Lost and won ... Second edition

Chapter I

A wintby rain had been falling during the whole day, and the view over the grey, fogwrapped sea had grown so cheerless that we were glad when evening came to draw the window-curtains and bring our chairs near to the fire. The wind, too, about that time began to rise : it came sweeping, hollow-toned, over the water, rousing ghostly echoes in the old corridor. " Guy will scarcely be home yet for another hour," my Aunt Graham said. " We will have candles, Hope, and go on with our book." I rang the bell for lights accordingly, and pro ceeded to read aloud. I read until the clock over the mantelpiece struck eight, and the wailing wind had risen to a shriek. I had persisted so long, for the pages that I read had life in the ring of their burning words, but I had to close my book at last, for my voice was growing drowned in the din of wind and wave.

My Aunt laid down her embroidery, and stirred the fire into a blaze. " I wish that boy was home, Hope. He will be wet through," she said. " He cannot be much longer, Aunt." We sat in silence for five minutes, listening : at the end of that time our patience was rewarded. Through the roaring of the storm I heard a faint sound of horses' hoofs. " That is he, Aunt Graham ! " and I ran to the hall to welcome him. It was truly Guy — but Guy in a sorry plight — ■ his great riding-cloak clinging saturated to him, and the very locks of his chesnut hair glittering glossy wet. He sprang into the hall, and I broke into laughter at the sight of him. " Guy, you look like a great water-dog ! " " Don't be impertinent, or I will shake my coat over you ! Come here, undo this fastening ; my fingers are frozen, Hope."

I reached up to the throat, and unclasped his cloak; he laid off his hat, and got rid of his riding-boots ; then restored to something like himself, he went with me to the drawing-room. He entered with a merry laugh. "Well, Mother, the elements have not annihi lated me yet ! " " So I see, my dear boy." " But they have done their best. Do you know, Mother, it is like a December night." He came and himself of the arm chair in the middle of the hearth : we sat one on each side of him. " I am glad to be home. What a pleasant blaze this is ! " He stooped over the fire, and the light shone merrily up into a fresh, manly, handsome face, a face that my Aunt Graham loved above all faces upon earth, which I admired too, in my quieter way, following the creed in which I had been brought up ; that religion including among its articles, as one of vital importance, the duty of believing in Guy Graham.

I had never questioned it; nor had any one I ever heard of — man or woman — at Falcon Court. B I have a letter for you somewhere, Mother, if I Imve not lost it, for it is very small. Ay, here it is." It was a minute packet — an epistle, too, written on foreign paper. " It is from Brussels ; it must be from Hildred Kane," my Aunt said ; and she took it nearer to the lights to decipher it. Guy turned to me. " I made particular inquiries ; but for Hope there was no letter." " Hope did not look for one." " How many do you receive in the course of a year, Hope ? Last year I wrote you one while I was in London." " Don't make a boast of your broken promises, Guy!" " Did I promise more ?" He laughed heartily, lifting up sunny hazel eyes. My Aunt took her seat again, with her open letter in her hand.

" Poor Hildred ! " she said. "What is it, Mother?" " She is leaving the Churtons, and wants to come to us." " Well, write and tell her to come." " Of course. Poor tiling, I am afraid she has not been very happy. It is an odd, short note." She gave it to Guy, and Guy read it aloud : " May I accept an invitation that you gave me long ago ? May I come to Falcon Court for a month, until I can find some other place to go to ? I am forced to leave these people ; I cannot live with them any longer, and I have no friends in Brussels." " What folly it is of her ! " Guy broke out impatiently. " What necessity or reason is there for her to teach ? Mother, cannot you interfere ? Think what it must appear to every, one who knows us ! " " I will do what I can when she comes, Guy : it is no use discussing the matter any more by letter."

" Everybody will see her when she is here : it will be extremely annoying to us. Mother, how old is she ? " " How old are you, Hope ? " " Seventeen." " She is five years older than you : she is two and-twenty, then." " I thought she had been older." Guy folded up the letter, mused for a few moments ; then threw it on the mantel-shelf, and dismissed the subject. " Hope, what have you been doing all day ? Have you seen Frankland ? " " No." " He gave me some message for you this morning, but I can't tell it you : I perfectly forget it. By the way, Mother, he was ill." " Frankland ? " and my Aunt raised her head. " Yes ; he was wrapped up in flannel with a sore throat." " Poor fellow ! " she said, calmly. " I must go and see him to-morrow." " I said you would go. Hope, are you tired ? " " No." " I wish you would sing me something."

