For her dear Sake

Chapter I

" Who saws thro' the trunk, tho' he leave the tree up in the forest, When the next wind casts it down, — is his not the hand that smote it ?" A WILD, wet evening in that remote county whose magnificent coast — magnificent be yond all words — enfolds so many tracts of weird, unvaried desolation. A wild, wet even ing on the Lizard coast, with the sea-mist creeping stealthily inland. But, though the mists are dense and dangerous there, as surely in no other spot in England, they had no power to frighten or disturb a woman standing upon the pile of rocks that crown Pen Olver; the only human figure in that wild, wide scene. Dim and tall and unutterably solitary it looked against the dull grey sky; lonely with the VOL. I. B wonderful loneliness of the sea itself. So still the woman stood among the rocks, she might have been one of the Druids, who, in far-off Celtic days, had made these stones their altars ; and as vague and dim, wrapped in the evening mist, as is the history of such a spot as this, which even wonder fails to reach.

She never turned, nor even started, when now and then the hollow sound of the fog-signals from the Lizard went out warningly to sea, or when, in the little cove far down below her, the waves rolled in with a sudden roar, which broke the monotonous "calling of the sea," as the booming of a cannon would break the shoot ing of a rifle battalion. Steadily the mist came on, enveloping the mighty headland ; and the woman, glancing inland, saw the storm cloud gather over the little town. Knowing this coast so well, she knew that, as it settled, the whole scene around her would be obliterated ; yet still she waited, and still with that indefinable expression of its being very natural to her to wait. The line of flags upon the signal-station just behind her lost their form and colour, seeming only a cloud behind the mist ; even the great beacon-lights looked blurred and dim, like a bright memory lost in tears ; and presently one brave little light, carried by a passing vessel, was suddenly lost, as if the hungry sea had swallowed it.

Then, as if the fading of that moving light had roused her, she turned from her long waiting, and, after covering her eyes for one moment, as if they were dazzled by their long gaze into the mist, walked swiftly to the signal-station. The light within con fused her as she entered, but a girl who was just leaving the office, wrapped in a long waterproof cloak, paused and spoke to her unquestioned. " No answer yet," she said ; but without either the sing-song in her voice and the innate courtesy of the Cornish people. "I'm off duty now, but the other clerk knows you're wait ing." " Thank you," the woman said, without a smile or nod, and turned and went out again into the gloom ; while the girl-clerk, bending her head against the rain, hurried up the cliff above the station, to the cottage where she lodged, and where the sight of a bright fire and her waiting tea scattered from her memory all those puzzled surmises (nourished in the dul ness of an almost idle day in the telegraph office) over the visit of this grave and quiet woman, who was so anxious for the answer to her telegram.

Slowly pacing backwards and forwards now B before the station door, the woman wore through another waiting hour ; and in every movement — just as in that long motionless pause upon the cliff — there was the indescrib able evidence of a great dogged patience. Once or twice she started, fancying she heard the opening of the door, but the next moment resumed her slow and measured walk. When this hour had passed, she once more entered the telegraph-office, and this time found the clerk fastening the envelope containing her message. "I wish you had waited in here,'" he said, glancing from her wet cloak to her cold and colourless face. " 'Tis a wisht night for walk ing the cliffs. Rest a little now." The answer was only a quiet dull refusal, with brief thanks ; and, to the clerk's surprise, his visitor never attempted to make use of the light to read her telegram, but closed her fingers over it and went quietly away.

There was no loitering in her step now, though once or twice she stopped suddenly, as she might have done if she had heard a call upon her name. But the next moment she started hurriedly again, with a half smile, as if she wondered at herself for being even once im posed upon— she knowing it so well— by that deception of the sea-mist which made a mock of sound as well as sight; sometimes bringing near what was distant, and sometimes taking away what really was quite near. The hedges, to which she kept so close, looked unreal and distant, and the few stunted trees, dim and ghost-like, were invisible till she was close upon them, and then were swallowed up suddenly as she seemed to reach them. When she had passed through the last field, and crossed the last awkward Cornish stile, she heaved a sigh of relief, as if it were good — for all her long, long gaze upon it — to have left the mourning sea behind her, with that thought of the many, many years it had sobbed itself in wild unrest against the rocks it could not melt.

