Hostages to fortune : a novel

Chapter I

“Full many alady T have eyed with best regard ; and many a time The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues Have I liked seyeral women; never any With so full soul, but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, And put it to the foil. But you, O you, So perfect and so peerless, are created Of every creature’s best,”

ProrounD excitement prevails in Llandrysak this sunny August morning. Dog-carts dash wildly down the fragment of inchoate street, whose chief feature is the post office ; phaetons and ponycarriages unknown to Llandrysak wind gaily across the common, and appear on the railway bridge. ‘The station disgorges a crowd of smartly-dressed young women and their attendant swains, who swarm over the little settlement, and forthwith make forthe one establishment which provides refreshment of a light and unintoxicating character; for the people who come to Llandrysak are, as a rule, temperate im the extreme, and hardly know the meaning of a public-house.

Mr. Cates—the purveyor of thingsin general, from butcher's neat and bacon to tea, sugar, confectionery, and fancy biscuits ; from bread, butter, and eggs to greenstuff and fish—has been labouring all night in the sweat of his brow to prepare adequately for this peaceful invasion. Monster hams await the sacrificial knife ; quartern loaves wall-in one side of the well-used counter ; all the interior accommodation available in Mr. Cates’s private abode has been thrown open for the reception of visitors ; and tea and coffee are in perpetual preparation. But the most Mr. B

Cates can do in this way. falls short of his patrons’ demands. They storm his passage, they swarm upon his stairs, and throng his rooms, even trying to invade the sanctity of his bedchamber, and wax loud and savage in their demands for accommodation and refreshment, until Mr. Cates—although feeling that he is making money as fast as he can drop it into his till—wishes that his customers were less numerous or less importunate ; or, in his own words, wishes that he “had known beforehand that there would beso many ;” though what he would have done had he been so informed, seeing that his house has no power of expansion, and that he has no yard or garden available for the erection of a tent, must ever remain a mystery. Whatever power -of expansion his business premises possess has been exercised to the uttermost; for he has absorbed as much of the roadway as he can venture to encumber without detriment to the public. The space before his busy little shop is spread with trays of tarts and buns, hot and hot from the oven, promptly renewed as the hungry visitors consume them.

And wherefore this inroad of the surrounding neighbourhood into quiet little Llandrysak, famous only for its saline and sulphur springs, and in its normal condition the tranquil resort of health-seekers and water-drinkers ? Question easily answered. For the last fortnight placards have adorned the public places of Llandrysak—the gates of the market hall, the portal of the post office, and the railway station—setting forth that on this third of August an Histeddfod would be holden at Llandrysak, and ~ numerous prizes—ranging from ten pounds to five shillings— would be awarded to successful competitors in the art of music and dramatic recitation. A monster tent has been brought from a distant city—Llandrysak is a good forty miles from any large town—and erected behind the pretty little modern Gothic church on the common yonder; and after braving the breeze for a day or two has ignominiously collapsed on Sunday afternoon, to be re-erected with increased stability on Monday. ‘To-day is Tuesday, and the tent still stands bravely. The warm summer sky and soft west wind promise a glorious noontide, and at half-past nine o’clock the inhabitants of surrounding villages are pouring into Llandrysak as fast as the single line of rail can bring them.

Perhaps of all the quiet out-of-the-way places in this seabound isle, there is none more tranquil, more remote from the busy world, than Llandrysak. It is-certainly not a town, it is hardly to be called a village. Two large and prosperous hotels, and three or four smaller hostelries—which are rather public boarding-houses than inns—hare sprung up around the mineral springs. Three or four shops and about half a dozen lodging-houses have been built‘on the edge of an undulating common ; and the new church, erected by public subscription, looks down upon the little settlement from its elevation on the aforesaid common.

Llandrysak is situated on a plateau seven hundred feet above the sea-level, and all around it rise the green Cambrian hills, not mighty peaks, like Snowdon or Penmaenmawr, but lovable hills, grassy and ferny—hills that tempt the pedestrian, and seem to ery aloud even to the idlest lounger: “Come, climb our gentle breasts, and breathe the purer ether that circles round our heads.”

