging by the patience with which you endured the parson's general discursiveness. What a superb night!" He stepped from the portal out on the old flagstones of the courtyard. "Take just one turn with me, Maryllia!"

Quietly, and with an air of cold composure she came to him, and walked slowly at his side. He looked at her covertly, yet critically.

"I won't make love to you,"--he said presently, with a smile-- "because you tell me you don't like it. I will merely put a case before you and ask for your opinion! Have I your permission?"

She bent her head slightly. Her throat was dry,--her heart was beating painfully,--she knew Roxmouth's crafty and treacherous nature, and her whole soul sickened as she realised that now he could, if he chose, drag the name of John Walden through a mire of social mud, and hold it up to ridicule among his own particular 'set,' who would certainly lose no time in blackening it with their ever-ready tar-brush. And it was all through her--all through her! How would she ever forgive herself if his austere and honourable reputation were touched in ever so slight a degree by a breath of scandal? Unconsciously, she clasped her little hands and wrung them hard--Roxmouth saw the action, and quickly fathomed the inward suffering it indicated.

"You know my dearest ambition,"--he went on,--"and I need not emphasise it. It is to call you my wife. If you consent to marry me, you take at once a high position in the society to which you naturally belong. But you tell me I am detestable to you--and that you would rather die than accept me as a husband. I confess I do not understand your attitude,--and, if you will allow me to say so, I hardly think you understand it yourself. You are in a state of uncertainty--most women live always in that state;--and your vacillating soul like a bewildered butterfly--you see I am copying the clerical example by dropping into poetry!--and a butterfly, NOT a cigarette, is I believe the correct emblem of Psyche,--" here he took a whiff at his cigar, and smiled pleasantly--"your soul, I repeat, like a bewildered butterfly, has lighted by chance on a full-flowering parson. The flight--the pause on that maturely-grown blossom of piety, is pardonable,--but I cannot contemplate with pleasure the idea of your compromising your name with that of this sentimental middle-aged individual who, though he may be an excellent Churchman, would make rather a grotesque lover!"

She remained silent. Glancing sideways at her, he wondered whether it was the moonlight that made her look so set and pale.

"But I said I would put a case before you,"--he continued, "and I will. Here are you,--of an age to be married. Here am I,--anxious to marry you. We are neither of us growing younger--and delay seems foolish. I offer you all I am worth in the world--myself, my name and my position. You have refused me a score of times, and I am not discouraged--you refuse me still, and I am not baffled. But I ask why? I am not deformed or idiotic. I would try to make you happy. A woman is best when she has entirely her own way,--I would let you have yours. You would be free to follow your own whims and caprices. Provided you gave me lawful heirs, I should ask no more of you. No reasonable man ought to ask more of any reasonable woman. Life could be made very enjoyable to us both, with a little tact and sense on either side. I should amuse myself in the world, and so I hope, would you. We understand modern life and appreciate its conveniences. The freedom of the matrimonial state is one of those conveniences, of which I am sure we should equally take advantage."

He puffed at his cigar for a few minutes complacently.

"You profess to hate me,"--he went on--"Again I ask, why? You tell your aunt that you want to be 'loved.' You consider love the only lasting good of life. Well, you have your desire. I love you!"

She raised her eyes,--and then suddenly laughed.

"You!" she said--"You 'love' me? It must be a very piecemeal sort of love, then, for I know at least five women to whom you have said the same thing!"

He was in nowise disconcerted.

"Only five!" he murmured lazily--"Why not ten--or twenty? The more the merrier! Women delight in bragging of conquests they have never made, as why should they not? Lying comes so naturally to them! But I do not profess to be a saint,--I daresay I have said 'I love you' to a hundred women in a certain fashion,--but not as I say it to you. When I say it to you, I mean it."

"Mean what?" she asked.

"Love."

She stopped in her walk and faced him.

"When a man loves a woman--really loves her,"--she said, "Does he persecute her? Does he compromise her in society? Does he try to scandalise her among her friends? Does he whisper her name away on a false rumour, and accuse her of running after him for his title, while all the time he knows it is he himself that is running after her money? Does he make her life a misery to her, and leave her no peace anywhere, not even in her own house? Does he spy upon her, and set others to do the same?--does he listen at doors and interrogate servants as to her movements--and does he altogether play the dastardly traitor to prove his 'love'?"

Her voice shook--her eyes were ablaze with indignation. Roxmouth flicked a little ash off his cigar.

"Why, of course not!" he replied--"But who does these dreadful things? Are they done at all except in your imagination?"

"YOU do them!" said Maryllia, passionately--"And you have always done them! When I tell you once and for all that I have given up every chance I ever had of being my aunt's heiress--that I shall never be a rich woman,--and that I would far rather die a beggar than be your wife, will you not understand me?--will you not leave me alone?"

He looked at her with quizzical amusement.

"Do you really want to be left alone?" he asked--"Or in a 'solitude a deux'--with the parson?"

She was silent, though her silence cost her an effort. But she knew that the least word she might say concerning Walden would be wilfully misconstrued. She knew that Roxmouth was waiting for her to burst out with some indignant denial of his suggestions--something that he might twist and turn in his own fashion and repeat afterwards to all his and her acquaintances. She cared nothing for herself, but she was full of dread lest Walden's name should be bandied up and down on the scurrilous tongues of that 'upper class' throng, who, because they spend their lives in nothing nobler than political intrigue and sensual indulgence, are politely set aside as froth and scum by the saner, cleaner world, and classified as the 'Smart Set.' Roxmouth watched her furtively. His clear-cut face, white skin and sandy hair shone all together with an oily lustre in the moonlight;--there was a hard cold gleam in his eyes.

"It would be a pretty little story for the society press," he said, after a pause--"How the bewitching Maryllia Vancourt resigned the brilliancy of her social life for a dream of love with an elderly country clergyman! By Heaven! No one would believe it! But,"--and he waited a minute, then continued--"It's a story that shall never be told so far as I am concerned--if--" He broke off, and looked meditatively at the end of his cigar. "There is always an 'if'-- unfortunately!"

Maryllia smiled coldly.

"That is a threat,"--she said--"But it does not affect me! Nothing that you can do or say will make me consent to marry you. You have slandered me already--you can slander me again for all I care. But I will never be your wife."

"You have said so before,"--he observed, placidly--"And I have put the question many times--why?"

She looked at him steadily.

"Shall I tell you?"

"Do! I shall appreciate the favour!"

For a moment she hesitated. A great pain and sorrow clouded her eyes.

"No woman marries a leper by choice!"--she said at last, slowly.

He glanced at her,--then shrugged his shoulders.

"You talk in parables. Pardon me if I am too dull to understand you!"

"You understand me well enough,"--she answered--"But if you wish it, I will speak more plainly. I dream of love---"

"Most women do!" he interrupted her, smilingly--"And I am sure you dream charmingly. But is a middle-aged parson part of the romantic vision?"

She paid no heed to this sarcasm. She had moved a pace or two away from him, and now stood, her head slightly uplifted, her eyes turned wistfully towards the picturesque gables of the Manor outlined clearly in the moon against the dense night sky.

"I dream of love!"--she repeated softly,--while he, smoking tranquilly, and looking the very image of a tailor's model in his faultlessly cut dress suit, spotless shirt front, and aggressively neat white tie, studied her face, her figure and her attitude with amused interest--"But my dream is not what the world offers me as the dream's realisation! The love that I mean--the love that I seek- -the love that I want--the love that I will have,"--and she raised her hand involuntarily with a slight gesture which almost implied a command--"or else go loveless all my days--is an honest love,-- loyal, true and pure!--and strong enough to last through this life and all the lives to come!"

"If there are any!"--interpolated Roxmouth, blandly.

She looked at him,--and a vague expression of something like physical repulsion flitted across her face.

"It is no use talking to you,"--she said--"For you believe in nothing--not even in God! You are a man of your own making--you are not a man in the true sense of manhood. How can you know anything of love? You will not find it in the low haunts of Paris where you are so well known,--where your name is a byword as that of an English 'milord' who degrades his Order!"

"What do YOU know of the low haunts of Paris?" he queried with a cold laugh--"Is Louis Gigue your informant?'

"I daresay Louis Gigue knows as much of you as most men do,"--she replied, quietly--"But I never speak of you to him. Indeed, I never speak of you at all unless you are spoken of, and not always then. You do not interest me sufficiently!"

She moved towards the house. He followed her.

"Your remarks have been somewhat rambling and disjointed,"--he said- -"But essentially feminine, after all. And they merely tend to one thing--that you are still an untamed shrew!"

She looked back at him over her shoulder. Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight,--a faint smile curved her pretty mouth.

"If I am, it will need someone braver than you are to tame me!" she said--"A trickster is always a coward!"

With an angry exclamation he flung away the end of his cigar,--it fell into a harmless bed of mignonette and seared the sweet blossom, burning redly in the green like a wicked eye. And then he caught her hand firmly and held it grasped as in a vice.

"You insult me!" he said, thickly--"And I shall not forget it! You talk as a child talks--though you are no child! You are a woman of the world--you have travelled--you have had experience--and you know men. You are perfectly aware that the sentimental 'love' you speak of exists nowhere except in poems and story-books--you know that no sane man alive would tie himself to one woman save for the law's demand that his heirs shall be lawfully born. You are no shrinking maid in her teens, that you should start and recoil or blush, at the truth of the position, and it is the merest affectation on your part to talk about 'love lasting forever,' for you are perfectly aware that it cannot last very long over the honeymoon. The natural state of man is polygamous. Englishmen are the same as Turks or Hottentots in this respect, except for the saving grace of hypocrisy, which is the chief prop of European civilisation. If it were not for hypocrisy, we should all be savages as utterly and completely as in primaeval days! You know all this as well as I do--and yet you feign to desire the impossible, while all the time you play the fool with a country parson! But I'll make you pay for it--by Heaven, I will! You scorn me and my name--you call me a social leper---"

"You are one!" she said, wrenching her hand from his clasp--"And what is more, you know it, and you glory in it! Who are your associates? Men who are physically or morally degenerate--women who, so long as their appetites are satisfied, seek nothing more! You play the patron to a certain literary 'set' who produce books unfit to be read by any decent human being,--you work your way, by means of your title and position, through society, contaminating everything you touch! You contaminate ME by associating my name with yours!--and my aunt helps you in the wicked scheme! I came here to my own home--to the house where my father died--thinking that perhaps here at least I should find peace,"--and her voice shook as with tears--"that here, at least, the old walls might give me shelter and protection!--but even here you followed me with your paid spy, Marius Longford--and I have found myself surrounded by your base tools almost despite myself! But even if you try to hound me into my grave, I will never marry you! I would rather die a hundred times over than be your wife!"

His face flushed a dark red, and he suddenly made an though he would seize her in his arms. She retreated swiftly.

"Do not touch me!" she said, in a low, strained voice--"It will be the worse for you if you do!"

"The worse for me--or for YOU?" he muttered fiercely,--then regaining his composure, he burst into an angry laugh. "Bah! You are nothing but a woman! You fling aside what you have, and pine for what you have not! The old, old story! The eternal feminine!"

She made no reply, but moved on towards the house. "Quel ravissement de la lune!" exclaimed a deep guttural voice at this juncture, and Louis Gigue came out from the dark embrasure of the Manor's oaken portal into the full splendour of the moonlight--"Et la belle Mademoiselle Vancourt is ze adorable fantome of ze night! Et milord Roxmouth ze what-you-call?--ze gnome!--ze shadow of ze lumiere! Ha-ha! C'est joli, zat little chanson of ze little rose- tree! Ze music, c'est une inspiration de Cicely--and ze words are not so melancolique as ze love-songs made ordinairement en Angleterre! Oui--oui!--c'est joli!"

He turned his shrewd old face up to the sky, and blinked at the dim stars,--there was a smile under his grizzled moustache. He had interrupted the conversation between his hostess and her objectionable wooer precisely at the right moment, and he knew it. Roxmouth's pale face grew a shade paler, but he made a very good assumption of perfect composure, and taking out his case of cigars offered one to Gigue, who cheerfully accepted it. Then he lit one for himself with a hand that trembled slightly. Maryllia, pausing on the step of the porch as she was about to enter, turned her head back towards him for a moment.

"Are you staying long at Badsworth Hall?" she asked.

"About a fortnight or three weeks,"--he answered carelessly, "Mr. Longford is doing some literary work and needs the quiet of the country--and Sir Morton Pippitt is good enough to wish us to extend our visit."

He smiled as he spoke. She said nothing further, but slowly passed into the house. Gigue at once began to walk up and down the courtyard, smoking vigorously, and talking volubly concerning the future of his pupil Cicely Bourne, and the triumph she would make some two years hence as a 'prima donna assoluta,' far greater than Patti ever was in her palmiest days,--and Roxmouth was perforce compelled, out of civility, as well as immediate diplomacy, to listen to him with some show of interest.

"Do you think an artistic career a good thing for a woman?" he asked, with a slight touch of satire in his voice as he put the question.

Gigue glanced up at him quickly and comprehendingly.

"Ah, bah! Pour une femme il n'y'a qu'une chose--l'Amour!" he replied--"Mais--au meme temps--l'Art c'est mieux qu'un mariage de convenance!"

Roxmouth shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly, smiled tolerantly, and changed the subject.

That same evening, when everyone had retired to bed, and when Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay was carefully taking off her artistically woven 'real hair' eyebrows and putting them by in a box for the night, Lady Beaulyon, arrayed in a marvellous 'deshabille' of lace and pale blue satin, which would have been called by the up-to-date modiste 'a dream of cerulean sweetness,' came into her room with dejection visibly written on her photographically valuable features.

"It's all over, Pipkin!" she said, with a sigh,--Pipkin was the poetic pet-name by which the 'beauty' of the press-paragraphist addressed her Ever-Youthful friend,--"We shall never get a penny out of Mrs. Fred Vancourt. Maryllia is a mule! She has told me as plainly as politeness will allow her to do that she does not intend to know either you or me any more after we have left here--and you know we're off to-morrow. So to-morrow ends the acquaintance. That girl's 'cheek' is beyond words! One would think she was an empress, instead of being a little bounder with only an old Manor-house and certainly not more than two thousand a year in her own right!"

'Pipkin' stared. That she was destitute of eyebrows, save for a few iron-grey bristles where eyebrows should have been, and that her beautiful Titian hair was lying dishevelled on her dressing table, were facts entirely lost sight of in the stupefaction of the moment.

"Maryllia Vancourt does not intend to know US!" she ejaculated,-- "Nonsense, Eva! The girl must be mad!"

"Mad or sane, that's what she says,"--and Eva Beaulyon turned away from the spectacle of her semi-bald and eyebrow-less confidante with a species of sudden irritation and repulsion--"She declares we are in the pay of her aunt and Lord Roxmouth. So we are, more or less! And what does it matter! Money must be had--and whatever way there is of getting it should be taken. I laughed at her, and told her quite frankly that I would do anything for money,--flatter a millionaire one day and cut him the next, if I could get cheques for doing both. How in the world should I get on without money?--or you either! But she is an incorrigible little idiot--talks about honour and principle exactly like some mediaeval story-book. She declares she will never speak to either of us again after we've gone away to- morrow. Of course we can easily reverse the position and turn the tables upon her by saying we will not speak to her again. That will be easy enough--for I believe she's after the parson."

Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay's eyes lightened with malignity.

"What, that man who objected to our smoke?"

Lady Beaulyon nodded.

"And I think Roxmouth sees it!"--she added.

'Pipkin' looked weirdly meditative and curiously wizened for a moment. Then she suddenly laughed and clapped her hands.

"That will do!" she exclaimed--"That's quite good enough for US! Mrs. Fred will pay for THAT information! Don't you see?"

Lady Beaulyon shook her head.

"Don't you? Well, wait till we get back to town!"--and 'Pipkin' took up her false hair and shook it gently, as she spoke--"We can do wonders--wonders, I tell you, Eva! And till we go, we'll be as nice to the girl as we can,--go off good friends and all that sort of thing--tell her how much we've enjoyed ourselves--thank her profusely,--and then once away we'll tell Mrs. Fred all about John Walden, and leave her to do as she likes with the story. That will be quite enough! If Maryllia has any sneaking liking for the man, she'll do anything to save HIS name if she doesn't care about saving her own!"

"Oh, I see now!" and Lady Beaulyon's eyes sparkled up with a gleam of malice--"Yes--I quite understand!"

'Pipkin' danced about the room in ecstasy,--she was half undressed for the night, and showed a pair of exceedingly thin old legs under an exceedingly short young petticoat.

"Maryllia Vancourt and a country parson!" she exclaimed, "The whole thing is TOO delicious! Go to bed, Eva! Get your beauty sleep or you'll have ever so many more wrinkles than you need! Good-night, dearest! If Maryllia declines to know US, we shall soon find excellent reasons for not knowing HER! Good-night!"

With a shrill little laugh, the lady kissed her dear friend affectionately--and if the caress was not returned with very great fervour, it may be presumed that this coldness was due more to the unlovely impression created by the night 'toilette' of the Ever- Youthful one, than anything else. Anyway the two social schemers parted on the most cordial terms, and retired to their several couches with an edifying sense of virtue pervading them both morally and physically.

And while they and others in the Manor were sleeping, Maryllia lay broad awake, watching the moonbeams creeping about her room like thin silver threads, interlacing every object in a network of pale luminance,--and listening to the slow tick-tock of the rusty timepiece in the courtyard which said, 'Give all--take nothing-- give--all--take--no--thing!'--with such steady and monotonous persistence. She was sad yet happy,--perplexed, yet peaceful;--she had decided on her own course of action, and though that course involved some immediate vexation and inconvenience to herself, she was satisfied that it was the only one possible to adopt under the irritating circumstances by which she was hemmed in and surrounded.

"It will be best for everyone concerned,"--she said, with a sigh-- "Of course it upsets all my plans and spoils my whole summer,--but it is the only thing to do--the wisest and safest, both for--for Mr. Walden--and for me. I should be a very poor friend if I could not sacrifice myself and my own pleasure to save him from possible annoyance,--and though it is a little hard--yes!--it IS hard!--it can't be helped, and I must go through with it. 'Home, Home, sweet Home!' Yes--dear old Home!--you shall not be darkened by a shadow of deceit or treachery if I can prevent it!--and for the present, my way is the only way!"