I went to the piano, and sang. When my first song was ended he called for another : he kept me at the piano for a long time. I was playing sweet, soft, quiet music : in perfect repose he was lying back in his great chair. Suddenly with a spring up he started. " By the powers ! I was forgetting. I have an evening's work before me. Mother, is there a fire in the study ? " " I don't know — I will ask. What have you to do?" " Oh, to make out some papers for Frankland. I promised to do them. They must be sent over in the morning." My Aunt rose up and rang the bell. She stood a moment before the fire. " Really, I think Frankland might have made time to do them himself," she said, sharply. " It is a hard tax upon you after such a fatiguing day." Most women are unjust hi some of their thoughts, and Mrs. Graham was no exception. Frankland Graham might have come a beggar to his mother's gates, and I think if Guy had said, " Shut the doors upon him," she would have shut them.

Chapter II

" I strrposE our lessons are to end now. Are they, Frankland ? " " I don't know. Are they, Elfie ?" It was the morning of the day on which we looked for Hildred Kane, and Frankland Graham had been giving me my accustomed Italian lesson in the study of his house — the Vicarage at Forth Regis. I had risen to go home now and was standing before him tying my bonnet-strings. " I suppose they are. Hildred will create a revolution at Falcon Court." " Then Hope must steer her way through it." « Must I ? " I liked that command : I felt my face brighten before it. I concluded my dressing quietly and swiftly. " Elfie, where are you going ? " " Home." " But I am not ready." " Are you coming with me, Frankland ? *' " Yes, if you will wait for me." " I will wait. Give me something to do." " You shall have a drawer to clear.

Wait a moment : now, look here. Take out all these papers, and lay them straight." " Yes." I sat down to my task, near to the open window, full in the perfume from the garden of the lilac bushes, and in the beams of the May sun. A right pleasant room was that vicarage study, spite of dusty book-shelves and disordered tables ; pleasant in summer sunshine, and in winter fire light ; pleasanter at no time to me than when, as now, Frankland and I sat silent in it together. We passed a mute half-hour ; then Frankland closed his desk. " Now, Elf." " Wait one moment ! I am just done." " You are disposing of all my property so that I shall never be able to lay finger on it more ! Elfie, Elfie ! how am I ever to get at one of these papers if you tie them up ? " "You don't want to get at them, FrankLind: they are all waste paper."

"Elf!" " They are ! I don't think there is one bit of good in them." " Give me my drawer, Elf! " " Does it not look nice, Frankland? " " Give me my drawer ! " " Yes — in one instant. There, it is done. Now, am I to get ready, Frankland?" I tied my bonnet-strings again, and we set out. It was a half-mile's walk to Falcon Court, a short half-mile when, as to-day, and always in dry weather, we took the path across the meadows. It was a pretty walk too. Upon one hand a great calm sea, stretching out, blue and infinite : on the other a low, undulating line of hills, their summits wooded, and the clear thin sky shewing far off through the rents of the high branches. Mrs. Graham and Guy had gone to meet Hildred at Dorchester, and we were alone through the afternoon. We sat together in the great drawing-room, the room of all others that, at Falcon Court, I loved the best ; with its repose of rich soft colours, with its low oaken roof, and its great stained embrasured window in the deep recess, whose cushioned ledge had made a couch for me ever since I was a child — calm summei' resting place, over which the mellow light crept full and soft, deep-dyed through the rich robes of sains s and angels: the dear old room, with its quaint shape, one quarter of its great square cut away by a sharp angle, as if the incision had had for its very purpose and design the making of the deep abutting wall an everlasting screen before that dark recess and solemn window far away.