She walked on rapidly now through the little church-town, half sleeping in the mist, once or twice answering a frank " Good night " from a passing fisherman, or from a woman peering from her door. But her step grew quicker presently, when she was out upon the road that crossed the downs, no sound near her save the whirring of the telegraph wires above her. At last, never seen till it was close upon her, a man's figure loomed out of the chill cloud in front of her, and then — long, as it seemed, after his short signal whistle had sounded — there came into sight, blurred and big and indis tinct, a vehicle, with a candle burning with a dying flare in the socket of one of its lamps. "I am ready," the woman said ; but, instead of taking her seat, she stood in the road beside the gig, and opened the paper in her band, where the candlelight would fall upon it.

She had only two words to read, but louder than that monotonous vibration of the wires above her, louder even than had sounded the rolling of the surf as she stood on the cliffs, or the booming of the fog-signals, those two words echoed and re-echoed now in the mist around her — " Too late !" The face bent over the coloured paper was pale and anxious in the candlelight — a peculiar face it was, with a scar on one temple — and the lips were cold and tightly pressed ; but yet the down-bent eyes bad no look beyond their patient steadfastness, even when she tore the paper to fragments, just onee repeating, below her breath, those two brief words in which her long-expected answer came — " Too late !" A lofty chamber, the ceiling of which rose to a pointed arch, where tbe rich carving of four centuries before was almost hidden.

A room so spacious that the great square bed, with its heavy velvet hangings, looked almost insignificant against the inner arched wall, while the whole of the outer one formed a single window, in the high arch of which the cluster of armorial bearings shone in brilliant hues, like a gorgeous tropical island, from a thousand tiny diamond panes of palest green, beyond which the sea really rose and fell, giving them its own deeper hue, and something even of its own life and motion. A splendid room, yet marred by striking incongruities. Though there was such ample breadth of hearth on either side the vaulted room, there burned but the most unhealthy fire on one only of the wide hearths, its light scarce touching the handsome chimney-shafts. Though the mantels held a lavish and pompous display of heraldic insignia, they bore no work of modern art, or emblem of a living cultured taste.

Though the wide uncarpeted oak floor shone smooth as glass with age and polish, there lay no luxury of rugs 'and furs upon it. Though upon the fading tapestry there came first the names and arms and history of the founder of a grand old family, and then repeated feats of prowess with the same name ever recurring, yet in the few modern books which lay ahout there was no repetition of this name. Though the carved medallions represented forms and figures with one strong indefinable resemblance throughout, yet there was little likeness to any form or face among them, or to any painted, carved, or broidered face around him, in the sole occupant of this room. It was an old man, sitting propped by pillows in the curtained bed that faced the coloured light, powerless just now, yet unresting in his eager, nervous vitality, his eyes keen and alert under a close-fitting black silk cap, the sinewy fingers turning over and over, yet never unfold ing, a letter that they held.

An old man, and aged still more by the hurry of a grasping nature than by the even and unhindered speed of time alone. " Not come ?" he questioned, irritably, with out using a name or its equivalent, as he turned and fixed bis eyes upon a man-servant, who entered the room and went forward to stir the smouldering fire. "Not yet, sir." " Then you couldn't have sent when I ordered you." " I sent at once, sir," the man answered, with a certain tone of superciliousness in his respect ; " but Sir Piers was from home — as I told you, sir." " Then send again." The tone was suspicious — a tone that a good servant is sure to resent — and the man walked from the room without a reply, followed by his master's shrewd, distrustful gaze. Left alone again, the old man lifted the letter near his eyes, and read the address aloud, with a smile lurking on his thin tight lips, but a cold and ugly glitter in his eyes.