One or two tears glittered on her long lashes when she at last fell into a light slumber, and the old pendulum's rusty voice croaking out: 'Give all--take no--thing' echoed hoarsely through her dreams like a harsh command which it was more or less difficult to obey. But life, as we all know, is not made up of great events so much as of irritating trifles,--poor, wretched, apparently insignificant trifles, which, nevertheless do so act upon our destinies sometimes as to put everything out of gear, and make havoc and confusion where there should be nothing but peace. It was the merest trifle that Sir Morton Pippitt should have brought his 'distinguished guests,' including Marius Longford, to see John Walden's church--and also have taken him to visit Maryllia in her own home;--it was equally trifling that Longford, improving on the knightly Bone-Melter's acquaintance, should have chosen to import Lord Roxmouth into the neighbourhood through the convenient precincts of Badsworth Hall;-- it was a trifle that Maryllia should have actually believed in the good faith of two women who had formerly entertained her at their own houses and whose hospitality she was anxious to return;--and it was a trifle that John Walden should, so to speak, have made a conventionally social 'slip' in his protest against smoking women;-- but there the trifles stopped. Maryllia knew well enough that only the very strongest feeling, the very deepest and most intense emotion could have made the quiet, self-contained 'man o' God' as Mrs. Spruce called him, speak to her as he had done,--and she also knew that only the most bitter malice and cruel under-intent to do mischief could have roused Roxmouth, usually so coldly self-centred, to the white heat of wrath which had blazed out of him that evening. Between these two men she stood--a quite worthless object of regard, so she assured herself,--through her, one of them was like to have his name torn to shreds in the foul mouths of up-to-date salacious slanderers,--and likewise through her, the other was prepared and ready to commit himself to any kind of lie, any sort of treachery, in order to gain his own interested ends. Small wonder that tears rose to her eyes even in sleep--and that in an uneasy and confused dream she saw John Walden standing in his garden near the lilac-tree from which he had once given her a spray,--and that he turned upon her a sad white face, furrowed with pain and grief, while he said in weary accents--"Why have you troubled my peace? I was so happy till you came!" And she cried out--"Oh, let me go away! No one wants me! I have never been loved much in all my life--but I am loving enough not to wish to give pain to my friends--let me go away from my dear old home and never come back again, rather than make you wretched!"

And then with a cry she awoke, shivering and half-sobbing, to feel herself the loneliest of little mortals--to long impotently for her father's touch, her father's kiss,--to pray to that dimly-radiant phantom of her mother's loveliness which was pictured on her brain, and anon to stretch out her pretty rounded arms with a soft cry of mingled tenderness and pain--"Oh, I am so sorry!--so sorry for HIM! I know he is unhappy!--and it's all my fault! I wish--I wish---"

But what she wished she could not express, even to herself. Her sensitive nature was keenly alive to every slight impression of kindness or of coldness;--and the intense longing for love, which had been the pulse of her inmost being since her earliest infancy, and which had filled her with such passionate devotion to her father that her grief at his loss had been almost abnormally profound and despairing, made her feel poignantly every little incident which emphasised, or seemed to emphasise, her own utter loneliness in the world; and she was just now strung up to such a nervous tension, that she would almost have consented to wed Lord Roxmouth if by so doing she could have saved any possible mischief occurring to John Walden through Roxmouth's malignancy. But the shuddering physical repulsion she felt at the bare contemplation of such a marriage was too strong for her.

"Anything but that!"--she said to herself, with something of a prayer--"O dear God!--anything but that!"

Sometimes God hears these little petitions which are not of the orthodox Church. Sometimes, as it seems, by a strange chance, the cry of a helpless and innocent soul does reach that vast Profound where all the secrets of life and destiny lie hidden in mysterious embryo. And thus it happens that across the din and bustle of our petty striving and restless disquietudes there is struck a sudden great silence, by way of answer,--sometimes it is the silence of Death which ends all sorrow,--sometimes it is the sweeter silence of Love which turns sorrow into joy.

Next day all the guests at the Manor had departed with the exception of three--Louis Gigue, and the 'Sisters Gemini,' namely, Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby. With much gush and gratitude for a 'charming stay--a delightful time!' Lady Beaulyon and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay took leave of their 'dear Maryllia,' who received their farewells and embraces with an irresponsively civil coldness. Lord Charlemont and Mr. Bludlip Courtenay 'motored' to London, undertaking with each other to keep up a speed of fifty miles an hour, provided there were not too many hills and not too much 'slowing down' for the benefit of unexpected policemen round corners. And at sunset, a pleasant peace and stillness settled on the Manor grounds, erstwhile disturbed by groups of restless persons walking aimlessly to and fro,--persons who picked flowers merely to throw them away again, and played tennis and croquet only to become quarrelsome and declare that the weather was much too hot for games. Everybody that was anybody had gone their ways,--and within her own domicile Mrs. Spruce breathed capaciously and freely, and said in confidence to the cook and to Primmins:

"Thank the Lord an' His mercies, that's all over! An' from what I hears, Miss Maryllia won't be wantin' no more London folks for a goodish bit o' time, an' we'll all 'ave peace to turn round an' look at ourselves an' find out whether we're sane or silly, for the two old leddies what is stayin' on give no trouble at all, an' that Mr. Gigg don't care what he gets, so long as he can bang away on the pianner an' make Miss Cicely sing, an' I will own she do sing lovely like the angels in a 'evenly 'ost, but there!--I don't want no more company, for what with French maids an' valets, all talkin' the wickedest stuff I ever heard about the ways an' doins o' their masters an' missises in London, I'm downright glad to be rid o' the whole lot! For do what we will, there is limits to patience, an' a peaceful life is what suits me best not knowin' for the past three weeks whether my 'ead or my 'eels is uppermost with the orderin' an' messin' about, though I will say Miss Maryllia knows what's what, an' ain't never in a fuss nor muddle, keepin' all wages an' bills paid reg'lar like a hoffice clerk, mebbe better, for one never knows whether clerks pays out what they're told or keeps some by in their own pockets, honesty not bein' always policy with the likes o' they. Anyway 'ere we are all alive an' none the worse for the bustle, which is a mercy, an' now mebbe we'll have time to think a bit as we go, an' stop worrittin' over plates an' dishes an' glass an' silver, which, say what we like, do sit on one like a burden when there's a many to serve. A bit o' quiet 'ull do us all good!"

The 'quiet' she thus eulogised was to be longer and lonelier than she imagined, but of this she knew nothing. The whole house was delightfully tranquil after the departure of the visitors, and the spirit of a grateful repose seemed to have imparted itself to its few remaining occupants. Louis Gigue played wonderful improvisations on the piano that evening, and Cicely sang so brilliantly and ravishingly that had she then stood on the boards of the Paris Grand Opera, she would have created a wild 'furore.' Lady Wicketts knitted placidly; she was making a counterpane, which no doubt someone would reluctantly decide to sleep under--and Miss Fosby embroidered a cushion cover for Lady Wicketts, who already possessed many of these articles wrought by the same hand. Maryllia occupied herself in writing many letters,--and all was peace. Nothing in any way betokened a change, or suggested the slightest interruption to the sun-lighted serenity of the long, lovely summer days.

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XXV

Whatever the feelings of John Walden were concerning the incidents that had led him to more or less give himself away, as the saying goes, into Maryllia's hands, he remained happily unconscious of the fact that Lord Roxmouth had overheard his interview with her in the picture-gallery--and being a man who never brooded over his own particular small vexations and annoyances, he had determined, as far as might be possible, to put the whole incident behind him, as it were, and try to forget it. Of course he knew he never could forget it,--he knew that the sweet look in Maryllia's eyes--the little appealing touch of her hand on his arm, would be perchance the most vivid impressions of his life till that life should be ended. But it was useless to dwell with heart-aching persistence on her fascination, or on what he now called his own utter foolishness, and he was glad that he had arranged to visit his old friend Bishop Brent, as this enabled him to go away at once for three or four days. And it was possible, so he argued with himself, that this three or four days' break of the magnetic charm that had, against his own wish and will, enslaved his thoughts and senses, would restore him to that state of self-poise and philosophic tranquillity in which he had for so many years found an almost, if not quite, perfect happiness. Bracing himself fully up to the determination that he would, at all hazards, make an effort to recover his lost peace, he made rapid preparations for his departure from St. Rest, and going the round of his parish, he let all whom it might concern know, that for the first time in a long ten years, he was about to take two or three days' holiday. The announcement was received by some with good-natured surprise--by others with incredulity--but by most, with the usual comfortable resignation to circumstances which is such a prevailing characteristic of the rustic mind.

"It'll do ye good, Passon, that it will!" said Mrs. Frost, in her high acidulated voice, which by dint of constant scolding and screaming after her young family had become almost raspish--"For you're looking that white about the gills that it upsets my mind to see it. I sez to Adam onny t'other day, 'You'll be diggin' a grave for Passon presently--see if you don't--for he's runnin' downhill as fast as a loaded barrow with naught ahint it.' That's what I said, Passon--an' its Gospel true!"

Walden smiled.

"You're quite right, Mrs. Frost,"--he said, patiently--"I am certainly going downhill, as you say--but I must try to put a little check on the wheels! There's one thing to be said about it, if Adam digs my grave, as it is likely he will, I know he will do it better than any other sexton in the county! I shall sleep in it well, and securely!"

Mrs. Frost felt a certain sense of pride in this remark.

"You may say that, Passon--you may say that and not be fur wrong,"-- she said, complacently--"Adam don't do much, but what he doos is well done, an' there's no mistake about it. If I 'adn't a known 'im to be a 'andy man in his trade he wouldn't 'a had me to wife, I do assure you!"

Walden smiled and passed on. To Mr. Netlips, the grocer, he confided a few orders for the household supplies during his absence, which that worthy and sapient personage accepted with due attention.

"It is a demonstrable dispensation, Mr. Walden, sir,"--he said, "that you should be preparing yourself for locomotion at the moment when the house-party at the Manor is also severed indistinguishably. There is no one there now, so my imparted information relates, with the exception of her ladyship Wicketts, a Miss Fosby and a hired musician from the cells of the professional caterer, named Gigg."

Walden's eyes twinkled. He was always very indulgent to Mr. Netlips, and rather encouraged him than otherwise in his own special flow of language.

"Really!" he said--"And so they are all gone! I'm afraid it will make a difference to your trade, Mr. Netlips! How about your Petrol storage?"

Mr. Netlips smiled, with a comfortable air of self-conscious wisdom.

"It has been absorbed--quite absorbed," he said, complacently--"The board of announcement was prospective, not penetrative. Orders were consumed in rotation, and his lordship Charlemont was the last applicant on the formula."

"I see!" said Walden--"So you are no loser by the transaction. I'm glad to hear it! Good-day! I only intend to be away a short time. You will scarcely miss me,--as I shall occupy my usual post on Sunday."

"Your forethought, Mr. Walden, sir, is of a most high complication,"--rejoined Mr. Netlips with a gracious bend of his fat neck--"And it is not to be regretted by the profane that you should rotate with the world, provided you are seen in strict adhesion to the pulpit on the acceptable seventh day. Otherwise, it is but natural that you should preamble for health's sake. You have been looking poorly, Mr. Walden sir, of late; I trust you will beneficially profit by change."

Walden thanked him, and went his way. His spirits were gradually rising--he was relieved to hear that Maryllia's house-party had broken up and dispersed, and he cogitated within himself as to whether he should go and say good-bye to her before leaving the village, or just let things remain as they were. He was a little uncertain as to which was the wisest course to adopt,--and while he was yet thinking about it he passed the cottage of old Josey Letherbarrow, and saw the old man sitting at his door peacefully smoking, while at his feet, Ipsie Frost was curled up comfortably like a kitten, busying herself in tying garlands of ivy and honeysuckle round the tops of his big coarsely-laced boots. Pausing, John leaned on the gate and looked at the two with a smile.

"Ullo, Passon!" said Ipsie, turning her blue eyes up at him with a confidential air--"Tum an' tie up my Zozey-Posey! Zozey-Posey's bin naughty,--he's dot to be tied up so he tan't move!"

"And when he's good again, what then?" said Walden--"Will you untie him?"

Ipsie stared roundly and meditatively.

"Dunno!"--she said--"'Specks I will! But oh, my Zozey-Posey IS so bad!" and she screwed her little flaxen head round with an expression of the most comical distress--"See my wip?" And she held up a long stem of golden-rod in flower,--"Zozey dot to be wipped-- poor Zozey! But he's dot to be tied up fust!"

Josey heard all this nonsense babble with delighted interest, and surveyed the tops of his decorated boots with much admiration.

"Ain't she a little caution!" he said--"She do mind me somehow of th' owld Squire's gel! Ay, she do!--Miss Maryllia was just as peart and dauntsome when she was her age. Did I ever tell ye, Passon, 'bout Miss Maryllia's legs an' the wopses' nest?"

John started violently. What was the old man talking about? He felt that he must immediately put a stop to any chance of indecorous garrulity.

"No, you never told me anything about it, Josey,"--he said, hastily,--"an I've no time just now to stay and listen. I'm off on a visit for two or three days--you won't see me again till Sunday."

Josey drew his pipe slowly out of his mouth.

"Goin' away, Passon, are ye?" he said in quavering accents of surprise--"Ain't that a bit strange like?"

"Why yes, I suppose it is,"--said John, half laughing--"I never do go away I know--but---"

"Look 'ere Passon! Speak frank an' fair!--there baint nothin' drivin' ye away, be there?"

The hot colour sprang to Walden's brows.

"Why no, Josey!--of course not! How can you think of such a thing?"

Josey stooped and patted Ipsie's flaxen tangle of curls softly. Then he straightened himself and looked fully into John's face.

"Well I dunno how 'tis, Passon,"--he said, slowly--"When the body gets old an' feels the fallin' o' the dark shadder, the soul begins to feel young, an' sees all at once the light a-comin' which makes all things clear. See this little child playin' wi' me?--well, she don't think o' me as an old worn man, but as somethin' young like herself--an' for why? Because she sees the soul o' me,--the eyes o' the children see souls more'n bodies, if ye leave 'em alone an' don't worrit 'em wi' worldly talk. An' it's MY soul wot sees more'n my body--an' that's why I sez to ye, Passon, that if so be you've any trouble don't run away from it! Stay an' fight it out--it's the onny way!--fight it out!"

Walden was for a moment taken aback. Then he answered steadily.

"You're right, Josey! If I had any trouble I should stay and as you say, fight it out;--but I've none, Josey!--none in the world! I am as happy as I can be,--far happier than I deserve,--and I'm only going away to see my old friend Bishop Brent--you remember--the Bishop who consecrated the church seven years ago?"--Josey nodded comprehensively, "He lives, as you know, quite a hundred miles from here--but I shall be in my usual place on Sunday."

"Please God, you will!" said Josey, devoutly--"And please God, so shall I. But there's never no knowin' what may 'appen in a day or two days---"

Here Ipsie gave vent to a yell of delight. She had been groping among the flowers in the cottage border, and now held up a deep red rose, darkly glowing at its centre.

"Wed wose!" she announced, screamingly--"Wed--all wed! For Passon! Passon, tiss it!"

John still leaning on the gate, reached down and took the flower, kissing it as he was told, with lips that trembled on the velvet leaves. It was one of the 'old French damask' roses--and its rich scent, so soft and full of inexplicable fine delicacy, affected him strangely.

"'Ave ye heard as 'ow Miss Maryllia's goin' to marry that fine gen'leman wot's at Badsworth?" pursued Josey, presently, beginning to chuckle as he asked the question--"Roxmouth, they calls him;-- Lord, Lord, what clicketin' talk, like all the grass-'oppers out for a fairin'! She ain't goin' to marry no Roxmouths, bless 'er 'art!-- she's goin' to stick to the old 'ome an' people, and never leave 'em no more! I knows her mind! She tells old Josey wot she don't tell nobody else, you bet she do!"

John Walden tried not to look interested.

"Miss Vancourt will no doubt marry some day,"--he said, somewhat lamely.

"Av coorse she will!"--returned Josey--"When Mr. Right comes along, she'll know 'im fast enough! Them blue eyes ain't goin' to be deceived, I tell ye! But she ain't goin' to be no Duchess as they sez,--it's my 'pinion plain Missis is good 'nough for the Squire's gel, if so be a lovin' an' true Mister was to ax 'er and say--'Will 'ee be my purty little wife, an' warm my cold 'art all the days o' my life?'--an' there'd be no wantin' dukes nor lords round when there's real love drivin' a man an' woman into each other's arms! Lord--Lord, don't I know it! Seems but t'other day I was a fine man o' thirty odd, an' walkin' under the hawthorns all white wi' bloom, an' my wife that was to be strollin' shy like at my side--we was kind o' skeered o' one another, courtin' without knowin' we was courtin' ezackly, an' she 'ad a little blue print gown on an' a white linen sunbonnet--I kin see 'er as clear an' plain as I see you, Passon!--an' she looks up an' she sez--'Ain't it a lovely day, Joe?' An' I sez--'Yes, it's lovely, an' you're lovely too!' An' my 'art gave a great dump agin my breast, an' 'fore I knowed it I 'ad 'er in my arms a-kissin' 'er for all I was worth! Ay, that was so-- an' I never regretted them kisses under the may-trees, I tell ye! An' that's what'll 'appen to Squire's gel--some good man 'ull walk by 'er side one o' these days, an' won't know wot he's a-doin' of nor she neither, an' love 'ull just come down an' settle in their 'arts like a broodin' dove o' the 'Oly Spirit, not speakin' blasPHEmous, Passon, I do assure ye! For if Love ain't a 'Oly Spirit, then there ain't no Lord God in the 'Love one another!' I sez 'tis a 'Oly Spirit wot draws fond 'arts together an' makes 'em beat true--and the 'Oly Spirit 'ull fall on Squire's gel in its own time an' bring a blessin' with it. That's wot I sez,--are ye goin', Passon?"

"Yes--I'm going," said John in an uncertain voice, while Ipsie stared up at him in sudden enquiring wonder, perhaps because he looked so pale, and because the hand in which he held the rose she had given him trembled slightly--"I've a number of things to do, Josey--otherwise I should love to stop and hear you talk--you know I should!" and he smiled kindly--"For you are quite right, Josey! You have faith in the beautiful and the true, and so have I! I believe-- yes--I believe that everything--even a great sorrow--is for the best. We cannot see,--we do not know--but we should trust the Divine mind of God enough to feel that all is, all must be well!"