We sat alone, each busy. Time had been when we had sat thus often ; but Frankland had ceased two years ago to live with us. To me the rooms had never grown familiar with his absence. A great barrenness had settled on them when he went away, from which they only now crept back at short ami sometimes distant intervals to their old look, when, as to-day, lying in the seat that I loved best, I could at my will look up, and find him as of old before me, at work, with his quiet head bent down — embodying to me, as ho had always dono, all that existed of repose at Falcon Court. " Elfie/' he said, " they are long in coming." Yes — they were long. The silver tongue over tho mantel-shelf had told five, and we had expected them before this. " What are you studying? " laughed as he came to me and took my book, for it was a light kind of study — a little German story that I had read a score of times, — fl Aslauga's Knight " they called it, a simply quaint, pathetic story, always strangely sorroAvful to me, and strangely tender ; a tale that had been wont to haunt me in my childhood, as I used to read it lying in that same seat, till the sunlight, flashing through the painted windows on the pages, would thrill me with a living likeness to the golden glancing of Aslauga's hair.

" Into what old corners do you go delving for your books, Elf ? This one was all thumbed and worn before you came into the world." " Yes; I know it was. Did you ever read it, Frankland ? He turned the pages over, and laughed. " Yes ; I have read it." " Don't laugh at it, Frankland, I like it so much." "So do I like it, Elfie. It is a quaint, pretty story of knight-errantry." " You say that slightingly. You don't tliink knight-errantry was a good thing?" "Do you?" " Yes, I do ! in the heart of it at least. I would rather read that story than I would Don Quixote with all its genius, making mockery as it does of things that are beautiful and noble." "Who told you to talk so of Don Quixote? Do you want the days of chivalry to return, Elfie ? " " We might have the spirit without the knight errantry, Frankland.

I think it would be a good thing if we could. We might have the bravery, and the generosity, and the courtesy." Frankland laughed. " You would not like the old knight courtesy if you could get it, Elfie. In those old days they worshipped women as saints, and the worship made a strong incitement to the doing of brave deeds ; but I doubt if the women were much the happier for it. In these modern times we take them for what they are — true flesh and blood ; we set them in our houses to be the light of quiet homes ; we place them at our hearths, the fore most of our household gods ; we go to them for sympathy in joy, and we lay our heads upon their bosoms in sorrow and sickness. We only worship them when we are feverish. And they are con tented to have it so — and rightly contented, Elfie." I did not answer him; but I put my book away.

Yes ; it was a loving, tender, human story ; yet I thought with Frankland. Had I lived in olden times I should have made a sorry mistress for a knight. They liked queenly women, and I was not queenly, nor beautiful in their way. What I was was rightly enough described in that name that Frankland Graham had given me long ago. I was small, and slight, and nimble ; I had a swift way of doing things ; I was fair and childish -looking; 1 was very quiet, and had I lived in those old times I think I would rather have crept into the dark places within the castle walls than have sat in the balconies at the castle tournaments. I had put away my book : I lay without speaking, with it closed by my side. Frankland took a quiet turn in the room, and laughed when, returning, he found me still in the same attitude.

" Still musing, Elfie ? " he asked. " I was thinking — " I began my sentence, and turned my face towards him as I spoke ; but in an instant thought and unfinished sentence alike fled from me, and up I started, for where the angled recess opened on the remainder of the room some one was standing. It was a woman in a dark travel ling dress, with a broad-leafed drooping riding-hat, and about her neck a great mass of falling hair, a loose coil of wild gold-red Aslauga tresses, burning in the sunlight. I started up ; my breath for a moment fled before that bright, strange vision : but Frankland was more composed than I. He turned about, and with one exclamation of surprise went forward. " I am not sure — are you Hildred ? " he said. She answered " Yes," and with a smile put her hand in his. " Welcome to England !

" he exclaimed. " But how are you alone ? My mother went to meet you." "I made a mistake: I came out at a wrong station — it was very stupid." " And you have driven on here alone ? " " Yes." Her voice was just tinged by a foreign accent : it was pecidiar in its tone, but not unpleasant; neither rich nor soft, yet wonderfully clear ; a voice with a pure ring in it like silver." " We must take care of you till my mother comes back. Hope ! " he called. I was near at hand. "This is my cousin — Hope Graham. I am Frankland," he said. I extended my hand, but she stooped and kissed me. I had no right to the salute, but I took it in silence. " Will my aunt be very long ? " " I do not think so. She is waiting, I see, for another train to come in — but she cannot be longer than an hour." " I should like to change this dress.