Presently, in the quietness, sleep fell upon him, and the light behind the high, arched window was growing dim a little — though one gorgeous splash of colour lay upon the floor — when be awoke, glancing around the room with quick consciousness of a change in it. It did not look greatly changed either. He saw only a young man, bare-headed, though in riding-boots, half lounging and half sitting on an old carved chest against the wall on one side of the bed, and three dogs near him. And yet the room zvas changed, almost as an instrument is changed under a master's hand. The young man was as still as the forms upon the tapestry behind him, and the three dogs lay as motionless near his feet as the carved animals up there in the dim recesses of the vaulted roof; yet something in the silent figures gave the room a harmony it had not had before.

For a few moments old Revel Hardress gazed unnoticed into the young man's thoughtful face ; then his grim lips relaxed, as if the sight pleased him a little, but in a rather cruel way. " I took the liberty of sending for you, Sir Piers," he said, with a very mockery of defer ence in his tone, " even at the risk of incurring your displeasure, as I usually do." The young man's eyes, when he lifted them, had less of displeasure in them than of utter indifference, but the tranquil, rather haughty tone was stirred a little, as if by amusement. " You are right, as usual," he said ; " but I have come at your request. Have you much to say to me ?" "No — not much," the rold man answered, seeming to weigh each word. " Peter told you of this letter ?" " Yes." " He said," Mr. Hardress went on, intently Avatching the young man's handsome, indifferent face, " that you made no remark at all."

" Did I not? I should not have given myself credit for such a prudent reticence." " Sir Piers Tresillyan," the old man inter posed, testily, " I intend in this case to inflict the heaviest punishment the law allows." " Doubtless." " And," Mr. Hardress continued, noticing this interruption only by a momentary hesitation, " the law allows a peculiarly heavy punishment for this offence. But, before we speak more of that, and before I tell you why I asked you to come to me here, where I am at present tied, I want to hear the truth of this strange tale they tell me. I'm used to bearing strange tales of you, Sir Piers Tresillyan, just as I'm used to hearing strange opinions from you, in our too brief intercourse." "How would it be to come to the point?" suggested the young Baronet, his eyes darkening proudly, yet his tone simply one of rather careless amusement.

For, though the old man's nature, in its seriousness, won from him such supreme contempt, yet was it not almost amus iug to detect so readily the warring of two mean propensities — one to pay fawning homage to high birth, the other to show arrogant superi ority over one on whom he pressed his heel with such unwavering heaviness ? " They tell me what I find some difficulty in believing," Revel Hardress said, his eyes half closed in his paltry enjoyment of a meditated stab, " that some fools attempted a burglary at the Mine House the other night." " Fools, of course, to attempt the Mine House when the Castle is so near ; but then, you see, the wealth of the Castle is too nobly defended." " And they say," the old man went on, with an involuntary glance of wonder into the careless, refined face, as his thoughts rested for one brief second on the young man's home, " that you surprised the villains and captured them yourself."

" Only one." " You positively attacked them in the dark, not knowing how many there might be ?" " Nor how few." "Rubbish!" sneered Mr. Hardress. "There could not, in any case, have been less than one ; and the chances were for more. It was a pre sumptuous courting of danger." " It was nothing of the kind," Sir Piers Tre sillyan answered, stooping to rouse his dogs with the handle of his whip. " I heard a step in my steward's office, for which — in the night — I could not easily account, so I went to look into it." " You enjoy looking into places — and things, don't you, Sir Piers ?" queried the old man, glancing shrewdly from the tall easy figure to the keen intelligent face. " Go on, please." "There is nothing worth telling. The thief was alone, aud not so strong as myself." " One way of putting it.