"That's so, Passon!" said Josey, with grave heartiness--"Stick to that, an' we're all right. God bless ye! I'll see ye Sunday if I ain't gone to glory!"

Walden pulled open the garden gate to shake hands with the old man, and to kiss Ipsie who, as he lifted her up in his arms, caressed his cheeks with her two dumpy hands.

"Has 'oo seen my lady-love?" she asked, in a crooning whisper--"My bootiful white lady-love?"

Walden looked at Josey perplexedly.

"She means Miss Maryllia,"--said the old man--"That's the name she's given 'er--lady-love--the thinkin' little imp she is! Where's lady- love? Why she's in 'er own house--she don't want any little tags o' babbies runnin' round 'er--your lady-love's got somethin' else to do."

"She AIN'T!" said Ipsie, with dramatic emphasis--"She tums an' sees me often--'oo don't know nuffin' 'bout it! HAS 'oo seen 'er?" she asked Walden again, taking hold of one end of his moustache very tenderly.

He patted the little chubby arm.

"I saw her the other night,"--he said, a sudden rush of words coming to his lips in answer to the child's query--"Yes, Ipsie,--I saw her! She was all in white, as a lady-love should be--only there were little flushes of pink on her dress like the sunset on a cloud--and she had diamonds in her hair,"--Here Ipsie sighed a profound sigh of comfortable ecstasy--"and she looked very sweet and beautiful--and-- and"--Here he suddenly paused. Josey Letherbarrow was looking at him with sudden interest. "And that's all, Ipsie!"

"Didn't she say nuffin' 'bout me?" asked the small autocrat.

Walden set her gently down on the ground.

"Not then, Ipsie,"--he said--"She was very busy. But I am sure she thought of you!"

Ipsie looked quite contented.

"'Ess,--my lady-love finks a lot, oh, a lot of me!" she said, seriously--"Allus finkin' of me!"

John smiled, and again shook old Josey's hand.

"Good-bye till Sunday!" he said.

"Good-bye, Passon!" rejoined Josey, cheerily--"Good luck t'ye! God bless ye!"

And the old man watched John's tall, slim athletic figure as long as his failing sight could follow it, murmuring to himself--

"Who'd a thought it!--who'd 'a thought it! Yet mebbe I'm wrong--an' mebbe I'm right!--for the look o' love never lightens a man's eyes like that but once in his life--all the rest o' the sparkles is only imitations o' the real fire. The real fire burns once, an' only once--an' it's fierce an' hot when it kindles up in a man after the days o' his youth are gone! An' if the real fire worn't in Passon's eyes when he talked o' the lady-love, than I'm an old idgit wot never felt my heart go dunt again my side in courtin' time!"

Walden meanwhile went on his round of visits, and presently,--the circle of his poorer parishioners being completed,-he decided to call on Julian Adderley at his 'cottage in the wood' and tell him also of his intended absence. He had taken rather a liking to this eccentric off-shoot of an eccentric literary set,--he had found that despite some slight surface affectations, Julian had very straight principles, and loyal ideas of friendship, and that he was not without a certain poetic talent which, if he studied hard and to serious purpose, might develop into something of more or less worthiness. Some lines that he had recently written and read aloud to Walden, had a haunting ring which clung to the memory:

Art thou afraid to live, my Heart? Look round and see What life at its best, With its strange unrest, Can mean for thee! Ceaseless sorrow and toil, Waits for each son of the soil; And the highest work seems ever unpaid By God and man, In the mystic plan;-- Think of it! Art thou afraid?

Art thou afraid to love, my Heart? Look well and see If any sweet thing, That can sigh or sing, Hath need of thee! Of Love cometh wild desire, Hungry and fierce as fire, In the souls of man and maid,-- But the fulness thereof Is the end of love,-- Think of it! Art thou afraid?

Art thou afraid of Death, my Heart? Look down and see What the corpse on the bed, So lately dead, Can teach to thee! Is it the close of the strife, Or a new beginning of Life? The secret is not betrayed;-- But Darkness makes clear That Light must be near! Think of it! Art thou afraid?

"'Darkness makes clear, that Light must be near,'--I am sure that is true!"--murmured John, as he swung along at a quick pace through a green lane leading out of the village into the wider country, where two or three quaint little houses with thatched roofs were nestled among the fields, looking like dropped acorns in the green,--"It must be true,--there are so many old saws and sayings of the same kind, like 'The darkest hour's before the dawn.' But why should I seek to console myself with a kind of Tupper 'proverbial philosophy'? I have no black hour threatening me,--I have nothing in the world to complain of or grumble at except my own undisciplined nature, which even at my age shows me it can 'kick against the pricks' and make a fool of me!"

Here turning a corner of the road which was overshaded by a huge chestnut-tree, he suddenly came face to face with the Reverend Putwood Leveson, who, squatted on the hank by the roadside, with his grand-pianoforte legs well exposed to view in tight brown knickerbockers and grey worsted stockings, was bending perspiringly over his recumbent bicycle, mending something which had, as usual, gone wrong.

"Hullo, Walden!" he said, looking up and nodding casually--"Haven't seen you for an age! What have you been doing with yourself? Always up at the Manor, I suppose! Great attraction at the Manor!--he-he- he!"

A certain quick irritation, like that produced by the teasing buzz of some venomous insect, affected Walden's nerves. He looked at the porcine proportions of his brother minister with an involuntary sense of physical repulsion. Then he answered stiffly--

"I don't understand you. I have not been visiting at the Manor at all. I dined there the night before last for the first and only time."

Leveson winked one purple puffy eyelid. Then he began his 'He-he-he' again to himself, while he breathed hard and sweated profusely over the rubber tyre of his machine.

"Is that so?" he sniggered--"Well, that's all the better for you!-- you do well to keep away! Men of our cloth ought not to be seen there really."

And scrambling to his feet with elephantine ease, he brushed the dust from his knickers, and wiped his brows with an uncleanly handkerchief which looked as if it had been used for drying oil off the bicycle as well as off the man.

"We ought not to be seen there,"--he repeated, disregarding Walden's steady coldness of eye--"I myself made a great mistake when I wrote to the woman. I ought not to have done so. But of course I did not know--I thought it was all right." And the reverend gentleman assumed an air of mammoth-like innocence--"I am so mediaeval, you know!--I never suspect anything or anybody! I wrote to her in quite a friendly way, suggesting that I should arrange her family papers for her--I thought she might as well employ me as anyone else--and she never answered my letter--never answered a word!"

"Well, of course not!" said Walden, composedly, though his blood began to tingle hotly through his veins with rising indignation-- "Why should she? Her family papers are all in order, and no doubt she considered your application both ignorant and impertinent."

Leveson's gross countenance flushed a deeper crimson.

"Ignorant and impertinent!" he echoed--"Come, I like that! Why she ought to have considered herself uncommonly lucky to receive so much as a civil letter from a respectable man,--such a woman as she is!-- 'Maryllia Van'--he-he-he-he!"

Walden took a quick step towards him.

"What do you mean?" he demanded--"What right have you to speak of her in such a manner?"

Leveson recoiled, startled by the intense pallor of Walden's face, and the threatening light in his eyes.

"What right?" he stammered--"Why--why what do yon mean by flaring up in such a temper, eh? What does it matter to you?"

"It matters this much,--that I will not allow Miss Vaneourt to be insulted by you or anyone else!" retorted Walden, hotly--"You have never spoken to her,--you know nothing about her,--so hold your tongue!"

The Reverend 'Putty's' round eyes protruded with amazement.

"Hold--my--tongue!" he repeated, in a kind of stupefaction--"Are you gone mad, Walden? Do you know who you are talking to?"

John gave a short laugh. His hands clenched involuntarily.

"Oh, I know well enough!" he said--"I am talking to a man who has no more regard for a woman's name than a cat has for the mouse it kills! I am talking to a man who is an ordained Christian minister, who has less Christianity than a dog, which at least is faithful to its master!"

Leveson uttered a kind of inarticulate sound something between a gasp and a grunt. Then he fell back on his old snigger.

"He-he, he-he-he!" he bleated--"You must be crazy, Walden!--or else you've been drinking! I've a perfect right to speak of the Abbot's Manor woman IF I like and as I like! All men have a right to do the same--she's been pretty well handed round as common property for a long time! Why, she's perfectly notorious!--everybody knows that!"

"You lie!"

And Walden sprang at him, one powerful clenched fist uplifted. Leveson staggered back in terror,--and so for a moment they stood, staring upon one another. They did not hear a stealthy rustle among the branches of the chestnut-tree near which they stood, nor see a long lithe shadow creep towards them for the dense low-hanging foliage. Face to face, eye to eye, they remained for a moment's space as though ready to close and wrestle,--then suddenly Walden's arm dropped to his side.

"My God!" he muttered--"I nearly struck you!"

Leveson drew a long breath of relief, and sneaked backward on his heels.

"You--you're a nice kind of 'ordained Christian minister' aren't you?" he spluttered--"With all your humbug and cant you're no better than a vulgar bully! A vulgar bully!--that's what you are! I'll report you to the Bishop--see if I don't!--brow-beating me, and putting me in bodily fear, all about a woman too! Great Scott!--a fine scandal you'll make in the Church one of these days if you're not watched pretty closely and pulled up pretty sharply--and pulled up you shall be, take my word for it! We've had about enough of your high-and-mighty airs--it's time you learned to know your place---"

The words had scarcely left his mouth when a pair of long muscular arms seized him by the shoulders, shook him briefly and emphatically, and turning him easily over, deposited him flat in the dust.

"It is time--yea verily!--it is full time you learned to know your place!" said Julian Adderley, calmly standing with legs-astride across his fat recumbent body--"And there it is--and there you are! My dear Walden, how are you? Excuse my shaking hands with you-- having defiled myself, as the Orientals say, by touching unclean meat, I must wash first!"

For a moment Walden had been so taken aback by the suddenness of Leveson's unexpected overthrow that he could scarcely realise what had happened,--but presently when the Reverend 'Putty's' cobby legs began to sprawl uneasily on the ground, and the Eeverend 'Putty' himself gave vent to sundry blasphemous oaths and curses, he grasped the full humour of the situation. A broad smile lit up his face.

"That was a master-stroke, Adderley!" he said, and the smile deepened into sudden laughter--"But how in the world did you come here?"

"I was here all the time,"--said Adderley, still standing across Leveson's prostrate form--"Returning to the habits of primaeval monkey as I often do, I was seated in the boughs of that venerable chestnut-tree-and I heard all the argument. I enjoyed it. I was hoping to see the Church militant belabour the Church recusant. It would have been so new--so fresh! But as the sacred blow failed, the secular one was bound to fall. Don't get up, my excellent sir!-- don't, I beseech of you!" This to Leveson, who was trying by means of the most awkward contortions to rise to a sitting posture--"You will find it difficult--among other misfortunes your knickers will burst, and there is no tailor close at hand. Spare yourself,--and us!"

"Oh give him a hand, Adderley!" said Walden, good-naturedly. "Help him up! He's had his beating!"

"He hasn't,"--declared Julian, with a lachrymose air of intense regret--"I wish he had! He is less hurt than if he had fallen off his bicycle. He is in no pain;--would that he were!"

Here Leveson managed to partially lift himself on one side. "Assault!" he stuttered--"Assault--common assault---"

"AND battery,"--said Julian--"You can summons me, my dear sir--if you feel so inclined! I shall be happy to explain the whole incident in court--and also to pay the five pounds penalty. I only wish I could have got more for my money. There's such a lot of you!--such a lot!" he repeated, musingly, "And I've only sailed round such a small portion of your vast fleshy continent!"

Walden controlled his laughter, and stooping, offered to assist Leveson to get up, but the indignant 'Putty' refused all aid, and setting his own two hands firmly against the ground, tried again to rise.

"Remove your legs, sir!" he shouted to Julian, who still stood across him in apparent abstraction--"How dare you--how dare you pin me down in this fashion?--how dare---"

Here his voice died away choked by rage.

"You are witty without knowing it, my fat friend!" said Julian languidly--"Legs, in slang parlance, are sometimes known as 'pins,'- -therefore, when you say I 'pin' you down, you use an expression which is, like the 'mobled queen' in Hamlet, good. Be unpinned, good priest--and remember that you must be prepared to say your prayers backwards, next time you slander a woman!"

He relaxed his position, and Leveson with an effort scrambled to his feet, covered with dust. Picking up his cap from the gutter where it had fallen, he got his bicycle and prepared to mount it. He presented a most unlovely spectacle--his face, swollen and crimson with fury, seemed twice its usual size,--his little piggy eyes rolled in his head like those of a man threatened with apoplexy--and the oily perspiration stood upon his brow and trickled from his carroty hair in great drops.

"You shall pay for this!" he said in low vindictive tones, shaking his fist at both Walden and Adderley--"There are one or two old scores to be wiped off in this village, and mine will help to increase the account! Your fine lady at the Manor isn't going to have everything her own way, I can tell you--nor you either, you-- you--you upstart!"

With this last epithet hurled out at Walden, who, shrugging his shoulders, received it with ineffable contempt, he got on his machine and worked his round legs and round wheels together furiously away. When his bulky form had disappeared, the two men he had left behind glanced at one another, and moved by the same risible emotion burst out laughing,--and once their laughter began, they gave it full vent, Walden's mellow 'Ha-ha-ha!' ringing out on the still air with all the zest and heartiness of a boy's mirth.

"Upon my word, Adderley, you are a capital 'thrower'?" he said, clapping Julian on the shoulder. "I never was more surprised in my life than to see that monstrous 'ton of man' heave over suddenly and sprawl in the dust! It was an artistic feat, most artistically executed!"

"It was--it was,--I think so myself!"--agreed Julian--"I am proud of my own skill! That pious porpoise will not forget me in a hurry. You see, my dear Walden, you merely threatened punishment,--you did not inflict it,--I suppose out of some scruple of Church conscience, which is quite a different conscience to the lay examples,--and it was necessary to act promptly. The air of St. Rest is remarkably free from miasma, but Leveson was discharging microbes from his tongue and person generally that would have been dangerous to life in another minute." He laughed again. "Were you coming my way?"

"Yes, I was," replied Walden, as they began to walk along the road together--"I am going away on a visit, and I meant to call and say good-bye to you."

Julian glanced at him curiously.

"Going away? For long?"

"Oh no! Only for two or three days. I want to see my Bishop."

"On a point of conscience?"

John smiled, but coloured a little too.

"No--not exactly! We are very old friends, Brent and I--but we have not met for seven years,--not since my church was consecrated. It will be pleasant to us to have a chat about old times---"

"And new times--don't leave THEM out," said Julian--"They are quite as interesting. The present is as pleasing as the past, don't you think so?"

Walden hesitated. A touch of sorrow and lingering regret clouded his eyes.

"No--I cannot say that I do!" he answered, at last, with a sigh--"In the past I was young, with all the world before me,--in the present I am old, with all the world behind me!"

"Does it matter?" and Adderley lifted his eyelids with a languid expression--"For instance let us suppose that in the past you have lost something and that in the present you gain something, does it not equalise the position?"

"The gain is very little in my case!"--said John, yet even as he spoke he felt a pang of shame at his own thanklessness. Had he not secured a peaceful home, a round of work that he loved, and happiness far beyond his merits, and had not God blessed him with health and a quiet mind? Yes--till quite lately he had had a quiet mind--but now---

"You perhaps do not realise how much the gain is, or how far it extends,"--pursued Adderley, thoughtfully--"Youth and age appear to me to have perfectly equal delights and drawbacks. Take me, for example,--I am young, but I am in haste to be older, and when I am old I am sure I shall never want to be young again. It is too unsettled a condition!"

Walden smiled, but made no answer. They walked on in comparative silence till they reached Adderley's cottage--a humble but charmingly artistic tenement, with a thatched roof and a small garden in front which was little more than a tangle of roses.

"I am taking this house--this mansion--on," said Julian, pausing at the gate--"I shall stop here all winter. The surroundings suit me. Inspiration visits me in the flowering of the honeysuckle, and encircles me in the whispering of the wind among the roses. When the leaves drop and the roses fade, I shall hear a different chord on the harp of song. When the sleet and snow begin to fall, I shall listen to the dripping of the tears of Nature with as much sympathy as I now bask in her smiles. I have been writing verses to the name of Maryllia--they are not finished--but they will come by degrees-- yes!--I am sure they will come! This is how they begin,"--and leaning on the low gate of his cottage entrance he recited softly, with half-closed eyes:

In the flowering-time of year When the heavens were crystal clear, And the skylark's singing sweet Close against the sun did beat,-- All the sylphs of all the streams, All the fairies born in dreams, All the elves with wings of flame, Trooping forth from Cloudland came To the wooing of Maryllia!

Walden murmured something inarticulate, but Adderley waved him into silence, and continued:

Woodland sprites of ferns and trees, Ariels of the wandering breeze, Kelpies from the hidden caves Coral-bordered 'neath the waves, Sylphs, that in the rose's heart, Laugh when leaves are blown apart,-- All the Faun and Dryad crew From their mystic forests flew To the wooing of Maryllia!

"Very fanciful!" said John, with a forced smile--"I suppose you can go on like that interminably?"

"I can, and I will,"--said Julian--"So long as the fit possesses me. But not now. You are in a hurry, and you wish to say good-bye. You imply the P.P.C. in your aspect. So be it! I shall see you on Sunday in the pulpit as usual?"

"Yes."

"Badsworth Hall will probably attend your ministrations, so I am told,"--continued Julian--"Lord Roxmouth wants to hear you preach,-- and Sir Morton himself proposes to 'sit under' you."

"Sorry for it!" said Walden abruptly--"He should attend his own 'cure'--Mr. Leveson."

They laughed.

"Of course you don't credit that story about Miss Vancourt's marriage with Lord Roxmouth?" queried Adderley, suddenly.

"I am slow to believe anything I hear,"--replied John--"But--is it quite without foundation?"

Adderley looked him straight in the eyes.

"Quite! Very quite! Most quite! My dear Walden, you are pale! A change, even a brief one, will do you good. Go and see your Bishop by all means. And tell him how nearly, how very nearly you gave prestige to the calling of a Churchman by knocking down a rascal!"