May I go to my room ? " " Hope will show it to you." We went upstairs together, and when we reached her room she bade me enter it with her. I had asked when I stood at the threshold if I could be of any use to her, and her answer came sharply : " You can stay with me," she said ; " I did not come here for solitude. I watched her almost without speaking, while she rapidly freed herself from her travelling dress. Nor had she much to say — until cloak, hat, and dress were all thrown off, and she stood before me with her bared white arms and shoulders, all veiled and shadowed by the great loose, heavy tresses of her gorgeous hair. JLOST AND WON. 17 Then she turned to me. " I am not quite sure who you are," she said, abruptly. " I kissed you down-stairs — but per haps I should not have done it."

" We are no relations. I was a niece of Mr. Graham's." " And I am a niece of his wife's : I see." She turned to the glass, but only for a few moments. Presently, with the same abruptness, she asked — "a Which of the sons is Frankland ? " " The youngest," I answered. " Where is the other ? " " Guy went with Mrs. Graham to meet you. " Is Guy like his brother? " " No." « What is he like?" " He is very handsome — tall, and strong." "And Mrs. Graham?" " Mrs. Graham has been very pretty. She looks young and pretty even still." The questions ceased : she stood silent again, deftly dressing her wonderful hair. Coil after coil of it she knotted up : in five minutes the queenly head was all arrayed. She attired herself in a light cambric dress, without ribbon or jewel on ■J. her ; and when all was done, she stood before me, the most regal creature my eyes had ever looked upon.

She gave a parting look in the glass, and then drew near to me. " I am ready," she said, and we returned down stairs together. It was a warm evening, though it was only May, and she passed the fire, and went on and took her seat where I had before been lying. There Frankland joined her, and they talked together. I was not wanted then. There were some new books lying uncut on one of the tables a few yards away, and I sat down and began to cut them. She talked with Frankland. She was sitting in the rich light of the painted window, its solemn hues and shadows falling over her. She was playing too with the book I had been reading, turning its pages over and over as she talked, doing it very idly, for the book had no meaning for her, yet never letting it alone, touching it softly, moving her fingers over it continually.

Once she even laid it on her knees and opened it, and read a line or two. But Frankland laughed then, and placed his hand upon it. " That is one of Hope's old books — not good for a drawing-room ornament," he said ; and he took it from her and threw it aside. I came quietly from my seat and lifted it up. It had its own place high upstairs in an old chest. I carried it there, and locked down the lid upon it. They talked together until my Aunt and Guy returned. That room was far removed from the entrance of the house, and the sounds of arrival at the outer door only faintly reached it. Mrs. Graham was standing facing us before we knew that she had come home. " Hildred, are you here ? " she exclaimed. She came forward quickly, but before she kissed her niece, she held her for a moment at arms' length.

My Aunt Graham was calm, not easily moved, but Hildred startled her. Hildred herself was natural and cordial, and the meeting and the necessary explanations passed off well. " But Guy — where is Guy ? " my Aunt called. Guy was close at hand and easily found, but he was strangely silent when he came. His few welcoming words were spoken hurriedly. " I am glad that you found Frankland here at least," Mrs. Graham said, calmly. " It would have been an inhospitable reception for you, Hildred, if we had all been away." " Miss Graham would have taken pity on me then." My Aunt turned round to look where I stood. " Hope ? Oh, yes ; you would have had Hope," she said — but I fell back a step farther as she spoke, for that voice had cold tones in it some times for me. I was a Graham, and no kin of hers; and there were some moments at least, if not many, when my uncle's wife remembered that.

I fell back a little, and Guy had already re treated. The conversation with Hildred was left to be sustained by Mrs. Graham and Frank land, and so in great measure it continued to be throughout the remainder of the evening. But there was no lack of it. Hildred had plenty to say, and abundant words to say it in. She talked fluently, and she talked well. All through the evening that clear ringing voice was sounding in my ears, as she spoke of foreign people and foreign places, delivering a full, graphic history of her two-and-twenty years. Only once it broke down. That was at the close of her narration. She had spoken of the deaths of her mother and her father ; of how she had been thrown alone on the world at seventeen ; of how she had taught for her living in Venice, and Padua, and Dresden ; then, last, in Brussels.