Quiet and-remote though Llandrysak is, it is eminently popular

inits way. The hotels and lodging-houses are full to plethora in the season, and guests are billeted at’ outlying farmhouses to

an alarming extent, considering the number of the lodgers in

relation to the space. available for their accommodation. In sheltered nooks upon the hill-side, in rustic lanes, youcome upon ~ lowly homesteads, which to the stranger's eye appear in no wise too spacious for a farmer’s household, and which yet afford board and lodgment to fifteen or twenty water-drinkers in time of need.

Of the two hotels, the Cambria is select and aristocratic, judiciously dividing its guests into two sections, known as Lords and Commons ; and the Spring House popular and easy-going, Wondrous stories are told of the chaff aid practical joking which obtain at the latter hostelry, and the matrimonial engagements apt to result from a week's residence therein. Pianos are heard long after midnight ; amateur concerts and Christy minstrelsy diversify the monotony of social intercourse. Picnics and excursions of all kinds are of daily occurrence; and the click of croquet-balls without and billiard-balls within may be heard from morn till midnight. The more quiet Cambria has its croquet-lawn also, sheltered by surrounding groves of spice-breathing pines, and its spacious billiard-room over the stony chamber, where the unsavoury waters are dealt out by complacent maidens across a pewter-covered bar, suggestive of Spiers and Pond— awful chamber, pervaded ever by the odour of innumerable rotten eggs, which odour is the delightful characteristic of a sulphur-spring in perfection.

This pump-room stands flush with the more aristocratic wing of the Cambria, and its doors and windows open upon the croquet-lawn and piny groves, and a broad space of gravel before the house. An avenue leads from the hotel down to a little bit of road that crosses the common and joins the high-road—for the ‘Cambria stands in a genteel seclusion, about half a mile from the settlement that has grown up in the neighbourhood of the railway station.

From the pump-room, on this sunny August morning, emerges a gentleman, who wipes his lips with a cambric handkerchief, and wears a disgusted expression of countenance.

“Upon my word, Dewrance, I can’t stand much more of me he exclaims. “Faugh! assafcetida would be ambrosial in comparison.”

Mr. Dewrance, in clerical costume—faultless black and Roman collar—is lounging on a bench outside, smoking an after-breaktast cigar, with contentment depicted upon his visage. He is a wandering light in the ecclesiastie system, and has come to do duty at the unendowed church on the common for the season. He is not at Llandrysak for the waters. ;

“ What does it matter how nasty the stuff is if you think it’s doing you good ?” he asks languidly.

The morning is too warm for much exertion. Even the clerical mind needs repose after the labour of performing matins for the edification of about a dozen females in an advanced stage of spinsterhood.

“ Ah, it’s all very well for you to talk like that,” remonstrates the other. ‘In the first place you don’t drink that nauseous stuff ; and in the second, it would jump with your notions of self-mortification—fasting, abstinence, and all that kind of thing —to imbibe obnoxious waters. The sort of thing St. Francis d’ Assisi would have liked, you know.”

“Are you going to the Histeddfod?” asks Mr. Dewrance, calmly ignoring these remarks.

DNS SOUT

“That depends. Slingford Edwards is to be there in full force,” with a wry face; “and I don’t much care about the business. But I promised some ladies-—”

“ Of course ; | never knew sucha man! Your whole life is frittered away in such small engagements; not an hour that is not pledged to a petticoat. Dewrance, in spite of your varied experience of life, your travels, your knowledge of the world, you are still what you were born to be.”

“What is that?” inquires Mr. Dewrance, with the faintest show of curiosity.

“A tame cat.”

“Why not?” asks the Curate placidly. “Tame-catism isn’, half a bad thing in its way. I like women and women like me. I can make friends of them. I don’t flirt, and I never commit myself; and then I look to. women to help me in the serious business of my life. A priest can achieve great victories with an army of women at his command. How are our churches beautified, our sick tended, our poor fed, our children taught and cared for and civilised? Do you think the masculine element goes for much in these things? No, Westray ; women are the Church’s strong rock. As they were the last at the foot of the cross, so they have become the first at the altar.”

“Upon my soul,” ejaculates Westray, pulling his: dark-brown moustache, “I begin to think that women exercise a great deal more influence than we give them credit for; more than half the world is under petticoat government.”

“Why don’t you join the majority?” asks Dewrance, with a keen look at his friend.