They parted then; and by sundown Walden was in the train speeding away from St. Rest at the rate of fifty miles an hour to one of the great manufacturing cities where human beings swarm together more thickly than bees in a hive, and overcrowd and jostle each other's lives out in the desperate struggle for mere bread. Bainton and Nebbie were left sole masters of the rectory and its garden, and both man and dog were depressed in spirits, and more or less restless and discontented.

"'Tain't what it used to be by no manner o' means,"--muttered Bainton, looking with a dejected air round the orchard, where the wall fruit was hanging in green clusters of promise--"Passon don't seem to care, an' when HE don't care then I don't care! Why, it seems onny t'other day 'twas May morning, an' he was carryin' Ipsie Frost on his shoulder, an' leadin' all the children wi' the Maypole into the big meadow, an' all was as right as right could be,--yet 'ere we're onny just in August an' everything's topsy-turvy like. Lord, Lord!--'ow trifles do make up a sum o' life to be sure, as the copybooks sez--for arter all, what's 'appened? Naught in any wise partikler. Miss Vancourt 'as come 'ome to her own,--an' she's 'ad a few friends from Lunnon stayin' with 'er. That's simple enough, as simple as plantains growin' in a lawn. Then Miss Vancourt's 'usband that is to be, comes down an' stays with old Blusterdash Pippitt at the 'All, in order to be near 'is sweet'art. There ain't nothin' out of the common in that. It's all as plain as piecrust. An' Passon ain't done nothin' either but jest his dooty as he allus doos it,-- he ain't been up to the Manor more'n once,--he ain't been at the 'All,--an' Miss Vancourt she ain't been 'ere neither since the day he broke his best lilac for her. So it can't be she what's done mischief--nor him, nor any on 'em. So I sez to myself, what is it? What's come over the old place? What's come over Passon? Neither place nor man's the same somehow, yet blest if I know where the change comes in. It's like one of the ways o' the Lord, past findin' out!"

He might have thought there was something still more to wonder at if he could have looked into Josey Letterbarrow's cottage that evening and seen Maryllia there, sitting on a low stool at the old man's knee and patting his wrinkled hand tenderly, while she talked to him in a soft undertone and he listened with grave intentness and sagacity, though, also with something of sorrow.

"An' so ye think it's the onny way, my beauty!" he queried, anxiously--"There ain't no other corner round it?"

"I'm afraid not, dear Josey!" she answered, with a sigh--"And I'm telling you all about it, because you knew my father, and because you saw me when I was a little child. You would not like me to marry a man whom I hate,--a man who is bad right through, and who only wants my aunt's money, which he would get if I consented to be his wife. I am sure, Josey, you don't think money is the best thing in life, do you?--I know you agree with me that love is better?"

Josey looked down upon her where she sat with an almost devout tenderness.

"Love's the onny thing in the world worth 'avin' an' keeping my beauty!" he said--"An' love's wot you desarves, an' wot you're sure to get. I wouldn't see Squire's gel married for money, no, not if it was a reglar gold mine!--I'd rather see 'er in 'er daisy grave fust! An' I don't want to see 'er with a lord nor a duke,--I'll be content to see 'er with a good man if the Lord will grant me that 'fore I die! An' you do as you feels to be right, an' all things 'ull work together for good to them as loves the Lord! That's Passon's teachin' an' rare good teachin' it be!"

At this Maryllia rose rather hurriedly and put on her hat, tying its chiffon strings slowly under her chin.

"Good-bye, Josey dear!"--she said--"It won't be for very long. But you must keep my secret--you mustn't say a word, not even"--here she paused and laughed a little forcedly--"not even to the Parson you're so fond of!"

Josey looked at her sideways, with a quaintly meditative expression.

"Passon be gone away hisself,"--he said, a little smile creeping among the kindly wrinkles of his brown weather-beaten face--"He baint comin' back till Sunday."

"Gone away?" Maryllia was quite unconscious of the vibration of pain in her voice as she asked the question, as she was equally of the startled sorrow in her pretty eyes.

"Ah, my beauty, gone away,"--repeated Josey, with a curious sort of placid satisfaction--"Passon, he be lookin' downhearted like, an' a change o' scene 'ull do 'im good mebbe, an' bring 'im back all the better for it. He came an' said good-bye to me this marnin'."

Maryllia stood for a moment irresolute. Why had he gone away? Her brows met in a little puckered line of puzzled wonder.

"He be gone to see the Bishop,"--pursued Josey, watching her tenderly with his old dim eyes,--it was like reading a love-story to see the faint colour flushing those soft round cheeks of hers, and the tremulous quiver of that sweet sensitive mouth--"Church business, likely. But never you mind, my beauty!--he'll be 'ere to preach, please the Lord, on Sunday."

"Oh, I don't mind," said Maryllia, quickly recovering herself--"Only I shan't be here, you see--and--and I had intended to explain something to him--however, it doesn't matter! I can write all I wanted to say. Good-bye, Josey! Give my love to Ipsie!"

"Good-bye, my beauty!" returned Josey, with emphatic earnestness-- "An' God bless ye an' make all the rough places smooth for ye! You'll find us all 'ere, lovin' an' true, whenever ye comes, mornin', noon or night--the village ain't the world, but you've got round it, my dearie--you've got round it!"

And in the deep midnight when the church chimes rang the hour, and the moon poured a pearly shower of luminance over the hushed woodland and silently winding river, Josey lay broad awake, resignedly conscious of his extreme age, and thinking soberly of the beginning and end of life,--the dawn and fruition of love,--the wonderful, beautiful, complex labyrinth of experience through which every human soul is guided from one mystic turn to another of mingled joy and sorrow by that supreme Wisdom, Whom, though we cannot see, we trust,--and feeling the near close of his own long life-journey, he folded his withered hands and prayed aloud:

"For all Thy childern, O Lord God, that 'ave gone by the last milestone on the road an' are growin' footsore an' weary, let there be Thy peace which passeth all understandin'!--but for Squire's gel with the little lonely heart of 'er beatin' like the wings of a bird that wants a nest, let there be Love!"

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XXVI

Next day at Badsworth Hall, a stately luncheon was in progress. Luncheon, or indeed any meal, partaken of under the rolling and excitable eye of Sir Morton Pippitt, was always a function fraught with considerable embarrassment to any guests who might happen to be present, being frequently assisted by the Shakespearean stage direction 'alarums and excursions.' With Sir Morton at the head of the table, and the acid personality of his daughter Miss Tabitha at the foot, there was very little chance of more than merely monosyllabic conversation, while any idea of merriment, geniality or social interchange of thought, withered in conception and never came to birth. The attention of both host and hostess was chiefly concentrated on the actual or possible delinquencies of the servants in attendance--and what with Sir Morton's fierce nods and becks to unhappy footmen, and Miss Tabitha's freezing menace of brow bent warningly against the butler, those who, as visitors, were outside these privacies of the domestic circle, never felt altogether at their ease. But the fact that other people were made uncomfortable by his chronic irascibility moved Sir Morton not at all, so long as he personally could enjoy himself in his own fashion, which was to browbeat, bully and swear at every hapless household retainer that came across his path in the course of the day. He was more than usually choleric and fussy in the 'distinguished' presence of Lord Roxmouth, for though that individual had gone the social pace very thoroughly, and was, to put it mildly, a black sheep of modern decadence, hopelessly past all regeneration, he still presented the exterior appearances of a gentleman, and was careful to maintain that imperturbable composure of mien, dignity of bearing, and unruffled temper which indicate breeding, though they are far from being evidences of sincerity. And thus it very naturally happened that in the companionship of the future Duke of Ormistoune, Sir Morton did not shine. His native vulgarity came out side by side with his childish pomposity, and Roxmouth, after studying his habits, customs and manners for two or three days, began to feel intensely bored and out of humour.

"Upon my word,"--he said, to his fidus Achates, Marius Longford,--"I am enduring a great deal for the sake of the Vancourt millions! To follow an erratic girl like Maryllia from one Continental resort to another was bad enough,-but to stay here in tame, highly respectable country dullness is a thousand times worse! Why on earth, my good fellow, could you not have found a more educated creature to play host to me than this terrible old Bone-Boiler?"

Longford pressed the tips of his fingers together with a deprecatory gesture.

"There was really no one else who could receive you,"--he answered, almost apologetically--"I thought I had managed the affair rather well. You will remember that directly Miss Vancourt had announced to her aunt her intention to return to her own home, you sent me down here to investigate the place and its surroundings, and see what I could do. Sir Morton Pippitt seemed to be the only person, from the general bent of his character, to suit your aims, and his house was, (before he had it) of very excellent historic renown. I felt sure you would be able to use him. There is no other large place in the neighbourhood except Miss Vancourt's own Manor, and Ittlethwaite Park--I doubt whether you could have employed the Ittlethwaites to much purpose---"

"Spare me the suggestion!" yawned Roxmouth--"I should not have tried!"

"Well, there is no one else of suitable position, or indeed of sufficient wealth to entertain you,"--continued Longford--"Unless you had wished me to fraternise with the brewer, Mordaunt Appleby? HE certainly might have been useful! oj He would sell his soul to a title!"

Roxmouth gave an exclamation of mingled contempt and impatience, and dropped the conversation. But he was intensely weary of Sir Morton's 'fine jovial personality'--he hated his red face, his white hair, his stout body, his servile obsequiousness to rank, and all his 'darling old man' ways. Darling old man he might be, but he was unquestionably a dull old man as well. So much so, indeed, that when at luncheon on the day now named, his lordship Roxmouth, as Mr. Netlips would have styled him, was in a somewhat petulant mood, being tired of the constant scolding of the servants that went on around him, and being likewise moved to a sort of loathing repulsion at the contemplation of Miss Tabitha's waxy-clean face lined with wrinkles, and bordered by sternly smooth grey hair. He was lazily wondering to himself whether she had ever been young--whether the same waxy face, wrinkles and grey hair had not adorned her in her very cradle,--when the appearance of an evidently highly nervous boy in buttons, carrying a letter towards his host on a silver salver, distracted his attention.

"What's this--what's this?" spluttered Sir Morton, hastily dropping a fork full of peas which he had been in the act of conveying to his mouth--"What are you bringing notes in here for, eh? Haven't I told you I won't have my meals disturbed by messages and parcels? What d'ye mean by it? Take it away--take it away!--No!--here!--stop a minute, stop a minute! Yes--yes!--I see!--marked 'immediate,' and from Abbot's Manor. My dear lord!"--And here he raised his voice to a rich warble-"I believe this will concern you more than me--ha-ha- ha!--yes, yes! we know a thing or two! 'When a woman will, she will, you may depend on't!'--never mind the other line!--never mind, never mind!" And he broke open the seal of the missive presented to him, and adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles to read its contents. "Eh-- what's this--what's this? God bless my soul!" And his round eyes protruded in astonishment and dismay--"Look here!--I say--really! You'd better read this, my lord! God bless my soul! She's bolted!"

Roxmouth started violently. Mr. Marius Longford looked up sharply-- and Miss Tabitha laid down her knife and fork with the regular old maid's triumphant air of 'I told you so!'

"God bless my soul!" said Sir Morton again--"Was ever such a bit of damned cheek!--beg pardon, my lord!---"

"Don't apologise!" said Roxmouth, with courteous languor, "At least, not to ME! To Miss Tabitha!" and he waved his hand expressively. "May I see the letter?"

"Certainly--certainly!" and Sir Morton in a great fluster passed it along. It was a very brief note and ran as follows:

"DEAR SIR MORTON,--I quite forgot to tell you, when you and your friends dined with me the other day, that I am leaving home immediately and shall be away for the rest of the summer. Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby are staying on at the Manor for a fortnight or three weeks, as the country air does them so much good. It will be very kind if you and Lord Roxmouth will call and see them as often as you can,--they are such dear kind people!--and I am sure Miss Tabitha will be glad to have them near her as she already likes them so much. Anything you can do to give them pleasure while they are here, will be esteemed as a personal favour to myself. I am sorry not to have the time to call and say good-bye--but I am sure you will excuse ceremony. I shall have left before you receive this note.--With kind regards, sincerely yours," "MARYLLIA VANCOURT."

Roxmouth read this letter, first to himself, and then aloud to all at table. For a moment there was a silence of absolute stupefaction.

"Then she's gone!" at last said Miss Tabitha, placidly nodding, while the suspicion of a malign smile crept round the hard corners of her mouth.

"Evidently!" And Roxmouth crumbled the bread beside his plate into fine shreds with a nervous, not to say vicious clench of his hand.

He was inwardly furious. There is nothing so irritating to a man of his type as to be made ridiculous. Maryllia had done this. In the most trifling, casual, and ordinary way she had compelled him to look like a fool. All his carefully laid plans were completely upset, and he fancied that even Longford, his tool, to whom he had freely confided his wishes and intentions, was secretly laughing at him. To have plotted and contrived a stay at Badsworth Hall with the blusterous Pippitt in order to have the opportunity of crossing Maryllia's path at every turn, and compromising her name with his in her own house and county, and then to find himself 'left,' with the civil suggestion that he should 'call and see' the antique Sisters Gemini, Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby, was somewhat too much for his patience. The blow was totally unexpected,--the open slight to his amour propre sudden and keen. His very blood tingled under the lash of Maryllia's disdain--she had carried a point against him, and he almost imagined he could hear the distant echo of her light mocking laughter. His brow reddened,--he gnawed his under-lip angrily, and sat mute, aware that he had been tricked and foiled.

Longford watched him narrowly and with something of dismay,--for if this lordly patron, who, by his position alone, was able to push things on in certain quarters of the press, were to suddenly turn crusty and unreasonable, where would his, Longford's, 'great literary light' be? Quenched utterly like a rush-light in a gale! Sir Morton Pippitt during the uncomfortable pause of silence had grown purple with suppressed excitement. He knew perfectly well,-- because he had consented to it,--that his house had only been 'used' for Roxmouth's purposes, and that he, personally, was of no more consideration to a man like the future Duke of Ormistoune than a landlord for the time being, whose little reckoning for entertainment would in due course be settled in some polite and ceremonious fashion. And he realised dolefully that his 'distinguished' guest might, and probably would, soon take his departure from Badsworth Hall, that abode no longer being of any service to him. This meant annihilation to many of Sir Morton's fondest hopes. He had set his heart on appearing at sundry garden- parties in the neighbourhood during the summer with Lord Roxmouth under his portly wing--he had meant to hurl Lord Roxmouth here, Lord Roxmouth there at all the less 'distinguished' people around him, so that they should almost sink into the dust with shame because they had not had the honour of sheltering his lordship within their walls,--and he had expected to add considerably to his own importance by 'helping on' the desired union between Roxmouth Castle and the Vaneourt millions. Now this dream was over, and he could willingly have thrown plates and dishes and anything else that came handy at the very name of Maryllia for her 'impudence' as he called it, in leaving them all in the lurch.

"It will be quite easy to ascertain where she has gone,"--said Marius Longford presently, in soft conciliatory accents--"Lady Wicketts will probably know, and Miss Fosby---"

"Damn Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby!" snapped out Sir Morton, this time without any apology--"A couple of female donkeys! 'Kind of me to call upon them!' God bless my soul! I should think it WOULD be kind! Nobody but a fool would go near them---"

"They are very pleasant, good women,"--said Miss Tabitha with severe serenity--"Personally, I much prefer them to Miss Vancourt."

Sir Morton snorted contempt; Mr. Longford coughed discreetly.

"Miss Vancourt has not yet ripened sufficiently to bear comparison with Lady Wicketts,"--he said, smoothly--"or with Miss Fosby. But I think, Miss Pippitt, there is a great deal in what you say!" Miss Tabitha bowed, and smiled a vinegary smile. "Lady Wicketts has a fine mind--very fine! Her husband, Sir Thomas---"

"Oh never mind her husband!" blustered Sir Morton,--

"He's dead. And a good job too--for himself. Now what's to be done, my dear lord, eh?--what's to be done?"

Roxmouth looked up and managed to force his usual conventional smile.

"Nothing!"

"Nothing? Oh come, come! That won't do! Paint heart never won fair lady--ha-ha-ha! God bless my soul! The course of true love never did run smooth--that's the advice of what's-his-name--Shakespeare. Ha- ha! By the bye, what's become of that poet acquaintance of yours, Longford? Oughtn't HE to have known something about this? Didn't you tell him to keep a sharp look-out on Maryllia Van, eh?"

Longford reddened slightly under his pale yellow skin. What a vulgar way Sir Morton had of putting things, to be sure!

"I certainly asked Mr. Adderley to let us know if there was anything in which we could possibly participate to give pleasure and entertainment to Miss Vancourt,"--he answered frigidly--"He seems to have ingratiated himself with both Miss Vancourt and her young friend Miss Bourne--I should have thought he would have been told of their intending departure."

"You may depend he knows all about it!" said Sir Mortou--"He's double-faced, that's what he is! Poets always are. I hate 'em! Regular sneaks!--always something queer about their morals--look at Byron!--God bless my soul!--he ought to have been locked up-- positively locked up, he-ha-ha! We'll come down on this Adderley-- we'll take him by surprise and cross-examine him--we'll ask him why the devil he has played a double game---"

"Pray do not think of such a thing!"--interrupted Roxmouth, quietly- -"I really doubt whether he knows any more than we do. Maryllia-- Miss Vancourt--is not of a character to confide her movements, even to a friend,--she has always been reticent---" He paused.

"And sly!"--said Miss Tabitha, finishing his sentence for him, "Very sly! The first time I ever saw Miss Vancourt I knew she was deceitful! Her very look expresses it!"

"I'm afraid,"--murmured Roxmouth,--and then hesitating a moment, he raised his eyes with an affectation of great frankness--"I'm really afraid you may be right, Miss Tabitha! I had hoped that I should not have had to speak of a matter,--a very disagreeable matter which happened the other night--but, under the circumstances, it may be as well to mention it. You can perhaps imagine how distressing it has been to me--distressing and painful--and indeed incredible,--to discover the lady whom I have every right to consider almost my promised wife, entering into a kind of amorous entanglement down here with a clergyman!"

Sir Morton bounced in his chair.

"God bless my soul! A clergyman?"

"A clergyman?" echoed Miss Tabitha, with sudden sharpness in her tone--"What clergyman do you mean?"