" And in Brussels, Hildred," my Aunt said, gently, " I am afraid those people were not very kind to you ? You were not very happy ? " It was night now, and the light of the lamps fell into Hildred's eyes. " No ; I was not happy," she said, coldly. Her head was bent then, but after a moment's silence she suddenly lifted it :' colour flushed into her cheek, and light into her eyes : she began to speak again, and a fierce kind of emotion came into her voice that made it writhe like some sentient thing. " I was not happy ! " she cried. " They treated me as if I had no more feeling in me than their dogs or horses ! They insulted me because I was handsome ! They knew that I had no friends, that I was motherless and fatherless, so they thought they could do what they chose with me. They were cruel to me — they were cruel to me !

They made every hour miserable, and humiliating, and bitter ! " Her eyes had been flashing fire in the lamp light: suddenly she stooped her face low; her burning cheek was hid ; there, before us all, she burst into a passion and storm of tears. Guy started from his seat. " Mother ! " he cried. It was the loudest word that had parted his lips for hours. It was all he said now, and, little as it was, it was not needed, for Mrs. Graham had already taken the weeping face to her bosom. But Hildred's gust of passion did not last long. It had come like an April hurricane, and it passed as quickly. In a few moments she looked up. " You are very good to me," she said, and she smiled into the two faces that were near her — for Frankland had come to her side too, and had spoken to her; nay, he had done more, he had taken one of her hands into his, and it stayed there after she had ceased to weep.

I was very weary ; I had sat listening so long. Presently, when Hildred was calm again, I stole away. The library was dark, except for what moonlight crept in through one uncurtained window — a solitary beam that fell pale and cold upon the lines of black-backed books. I went in there, and sat down in the silence. It was still not cold. I wanted neither light nor warmth : I sat down and laid my brow on the cool window ledge. I sat until a door was opened, and a step came out into the gallery towards the hall. It was Frankland, I knew, going home. I did not move — I would have sat there till he went ; but when he reached the hall he summoned me. " Hope ! " he called, and as I had obeyed that voice for ten years, so I obeyed it now. " Elfie," he said, " where have you been ? " " Only in the library.

" Alone ? Why did you run away from us, Hope?" " Why should I not ? I was tired — nobody wanted me." There was only one lamp hi the wide old hall : its light fell on us faintly ; my face, or what my face said, he could see by it but dimly. But he read something ; his answer came so quickly — cordially. " Elfie, i" want you always," he said. " I should want you if the world were full of Hildreds ! " "Frankland, are you going home?" My voice had sounded to my own ears so desolate when I spoke last: it had got warmth in it now— in the feebly lighted hall it had even gathered sunshine. "Yes; I am going. Open the door for me, Elfie. What kind of a night is it ? " " Very fair. The moon is almost at the full." I opened the door, and we stood together on the threshold, my hands, as he had placed them, linked on his arm.

It was very fair, the sea at rest in the May moonlight, and the tree branches very softly swaying in the fresh night air. " She is very beautiful, Elfie," he said. " Hildred ? Yes ; very beautiful." " Do you like her ? " He turned his face round and looked at me. Under that regard I answered slowly — I scarcely knew what I really felt; I said, "I do not know." " You have scarcely spoken to her," he said, quietly ; " but there is good in her, Hope." I did not doubt it : I said, " Yes." " And you will like dier soon ; we must all like her if we can : she is very friendless." It was true. She was friendless : she had had a sad, hard life — God help her ! I looked quickly up. " I will like her, Frankland ! I will help, if I can, to make her happy." " I know you will, little Elf ! " he said. He spoke no more of her, and I unclasped my hands from his arm.

" Are you going, Elfie ? " " You ought to go, and I am keepmg you here." " You do not keep me often. When you have shut the door upon me, what are you going to do with yourself? " " I don't know : I had not thought." "Go back to the drawing-room. I don't like Elfie to sit alone with the moonbeams." " Very well." " And warm yourself at the fire. These little hands are all cold." " They will get warm soon. Good-night, Frank land." " I like you to be the last to say good-night to me. It does me good to be sent away with that warm hand-clasp. Good-night ! Good bless you, Elfie ! " He clasped my hands and kissed them — that was a cousinly custom that had grown common of late years both with him and Guy — and then he went. I closed the door upon him, and returned, as he had bidden me, to the drawing-room.