But there is more to tell, I think. You committed him to gaol, of course ? You upheld the law, as a gentle man of title should?" " Oh, I upheld the law, of course !" rejoined Tresillyan, with a laugh in his beautiful dark blue eyes. " Would I venture now into the presence of a merciful magistrate, if I had left her to uphold herself? I sent the would-be thief to Bodmin. Could even you have done more wisely, Hardress ?" " I would have sent him, and have left him there," was the prompt answer ; " but I heard far otherwise of you. What was the use of your courage, or your ready means of capture, when you were to undo it all the next day? What on earth induced you to go up to Bodmin yourself, and look into the rascal's story? You knew enough of it, I should think." " But what you were to think did not affect me in the slightest," Tresillyan answered, tranquilly.

" I had a fancy for hearing something* from the man himself, whom I had known, long ago, on my own land. And I heard a story sad enough to have made you exult over its likeness to Bah ! What have I to say of it to you ? It was a history of misfortunes and sufferings which had made a man reckless, even while health and strength and youth were left him." "You believed it?" " I believed it, and proved it," the Baronet answered, briefly. " And then " " And then I obtained his release, and a berth on board a vessel bound for Sydney." " And yet I've heard it said," deliberated Mr. Hardress, smiling, as if the idea were hard to grasp, " that Sir Piers Tresillyan is no fool." " A falsehood, Hardress," was the careless answer, " or Sir Piers Tresillyan would not be with you now. Finish what you have to saj to me."

" One word first," the old man pleaded, clos iug his fingers over the letter that they held, while his thin lips widened into a peculiarly crafty smile. " You saw the cell, of course, in which the prisoner lay. Did it strike you as a pleasant dwelling for a young — person, or did it strike you as rather bare and grim and solitary for one who has been used to companionship ? Ha, ha ! you need not look at me in that way. I understand what I am saying ; and— and I positively enjoy thinking of how a prison cell would feel for the first time." " I should not wonder. I would not grudge you any new enjoyment, yours are so very few ; but I cannot enjoy with you while I am left in the dark." " You in the dark !" ejaculated the old man, with a sort of unwilling admiration in his glance at Sir Piers.

" Didn't I tell you, when you first came in, that I will have the heaviest verdict that the law allows ?" " May I see that paper in your hand ?" " Not yet, not yet !" Mr. Hardress answered, smiliug grimly. " But the law allows a terrible punishment for this. In the days when men were hanged for forgery, they should have been hanged and drawn and quartered for this. But I will have the extremest penalty. I have a warrant out, and the law shall do its worst — its very worst !" " Better, perhaps," Sir Piers observed, in easy parenthesis, " than your best. Is that all you need to say to me ?" " No, no !" Mr. Hardress rejoined, irritably fingering the paper he held. " What I need to tell you is that Leek and Curtis refuse to carry out my orders in this matter." " Fine fellows — Leek and Curtis !" commented Tresillyan, his eyes frankly meeting the old man's angry gaze.

" Too fine to be my solicitors any longer," was the blunt retort. " I am glad of that," Sir Piers answered, with quiet contempt. " Even the slightest lifting of your claim from what I value is a relief to me." The old man chuckled, irresistibly as it seemed. " Galling, is it ?" he asked, laying down upon the quilt the paper he had held, and patting it with his fingers. " Crushing to the lofty head ; degrading to the high spirit; chilling to the passionate patrician blood ? Yes, yes; I daresay. But it does us good to wear the yoke sometimes, Sir Piers Tresillyan— Ah, you are in a hurry, are you, sir ?" " I came to you because they told me you were helpless at present and wished to speak to me," the young Baronet answered, with a strange, proud quietness, which the old man— feeling in tuitively how far apart it placed them— resented more than he could have resented any words.

"I have heard enough now." " Not quite," Revel Hardress rejoined, with a just observable cringing in his tone, as was not unusual with him, even in his most insolent speeches, to the proud and honourable man, who, of all the world, most sorely felt, and most bravely bore, the grinding of his iron heel. " Of course I wished to tell you how your solicitors — and mine heretofore — refuse to conduct this case for me, though they might (and probably will) tell you this themselves. But I also wished you to know what you cannot know from them, that another man has undertaken it, and Avill go ably through with it; a solicitor introduced to me by my shrewd partner — my able, long-headed, pi-actical young partner." " And in what way can this possibly interest me?" " We'll wait and see," was the reply, uttered with unction.