"Who should I mean!" And Roxmouth affected a somewhat sad and forbearing demeanour--"There is only one who appears to be welcome at the Manor-the Reverend John Walden."

Miss Tabitha turned a paler waxen yellow-Sir Morton shot forth a deep, dreadful and highly blasphemous oath.

"That prig?" he roared, with a bull-like loudness and fury--"That high-and-mighty piece of damned superior clerical wisdom? God bless my soul! There must be some mistake---"

"Yes surely!"--murmured Miss Tabitha, feeling the clutch of a deadly spite and fear at her heart,--for was not Walden HER clergyman?--HER choice of a husband?--the man she had resolved to wed sooner or later, even if she had to wait till he was senile, and did not know what he was doing when led to the altar? "Mr. Walden is not a man who would be easily allured---"

"Perhaps not,"--said Roxmouth, quietly--"But I can hardly refuse to accept the witness of my own eyes and ears." And, attended by an almost breathless silence on the part of his auditors, he related with an air of patient endurance and compassionate regret, his own account of the interview between Maryllia and Walden in the picture- gallery, exaggerating something here, introducing a suggestive insinuation there, suppressing the simplicity of the true facts, and inserting falsehood wherever convenient, till he had succeeded in placing Walden's good name at Miss Tabitha's cat-like mercy for her to rend and pounce upon to the utmost extent of her own jaundiced rage and jealous venom.

Nothing could equal or surpass Sir Morton's amazement and wrath as he listened to the narration. His eyes seemed to literally start out of his head,--his throat swelled visibly till a fat ridge of flesh lolled over the edge of his stiff shirt-collar, and he threw in various observations of his own with regard to Walden, such as 'Sniveling puppy!' 'Canting rascal!' 'Elderly humbug!' 'Sneaking upstart,' which were quite in accordance with his native good taste and refinement of speech. And when at last his stock of expletives became, for the time being, exhausted, and when Miss Tabitha's dumb viciousness had, like an invisible sculptor's chisel, carved sudden deep lines in her face as fitting accompaniments to the deepening malice of her thoughts, they all rose from the luncheon table and went their several ways in their several moods of disconcerted confusion, impotence and vexation, in search of fresh means to gain new and unexpected ends. Roxmouth, reluctantly yielding to the earnest persuasions of Longford, walked with him into the village of St. Rest, and made enquiries at the post-office as to whether Miss Vancourt's sudden departure was known there, or whether any instructions had been left as to the forwarding of her letters. But the postmistress, Mrs. Tapple, breathing hard and curtseying profoundly to the 'future Dook' declared she ''adn't heard nothink,' and ''adn't 'ad no orders.' Miss Vancourt's letters and telegrams all went up to the Manor as usual. Whereupon, still guided by the astute Longford, Roxmouth so far obeyed Maryllia's parting suggestion as to go and 'kindly call' upon Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby at the Manor itself. The beautiful old house looked the same as usual; there were no shutters up, no blinds drawn, in any of the windows,--nothing indicated absence on the part of the reigning mistress of the fair domain; and even the dog Plato was comfortably snoozing according to daily custom, on the sun-baked flag-stones in the Tudor court. Primmins opened the door to them with his usual well-trained and imperturbable demeanour.

"Miss Vancourt is not at home?" began Roxmouth tentatively.

"Miss Vancourt has left for the Continent, my lord," replied Primmins, sedately.

Longford exchanged a swift glance with his patron. The latter gave a slight, weary shrug of his shoulders.

"Miss Bourne."--began Longford then.

"Miss Bourne and Mr. Gigg have also left," said Primmins.

"I suppose Miss Vancourt went with them?"

"No, sir."

This was baffling.

"Lady Wicketts is staying here, I believe,"--murmured Roxmouth--"Can I--er?"

"Her ladyship has the neuralgy and is lying down, my lord," and an acute observer might have noticed the tremor of a wink in Primmins' eye--"Miss Fosby is in the drawing-room."

With a profound sigh Roxmouth glanced at Longford. That gentleman smiled a superior smile.

"We should like to see Miss Fosby."

Primmins at once threw open the door more widely.

"This way, if you please!"

In another moment they were ushered into the presence of Miss Fosby, who, laying aside her embroidery, rose with punctilious ceremony to receive them.

"Lady Wicketts is not well,"--she said, in tenderly lachrymose accents--"Dear Lady Wicketts! She is always so good!--always thinking of other people and doing such kind things!--she fatigues herself, and she is so delicate--ah!--so very delicate! She is suffering from neuralgia, I am sorry to say!"

"Don't mention it,"--said Roxmouth, hastily--"We would not disturb her for the world! The fact is, we called to see Miss Vancourt---"

"Yes?" queried Miss Fosby, gently, taking up her embroidery again, and carefully setting her needle into the petal of a rosebud she was designing--"Dear girl! She left here yesterday."

"Rather sudden, wasn't it?" said Longford.

Miss Fosby looked up placidly, and smiled. She had a touch of humour about her as well as much 'early Victorian' sentiment, and she was just now enjoying herself.

"I think not! Young women like change and travel. Maryllia has always been accustomed to go abroad in August. The first time Lady Wicketts and I ever met her, she was travelling with her aunt. Oh no, I don't think it is at all sudden!"

"Where has she gone?" asked Roxmouth, affecting as much ease and lightness of manner as he could in putting the question.

Miss Fosby smiled a little more.

"I really don't know,"--she replied, with civil mildness--"I fancy she has no settled plans at all. She has kindly allowed Lady Wicketts and myself the use of the Manor for three weeks."

"Till she returns?" suggested Longford.

This time Miss Fosby laughed.

"Oh no! When WE leave it, the Manor is to be shut up again for quite a long time--probably till next summer."

"Miss Bourne has gone with her friend, I suppose?" "No,"--and Miss Fosby sought carefully among her embroidery silks for some special tint of colour--"Little Cicely and Monsieur Gigue, her master, went away together only this morning."

"Well, I suppose Miss Vancourt's letters will he forwarded on somewhere!"--said Eoxmouth, unguardedly. Miss Fosby's back stiffened instantly.

"Really, my lord, I know nothing about that,"--she said, primly-- "Nor should I even make it my business to enquire." There was an awkward pause after this, and though Longford skilfully changed the subject of conversation to generalities, the rest of the interview was fraught with considerable embarrassment. Miss Fosby was not to be 'drawn.' She was distinctly 'old-fashioned,'--needless therefore to add that she was absolutely loyal to her absent friend and hostess.

Leaving the Manor, Lord Roxmouth and his tame pussy sought for information in other quarters with equal futility. The agent, Mr. Stanways, 'knew nothing.' His orders were to communicate all his business to Miss Vancourt's solicitors in London. Finally the last hope failed them in Julian Adderley. They found that young gentleman as much taken aback as themselves by the news of Maryllia'a departure. He had been told nothing of it. A note from Cicely Bourne had been brought to him that morning by one of the gardeners at the Manor--and he showed this missive to both Roxmouth and Longford with perfect frankness. It merely ran: "Goodbye Moon-calf! Am going away. No time to see you for a fond farewell! Hope you will be famous before I come back. Enclosed herewith is my music to your 'Little Eose Tree,' GOBLIN."

This, with the accompanying manuscript score of the song alluded to was all the information Julian could supply,--and his own surprise and consternation at the abrupt and unexpected termination of his pleasant visits to the Manor, were too genuine to be doubted.

"It is positively remote!" he said, staring vaguely at his visitors- -"Too remote for realisation! Mr. Walden has gone away too."

Roxmouth started.

"Mr. Walden?"

"Yes." And Julian looked surprised at the other's hasty tone,--"But only to see his Bishop. He will preach here as usual on Sunday."

"Are you sure of that?" asked Longford, sharply scanning Julian's flabby face, green-grey eyes and ruddy locks with sudden suspicion-- "Or is it only a blind?"

"A blind?" And Adderley lifted his shoulders to the lobes of his ears and spread out his hands in flat amazement,--"What do you mean, most obscure Marius? For what purpose should a blind be used? Mr. Walden is the last person in the world to wish to cover his intentions, or disguise his motives. He is the sincerest man I ever met!"

Longford glanced at his patron for instructions. Was Adderley to be told of the 'amorous entanglement' of Miss Vancourt? Roxmouth frowned at him warningly, and he understood his cue.

"Well, if you hear any news from the Manor, you can let us know,"-- he said--"You are quite aware of the position---"

"Quite!" murmured Julian, lazily.

"And if you want to get on, you will hardly find a better friend than Lord Roxmouth,"--pursued Longford, with meaning emphasis--"He has made many a man famous!"

"Oh, my dear Longford!-pray do not speak of these things!"-- interrupted Roxmouth, with an air of gentlemanly humility. "Merit always commands my interest and attention--and Mr. Adderley's talent as a poet--naturally--!" Here he waved his hand and allowed the sentence to finish itself.

Julian looked at him thoughtfully.

"Thanks! I THINK I see what you mean!"--he said slowly--"But I'm afraid I am not a useful person. I never have been useful in my life--neither to myself, nor to anybody else. To be useful would be new--and in some cases, fresh,"--here he smiled dubiously--"Yes-- very fresh!--and delightful! But I fear--I very much fear that I shall always 'lack advancement' as Hamlet says--I can never accommodate myself to other people's plans. You will excuse my inabilities?"

Roxmouth flushed angrily. He understood. So did Marius Longford-- resolving in his own mind that whenever, IF ever, a book of poems appeared by Julian Adderley, he would so maul and pounce upon it in the critical reviews, that there should not be a line of it left unmangled or alive. They parted with him, however, on apparently excellent terms.

Returning to Badsworth Hall they found no further news awaiting them than they had themselves been able to obtain. Sir Morton's fussy enquiries had brought no result--Miss Tabitha had scoured the neighbourhood in her high dogcart, calling on the Ittlethwaites and Mandeville Porehams, all in vain. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had heard anything. The sudden exit of Maryllia from the scene took everyone by surprise. And when Miss Pippitt began to hiss a scandalous whisper concerning John Walden, and a possible intrigue between him and the Lady of the Manor, the 'county' sat up amazed. Here indeed was food for gossip! Here was material for 'local' excitement!

"Old Tabitha's jealous!--that's what it is!" said Bruce Ittlethwaite of Ittlethwaite Park, to his maiden sisters,--"Ha-ha-ha! Old green- and-yellow Tabitha is afraid she'll lose her pet parson! Dammit! A pretty woman always starts this kind of nonsense. If it wasn't the clergyman, it would be somebody else--perhaps Sir Morton himself--or perhaps me! Ha-ha-ha! Dammit!"

"I don't believe a word of it!" declared the eldest Miss Ittlethwaite,--"I do not attend Mr. Walden's services myself, but I am quite sure he is an excellent man--and a perfect gentleman. Nothing that Tabitha Pippitt can ever say, will move me on that point!"

"I always had my suspicions!"--said Mrs. Mandeville Poreham, severely, when she in her turn heard the news--"I heard that Miss Vancourt had insisted--positively INSISTED on Mr. Walden's visiting her nearly every day, and I trembled for him! MY girls have gone quite crazy about Miss Vancourt ever since they met her at Sir Morton Pippitt's garden-party, but I have NEVER changed my opinion. MY poor mother always taught me to be firm in my convictions. And Miss Vancourt is a designing person. There's no doubt of it. She affects the innocence of a child--but I doubt whether I have ever met anyone QUITE so worldly and artful!"

So the drops of petty gossip began to trickle,--very slowly at first, and then faster and faster, as is their habitude in the effort to wear away the sparkling adamant of a good name and unblemished reputation. The Reverend Putwood Leveson, vengefully brooding over the wrongs which he considered he had sustained at the hands of Walden, as well as Julian Adderley, rode to and fro on his bicycle from morn till dewy eye, perspiring profusely, and shedding poisonous slanders almost as freely as he exuded melted tallow from his mountainous flesh, aware that by so doing he was not only ingratiating himself with the Pippitts, but also with Lord Roxmouth, through whose influence he presently hoped to 'get a thing or two.' Mordaunt Appleby, the Riversford brewer, and his insignificant spouse, irritated at never having had the chance to 'receive' Lord Roxmouth, were readily pressed into the same service and did their part of scandal-mongering with right good-will and malignant satisfaction. And in less than forty-eight hours' time there was no name too bad for the absent Maryllia; she was 'mixed up' with John Walden,--she had 'tried to entangle him'--there had been 'a scene with him at the Manor,'--she was 'forward,' 'conceited'--and utterly lost to any sense of propriety. Why did she not marry Lord Roxmouth? Why, indeed! Many people could tell if they chose! Ah yes!--and with this, there were sundry shakings of the head and shruggings of the shoulders which implied more than whole volumes of libel.

But while the county talked, the village listened, sagaciously incredulous of mere rumour, quiescent in itself and perfectly satisfied that whoever else was wrong, 'Passon Walden' in everything he did, said, or thought, was sure to be right. Wherefore, until they heard their 'man o' God's' version of the stories that were being so briskly circulated, they reserved their own opinions. The infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff was not more securely founded in the Roman Catholic Ritual than the faith of St. Rest in the 'gospel according to John.'

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XXVII

Meanwhile Walden himself, ignorant of all the 'local' excitement so suddenly stirred up in his tiny kingdom, had arrived on a three days' visit at the house, or to put it more correctly, at the palace, of his friend Bishop Brent. It was, in strict reality a palace, having been in the old days one of the residences of Henry VII. Much of the building had been injured during the Cromwellian period, and certain modern repairs to its walls had been somewhat clumsily executed, but it still retained numerous fine old mullioned windows, and a cloistered court of many sculptured arches still eminently beautiful, though grey and crumbling under the touch of the melancholy vandal, Time. The Bishop's study had formerly been King Henry's audience chamber, and possessed a richly-wrought ceiling of interlaced oak rafters, and projecting beams smoothly polished at the ends and painted with royal emblems, from which projections no doubt, in early periods, many a banner of triumph had floated and many a knightly pennon. Bishop Brent was fond of this room, and carefully maintained its ancient character in the style of its furniture and general surroundings. The wide angle-nook and high carved chimney-piece, supported by two sculptured angel-figures of heroic size, was left unmodernised, and in winter the gaping recess was filled with great logs blazing cheerily as in olden times, but in summer, as now, it served as a picturesque setting for masses of rare flowers which, growing in pots, or cut freshly and set in crystal vases, were grouped together with the greatest taste and artistic selection of delicate colouring, forming, as it seemed, a kind of blossom-wreathed shrine, above which, against the carved chimney itself, hung a wonderfully impressive picture of the Virgin and Child. Placed below this, and slightly towarde the centre of the room, was the Bishop's table-desk and chair, arranged so that whenever he raised his head from his work, the serene soft eyes of Mary, Blessed among Women, should mystically meet his own. And here just now he sat at evening, deep in conversation with John Walden, who with the perfect unselfishness which was an ingrained part of his own nature, had for the time put aside or forgotten all his own little troubles, in order to listen to the greater ones of his friend. He had been shocked at the change wrought in seven years on Brent's form and features. Always thin, he had now become so attenuated as to have reached almost a point of emaciation,--his dark eyes, sunk far back under his shelving brows, blazed with a feverish brilliancy which gave an almost unearthly expression to his pale drawn features, and his hand, thin, long, and delicate as a woman's, clenched and unclenched itself nervously when he spoke, with an involuntary force of which he was himself unconscious.

"You have not aged much, Walden!" he said, thoughtfully regarding his old college chum's clear and open countenance with a somewhat sad smile--"Your eyes are the same blue eyes of the boy that linked his arm through mine so long ago and walked with me through the sleepy old streets of 'Alma Mater!' That time seems quite close to me sometimes--and again sometimes far away--dismally, appallingly, far away!"

He sighed. Walden looked at him a little anxiously, but for the moment said nothing.

"You give me no response,"--continued Brent, with sudden querulousness--"Since you arrived we have been talking nothing but generalities and Church matters. Heavens, how sick I am of Church matters! Yet I know you see a change in me. I am sure you do--and you will not say it. Now you never were secretive--you never said one thing and meant another--so speak the truth as you have always done! I AM changed, am I not?"

"You are,"--replied Walden, steadily--"But I cannot tell how, or in what way. You look ill and worn out. You are overworked and overwrought--but I think there is something else at the root of the evil;--something that has happened during the last seven years. You are not quite the man you were when you came to consecrate my church at St. Rest."

"St. Rest!" repeated the Bishop, musingly--"What a sweet name it is- -what a still sweeter suggestion! Rest--rest!--and a saint's rest too!--that perfect rest granted to all the martyrs for Christ!--how safe and peaceful!--how sure and glorious! Would that such rest were mine! But I see nothing ahead of me but storm and turmoil, and stress of anguish and heartbreak, ending in--Nothingness!"

Walden bent a little more forward and looked his friend full in the eyes.

"What is wrong, Harry?" he asked, with exceeding gentleness.

At the old schoolboy name of bygone years, Brent caught and pressed his hand with strong fervour. A smile lighted his eyes.

"John, my boy, everything is wrong!" he said--"As wrong as ever my work at college was, before you set it right. Do you think I forget! Everything is wrong, I tell you! I am wrong,--my thoughts are wrong,--and my conscience leaves me no peace day or night! I ought not to be a Bishop--for I feel that the Church itself is wrong!"

John sat quiet for a minute. Then he said--

"So it is in many ways. The Church is a human attempt to build humanity up on a Divine model, and it has its human limitations. But the Divine model endures!"

Brent threw himself back in his chair and closed his eyes.

"The Divine model endures--yes!" he murmured--"The Divine foundation remains firm, but the human building totters and is insecure to the point of utter falling and destruction!" Here, opening his eyes, he gazed dreamily at the pictured face of the Madonna above him. "Walden, it is useless to contend with facts, and the facts are, that the masses of mankind are as unregenerate at this day as ever they were before Christ came into the world! The Church is powerless to stem the swelling tide of human crime and misery. The Church in these days has become merely a harbour of refuge for hypocrites who think to win conventional repute with their neighbours, by affecting to believe in a religion not one of whose tenets they obey! Blasphemy, rank blasphemy, Walden! It is bad enough in all conscience to cheat one's neighbour, but an open attempt to cheat the Creator of the Universe is the blackest crime of all, though it be unnamed in the criminal calendar!"