They have known each other less than a fortnight, yet are on those friendly and familiar terms which men slip into so easily. Herman Westray is a man who has made himself a name in the world of letters. He began his career as a journalist in the year he left Oxford, and has only lately shaken himself free from the trammels of the daily press. He has won reputation as poet, dramatist, critic, novelist, and is a power in literary circles. Stimulated by success, and proud of his budding laurels, he has worked his brain to the verge of exhaustion, and has come to Llandrysak Wells at the advice of a wise old doctor, who attended him nine-and-twenty years ago for chicken-pox and croup.

“Why don’t you look out for some nice girl who would reconcile you to the idea of matrimony?” pursues Dewrance. “You're just the kind of man who is bound to go to eternal smash if he doesn’t marry.”

If Mr. Dewrance’s vocabulary is more modern than ecclesiastical, it must be urged in his excuse that he has not been long in holy orders, and that his previous experiences have been of the world worldly.

“T never found a nice girl yet,” replies Westray. ‘I have met handsome girls, clever girls, fascinating girls, but never the woman to whom I could say, ‘Take my lite into your keeping, and be my better angel. Come between me and my evil thoughts ; lead me into the path of peace.’”

“Girls nowadays are awfully fast, I admit,” says Dewrance, gravely, “unless they are Anglican. Try an Anglican girl.”

“No, thanks. A young woman who would get up at five o’clock in the morning to embroider an antependium, and neglect the housekeeping. shouldn’t like a tree-thinking girl, you understand, but I should prefer her religion to take its colour from such teachers as Richter and Carlyle.”

Dewrance shrugs his shoulders with a deprecating air, and rises from his recumbent position.

“T think we’d better go and have a look at the Histeddfod,” he says, ‘‘in spite of Slingford Edwards.”

Slingford Edwards is the Nonconformist light of Llandrysak— Wesleyan or Baptist, no one seemed very clear which; but eminently popular among the natives. He holds forth thrice every Sunday from his rostrum in the red-brick chapel, and appears on weekdays with his manly form equipped in a costume at once agricultural and sportsmanlike, his well-shaped legs, of which he is justly proud, encased in worsted hose, his feet in smart buckled shoes. ,

This gentleman’s popularity at Llandrysak gives him importance at the national festival. He is deputy-chairman, and does most of the hard work, Mr. Morton Jones, the squire, being only required to make a condescending speech, and sit in his armchair, smiling blandly across a little table, throughout the proceedings.

“Tet us go and see how Slingford Edwards does it,” says Mr. Dewrance, throwing away the stump of his cigar.

They stroll down the avenue and across the common, where even on this warm August day the west wind blows pure and fresh. Green hills ring them round like a girdle, and beyond the green rise loftier peaks, russet-brown or deep purple-tinged gray, melting into the blue cloudless sky.

“‘T believe your sulphur and saline springs are a gigantic humbug,” cries Herman Westray, looking round him with the artist’s love of the beautiful. “ But those hills and this pure air might reanimate exhausted mankind on the brink of the grave. I’m very glad my good old doctor sent me here.”

“You look twice as good a man as you did when you came,” answers Dewrance. “I never saw such an exhausted specimen of humanity. You looked like a consumptive vampire.”

“T had been working six hours a day, or six hours a night, at literature for the last three years. That sort of thing does tell upon a man, especially when he tries to combine social enjoyment with intellectual labour—dines out three or four times a week, wastes his afternoons at garden parties, goes to the opera whenever the heavy swells sing, attends all first performances at the theatres, and so on; thus reducing his working time to the small hours between midnight and morning.”

“Dreadful!” cries Dewrance. “I wonder you're alive.”

“Q, that’s habit. If I were to think of the unwholesomeness of my life, I dare say I should die. The quiet of the grave would seem preferable to such high pressure. But I take things easily.”

“You look like it,” says Dewrance, with a side-glance at his friend’s hollow cheeks and darkly-circled eyes.

Hostages to Fortune, il

“ Llandrysak has done me no end of good. I had acquired an uncomfortable habit of falling asleep over my desk, which hinted at apoplexy, and now I am as freshas paint. I have written two acts of a comedy since Saturday.”