" Being a universal philanthrop ist, you should take an interest in these things. We'll wait and see ; we'll wait and see." " I say nothing of the man who is Avilling to do your bidding," Sir Piers said, rising from his negligent attitude. " Justice will doubtless be on his side in any court of law ; but I may think Avhat I choose of your injustice." "Just what you choose, sir, as you always have done," Mr. Hardress replied, Avith a suddenly affected candour that suited ill the keen suspicion in his glance. "I have always found it hard to win the good opinion of Sir Piers Tresillyan, and I despair of doing it in my old age. What was I going to say ? Oh, if Leek chance to come down here before I am about again, just tell him, Avill you, that I soon found another lawyer avIio is willing to exalt, instead of evade, the laAv he professes to serve?"

" Leek Avould be instantly annihilated ; the firm would collapse at once," Sir Piers an swered. Then, turning for an instant Avith his hand upon the chamber-door, " Don't send for me again, Hardress," he added, with a change of tone, and a darkening of his handsome eyes — eyes to look away a woman's heart — " the worst feeling a man has to fight with, I have to fight with in this house, and you know it !" VOL. I. C

Chapter II

" A little since and I was glad— and now !" " TTOW many hundreds of times more are XI you going to play through that ' Spin ning Wheel,' Frances ?" The girl addressed turned her merry eyes from her music only for a moment. " I must practise well to-day, Portia. It's my last opportunity, you know." " I knoAv one thing, that, as long as there's a piano Avithin a mile of you, you'll find opportunities of practising." " I Avill leave off, if you are all tired of it," said Frances Merriman, turning to look at her companions. " I go on because, somehow, the room seems dull this afternoon. I wonder Avhen Jolette will be back." " Oh, Ave aren't dying for Jolette !" retorted Portia Bayne, bending over her crewels — for it was dangerous work, matching among those countless shades of green now that the light began to fade. — " Go on spinning, by all means, if you feel dull."

It Avas a sombre study in one of those tall crescent houses with which North Kensington abounds; but, though its four girl-occupants Avere all employed, there was nothing of the devotion to study, the haste, or even the silence, so customary in that room during the afternoon hours. For this was Saturday, and on the Monday morning Miss Kennedy's pupils were to separate — not for the vacation only, but for good. The bind and clever old schoolmistress bad determined to retire upon her laurels, and had only waited until these six present pupils were ready to leave her, their education con scientiously and generously completed. " Frank, will you lend me just one needleful of amber, and I shall have finished?" Margaret Herne asked it of the girl at the piano, though Portia was nearer to her, and had her creAvels all around her.

" Certainly, Maggie ; there's my case at Amy's elbow." " I Avonder," observed Amy LaAvson, lifting a plump good-humoured face from her painting, to pass the work-case, " how long Miss Kennedy Avill keep Rose, and whether Jolette will really be home for tea as she promised." c2 " Certain," put in Frances, still indefatigably making irregular cadenzas of the gliding bars; " Friiulein and Jolette will come straight from St. James's Hall, and Rose is only showing Miss Kennedy her new purchases. Oh, dear, what a thing it is to be as rich as Rose !" Just as she spoke, the study door AA'as opened to admit a handsome long-limbed girl of about nineteen, dressed in Avhite, aud holding a frilled, uncrumpled train daintily round her. She was a fair, almost amber-haired girl, with a long square jaw, and rather heaA'y eyes, which Avere yet gentle enough to suggest that rarest of all girl graces — steadfastness.