He uttered these words with intense passion, rising from his seat, and walking up and down the room as he spoke. Walden watched his restless passing to and fro, with a wistful look in his honest eyes. Presently he said, smiling a little--

"You are my Bishop--and I should not presume to differ from you, Brent! YOU must instruct ME,--not I you! Yet if I may speak from my own experience---"

"You may and you shall!"--replied Brent, swiftly--"But think for a moment, before you speak, of what that experience has been! One great grief has clouded your life--the loss of your sister. After that, what has been your lot? A handful of simple souls set under your charge, in the loveliest of little villages,--souls that love you, trust you and obey you. Compared to this, take MY daily life! An over-populated diocese--misery and starvation on all sides,--men working for mere pittances,--women prostituting themselves to obtain food--children starving--girls ruined in their teens--and over it all, my wretched self, a leading representative of the Church which can do nothing to remedy these evils! And worse than all, a Church in which some of the clergy themselves who come under my rule and dominance are more dishonourable and dissolute than many of the so- called 'reprobates' of society whom they are elected to admonish! I tell you, Walden, I have some men under my jurisdiction whom I should like to see soundly flogged!--only I am powerless to order the castigation--and some others who ought to be serving seven years in penal servitude instead of preaching virtue to people a thousand times more virtuous than themselves!"

"I quite believe that!" said Walden, smiling--"I know one of them!"

The Bishop glanced at him, and laughed.

"You mean Putwood Leveson?" he said--"He seems a mischievous fool-- but I don't suppose there is any real harm in him, is there?"

"Real harm?"--and John flared up in a blaze of wrath--"He is the most pernicious scoundrel that ever masqueraded in the guise of a Christian!"

The Bishop paused in his walk up and down, and clasping his hands behind his back, an old habit of his, looked quizzically at his friend. A smile, kindly and almost boyish, lightened the grey pallor of his worn face.

"Why, John!" he said--"you are actually in a temper! Your mental attitude is evidently that of squared fists and 'Come on!' What has roused the slumbering lion, eh?"

"It doesn't need a lion to spring at Leveson,"--said Walden, contemptuously--"A sheep would do it! The tamest cur that ever crawled would have spirit enough to make a dash for a creature so unutterably mean and false and petty! I may as well admit to you at once that I myself nearly struck him!"

"You did?" And Bishop Brent's grave dark eyes flashed with a sudden suspicion of laughter.

"I did. I know it was not Churchman-like,--I know it was a case of 'kicking against the pricks.' But Leveson's 'pricks' are too much like hog's bristles for me to endure with patience!"

The Bishop assumed a serious demeanour.

"Come, come, let me hear this out!" he said--"Do you mean to tell me that you--YOU, John--actually struck a brother minister?"

"No--I do not mean to tell you anything of the kind, my Lord Bishop!" answered Walden, beginning to laugh. "I say that I 'nearly' struck him,--not quite! Someone else came on the scene at the critical moment, and did for me what I should certainly have done for myself had I been left to it. I cannot say I am sorry for the impulse!"

"It sounds like a tavern brawl,"--said the Bishop, shaking his head dubiously--"or a street fight. So unlike you, Walden! What was it all about?"

"The fellow was slandering a woman,"--replied Walden, hotly-- "Poisoning her name with his foul tongue, and polluting it by his mere utterance--contemptible brute! I should like to have horsewhipped him---"

"Stop, stop!" interrupted the Bishop, stretching out his thin long white hand, on which one single amethyst set in a plain gold ring, shone with a pale violet fire--"I am not sure that I quite follow you, John! What woman is this?"

Despite himself, a rush of colour sprang to Walden's brows. But he answered quite quietly.

"Miss Vancourt,--of Abbot's Manor."

"Miss Vancourt!" Bishop Brent looked, as he felt, utterly bewildered. "Miss Vancourt! My dear Walden, you surprise me! Did I not write to you--do you not know---"

"Oh, I know all that is reported of her,"--said John, quickly--"And I remember what you wrote. But it's a mistake, Brent! In fact, if you will exonerate me for speaking bluntly, it's a lie! There never was a gentler, sweeter woman than Maryllia Vancourt,--and perhaps there never was one more basely or more systematically calumniated!"

The Bishop took a turn up to the farther end of the room. Then he came back and confronted Walden with an authoritative yet kindly air.

"Look me straight in the face, John!"

John obeyed. There was a silence, while Brent scanned slowly and with appreciative affection the fine intellectual features, brave eyes, and firm, yet tender mouth of the man whom he had, since the days of their youth together, held dearest in his esteem among all other men he had ever known, while Walden, in his turn, bore the sad and searching gaze without flinching. Then the Bishop laid one hand gently on his shoulder.

"So it has come, John!" he said.

Then and then only the brave eyes fell,--then and then only the firm mouth trembled. But Walden was not the man to shirk any pain or confusion to himself in matters of conscience.

"I suppose it has!" he answered, simply.

The Bishop sat down, and, seemingly out of long habit, raised his eyes to the blandly smiling Virgin and Child above him.

"I am sorry!"--he murmured--"John, my dear old fellow, I am very sorry---"

"Why should you be sorry?" broke out Walden, impetuously, "There is nothing to be sorry for, except that I am a fool! But I knew THAT long ago, even if you did not!"--and he forced a smile--"Don't be sorry for me, Brent!--I'm not in the least sorry for myself. Indeed, if I tell you the whole truth, I believe I rather like my own folly. It does nobody any harm! And after all it is not absolutely a world's wonder that a decaying tree should, even in its decaying process, be aware of the touch of spring. It should not make the tree unhappy!"

The Bishop raised his eyes. They were full of a deep melancholy.

"We are not trees--we are men!" he said--"And as men, God has made us all aware of the love of woman,--the irresistible passion that at one time or another makes havoc or glory of our lives! It is the direst temptation on earth. Worst of all and bitterest it is when love comes too late,--too late, John!--I say in your case, it comes too late!"

John sighed and smiled.

"Love--if it has come to me at all--is never too late,"--he said with quiet patience,--"My dear Brent, don't you understand? This little girl--this child--for she is nothing more than that to a man of my years--has slipped into my life by chance, as it were, like a stray sunbeam--no more! I feel her brightness--her warmth--her vitality--and my soul is conscious of an animation and gladness whenever she is near, of which she is the sole cause. But that is all. Her pretty ways--her utter loneliness,--are the facts of her existence which touch me to pity, and I would see her cared for and protected,--but I know myself to be too old and too unworthy to so care for and protect her. I want her to be happy, but I am fully conscious that I can never make her so. Would you call this kind of chill sentiment 'love'?"

Brent regarded him steadfastly.

"Yes, John! I think I should!--yes, I certainly should call 'this chill sentiment' love! And tell me--have you never got out of your depth in the water of this 'chill sentiment,' or found yourself battling for dear life against an outbreak of volcanic fire?"

Walden was silent.

"I never thought,"--continued the Bishop, rather sorrowfully,--"when I wrote to you about the return of Robert Vancourt's daughter to her childhood's home, that she would in any serious way interfere with the peace of your life, John! I told you just what I had heard--no more. I have never seen the girl. I only know what people say of her. And that is not altogether pleasing."

"Do you believe what people say?" interrupted Walden, suddenly,--"Is it not true that when a woman is pretty, intelligent, clean-souled and pure-minded, and as unlike the rest of 'society' women as she can well be, she is slandered for having the very virtues her rivals do not possess?"

"Quite true!"--said Brent--"and quite common. It is always the old story--'Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.' Do not imagine for a moment, John, that I am going to run the risk of losing your friendship by repeating anything that may have been said against the reputation or the character of Miss Vancourt. I have always prayed that no woman might ever come between us,"--and here a faint tinge of colour warmed the pallor of his face--"And, so far, I fancy the prayer has been granted. And I do not think that this--this--shall we call it glamour, John?--this glamour, of the imagination and the senses, will overcome you in any detrimental way. I cannot picture you as the victim of a 'society' siren!"

John smiled. A vision rose up before his eyes of a little figure in sparkling white draperies--a figure that bent appealingly towards him, while a soft childlike voice said--'I'm sorry! Will you forgive me?' The tender lines round his mouth deepened and softened at the mental picture.

"She is not a society siren,"--he said, gently--"Poor little soul! She is a mere woman, needing what woman best thrives upon--love!"

"Well, she has been loved and sought in marriage for at least three years by Lord Roxmouth,"--said the Bishop.

"Has SHE been loved and sought, or her aunt's millions?" queried Walden--"That is the point at issue. But my dear Brent, do not let us waste time in talking over this little folly of mine--for I grant you it is folly. I'm not sorry you have found it out, for in any case I had meant to make a clean breast of it before we parted,"--he hesitated--then looked up frankly--"I would rather you spoke no more of it, Harry! I've made my confession. I admit I nearly struck Leveson for slandering an innocent and defenseless woman,--and I believe you'll forgive me for that. Next, I own that though I am getting into the sere and yellow leaf, I am still conscious of a heart,--and that I feel a regretful yearning at times for the joys I have missed out of my life--and you'll forgive me for that too,--I know you will! For the rest, draw a curtain over this little weakness of mine, will you? I don't want to speak of it--I want to fight it and conquer it."

The Bishop stretched out a hand and caught Walden's in a close grasp.

"Right!"--he said--"Do that, and you will do well! It is all a question of fighting and conquering, or--being conquered. But YOU will never give in, John! You are not the man to yield to the wiles of the devil. For there IS a devil!--I am sure of it!" And his dark eyes flashed with a sudden wild light. "A cozening, crafty, lurking devil, that sets temptation before us in such varied and pleasing forms that it is difficult--sometimes impossible--to tell which is right and which is wrong! Walden, we must escape from this devil--we must escape!"

He sprang up with an impulsive quickness which startled Walden, and began to pace up and down the room again.

"A mocking devil,"--he said--"a lying devil!--whispering from morning till evening, and from evening till morning, doubts of God! Doubts whether He, the Creator of worlds, really exists,-doubts as to whether He, or It, is not some huge blind, deaf Force, grinding its way on through limitless and eternal Production and Reproduction to one end,--Annihilation! Walden, you must now hear MY confession! These doubts are driving me mad! I cannot bear the thought of the whirl of countless universes, immeasurable solar systems, crammed with tortured life for which there seems to be no hope, no care, no rescue, no future! I am unable to preach or to FEEL comfort for the human race! The very tragedy of the Cross only brings me to one result--that Truth is always crucified. The world prefers Falsehood. So much so indeed that the Christian religion itself is little more than a super-structure of lies raised above the sepulchre of a murdered Truth. I told you in my letter I had serious thoughts of resigning my bishopric. So I have. My spirit turns to Rome!"

"Rome!" cried Walden--"What, YOU, Brent!--you think of going over to Rome? What strange fantasy has seized you?"

"Rome," said Brent, slowly, stopping in his restless walk--"is the Mother of Creeds--the antique Muse of the world's history! Filled with the blood of martyrs, hallowed by the memories of saints, she is, she must always be, supreme in matters of faith--or superstition!" And he smiled,--a wan and sorrowful smile--"Or even idolatry, if you will! Emotionalism,--sensationalism in religion-- these the craving soul must have, and these Rome gives! We must believe,--mark you, Walden!--we must positively BELIEVE that the Creator of all Universes was moved to such wrath against the helpless human creature He had made, that he cursed that creature forever for merely eating, like a child, fruit which had been forbidden! And after that we must believe everything else that has since followed in the track of the Woman, the Serpent and the Tree. Now in the Church of England I find I cannot believe these things-- in the Church of Rome I WILL believe, because I MUST! I will humble myself in dust and ashes, and accept all--all. Anything is better than Nothingness! I will be the lowest of lay brethren, and in solitude and silence, make atonement for my unbelief. It is the only way, Walden!--for me, it is the only way! To Her!" And he pointed up to the picture of the Virgin and Child--"To Her, my vows! As Woman, she will pity me--as Woman, she can be loved!"

Walden heard this wild speech without any word or gesture of interruption. Then, raising his eyes to the picture Brent thus apostrophised, he said, quietly--

"When did you have that painted, Brent?"

A sudden change came over the Bishop's features. He looked as though startled by some vague terror. Then he answered, slowly:

"Some years ago--in Florence. Why do you ask? It is a copy---"

"Of HER likeness--yes!" said Walden, softly--"I saw that at once. You had it done, of course! She was beautiful and good--she died young. I know! But you have no right to turn your personal passion and grief into a form of worship, Harry!"

The Bishop gazed at him fixedly and solemnly.

"You do not know,"--he murmured--"You have not seen what I have seen! She has come to me lately--she, who died so long ago!--she has come to me night after night, and she has told me to pray for her-- 'pray' she says--'pray that I may help to save your soul!' And I must surely do as she bids. I must get away from this place--away from this city of turmoil and wickedness, into some quieter comer of the world,--some monastic retreat where I may end my days in peace,- -I cannot fight my devils here--they are too strong for me!"

"They will be too strong for you anywhere, if you are a coward!"-- said Walden, impetuously. "Brent, I thought you had gotten the victory over this old despair of yours long ago! I thought you had made the memory of the woman you loved a noble spur to noble actions! I never dreamed that it would be possible for you to brood silently on your sorrow till you made it a cause of protest against God's will! And worst and strangest of all is this frenzied idea of yours to fly to the Church of Rome for shelter from yourself and your secret misery, and there give yourself over to monasticism and a silent, idolatrous worship,--not of Mary, the Mother of Christ,-- but of the mere picture of the woman you loved! And you would pray to THAT?--you would kneel before THAT?--you would pass long hours of fasting and vigil, gazing at that face, till, like the 'stigmata,' it is almost outlined in blood upon your heart? My dear Brent, is it possible your brain is so shaken and your soul so feeble that you must needs seek refuge in a kind of half-spiritual, half-sensuous passion, which is absolute rank blasphemy?"

At this the Bishop raised his head with an air of imperious authority.

"I cannot permit!---" he said, in unsteady accents--"You have no right to speak to me in such a tone--it is not your place---"

Then, suddenly, his voice broke, and throwing himself into his chair, he dropped his head forward on the desk and covered it with his hands in an attitude of the utmost abandonment and dejection. The moisture rose to Walden's eyes,--he knew the great tragedy of his friend's life--all comprised in one brief, romantic episode of the adoring love, and sudden loss of a beautiful woman drowned by accident in her own pleasure-boat on the very eve of her marriage with him,--and be knew that just as deep and ardent as the man's passion had been, so deep and ardent was his sorrow--a sorrow that could never be consoled. And John sat silent, deeply moved in himself, and ever and anon glancing upwards at the exquisite face of the painted Virgin above him,--the face of the dead girl whom her lover had thus sanctified. Presently Brent raised his head,--his face was white and worn--his eyes were wet.

"Forgive me, John!" he said--"I have been working hard of late, and my nerves are unstrung. And--I cannot, I cannot forget her! And what is more awful and terrible to me than anything is that I cannot forgive God!" He uttered these words in an awed whisper. "I cannot! I bear the Almighty a grudge for wrenching her life away from mine! Of what use was it to be so cruel? Of what purpose to kill one so young? If God is omnipotent, God could have saved her. But He let her die! I tell you, Walden, that ever since I have been Bishop of this diocese, I have tried to relieve sorrow and pain whenever I have met with it--I have striven to do my duty, hoping against hope that perhaps God would teach me--would explain the why and wherefore of so much needless agony to His creatures--and that by discovering reasons for the afflictions of others, I should learn to become reconciled to my own. But no!--nothing has been made clear! I have seen innocent women die in the tortures of the damned--while their drunken husbands have lived to carouse over their coffins. Children,--mere babes--are afflicted with diseases for which often no cause can be assigned and no cure discovered--while over the whole sweltering mass of human helplessness and ignorance, Death stalks triumphant,--and God, though called upon for rescue with prayers and tears, withdraws Himself in clouds of impenetrable silence. It is all hopeless, useless, irremediable! That is why my thoughts turn to Rome--I say, let me believe in SOMETHING, if it be only a fairy tale! Let me hear grand music mounting to heaven, even if human words cannot reach so high!--let me think that guardian angels exist, even if there is nothing in space save a blind Chance spawning life particles uselessly,--let my soul and senses feel the touch of something higher, vaster, purer and better than what the Church of England calls Christianity at this present day!"

"And that 'something higher, vaster, purer and better'--would you call it the Church of Rome?" asked Walden. "In suggestion,--in emotion and poetic inspiration, yes!"--said Brent--"In theory and in practice, no!"

There was a pause. Walden sat for a few moments absorbed in anxious thought. Then he looked up with a cheerful air.

"Harry," he said--"Will you do me a favour? Promise that you will postpone the idea of seceding, or as you put it, 'returning' to Rome, for six months. Will you? At the end of that time we'll discuss it again."

The Bishop looked uneasy.

"I would rather do what has to be done at once,"--he said.

"Then I must talk to you straightly,"--continued John, bracing himself up, and squaring his shoulders resolutely--"I must forget that you are my Bishop, and speak just as man to man. All the facts of the case can be summed up in one word--Selfishness! Pure Selfishness, Harry!--and I never thought I should have had to convict you of it!"

Brent drew himself slowly up in his chair.

"Selfishness!" he echoed, dreamily--"I can take anything from you, John!--I did at college,--but--selfishness---"

"Selfishness!" repeated John, firmly--"You have had to suffer a grief--a great grief,--and because it was so sudden, so tragic and overwhelming, you draw a mourning veil of your own across the very face of God! You try to rule your diocese by the measure of your own rod of affliction. And, finding that nothing is clear to you, because of your own obstructive spirit, you would set up a fresh barrier between yourself and Eternal Wisdom, by deserting your post here, and separating yourself from all the world save the shadow of the woman you yourself loved! Harry, my dear old friend, unless I had heard this from your own lips, I should never have believed it of you!"

Brent sat heavily in his chair, sunk in a brooding melancholy.