“T thought you were here for rest.” ‘

“O, comedy dialogue hardly counts as work. Besides, I am pledged to give Mrs. Brandreth something sparkling for the opening of the autumn season at the Frivolity.”

z The Frivolity? That's one of the new theatres, isn’t at 2”

All that there is of the most new : a house like a bonbonnieére by Siraudin; all quilted canary satin and gold, with a background of burgundy-coloured velvet; medallion portraits of Shakespeare’s heroines on the panels—though what Shakespeare has to do with the Frivolity is more than any fellow can understand. In fact, it’s a charming little box. The actors are most of them ex-cavalry subalterns ; the actresses—well, there isn’t a plain woman among them.”

“Mrs. Brandreth herself is a handsome woman, I’ve heard,”

_says the Curate.

“It would bea bald description of Myra Brandreth to call her handsome,” answers Herman. ‘She is simply one of the most fascinating women who ever turned the brains of men. As for beauty, perhaps there are some handsomer, in her own theatre even ; but there is a kind of loveliness about Mrs. Brandreth which I never saw in any one else. Itisn’t a question of eyes, or nose, or complexion, or figure. She breathes an atmosphere of beauty.”

“Poetical,” says the Curate; “one would think you were among the men whose brains she has turned.”

“Not I. My part in life is rather that of observer of other men’s follies than partaker in their delusions. I contrive to dispose of my surplus idiotey in magazine articles.” ' “Isn't your Mrs. Brandreth a woman with a history?” asks Dewrance. ‘I seem to remember having heard—”

“¢There is a history in all men’s lives.’ Yes, they tell divers romantic legends of Mrs. Brandreth.”

“ Antecedents rather discreditable than otherwise,” hazards the Curate, who from the spiritual altitude he inhabits bends his ear occasionally to murmurs from the mundane level beneath.

“Mrs. Brandreth is an English officer’s daughter, and an English officer's widow. I know nothing further to her disadvantage.” :

“But come, now, don’t people say that Lord Earlswood built . this theatre on purpose for her?”

“Theatres are generally built by some one, and for some one,” answers the imperturbable Herman.

- “T haven’t been inside a theatre since I took orders,” says Mv. Dewrance. “The opera, of course, is different. I take a seat in a friend’s box now and then.”

They are close to the tent by this time, and the twanging of a harp within announces that the competition is in progress. They pay for their tickets at a little wooden watch-box outside the tent, and then, instead of entering with the commonalty, go round to the back, and make their way straight to the platform, Mr. Dewrance being a privileged person, for whom a place is reserved among the magnates of the land.

These magnates consist of a few country gentlemen, with their wives and daughters, who occupy a double row of benches on the platform, and thence survey the crowded audience below. Mr. Morton Jones, the chairman; Mr. Slingford Edwards; Mr. Evan Jones, the musical adjudicator; Mr. Davis, the treasurer ; Mr. Bufton, the secretary ; and two or three other gentlemen officially concerned in the day’s proceedings, are clustered about a table in the centre of this platform. ;

The body of the tent is as full as it can be, and the audience, perspiring but happy, are listening with rapt attention to an ancient Welsh song which a young man of the carpenter profession is singing to an accompaniment on the harp. It is really a spirit-stirring strain, with a fine bold swing in the melody, and better worth hearing than that slaughter of Handel and Haydn which the audience will have to assist at before that entertainment is over.

Competitors inthe ancient Welsh minstrelsy being nowhere, the melodious young carpenter has a walk over the course, and receives the prize—half-a-sovereign in a little silken bag, with long ribbon strings, which are hung around his neck by the fair hands of a damsel, who mounts the platform for that purpose amidst the applause of the crowd.

The next entry is the great event of the morning. Competing choirs are to sing Haydn’s-grand chorus “The Heavens are telling” for a prize of ten guineas, and an ebony-and-silver baton for the conductor. Profound excitement prevails as the names of the competitors are announced. Only two choirs have been found bold enough to essay the contest, and, after a brief delay, the first of these, consisting of about five-and-twenty young men and women, mount the platform, the conductor stands upon a chair, to be better seen by his band, and all is ready for the start.

There is to be no accompaniment, no symphony to induct the

Flostages to Fortune. 13 singers in the right path. But from an unseen corner of the tent there issues the lugubrious sound of a tuning-fork. The singers make a dash at the opening note, start off at a hand-gallop, and hold bravely on till they finish breathlessly amidst friendly plaudits.