"Jolette not come?" she queried, looking round the room. " It was too bad of her to go aAvay on this last day." " But Fraulein offered to take her to the Pop ; and it Avas such a treat for Jolette." " Don't say Pop, Amy, please." "Very Avell, Rose," returned Amy, readily, her round eyes fixed admiringly upon tbe new Avhite dress. " But it isn't slang." "Rose is like poor little Fraulein," put in Portia, Avho shared Avith Rose the privilege of seniorship. "She scolded Jolette for talking slang one day, Avhen Jolette said she escaped with the skin of her teeth. If I'd been Jolette, I'd have suggested the Friiulein's study of her bible." "No, you would not — if you'd been Jolette," returned Rose, quietly. "Let us dress between the lights," suggested Amy, closing her paint-box, " and then sit at the fire and enjoy ourseh'es till tea-time.

We are going to do some improvised charades up-stairs to-night, Rose, and yon. and Portia are to choose sides. Whom do you choose first ?" " Jolette." "Then me, please. I can't act except on Jolette's side. No one else has any real fun in her." " Don't be unfair, Amy," put in Frances, in cheerful parenthesis. "I decline to take the entire losing side," said Portia, a flush rising to her swarthy, rather Jewish face, which nevertheless would have been handsome but for the eyes meeting too closely over the nose. "I ought to have you, Rose; you are ahvays graceful aud self possessed." "Do join her, Rose," pleaded Amy, laughing as she came to the fire. " She needs one great actor, and she would sooner die than confess to a wish for Jolette, or acknowledge aloud that Jolette had one single good point."

" Your adulation requires an antidote," rejoined Portia, Avith a smile peculiar to her, lurking in the corners of her nose far more than in the eyes. " Come," put in Rose BosistoAv amicably, " Avill anyone tell us a story this last afternoon, as a great favour?" " That," observed Frances, turning at last from the piano, " is really the one thing that Jolette does better than any of us." " Oh, Ave needn't be always dependent on Jolette !" interposed Margaret, Avith a glance at Portia, as she drew her chair to the rug. " I will tell you a story." A few feeble expressions of thanks hailed this offer, but no extravagant anticipations of enjoyment Avere built upon it. For Margaret's story-telling poAvers were not more intimately known than the fact that Margaret herself was unaAvare of any want of lustre in her style ; her own pre-eminently common-place character gauging all things by the standard of an appalling mediocrity, and making her eA'en a little sorry, in her calm and placid Avay, for those whose ill-regulated natures tempted them to grope for the unknown land beyond.

In the gracious calm engendered by a total lack of that sympathy Avhich is our greatest sufferingv Margaret judged such as these with natural clemency, and, without blaming, only pitied them ; indulgently classing every feeling and motive that she could not grasp as " only eccentricity perhaps." Whispers on irrelevant subjects had ominously begun to accompany the protracted narrative, which Miss Herne had not only founded on fact, but in the buildiug of which she had elected that every stone should be a distinct and unassailable fact, Avhen a lengthy, but courteously suppressed, yawn from Rose Avas ruined by a fresh young laugh from the background. " We knoAv the end, Maggie, of course. When you take us Avading so deliberately into the depths of a story, we know by experience how shallow the banks are, aud that Ave can Avade as successfully out again.

Why don't you plunge in somewhere, and make us catch our breath, and Avonder how and where we cau land ? What an art it is in story-telling to know exactly how to begin !" " You think you possess the art of story-telling, I suppose ?" inquired Portia, her heavy deliberate tones forming a wonderful contrast to the rather peculiar frank voice of the listener behind. Jolette Carhilton turned her eyes for one minute upon her schoolfellow, then her wide ex pressive lips closed Avith a slightly tremulous motion, while she turned and drew to the fire the only easy-chair the room possessed. " I should be a miscreant descendant of a noble ancestor if I did not possess it," she said, the pretty musical voice stirred by a note of cynicism. " I have a great-uncle— a little great uncle he is — who earned his livelihood, and an immense fortune besides, simply by telling stories.