"'The heart knoweth its own bitterness!'"--he murmured wearily-- "Your reproaches are just,--I know I deserve them, but they do not rouse me. They do not stir one pulse in my soul! What have I learned of Eternal Wisdom?--what have I seen? Nothing but cruelty upon cruelty dealt out, not to the wicked, but to the innocent! And because I protest against this, you call my spirit an obstructive one--well!--it may be so! But, Walden, you have never loved!--you have never felt all your life rush like a river to the sea of passion!--not low, debasing passion, but passion born of vitality, ardour, truth, hope, sympathy!--such emotion as most surely palpitates through the whole body of the natural creation, else there would be naught created. God Himself--if there be a God--must be conscious of Love! Do we not say: 'God IS Love'?--and this too while we suffer beneath His heavy chastisements which are truely more like Hate! I repeat, Walden, you have never loved,--till now perhaps--and even now you are scarcely conscious of the hidden strength of your own feelings. But suppose--just for the sake of argument--suppose this 'little girl' as you call her, Maryllia Vancourt, were to die suddenly, would you not, as you express it, 'draw a mourning veil of your own across the face of God'?"

Walden started as though suddenly wounded. If Maryllia were to die!' He shuddered as the mere thought passed across his brain. 'If Maryllia were to die!' Why then--then the world would be a blank-- there would be no more sunshine!--no roses!--no songs of birds!-- nothing of fairness or pleasure left in life--not for him, whatever there might be for others. Was it possible that her existence meant so much to him? Yes, it meant so much!--it had come to mean so much! He felt his old friend's melancholy eyes upon him, and looking up met their searching scrutiny with a serious and open frankness.

"Honestly, I think I should die myself, or lose my senses!"--he said--"And honestly, I hardly realised this,--which is just as much selfishness on my part as any of which I hastily accused you,--till you put it to me. I will not profess to have a stoicism beyond mortal limits, Harry, nor should I expect such from you. But I WILL say, that despite our human weakness, we must have courage!--we are not men without it. And whether faith stands fast or falters, whether God seems far off or very near, we must face and fight our destiny--not run away from it! You want to run away,"--and he smiled gravely--"or rather, just in the present mood of yours you think of doing so--but I believe it is only a mood--and that you will not, after putting your hand to the plough, turn back because of the aridness or ungratefulness of the soil,--that would not be like you. If one must needs perish, it is better to perish at one's post of duty than desert over to the enemy."

"I am not sure that Rome is an enemy;"--said the Bishop, musingly.

To this Walden gave no reply, and the conversation fell into other channels. But, during the whole time of his visit, John was forced to realise, with much acute surprise and distress, that constant brooding on grief,--and excessive spiritual emotion of an exalted and sensuous kind, with much perplexed pondering on human evils for which there seemed no remedy, had produced a painful impression of life's despair and futility on Brent's mind,--an impression which it would be difficult to eradicate, and which would only be softened and possibly diminished by tenderly dealing with it as though it were an illness, and gradually bringing about restoration and recovery through the gentlest means. Though sometimes it was to be feared that all persuasion would be useless, and that the scandalous spectacle of an English Bishop seceding to the Church of Rome would be exhibited with an almost theatrical effect in his friend's case. For the ornate ritual which the Bishop maintained in his Cathedral services was almost worthy of a Mass at St. Peter's. The old, simple chaste English style of 'Morning Prayer' was exchanged for 'Matins,'--choristers perpetually chanted and sang,--crosses were carried to and fro,--banners waved--processions were held--and the 'Via Crucis' was performed by a select number of the clergy and congregation every Friday.

"I never have this sort of thing in my church,"--said Walden, bluntly, on one occasion--"My parishioners would not understand it."

"Why not teach them to understand it?" asked the Bishop, dreamily. They were standing together in the beautiful old Cathedral, now empty save for their presence, and Brent's eyes were fixed with a kind of sombre wistfulness on a great gold crucifix up on the altar.

"Teach them to understand it?" echoed Walden, with a touch of sorrow and indignation--"You are my Bishop, but if you commanded me to teach them these 'vain repetitions' prohibited by the Divine Master, I should disobey you!"

The Bishop flushed red.

"You disapprove?"

"I disapprove of everything that tends to put England back again into the old religious fetters which she so bravely broke and cast aside,"--said John, warmly--"I disapprove of all that even hints at the possibility of any part of the British Empire becoming the slave of Rome!"

Brent gave a weary gesture.

"In religious matters it is wiser to be under subjection than free,"--he said, with a sigh--"In a state of freedom we may think as we please--and freedom of thought breeds doubt,--whereas in a state of subjection we think as we MUST, and so we are gradually forced into an attitude of belief. The spread of atheism among the English is entirely due to the wild, liberty of opinion allowed tham by their forms of faith."

"I do not agree with you!"--declared Walden, firmly--"The spread of atheism is due, not to freedom of opinion, nor forms of faith, but simply to the laxity and weakness of the clergy."

The Bishop looked at him with a smile.

"You always speak straight out, John!" he said--"You always did! And strange to say, I like you all the better for it. I could, if I chose, both reprove and command you--but I will do neither. You must take your own way, as you always have done. But there is a flavour of Rome even in your little church of St. Rest,--your miracle shrine,--your unknown saint in the alabaster coffin. You and your parishioners kneel before that every Sunday."

"True--but we do not kneel to IT,--nor do we pray through It,"-- replied Walden--"It stays in the chancel because it was found in the chancel. But it does not make a miracle shrine' as you say,--there is nothing miraculous about it."

"If it contains the body of a Saint,"--said the Bishop, slowly--"it MUST be miraculous! If, in the far-gone centuries, the prayers and tears of sorrowful human beings have bedewed that cold stone, some efficacy, some tenderness, some vitality, born of these prayers and tears, must yet remain! Walden, we preach the supernatural--do we not believe in it?"

"The Divine supernatural--yes!" answered Walden,--"But---" The Bishop interrupted him by a gesture of his delicate hand.

"There are no 'buts' in the matter, John,"--he said, quietly--"What is supernatural is so by its own nature. The Divine is the Human, the Human is the Divine. In all and through all things the Spirit moves and makes its way. Our earth and ourselves are but particles of matter, worked by the spirit or essence of creative force. This spirit we can neither see nor touch, therefore we call it super- natural. But it permeates all things,--the stone as completely as the flower. It circulates through that alabaster sarcophagus in your church, as easily as through your own living veins. Hence, as I say, if the mortal remains of a saint are enshrined within that reliquary, the spirit or 'soul' enveloping it MAY work 'miracles,' for all we dare to know!" He paused, and looking kindly at Walden's grave and somewhat troubled face, added--"Some day, when we are in very desperate straits, John, we will am what your saint can do for us!"

He smiled. Walden returned the smile, but nevertheless was conscious of a sorrowful sense of regret at what he considered his friend's leaning toward superstitious observances and idolatrous ceremonies. At the same time he well knew that any violent opposition on the subject would be worse than useless in the Bishop's present mood. He therefore contented himself with, as he mentally said, 'putting in the thin end of the wedge'--and,--carefully steering clear of all controversial matters,--contrived in a great measure to reassert the old magnetic sway he had been wont to exercise over Brent's more pliable mind when at college--so that before they parted, he had obtained from him a solemn promise that there should be no 'secession' or even preparation for secession to Rome, till six months had elapsed.

"And if you would only put away that picture,"--said Walden, earnestly, pointing towards the 'Virgin and Child'--"Or rather, if you would have another one painted of the sweet woman you loved as she really was in life, it would be wiser and safer for your own peace."

The Bishop shook his head.

"The Virgin and Child are a symbol of all humanity,"--he said-- "Mother and Son,--Present and Future! Woman holds the human race in her arms--at her breast!--without her, Chaos would come again! And for me, all Womanhood is personified in that one face!"

He raised his eyes to the picture with an almost devout passion--and then abruptly turned away. The conversation was not renewed again between them, but when Walden parted from his friend, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he left him in a brighter, more hopeful and healthful condition, cheered, soothed and invigorated by the exchange of that mutual confidence and close sympathy which had linked their two lives together in boyhood, and which held them still subtly and tenderly responsive to each other's most intimate emotions as men.

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XXVIII

Arriving home at his own domain late on the Saturday night, Walden had no opportunity to learn anything of the incidents which had occurred during his brief absence. Letters were waiting for him, but he opened none, and shut himself up in his study at once to prepare his next day's sermon. He wrote on far into the night, long after all the servants of his household had retired to rest, and overslept himself the next morning in consequence, therefore his preparation for the eleven o'clock service were necessarily somewhat hurried, and he had not time to say more than a cheery 'Good-morning' even to Bainton, whom he passed on his way into the church, or to Adam Frost, though he fancied that both, men looked at him somewhat curiously, as with an air of mingled doubt and enquiry. Once within the sacred building he was conscious of an exceptionally crowded congregation. None that he could see were missing from their usual places. Maryllia certainly was not there,--but as she was admittedly not a church-goer, he did not expect her to be present. Badsworth Hall was entirely unrepresented, much to his relief; neither Sir Morton Pippitt nor Lord Roxmouth, nor Mr. Marius Longford were anywhere visible. Old Josey Letherbarrow sat in his usual corner,-- everything was precisely the same as it was wont to be--and yet a sense of vague trouble oppressed him,--he saw, or thought he saw, an expression on some of the faces of his parishioners which was new to him, and he felt instinctively that some disturbing element had found its way into the peace of the village, though what the trouble could be, he was at a loss to imagine. He chose as his text: 'What went ye out for to see? A reed shaken with the wind?' and preached thereon with wonderful force, simplicity, eloquence and fervour-- though all the time he spoke he wondered why his people stared at him so persistently, and why so many round eyes in so many round faces appeared to express such a lively, not to say questioning curiosity.

After service, however, the whole mystery was cleared up. Bainton, in his Sunday best, with hat in hand, presented himself at the garden gate on his master's return from the church to the rectory, and after a word or two was admitted into the study. Bainton, honest as the daylight, and sturdy in his principles as an oak in its fibres, had determined to have 'no humbuggin' wi' Passon.' And in a few words, spoken with a great deal of feeling and rough eloquence, he had told all,--how Miss Vancourt had gone away 'suddint-like' from the Manor,--and how it was said and reported all through the county and neighbourhood that she had gone because her engaged husband, Lord Roxmouth, had caught her 'makin' love' to a parson, that parson being no other than St. Rest's own beloved 'man o' God,' John Walden. And that Lord Roxmouth had at once gone after her, and that neither of the twain 'weren't never comin' back no more.' So said Bainton, twirling his cap round, and fixing his eyes sympathetically on his master's face,--eyes as faithful as those of the dog Nebbie, who clambered at his master's knee, equally gazing up at him with a fondness exceeding all speech.

John Walden sat, white and rigid, in his chair and heard the tale out to its end.

"Is that all?" he asked, when Bainton had concluded.

"That's all, an' ain't it enough, Passon?" queried Bainton in somewhat dismal accents. "Not that I takes in 'arf wot I hears, but from the fust I sez you should know every bit on it, an' if no one else 'ad the 'art or the pluck to tell ye straight out, I'd tell ye myself. For that old Miss Tabitha's got a tongue as long as a tailor's yard-measure wot allus measures a bit oif to 'is own good, an' Sir Morton Pippitt he do nothin' but run wild-like all over the place a-talkin' of it everywhere, an' old Putty Leveson, he's up at the 'All, day in, an' day out, tellin' 'ow you was goin' to hit 'im in the eye--hor-hor-hor!--an' why didn't ye do it, Passon?--'twould a' been a real Gospel mercy!--an' 'ow 'twas all about Miss Vancourt, till Mr. Hadderley 'e come up an throwed 'im over in the road on 'is back which makes me think all the better o' that young man, 'owsomever, I never took to 'im afore. But though he's all skin an' bone an' long 'air as red as a biled carrot, he's got a fist of 'is own, that's pretty plain, an' if he knocked down old Putty Leveson it shows 'e's got some sense in 'im as well as sperrit. For it's all over the place that there's trouble about Miss Vancourt, an' you may take my wurrd for it, Passon, they don't leave the poor little leddy alone, nor you neither, an' never takes into their minds as 'ow you're old enough to be 'er father. That Miss Tabitha don't spare no wurrds agin 'er--an' as ye know, Passon, she's a leddy wot's like curdled cream all gone wrong in a thunderstorm. Anyways, I thought it best to tell ye straight out an' no lyin' nor trickin'--an' if I've stepped over my dooty, I 'umbly axes pardin, but I means well, Passon,--I means well,--I do reely now!"

Walden looked up,--his eyes were glittering--his lips were pate and dry.

"I know-I know!"--he said, speaking with an effort--"You're an honest fellow, Bainton!--and--and--I thank you! Tou not only mean well--you have done well. But it's a lie, Bainton!--it's all a wicked, damnable lie!"

He sprang to his feet as he said this, the wrath in his eyes flashing a steel-like lightning.

"It's a lie!" he repeated--"Do you understand? A cruel, abominable lie!"

Bainton twirled his cap sympathetically.

"So it be, Passon,"--he murmured--"So it be--I know'd that all along! It's a lie set goin' by that fine gentleman rascal, Lord Roxmouth, wot can't get Miss Maryllia and 'er aunt's money nohow. Lor' bless ye, I sees that plain enough! But take it 'ow we will, a lie's a nasty sort o' burr to stick to a good name, 'speshully a name like yours, Passon,--an' when it comes to that I feel that moithered an' worrited-like not knowin' 'ow to pick the burr off again. An' Lord Roxmouth he be gone away or mebbe you could a' had it out wi' him---"

"That will do, Bainton!"--said Walden, interrupting him by a gesture--"Say no more about it, please! I'm glad you've spoken,--I'm glad I know! But,--let it rest there! Never allude to it again!"

Bainton glanced up timorously at his master's pale set face.

"Ain't nothin' goin' to be done?" he faltered anxiously--"Nothin' to say as 'ow it's all a lie---"

"Nothing on my part!"--said Walden, quickly and sternly, "The best answer to such low gossip and slander is silence. You understand?"

His look was a command, and Bainton felt it to be such. Shuffling about a little, he murmured something about the 'apples comin' on fine in the orchard'--as if Walden's three days' absence had somehow or other accelerated their ripening, and then slowly and reluctantly retired, deeply dejected in his own mind.

"For silence gives consent," he argued dolefully with himself-- "That's copybook truth! Yet o' coorse 'tain't to be expected as Passon would send for the town-crier from Riversford to ring a bell through the village an' say as 'ow he 'adn't nothin' to dp with Miss Vancourt nor she with 'im. Onny the worst of it is that in this wurrld lies is allus taken for truth since the beginnin', when the Sarpint told the first big whopper in the Garden of Eden an' took in poor silly Eve. An' ye can't contradict a lie somehow without makin' it look more a truth than ever,--that's the way o' the thing. An' it do stick!--Passon himself 'ull find that out,--it do stick, it do reely now!"

Meantime, Walden, left alone, gave himself up to a tumult of misery and self-torture. His sensitive nature shrank from the breath of vulgar scandal like the fine frond of delicate foliage from the touch of a coarse finger. He had never before been associated with the faintest rumour of it,--his life had been too simple, too austere, and too far removed from all the trumpery shows and petty intrigues of society. He felt himself now in a manner debased by having had to listen with enforced patience to Bainton's rambling account of the gossip going on in the neighbourhood, and despite that worthy servitor's disquisition on the subject, he could not imagine how it had arisen, unless his quarrel with Putwood Leveson were the cause. It was all so sudden and unlooked for! Maryllia had gone away,--and that fact of itself was sufficient to make darkness out of sunshine. He could not quite realise it. And not only had she gone away, but some slanderous story had been concocted concerning her in connection with himself, which was being bandied about on all the tongues of the village and county. How it had arisen he could not understand. He was, of course, unaware of the part Lord Roxmouth had played in the matter, and in his ignorance of the true source of the mischief, tormented his mind with endless fancies and perplexities, all of which helped to increase his annoyance and agitation. Pacing restlessly up and down his study, his eyes presently fell on the little heap of letters which had accumulated on his table during his brief absence, all as yet unopened. Turning them over indifferently, he came suddenly on one small sealed note, inscribed as having been left 'by hand,' addressed to him in the bold frank writing to which he had once, not so very long ago, felt such an inexplicable aversion when Mrs. Spruce was the recipient of a first letter from the same source. Now he snatched the little missive up with a strangely impulsive ardour, and being quite alone, indulged himself in the pleasure of kissing the firm free pen- strokes with all the passion of a boy. Then opening it, he read:

"DEAR MR. WALDEN,--You will be surprised to find that I have gone away from the dear home I love so well, and I daresay you will think me very capricious. But please do not judge me hastily, or believe everything you may hear of me from others. I am very sorry to go away just now, but circumstances leave me no other choice. I should like to have bidden you good-bye, as I could perhaps have explained things to you better, but old Josey Letherbarrow tells me you have gone to see the Bishop on business, so I leave this note myself just to say that I hope you will think as kindly of me as you can now I am gone. Please go into the Manor gardens as often as you like, and let the sick and old people in the village have plenty of the flowers and fruit. By doing this you will please me very much. My agent, Mr. Stanways, will be quite at your service if you ever want his assistance. Perhaps I ought just to mention that Lord Roxmouth overheard our conversation in the picture-gallery that night of the dinner-party. He was very rude about it. I tell you this in case you should see him, but I do not think you will. Good-bye! Try to forget that I smoked that cigarette!--Your sincere friend," "MARYLLIA VANCOURT."

As he perused these lines, Walden alternately grew hot and cold--red and pale. All was clear to him now!-it was Lord Roxmouth who had played the spy and eavesdropper! He recalled every little detail of the scene in the picture-gallery and at once realised how much a treacherous as well as jealous and vindictive man could make of it. Maryllia's hand laid so coaxingly on his arm,--Maryllia's face so sweetly and pleadingly upturned,--Maryllia's half-tender tremulous voice with its 'Will you forgive me?'--and then--his own impetuous words!--the way he had caught her hand and kissed it!--why his very look must have betrayed him to the 'noble and honourable' detective, part of whose distinguished role it was to listen at doors and afterwards relate to an inquisitive and scandal-loving society all that he heard within. By degrees he grasped the whole situation. He realised that his name and honour lay at the mercy of this man Roxmouth, who under the circumstances of the constant check put upon his mercenary aims, would certainly spare no pains to injure both. And he felt sick at heart.

Locking Maryllia's note carefully in his desk, he stepped into his garden and walked up and down the lawn slowly with bent head, Nebbie trotting after him with a sympathetically disconsolate air. And gradually it dawned upon him that Maryllia had possibly--nay very probably--gone away for his sake,--to make things easier for him--to remove her presence altogether from his vicinity-and so render Roxmouth's tale-bearing, with its consequent malicious gossip, futile, till of itself it died away and was forgotten. As this idea crossed his mind and deepened into conviction, his eyes filled with a sudden smarting moisture.