Choir number two succeeds, and begins with a false start. The pitch has to be given a second, nay a third, time by that Ingubrious tuning-fork in the corner—a fact to the last degree ignominious. But once off, choir number two has the best of it ; the alto parts ring out more clearly, the time and ensemble are better, and there remains little doubt in the minds of the listeners as to the destination of the ten-pound prize and the ebony baton worth one guinea.

Mr. Evan Jones, the adjudicator (no relation to Mr. Morton Jones, the squire), advances to the front. He is a small activelooking man, with a keen dark face, and a brow prophetic of future distinction. He carries a sheet of music-paper, on which, with ruthless precision, he has recorded the errors of the rival choirs. He expresses himself tersely, and with a certain good-natured irony, not unpleasing to the audience, however galling it may be to the performers, whose work he criticises.

“The first choir,” he begins blandly, “sang by no means badly, and in fact the performance was very creditable indeed.” (The first choir takes courage, and sees its way to the prize.) ~ But they were in too great a hurry to distinguish themselves— the opening movement was taken at a gallop. Now there’s no glory to God in such a stampede as that.” (Laughter.) Tlie first choir looks crest-fallen. ‘‘ They sang, on the whole, tolerably correctly. There was a G natural that ought to have been G flat ; but this we may attribute to nervousness, as well as the fact that they took the largo movement presto. ‘The altos were painfully weak ; the basses were a trifle flat. But, on the whole, as I remarked before, we may consider it a creditable performance, and that it does honour alike to their heads and hearts. Now, with regard to choir number two, I am bound to remark that they made a-very bad start—took the note wrong twice over; avery unmusician-like proceeding. If the composer had meant the chorus to begin with that kind of floundering about, he would have so written it. But there can be no doubt that the second choir redeemed their characters after this bad beginning by very satisfactory work. Their time was better than number one; their forte passages were firmer; their performance had more light and shade ;” and so on, and so on, through a careful criticism of the performance. “I, therefore, feel it incumbent upon me to award the ten-pound prize to the Llanvaerlog choir, and the prize baton, value one guinea, to the conductor of the same.”

Unanimous applause follows the decision. Mr. Slingford Edwards takes a yellow-satin bag froma nail on which it has hung in sight of the audience, looks about him doubtfully for a moment, and then confers in a whisper with the chairman. They are consulting as to the fair hand which is to bestow this guerdon —the chivalrous practice of the Eisteddfod requiring that each prize should be given to the happy winner by a lady selected from among the more distinguished of the assemblage.

““Miss Morcombe,” suggests Mr. Edwards, in a whisper.

“Yes, decidedly,’ replies the chairman, “if she’s here. Couldn’t have any one better.”

This ten-pound prize is the grand feature of the entertainment. The ten-shilling and five-shilling guerdons may be given by anybody, but the donor of the chief prize must needs be a person of mark.

Slingford Edwards slips behind one of those benches on the platform, bends over a young lady’s shoulder—a young lady who sits in the back row, and who has been hidden from the gaze of the public. He whispers a few words in her ear—there is a stir and a gentle flutter around her—she rises, and the Reverend Slingford leads her blushing to the front of the platform, where the expectant choristers wait, elosely huddled together and open-mouthed.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” roars Slingford Edwards above the universal hum, ‘I am proud—we are all proud, and I am sure you will, every man of you—yes, and every woman—for when was woman’s heart slow to throb in unison with man’s most generous emotions ?—participate in that feeling when I tell you that the great prize of the day will be awarded by Miss Morcombe, the lovely daughter of the most popular landowner— always excepting our respected chairman—in these parts. Miss Morcombe of Lothwithian Priory. Now, Mr. Sparks,” to the conductor, “‘down on your knees, and let the memory of this moment never fade from your mind; let it be a stimulus to future exertion, a guiding star to lead you to glory. Why don’t you kneel, you blockhead?” sotto voce to the winner of the prize, who looks as if he had only that moment discovered that his arms are appendages of an awkward and embarrassing character, so limp and helpless are his hands, so painfully angular his elbows.

“Three cheers for Miss Morcombe of Lothwithian,” cries Mr. Edwards ; whereon the audience, who have had to do a good deal of cheering already, respond feebly, with flagging energies.