"Poor child!" he said, half aloud--"Poor little lonely child!"

Then a fresh thought came to him,--one which made the blood run more quickly through his veins and caused his heart to pulsate with quite a foolish joy. If--if she had indeed gone away out of a sweet womanly wish to save him from what she imagined might cause him embarrassment or perplexity, then--then surely she cared! Yes--she must care for him greatly as a friend,--though only as a friend--to be willing to sacrifice the pleasure of passing all the summer in the old home to which she had so lately returned, merely to relieve him of any difficulty her near society might involve. If she cared! Was such a thing--could such a thing be possible? Tormented by many mingled feelings of tenderness, regret and pain, John pondered his own heart's problem anxiously, and tried to decide the best course to pursue,--the best for her--the best for himself. He was not long in coming to a decision, and once resolved, he was more at ease.

When he celebrated the evening service that Sunday the garrulous Bainton saw, much to his secret astonishment, that the effect of his morning's communication had apparently left no trace on his master's ordinary demeanour, except perhaps to add a little extra gravity to his fine strong features, and accentuate the reserve of his accustomed speech and manner. His habitual dignity was even greater than usual,--his composed mien and clear steadfastness of eye had lost nothing of their quelling and authoritative influence,--and so far as his own manner and actions showed, the absence or presence of Miss Vancourt was a matter to him of complete unconcern. His visit to his friend the Bishop had 'done 'im a power o' good'--said his parishioners, observing him respectfully, as, Sunday being over and the week begun, he went about among them on his accustomed round of duty, enquiring after the poultry and the cattle with all the zeal expected of him. The name of Miss Vancourt seldom passed his lips,-- when other people spoke of her, either admiringly, questioningly or suggestively, he merely listened, offering no opinion. He denied himself to all 'county' visitors on plea of press of work,--he never once went to Abbot's Manor or entered the Manor grounds--and the only persons with whom he occasionally interchanged hospitalities were Julian Adderley and the local doctor, 'Jimmy' Eorsyth. Withdrawing himself in this fashion into closer seclusion than ever, his life became almost hermit-like, for except in regard to his daily parish work, he seldom or never went beyond the precincts of his own garden.

Days went on, weeks went on,--and soon, too soon, summer was over. The melancholy autumn shook down the once green leaves, all curled up in withering death-convulsions, from the branches of the trees now tossing in chill wind and weeping mists of rain. No news had been received by anyone in the village concerning Maryllia. The 'Sisters Gemini,' Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby, had departed from Abbot's Manor when the time of their stay had concluded, and neither of the twain had given the slightest hint to any enquirer, as to the probable date of the return of the mistress of the domain. Sir Morton Pippitt at last got tired of talking scandal for which there seemed no visible or tangible foundation, and even his daughter Tabitha began to wonder whether after all there was not some exaggeration in the story Lord Roxmouth had given her to sow like rank seed upon the soil of daily circumstance? She never saw Walden by any chance,--on one occasion she ventured to call, but he was 'out' as usual. Neither could she persuade Julian Adderley to visit at Badsworth Hall. A veil of obscurity and silence was gradually but surely drawn between St. Rest and the outlying neighbourhood so far as its presiding ruler John Walden was concerned, while within the village his reticence and reserve were so strongly marked that even the most privileged person in the place, Josey Letherbarrow, awed at his calm, cold, almost stern aspect, hesitated to speak to him except on the most ordinary matters, for fear of incurring his displeasure.

Meanwhile the village sorely missed the bright face and sweet ways of 'th' owld Squire's gel'--and many of the inhabitants tried to get news of her through Mrs. Spruce, but all in vain. That good lady, generally so talkative, was for once in her life more than discreetly dumb. All that she would say was that she "didn't know nothink. Miss Maryllia 'ad gone abroad an' all 'er letters was sent to London solicitors. Any other address? No--no other address. The servants was to be kep' on--no one wasn't goin' to lose their places if they behaved theirselves, which please the Lord, they will do!"-- she concluded, with much fervour. Bennett, the groom, was entrusted with the care of the mares Cleo and Daffodil, and might be seen exercising them every day on the open moors beyond the village, accompanied by the big dog Plato,--and so far as the general management of affairs was concerned, that was ably undertaken by the agent Stanways, who though civil and obliging to all the tenantry, had no news whatever to give respecting the absence or the probable return of the lady of the Manor. The Reverend Putwood Leveson occasionally careered through the village on his bicycle, accompanied by Oliver Leach who bestrode a similar machine, and both individuals made a point of grinning broadly as they passed the church and rectory of St. Rest, jerking their fingers and thumbs at both buildings with expressively suggestive contempt.

And by and by the people began to settle down, into the normal quietude which had been more or less their lot, before Maryllia, with her vivacious little musical protegee Cicely Bourne had awakened a new interest and animation in the midst of their small community,--and they began to resign themselves to the idea that her 'whim' for residing once more in the home of her childhood had passed, and that she would now, without doubt, marry the future Duke of Ormistoune, and pass away from the limited circle of St. Rest to those wider spheres of fashion, the splendours of which, mere country-folk are not expected to have more than the very faintest glimmering conception. Even in that independent corner of opinion, the tap-room of the 'Mother Huff,' her name was spoken with almost bated breath, though Mr. Netlips was not by any means loth to spare any flow of oratorical eloquence on the subject.

"I think, Mr. Buggins," he said one evening, addressing 'mine host' with due gravity--"I think you will recall to your organisation certain objective propositions I made with regard to Miss Vancourt, when that lady first entered into dominative residence at Abbot's Manor. Personally speaking, I have no discrepancies to suggest beyond the former utterance. Matters in which I have taken the customary mercantile interest have culminated with the lady to the satisfaction of all sides. Nothing has been left standing controversially on my books. Nevertheless it would be repudiative to say that I have sophisticated my previous opinion. I said then, and I confirm the observation, that a heathen cannot enjoy the prospective right of the commons."

"I s'pose,"--said Mr. Buggins, meditatively in reference to this outburst--"you means, Mr. Netlips, that Miss Vancourt is a kind of heathen?"

Mr. Netlips nodded severely.

"'Cos she don't go to church?" suggested Dan Ridley, who as usual was one of the tap-room talkers. Again Mr. Netlips nodded.

"Well," said Dan, "she came to church once an' brought her friends-- -"

"Late,--very late,"--interposed Mr. Netlips, solemnly--"The tardiness of her entrance was marked by the strongest decorum. The strongest, the most open decorum! Deplorable decorum!"

"What's decorum?" enquired Mr. Buggins, anxiously.

Mr. Netlips waved one fat hand expressively.

"Decorum,"--he said--"is--well!--decorum."

Buggins scratched his head dubiously. Dan Ridley looked perplexed. There was a silence,--the men listening to the wailing of a rising wind that was beginning to sweep round the house and whistle down the big open chimney, accompanied by pattering drops of rain.

"Summer's sheer over,"--said a labourer, lifting his head from his tankard of ale--"Howsomever, we're all safe this winter in the worst o' weather. Rents are all down at 'arf what they was under Oliver Leach, thanks to the new lady, so whether she's a decorum or not don't matter to me. She's a right good sort--so here's to her!"

And he drained off his ale at one gulp with a relish, several men present following his example.

"Passon Walden,"--began Dan Ridley--"Passon Walden---"

But here there was a sudden loud metallic crash. Buggins had overturned two empty pewter-mugs on his counter.

"No gossiping o' Passon Walden allowed 'ere,"--he said,--"Not while I'm master o' this public!"

"Leeze majestas,"--proclaimed Mr. Netlips, impressively--"You're right, Buggins--you're quite right! Leeze majestas would be entirely indigenous--entirely so!"

An awkward pause ensued. 'Leeze majestas' in all its dark incomprehensibility had fallen like a weight upon the tavern company, and effectually checked any further conversation. It was one of those successful efforts of Mr. Netlips, which, by its ponderous vagueness and inscrutability, produced an overwhelming effect. There was nothing to be said after it.

The gold and crimson glory of autumn slowly waned and died,--and the village began to look very lonely and dreary. Heavy rains fell and angry gales blew,--so that when dark November came glooming in, with lowering skies, there was scarcely so much as a leaf of russet or scarlet Virginian creeper clinging to roof or wall. The woods around Abbot's Manor were leafless except where the pines and winter laurel grew in thick clusters, and where several grand old hollies showed their scarlet berries ripening among the glossy green. The Manor itself however looked wide-awake and cheerful,--smoke poured up from the chimneys and glints of firelight sparkled through the windows,-- all the shutters, which had been put up after the departure of the 'Sisters Gemini,' were taken down--blinds were raised and curtains drawn back,--and as soon as these signs and tokens were manifested, people were not slow in asking Mrs. Spruce whether Miss Vancourt was coming back for Christmas? But to all enquiries that estimable dame gave the same answer. She 'didn't know nothink.' The groom Bennett was equally reticent. He had received 'no orders.' Mr. Stanways, the agent, and his wife, both of whom had become very friendly with all the villagers, were cheerfully talkative on every subject but one,-- that of Miss Vancourt and her movements. All they could or would say was that her return was 'quite uncertain.' Fires were lighted in the Manor--oh yes!--to keep the house well aired--and windows were opened for the same purpose,--but beyond that--'really," said Mr. Stanways, smiling pleasantly--'I can give no information!'

The days grew shorter, gloomier and colder,--and soon, when the chill nip of winter began to make itself felt in grim damp earnest, the whole county woke up from the pleasant indolence into which the long bright summer had steeped it, and responded animatedly to the one pulse of vitality which kept it going. The hunting season began. Old, otherwise dull men, started up into the semblance of youth again, and sprang to their saddles with almost as much rigour and alertness as boys,--and Reynard with his cubs ruled potently the hour. The first 'meet' of the year was held at Ittlethwaite Park,-- and for days before it took place nothing else was talked of. Hunting was really the one occupation of the gentry of the district,--everything else distinctly 'bored' them. Many places in England are entirely under the complete dominion of this particular form of sport,--places, where, if you do not at least talk about hunting and nothing BUT hunting, you are set down as a fool. Politics, art, literature,--these matters brought into conversation merely excite a vacuous stare and yawn,--and you may consider yourself fortunate if, in alluding to such things at all, you are not considered as partially insane. To obtain an ordinary reputation for common-sense in an English hunting county, you must talk horse all day and play Bridge all night,--then and then only will you have earned admission into these 'exclusive' circles where the worth of a quadruped exceeds the brain of a man.

The morning of the meet dawned dully--yet now and then the sun shone fitfully through the clouds, lighting up with a cold sparkle the thick ivy, wet with the last night's rain, which clung to the walls of Walden's rectory. There was a chill wind, and the garden looked bleak and deserted, though it was kept severely tidy, Bainton never failing to see that all fallen leaves were swept up every afternoon and all weeds 'kep' under.' But there was no temptation to saunter down the paths or across the damp lawn in such weather, and Walden, seated by a blazing fire in his study, with Nebbie snoozing at his feet, was sufficiently comfortable to be glad that no 'parochial' duties called him forth just immediately from his warm snuggery. He had felt a little ailing of late--'the oncoming of age and infirmity,' he told himself, and he looked slightly more careworn. The strong restraint he had imposed upon himself since he knew the nature of the scandal started by Lord Roxmouth, and the loyal and strict silence he had maintained on the subject that was nearest and dearest to his own heart, had been very trying to him. There was no one to whom he could in any way unburden his mind. Even to his closest friend, Bishop Brent, he had merely written the briefest of letters, informing him that Miss Vancourt had left Abbot's Manor for a considerable time,--but no more than this. He longed passionately for news of Maryllia, but none came. The only person to whom he sometimes spoke of her, but always guardedly, was Julian Adderley. Julian had received one or two letters from Cicely Bourne,--but they were all about her musical studies, and never a word of Maryllia in them. And Julian was almost as anxious to know what had become of her as Walden himself, the more so as he heard constantly from Marius Longford, who never ceased urging him to try and discover her whereabouts. Which request proved that, for once. Lord Roxmouth had been foiled, and that even he with all his various social detectives at work, had lost all trace of her.

On this particular morning of the opening of the hunting season, Walden sat by the fire reading,--or trying to read. He was conscious of a great depression,--a 'fit of the blues,' which he attributed partly to the damp, lowering weather. Idly he turned over the leaves of a first edition of Tennyson's poems,--pausing here and there to glance at a favourite lyric or con over a well-remembered verse, when the echo of a silvery horn blown clear on the wintry silence startled him out of his semi-abstraction. Rising, he went instinctively to the window, though from that he could see nothing but his own garden, looking blank enough in its flowerless condition, the only bright speck in it being a robin sitting on a twig hard by, that ruffled its red breast prettily and blinked its trustful eye at him with a friendly air of sympathy and recognition. He listened attentively for a moment and heard the approaching trot and gallop of horses,--then suddenly recalling the fact that the hounds were to meet that day at Ittlethwaite Park, he took his hat and went out to see if any of the hunters were passing by.

A wavering mass of colour gleamed at the farther end of the village as he looked down the winding road;--scarlet coats, white vests and buckskin breeches showed bravely against the satiny brown and greys of a fine group of gaily prancing steeds that came following after the huntsmen, the hounds and the whippers-in, and a cheery murmur of pleasant voices, broken with an occasional musical ring of laughter, dispersed for a time the heaviness of the rainy air. Something unusually pleasant seemed to animate the faces of all who composed the hunting train as they came into view,--Miss Arabella Ittlethwaite, for example, portly of bulk though she was, sat in her saddle with an almost mirthful lightness, her good-natured fat face all smiles,--while her brother Bruce, laughing heartily over something which had evidently tickled his fancy, looked more like thirty than sixty, so admirably did his 'pink' become him, and so excellently well did he ride. Walden saluted them as they passed, and they gave him a pleasant 'good-day.' But,--what was that sudden flash of deep purple, which the fitful sun, peering sulkily through grey clouds, struck upon quickly with a slanting half-smile of radiance? What--and who was the woman riding lightly, with uplifted head like a queen, in the midst of the company, surrounded by all the younger men of the neighbourhood who, keeping their horses close on either side of her, appeared to be trying to outrival each other in eager attentions, in questions and answers, in greetings and hat- liftings, and general exchange of courtesies? Walden rubbed his eyes, and gazed and gazed,-anon his heart gave a wild leap, and he felt himself growing deadly pale. Had the portrait of 'Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt' in Abbot's Manor come visibly to life?--or was it, could it be indeed,--Maryllia?

He would gladly have turned away, but some stronger force than his own held him fast where he stood, stricken with surprise, and a gladness that was almost fear. The swaying gleam of purple came nearer and nearer, and resolved itself at last into definite shape,- -Maryllia's face, Maryllia's eyes! Almost mechanically he half opened his gate as all the hunters went trotting by, and she alone reined in her mare 'Cleopatra' and spoke to him.

"How do you do, Mr. Walden!"

He looked up--and looking, smiled. What a child she was after all!-- full of quaint vanities surely, and naive coquetry! For her riding- dress was the exact copy of that worn by her pictured ancestress "Mary Elia,'--even to the three-cornered hat and the tiny rose fastened in the bodice which was turned back with embroidered gold revers,--so that the 'lady in the vi'let velvet' appeared before him as it were, re-incarnated,--and the pouting lips, sweet eyes and radiant hair were all part of the witch-glamour and mystery! Mastering his thoughts with an effort, he raised his hat in his usual quietly courteous way.

"This is a great surprise, Miss Vancourt!" he said, lightly, though his voice trembled a little--"And a happy one! The villagers will be delighted to see you back again! When did you return?"

"Last night,"--she answered, fixing her frank gaze fully upon him and noting with a sharp little pang of compunction that he looked far from well--"I felt I MUST be here for the first meet of the season! I've been staying in an old convent on the Breton coast,-- such a dear quaint place! And I think,"--here she nodded her pretty head wisely--"I THINK I've brought you enough stained glass to quite finish your rose-window! I've been busy collecting it ever since I left here. Gently, Cleo!--gently, my beauty!"--this, as her mare pawed the ground restlessly and sprang forward--"Come and see me to- morrow, Mr. Walden! I shall expect you!"

Waving her gloved hand she cantered off and rejoined the rest of the hunters going on ahead. Once she turned in her saddle and looked back,--and again waved her hand. The sun came out fully then, and sweeping aside the grey mists, ehed all its brightness on the graceful figure in the saddle, striking a reflex of rose from the soft violet riding-dress, and sparkling against the rippling twists of gold-brown, hair,--then,--as she disappeared between two rows of leafless trees,--withdrew itself again frowningly and shone no more that day.

Walden re-entered his house, hardly able to sustain the sudden joy that filled him. He felt himself trembling nervously, and was angry at his own weakness.

"I am more foolish than any love-sick boy!" he said to himself with inward remonstrance--"And God knows I am old enough to know better! But I cannot help being glad she has come home!--I cannot help it! For with her presence it seems to me that 'the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come'! She is so full of life and brightness!-we shall know nothing of dull days or gloomy skies in St. Rest if she stays with us,--though perhaps for me it might be wiser and safer to choose the dull days and gloomy skies rather than tempt my soul with the magical light of an embodied spring in winter-time! But I shall be careful,--careful of myself and of her,- -I shall guard her name in every way, on my side--and if--if I love her, she shall never know it!"

He resumed his former seat by the study fire, and again took up his volume of Tennyson. And opening the book at hazard, his glance fell on that exquisite 'Fragment' which perhaps excels in its own way all the 'Idylls of the King'--

"As she fled fast thro' sun and shade, The happy winds upon her play'd, Blowing the ringlet from the braid: She look'd so lovely as she sway'd The rein with dainty finger-tips. A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips."

"Quite true!" he said, as he read the lines half aloud, a tender smile lighting up the gravity of his deep thoughtful eyes--"True to the life, so far as the Guinevere of to-day is concerned! But let the simile stop there, John, my boy! Don't carry it any further! Don't deceive yourself as to your own demerits! You are nothing but an old-fashioned country parson--a regular humdrum, middle-aged fogey!--that's what you are!--so, even though you HAVE fallen in love (which at your time of life is a folly you ought to be ashamed of), don't for Heaven's sake imagine yourself a Lancelot, John!--it won't do!"

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