The prizes are given—first the baton, and then the yellow-satin bag ; and Miss Morcombe curtsies and retires, led by the gallant Slingford. During the last five minutes she has been the focus of every eye, but no eye has gazed more intently than the eye of Herman Westray.

“What a sweet-looking girl!” says Mr. Westray to his companion.

“Yes, she’s nice, isn’t she? I'll introduce you, if you like. She’s very clever—likes literary people—likes to talk about them, at least; for I don’t think she knows many. Serious girl— Anglican.”

“Gets up at five o’clock on saint days, I suppose,” says Herman. “ Rather a trial, I should think, that kind of girl.”

“JT withdraw my offer to introduce you,” says Mr. Dewrance, with a disgusted look.

“OQ nonsense! I should like to know her. What would her getting up at five o’clock matter to me? Jam but a bird of

assage. Yes, she looks clever as well as pretty, and looks good into the bargain. A fine firmly-moulded face, something out of the common in the expression. Put her into a suit of armour, and she would do for Joan of Arc. Please introduce me.”

“Pll take you over to the Priory to luncheon to-morrow. I have carte blanche to take any one nice.”

“ Introduce me to-day. Is that sportsmanlike party with the foxy whiskers her father?”

“Yes, that’s Mr. Morcombe —fine fellow — good old Saxon family—pedigree that goes back to Hengist and Horsa—looks down upon people who date from the Conquest.”

“No end of money, I suppose?”

“Humph!” ejaculates Dewrance doubtfully ; “no end of land, if you like, but money dubious—ready cash at a premium. [ believe Miss Morcombe inherits something from her mother, but nothing considerable. People who trace their lineage as far as Hengist and Horsa are seldom heavily ingotted.”

“ Introduce me, please.”

“ Wait till the Eisteddfod is over. I'll ask them to luncheon at the Cambria.”

Mr. Westray sighs. He is not intensely interested in the musical contest. A young person of eleven is rattling through one of Brinley Richards’s fantasias upon a national air, with more patriotic fervour than discretion. There is to be a Welsh song in character after the pianoforte-playing ; and a recitation, Hamlet and the Ghost, after that. So that Mr. Westray, studying his programme intently, hardly sees his way to the conclusion of the entertainment.

“Can’t we get out, Dewrance?” he asks fretfully ; but Mr. Dewrance is whispering to the chairman, and has something to say to most of the ladies on the platform, and is, in short, in his glory as arbiter of feminine opinion in Llandrysak.

Bnt, lo, presently, comes an unlooked-for diversion. The sunshine which illuminated the tent a quarter of an hour ago has vanished, and a cold grayness prevails in its stead. Now comes the patter of raindrops on the canvas, heavier and heavier, and the assembled multitude begin to have an uncomfortable feeling that canvas is porous, and that there are, moreover, various holes in the tent through which the rain is already descending pretty smartly, to the detriment of new bonnets. Umbrellas go up. Mr. Dewrance has three pretty girls clustering under his serviceable Sangster. Murmurs of discontent arise at the back of the tent from eager souls whose vision is impeded by the front ranks of umbrellas. The Reverend Slingford remonstrates with the umbrella-holders ; urges that while the contest is going on they should submit to be rained upon rather than interfere with the enjoyment of the majority.

“YT should like to know who could enjoy themselves in such weather as this?” gruinbles a sturdy farmer in the front row ; “there ought to have been a tarpaulin.”

“ We didn’t pay our money to be drenched to the skin,” ejaculates another.

‘Think of your second crop of grass,” urges Slingford Edwards, “and what a blessing this gentle shower is for you.”

Meanwhile the rain falls faster ; it splashes and patters upon the piano, so that the last young interpreter of Brinley Richards is fain to stop short in the middle of her performance, and tlie piano is shut, and covered with green baize. The harp is also shrouded ; the smart little satin bags are thrust under cover.

The élite upon the platform huddle together anyhow, and little pools of water lie upon the abandoned benches. The Histeddfod comes to a dead stop, and the only question among the audience is whether it be wiser to stay where they are, or to brave the fury of the tempest in crossing the narrow ridge of common, which lies between them and shelter. Miss Morcombe is standing by her father, sheltered by his umbrella, and enveloped in a dark blue cloak, which drapes the tall full figure from head to foot. In the confusion that prevails Herman has ample leisure tu scrutinise the Squire’s daughter unobserved.